Gathered Around the Fire

LIFE ITSELF IS A GIFT OF GOD!  We do not often speak this out loud but the truth is:  LIFE itself is a gift...   The God in whose hand your next breath lies...have you not glorified? Daniel 5:23 We tend to recognize this more fully during our sunset years, or maybe IN OUR FINAL DAYS just before our life is over, unless we have had an experience of being close to death earlier in life, we just do not understand how precious life is until it is almost lost.  David had that near death experience many times while he was still a young man.  Knowing the king, who also happens to be your father-in-law, has assembled the armed forces and is hunting you down is a serious threat and David no doubt learned much through his suffering injustice at the hands of Saul.  Saul was his benefactor and the father of his first wife but became his judge, jury, and prosecutor. Because of jealousy Saul sought to take David's life and pur...

Here is the picture I saw of the lovesick maiden.  She stood with one hand on the railing of the widow's walk, staring out to sea, her eyes strained to see beyond the the misty fog lying over the surface of the inlet. I hesitate before using the word hunger, when describing her eyes, but the fact was, that her eyes were hungry.   I saw in them, devotion, a single desire to behold the face of her beloved.  It was all-consuming,  it was obsessive, like a starving man deprived of food, everything else is forgotten.  As a  parched soul, with  a swollen tongue does not desire the sweetest of drinks but simply yearns  for pure water.  My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You In a dry and thirsty land Where there is no water. 2  So I have looked for You in the sanctuary, To see Your power and Your glory.   Psalm 63:1-2 As she stared toward the sea, she tipped her head slightly to the side a...

*** First Time Visitors *** Please go to the  First Time Visitors  tab or    go to  Thursday night   tab   If you want to share what we are doing with a friend please direct them using the URL for that page. ============================ Have you ever been in a situation where you missed someone or anticipated missing someone so much that you ached inside to see them one more time, to spend one more hour with them? We hit that kind of a place this last Thursday night. We were in a time of prayer immediately following a time of worship. I got the idea to go to a rarely used variation on an E chord in the upper register of my guitar. I struck that single chord, and immediately I began to get the sense of a detailed picture unfolding of a lovesick maiden, as I continued to play that chord progression, I began and I believe others in the room began to feel it as well. desperation for His presence. A deep yearn...

I had an interesting conversation with a friend last night after our prayer meeting and that friend mentioned that they wondered, why we don't mention anywhere on this blog site, our connection with a local congregation. So I took my friends comments to heart and inserted the name of our local congregation (Covenant Family Church). I even linked our pages to the Covenant Family Church Website. Before this conversation,  It had never occurred to me that the local congregation would want to be named here and now they are. Thanks Lin!

So says Kaitlyn Murray! Kaitlyn Murray comments on a mutual friend's FB page, and I thought I should share that. FEAR IS A LIAR. It tells you that you're not good enough,   smart enough, or talented enough.  It lets you think your alone, or different, or too much the same.    It laughs at you, and kicks you around.   Fear is a bully. (fear brings torment) But, I know you are strong, I feel it and believe it.    I know you can do anything that  you want to do. You are amazing.  And that is the truth!   I borrowed her comment and share it after I added one comment of my own a phrase from Scripture, (fear brings torment) in brackets and the Scripture  passage below.  --- So says God.   He has not given us a spirit of fear   but of power, of love and of a sound mind. 

*** First Time Visitors *** Please go to the  First Time Visitors  tab or    go to  Thursday Night   tab   If you want to share what we are doing with a friend please direct them using the URL for that page.                                      ============================ KEEP CALM - JESUS IS LORD OF ALL  If there was a theme to last night's prayer group meeting it would have been the Lordship of Jesus the Christ.  We pulled out a 20 year old prophetic song from Lyndon Bartel and sang it.  Even though it was 20 years old, it was relatively new to everyone there but me. There is a propensity in all of us, to let the things going on in the world around us, to overwhelm us, to drag us down from time to time. For some, it is a constant battle to fight off feelings of hopelessness, loneliness, or depression. The song we sang las...

HE IS RISEN!   HE IS RISEN INDEED! This is how the early church greeted each other on this day.  Did you know that according to Paul the apostle over 500 people saw Jesus alive after he was raised from the dead?  Here are seven tests of the resurrection of Jesus to determine whether it is a myth or a reality. 7 Proofs of the Resurrection Evidence the Resurrection of Jesus Christ Happened Is the Resurrection   of Jesus Christ   an historical event that really happened, or is it only a myth, as many atheists claim?  While no one witnessed the actual resurrection, many people swore they saw the risen Christ after his death,    and their lives were never the same. The Resurrection Proof #1: The Empty Tomb of Jesus The Resurrection Proof #2: The Holy Women Eyewitnesses The Resurrection Proof #3: Jesus' Apostles' New-Found Courage The Resurrection Proof #4: Changed Lives of James and Others The Resurrection Proof #5: ...

THE WAVE SHEAF OFFERING - SUNDAY MORNING! Why did Jesus' resurrection have to take place on this day of the year? Jesus is risen and has interacted with Mary revealing Himself, but He says a very curious thing to her. He said,   "Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father." What does that mean?  If we are ignorant of the Feasts of the Lord , this phrase makes absolutely no sense.  If however, we were familiar with the Feasts of the Lord , we would know that the First Fruits of the barley harvest must be presented in a wave sheaf offering on the first day of the week, that follows the weekly s abbath. Specifically the s abbath that falls during the week long Feast of Unleavened Bread .  In 2014 First Fruits falls on Sunday April 20. It does not coincide with the date of the resurrection which is today April 17. But in the year that Jesus died and was resurrected the two events fell on the same exact day.  And the  Lo...

Yesterday we left off with this scripture.  Study to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.  2 Timothy 2:15 New King James Version (NKJV) Yesterday we looked at five key things that indicated that Jesus must have died at the same time as the Passover lamb, on Wednesday at 3:00 PM.  If not, then ... 1. Jesus failed to meet the ONE criteria, He Himself prophesied.  2. The Sadducees, Pharisees, and Scribes, clearly broke the law.    1. convening the Sanhedrin on a sabbath day 2. starting a public trial on a Sabbath day 3. They asked for the guard to be posted on the same morning Jesus was being tried and in the same court of law.  (not possible he wasn't dead yet) In order not to break the law of the Festival Sabbath, all these things had to happen during the 24 hour period known as the Day of Preparation, running from Tuesday at sundown to just before the sun went down on ...