Steve McVey Writes: "Dead Things "

I recently read a story about a little boy whose pet cat was killed one day while he was in school. His mother was very concerned about how he would take the news. When he got home, she explained what happened. The little boy turned away and began to cry. "Don't worry," the mother said reassuringly. "He's in heaven with God now." The little boy whirled on his mother and with desperation and anger in his voice yelled, "What's God gonna do with a dead cat?"

That's how we all feel sometimes, don't we? We know God has the situation in His hands, but from our perspective the outcome seems final and the whole thing appears to have a finality to it that is completely unacceptable to us. Despite the fact that we know it’s in His hands, we want to scream, "What's God gonna do with a dead cat?!" In other words, "Why did it have to end this way?"

Mary and Martha felt the same desperation when they buried their brother, Lazarus. Martha spoke for all of us during the times when our crisis doesn't seem to end with a miracle, but with a misery that screams despair into our emotions and thoughts. Martha said, "Lord, if you had been here!" Do you feel that way about situations in your life? Does it seem like there have been times when Jesus wasn’t in town when you needed Him the most?

At times it is impossible to understand the divine reasoning behind God’s actions or, more often it seems, His lack of visible action in our circumstances. In John 11, the Bible shows that Mary and Martha faced this very dilemma.

The text says, “Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. So the sisters sent word to Him, saying, "Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick." But when Jesus heard this, He said, "This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it." Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when He heard that he was sick, He then stayed two days longer in the place where He was. Then after this He said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."

The reasoning of Jesus in waiting two more days before coming to Bethany makes perfect sense to us now, since we know the whole story. God received greater glory by raising Lazarus from the death than he would have by healing him. That possibility wasn’t one that would have occurred to these two sisters at all so how could it make sense to them? All they could see was that Jesus wasn’t coming through for them when they needed Him the most.

We all feel like these two at times, don’t we? You may have faced situations in your life where you have struggled to understand why your prayers about the matter seemed to be ignored. It seemed to you that, at a time when you most needed divine intervention, God was inactive.

In moments like that it is important to remember that your perspective is limited to what you can see at the moment. Mary and Martha couldn’t imagine how their situation could possibly have a good ending, but God had one in mind all along. You can be assured that the same God who raised Lazarus from the dead is fully aware of your problems.

From your finite understanding you too may not be able to imagine how your situation could possibly end well, but remember this: You don’t see things from the eternal perspective. Your Father does, so trust Him. He has not forgotten nor is He ignoring you.

There actually is an answer to the question, "What's God gonna do with a dead cat?" He may resurrect it. Dead things don't deter God. He can put life right back into something that is already dead. Hope isn't gone just because a situation appears to have ended.

God may not resurrect it, but may instead redeem it. In other words, He will use the disappointments and devastations of our lives to accomplish a greater purpose. We don't know what's good and what's bad for us. Only He does. What we do know is that our Father loves us. He isn't sadistic, but gently and tenderly loves us at all times. Never do we need to believe that more than when life makes no sense.

When circumstances spiral downward and God doesn't step in to change them, He can use the outcome in a positive way. We don't have to see how He plans to use it for that fact to be true. Faith means that we trust Him even when our senses tell us all hope is gone.

Our faith is in our God, period. Faith doesn’t require believing that we will get what we want. Instead, it knows that we get what God wants and it is being willing to accept that and rest in it even if our emotions and thoughts argue.

So, “what's God gonna do with a dead cat?” Whatever He wants. His role is to be in charge. Ours is to trust. 

He is a Coward

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What God HAS revealed

 

Jesus' Love

 

Rejection Sucks

Rejection sucks doesn’t it? 

Being blunt, cause it deserves honesty. So let’s be honest; it sucks. For real. 

What I have learned though and become quite intimate with is this. In the deep places where it can sometimes really sting the most,  there you are Papa.  Abba, Father. ❤️❤️

Your light ✨ absorbs all the darkness of pain and you set us firmly on a ROCK. Your love is a consuming fire burning away all that doesn’t affirm us or that which blocks us from seeing the very truth of who we are. All that causes us to feel this lie of being separated. 

