Sarah Reeves – Just Want You (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)

5 years ago

And Jesus said, “A man had two sons.The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the estate that falls to me.’ So he divided his wealth between them.And not many days later, the younger son gathered everything together and went on a journey into a distant country, and there he squandered his estate with loose living.”

– Luke 15:11-13

A Father’s Grief

Father’s Day is set aside each year to celebrate the dads in our lives. But for many, this is a hard day. Some men are not able to have children. For others, this is the day they grieve the loss of a child. And for many, this day will pass with the knowledge that they will not hear from their son. In this context, the Biblical story of the prodigal son is an ancient one that still pulls on the souls of fathers everywhere.

The prodigal was a young man who became restless and decided to leave home for the big city. He took his inheritance, spent it all on loose living, and was reduced to feeding pigs in order to survive. As he starved in the pig pen, he came to his senses and realized that his father’s servants ate better than he did. He swallowed his pride and returned home.

In the Bible account, the first thing the prodigal son saw when he arrived home in humiliation was the sight of his father running down the road to meet him with joy. There they embraced, both the fears of the son and the heartache of the father dispelled in a moment of sweet reconciliation.

The son suffered much for his choice to walk away and squander his inheritance, and it was his desperation that drove him home. It must have been a long walk home that day.

But the things that he never saw would have helped him to understand what it meant to be loved without condition.

Had he known, he would have run all the way home.

He never saw the agony of an old man broken. He never saw the lines in his father’s face from the many nights without sleep. He never saw how his father struggled to hold on to his integrity when the questions drowned him in the night.

He never saw the tears or the drooped shoulders from carrying a sorrow too great. He never saw the way his father fought to hold up his head around others, as if to dare the shame to approach him.

If he could have seen his father’s heart, he would have known how many times he was remembered, prayed over, grieved, forgiven, remembered, prayed over, and grieved again. If he could have only seen the pain he inflicted by disrespecting and discarding his family’s love so easily, he would have never left.

If only he could have seen how much precious time he had lost, how much happiness he had squandered on sin.

A godly father’s heart is larger than our failures.

If we realized how much the story of the prodigal reveals of our Father in heaven, who grieves silently and intensely, how much more we would understand God. It is this Father who weeps for us, who watches the road for our return, and who runs to meet us with great joy when we make that long walk home.

This son of mine was dead and has come to life again;

he was lost and has been found.

– Luke 15:24

Slightly Obsessed #247: What The Prodigal Never Saw

5 years ago

Rebecca St. James – Battle is the Lord’s (Lyric Video) New Song 2020

5 years ago

Winona Avenue – Masterpiece (Official Music Video)

5 years ago

This I recall to my mind,

Therefore I have hope.

The LORD’S lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,

For His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

Great is Your faithfulness.

‘The LORD is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘Therefore I have hope in Him.’

– Lamentations 3:21-24

When the World Seems out of Control

The year of 2020 is only half over, and it’s already been one for the books. Nationally, internationally, and personally, it’s been a year of unprecedented challenges.

I broke my back just three days after the new year dawned, the same month news stories revealed a virulent new coronavirus in China. Soon, that news became more real as a pandemic rapidly swept across the nations. For our household, COVID-19 meant drastic measures to protect our high-risk family members and a constant search for the necessary medical supplies.

Since May, protests, riots, and looting have shaken the core of our country. Our daughter and her family faced the threat of imminent danger and saw devastating property damage in their neighborhood in Minneapolis. They had to evacuate during the worst of it and returned to the sobering sight of a burned-out city. For them, this was more than a national debate. This is their home and their friends. The emotional toil has been enormous.

No one knows what the rest of the year will bring. But one thing is certain: God is in control.

He is bringing together the harvest of the ages, both the good and the evil. In the furnace of trial, many people have experienced spiritual regeneration and renewal. Many have reconsidered their priorities and made important changes in their lives. Both bad and good fruit of many hearts have been revealed. And some beautiful stories of compassion and faith have emerged from the ashes of the last months.

When we lift our eyes above the storms buffeting us, we see the One who conquers the waves.

It is when we fix our eyes on Him and Him alone that we walk upon the waters. And when we sink, it is He who will reach down every time and lift us up to safety.

God is working out a plan for this earth that He formed before its very creation. We must only endure and trust in His power to bring that plan to fruition. Jesus gave us two great commandments:

Love our God with everything in us; love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. God has everything else. We can arise each day in hope.

I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord

In the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord;

Be strong and let your heart take courage;

Yes, wait for the Lord.

– Psalm 27:13-14

Slightly Obsessed #246: There Is Hope

5 years ago

Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you—unless indeed you fail the test?

