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The Power of God

February 19, 2008

The Lord desires for us believers to be filled to overflowing with the power of His Spirit. In Luke 11:9-13 we are given the key to having this power. “so I say to you, ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you…If you then, being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

Today let us start out by asking our loving Father for that necessary power to live in a manner that brings glory to Him.

 I encourage you all and more specifically those in our group to read over chapter 2 in Acts and meditate on the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives.

Lord bless you this week.

Paul

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John’s Thought of the Day

February 5, 2008

You know how sometimes you get a song stuck in your mind and you just can’t get it out? I know you’ve been there, we all have. Well, I’ve got a song stuck in my mind and it’s made me think. It’s In the End, by Linkin Park. Below are some of the lyrics:

All I know
time is a valuable thing
Watch it fly by as the pendulum swings
Watch it count down to the end of the day
The clock ticks life away
It’s so unreal
Didn’t look out below
Watch the time go right out the window………..

As I read these lyrcs with the tune stuck in my head, I wonder how much time have I wasted. Being a dinosaur, probably much more than many of you who are reading this. But consider what you do in a day, consider what occupies your thought life, consider what you bottle up inside. Check out some more of the song’s lyrics:

You kept everything inside and even though I tried / it all fell apart
What it meant to me / will eventually / be a memory / of a time when I tried so hard

Often times we try so hard and we get nowhere. But the question becomes, why waste our valuable God given time in our own strength? Why bottle things up when they go wrong or not how we planned? We have a Lord who cares. It says in 1Peter 5:7:”Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

We can waste our time focusing on ourselves, our problems, our failures, or we can “cast our anxieties on Him”. Ephesions 3:20 says: Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

He is able to do immeasurably more than we can even think to ask. He has that power! Yet we waste our time in our own strength accomplishing little. Accomplishing things that as the song says “in the end it really doesn’t matter”. What will it take to put our focus on Him who can do “immeasurably more than we can imagine” and stop wasting our time?

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Welcome to Youth Blog

February 4, 2008

Youth and Parents,

Welcome to “Blog World”! I’m working with Dave to get this Youth Blog up and running. The intent is for this to be a means of communicating to each other about pertinent events, spiritual issues, possibly devotions, reviewing Sunday lessons, etc. I put down etc on purpose. Why? So you can give me some input. So, feel free, let me know your thoughts. When I become a little more proficient at this, I’ll post the pictures from the retreat we had last week!

 OK, ready, set get commenting!

John