Category: Love

The Power of Love

Posted on by Dorci

Hello

I am so excited to be back with you after my long hiatus.  God has been good and faithful and has done some great things in my heart and life during my break and I’m ready to resume our journey with the Lord together.

Life is hard, I know, and the world seems to be getting crazier, darker, and more unstable than ever, but I hope to encourage you to keep focused on Jesus.  He is our compass, our light, our peace, our truth, our hope.

He is our solid foundation.

When all else is shaky, we can walk surefootedly, and we can stand unwaveringly in our faith and trust of the God who loves us.

The enemy would have us get sidetracked, even in things that seem good, but none of it means a thing if our focus does not continue to be this:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  Mark 12:30

This is the crux of our journey.

Everything we do hinges on God’s love – understanding and receiving it more and more as we grow in our relationship with Him, and loving Him back more today than we did the day before.

God’s love is where all true treasure lies.

From His love all good things flow.  With it we have the power to forgive, the confidence to pray, the strength to serve, the courage to do whatever He calls us to do.  And that’s when an enriched life begins.

As that love between us and God grows, nothing will be able to move us.  No surprise diagnosis, no financial upset, no personal attack, no shocking headline, nothing.

Walking with Jesus we can endure anything, and endure it with a peace and joy that can only come from Him.

During my break each one of you (followers on the website and on the Facebook page) have been prayed for individually, by name.  Let me tell you, it was an absolute joy to do that.  I hope the Lord blessed you through it as much as He did me.

Please feel free to ask for prayer anytime.  You are all on my heart and I love you all very much.

If you follow God Treasure through email, please consider liking the Facebook page where I post scripture and music and other things I may not necessarily post on the regular website.

And if you follow only through Facebook, since FB has a quirky policy of not getting the all the posts to all the followers, please consider signing up on the website – Godtreasure.net – to receive the blogs by email so you don’t miss any.  I promise, I won’t send you anything else! And the more you like the posts on FB, the more likely you are to get the posts.  And don’t forget to share!  

“The Lord bless you
and keep you;
the Lord make his face shine on you
and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you
and give you peace.”

Numbers 6:24-26

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It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

Posted on by Dorci

“Never stop learning.”

“Keep learning.”

“Don’t give up learning.”

I must have heard this admonition at least three or four times over the past couple of weeks.  Heaven help us if we ever come to the place where we think we have it all figured out.  Or that we’re too old or too young or too busy, or too anything to learn new things.

There is no where that is truer than in our walk with Christ on our journey through life.

God is always speaking, as long as we’re listening.

In Peter’s second letter to those living in faith in Christ, he writes:

“For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,  and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.” 2 Peter 1:5-7

Faith is not a badge we put on at the moment of conversion as if the race were over and the rewards already given.  Faith is the starting point.  Then, with our faith in hand, we run the race.

Virtue

Live with high moral standards.  That is a daily, conscious effort in this morally-declining world.  Up is down, right is wrong and wrong is right.  But we know where to go to cut to the chase and find the absolute truth, and that is always God’s Word.

Knowledge

God tells us in scripture that we are to grow in the knowledge of Christ, grow in the wisdom and knowledge that Christ gives, and, interestingly, that husbands are to live in an understanding (knowledgeable) way with their wives.

Self-control

The more we allow the Holy Spirit to rein in our hearts and lives, the more we will learn to restrain ourselves from the things of the world that create division from Him, and vice versa.

Steadfastness

This is a cheerful, patient endurance through all our trials, ever-increasing in hope that through it all our God is molding us into the image of His Son.  We learn to wait – to wait for direction, to wait for discernment, to wait for rescue, to wait for healing, to wait on our God and know that He hears, He loves us, and His timing and ways are perfect.

Godliness

Simply, less of me and more of Him.

Brotherly affection

Daily we are to grow in our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Love

This is agape, the highest form of love. It is the pinnacle of sacrificial, unconditional love that puts ourselves on the alter to serve another.

To grow in these godly qualities takes a willingness to be humble.  It takes being able to admit when we’re wrong so we can repent and grow.  It is taking regular stock of our hearts through scripture as the Sword “penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Heb 4:12) 

It takes walking out of the shadows into the bright and baring light of Christ and letting Him examine us, burning off those ungodly traits through the fire of trial, and knowing that those same flames burn with His love and grace and mercy and forgiveness.

