Dulles Family Life Church

     One of the things I pray for concerning both the people I pastor, and myself as well, is that the Lord would break the spirit of mistrust and unholy fear of God that so many are trapped in.  An inability to trust God almost always stems from an unholy fear of Him.  By unholy, I mean an attitude and mindset that believes that God is somehow against us, means us harm, means to lessen our standard of life, not add to it.   These attitudes exist because we don’t know Him, and ignorance of Who He truly is can be a real stronghold in so many lives.
     The verse, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” may well be widely quoted, but there are seeming multitudes who in their hearts, don’t really believe He is for them at all.  The thought that He is trustworthy may be in their mind, but somehow, the reality of it has yet to reach their heart.  As a result, we cling to things, be they people, finances, relationships, even ministries, trying to “manage” them, control them, and all the while live in a growing sense of anxiety and fear, because deep down, we know we can’t control all the things going on around us.  The result is that all these people, things, and situations we are stiving to control just get more and more out of control.  We want to believe and live in the knowledge He is for us, but we can’t, because we lack real knowledge and experience of that.  We lack it because we don’t really know Him.
     There is much talk and teaching both in the church and outside it of the need for real communication in relationships, and it is needed.  Yet, we don’t seem to feel that communication skills are just as needed in our relationship with the Father.  This despite the fact that the “relationship” may have existed for many years.  We’re much like the disciple, known to some as “Doubting Thomas,” to whom Jesus, after His rising said, “Have I been so long with you Thomas, and still you don’t know Me?”  How often in our day to day lives are you and I just like Thomas, and how often must He ask us the same question?
     One of the other things I seek in my prayers, is that He would truly teach us to pray.  Not just ask for things, but to pray, relate, communicate, in deep and intimate ways, which is exactly what prayer is and should be.  Yet, how much of our prayer life is hurried, or merely a “to do list” for God?  He wants to talk…to you.  He wants to hear your heart, your heartache, as well as your hopes, dreams, and all the burdens of your heart too.  As speaker and writerPriscilla Shirer says, “Satan wants to make us dependent on others for hearing from God…If He loves us enough to die for us, for doesn’t He love us enough to talk to us?”
     The apostle John wrote in I John 3:2-3, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”  I know that the full realization of that scripture lies in the future, but we don’t have to wait till then to be experiencing it’s truth.  We can know Him as fully as we are capable of now, and His time for that is always NOW!  Ignorance, fear and mistrust of Him is a spiritual and emotional prison, and such is never His plan or desire for you.  How long has He been with you and yet you still don’t know Him?  In the midst of Thomas’ doubts, Jesus invited him to lay hold of Him, and know the truth.  He invited you and I as well.  He invited us to intimacy.  Lay hold of Him, know Him….now.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Though I generally write “Heart Thoughts” on Wednesday’s, I felt a “push” that I needed to write one today.  The trouble was that when I sat down and tried to write, nothing seemed forthcoming, and what I did try to write certainly didn’t seem to contain any flow of the Holy Spirit.  So, I just kind of dismissed it as perhaps just coming from a need to have something to say, a trait common to many pastors.  However, as I was showering, the Lord spoke to me (He has never seemed to be shy about the places He chooses to speak to me).  He seemed to bring to mind some of the events of my life, where it has been, what He has done in spite of that, and then, I heard His word from Revelations 21:6.  “I am the Alpha and Omega-the Beginning and the End.”
     What came to my mind was just where my life was at nearly 20 years ago.  My marriage had ended, I was not pastoring a church.  At that time, the future of a divorced pastor, even one who had not sought it, seemed very bleak.  Many well meaning, and few not so well meaning people in the church told me I really needed to look towards a life that didn’t include being a pastor.  Even some of my family thought that was what I needed to do.  The thing was, that was not at all what He had told me to do.
     During that time of woundedness and healing, so many spoke into my life, and a constant message was that the Lord was able to take hold of this situation,any situation, and all the lives and hearts involved, and work them to the fulfillment of His will for me.  As long as I stayed yielded and obedient, His plan and purpose for me would be fulfilled.  God knew the end, my end, from the beginning, and no matter what the twists and turns were along the way, He was Lord over all, and would accomplish His will in and through my life.  No matter what others, including the enemy thought my “end” might be, it was only what He said, He alone that mattered.
     I have found that life can have so many “beginnings” and sometimes those beginnings can happen in the darkest of places.  You may find yourself, or someone you love, in such a place now.  May your heart and soul know that He is Lord of that beginning, as well as Lord over all that can or will happen in the journey along the way to the end, an end that is firmly in His hands.  You may be surrounded by people, some well meaning, some not, who tell you you’ve reached the end, but you haven’t.  Jesus, the Alpha and Omega, the Lord, is there, and what He speaks in the second part of verse 6, He speaks to you, to all of us as well.  “To all who are thirsty, I will give the springs of the water of life without charge.”  Your beginning right now may be the most dry, desertlike wilderness imaginable.  He is ruler there, and for you, He will pour out the water of life…without charge.  Drink, because He knows the end He will bring from this beginning.  All you need do is trust, obey….and drink.

