Let the Body of Christ walk in their gifts

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last nigh at bible study God brought out that we should and need to be using our gifts that He gave us. it started with talking about my week with God. i have been thinking here lately that i do not really have a passion(s). i enjoy doing lots of things but i do not really have something that i am passionate about. i feel like for a while now that i do not have something that i get excited about, and with that i feel like God has been leading me to get excited/passionate about something. in my heart of hearts i don't want to devote my time to secular things. i don't want my day to be filled with things that i can come up with. i want my day to be filled with Jesus. see i started reading in Matthew (and will end with John) to see just what Jesus requires of me. i want to do the things that make Him happy..... anyway i am getting off topic. what i am saying is that this last week God has made me look at what my passions are. which in reality is serving Jesus (or at least that is what i want it to be).

as i sat down to look and asked God what we would talk about during bible study i felt like He wanted me to talk about our passions. so i asked Him what scriptures do i apply to this? at first i didn't get anything. so i started thumbing through my bible to see if anything would jump out at me. of course nothing did. so asked my wife what she thought about when i asked her about passions. (i thank God for my wife. He speaks through her so much) she thought about 1 Timothy 4:12-16. which tells us not to let people despise our youth, but to be an example to all, and to neglect the gift that God has given us. this lead me to 2 Timothy 1:6-9 where it tells us to stir up the gifts that we have. praise the Lord that He knows what He is doing. at this point someone asked "where in Corinthians does it talk about gifts?" so of course we looked at it and several others. here they are: 1 Corinthians 12:4-12, Romans 12:3-15, and Ephesians 4:11. there are many other verses that one could use for talking about the gifts but these are the few that we quickly looked at. now to start tying all this together let us first look at one last verse out of the Message bible: Colossians 2:6-10 "6 My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him.7 You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving.8 Watch out for people who try to dazzle you with big words and intellectual double-talk. They want to drag you off into endless arguments that never amount to anything. They spread their ideas through the empty traditions of human beings and the empty superstitions of spirit beings. But that’s not the way of Christ.9 Everything of God gets expressed in him, so you can see and hear him clearly. You don’t need a telescope, a microscope, or a horoscope to realize the fullness of Christ, and the emptiness of the universe without him.10 When you come to him, that fullness comes together for you, too. His power extends over everything." what a great verse!!! see God from a young age spoke to me about the gifts that i have in Him. and from a young age it has made happy to walk/operate in the giftings. after reading these several verses and hearing God speak to me about my "passions" it was and is clear as day to what i need to be doing. God wants me to (in His words) "Just start living it!" to let/make my passions be the spiritual gifts that He gave me. what a revelation! it may be a small one, and one that seems so obvious, but it is a blessing to know that God has found in me something that He wants to use. so here is where i count my blessings. i thank God that he has not forgotten about me and that He has counted me worthy enough (even through my filthy flesh)to be a minister for Him!

Auschwitz!!!

so the wife and i went to Auschwitz this past three days; and let me just say WOW!!! i have and never see or do i want to see something like that again. well i hope i never have to. we started out walking through the gates (what a sobering moment) and immediately we were walking through the "Blocks." we made our way to block 4 where the memorial fokes put up for display several disturbing things. walking through the door was crazy enough, but when we went into the room where they laid out 2000kg of human female hair was mind blowing. the hair came from all woman that was shipped there. talk about making my stomach turn. we went on to see thousands of pairs of shoes, glasses, toothbrushes, and clothes. these are just a few items that they displayed to keep the memory of those who were there alive. just when we thought that we had seen it all they told us that they would now take us to Auschwitz 2. i couldn't believe it! there was more! as if one of these horrifying wasn't bad enough. so we got on a bus and head down the street to Auschwitz 2. this one was (and i am not joking) 10 times bigger. Auschwitz 2 is the one that is mostly shown on TV and stuff. its the one with the train that goes right through the doors. they said that it could (and did) hold hundreds of thousands of people. it's almost safe to say that as far as the eye can see that is how far the camp, barracks, and crematoriums go. among holding that many people they killed just as much. at this Camp they had 5 crematoriums to aid in the disposing of all those innocent people. if that's not enough to make you shake your head in sadness they said that at the crematoriums where they dumped the ashes looked beautiful. that there were flowers that flourished from the soil being so fertile with ashes. how messed up is that. in a place of death, beauty springs up..... the whole time we are walking and hearing how they did the selection of who would live and who would die, i could not stop thinking about my family. if my wife and i were taken up and shipped to that place there is no way that she (being pregnant) would have been selected to live. and if she by some chance had been allowed to live she would have wished she was dead. from what they told us she and the baby would have been subject to God knows what kind of torture; leading to death. there is no way i would want my family to have to go through that. so here i can count my blessings. i am very thankful that God has sparred us from having to live in that time.... but in my personal opinion our time as Christians living in peace is on a short time line. let us be thankful that our Heavenly Father has been so gracious to us.....

A Day filled with Blessings from my Heavenly Father

Blessings. that is one thing that God has given me.... from a child my mother, grandmother and aunt would always tell me to count my blessings. i never knew just what they were talking about until i got a little older and started a family of my own. see i have always tried to walk with Jesus and have in my eyes served Him with all of my heart (or at least tried). three years ago He gave my what would be one of my most amazing blessings. He gave me my wife! today two years ago my wife and i got married. what a wonderful blessing that was. Jesus says be thankful in all things, and some times that is a hard thing to do. on that day two years ago it was easy, and today two years later it is still easy. now He has added to that blessing. 31 weeks ago today He blessed my wife and i by making us (her) pregnant. today is an easy day for me to count my blessings. it is a day filled with joy, happiness, love, and gratitude. i have been and know that i will continually be blessed by my heavenly Father. let us continue to count our blesses and be thankful in all things.