Why? Why do we want to do these things instead of just coasting through life, knowing that we have salvation at the end of it?  Peter tells us in the next verse:

“For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  2 Peter 1:8

I don’t know about you, but I want to be effective.  I want my life to count for good.  It was used for enough pain and sorrow before Christ graciously invaded my life.  I want to learn and grow and trip and get back up and try again, trust more, pray more, yield more, love more. 

In this one life I get, I want Christ to have His way in and through me. I want to learn the way of my Master and be prepared and unashamed when I meet Him face to face. 

But it won’t come by osmosis.

So I take the faith handed to me by the Holy Spirit, and together we run…

Grace and Peace in Abundance,

 

Love: Food, Drink…and Burning Coals?

Posted on by Dorci

“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary:

‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head. (Proverbs 25:21-22)’

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Romans 12:9-21

The term “to heap burning coals on someone’s head,” is not, as it might seem at first glance, an act of vengeance. It’s actually an act of kindness. People needed to keep their home’s fire burning during the night to cook food in the morning. If it died out, they would go to a neighbor and ask for live coals to relight their fire. The neighbor would have to get out of bed and give some of their own fire’s coals. The coals would be heaped into a container on the person’s head to carry home.

This is love. We are to go our of our way to bless our enemies even when it’s an inconvenience, even if we don’t feel like it, and even when it causes us a degree of suffering. In this way we introduce our enemies to the love of Christ, and bring the kingdom of heaven to their door. It is, after all, God’s loving kindness that brings us all to repentance.

Grace and Peace,

The High Road

Posted on by Dorci

It takes a very humble and very willing servant of Yeshua, the Everlasting God, to put one foot in front of the other and walk the road high enough to pray in agreement with these words. For the sake of these souls – both the lost whom Christ loved and died for as well as for us, and for those who would be their next victims, I pray we would each examine our hearts and be willing to walk that high road, following closely behind our Savior.

Do You Believe?

Posted on by Dorci

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.” Romans 10:9-10

This Friday, March 20, the movie Do You Believe? will open in theatres. It journeys alongside the lives of a dozen people, all struggling and looking for something, but they don’t know what.

Sounds like a lot of people in the world right now. And of course, there is only one answer to all of life’s questions, to its pain, its confusion, its heartache, to the web of our own sin, and that is Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth and the life. “No one comes to the Father except through me” Jesus declared. No one.

But the good news is that anyone, no matter what a person’s religious background, age, color, socioeconomic background or anything else, and no matter what sins a person has done, anyone who believes on the name of Jesus Christ and declares Him as Lord will be forgiven and saved from the eternal punishment of those sins.

Christ says “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.” Revelation 3:20

Not only will a place be made in heaven for those who believe in God’s Son, but Christ promises to live with us right here, right now, to journey with us and give us hope and peace in the midst of our struggles.

We all know people who are struggling and looking for something but they don’t know what that something is. But we who know Christ do, and we may be the only one who can stand in the gap for them, who can be the bridge between darkness and Light, who can introduce them to the One who is the answer to the questions they’re asking.

Ask the Lord who that person or persons are who He would have you invite not just to see a movie, but to be shown the Way.  Pray ahead of time that the Lord would soften hearts.  Fast and ask the Spirit to break the chains.  And then be bold and ask.

Heck, throw in a big tub of buttered popcorn.

Maybe you are the person who is struggling and looking for answers. Maybe you’ve gone to church all your life, maybe you haven’t stepped foot in one in a long time, maybe never at all.

Please know this: God loves you. His Son, Jesus Christ, loves you, and He desperately wants a relationship with you, so much that He died on the cross for your sins. His grace and mercy are deep and wide enough to reach you no matter how far away you think you are.  He is only one prayer away.

If you can, go see the movie this weekend. And whether you go for yourself or you take someone, come back here and tell me how God spoke to you through it.

Life is short, and none of us knows how much time we have left.  All those who will pass away today didn’t know it yesterday.  We must seize the day.

In His great grace,