I Could Have Missed This!

This past weekend I was in the Houston, Texas area speaking at Crosspoint Fellowship in Pearland.  HELLOOO to all my new friends in that area and the awesome team that organized and put their special touches into that wonderful day!!!  The Lord was magnified through you!

I took a few pictures that I will have to post later due to computer problems...so come back and check them out later in the week!

After each event I like to pause and spend time with God and thank Him for His provision's and review with Him the details of the ministry event.   At times the review of it all can be so overwhelming!!  Especially when I realize - I could have missed meeting these wonderful ladies...I could have missed this time in His presence...I could have missed the words He speaks to me in the midst of all the preparation and delivery...I could have missed watching Him transform lives...I could have missed all of this and more!!  

This particular weekend was huge on the scale of thanking God for what He did in arranging this event on my calendar, as well as what He allowed me to witness with my eyes and soak in my soul...and to think...

If I had not believed...I could have missed it!

If I had not surrendered...I could have missed it!

I I had not opened & studied His Word...I could have missed it!

If I had not trusted...I could be have missed it!

If I had not prayed...I could have missed it!

If I had not prepared...I could have missed it!

I praise Him for His revelation in my life and His endurance with me!

I sing for Joy because of the Freedom I am experiencing in Christ and the Peace he provides in the steps I take along the journey.  

May we all walk in greater knowledge and awareness of His purpose for us each day.  

Not filling it with meaningless - time consuming excursions and thoughts.

And especially not missing out on what He wants us to see, hear, experience and live out!!

I pray these words over you today.

I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.  I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.  I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints and his incomparably great power for us who believe.

That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Ephesians 1:16-22 

He Inspires Me,

Vern

Day 5 ~ What Christians Believe...

"He Descended Into Hell..."

My favorite icon (those ancient pictures which Christians in the Orthodox East use as instruments of worship) is called “The Harrowing of Hell”.  It depicts Jesus coming out of the tomb - not gently, but leaping, his robe fluttering behind him in the wind almost like a kind of Superman’s cape! Scattered all around him are the broken down doors, the shattered wood, and the broken locks and hinges of hell itself.  With one hand he is grasping Adam and with another he is holding on to Eve, and a whole crew of people are scurrying out behind him. He has just conquered hell and freed its captives.

When the Apostle John was in exile on the Isle of Patmos he had a vision of the risen Lord who told him, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive for ever and ever!  And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1.18).  From whence did he get those keys? Well, he got them from death and hell and the grave - when he descended there in his own death.   While he was in hell he not only experienced the depths of human death, he not only preached to those who were there, he also conquered the evil powers!  Paul writes, “And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2.15).

The early Church Fathers have seen this descent into hell as a fulfillment of Job 40.1, where God asks Job, “Who can capture with a hook the great sea monster Leviathan [the Dragon]?”  In his descent into hell, as a human, Jesus “tricked” the trickster, the devil, that old serpent, the dragon. Saint Cyprian wrote, “The divine power of God’s son was a kind of fishhook hidden by the covering of human flesh”. Saint Gregory of Nyssa wrote, “...the deceiver reaps the harvest of the seeds he sowed with his own free will.  For he who first deceived man by the bait of pleasure is himself deceived by the camouflage of human nature...”! John of Damascus explained it like this: “Wherefore death approaches, and swallowing up the body as a bait is transfixed on the hook of divinity, and after tasting of the sinless and life-giving body, perishes, and brings up again all whom of old he swallowed up.  For just as darkness disappears on the introduction of light, so is death repulsed before the assault of life, and brings life to all, but death to the destroyer”.

Do you see the brilliance of this strategic move?  Satan rejoices in the death of Jesus, and the demons of hell celebrate his descent into their territory!  But the shouts of joy soon turn to howls of terror when they realize that the One among them is himself Life and Light that cannot be extinguished! To put it another way, hells gates are broken down from the inside out! The great reversal has begun.

(From Chapter Five, What Christians Believe by Kenneth N. Myers)

To order Bishop Kenneth's book go to his website - www.kennethmyers.net

Thank you all for joining us on this blog journey!

