My fantastic wife in a recent Sunday teaching challenged her audience to change how they addressed God Almighty. She said God is our Father and that is how He wants to be recognized. We are His children, so we call God, Father.
It was an inspired moment that flowed with her sharing. Its magnitude became more evident after attending a Christian concert featuring several prestigious music groups. I appreciated her challenge even more. The performers called our Heavenly Father, God, virtually the whole evening.
God in His Word addresses Himself over 80 times as Father in Acts through Revelations. What titled is most approachable, God or Father?
The whole eternal purpose and passion of the Heavenly Father was to have children that called Him Father. This intimacy makes believing Him much easier.
My Father’s promises ring much clearer and more personal than saying, God’s promises.
I encourage you to listen to the audio teaching at: www.actsnowfellowship.net or watch the video on our Acts Now Fellowship Facebook page, and take the one week challenge of not calling God, God, but Father!
1 John 3:1 (NLT):
See how very much our Father loves us, He calls us His children, and that we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him. (Jesus Christ)
Agape,
Bob Lindfelt
There is a conundrum with God’s people that needs to be addressed!
First, what is a conundrum? Ms. Siri says, “A confusing and difficult problem.”
As believers we strive to walk with and for our Heavenly Father. Most important, we fellowship with Him: We pray, study His Word and apply it to our lives.
There is one area in the lives of many saints I see we fall short on (me included): Being good stewards of the temple of God (our physical bodies). “What? Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” (I Corinthians 6:19).
We seem to take good care of our phones, cars, computers, homes, pets and other personal things more than we keep ourselves healthy for the Lord.
Too many of my brothers and sisters are having physical problems. “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (III John 2). Our Father wants us and needs us to be in the best of health so we can live for Him. Do not let the evil one continue to deceive us in the area of nutrition and exercise.
The older I get, the more conscientious I am about my health and living a long purposeful life for my Heavenly Father.
I challenge you (and myself) to really survey what is a good diet for you and what exercises are best for your body. Then do what is necessary to take care of the physical vessel that the Father has given you to house the gift of holy spirit.
Being our best for the Father includes stewarding our physical body – It is never too late!
Agape,
Bob
Our Heavenly Father has given us so, so much in so many aspects of our lives. It would take reams of paper to list everything we have been given by God. First, we have life! We are conscious living beings of body and soul. Along with this, if we so choose, we have eternal spirit life as a result of making Jesus Lord in our life and believing that God raised Him from the dead. Really, everything we have in our lives is a result of the Heavenly Father.
What is our response to this? We have a responsibility to steward what we have been given. I believe God expects us to use and take care of the resources He has given us. That includes our physical possessions, relationships, finances, health, etc.
Our natural inclination is to say, “It is mine. I earned it, so it belongs to me.” The truth of the matter is you are here and all that you have is a result of God’s love and grace. By the way we do not belong to ourselves anymore. God bought us with the price of His Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 6:19 & 20).
How we take care of the resources from God is up to us. This is called stewardship. God has given us clear directions on how to steward all that we have. One method of stewardship is giving.
A Stewardship Principle - Giving
The law and principle of giving is perhaps the most misunderstood of God’s stewarding methods. A worldly person cannot imagine how you can give something and then be blessed back much more because of giving out of love.
God’s Word strongly encourages believers to be cheerful givers.
2Corinthians 9:6-8: But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.
And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:
As we live our life for the Heavenly Farther may we take advantage of His guidance and do His Word so that we can be fully blessed and abound in the riches of His resources.
Agape,
Bob
We, at one point in our lives as born again believers, did the most beneficial act we could ever do. We made Jesus Christ Lord in our lives and believed God raised Him from the dead (See Romans 10:9). That incredible statement of belief took us from eternal death to eternal life with our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ.
I did this for sure when I was 20 years old. Every day since then, by the freedom of my will, I continue to make Him Lord or not. Many days, I did not think about who is Lord in my life. I just lived my life taking care of myself.
Whenever I thought about my Heavenly Father and His Son and applied the renewed mind by putting off the old man and putting on the Christ in me, my life was rich and purposeful. I am challenged every day to make Him Lord in my life. Why not? The Heavenly Father sure put me first in giving His Son to accomplish my redemption through His shed blood.
I am a new creation in Christ. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation...” (ESV II Corinthians 5:17).
Every day we are challenged to make decisions on our priorities in life. Jesus Christ made us His priority, now why not make Him a priority in our lives every day. Why not choose to live for Him and make Him Lord in your life every day. The first time I did, I received eternal life! Why not continue living like that and benefit every day by making Him Lord.
How do I make Him Lord every day? A prayer in the morning recognizing His presence and Lordship is a good start. Speaking in tongues throughout the day, means you are thinking about Him and the Father. It says in I Corinthians 12:3:…” that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” Speaking by the spirit is speaking in tongues. Every time you speak in tongues it shows you have made Jesus Lord!
Who is Lord in your life today?
Agape,
Bob
I am not a farmer, but I enjoy gardening. The experience of putting a tiny wrinkled speck in the ground and watch what comes up fascinates me. Within a week or two, a green sprout emerges. After several weeks a full on plant develops, and within 90 days you are picking large, luscious fruit from this product of a little seed. All I did was put it in the ground and watered it.
We all arrived here via an invisible seed impregnating an egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The miracle of life occurs and an individual is born and develops into a person.
The Bible declares how terrific seeds are and the role they play in the big picture of life.
1Corinthians 15:37 & 38: (ESV) And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.
But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body.
We all may be amazed at the remarkable ways seeds function to produce life in the most simple forms of life to the most sophisticated animals, including man. But, there is one seed that completely exceeds all others. It is the new birth seed a person receives when they believe the Word of God and get saved, becoming a child of God (Romans 10:9 and Romans 8:16 & 17). That seed is incorruptible and abides forever in the child of God.
1Peter 1:23: (KJV) Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.
This seed is perfect and cannot sin. We may sin in our flesh, but our spiritual life comes from an incorruptible seed, so we cannot sin through that seed.
1John 3:9: (KJV) Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
As I plant seeds in my garden this Spring and watch the life grow from them, I will always think of and be grateful to the Heavenly Father for the incorruptible seed He gave me. With this fascinating seed I have eternal life and an upcoming new body at the return of Christ!
Agape,
Bob