Monday, August 22, 2011

Darkness. People all around you in the light but all you hear is silence.
Your past like a tunnel about to swallow you and smother you...you cant breathe.
Everyone says, "I know how you feel"...but nobody has answers.
So you're running in circles trying to forget all the problems, escape from the voices that tell you it's over. You dont want to give up but what else can you do? You're going insane.
So you cut yourself. You feel like you've won. That you conquered the chaos that burns in your blood that flows from your wrist as the blade cuts through your flesh. And finally! Sweet relief! Everything fades away and your burden is lifted and you are happy. your head feels as light as a feather and you take a deep breathe.

Or maybe you cut because you just want to feel something.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Embrace the challenge! Walk in obedience!


Think about it...The holy Spirit is bold and radical! Are the words that we speak bold? Radical? Are they challenging? Or are we just seeking the approval of listeners????....Be More

-Point5

Monday, July 11, 2011

Focus

Keep your eyes on where you are going because where you are can detour you. What you focus on will be the direction you go so stay focused on where you want to go and not on your failures. Your going to mess up get over it! Failing doesn't make you a failure...not trying does. Anytime you have a dream in your heart you will have opposition in your life. There are no free rides to your destiny. There will be naysayers along the path...what you listen to long enough you will believe. Be careful what you believe because that is what you become! What you invest time in will become valuable to you so invest yourself wisely. If you choose to spend your time on things that don't move you forward don't be surprised when you move backwards. There are two paths for your life, a right one and a wrong one. What you focus on is the difference between regret and a life well lived. Proverbs 4:21 says to guard your heart with all diligence because out of it flows the issues of life. Paul told Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:14 to not neglect the spiritual gift inside him. Whenever God puts something in our heart you must protect it and be diligent to see it lived out in our life.

James "Pops" Rees
SaltBox

The Heart

Have you heard the saying "Follow Your Heart"? That's the stuff of fairy tails and nightmares. Your heart can lead you into places you never ment to go and into things you didn't want to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that your heart can't tell you good things. It can, but we can convince ourselves in our hearts that anything is OK and right. What does your heart want? To whom is it submitted?

Do you have "if onlys" in you life? Like if only I had this then my life would be complete. Just as we get what we thought we needed the rules change and there is something new that we need. It's a never ending cycle.

In the Garden on Eden, Adam and Eve enjoyed a standing invitation of open access to God. All their needs were met. They had no hunger, stress, sickness, bills, demands... What are some of the things that you deal with that they didn't have to? They didn't sin because of their demanding circumstances or need. Sin is not the product of what we have or don't have. It is a product of the heart. "The heart is deceitful above all things." Jeremiah 17:9 The heart can easily buy into satan's lies.

Nothing is more misleading than an unsanctified, rebellious, or lost heart. For this reason God continually warns us through the Bible for us to give Him our whole heart. Here are some examples:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength" Deuteronomy 6:5
"Acknowledge the God of your Father and serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and thought." 1 Chronicles 28:9
"As water reflects the face, so one's life reflects the heart" Proverbs 27:19
"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" Matthew 12:34b
"Good people bring good things out of the good stored in their heart, and evil people bring evil things out of the evil stored up in their heart. For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks" Luke 6:45
These are just a few places in the Bible the heart is mentioned. Do a search and look up other verses and study them. Are you seeing a pattern?

So enter Noah...Adam and Eve lived in the most ideal circumstances, but still choose sin and disobedience. Noah lived where depravity ruled and people followed every evil thought without restraint. He made right choices and was righteous and blameless. "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God" Genesis 6:8&9

What was the difference? The difference is Noah walked with God in his heart. Heart change doesn't come form a one time commitment or far away thoughts of God. It comes from the constant state of fellowship with God. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute...

The deliberate act of will is the inevitable choice between habitual fellowship or habitual failure. Our culture surrounds us with every conceivable practice of sin and the continual mockery of God. We can be victorious only if we walk with God and give Him our whole heart. There is no place more safe. The choice is your daily, hourly, momentarily... What will your choice be? Who will you serve?

Athena
SaltBox

Captivity or Freedom...the choice is yours

How many have heard of Babylon in the Bible? It was like the ultimate place when every carnal desire could be attained easily. Sound familiar? Kinda sounds like the day we live in. So take the word "Babylon" and let it become the mentality or mind set of carnal desire where every worldly thing is just a step away or who the world says you must be to be cool and accepted. I am not attacking America, just trying to help with a mental picture.

So, let's begin there and realize that surrounding us is everything our flesh could possible desire. How are we to live in an excessive culture and not be poisoned by it, let alone influence it? In a place where youth and beauty are the greatest things desired, how are we to avoid being sucked in? The term "friendly captivity" comes to mind. Think about that for a while. To be in captivity is to be enslaved. This world offers a lot of friendly captivity. The way it leads to captivity is by saying one look won't hurt, one taste can't hook, one time won't change, you deserve it... The thing is captivity never remains friendly. The more you have, the more you need and the less happy you become. Just ask anyone you has been addicted to anything. The more we "play" with sin, the more we will be sucked in. Satan will bide his time and wait for the opportune moment to take us captive. It may seem like your getting away with what your doing, but make no mistake the devil will ensnare you when you play with sin and you will be the one with the regrets.

Here's a question. Are you so used to the decaying morals that surround you that you don't even know how to blush anymore? What I mean by that is there is stuff that we see daily weather it be on TV, the internet, or real life that should shock and embarrass us. When we are no longer embarrassed or shocked by what we see, than we are beginning on the road to that friendly captivity. Daily we are being indoctrinated or trained by the culture around us. What are you doing to counteract that?

Now we come to the choice part. Any decision that we make, that is not easy requires this small thing called resolve. Resolve means to make a decision or have firmness of purpose. Resolve requires integrity on our part as well. Integrity is the state of being undivided or complete. Integrity depends on consistency. Consistency is sticking with something and doing it over and over that same way. I'm not talking about being perfect. Perfection on earth is impossible. What I mean is that resolve is not a one time choice. It is a daily thing. It means making the right choices over and over and over again. It means that no matter who you are with, where you are, or if you are by yourself, that you are the same person. Life is much easier and simpler when we don't have to remember what we are supposed to be with different people.

Here's the low down. The devil never wastes his attacks. He knows where in our lives that we are inconsistent. He's know when we stop making the resolute decision to choose what is right. He knows exactly what to send in your path to make you trip because he's been studing your habits. The bull's-eye for him is our inconsistency. That's where he'll be waiting to help us make the bad choice.

We will live making the right choices on purpose or we will not do it at all.
"Sin is crouching at you door; it desires to have you" Gen. 4:7
Right living takes tenacious obedience!

The choice is yours...


Athena
SaltBox

Negative Voices

There is a significant amount of negativity these days. You can't turn on the tv, radio or internet without people telling you everything that is wrong with the world. It seems to me that we should be different than this. We should be bringing hope to a world without hope rather than adding our two cents worth. Often we simply tell people what is wrong from our "Christian" perspective. All this does is makes us another useless voice in the sea of negativity. We get tuned out just like the rest of the noise. The bible says in Ephesians 4:29 we should not speak unwholesome words but just words that give grace to the people who need to hear them at that moment. The challenge for us is to separate from the hopelessness around us so that when we speak it doesn't remind people where they are but shows them where they want to be.

James "Pops" Rees
SaltBox