Stay in touch and come back to visit our sites so that you can be kept updated on future releases and events.

It is my prayer that you will be rooted and established deeply in the love of Christ and will come to grasp even greater how wide - how long - how high and deep His love is for you!  To Him be all the glory  forever and ever!  Amen!

(Ephesians 3:14-21)

May we never be the same!

Blessings,

Vern

Lyrics to The Glory Of It All  ~ By David Crowder
At the start
He was there
He was there
In the end
He’ll be there
He’ll be there
And after all
Our hands have wrought
He forgives

Oh, the glory of it all
Is He came here
For the rescue of us all
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all

All is lost
Find Him there
Find Him there
After night
Dawn is there
Dawn is there
And after all
Falls apart
He repairs
He repairs

Oh, He is here
With redemption from the fall
That we may live
For the glory of it all
Oh, the glory of it all

After night
Comes a light
Dawn is here
Dawn is here
It’s a new day, a new day
Oh, everything will change
Things will never be the same
We will never be the same

Oh, everything will change
Things will never be the same
We will never be same

 

Day 4 ~ What Christians Believe. Jesus Christ...Born of the Virgin Mary

"Who For Us And For Our Salvation Came Down From Heaven"

We now come to the central truth of Christianity: “Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven”. God the Son, the very manifestation of the invisible God himself, the one who is the Word of God and brought all things into existence, the one who revealed himself to Moses and Joshua and the Prophets, “came down from heaven”. And his coming from the heavenly dimension into our realm of the physical was not just for a visit, but for an eternal union with what he had made, and in particular with humanity. But it must be emphasized that this wonderful act was not for himself - he didn’t “need” to join himself to us - he did it for “us and for our salvation”. The very act of the incarnation (“enfleshing”) was to save creation and restore mankind to himself. It was an act of love.

How he came down from heaven was that he became “incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary”. In the third and final clause of the creeds we will learn more of the Holy Spirit, but here we see the Spirit of God is referenced as that life, that energy, that “flow” between the Father and the Son, and it was by the Spirit that the Son became flesh. The angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary and told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1.35).

And thus, for us, was God “made man”. In the womb of the Virgin Mary God joined himself to his creation. He took the flesh of Mary - her egg, and joined himself to her flesh and the child born was without human father but was of human mother. “The Word became flesh” (John 1.14). In the early Church the Virgin was given the title, “Mary, Mother of God”. Some people have been thrown off by this title, feeling that it elevated Mary to too high an honor. Laying aside for a moment that the Bible actually says that all generations will call her Blessed and that she is blessed among all women (Luke 1.42, 48), the title is not about Mary, but about Jesus. The title is not a marian statement, but a christological statement. It is saying that what was in the womb of Mary was really and truly God, “true God of true God”! In the inner chamber of humanity, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, God became man. He did not simply put on a human costume. He became man. Never again to not be man! God elevated the stuff of our nature to the place of Divinity eternally! Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man and the two shall nevermore be divided or separated. A man - one of us - sits enthroned in the heavenlies forever and is God Almighty! And it was all an act of love, a reuniting, a reconciling: “God was in Christ Jesus, reconciling the world to himself, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5.19)!

(From Chapter Three, What Christians Believe by Kenneth N. Myers)

To order Bishop Kenneth's Book - www.kennethmyers.net.

Even though we are not in the middle of Christmas season - today is a great day to give thanks to our Lord for the gift of Jesus...the One who saves and rescues us! Do you know my Savior?

If you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord" and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. Romans 10:9-10

Praise Yahweh for the Birth, Death and Resurrection of Jesus!
Give thanks for His saving power and his continued provision of forgiveness and deliverance!

Praise the Lord (Yahweh), O my soul;
all my innermost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord (Yahweh), O my soul, and forget not all his benefits -
who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord (Yahweh) has compassion on those who fear him.

Psalm 103:1-5, 11-13


He has done great things!

Vern