- When it is quiet, take solace, rest in it; let it soak in.
- Learn the rhythm of the kingdom.
- Don’t play the victim. Always take your identity as God’s child. God takes care of his children, so there is always going to be more to the story. Unopened gifts surround you. Find and open them.
- Don’t be surprised when you suffer and ask, “why?” But hold the hand that is holding you. That will be the beginning of figuring out what to do or how to be.
- Just like any living thing, people of faith are prone to various diseases. Pride or self-righteousness might be number one.
- We tend to always focus on other people or circumstances, when we have troubles. A better focus is, “what am I doing wrong or how can I change?, or “what do I need to be different?” What about also asking, “how would you, Jesus, handle this?”
- Whatever you feel, express it to God: happy, sad, glad, mad.
- If you are hurt, have resentment, are bitterly disappointed, or feel you have suffered injustice; tell God about it.
- Sin that is undealt with causes an infestation that may become and is a place of demonization in your life. Get yourself free by repenting and disavowing, then getting the demons knocked off of you, through the authority of God in Jesus; probably administered by another believer.
- Spiritual warfare is normal for Christians. No warfare might mean that the enemy is not concerned about you. Much warfare might mean that you are close to God.
- Remember when Peter spoke about Jesus destiny wrongly and Jesus rebuked him, saying, “get behind me, Satan!”? Peter was the chief Apostle and a prophet. The lesson is that any of us can speak wrongly, from the dark side, and still maintain our role, gift, and function.
- Learn to discuss and argue. Civil debate is part of loving community.
- Things that are hard to believe are because it takes faith. Children are open to learning new things, constantly in wonder and awe at all they are learning and taking in. Adults become stunted when they stop being open and think they have all the knowledge in their small minds and worlds. We have to be like children again, to have our faith expanded.
- When you read the Bible, have you imagined what various people were like and how they lived? Only one person lived a sinless life. Everyone else was hopelessly flawed. But God worked with a portion of the flawed people while the rest refused to work with God. Those are the basic two categories of people.
- Are you in the category of people who have a working relationship with God? Is the person that you are criticizing also working with God: he or she is your brother or sister, God’s child?
- I have always been shocked at corruption and evil in humans, but it has been part of humanity since Adam and Eve fell into deception and their son, Cain murdered his brother, Abel. This was a pretty bad start and many more bad things were done after that.
- But history (His story) shows that God keeps working with people, all the way up to the present; while corruption expressed in deception (lies) and murder keeps happening.
- Every deceived person was born with a clean slate, then made choices, like Adam, Eve, and Cain. Some of us have come out of deception and some are still deceived.
- When you say things against someone, are you coming from deception or truth? And if it is truth, is it a deceived truth, like when Peter told Jesus, “no way are you going to die crucified!”?
- Are you open minded? You don’t want to be so open minded that your brains fall out. In other words, think critically. Jesus is not an idealog.
- Family and friendship in love is what church should be about: it’s essence.
- Essence: The intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something, especially something abstract, that determines its character.
In-between 