I'm Back

Good to be back after a short break. Family time....family trip.....lots of memory makers. Always grateful to God for giving us such a blessing where we all could be together for a week. 

Last night at Vineyard Recovery Church, we got to gather together again for some worship/ teaching/ ministry. I told the group that I felt like God was leading each of us to expand our view and understanding of what it means to live in sobriety. I explained that while sitting on the beach last week, I had tried to pick up a single grain of sand. Eventually I was successful as it lay in the palm of my hand. But this single grain of sand was part of a larger body of sand. Looking around, I saw billions and billions of grains of sand, all together in what we refer to as the beach. In our understanding, we look at sobriety as the beach....it is huge and almost incomprehensible. Yet a life of sobriety is only one grain of sand in the whole scheme of things that God is calling us to.

There is so much more to walking in a relationship with Christ. So much more than just he absence of any drug or alcohol. There is the incredible gift of having our character changed. A changed heart leads to a changed mind. Put these two together and you get a changed behavior. All made possible from the One who could do for me, what I could not do for myself.

Isaiah 7:23 reads: 
Obey (follow my instructions)
My voice (It's about learning how to "hear" God in our thoughts and heart)
And I will be your God (We can lay claim to being in His family)
And you shall be My people (We become His possession to protect, lead and watch over)
And walk in all the ways I have commanded you (Goes back to the opening word..."Obey"....Just do it....Follow Me.....Listen to me...I Will never steer you wrong.")
That it may be well with you. (In other words...we won't find ourselves stuck in "Stupid Land" because of our own selfish, dark desires.)

I guess the anti-verse, or opposite of what I have just written would be....
Do your own thing outside of the will of God and you can only expect to find yourself in deeper and deeper trouble. I think I will stick with the first one...Obey...listen....become part of God's family.....just do what I hear to do.
Yep...I  choose that first one.

God on you....
mb