-2 Corinthians 13:5

Recently the front man for a well-known Christian band confessed publicly that he doesn’t believe in God anymore.

By his own admission, he was raised in a Christian home and did all the things that would be attached to following Jesus. But now he’s announced to the world that he’s not a believer.

His declaration follows a string of such renunciations to hit the news. Among the questions we ask ourselves in the wake are these: Did he lose his salvation? Was he ever saved? Or is he simply going through a time of questioning?

Clearly, only God knows the answer to that.

It does highlight an urgent clarion call to everyone who claims to be a Christian:

Be sure you know what you believe.

In the Gospels of the New Testament, the Lord Jesus described the types of people upon whom the seed of the Good News would fall. One was the person upon whose heart the seed fell as upon a roadside. This heart was hard and beaten down, and the seed could not take root. The second person was the one who had little depth of soil, and the plant sprung up but couldn’t take root. The third was the person whose life was so full of the weeds of sin and worry that the seed was choked out and died. One person, however, had the depth and receptive heart in which the seed of life could take hold and flourish.

The one on whom seed was sown on the rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no firm root in himself, but is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away.

– Matthew 13:20-21

A couple of months ago, I read about how to grow new celery from the base of an old bunch. I followed the directions, placing the stump in a shallow dish of water. Sure enough, I soon saw a new bunch of tender green growth. I planted the base in soil and watched with satisfaction as the new growth continued. I couldn’t wait for the harvest.

Then one day, the new growth began to wilt. I checked the soil, and it wasn’t dry. It continued to wilt until it completely died. I pulled it up out of the soil and discovered that it had no roots. It had only lived as long as the original stump was there. But as the stump died, the new plant had no way to survive.

A plant with no roots looks just like a rooted plant for a while. It takes the elements of time and testing to reveal whether it will wither or grow to produce fruit. The Lord uses these elements to test and reveal the validity of our beliefs.

As we negotiate a strange and uncertain world, it is crucial that we make sure the confession of our faith.

We are gifted with this day, and this day only, to make things right with God. Tomorrow we may be victims of a pandemic or other earth-shaking event. Tomorrow, any of us could be standing before God.

Today is the day to check out your root system. Do you know what you believe? Is your faith one that is rooted in Jesus Christ, or have you been living on the faith of others? If the world should fall, will you stand?

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

– Ephesians 3:14-19 (NKJV)

Slightly Obsessed #245: Are You Rooted?

5 years ago

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn,

If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.

-Psalm 139:7-10

We often think of God as living in heaven, and rightfully so.

Psalm 11:4 declares that the Lord is in His holy temple in heaven; Revelation 4 even describes the Throne Room of God there. And yet, the Bible also tells us that He is omnipresent, or present in every place at the same time. Acts 7:49 asserts that heaven is God’s throne and the earth is His footstool. In addition, we are told in the New Testament that God lives inside each believer through the Holy Spirit.

Clearly, God is everywhere. So why does He single out the praises of God’s people as a place He inhabits? Isn’t that redundant?

“But you are holy, you who inhabit the praises of Israel.”
-Psalm 22:3 (WEB)

The Hebrew word יָשַׁב yâshab is commonly translated as “to inhabit” or “enthroned.” It means to sit, to dwell, or to live.

The word is used throughout the Old Testament when the Scriptures speak of people dwelling, or settling in a place. The word also has the connotation of sitting as a judge.

From His place in heaven, God seems remote, disconnected from our world. It’s easy to blame Him for our problems, to see Him as uncaring and unloving. At times, He may feel to us like the cold authoritarian.

Nothing could be further from the truth. God dwells in heaven, but He wants to be enthroned in our hearts.

He yearns for us to trust His plan for our lives; to understand and appreciate Him for who He is, even when we don’t comprehend what He is doing. For us, the temptation is great to see God mostly as a provider of good stuff. When He doesn’t appear to be measuring up to our expectations, we complain. But like any loving father, God wants more than just to be the person with the open wallet. God wants relationship. He wants to share the riches of fellowship with us. He wants to hear from us and to talk with us.

When we set down our list of wants and consider all that our Lord is and has done for us, we can’t help but praise Him. From that wellspring of gratitude and revelation erupts a fountain of joy.

Ours, and His.

God abides in our worship. He is near to a grateful, though broken heart. His authority and royal nature are displayed in all their beauty when we yield sovereignty of our lives to Him. God inhabits, fills, abides, rejoices, and lives in our praise; not because He needs the validation, but because we need the reminder. Praise destroys the lies of the enemy and exalts the King.

The Lord your God is in your midst,

A victorious warrior.

He will exult over you with joy,

He will be quiet in His love,

He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

– Zephaniah 3:17