The sweet whisper of Holy Spirit from within that declares who we really are: accepted in the beloved. Wholly acceptance. And that we are firmly seated in heavenly places; with you; tethered to this full acceptance, deeply and passionately saturated in your Perfect Love. 

Knowing this perfect love will set a man or woman free from ever needing approval. 

It’ll set us free from the need to have the final word; the need to be understood and the most freeing is the need to be right 

Lisa couture writes:

 I have felt an ache and burden in my heart this week. I keep hearing the phrase over and over- 

SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST 

Galatians 6:14 But for me, may it be never to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. 

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

2 Corinthians 11:30 If I have to boast, I will boast of what pertains to my weakness.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the good news of the radical grace of  JESUS. 

SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST

Each of us if we were honest know we didn’t wake up to this glorious redemption because of one single thing we did. We weren’t even looking and instead living alienated and then the loving kindness of our Father provoked us from within. He wooed and He drew us into freedom! And yet so often, right after we wake and received this beautiful truth, we get swept into a system. And our language shifts to ministry and eventually right back onto man and self. 

So often it becomes about our *church denomination*, our *prayer life*, our *ministry*, our *good works*, our *tithe*, our *worship* our *anointing*, our *calling*, our *fasting*, our *dying to self*, our*strong faith* our *number of salvations*, our *evangelism*, our *bible knowledge*, our *doctrine*, on and on this performance based weary list can go. 

The GOSPEL is not what we do or what we did to get to God. It’s what we BE because HE came to us. Immanuel, Christ with us and now in us. 

SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.

•It’s actually the Faith OF Jesus Christ that we even know Him.

•It’s Jesus Christ who was faithful and it was He who died so that now we will live in Union with Abba, Son and Holy Spirit. 

•It’s Holy Spirit’s anointing which we all have now. It is not just for the special people at a higher level who got a special anointing. 

•He is the one who saved us FOR good works but it is not our good works that gets us to Him. 

SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST

It even strikes me strange now when I hear people say they had many *decisions for Christ* at an event. 

Because the TRUTH is God the Father IN CHRIST as revealed by Holy Spirit is the WHO that made a decision for us! He did it all! SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST. 

If we have any special ministry it is the one called out by Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 of seeing no one after the flesh (as they are behaving) and instead as reconciled and telling them that message, Christ reconciled you! Telling them they have been reconciled, now be who you are and BE reconciled. 

BUT JESUS DID IT ALL! 

And in this union we are

*Radically loved

*Wholly Forgiven 

*Holy and set apart by His Love

*Blameless

*Redeemed

*Righteous 

*Blessed

*Fully Accepted 

*Healed and made whole 

This is what salvation looks like. So don’t think that prayer you prayed is what saved you.  It was all Jesus Christ and His doing.  

Jesus never spoke to my fallen self. He only spoke to who I am. I was blind one day like Paul and then God woke me up by the whisper of His still soft voice from within, telling me who I was! Who HE made me to be and like the lost treasure in the field I was lost, but now I am found. And that treasure always had value. It never lost its value. He woke me up to my value and my origin. 

Why are we not seeing this message more in the church? Why is it more about moral superiority and us vs them and messages that sound more like “I am so glad I don’t sin like that group or that person over there”. Why is it all about man? Could it be we have begun to boast in ourselves? This is something I think is on God’s heart. A return to the Glorious Gospel of Grace. 

This is not a new message. Paul proclaimed this message. Christ alone and Him crucified was His message. It was never about us and what we can do to get back to God. It was always a message of reconciliation telling people and proclaiming the day of the Lord and the good news that IN Christ we are accepted! 

NOW wake up oh sleeper and BE WHO YOU ARE! All because Of Jesus Christ.  

SO THAT NO MAN CAN BOAST.

Holy Spirit Testifies of Jesus

 Holy Spirit testifies of JESUS. 

If what we are experiencing in any ministry of the spirit is not speaking to our identity in Christ and all the FULLNESS of this joyous blissful inheritance within us already; we are missing it. 

