REMEMBER ME - by Elijah Breon

It is easy to forget how much I can rely on God. Life comes at me from all angles, and over the days I end up carrying the heaviness. But, at some point, I hear him say, “Remember me?” “Yes!” I always reply in my heart. Of course I remember you. So I stop and listen a while.  “I have so much more for you than worry. Don’t let the season wear on your memory. I have taken you places you never knew you’d be. Remember that you gave me your future? I have walked with you every day of that path. I have met you in the very difficult days and I’ve always opened up doors that you couldn’t see. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You can rely on me that can be your mind’s focus. When you are trying to calculate and weigh options and possibilities, remember me. I have Grace for you.” We don’t walk this life alone. We have a Father who is mighty and immensely interested in our lives. “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.” Psalms 37:4-5 NKJV

IN US, THROUGH US AND AS US: MOVING AS ONE IN THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF THE TRINITY - by Joel Pollard

2 Corinthians 4:6-7 in the Mirror declares, “The light source is founded in the same God who said, “Light, be!” And light shone out of darkness! He lit the lamp in our understanding so that we may clearly recognize the features of his likeness in the face of Jesus Christ reflected within us. And now, in the glow of this glorious light and with unveiled faces, we discover this treasure where it was hidden all along, in these frail skin-suits made of clay. We did not invent ourselves; we are God’s idea to begin with and the dynamic of his doing and amazing engineering!” It is not God in us, it is God as us. It’s not Jesus in us, it’s Jesus as us, for we are joint heirs in Christ. What does a move of God actually look like? I believe that the body of Christ has been looking externally for the answer so long to this question instead of internally. We’ve been looking “out there for the next move of God” when the move has been in us all along. When see God externally, it creates a sense of separation and alienation from Him. The good news of the Gospel is we don’t just have love, we are the very love of God, for there is no separation in Him, for we are one with God. He’s not working through us, He’s working as us for we ARE the very expressed image and likeness of Jesus! We’re the object of His greatest affection - we are the pearl of great price. We have been invited into this great adventure with the Trinity. We died with Christ, and because our life is now His life, this means that we’ve literally been given Jesus’ relationship with the Father (Col. 3:1-4). This is a place where we enter pure grace and rest; we already are because he is; as he is, we are already. When we already know who we are, it stops us from thinking who we are. It’s important that we don’t confuse behavior and identity - they are not the same thing. In the words of one my friends, Dr. Matt Pandel, “Mankind’s original sin is a propensity (a behavior pattern, not an identity or state of existence) to strive for what one already possesses. Our behavior often expresses what we believe about our identity. We “act” according to our beliefs about ourselves and who we think God is.” Faulty beliefs bear the fruit of faulty behaviors. For example, some of us may have experienced trauma in our past and the behavior from that has created a pattern that is not in who we inherently are. Trauma makes you who you aren’t but healing allows you to be the person you were always meant to be. My prayer is that as we awaken to the reality of who we really are in the Father, Son and Spirit, who we’ve been all along from when we were created before the foundation of the world, that we would come to further experience and encounter the reality that we are One with the Trinity, as They continue to move in us, through us and as us.  With Love, Joel

