A shorter post

Okay...someone said my posts are too long...so today Im just going to share a couple short points that stood out to me during a recent message I was listening to.

We can sometimes lose focus on the big picture. In the past I would continually give to the church, I would continually give to others. But over time I began to think along the lines of "God...Im giving and giving and giving and giving...but Im not receiving, Im not getting anything back". But then I realised...how did I actually get what I had to give in the first place? Then you begin to see that you do receive, that God is continually blessing your life. How do you keep your position in your job? Through the love of God. Philippians 4:19 says:

And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

As long as we are faithful to God, God will be faithful to us. We must learn to continually be faithful in our sowing.

The other thing I wanted to encourage you with was the following line: maintain your integrity in times of hardship. It is so easy to compromise our beliefs when the going gets tough. You are facing a big problem and all you want to do is survive it, to find a solution and sometimes we are tempted to but our belief to one side and tackle the problem on our own. But we must learn that its imperative we never put God in a box, we never take the approach we can do things without him. I will draw on Philippians again, this time 4:13 where it says:

I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

The key word here is "everything", not some things...everything! For we must recognise that we can not do anything without the power of God with us. So when we are looking at a troubling time, dont worry...for you have God. A perfect example was Jesus when He went into the desert to fast for 40 days and during this time the Devil came to Him and tried to tempt Him, but he was not tempted!! He did  not compromise His integrity!!

One final verse I want to mention, something that Jesus says and it again highlights the fact that we can do nothing with out Jesus:

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)