This is the first video podcast and I share about the difference in our relationship with God vs fellowship with God and who is responsible for each.  We sometimes get them a bit mixed up and our relationship with Jesus can be so much better when we stay in our lane and take our responsibility seriously and let God be God.

This is Thanksgiving week and this week always brings to mind how grateful I am for all the many blessings God has given me.  The biggest blessing of all is the relationship I am able to have with my Heavenly Father.  When I realize that watching my dad and his love for Jesus has influenced me in my relationship with Jesus makes me realize I have the two best Fathers I could possibly have.  I pray you had a wonderful earthly father, but I know you have the best Father in God.

How we see things impacts our ideas, thoughts and our attitude, which in turn impacts those around us.  Learn to choose joy.  Joy in the Lord, joy in the many gifts He gives us.  Choose joy over what the world has to offer, mere happiness that is fleeting and superficial.

We all wear masks.  We have to act in a way we don't feel like acting at times.  But don't forget that God can see right through our mask to our heart.  He knows what we are doing, what we are thinking and what are motives are.  The elder son in the Prodigal Son Parable wore a mask.  It is easy to think he is the "good guy" in the story until you look deeper and realize his motives for his behavior.  Don't be like the elder son and do the right things for the wrong reasons.

The flight attendants always tell us to secure our mask before we assist our children, loved ones or anyone needing assistance near us.  If we don't do this, we might cause our loved ones to not get the assistance they need because we are in the way or someone is caring for us rather than our loved ones.  This works into our spiritual lives as well.  We need to spend time with Jesus and make sure our spiritual mask is secure before we start trying to help someone else.  In Matthew 7 Jesus shares about the log in our eye that keeps us from seeing clearly to help our brother remove the speck that is in his eye.  When we focus on others without involving God, many times we miss the greatest blessings of all.  We need to keep our eyes on Jesus and He will keep us seeing clearly so we can help others.