Your faith can move other peoples' mountains

Mark 2
I've often heard it preached that my faith can move mountains in my life. I.e that my faith in God can remove the obstacles that I face or that it can restore my life in the way God wants it to be. That through my faith I can be saved, healed, set free from sin and fear, made whole. And this I believe.
But the above passage takes things into a whole new realm.
An exciting realm.
Because of  verse 5:
 "When Jesus saw their faith."
It was not the faith of the paralysed man that caused Jesus to act.
It was not the faith of the paralysed man that prompted Jesus to move powerfully through his life, forgiving, healing, setting him free, making him whole.
It was his friends' faith.
It was their faith that brought this man to Jesus, their perseverance that took him through the obstacles and brought about a tremendous salvation, spiritually, physically and no doubt emotionally.
And so a huge message to us through this story is that our faith can move other peoples' mountains.
Our faith can bring people to Jesus.
Our faith can see people restored, healed, made whole.
As James put it "The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and avails much"
God's kingdom comes in power when we pray with faith. Seeing with the eyes of our heart the very things that God wants to bring to pass on the earth. 
There are huge numbers of people on this planet - many of whom we know - that are in a similar position to the paralysed man in the story. So let us use our faith, let us pray boldly, and believe for major breakthroughs in the people that surround us. And we will see God's kingdom come and His will be done. On earth as it is in Heaven.

 

Love - the top priority

Often the busyness of life confuses our priorities. Certain jobs demand to be made top priority and we obey because they make the most noise in our minds.
But Jesus was very clear in the top priority.
Love.
First God, then others. Because if we get this right everything else falls into place anyway.
It is love that will change the world. Loving people will cause them to see that they are valuable, and worth something and in turn fills their hearts with God's love. Every time we pause in life and give someone some of our time we are telling them they are valuable. Every time we smile at someone, every time we give of ourselves and make someone else a bigger priority than ourselves, we are transmitting love into their hearts and making a difference on the world.
So may God's love flow through us every day and impact those around us. May we go out every day to give out love before we think about the multitude of tasks that need to be done.

Enjoy every minute! (or Trusting in God)

It is very easy to let ourselves get anxious about life. Be it our current issues or things that may occur in the future. But God does not want us to live with a heavy heart. He came to bring life in all its fullness. He said 'come to Me you who are burdened and I will give you rest.'
God wants us to enjoy every minute of our lives in His presence.  It is not God's will that we live worrying or in fear. Worries and fears take us away from dwelling in His presence.
How do we get rid of worries of fears?
Jeremiah 17:7 -8 gives us a huge clue.
"But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord ,
whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."

Let us cast our burdens onto God and trust Him with them. So often we want to handle everything by ourselves, but God desires us to trust Him with our issues and troubles. it is as we trust God with our problems that we open a door for the peace of God to reign in our hearts!
Enjoy every minute.

Who we are now

There are many times in life that we can feel lacking in energy, where the difficulties of life dampen our spirits and that surviving from one weekend to the next is the best we can hope for.
A big part of this is our self perception.
Who do we believe we really are?
What do we think we are made of?
We must be careful not to allow our feelings to dictate to us who we really are. there may have been a time in the past where we were incapable of standing strong through the difficulties of life, where surviving was all we could hope for and looking to bless others was a distant dream.
But now all things have become new. God has made us new on the inside. Our DNA has been changed. Christ lives in us. And through him we can do all things, through him we are more than conquerors, through him we are mighty warriors, able to shift mountains and overcome all obstacles that life throws at us.
So if we hear the voice that says 'this is too difficult I cannot, ' let us finish the sentence with 'but in Christ I can!'

To the ends of the earth spreading His love....

"A Prayer by Mother Teresa":

Dear Jesus, Help us to spread your fragrance everywhere we go, flood our souls with your Spirit and life. Penetrate and possess our whole being so utterly that our lives may only be a radiance of yours. Shine through us and be so in us that every soul we come in contact with may feel your presence in our soul. Let them look up and see no longer us but only Jesus. Stay with us and then we shall begin to shine as you shine, so to shine as to be light to others. The light, O Jesus, will be all from you. None of it will be ours. It will be your shining on others through us. Let us thus praise you in the way you love best by shining on those around us. Let us preach you without preaching not by words, but by our example by the catching force the sympathetic influence of what we do the evident fullness of the love our hearts bear to you. Amen.

Mother Teresa
(1910 – 1997)

What do we seek? Popularity or righteousness?

Luke 6:22-23 NKJV

Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Mans sake.    Rejoice in that day and leap for joy!  For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the

 prophets.'

There is an issue with the heart that needs to be addressed. Do we seek to be popular

 or do we seek to do the right thing. Do we seek to live for God and his ways, do what is

 right in his eyes?

Our hearts cry out to be liked, to be loved, to be accepted. This means that flattery, being part of the "in-crowd" and the praises of people are potentially dangerous. If we seek the praises of people then to choose righteousness, to choose God's will becomes harder. Our hearts will be divided. A heart devoted to the will of God will not be concerned about how others' may view us or how liked we are.

These are needs that need to be satisfied in Christ rather than sought after in people.

Doing God's will and being popular all of the time is mutually exclusive. We cannot seek both. We must resolve this issue and be prepared to be out of the limelight, and even unpopular should it glorify God and advance his purposes greater.

The fuller we are of the unconditional, never-ending love of God the more our hearts are satisfied and the less we look to others to satisfy it.

And the only way to do this is by spending time in His presence, seeking His face,

listening to His still small voice.

A very good prayer!

"A Prayer for Spiritual Revival":

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, To venture on wider seas Where storms will show your mastery; Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars. We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes; And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.Because we have dreamed too little, When we arrived safely Because we sailed too close to the shore. Disturb us, Lord, when With the abundance of things we possess We have lost our thirst For the waters of life; Having fallen in love with life, We have ceased to dream of eternity And in our efforts to build a new earth, We have allowed our vision Of the new Heaven to dim. Amen.

Sir Francis Drake
(1540 - 1596)