Measure of Leadership

There is a difference between success and leadership. A person can work hard to succeed and still not lead. A person may have dedication to a task/problem and still lack leadership. King David had a lot of military successes but it wasn't until the people come to recognize his leadership that he was able to influence others. As a parent it is important if my children listen and obey when I say something. But it is more important that those lessons they have learned are carried over into their life when I am not there. A lot of pastors have been successful in building churches and growing budgets. But the true mark of leadership is what happens when he/she leaves. The same is true in business. If we strive to be a great leader success will follow. If we strive for success there is no guarantees that leadership will occur.

Worry

How many of us can name one thing in our life at this moment that is causing us to worry? When it comes to worry there are three types of people in the world. First, those who worry about everything. They wake up worrying what the weather is going to be like, how will deal with the changes all around them, will the world be disappointed that they are still alive. These are the people that take everything so personal. On other extreme is those who are so carefree that nothing gets to them. They never seem to sweat. Life is just happy go lucky. They may be carefree but they are also void of anything productive. Then there is the rest of us in the middle. We know that worry is not beneficial. But telling us not to worry is like telling a new-born baby not to cry – we are still going to worry.
In recent months our anxiety level has risen as our pension keeps dropping. The media and our politicians have convinced us we are going to run out of money before we run out of life. At the rate we are headed, we won’t have a retirement. So those of us who knew that retirement was connected to a larger market but was just sort of oblivious to how it all worked are now paying more attention to the reports. We ride the stock market roller coaster, we read our portfolio’s more carefully, and we watch Bloomberg. When I was going to the gym there was a guy who would get on the treadmill beside me, change the channel to Bloomberg, and turn up the volume. It would drown out my headphones. Now I don’t if you have ever tried to run at a fast pace to a stock market report but it just was not working for me. On top of all that he would try to start a conversation. Now I’m running and trying to pay attention so that I don’t go flying off the back of this machine and he is trying to talk to me about the economic situation in America. I went to the gym to relieve stress, not to get more stressed out.
Have you noticed that all our news is consumed by the economy. Fox News and CNN now have a special hour designated to just the falling economy. Our local news channels designate a portion of their hour to updating us on the day’s job losses as a result of the failed economy. It’s like nothing else is going on in the world but the messed up economy of the United States of America. The bottom line is that we are convinced that our money is going to run out before we have a chance to live our lives. The lesson all this has taught us is that the thing we are most devoted to is the things we will worry about.
Jesus starts out his discussion on worry talking about money. He says in verse 24, “No one can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. The Greek word for “wealth” is “mammon.” It speaks more of our possessions or the physical attachments of our life. The things that money buys. Jesus says we can’t love both: God and our stuff. We are going to love one or the other. This just may be the tension that causes worry. We know that we should not love our stuff but we like our stuff. We like our lifestyle. We know God is important. We know that God should be first but we like our stuff and in order to keep our stuff we must stay at a certain level on the economic scale. And yet we want to seem committed to God. So we live in this tension between trusting God and trusting in our stuff. Jesus says can’t do it. One will win out. Either you will love God or love your stuff or the money that buys you the stuff. Many of us have put on the face of loving God when in reality we are more in love with our stuff.
