Dulles Family Life Church

     In the Old Testament, particularly in the books of the prophets, there is a theme that stands out in each of them.  God’s people were being crushed as a result of their lack of knowledge about Him, His character, and His Word.  He speaks directly to this in Hosea 4:6, saying, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”  It was true then, and doubly true today.  In our world of fast food, express lines, hi-speed internet, and EZ Pass tollbooths, we have little time, or desire, to spend any real time in His Word and Presence.  We grab our verse for the day and run with it, but in truth, we run on empty…….and it’s destroying us.  In another translation, He says, “My people are perishing (dying)….” as a result of that very lack.  So are we.

     There are almost endless reasons for why this is so, but I think a very apt one is found in  II Kings 22.  Josiah has become king, following the godless reigns of his grandfather Manasseh, and father Amon.  The Temple, God’s house, has fallen into disrepair and disuse.  Josiah orders work to begin on its restoration.  In the midst of that restoration, the priests find the book of the Law, which apparently had been hidden under much debris.  They brought it to Josiah, who ordered it read to him.  The scripture he heard was from Deuteronomy 28, where God told the people all the blessing that would be upon them if they would heed His word and will and follow Him, but all the misfortune and hardship that would be theirs if they refused.  The truth pierced Josiah’s heart, and he ordered his life, and the life of the nation before God, and according to His Word.  Both he and the nation were blessed during all of his reign.  His Word, buried under all the debris, had been set free in his life, and in the nation.  I wonder, how deeply buried is His Word under all the ”debris” that has accumulated in our lives? 

     There is the debris of busyness, jobs, family, relationships, and of course, our own agenda’s.  All these things cover, hide, and render ineffective in our lives, the mighty Word of God.  It’s hidden in the debris, and continues to be hidden from us, unknown to us, and thus, for us, powerless.  In Jerusalem, the city of God, in the Temple of God, was abiding His Word, but no one knew it.  Not the priests, not the people, not the king.  How close to reality is that for you and I?  How much of our day to day lives are spent pursuing our own agenda, wearing ourselves out, missing His blessing, and most of all, missing Him, because His Word is hidden to us, and we are being destroyed because of it?

     I expect for each of us, it’s time to do a restoration project.  Time to excavate that which has lain buried for too long.  Clear away the debris, uncover anew, perhaps for the first time, the wonder that is His Word, and the wonder He means it to be in our lives.  One of the terms used for satan in the Bible is “Destroyer.”  His great weapon to use in destroying us is our own ignorance of the things of God.  We overcome, destroy the Destroyer with His truth.  Clear away the rubble, raise up His word, stop perishing.  Live again.

Blessings,

Pastor O 

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Perserverance.  It’s a word that gets a response from most of us.  Is it the right one?  I think the majority of us would we say we know its meaning, but do we?  Just what does it mean, and how does it play out in our day to day lives?  Are we people who are truly perservering in our everday living, or are we just “hangin’ in there?”  The quality of our lives depends on how we answer that.

     I jotted down a quote from author and pastor Mark Buchanan about perserverance.  He said, “Perserverance only makes sense if we’re headed in the right direction.”  I wonder, how many of us are really headed in the right direction?  I dusted off my old dictionary of theology and looked up the biblical meaning of perserverance.  It said, “…..the persistance of the….believer in running the Christian race and the certainty of its final outcome.”  I have to say here that in nearly 25 years of pastoring, I’ve discovered something about people, including myself.  We are incredibly stubborn.  God calls it being stiffnecked.  I think, as it applies to a lot of our lives, we are mistaking our human stubbornness concerning our life choices, paths chosen, decisons made, for perserverance, rather than the reality that we’ve taken a stiffnecked stance about them.  This is what we’ve chosen to do, and by golly, we’re going to do it.  We’re hangin’ in there, but we’re not living in the inheritance we have in Christ.  Stiffnecked folks never do, and we go on telling ourselves we’re perservering, but all the while, we continue to head in the wrong direction.  Might that be where you find yourself at this moment? 