Blessings,
Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     Are you starving God?  I know that seems an odd question, but it’s one that came to me as I was reading in Numbers (No, it’s not my favorite Bible book either!) yesterday.  In Chapter 28:2, the Lord tells Moses, “Give these instructions to the people of Israel: The offerings you present to me by fire on the altar are My food, and they are very pleasing to Me.”  Now, I know this is the Old Testament, and we no longer bring Him daily offerings of meat and grain, to be burned before Him on the altar, but we are still to bring Him offerings, and they are still to be burnt up before Him, and yes, they are still very pleasing to Him.
     In the OT, these offerings were a part of life, and symbolized the dedication and surrender of the people.  That was the time of the Law, and we now live under Grace, but that doesn’t mean we should cease to bring Him our choice offerings, and what could be more choice than our own lives?  Lives that we bring, and place before Him, on His altar, daily.  Lives filled with needs, choices, desires, ambitions, and challenges.  Lives that His Word tells us are not our own, but His.  Lives that are brought to Him, surrendered to Him, and yes, lives that we yield to His Holy, consuming fire.  Fire that may well, and often does, burn up something that may be very precious to us.
     We find ourselves in the middle of the week, and each of us is likely wrestling with something, perhaps many things.  Marital situations, issues with our children.  Work problems, money problems, relationship problems, and a host of other circumstances and choices.  When we arise each day, what do we DO with them?  Do we continue on through the day, wrestling with and each and all of them?  Or, did we, at the very beginning, bring them as an offering to Him, placing them on His altar, surrendering them to Him, and to His fire?  Before you answer that, let me say that you won’t be able to do that unless you have first brought Him the ultimate offering….yourself.  Until you have done that, placed self on His altar, allowing Him to consume you, with all your desires, hopes, and plans, you will never be able to bring all these other things related to your life.  Oh, you may have your “daily devotion,” but it will be mainly ritual, which is exactly what this OT practice became in the life of the nation of Israel.  Because of that, they were overcome time and again by their enemies, and so will you and I be.  They merely went through the motions.  Are you and I guilty of the same?
     So, I get back to my original question.  If our offerings are His food, do the they leave Him hungry?  Is what we offer Him, in the end, not only tasteless, but useless?  What are you really bringing to His altar, and in the end, what do you really leave there?  Is the life you lead, starving God?

Blessings,
Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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     John Piper in his book, “When I Don’t Desire God,” writes of the time when God opened his eyes to the difference between the kind of life he had been living, and the life he had been created for.  He says, “Manageable, duty defined, decision oriented, willpower Christianity now seemed easy, and real Christianity had become impossible….The Christian life became impossible.  That is, it became supernatural.”
     God calls you and I to an impossible life.  Impossible because it can’t be managed, controlled or lived out within the boundaries of our individual comfort zones.  It is not a natural life, but a supernatural life.  It is a life that is impossible, terrifying, dangerous, and one which our flesh will flee from at the first opportunity.  It cannot be lived within the limits of our understanding, but only by being intimately connected with the Author of wisdom, understanding, discernment and power.  It’s the life Christ lived, and the life He calls us to.  The life we were created for.  So what keeps us from it?
     Columnist Barbara Wentroble says, “Too often we live not out of who we truly are in Christ, but out of diseased feelings, attitudes or images of self that aren’t real.”  We live bound by the chains of lies about ourselves and our God that seek to keep us from this impossible life.  As a result, we’ve settled for what we believe is possible, and the fruit of that is mediocrity and lukewarmness, a kind of half-life.  This is not the life we were made for and that He calls us to.  That life is one that is out of control, our control and lived out under His.  He knows where it is going, and oftentimes we don’t, but we are at peace, because we not only know that He is good, we are experiencing that He is good.
     His Word tells us that we are to “delight ourselves in Him.”  Delight is an experience and involves our emotions and our being.  As Piper says, “God is glorified in His people by the way we experience Him, not merely by the way we think about Him.”  Too much of our life with Him has been lived out in our minds with logic and reason, and not in our hearts, and it’s this that keeps us from the impossible life, the abundant and wondrous life we were made for.  Is it keeping you and I from it now?
     Paul asked, “How then shall we live?”  How then shall you live?  Will it be the controlled kind of half-life, or will it be His life, out of control, impossible, supernatural?  It’s center is not in our heads, but our hearts.  Hearts intimately joined with His.

Blessings,

Pastor O

Tags: Heart Thoughts by oshell
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