Jesus then goes into telling us not to worry. He tells us not to worry about what we will eat, what we will drink, or what we will wear. These are the worry points of Jesus’ audience. Most of us sitting here doesn’t worry about what we will eat, what we will drink, or even what we will wear. We pretty much have that covered. If Jesus was teaching us this today he would use something different. He might say, “Don’t work about your retirement, don’t worry about sending your kids to school, don’t worry about your job, don’t worry about your health, don’t worry.”
Then look what he says, “Look at the birds of the air . . . . consider the lilies of the field.” Now when I first read this I was like what are you talking about Jesus? I was like how insensitive. I might be losing my job but I need to look at the birds of the air. I might not be able to send my kids to college and you want me to consider the lilies of the field. I might have to work until I am like one hundred and you want me to look at the birds of the air. I was reading this like I know your right, life is more than what I eat, drink, or wear but if I am going to live I need to eat, drink, and for the sake of not embarrassing my kids I got to wear something. Then I got it. Jesus wants me to call up Jimmy Buffet or some other beach bum and live out the rest of my days on a deserted island while my house gets repossessed, my kids run around naked, and my wife sips on coconuts – NO!
Jesus isn’t saying what we eat, drink, or wear or in our case our jobs, kids college fund, or retirement is not important. He is just saying that life is more than these things. Life is more than my job, or whether my kids get into the best college, or my 401k. When Jesus tells us to “consider” he is saying to look upon, examine, take the time to observe, give careful attention. Look at the birds they don’t sow nor reap nor gather and yet God loves them. Look at the lilies of the field. They grow wild and bloom wherever they are planted and God loves them. We plant, we labor, we sow, we reap, we gather all of which are important and God loves us. Matter of fact Jesus says God loves us more than the birds. God loves us more than God loves the birds in the sky. Say it with me: God loves me more than he loves the birds in the sky. If he takes care of the birds and the wildflowers how much more will he take care of us who are created in his image.
What Jesus wants to do in this passage is to pull us away from our hyper-focus attention on the things that worry us and give us a bigger picture of life. The thing you are most devoted to are the things you will worry about the most. It is the things that you worry about that gets all your attention. What drives your worry? What are you devoted to? What if you shifted your devotion? What would happen to your worry? What if you could start each day with the thought: God loves me more than he loves the birds in the sky. The key to less worry is stepping back from the things that worry us and take a look at it in the larger scheme of life. Life is not just those things that worry us. Matter of fact, we may discover that in the whole scheme of life what we are worrying about will not compare to the fact that God loves us more than he loves the birds of the air. We may discover that worrying does not add a single hour to our life. Instead worrying may actually be taking away hours from our life span.
We need to get a larger picture of life. Worry narrows our focus and limits our possibilities. Step back. Look at life from God’s perspective. Place the thing that worries you in that picture and compare it to the bigger picture. It’s not that it isn’t important its just that it may not be as important as what you think it is when you get a different look at it. God loves me that’s important. At the end of the day when I lay my head down that’s what matters. To start the day knowing that God loves me is better than anything else.
Imagine how much more relaxed your world would be. Imagine how free you would feel to be the person you could be if you were not weighed down by worry. Consider how larger your life can be without the limited view of worry.

