Search Our Blog Posts
Blog Article Tags
We love building relationships. Subscribe to our blog to receive weekly encouragement in your email inbox.
- Details
Genesis means beginning. The book of Genesis narrates the creation and the beginning of the world, but it also communicates about fresh beginnings for each of the characters in the patriarch story. God wiped their slate clean each time they messed up and continued to choose them as His people.
Genesis should be subtitled, "God specializes in using screw-ups." It is the book of the Bible that has most taught me about grace and transformed my thinking about how God works.
I am a typical oldest child, type-A personality, believer in cause and effect - you work hard and you are rewarded for your work. However, God doesn't always work that way.
Abraham lied twice about his wife being his sister, yet he was the father of many nations whose faith was counted as righteousness.
Isaac showed favoritism with his sons and also lied about his wife being his sister - a bad family pattern. But God did not turn His favor from the family.
Jacob lied to his dad, schemed with his mom, stole his brother Esau's blessing, and continued the bad pattern of favoritism. Even still, God chose him to be named Israel and blessed him with twelve sons that became the twelve tribes of God's people.
If I were God, I would've cut that family off long ago. They didn't deserve to be chosen or to be the names by which God is often referred, "The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
But I was forgetting one major thing. It's not about what we do. Whew! It's about what God does and who He is. By doing things the way He does, extending grace and blessing to undeserving people, He gets all the glory!
So, don't beat yourself up if you're falling into a bad family pattern. God can help break destructive cycles. Feeling unworthy of God's mercy? You're in good company.
Let's have a genesis moment for Makeover Monday - a new beginning offered in God's grace and extended to those whom God has chosen to bless, namely you!
- Details
The church is a community that extends beyond borders, languages, cultures, and time. I have had the blessing of getting to know members of the community of believers across the U.S. and from many countries across the world. Whether African or Chinese, Hispanic or Indian, Kazak or Russian, Canadian or Southern, the community in Christ is one.
One thing we all have in common is the desire for relationship - for a deeper sense of community. We long for community with our Creator and with His creation - other people with whom we can relate and share our lives.
Grandmas and college students alike want to know what it truly means to be in relationship with God and one another - what it means to be community, family, and the church to each other.
For Food & Family on Fridays, I encourage you to to find a community, members of a church family with whom you can be authentic, encouraged and accountable.
It is my prayer and one of the goals of Iron Rose Sister Ministries, that we might be that community to each other - a church family that spans at least two languages and two continents. I pray that we may be iron sharpening iron to one another and that we might encourage and inspire each other to be as beautiful as a rose in spite of a few thorns - all in the context of community.