Element Christian Church of Santa Maria

If you're going to meet God:

You have to meet Him alone.

You have to meet Him for Blessing.

You have to meet Him at the point of weakness.

Learn to connect the gift—which you already love—with the Giver, whom you want

to love more. You start with what you already like and work your way back to its

source, to God. You taste and see that the Lord is good.

Most people already know more than they need to know...it is simply LIVING what we claim we know that needs to be done. We don’t become doers on our own, as we read the Scripture, we ask the Spirit to help us understand what to do in response. The intersection of what the Scriptures teach and how our lives unfold will give us a never-ceasing stream to actually do what Jesus says.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

In one sense, you know yourself better than anyone in the world. You alone have access to your inner thoughts, feelings, and judgments. In another way, you know yourself worse than anyone else can know you. Because we hate being honest with ourselves about ourselves...we all rationalize, justify, minimize, forget, and embellish—and we do not even know when we are doing it.

We are so consumed with giving in this time of year, we forget to give God what we should be giving Him. Our love, our life, we are to live for Him in everything we do. We are great at quickly accepting the good things that He gives us, but we are slower to give back. We forget to give Him what He deserves: our love, for He first loved us.

One of the things the Holy Spirit does is encourage believers in their work. In reading the scriptures you realize God is still active, even today, and He is working. Work brings pleasure to the image of God in us.

People are hard to get along with because we are all evil. Sin is in us and comes out through our words and actions. Sin separated people from each other and God...sin leads to only death. The simple fact is that we all sin.

God is never anxious, worried or afraid. His presence in the midst of our lives should be a calming influence because He knows all that we will face. So today’s question section will be a little different.

This Halloween: Engage the culture you live in:

1. Don’t turn out the lights and ignore it. Halloween won’t go away. So if you don’t support this holiday, determine to turn a negative into a positive.

2. If you’re staying home: buy some candy, answer the door and when you put candy in the children’s bags be kind and say hi to their parents.

3. If you have children, don’t take fun away from them, go “Trick-or-Treating” with them. How often can you go door to door on a day when almost everyone will answer the door with a pleasant attitude?

4. PRAY! Pray for the safety of the children who will be out on that night, but more importantly pray that the Gospel will go out that night as well—and that through God’s word some lost soul might come to know Jesus.

People are okay telling a doctor that their bodies have a problem or telling a mechanic that their car has a problem. Why is it so difficult for people who sin to tell other people who commit sins that they have a sin problem?