A SAFE FATHER WHO DOESN'T JUDGE US - by Brent Lokker

Language is a funny thing. How do we convey deep realities in the spirit and of the heart using sounds (phonetics) that we’ve created over the centuries to be able to communicate with one another? And then, how do we adequately translate the depth of these specific words across languages and cultures when often there just aren’t ways to adequately express the same nuances?   Take, for example, the verb to judge (judging, judgmental, etc). There are dozens of Greek words with hundreds of variations in the New Testament (woah!), but the word most often used is krisis. Though simply translated as judgement in English, it doesn’t carry the meaning of damnation or condemnation even though most of us who grew up in the church were instructed otherwise. Rather, the Greek word krisis usually conveys something much richer: “setting affairs right between different parties, deciding an issue, coming to a conclusion.”   In this way, we can see how God used his perfect and loving krisis/judgement/decision to come to a conclusion about us. What is that conclusion? Before the foundation of the world, the Father made the decision that we would be holy and innocent before him in love. (Ephesians 1:4; Colossians 1:22) He decided that through Christ, our intimate connection with Him would be fully restored. (Romans 5:1-2) He decided to set things right again by dealing a death blow to the devastating problem of our wayward independence that gave us a distorted view of God, and therefore of ourselves. (2 Corinthians 5:14; Colossians 2:13-15) And by his choice, He created us in his image and shared with us his divine nature to live in eternal union with the Trinity. (Genesis 1:27; 2 Peter 1:4; Romans 6:5)   Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that the Father judges no one but has entrusted all judgement to himself. (John 5:22) Then Jesus says though we judge by human standards, he (Jesus) passes judgement on no one. (John 8:15) Here he’s clearly talking about the ways in which we look down on another and judge others as less than in some way. He is letting us know, “My Father and I don’t do that to anyone…ever!”   Yet another time, Jesus says there is no judgement against anyone who believes in him, but if we don’t believe in him, we have already been judged. (John 3:18) Here’s an intriguing question to ask yourself: who is doing the judging? Jesus never says that it’s him nor does he say it’s the Father, but that’s an assumption most of us have made, mostly because it’s what we were taught, thus it’s the lens through which we see. If we look back to the deception in the Garden of Eden, some kind of distortion gripped God’s first children to suddenly hide from him in shame, somehow anticipating his punishment though previously all they had ever known was deep intimacy with a safe and loving Father. What was their Creator’s response? “My child, why are you hiding from me?” and later, “Who told you that you were naked?” Their loving Father was letting Adam and Eve know, “It wasn’t me!”   So again, who is doing the judging? I propose that the most telling answer is, WE are! And this is often the case when the word judgement is used in the New Testament. We end up judging ourselves when we look through distorted lenses and make up our own stories about who God is and who we are. We have a tendency to come into agreement with some pretty awful, condemning judgements—accusing ourselves, accusing others and even accusing God of being something other than who he is as the purest Lover of our souls.   This truly is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the complexities of the nuances of this one word, judgement. So the big question is, how do we gain more clarity? In a Word…Jesus. We gaze at Jesus who perfectly displays the heart and nature of our heavenly Father. Another way of saying this is, if you don’t see it in Jesus, it can’t be true of the Father. Remember, Jesus was the one to whom all judgement was given and what did he do with that? The only one who was given the authority to accuse and condemn—should he have chosen to do so—relinquished his right to be right in that epoch moment on the cross when he cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they’re doing.”   If you have questions regarding what judgement is all about, gaze at Jesus and see how he loved people—like the woman with a poor reputation who anointed his feet with expensive oil and tears of deep gratitude because she encountered a Savior who was safe and who did not judge her in any way (you can read this story in Luke 7). When you wonder what the Father is really like, look no further than the person and life of Jesus and remember how faithfully he has loved you no matter what you have done in your life or where you have found yourself. That’s never going to change! Then, with those lenses in place, the Holy Spirit will lead you on a never-ending adventure of discovering how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ!   And this is why you can run full on into the loving arms of your safe Father who will never condemn you but who has already chosen you to be his forever!

OUR CENTRAL REFERENCE POINT - by Russ & Susan Fochler

At a recent leader’s meeting, Susan felt God’s presence and saw an angel holding a large sword vertically with the point up.  And in her spirit and mind Susan heard “plumb line” and she understood our plumb line or central reference point is God’s love.  While other things are important, everything else is rightly valued and understood when we build our life upon His love.   What does this mean?  Last Saturday night, we looked at these scriptures:  - Psalm 89: 1-2, and 14-15 in the NIV - Isaiah 28:16-17a in the NKJV - 1 Cor 13:1-7, 12-13 in The Source New Testament - Hebrews 12:5-11 in The Message Bible - And 1 John chapter 1 in The Passion Translation - Saturday's talk starts here at an hour and 26 minutes. - “Therefore thus says the Lord God: Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, A tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; Whoever believes will not act hastily. Also I will make justice the measuring line, And righteousness the plummet;”    (Isaiah 28:16-17a  NKJV) God declares this prophecy in response to the problem of the scornful men ruling Jerusalem seemingly getting away with evil.  But, the true scope of this prophecy is for the whole world throughout time.  Unless our hearts change, the devastations and desolations resulting from heedless self-protection and self-promotion continue to ripple outward.   Jesus the Messiah is our cornerstone - our central reference point of other-centered, self-giving love.  His justice is the restoration of every violation of love (Jennifer Toledo).   And righteousness is established by God (Abba, Jesus, and Holy Spirit) through living inside us, living in communion with us while we grow in trusting and agreeing with His glad, loving heart. This song beautifully captures this: “Holy, there is no one like You There is none beside You Open up my eyes in wonder And show me who You are And fill me with Your heart And lead me in Your love to those around me   And I will build my life upon Your love It is a firm foundation And I will put my trust in You alone And I will not be shaken”   (Build My Life by Pat Barrett)   With hope and joy in Jesus,  Russ & Susan