SHEEP + the ULTIMATE Sheppard

Sheep, yes, sheep. We are sheep. God is the sheppard. In fact he is the ULTIMATE Sheppard.
Over the past few weeks I have been reading and re-reading Ezekiel 34.
Did you know that God cares about you more than people do? More than the closest person to you does?
He says "I myself will search for my sheep and look after them"... God SEEKS us out, he is stalking us, on the look for us and searching us out. He is pursueing us.
Have you ever been in an upset state and run off from somewhere and someone has run off after you to find you and look after you? God does that too. He is tugging on our heart and if we would only still ourselves we would realise that God is there looking after us wanting to be with us.

He also says "I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkenss" He wants to be that person that rescues us from pain and hurt. He wants and desires to bring us in close to him. He doesn't want us scattered and lost like a lost sheep. He wants us close with the other sheep and close and under the care of the sheppard. The ultimate sheppard. God.

He desires us to be close to him, safe in his care and protection.
We have to let him be close to us. We can run away from his protection, run away from his care, run away from his guidance but we have to position ourselves close to him so that we can recieve his love, care, protection and guidance.

More tree metaphors!

Last night in Bible class I was struck with some more tree metaphors and verses and thought I would add to my last post about trees!

Trees.
John 15:1-8
 ¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes^[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. ³ You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. ⁴ Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
   ⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. ⁷ If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ⁸ This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."


Recently I have been thinking about being transformed by God and allowing him to get rid of (or cut away) things from my life that are not of him. In John 15 it says in verse 2 "He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful". He also says in verse 5 "I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing". This led me to think about trees and how we (as branches) stem out of the vine and that he will cut off bits of us (if we allow him) and prune us into being beautiful trees. Just like a gardener that doesn't want dead branches on his trees. 
Also a branch can not survive without a vine, as the branch stems from the vine. We are also only fruitful through him.
Some questions I have been thinking about are... Am I allowing the gardener to prune me? (God to cut away bad things in my life) Am I remaining in him and producing fruit? I can always tell if the time I am spending with him and being in his word is paying off because of the fruit that is being produced in my life. (See Galatians 5:22 for fruits of the Spirit) you will be growing to become more beautiful as your Father the ultimate gardener prunes you and you produce delicious fruit that is your inner beauty :)

Hope this makes sense! My mind is a really exciting, deep but messy place to be!

Rooted and Established in LOVE

Ephesians 3:17-19 "So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have the power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge-that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

I have been thinking about this verse the past few days and here are my thoughts... Trees are watered from the roots, the roots suck in the water and the tree flourishs from the inside out. Just as we should feed our selves with  God's word and start flourishing from the inside out.

Tree's are captivating in beauty they cry out "I have been made by God, I worship him through my beauty", this is what I want to be like, that God's fine art work would display through me and that would be worship to him.

Tree's are also grounded/planted in the ground and are almost impossible to just pull out. Being rooted and established in LOVE means that you are so stuck in His LOVE that it is pretty much impossible to be up-rooted from it. You can only start to understand LOVE through experiencing it. So to grasp how long, how wide his love is you must experience it and be in it, like the tree is in the soil, feeding off it. Which will strengthen you to start to understand his love more.

I want to be more like the tree, so deeply rooted in God's love that I am not swayed or uprooted by the storms of life.

Phippians 3:13b says "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forwards for what lies ahead" we must not look behind to the past because otherwise we risk tripping up and falling over, just like a man runnning race, if he was to look behind while running he would run the risk of not seeing where he was going and falling over. We  must fix our eyes on what lies ahead, which is God in us in his fullness. I have found this so much in my life that I dwell in the past and not look to Jesus who is what we are desiring to become like. It is so easy to do because we are human but we do not want to look to what the devil has done but to what God is done, doing and is going to do!

The end of the world?

I was just thinking, we don't really plan a youth service on a Friday night with for  "plan b - natural disaster" ... What happened tonight was incredable, everyone got desperate because they didn't know what was going to happen, it felt like the end of the world, with another natural disaster so soon after Christchurch. I thought it is because the physical no longer matters anymore, in a natural disaster when you have the risk of loosing your life you wouldn't be concerned with your laptop or your clothes anymore you would be thinking about your life and where you are going when you die, or you pray to a higher power because you know there is nothing you can do in your strength to stop it, you call out to the God of the universe because you know deep down that he is in control and you need him in that moment. So tonight in the desperation we saw somewhere between 4-6 lives be given to God! I think normally we are so caught up in the physical we forget that life is more than the moment we are living in and life is more than the physical.. we forget that God created us to spend eternity with Him.
Anyway, hope this makes sence to everyone that reads this, it is almost 1am after a Friday night youth service and my thoughts and words are all jumble.

My spelling is shocking!

Putting God back where he belongs

Yesterday I had a bit of a empifiany, I was walking through town and simply just watching everyone going about their daily lives and had the realisation that we have placed materialism and people where God belongs. On my visit to JB Hi-Fi I watched about 8 "nerds" geak out on ipads, eyeing them up with hungry eyes and a desire for the next piece of technology which is going to do "everything" you know just like God can...This lead me to the thought...are they going to try and make iGod? I carried on through town and watched how people in clothes and make up shops were looking so hungry for something that would complete them, that would give them the perfect look, that would make them the "hottest person in the world" you know like "number one" in the universe, where God belongs. Then I walked past some bars and watched again how some of the men looked so hungry for the women, and the women so hungry for the men, ready to throw a few hundred bucks away on drink so that he could loosen up to become someone he is not and take someone home that night...desiring intimacy is all he is after.
After I thought about this I realised that all everyone is after is GOD. Whether or not they realise it or not they desire...LOVE, and God is LOVE, he is perfect un-conditional love, he is PROVISION just like the Apple products can provide you with everything for life, God can provide you with so much more. God is SECURITY, the security that people in business seek and strive so hard to get in their job and position and their income. He can secure you so much more, in fact he has a life-long security plan in eternity!
God secures you in Him, when you put him as number one in your life and take yourself out of that spot you are loved on by him because you are His precious child and making you feel like an adored child!
And most of all God is INTIMACY - this intimacy that everyone in the world desires, a deep sence of connection with another, a desire to know the other more, a closeness. God desires us to get and be intimate with him, he wants us close to him. He wants us intimate with Him.

So at the end of the day, everyone desires God, it's whether or not we put Him where He belongs determines the outcome of a realtionship with him or a relationship with the world. A relationship with un-conditional love and real security, provision, intimacy and much more or a relationship with stuff that will give up on you...It is your choice...