     Let’s go back to that dictionary meaning again?  It says that those who run the believers life race are certain of its outcome.  Are you certain today that the road you’re on is really leading you home?  Is it really leading you to Him, to the fullness of what His will for you in and for this life really is?  Buchanan said that, “…there’s only one road home and to get there, you’ll have to stay the course.”  His course, not ours.  Friend, whose course are you really on today?  One road leads home and goes through Christ and Christ alone.  Have you chosen it, or do you stubbornly cling to your own road and your own way of doing things?  More, you may have chosen Him as your destination, chosen Christ as your means of getting there, but somewhere along the way, you started to believe you knew a better way than He did, and your will, what you want, mattered more than what He wanted.  You’ve gotten off course in your desires, choices, plans.  It’s time to get back on the road, the right road and now. 

     Daniel, writing of things to come says in 12:12, “…and blessed are those who perservere and attain….” Are you really among the blessed today?  Have you set your heart to attain ALL that He has for you?  Have you surrendered to and determined to walk upon His road, knowing that you don’t know all that lies upon it, but you do know where it is leading, and you’ve set your heart to get there, walking in your inheritance as you go?  You’re on the road home, and He will lead you there.  You know what it means now to perservere.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Yesterday, I wrote about the difference between merely knowing about God and truly experiencing Him.  Experiencing intimacy, power, victory, and life, His life.  I wrote about how so few of us truly enter His promised land, the biblical land of “milk and honey.”  I said that there were two reasons that seemed to keep us from this land, the first being a faulty understanding of just what that land really was, and the second being an old and familiar enemy to many of us.  Fear.  Today, I want to add a third.  Our tendency to settle for His good and not His best.

     During the Israelite’s wandering in the desert, they eventually came to a place called Kadesh-Barnea.  It was an oasis and a refreshing change from the dreariness and weariness of the desert wilderness they’d been traveling in.  They were renewed and refreshed there.  It was a good place and they wanted to stay.  That was the problem, this good place was not the best place.  It was not His place for them.  How guilty are you and I of doing the same? 

     In the wilderness places of our lives, how often has He brought us to a Kadesh-Barnea, a place of refreshment in the midst of our desert journey, and we elected to stay there?  In our fiery trials, trials meant to shape and grow us more like and closer to Him, we fell in love with the blessing, and in the blessing, we wished to stay.  We no longer wanted to go forward.  Maybe you’re living in your own Kadesh-Barnea right now.  You’ve gone through some hard places, and He has lovingly sent you relief.  You’re stuck at the oasis, but the oasis is not where He means for you to live.  His call is ever onward and upward.  Kadesh-Barnea is not the promised land, and by staying there, you’ll never know it’s, the promised land’s, wonder.  You’ll never enter in.  You’ve settled for the good.  You’ll never know His best, and you’ll never truly experience Him.

     With the Father, His best is always yet to come.  In John 2, where Jesus turned the water to wine at a wedding, the chief steward remarked in wonder, “Usually a host serves the best wine first…then when everyone is full and doesn’t care, he brings out the less expensive wines.  But you have kept the best until now.“  Kadesh-Barnea was not His best for the Israelites, and it’s not His best for you.  Don’t get stuck there.  Your oasis is still surrounded by wilderness.  Move out!  Follow hard after Him.  There’s land to be won, settled, lived in.  The promised land, a land of milk and honey.  His best.  He has it for you.  Don’t miss it.  Don’t fail to enter in.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Sometimes the Lord impresses things on me that require more than a weekly “Heart Thoughts.”  This is such a time.  I was listening to author and conference speaker Priscilla Shirer this morning on James Robison’s “Life Today” program.  She asked a powerful question.  “Will we know about Him, or will we experience Him?”  She went on to say that the goal of the Israelite’s coming out of bondage in Egypt was to come into the land of abundance, the promised land.  The Bible called this the “land of milk and honey.”  Her question was, “Is there milk and honey in our lives?”  I think how we answer that hinges on how we answer the first question.  Do we merely know about Him, or are we truly experiencing Him on a day to day, even moment by moment basis?

