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Psalm 77 is the heart cry of a person who is waiting for bad stuff to stop and good stuff to start. He has found himself in a season of deep trouble, days when God seems absent at best, times when he cries out to God but finds no comfort for his soul. But even in this deep trouble, he finds a way to practice gratitude. 

How about you, have you find a way, even in deep trouble, to still be grateful? That's the focus of this gratitude pause.

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As we enter the holiday season, I just want to focus for a moment on the word, bless. Psalm 67 uses that word alot. "May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us." "God our God blesses us. May God bless us still." 
I'm sure that they aren't the only ones who use the phrase, but a family that used to attend Calvary, the Norwood's are the first ones who I heard use it, --BBB--  "Blessed Beyond Belief." It's not a bad phrase to carry around in our hearts as we make our way through the Christmas season, as we shop and sing and bake and eat...and eat...and eat...

It's a good thing to be reminded that in so many ways that don't require a credit card or a receipt, we have been blessed beyond belief.  In this episode and the next I just want to give us a pause for gratitude!

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"Seek first the Kingdom of God." That's our final challenge for this series. We don't use the word Kingdom very much today, but in Jesus' day they used it all the time.  They understood a little bit better than we do, what a Kingdom was all about.  See in a biblical sense, everyone has a kingdom.  Your kingdom is whatever you  control. Your Kingdom is that part of your life where what you say goes. Dallas Willard calls it "the range of your effective will." Throughout life we have this inclination to protect and maybe even expand our kingdoms.  

So what are your little kingdoms?  You might have more than one.  Some people are bold and obvious about kingdom-building; some people are sneaky and subtle about it. But we all have a little kingdom or two that we are trying to build. The question is am I living for my little kingdom, or am I living for His Big Kingdom?

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In this episode we going to focus on a promise and a challenge from Jesus. The promise is "Where your treasures lead, your heart will follow." The challenge is "so put your treasures in heaven, because your heart is made for heaven." Where your treasures lead your heart will follow. So where are you storing your treasures? Where is your heart? In the grand scheme of collecting stuff and counting stuff and saving stuff and spending stuff, whatever you do, don't lose your heart!

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Sometimes we make prayer so complicated! And yes, there are depths to prayer that I may never fully explore or understand, because there are depths to God that will ever be mysterious to me. But at the same time, there is meant to be a simplicity and an ease to prayer that is the ease of a son or daughter coming to their Father, their Papa God.  Stop trying to earn it.  You can't anyway, but we don't come into His presence because we earn it.  We come in because He loves us. We come in because it's home.

Call out to him today. It may be that your prayer is nothing more than, "Daddy come here! But listen for His voice deep in your heart, He wants to be with you. Just let Father God love you.

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I believe that the most important part of Jesus teaching on prayer in Matthew 6:5-15 is the Father part. When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray he
said, "Ok, when you pray...say Father."  Much of the Lord's prayer was not all that different from the standard Jewish liturgical prayers of the day; one big difference, "When you pray, call Him Father." When Jesus lived, what he had to say about God blew away the routine categories of God-pictures.  The father-truth shaped  everything Jesus said and did. It certainly shaped his prayer life. But then this this amazing thing happens, Jesus passes it on to us. "Not only my Father, your Father.  God is your Father." 

So here’s my question, What if I learned to pray like his kid? 

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I think our greatest problem is a Sin-Soaked Heart. It keeps us from thriving, leads to addiction, ravages marriages and breaks families, it hardens hearts & creates anxiety filled minds, it drains joy and reaps discouragement..it causes us to hate or even worse ignore our neighbors. We sacrifice our kids on the altar of success and we care about so much that matters so little.  Yet in the midst of my sin, my greatest hope is that we are relentlessly pursued by a lavishly gracious, greatly merciful, fiercely loyal, patiently loving God. And every time our hearts get soaked in sin, it’s time to run like little kids to our Father's arms.

What is an oopster, listen in and you'll find out. But realize up front, it's far better to be His kid, than an oopster! 

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How many of us have a problem? I wonder if you could make a case that we are defined, at least in part, by the problems we embrace. What's your problem? Sometimes we call it a holy discontent; an external problem so deep in your heart that it's hard to go to sleep without pondering it's solution. Maybe it's not just your problem, it's broader and you want to see it solved for others. What's your  problem? Perhaps it's lonliness, or depression or orphans or world hunger or racism, or fill-in the blank. Can I tell what I think Jesus would say? And if Jesus would say it, than it might be a problem that goes even deeper, all the way to the core of our humanity; a meta-problem. I think Jesus would say, "Your problem is you have a broken heart." 

And you know what, our broken heart is Jesus holy discontent. He came to give us a new heart!

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I know sometimes "the church" is a mess & right now it's nowhere near the center of attention in central PA (or wherever you live). But "the church" is where eternity is aimed. If you hate the church, heaven's going to be a bit awkward. The sermon on the mount is the blueprint for the life of the church because it's all about becoming like Jesus.

Could that be our greatest problem today? Can I tell you why we aren't the center
of attention in central PA? Why our neighbors aren't running to Jesus? Why each succeeding generation has been more skeptical of and less connected to church? Isn't it because, at least sometimes, we don't look a whole lot like Jesus? If that's the case, we don't need to restructure, reform or renew, we just need to reJesus!

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When my daughter Katy was about 3, for a season of time, one of her favorite prayers was, "And God please help me fly."  She had watched the movie Dumbo. I  was just glad she wasn't asking God for big ears! But that's my prayer at the end of this episode. God please help us to fly. Give us a love that soars. This is the dream on the heart of Christ for his church. That our love would soar. That we would be known for the size of our hearts.

Listen, we can do this. I believe that the church is standing at a defining moment in the Kingdom of God. Our culture has perfected turning neighbors into enemies. But in the midst of the division, in the midst of the enemy-making, you can love in a way that amazes people. You can even love your enemies. God please help us fly!