Blazing Fire's Encouraging Blog

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect; but I  press on that I may lay hold of that for whichChrist Jesus has also laid hold of me.” Philippians 3:12 So much about walking with God is about receiving. I think of life kind of like a big ship on the ocean. In order for the ship to move forward, the sails need to be open. Even if everything else on the boat looks perfect, clean, tidy, put together, prepared, if the sails aren’t open the ship won’t make it far. God has encouraged me not to put so much effort in making my life look put together, but instead to open my heart to Him. To come back to receiving His love, allowing Him to be the wind that carries me forward.  I can get sidetracked by my insufficient efforts, or I can open my heart to what He says and where He leads.  I challenge you to press on. To open your heart with vulnerability towards the Father, leaving your insufficiency behind and receive His Love to carry you forward. You were born to jour...

Last Saturday, we continued our journey through 2 nd  Corinthians, focusing on chapter 11:1-4. Paul was feeling burdened because the church was beginning to listen to false teachings and forgetting the simplicity of the gospel. This is something I can relate to. I was eighteen when I first heard about Jesus. I finally felt deeply loved and free for the first time in my life. But over time, I started to hear mixed messages and began to forget all that Jesus had freely given me, the joy of my salvation. I easily fell into religious thinking because I was looking for someone (or a system) to tell me what to do to feel okay. I grew up without a lot of boundaries or rules and felt I had too much freedom which led me to a very dark place. Of course, we need boundaries and an effective justice system but it’s when we feel we need to follow a set of rules to earn our way into Jesus’ acceptance that gets us off track.    “I am trying to help you and make things easier for you and ...

Negative thoughts running through our minds and tearing at the fabric of our joy is a universal problem. Jesus is the universal answer, if we will trust him to tell us what the truth is and agree with his assessment.   Theologian Richard Rohr states, “Jesus came to teach us the way of wisdom by bringing us a message that offers to liberate us from both the lies of the world and the lies lodged within ourselves.”   This is precisely what the Apostle Paul is getting at when he writes, “The weapons of the war we’re fighting are not of this world but are powered by God and effective at tearing down the strongholds   erected against His truth. We are demolishing arguments and ideas…We are taking prisoners of every thought,   every emotion, and subduing them into obedience to the Anointed One, Jesus.” 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 (VOICE)    If you would like to hear more about how every thought (healthy as well as negative) takes up space in your brain, making those...

We love because God first loved us. We forgive because God forgave us first. We extend mercy because of the mercy our Lord extended to us beforehand. We show compassion because of the compassion first granted to us by our tenderhearted Father. And we are hilarious givers because God first poured out in lavish abundance his extravagant goodness and every possible gift we could ever need. And why do we follow in God’s footsteps to do what he does? Because we are created in His image and share in his likeness. We are children of the King, partakers of the divine nature, and one with the Trinity because we’ve been ‘de-otherized’ through Christ’s death and resurrection to be in perfect union with our Creator. In short, our most authentic self is just like our Dad!   I remember as a young, excited follower of Jesus how I discovered the sheer joy of giving. I was part of our church college choir and each Monday evening when we gathered to rehearse, we would first share testimonies of God’...

Last weekend, we enjoyed another Snack & Testimony Night. After Brent led us through a gentle yet powerful time with soaking worship, we continued a great evening of snacks, fellowship & testimonies.  Sharing a testimony, whether with one person or a group, is really an exercise in remembering key moments in our lives (or for loved ones). A story helps us personally by freshening our recall of events that might fade over time. A story shared with others helps them to understand us better and to learn from our experiences.  In some Bible stories, people would stack or stand-up rocks to serve as a memorial to God’s goodness. For example, in Genesis 28 Jacob set up the rock he slept upon as a memorial to the powerful dream/vision God gave him. In Joshua 4, God instructed the Israelites to stack rocks from the Jordan River they had just crossed via His miracle. In the first example, Jacob erected a memorial based on God’s promises (even before any fulfillment). In the seco...

Worship is a gateway to encountering God’s presence and I believe that God wants to encounter us through worship corporately, in the mundane day to day tasks, and in the messiness of life.  God has reminded me of the beauty of bringing forth a “sacrifice of praise” when I am confronted with challenges in my life. A few weeks ago, I was feeling disappointed about a situation that I have been believing for breakthrough in but have not seen yet. I was struggling to believe that God is faithful, but I felt God pull me to the piano to worship Him and sing songs of thanksgiving. As I sang to Him, I heard God tell me that His faithfulness does not always look like the fulfilled promise or the breakthrough, but that His faithfulness often looks like Him holding my hand and choosing to stay committed to me through the pain and in the waiting. I cried and started truly believing that God is faithful as I continued to sing praises to Him. When we choose to worship Jesus in the middle of the s...

     I recently asked myself, what would it look like if I let grace continue its journey through me? We read in 2 Corinthians 8:1-15, the story of Paul writing to the Corinthian church to encourage them to follow through to give to the financial need of the brothers in the church at Jerusalem while also conveying of how passionately the church in Macedonia, who had completely nothing, gave without even thinking twice about it. I believe that this story is not talking only about money in the taking up of a collection amongst the churches, but far more about the heart in which the Macedonians gave out of having revelation of true grace.      When we think of generosity, we need to know that it is not a transaction, rather, it is a Trinitarian expression of grace. It begins in surrender to Jesus, flows from the will of the Father, and is completed through the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit. Before giving anything materially, the Macedonians gave their...