     The scripture that came to mind concerning all this is found in Genesis 28.  Jacob, in fear for his life from his brother Esau, has fled and is on his way to Haran.  He makes camp for the night, and, exhausted, quickly falls asleep.  In his sleep, the Father comes to him and speaks in a dream, saying, in verse 13, “I am the Lord, the God of your grandfather Abraham and your father, Issac.  The ground you are lying on belongs to you.  I will give it to you and your descendants.”  God goes on to elaborate on this promise and then says in verse 15, “What’s more, I will be with you and protect you wherever you go…..I will be with you constantly until I have finished giving you everything I have promised.”  Verse 16 tells us, “Then Jacob woke up and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it.’ “  Jacob, whose father and grandfather had known, followed and experienced God, had grown up hearing about that God, knowing about that God, but had never experienced that God…..till now.  How like he are you and I?

    As Shirer says, the goal of coming out of bondage is to enter into abundance, to enter into the land of milk and honey, except for far too many, we never really leave the bondage, never really enter into abundance, never know true milk and honey.  We never experience the Father.  We’ve heard so many stories about Him, our hearts are pulled towards Him, yet our “knowledge” rests mostly on hearsay, not experience.  Why?  Two reasons that come to mind are, first, our faulty ideas of what the land of milk and honey really is.  In our materialistic world, we think it means lots of money and possessions.  Now, I fully believe He loves to bless us with good things, but the land of milk and honey is not found until it is first entered into within.  His full inheritance is found in the inner riches He longs to bestow on us.  The second reason is we fear to enter in.  It’s estimated that about 2 million people left the bondage of Egypt.  Out of that 2 million, 2 actually entered in.  The rest died in the wilderness.  Two, out of two million.  which group are you and I to be found in?  Which group do we truly yearn to be a part of?

    Jacob began his journey with a solid knowledge about God, yet went to sleep oblivious to the fact that He was so powerfully present in that very place.  When he awoke, he had experienced the God he’d always heard about.  Are you ready to awake as well?  Are you at last ready for the true milk and honey?  God has a land to give you.  Will you dare to enter it?

Blessings,

Pastor O

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     Author and Pastor Erwin McManus in his book “Soul Cravings” writes, “God calls us out of the life we have known and calls us to a life we have never imagined.”  When I read this, the scripture that immediately came to my mind was I Corinthians 2:9, where Paul writes, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love Him.”  Along with that comes a question.  How real is what McManus writes and God promises in your life and mine?

     I think for far too many of us, His Word is more a matter of theory, rather than fact.  We know of His Word, and the promise of its power.  We’ve read about it, heard it preached, gone to seminar after seminar concerning it, yet in our day to day lives, its reality seems to be far from us.  We’ve heard so much about His wonderful plan for our lives, and we’ve read much about having a “purpose driven life.”  Yet too many seem to just drift about with neither plan or purpose.  For a lot of people, life is something that happens to us, and our expectation of what is going to happen is most often, bad.  We know He’s promised a future and a hope, but our experience keeps looking like the past, and what we feel is hopelessness.  We’re now 9 days into the new year, and for many, it looks a lot like all the ones that have gone before.  Is this what a “child of the King” is supposed to live like?  Well, not according to the theory.  Friends, it’s time to move into reality.  His reality, for you, and for me.

     In that same book by McManus, and I came across an interesting truth.  McManus called it “the bumblebee effect.”  It seems that according to the laws of physics and aerodynamics, there is absolutely no reason or possibility for a bumblebee to be able to fly.  Their bodily structure should make it impossible.  Yet, they do fly.  why?  The answer is simple.  That’s what God created them to do, and it’s what they do.  They don’t know that it should be impossible.  They’re just doing what He created them for.  You and I need to become part of the bumblebee effect as well.  We need to know that defeat, despair, discouragement and disillusionment are not what He made us for.  He made us to overcome, to be victorious, to go from glory to glory….to fly.  Your circumstances, problems, even satan himself may constantly scream at you that it’s impossible, but He whispers in your ear, and mine, you can, we can, we can fly.  All things are possible…..for Him who believes.

     Isn’t it time to really leave that life you’ve known for so long, that life filled with seeming impossibilities, and enter into that life beyond imagination?  The life beyond anything our eyes, ears, and minds could ever hope to see, hear, or dream about?  Paul says such life is guaranteed for those who love Him.  I will not question your love for Him, but ask, do you love Him enough to believe Him, to trust Him, to step out in the midst of all that tells you you can’t, and fly?  Are you ready for the bumblebee effect to have its effect on you?  Is the bumblebee ready to take off?

