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Come home. Calling all prodigals, Jesus is calling you back to the fold. If you are one who needs reconciliation, God is calling your name. His desire is that you run back into His arms. He is waiting, and watching for you to come HOME. It doesn’t matter that lots of water has gone under the bridge, or how long it has been, today is the day of restoration, reconciliation and salvation. Don’t wait another moment. Nothing you can do, can make God love you more, and nothing that you have done already would disqualify you from running back to Jesus. That is what the cross is all about. Jesus paid the penalty for your sin, so that you can live free from guilt, free from shame, and free in Christ. Because of the cross, your sin has been taken care of. Jesus bore all the sins of the world on His own body, so that we can live for Him. Our choice is, do we accept or reject what was accomplished for us on the cross? Do we say yes to receiving full salvation? Just like the Father in the story of the prodigal in the Bible, God is anxiously waiting your return, and has a robe to place on your back and a ring to put on your finger. He’s ready to throw a party when you return. He is ready and waiting for you! The robe you get to wear is the Robe of Righteousness, which is blemish free, with stains removed, and past forgotten. The ring you wear is one of royalty. You are a part of the family, you get the family name, and your position restored, all because of God’s love. So come on Home. The party is about to start. Say yes to coming to Jesus! Welcome Home!

Can you be a mediator for someone else? The word intercessor means someone who stands in the gap for someone else. We think of intercessors when we are praying for someone who is going through difficulty, or for someone who needs to come to Christ. Sometimes, God might direct you to help in a situation where two people are having struggles together, and you can pray, counsel, or mediate them through their difficulty. Just like in our relationship with God, walls divide. God’s desire is that we have healthy, vibrant, extremely fit relationships. It takes work at times, and sometimes it takes the help of someone outside of ourselves to walk through a hard place. We will seek help quickly for a physical difficulty, but often we settle long term with relational and emotional challenges. If that is us, let’s ask for help from a godly adviser. Wisdom and advise from a Spirit directed vessel can save your relationship. If you are having success, why not help someone else! We have marriage mentors at our church for that specific reason, to help people who need assistance in their relationships to come to a better place. They work through the areas that need growth, and encourage the areas that are currently solid. I love watching people in the body, helping people in the body. Making that kind of commitment to help someone else is evidence that we really are a body, and that we each need the other. So if you are in need of help in relationships, ask for it from the right people! If you could be a helper, why not volunteer to use your success and be trained further to help someone else. Let’s say yes to interceding on behalf of someone else. Let’s say yes to becoming a bridge builder and a restorer of relationships. Just say yes!

Jesus called us, and He is calling others through you! Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me…..remember that old song? Jesus is calling you! He wants to draw us daily into His presence. I love the devotional by Sarah Young called, “Jesus Calling” and I love it that so many people make reading it a part of their daily quiet time with God. My mom personally has given the book Jesus Calling to probably 50 people, or more! It is a precious thought that Jesus is wooing us personally unto Himself. He wants an intimate relationship with you. If you’ve answered with a yes, God will then begin to use you in your sphere of influence to lead others to Him, through your life. Perhaps you think that means you have to be telling everyone everywhere about the Lord. That wouldn’t be a bad idea, if you do it when you are prompted by the Holy Spirit, but seeing others come to Christ is often more show than tell. Both work together well, but if your life isn’t showing the change that happened in your life since you’ve come to Christ, then your telling will be totally ineffective. So walk it and talk it, but make sure your telling lines up with your showing! So go tell, walk the walk, and talk the walk, and show the world around you that Jesus is real by your manner of life. Let the evidence of your life show that you are saying yes to God’s call on your life to reach your world.

Monday March 27
Intro:
Easter is getting closer and we are in the season of preparation for Easter called Lent. Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your dailyeword. Together we are discovering a few things that might make this time more meaningful. We’ve already seen that it can be a time of GIVING UP and a time of PARING BACK. It can be a time of REACHING OUT. It can be a time of RESPONSIBILITY, and REPENTeNCE. It is also a time of reconciliation and REFRESHING! So there are many ways this season of Lent can make your life better. Let’s take this time and be self aware, and then heighten our God awareness, so that our life can be the best it can be. This week we’ll look at reconciliation. Here is your dailyeword.

