Author: debo

Intro:
Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your daily eword. Last week we started a new series that am I hoping will be a wonderful blessing to you. I think we all have been in a dry place before, and need to be refreshed. In the coming weeks we will be talking about breathing a breath of fresh air in our life, and this week is all about the doldrums. How we got there, and how to get out. I hope these daily encouragements designed to harmonize with the study, will help you take a deep breath and breathe in all that God has for you. If you haven’t joined periscope, I encourage you to do so today. Frequently I will be pericsoping to you about your dailyeword. Listen, watch and show me some heart!

What does the word doldrums mean to you? It can mean stagnation, lethargy, boredom, despondency, the blues, gloom, misery, and even despair. You might think that someone in the “doldrums” got there because they were pessimistic, but not necessarily. Even great characters in the Bible show us that you can be on top of the world one day, and in the depths of despair the next. David and Elijah for example. The devil often works that way. We can have a wonderful victory, and then post victory blues set in. It even happens with moms who have a beautiful baby, and then instead of enjoying this wonderful season of new motherhood, post partum depression sets in. A wonderful blessing arrives, and the new mom is miserable, full of guilt and shame, and feels like a failure. We may not all have experienced all of those synonyms for the doldrums, but every person has had the opportunity to be ensnared by the enemy of our souls with discouragement, and he likes to keeps us snared as long as possible. I love Psalms 61 which says this in The Message Bible:
God, listen to me shout,
Bend an ear to my prayer
When I’m far from anywhere
Down to my last gasp,
I call out, guide me up High Rock Mountain
You’ve always given me breathing room,
A place to get away from it all
A lifelong pass to your safe house,
An open invitation as your guest
You’ve always taken me seriously, God,
Make me welcome among those who know and love you.
God gives us breathing room! Sounds like the fresh air you might be needing right now.

Happy Sunday! This is the day that the Lord has made, let’s rejoice, let’s be glad, let’s go to church! My prayer every Sunday is that every seat in the sanctuary of our church would be filled with people who are hungry and thirsty for the things of God, right out of Matt 5. Guess how those people get to church? Sometimes they drive by and God draws them in, sometimes they look in the phone book, well maybe not. Sometimes they go on line and find a church. Sometimes they see our church on TV or they listen to the radio station KAGF, 105.5 and hear about our services. You know how most people come to church? Somebody invites them. They may even drop by and pick them up. Sometimes, they keep inviting them until they come to a big event planned for outreach. Sometimes they come on their own, but you are placed in the lives of people that God wants you to reach. So invite them to church. Tell them about our terrific kidlink kids programs, and our amazing Commissioned Youth services, or our college outreach called Pursuit. Or just invite them to the main service. Why not try to make it your goal to bring one person a month with you to church, and let’s see every seat full and running over, and let’s keep adding services, making more room for more people who are hungry and thirsty for God.

Who can you invite to church with you? If you have been a believer for very long, you have probably noticed it is easy to surround yourself with people to think like you, act like you and believe like you. Part of that is really good, because we want to hang around people who challenge us to grow in God. At the same time, we can become immersed in church life, that we forget that there is a world out there dying to know Jesus. We have received something wonderful, new life in Christ. Now, instead of just going on our merry way, loving Jesus, we need to think about those that haven’t met Christ yet. They don’t know the joy, the peace, the rest, the hope that we have in abundance. The reason we have an abundance is because we have some to give away. God always works that way. He fills us up, so that we can give something to someone who needs some of what we have. So keep your eyes and ears open. Where can you find someone to help? Ministry is all about helping people. Fill your sail with fresh air, by leading somebody to the feet of Jesus.

Sunday is my favorite day of the week – Fresh Air Day! I know I say this a lot, but I love getting together with my church family. Here it is Friday, and I’m already looking forward to Sunday. The Bible reminds us to meet together regularly, and for lots of people, regular attendance, is less than once a month. I want to stir you up to make your commitment greater than that. I encourage you to participate in your church life, every single week. The Jews had the Sabbath set aside for worship, and when Jesus rose on the first day of the week, the early believers made worshipping on Sunday the new pattern. What a great way to start the week. I look at it almost like the tithe. If you give God the first part, instead of the leftovers, you are showing where your priorities are. I actually missed a church service a few weeks ago, and even then, I watched church online at agf.org, I watched our TV service on KMVT and then I turned on some praise and worship music. But, I was still bummed, because church life to me, isn’t just the great teaching or awesome worship, it is loving and serving the church family. Plan to go to church this Sunday, and get some fresh air in your sail.

I love going to weddings, and I have been to a lot of them recently. We are going to one tomorrow as well. Weddings are a beautiful time to see a couple commit their lives to each other, in front of their friends and loved ones. They promise that they will love each other and lay down their life for the life of their mate. You have probably noticed this too, that newlyweds can be so devoted to one another that they love serving each other. Sometimes it’s even a contest of who can serve more. But if you look around at older married couples, that sweet, innocent, loving devotion to serve one another can sometimes get tarnished. We don’t serve each other out of devotion anymore, we do it out of duty, or we tell our mate, they can fend for themselves! The sweetest thing ever is when I see an older couple that keeps fresh air in their relationship. They serve one another out of love. In fact it becomes a life long competition of who can out serve the other. It takes a conscious effort to continue doing that year after year, but boy is it worth it. Let’s keep fresh air in our marriages, and remember that we are called to love one another, and love is a verb. I encourage you to breathe some fresh devotion into your relationships.