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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A new year is upon us. The question for each of us is, will it really be new, or it will it just be more of the “old?” We may think that there are many things we can do to make it “new,” but I believe the answer is found in what He has done, and that answer is in Colossians 2:12.
The apostle Paul writes, “For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized and with Him you were raised to a new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, Who raised Christ from the dead.” If our lives are to be truly new this year, than these words must truly live in us. How? We must trust in the resurrection power of God. Simply, we must trust God.
For each of us, this year will hold both the expected and the unexpected. There will be the normal, daily cares of life. Earning a living, providing for a family, working out relationships, and much more. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up thinking that the meeting of these needs depends on us, and we can save “the big stuff for Him.” So many of us fall into this deception, and when that “big stuff” does hit us, we’re no more able to trust Him with that than we were with the so called “little stuff.” Friend, you and I have got to trust in the “mighty power of God.” The power that is able to bring life from death, and make that life new. It’s the only way to really having new life.
Many of the challenges and problems we face this year won’t be new at all. They’ll enter this new year right along with us. For sure, along with them, will come new ones. Will we react in fear and panic, or will we respond in trust? Will it be the old life again, or will it be the new life He gives us in Christ? The answer lies with us. Will we trust in the His mighty power, or will we crumble in defeat. His Word tells us that our greatest and last enemy is death. His Word also tells us that on the cross and with His resurrection, Christ conquered death, than so can any lesser enemy or threat defeat those who have entered into His life? How can we be defeated by such lesser enemies as money needs, job needs, health issues, child issues, marriage issues, all issues? Yes, I know that these things can be intense when we find ourselves in the midst of them, but can any of them stand in the Presence of the One who raised Christ from the dead? Can any of these threats overcome the One who has overcome all things, even these things?
Yes, a new year is upon us, but the same God stands with us. Will we trust Him? Will we live in Him? Will we really have new life in Him, in this, our new year? How will you answer this?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     A new year is upon us.  The question for each of us is, will it really be new, or will it just be more of the “old.”  We may think that there are many things we can do to make it “new,” but I believe the answer is found in what He has done, and that answer is in Colossians 2:12.  The apostle Paul writes, “For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized and with Him, you were raised to a new life because you trusted in the mighty power of God, Who raised Christ from the dead.”  If our lives are to be truly new this year, than these words must truly live in us.  How?  We must trust in the resurrection power of God.  Simply, we must trust God.

     For each of us, this year will hold  both the expected and the unexpected.  There will be the normal, daily cares of life.  Earning a living, providing for a family, working out relationships, and much more.  If we’re not careful, we’ll end up thinking that the meeting of these needs depends on us and that we can save “the big stuff” for Him.  So many of us fall into this deception and when that “big stuff” does hit us, we’re no more able to trust Him with that than we were with the so called “little stuff.”  Friend, you and I have got to trust in the “mighty power of God.”  The power that is able to bring life from death, and make that life new.  It’s the only way to really having new life.

     Many of the challenges and problems we face this year won’t be new at all.  They’ll enter this new year right along with us.  For sure, along with them will come new ones.  Will we react in fear and panic or will we respond in faith and trust?  Will it be the old life again, or will it be the new life He gives us in Christ?  The answer lies with us.  Will we trust in His mighty power, or will we crumble in defeat?  His Word tells us that our greatest and last enemy is death.  His Word also tells us that on the cross and with His resurrection, Christ conquered death, so, can any lesser enemy or threat defeat those who have entered into His life?  How can we be defeated by such lesser enemies as money needs, job needs, health issues, child issues, marriage issues, all issues?  Yes, I know that these things can be intense when we find ourselves in the midst of them, but can any of them stand in the Presence of the One who raised Christ from the dead?  Can any of these threats overcome the One who has overcome all things, even these things?

     Yes, a new year is upon us, but the same God stands with us.  Will we trust Him?  Will we live in Him?  Will we really have new life in Him, in this, our new year?  How will you answer this?

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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