Reconciliation takes on various forms. During this season of Lent, reconciliation can happen between God and us, us and others, God and others, and even in our closest family relationships. Jesus is our peace who has broken down all the walls that divide, and the place where reconciliation starts first is between us and God and us. Because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can be in total union and communion with God. Eph 2:14-16 says He is our peace, who has broken down every wall. I am a big fan of all inclusive words like all and every, when it comes to receiving things from God. Every wall of division, means every wall of division! That means God’s plan for our relationship with Him is to have no walls. We give Him every single part of our lives. We get all of Him! What a nice exchange and a wonderful benefit from giving our heart to God completely! If you have recently come to Christ, or recently come back to Christ, make no walls your aim with your relationship with God. God’s desire is that we feel totally free and comfortable in His presence. That is a peaceful place to be in any relationship. No walls, no secrets, no complications. Let’s simply live for God, and experience the abundant life that Jesus died to give us. Let’s say yes to freedom! Let’s say yes to Jesus!

I have been crucified with Christ, no longer I but Christ lives in me is what Gal 2:20 says. It is amazing to think that when we come to Christ, we become truly alive. We say yes to God, He says yes to bringing new life on the inside of us! Our spirit becomes alive unto God and we start living the life that God has planned for us. In the midst of all that life going on, we realize that we have to crucify the flesh. Our carnal self, or our flesh, wars against the things of God. Our flesh needs to be crucified! We silence the voice of our flesh. We can do that when we crucify it! Dead people don’t talk, they don’t give their opinion, and they don’t get the opportunity state their case. So if our flesh is crucified, we don’t listen to it. We listen to the voice of the Spirit, which the Bible says, is the candle of the Lord. When we say yes to God and His Word, it is what lights our path, and gives us direction. God’s Spirit speaks to us in our spirit, or our “knower”, and we follow the voice of our shepherd, and no other voice. So we say no to the flesh because it is crucified, but say yes to the spirit and we come alive! Christ is who is living on the inside of us. He brings us life in abundance and running over. He is working on the inside perfecting His will in our lives. He is completing what he began on the inside of us. He wants us to resemble Who is living on the inside of us. JESUS! He wants us to be so full of Him, that all the world can see is Jesus. We can know and experience God that intimately in our lives. It really is the only way to live!

I hope you are continuing to say YES to the things of God. Do you know that the things that come from the Spirit of God are spiritually discerned. (I Cor 2:14) Have you noticed when it comes to the things of God that not everything we do makes sense to the world’s system? The world can look at going to church, giving 10% plus more in our tithe and offerings, even reading the Bible as things that are a waster of time, or totally unnecessary. When we talk about spending time with an invisible God, listening to His voice, and talking to Him, they could think we are a little out there! But just as this scripture states, the things that are from God, don’t always make sense to the natural world’s system. What can be as natural to us as breathing can seem unusual and maybe even weird to the unbeliever! That is a good thing to be aware of, because often we use a vocabulary that is irrelevant to the world. When talking about our relationship with God to those who don’t know Him yet, we do have to consider how we say things! It might be good to explain what we mean in simple to understand ways. When we say God spoke to us, most non believers get a big question mark on their face!!! Maybe a better way to say it would be that God impressed something on your heart. When we say we felt the leading of the Lord to do a particular thing, that too can bring confusion. When we know in our heart that God gave us specific direction through His voice, or His leading we can say those things in a Christian setting without explanation. With unbelievers, we have to break it down. So we not only have to have a sensitive discerning heart toward God, we should also do the same toward those who haven’t experienced God the way that we do. Let’s use our words to encourage others, to know God like we know Him and then act like He would.