The kingdom of God is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Ghost. So if any ministry is not connecting us to the fruit of the Spirit which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness gentleness, faithfulness or self control, already within us, it may not be the ministry of the Holy spirit. 

What we are thinking becomes who we are. So if we are obsessing about the works of darkness or constantly looking at fallenness, this isn’t how God speaks to us.  

💎 He points out the GOLD in us. He will minister to the treasure in us all. 

So thinking on things, speaking of things of darkness will only produce darkness. Paul says to think on things pure, lovely, noble, true, admirable,  etc because this will lead us to PEACE. He also says cast down (toss away) any vain imaginations(Image is in that word)  that bombard our thinking because these are lies. They speak contrary to who we truly are in Christ! So we have to cast those lies as they try to invade our minds. Just think of a fishing rod and cast them into the sea of forgetfulness. They are not ours to own. 

✨We have the mind of Christ.

Holy Spirit will always lead and guide us to all truth already. That we are complete in Him. 

We must become like children again I believe.

Steve McVey Writes:

Lets stop worrying and just trust 

I have vague memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis that happened in 1962 when I was a young child. Some say it was the closest the United States has ever been to nuclear war. One of the main things I remember is that our church family brought canned food and bottled water and put it under a stairway inside the church building. The plan was that we would all would all gather together at church if a missile were to be launched against us.

As my young friends and I explored, we sat under the stairs with the stockpile of food and water and I thought to myself, "This wouldn't be a bad place to stay for awhile." I wasn't worried about the potential danger at hand. I knew something very bad could happen, but reasoned that my parents would take care of me. So while adults worried and prayed and collected bottles of water and cans of food, I laughed and played without a care in the world.

This seemed to be the way of the early church, even in the face of persecution. The second chapter of Acts describes a group of people who laughed and loved, who shared meals and money; people who enjoyed life by trusting their Father regardless of threats that may have been nearby. Even in the fact of potential danger, joy was the order of the day. They would have fully affirmed C. S. Lewis's claim that "joy is the serious business of heaven."

A spirit of God-centered calmness is often conspicuously absent in contemporary Christianity. What urgent matters have we allowed to rob us of our playful spirit? Aren't we people of faith? We are going to live forever. Temporal things won't even be remembered, let alone matter a hundred years from now. Sure, they matter now but let's put it all in perspective. What are we trying to prove by our stress-filled agendas and to whom are we trying to prove it? There's no doubt about it, most of us need to relax.

Don’t be tempted to think that circumstances have the power to steal an attitude of rejoicing. New Testament believers didn’t have it easy either. Acts 16 describes a very hard situation faced by Paul and Silas on the first missionary trip to Europe. They had just finished preaching when a riot broke out. The Bible describes it:

“ The crowd rose up together against them, and the chief magistrates tore their robes off them and proceeded to order them to be beaten with rods. When they had struck them with many blows, they threw them into prison, commanding the jailer to guard them securely; and he, having received such a command, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the stocks. But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God, and the prisoners were listening to them; and suddenly there came a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison house were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone's chains were unfastened” (Acts 16:22-26).

With their own lives in jeopardy, Paul and Silas sang. What a display of confidence that their Father would take care of them! They knew that the worst thing that could happen would be that they might soon be brought home to heaven and that is no threat!

What threatening circumstance do you find yourself in today? Whatever it is, God knows about it and He will take care of you. When we don't maintain an attitude of internal joy that can't be touched by external circumstances, the rhythms of grace in our life become discordant. The music soon stops.

To rejoice doesn't mean you're oblivious to danger, but it does mean you trust in the protection of your Father. Your security rests in Him, not in the outcome of whatever circumstances you find yourself. You can be confident in Him, not in the outcome of what is happening at a given moment in time.

This is the message we're sharing at Grace Walk. Our staff in six countries are all working hard, even in the midst of the pandemic. I appreciate your help getting the message out. Thank you in advance for whatever amount you choose to donate, and I want those who faithfully stand with us financially to know how much I do appreciate you.! 

