When fear comes, remind yourself who God is.

Joy is a great word.  It is different from happiness.  Different from “I want to be happy.”  Joy in Psalm 126 is attached to tears.  Happiness is not.  We are to take our struggles, hurt, pain and tears, and take them all to God.  Say: “God, I’m giving You this hurt.  I give this grief to You.”

You have a choice: To live life covered up or to confess before God.  

When we experience pain, sorrow or suffering, it is easy to forget what God is doing right now in our lives, and what ways He has worked and blessed in the past.

Nobody likes pain and sometimes we try to avoid the pain without finding our the source of our pain.  We ignore it, numb it, we sweep it under the rug instead of bringing it to God and asking ourselves: Why is this happening?  

Psalm 73 is a Psalm of doubt.  The writer is a guy named Asaph.  He faces something that everyone of us faces in life, when a situation causes us to ask questions like: Is that fair?  Why did that happen?  But they say what I believe is not true.  

Do you have a battle between fear and faith that goes on in your mind?  I do. I want to trust God AND I want to control situations.  Maybe that’s you too. 

Prayer is not just getting what you want from Dad, it’s about having a relationship with Dad.  Knowing Him, loving your Dad, and trusting your Dad.  Doing what your Dad has for you–caring for people, forgiving people.

All of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in the Bible, tell us the women who were followers of Jesus went to the tomb early on Sunday morning.  They found the tomb empty and heard a message from the angel.  

Jesus talked alot about the danger of greed, of materialism.  And how we can be blind to money’s control over us.  Jesus tells us to: Watch out!  Be on your guard.  About what?  All kinds of greed.  That’s another way of saying: Chasing more.  

Peter expected seven times to forgive to be impressive.  The Jewish law only required three times.  Jesus is basically saying there should be no limit when it come to forgiveness.  The point is that if you are keeping score, you’re not really forgiving.  So, do you keep score?  

In I Kings 18, Ahab and Jezebel, King and Queen of Israel, had established idolatry—the worship of Baal, as the official religion of Israel.  Elijah the prophet of God says: Let’s have a contest on Mt. Carmel between me and the prophets of Baal in front of the King.  It’s basically: My God can whup your god.  Meet me on the mountain and we’ll settle this once and for all.