NextGenKent

I am continuing to chew on something one of my ABF (Adult Bible Fellowship): What if in our praying for revival it has actually brought us to a sphere of where reconciliation must be exercised? I see this is a wonderful discovery and in my heart I hear, DO NOT MISS THE TWO! They are part of each other. friends said about revival and reconciliation, which has brought me to ask:  Revival and Reconciliation.  Let me dig into this more with something simple: a triangle. There are three points to every triangle, but if you have it flat side down, two points go up to ONE point to meet.  There has to be ONE point we all see for revival to happen as we pray for it; ONE point that draws us all together and I believe that ONE point is GOD as revealed through JESUS CHRIST and attested to by His Word given to us in the Bible. As we all come from whatever point we are currently standing (two points of a triangle) we need a ONE point to bring us together. Jesus said, "If I be lifted up...

My devotional today from Ravi Zacharias stated, “The blindness to the sacred is the cause of all evil.” I see that as blindness to Christ of course. After all, he is the light of all.   Spiritual blindness is the refusal to see the glory of God our Creator for what it is—in its truth and love. The pride of humanity doesn’t want to be shown what it doesn’t know and that it doesn’t know. After all our forefathers and mothers  have tasted the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of good AND evil. What is there not to know? That is where our blindness lies.  But Jesus didn’t leave us in darkness or in our blindness. “ His cure was to help them see what they were really blind to, yet refused to see.” John wrote that men loved darkness rather than light. Jesus said that we are the light of the world and that a city set on a hill cannot be hidden not can a little lighted candle is it is lifted up in the room. Light is hope. Light in the darkness. That is what the e...

I am going off script today and basically ... just rambling. BUT I think there is a pattern of thought: Contemplation #1: Lately I have been pondering the facts of life and how the power of self deception is subtle yet so powerfully enslaving. I watch AFV from time to time and on one episode, a woman had a VR headset on, pointed screamed, ducked and fell down. Whatever she saw in the video headset caused her reality to shift and she no longer saw the video for what it was, but mistook it as reality and responded. How does this happen? Such depth of contemplation is beyond me to arrive at an answer I shouldn't wonder. Contemplation #2: There is of course, misperceptions: how I see myself, I how think you see me, and how you think you see me. Then there is of course, how God truly sees us. Misunderstandings happen, for sure, but the thinking that you have portrayed yourself one way and it was taken another can be downright befuddling to the mind and impaling to the heart. There ...

The knowledge of God is a vital part of the well-being of your life--spiritually and otherwise God desires for you to know Him, but even more, God desires to reveal Himself to you. The knowledge of God is hidden--you cannot just expect to gain it. You need to especially understand that many will say they have it when in fact they do not. However, those who truly know God have very specific things in common. The Word of God reveals to us the knowledge of God , but it isn’t the only place our knowledge of Him comes from. However, every other place we obtain our knowledge of God will never contradict the knowledge available to us in the written Word of God. When I speak of the knowledge of God, I attach the knowledge of Jesus Christ of Nazareth and the knowledge of the Spirit of God--the holy Trinity, three in One, King of the Universe, and of my heart. Proverbs 2:5 tells us that your deepest respect for God , or the fear of the Lord, will accompany the knowledge o...

My daughter worked on her graduation display after I went to bed at 10:30pm. At 12:15am, she spoke into my bedroom, "Dad, I need your help with something. I spilled some paint on the carpet." My grogginess soon dissipated when I walked into the living room and saw an eight-inch circle of deep black. She had reached for something and turned over a pint full of tempera paint and had already attempted cleaning it up. "This happened in your bedroom once before ... and why we told you to have plenty of newspaper down..." No speech would help her (or the carpet) at this point, so I stopped, turned and headed for the Oxi-clean.  It was my problem now.  I could stop there because that is the crux of the theological moment for a life lesson that happened that night. At least the summary of what God spoke to my heart as I headed back up the stairs to go to bed.  We are going into the Pentecost season starting Sunday, and I am filling in the pulpit at a ch...

I have been in a place for the past week or so that feels like there is a plot against me. I cannot explain ALL, just that I feel a "dark cloud" over me, my spirit is agitated, I cannot connect with God, my wife, my kids, my friends--anyone. All of my words seem dampened and my mind and my heart seem to be too. In my spiritual journey, I have become more aware of times like these and others that effect me negatively, and have learned to pause, reflect and pray--even fast if goaded to do so. I continue to hold on to Jesus and seek to connect and somehow break through this crustiness that stands in my way.  There is no sense in believing it will all pass away soon enough--it always does, but I have never been better for it if I just trust such a time/season to "fate" and believe that "whatever will be will be." I am a co-creator with God, created in His image and bear the markings of Jesus on my spirit--the Holy Spirit testifies that I am His and He is...