The Gospel Changes

Steve McVey Writes:

Canned Goods and Closed Hearts

My parents were born during the decade of "The Great Depression." It was a time when many families in America struggled to put food on their tables. Luxuries pretty much became vague memory for most Americans during those days. Finding enough food for another week was the goal for most families then.

I grew up hearing the stories about meals consisting of salted pork fat back and biscuits, with syrup or gravy made from a limited amount of flour. I must say that I'm thankful I didn't have to eat meals like that when I was a child. We never lacked for food.

I did, however, notice something that many people my age may remember about their parent's kitchen cabinets. The cupboard was always filled with canned foods and the freezer was packed with meat and vegetables. Green beans, creamed corn, navy beans, canned yams, peas of various assortments, applesauce, even hominy (a food that ranks right down there with fat back) lined our shelves. Open the kitchen cabinet doors in the home of my childhood and you would think we were about to have an army come over for dinner. Sometime, before Melanie and I go to the grocery store now, the cabinets look pretty empty. Not so in my parent's kitchen. There was always food.

There was an irony about the whole situation. Much of the food in those cabinets seemed to stay there a long time. I don't think I ever saw the cupboard empty. As an adult looking back on the situation, I think I get it.

My parent's generation had known what it was like to be without food. Consequently, somewhere deep inside them a voice must have said, "I will never be caught without enough food to eat again." Thus, the massive inventory of canned goods. Come what may in life, there would be food in the cabinets.

I think that's how many of us face most areas of our lives. We have faced circumstances at times that created a sense of loss or need within us. Because the situation was painful, somewhere deep inside us, we said, "This won't ever happen to me again." So we hoarded what we have and shut the cabinet door. We went into the self-protection mode.

Some were hurt by a friend and have now closed the door on vulnerability. They'll never trust another person as a true friend. Others have had a marriage go sour. Today, they won't completely open up to their mate because of fear. If they give everything, they risk losing everything again. Some were emotionally burned at church. Now, they have lumped all churches in the same hypocritical pile and won't become an integral part of a church fellowship.

The hurts differ, but the response is common. Shut the door of my heart and don't risk losing what I have or being hurt. After all, if it happened once, . . .

What "great depression" have you experienced in life? What commodity did you feel you had taken from you when you needed it most? Was it trust? Love? Friendship? What have you lost?

As a result have you tried to stuff those things deep inside you that you don't want to ever lose again? Are you fearful to take them out? Have you resolved that you'll never find yourself in that kind of situation again?

The healing grace of God can free you from the debilitation of your past hurts. The problem with erecting an emotional wall to keep others from hurting us is that it also blocks us from experiencing love, affirmation, affection and other positive qualities that we need to feed our souls. In Isaiah 53:4, the Bible says about Jesus: “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried.”

When the Scripture says that Jesus “bore” our grief, it uses an interesting word in the original Hebrew language in which it was written. It uses the word nasa', a word that means, “to lift up; to take away.” It reminds me of NASA, the acronym for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the agency that has directed America’s space program.

The Bible says that Jesus Christ has lifted up and taken away your grief. It is as if it has been ejected into outer space, far, far away from you. You don’t have to be controlled by the grief of your past. Believe that He has taken it away and find healing from its residual effect in your life.

Jesus Christ will be the Great Physician to your wounded heart. The Psalmist wrote, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). Submit your wounded heart to him and allow Him to heal you. What a waste if you were to spend the rest of your life with unresolved pain that He stand ready to heal!

There's a problem with keeping canned goods in a cupboard too long. The food will spoil. Sometimes the cans will even explode. What seemed like a good idea initially, ultimately is proven to be the wrong choice.

Don't make that mistake in your life. Open the doors of your heart and utilize what is there. Trust people. When pain arises within you, cast “all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7).

Open yourself up to be vulnerable. Share from your heart with those you love. The Great Depression is over. Don't judge your future by the past. You have much to share. Don't hide it behind closed doors. There's a hungry world around you and you have what they need. 

In the Dark

 

Your Life