We celebrate Lent and Easter because Jesus loved us enough to die for us and fix the broken places in our life. We often hear that people say God is breaking them, or even hear people pray for God to break the people they know, so they can come to Christ. Every time I hear that kind of statement I ruffle a little. I understand what they are trying to convey, but most people come to God already broken. God isn’t the one doing the breaking. He is the one doing the fixing! God is good at that! God is a great fixer, and a repairer of anything broken. The world, and the god of this world (the devil, our enemy), are experts at breaking things. The flesh is also good at brokenness. We come across broken hearted people every day. We see people all the time who need the restoring hand of God to touch their lives. John 10:10 says that it is the thief (the enemy) that comes to kill, steal and destroy, and it is God who comes to bring life. God is into life more abundantly. I think it is really important when we talk about God what God does, or how He acts, that we look at His character. How often do we forget that we have a new and better covenant established for us, with new and better promises. The cross is the dividing line, and to get to know God’s character all we have to do is look at how Jesus acted while He was on the earth. He went about blessing people, healing people and setting people free. He only did what He saw His Father do, and He only said what He heard His Father say. It seems pretty evident that He demonstrated the goodness of God wherever He went. God is a good God, through and through! It is His goodness that draws people to repentance. We, his people, should proclaim His goodness, and be willing to show His goodness to our world. We can be a healing hand to those who are broken, and lead them to the feet of Jesus.

As we continue toward Lent, and ponder the beauty of Easter, we see that what Jesus did on the cross gives us the ability to live life abundantly. Jesus shattered the enemy’s hold on us, and gave us the keys to the kingdom. Because Christ lives on the inside of us, our potential is unlimited in God, and our only boundary is the limits we put on ourselves. You may think that you are limited in other ways, but once we see who we are in Christ, we are free in Him to become exactly who He wants us to be, and LIVE the life He has for us. Let’s continue say yes to God’s best. This Lenten season, my prayer for you is that you truly experience the joy of saying yes to Jesus. He rose for you, and now we can rise above any situation that tries to contain us. We’ve got the keys. He brought us amazing freedom in every area – salvation, wholeness, welfare, so that we can LIVE abundantly. Savor each wonderful moment and LIVE life to the fullest! And you can continue putting the work of Christ in you into action for someone else, by:
“Doing all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as you can!”

Did you know that the word “good” comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word which literally means “to be like God”? That would imply that when godliness increases, so does goodness! Maybe you’ve heard this before, if you take God out of the word good, all you get is a big fat zero. Or perhaps you’ve heard this other saying about God’s goodness, that good is just God elongated! Try to imagine your life with God’s goodness flowing through you. Out of every pore of your life, goodness oozes out. That may be a funny word picture, but I think that is how we should begin picturing a lifetime of saying yes to God. Producing “good” should not be a strain. It should come very naturally, and just like God who is totally good, we can begin to completely demonstrate God’s goodness in us. Psalms 107 is a classic portrayal of God’s goodness. Here are some of the things that Psalms 107 says about God’s goodness.
He is GOOD,
He delivers us,
He does wonderful deeds,
He satisfies the thirsty,
and fills the hungry with GOOD things.
He breaks away chains,
He sent forth His Word and healed them,
He rescued them,
He stilled their storms,
He guided them,
and listen to this, He sowed fields and planted vineyards, that yielded a fruitful harvest! God’s goodness is amazing. Saying yes to Him brings all of that goodness into our lives. Let’s make it our goal to be just like Him, by:
“Doing all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as you can!”

We don’t do good because we think God will love us more, or we’ll get on His good side, we just do good because God loved us. We are loved just as much as God loved Jesus, so we love Him back. Just like it is God’s nature to be good, when we receive our new nature through salvation, His goodness becomes a part of who we are. It should be as natural as breathing for us. God never gets weary of being good, and we shouldn’t either. There is a great verse in Galatians 6:9 that tells us not to grow weary in doing good, for in time we will reap a harvest of blessing, if we don’t get discouraged and if we don’t give up. So if you are getting tired, remind yourself, saying yes to God is the only way to live. As humans, we get very dependent on what we see and feel, but very often, things are happening even if you don’t see it with your natural eyes. How often do we give up just before the miracle happens? If we knew what was just beyond the mountain in our way, if we could see with our eyes of faith and not just with our natural eyes, we could see that break through is just around the corner. Don’t give up before your miracle comes. We know that living for God, and saying yes to him, affects not only now, but eternity. So keep on:
“Doing all the good you can
By all the means you can
In all the ways you can
In all the places you can
At all the times you can
To all the people you can
As long as you can!”