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THE BLESSED JOURNEY - by Brent Lokker

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The beatitudes (blessings) Jesus shares in Matthew 5:3-11 were never meant to be a checklist of things you need to do to be right with God, nor requirements you need to fulfill to earn God’s blessings. See them, rather, as a portrait painted by Jesus of your most authentic self—your in-Christ, made in the image of your divine Creator self. In a way, Jesus is splashing cold water on our faces as if to say , “Wake up to your true self! The way I fashioned you is nothing like how the world wants to define you. I am reminding you of your original design in my divine image which will open you up to the joy your heart has been longing for.” This is how you will experience the blessed journey of life. Your life is a unique song that was meant to be sung in this world. Jesus is the only one who can sing it to you until you can hear it clearly for yourself and sing it out with childlike joy and confidence. Here is a paraphrase I wrote of the beatitudes, along with us being light and salt in th...
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YOU ARE THE CHURCH - by Karena Lout

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  Thank you so much for your generous donations and help serving the community at our Back to School outreach last Saturday! We had over 150 children and teenagers from Pleasanton, Dublin, San Ramon, Livermore, Oakland and Hayward. I met a single Mom who is currently living between her car and a hotel.  As we prayed for her, Jesus began to fill her with hope like only he can that her situation would change. While some parents shared their hearts, children got their face painted, received haircuts, did art projects and played games. What I heard the most from families was how over the top kind and loving everyone was that helped them. There was such a feeling of gratitude and joy in the room. Whenever we do these outreaches, I often look around the room and think "this is church." So often we think a typical service has to consist of a worship set and a message. But throughout the bible, the church is never defined by a service or a building. It's the people. You each shin...
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GOD'S FIERY, FAITHFUL, TRANSFORMING LOVE FOR US - by Russ Fochler

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  Jesus’ eyes of blazing fire in the book of Revelation reveal His passion for our healing, freedom, and transformation. The writer of Hebrews calls us to respond well to what God is doing for us: “ Do you see what we’ve got? An unshakable kingdom! And do you see how thankful we must be? Not only thankful, but brimming with worship, deeply reverent before God. For God is not an indifferent bystander. He’s actively cleaning house, torching all that needs to burn, and he won’t quit until it’s all cleansed. God himself is Fire!”  Hebrew 12:28-29 in The Message God’s fiery love for us His beloved ones won’t leave us wounded or stuck in sin and lies.   George MacDonald wrote this: “For love loves unto purity. Love has ever in view the absolute loveliness of that which it beholds.”   “Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind , must be destroyed.  And our God is a consuming fire.”   - Consuming Fire - Uns...
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OUR OPEN HEARTS WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED - by Brent Loker

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This past Saturday we had a very special guest speaker at Blazing Fire, my dear friend Dr. Joseph Nassralla who is from Egypt and has a ministry in Southern California, The Cross TV, where he shares the exceptionally Good News of Jesus via satellite to millions of Arabic speaking homes throughout the Middle East and other nations throughout the world. Two years ago, he translated into Arabic a dozen messages I shared in his TV studio about the Father’s love that continue to be replayed, transforming the hearts of some of our brothers and sisters around the world with God’s tenderhearted Joseph’s message was highly encouraging and inspiring as he shared about being brutally persecuted for his belief in Jesus which has given him a childlike zeal and also a depth of understanding about the purpose of pain in our growing journey with Jesus. I highly encourage you to listen to his message here (at 1 hr 21 min) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiy01nK0Oj0 Also, you can listen to more details ...
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AUTHENTIC FREEDOM - by Brent Lokker

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This past week, we celebrated 250 th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of hapiness.” Though our forefathers stole the land we call America from our First Nations brothers and sisters who originally inhabited and cared for this land, it seems our founding fathers did have an internal compass that drew them back into the direction of the Father’s heart—that all of his children have equal value to him. What a beautiful truth to have founded our part of America’s history upon. Unfortunately, many in our country believe their freedom is in doing whatever they want to do, much to the pain of others. That kind of ‘freedom’ actually imprisons us to the very thing we thought was our freedom. In contrast, Jesus lets us know that our freedom is actually in surren...
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MERCY AND JUSTICE - by Karena Lout

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Last Saturday, we continued our journey through the beatitudes, focusing on Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.” As we receive the generous mercy of Jesus in our lives, we then begin to see his justice unfold as well. Mercy and justice are so interconnected. Without mercy, justice can be harsh, cruel, revenge seeking. There’s no room for redemption. And without justice, mercy can sometimes be forced, done out of guilt or obligation, reduced to just a nice gesture. There’s often no real transformation. Jesus doesn’t just execute justice. He IS justice. He made all things right on the cross. His kingdom justice looks so different than what we could ask or imagine. In Mark 10, Bartimaeus cries out to Jesus, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” It seemed obvious that Bartimaeus was asking Jesus to heal him of his blindness. But Jesus asks him “what do you want me to do for you?” I believe that Jesus wants us to acknowledge our need and identify what it is we wa...
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OUR ADOPTION IS SWEETER THAN WE KNOW - by Brent Lokker

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This past Friday and Saturday, we had a two day conference with Lonnie Ellis and Tiffany James called, “Strength & Vulnerability: Courage to be Real.” In a casual style all three of us told real stories of the goodness of God meeting us in our messed up, vulnerable places. It would be an understatement to say we went deep and many  expressed to me profound moments of breakthrough in their awareness of Papa’s goodness and tender care. This is always going to be the fruit of choosing to be a family that embraces vulnerability and the courage to invite Jesus into hard or scary places. I strongly encourage you to watch Saturday’s service here:     Saturday’s Service One topic that came up was how we’ve been adopted by our heavenly Father. While I’ve discovered redemptive ways of describing ‘adoption’ through the years, it always still had that ring to it that we weren’t God’s until some point when we were. Yet that didn’t jive with what I know from Scripture, that we...
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