pastorjohnb

Thoughts and musings on faith and our mighty God!

Tag Archives: comfort


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He is That Big

Standing on a beach, looking out across the ocean, it seems like you can see forever.  Despite our natural vision ending at the horizon, we  know the ocean goes on.  It extends beyond what we can see yet we know there is more out there.

If one just stays still and looks out across the water, all else seems to disappear.  We loose sense of the breeze and the warm sand and even of the waves landing on the beach.

As we look out into our faith and look out to find God, one begins to sense something like the ocean.  Our faith can be as vast as the ocean.  Our faith can have no visual end.  Our God is that big.

Yet in that vastness we can find God at any point or at any place.  When the waves of life start landing on our shores, we can find God.  When the breezes start to toss us about, we can look into our faith and draw near to God.  When the sand beneath our feet start to shift and seem to be getting unstable, we can seek God out.  Our God is that big.  He is always everywhere and anywhere to uplift, to encourage, to comfort, to heal, to call us forward, to call us out, to cleanse us of our sins, to love us.  Our God is that big.  Thanks be to God!!


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Supreme Blessing for All!!

The Sermon on the Mount begins with the Beatitudes. ‘Beatitudes’ mean supreme blessings or happiness, according to Webster. For some of the beatitudes, they are certainly a blessing. But for some the blessing comes in how we live them out. In the Beatitudes we see some ways for us to draw near to God, some ways to share our God, and some ways God draws near to us.

When we are poor in spirit we see our need for God and move towards deepening our relationship with Him. To me this is like when I am starting to get hungry – I can begin to sense my need for food. The perceived feeling of missing something draws us near to what we need. When we are humble we acknowledge that there is a need. Then we can begin to walk toward Him that fills us. As we seek righteousness with a pure heart, God is happy to meet us in the journey and to fill us up. And thus our relationship with gains depth.

Out of these internal things and the relationship with God that forms and grows, we can allow God to flow forth from us, into the lives of others. Because we are filled with His peace and mercy, we can offer peace and mercy to those we meet who need to come to know God. The hands and feet of God become our hands and feet as we meet someone in their place of need. Their walk begins or is helped along.

And because of His great love for us, at times God draws near to us. When we mourn, He enters in to bring us comfort. When we are persecuted, He enters in to bring us the strength we need to face the trial. Through His presence with us in our times of need, we gain a depth of relationship with God that allows us to be there for others in their time of need. This too can become a way that God flows out of us and into the lives of others.

As we seek out ways to live out the beatitudes, God will be there with us. Some of the opportunities will be obvious and some will require us to see them not through our eyes but through God’s eyes. Some will become only obvious when we feel with God’s heart and not our own. As we draw closer to God in our relationship with Him, our vision for our own faith and the faith of others becomes clearer as well.

Zephaniah 3:17: “The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you singing.”