One reason this study speaks called Fresh Air so much to me is for the last month, I have had a hard time breathing. Starting with an infection, then having the smoke from the Idaho fires in our valley really made it hard for many people to breathe, including me. Breath is essential to life. You can’t breathe, you don’t live. It works like that in our spiritual life too. If you need some fresh air in your sail, you will be blessed and encouraged by this new series. Even if you walk into a house that hasn’t had the doors and windows opened for a while, the air feels stale. We don’t want our Christian walk to be stale, and we certainly want to be able to breathe. So let’s air out our “house”, Jesus did say we are the temple of the Holy Spirit! Let’s let the fresh breeze of the Holy Spirit blow out the stale, and become an inhabitable home again for our comforter and teacher to feel at home in. It would be easy to try to cover up the stale smell with an air freshener, but let’s not just do a cover up. Let’s let the wind of the Holy Spirit sweep through our doors and windows and become a “house” that is fresh and clean. Thank God for the fresh air of the Holy Spirit.

Every person determines their personal speed of spiritual growth. You have probably noticed that someone can be saved for many years, and still be a baby Christian. And on the other hand, you might have known someone who just recently has been saved, and have grown leaps and bounds, because they have dug into the Word of God, they have gotten involved in church life, spent time in prayer and have planted themselves in a life giving small group. Those really are four keys to personal spiritual growth! Let’s talk about them. 1) Be a person of the Word. Dig in, find a good study program, do word studies, get in a Bible Study and really make the Word of God your life. YouVersiion.com makes it so easy if you like doing your study on your phone or tablet. 2) Finding a life giving local church is vitally important too. You want to be in a church that is equipping you to do ministry, a place where teaching the whole Word of God is central, and where you can call your church home. A third key is having great communication with God through prayer. Prayer really is just a conversation, but it is with the person who has your best interest at heart and loves you the most. And lastly, getting involved in a small group really helps you grow, iron sharpens iron, and you grow spiritually in a small group, bringing fresh air to your life!

Intro:
Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your daily eword. Today we start a new series that I hope will be a wonderful blessing to you. I think we all have been in a dry place before, and need to be refreshed. In the coming weeks we will be talking about breathing a breath of fresh air in our life. Our church is doing the study this fall by Chris Hodges, and I hope these daily encouragements designed to harmonize with the study, will help you take a deep breath and breathe in all that God has for you. Be encouraged today! If you haven’t joined periscope, I encourage you to do so today. Frequently I plan to be pericsoping to you about your dailyeword.

This week is the beginning of a really exciting Bible Study that you can be involved with if you like. The study is called Fresh Air and you can find the weekly video lessons on Right Now Media if you would like to join us. The introduction really is a great reminder of how important it is to have life giving relationships around us, and to be involved in a small group where we have accountability and encouragement. Why should you be in a small group? Because if we look at the pattern of Jesus, he had the initial small group. He had 12 men around him to were there to help and bless him, but also they grew and were blessed just by being around Jesus. So how about you identify a small group where you can grow. Follow the pattern of Jesus and find a group where you can study and grow together. Our groups are starting this week at AGF, so jump in, get involved!

Release heaven into this earth life through prayer. One of my favorite verses in the Bible says Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. For the believer, this earth life can be wonderful. Of course there will be bumps along the way, we live on a fallen planet, and our earth has a curse, but we can rise above, even the difficult moments of our life. Think about this, we have the right and the responsibility to pray for everything this is God’s will that we don’t see manifested on the earth just yet. Our prayer can be what releases God’s power to do immeasurably more than we can ask or even imagine. That stretches my thinking! I have a huge imagination, and I come up with enormous ideas, but Eph 3:20 says that God wants to increase us beyond what we can even imagine. He wants life to be amazing. We can see that accomplished when we take off any limitations we might have, and let our spiritual imagination take over. God’s will for us is way bigger than we can even think. My prayer is that we can grab ahold of that. So many of us live so far beneath what God has for us. Let’s not wait until we get to heaven to realize it. Let’s reach for that immeasurably more that is available, right now….. More power, more anointing, more ability, more provision. God is more than enough

Has anyone ever asked you to pray for them, and you see them the next week at church and realize you forgot to pray at all? I have an easy remedy for that!!! PRAY immediately when they ask you. I have made it a habit of doing that, and so I pray in some very unexpected places. I pray over the phone, I pray in Costco, I pray at a track meet, I pray in the pew right before church starts, I pray in the kitchen, probably even in the bathroom! I look for people who have needs. You can tell by looking when someone isn’t feeling well, or they have a heavy burden, ask them if you can pray for them! Then make a point to follow up. Sometimes we don’t know if a prayer was answered just because we forgot to follow up. What an amazing faith builder answered prayer can be! Follow up and get that praise report. If it’s not a praise report yet, continue praying. Keep standing in faith. Keep thanking God that he heard your prayer and is working on the situation. Make prayer a part of your daily life. I pray in the spirit before I get out of bed. I pray as I get ready, as I drive places, when I am alone, before meals, before bedtime, there are opportunities to pray all day long, each and every day. Take them, and find people to pray for, and then take the time, to check back with them and find out how they are doing. That is one anothering!