Cart Before the Horse

I reread the story of David being crowned king by Israel in 2 Samuel 5. It was not until after some military defeats and then the building of his house that it is said, "David then percieved that the Lord had established him king over Israel, and that he had exalted his kingdom for the sake of his people Israel." What was it about the building of this house that brought forth this realization for David?
I think it is like moving to Braselton and building a house only to discover that the job is in Macon. It was only after gaining the position of leadership through victory that David was ready to settle in and rule as king. How many times do we get the cart before the horse? We make all these plans without proving that we can do the job or perform the task. Let's not get to comfortable before we know we are the right match for the position.

Skin Horse

This is an excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit by Margarey Williams:

"The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs on his tail had been pulled out to make string bead necklaces. He was wise for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

'What is real?' asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. 'Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?'

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you, then you become Real.'

Real is not just living but living life being loved and loving.

Guilt

He Loves Me. He Loves Me Not.
Guilt
Psalm 32

Last summer I was doing some work in the front yard and the boys were playing around the house. Jaden, who was five at the time, came over and said that it stinks in the back yard. I told him to play somewhere else then. So he played for a while on the drive way and then after a few minutes he came up and said that it stinks on the driveway. I said well just play right here around where I am working and you will be fine. After a few minutes I noticed an unpleasant aroma and I asked Jaden to show me the bottom of his shoe. Jaden had stepped into something that a dog had left in the yard. The lesson we learned that day is that if you notice a really bad smell around you, you need to first determine if it is you.
Sin stinks. Sin is like that horrible smell that you cannot get rid of. The thing about sin that sticks is the guilt that we carry around with us. Unconfessed sin is like the dog poo on the bottom of the shoe. We can change our circumstances and it follows us. We can change our environment and it follows us. We can hang around different people and it follows us. We can make promises and vows to people and say we will never do it again and it continues to follow us.
The other similarity between guilt and dog poo on the bottom of the shoe is that we become identified by it. It takes over our whole personality. The stink of guilt affects our relationships. It robs us of our sense of worth. It takes away our possibility for a future.
There are some people with dog poo on the bottom of their shoe who refuse to acknowledge it. They tell themselves it’s always somebody else’s fault. Never doing anything wrong themselves. They are quick to point out the faults of others. They try to cover up their guilt by attempting to ignore it.
Guilt is the dog poo on the bottom of the shoe. Unless we get rid of it we will be the stink of our own existence and that of everyone else’s. Think of one unconfessed sin in your life right now. Consider that one thing in your life that is stinking up your relationships, your sense of self worth, or limiting the possibility of your future. If you could get rid of that poo on the bottom of the shoe today would you do it? If you could leave here smelling fresh would you do whatever it took?
I would like to invite you to stand with me and read Psalm 32. You can find it in your hymnal on page 766. We will read verses one through five. I will ask you to read the bold print. David says in essence in this psalm that happy people are forgiven people. Happy people are those that have confessed their sins before God and know that they are forgiven. He also teaches us that if we try to conceal our sin from God it will be useless and it affects our wholeness. Unconfessed sin is like the poo on the bottom of the shoe. It affects every aspect of our life: physical, emotional, relational, spiritual. It destroys. David should know this. He is speaking from experience.
Early in his life as he gained power and influence he was one day walking on the roof top of his palace admiring all of his accomplishments. As he walked he noticed a beautiful woman taking a bath. He called for his servants to bring her to him. They had sex. She got pregnant. She also happened to be the wife of one of his top military generals. He tried to cover up the sin and when that didn’t work he had her husband killed. He went without confessing the sin for a while and this created a stink on the bottom of his shoe until the prophet Nathan came and told a story about a wealthy man stealing a sheep of a poor man. The story pierced David’s heart. Later he would pray: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me” (Psalm 51: 1 – 3). Happy people are not perfect people but people who know they are forgiven. If we want to be happy, guilt-free happy, we must be honest before God and confess.
You have a choice: you don’t have to walk around unforgiven if you don’t want to. The stink of guilt can be removed by confessing sin and claiming God’s forgiveness. The cross is the symbol of our own forgiveness in Jesus Christ. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we capture the depth of God’s love for us. It is not a love that condemns but a love that extends forgiveness but it is up to us to claim that forgiveness, to be freed from our own burden of guilt and to discover the joy of being a forgiven and reconciled people. What is it that is still eating away at your soul? What is still causing your life to stink? Go ahead and name that unforgiven sin. Confess it. And be forgiven by God.
A story is told of a little farm boy called Willie, who lived in the early part of the last century. He was the youngest of a poor sharecropping family, who had no more money than what was absolutely needed for survival. One year finally they had a few dollars left over and sent off to Sears Roebuck for their first “luxury” item: a mirror. When it came, the family passed it around so everybody could see himself for the first time. When it was Willie’s turn, he was shocked. His face was full of scars. No one had ever told him that he had been kicked by a horse when he was an infant. With tears in his eyes, Willie turned to his mother and asked her, “Mom, did you know I looked this way all the time?” “Yes, of course I did.” “And you still loved me?” “Yes, Willie, I still loved you and I do love you. I love you because you’re mine.”
Jesus teaches us that God does not accuse us nor does God shame us. He loves us. He loves us, whatever guilt we are feeling; whatever scars remain from the horrible events of the past. Jesus loves us anyway, because we are his. God’s love is not based on how few scars we have from past failures or how bad we stink from the mess we have made of our lives. Confess your sin. Know that you are forgiven. Leave behind your guilt. Live blessed. Happy people are not perfect people but people who know they are forgiven.

Faith and Doubt

In the bible there is a story about a man who has a son that is controlled by an evil spirit. The evil spirit takes control of the boys will and forces him into dangerous situations. The father brings the boy to the disciples and the disciples were ineffective at delivering the boy from the evil controlling spirit. So the boy is presented to Jesus. The boy’s father pleads with Jesus to have mercy and heal his son. Jesus says, “All things can be done for the one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Like the father, I live somewhere between faith and doubt.
I have my doubts. I know this is not something you want to hear from your spiritual leader. If anyone is suppose to have an unwavering confidence in God and God’s world it is the minister. But I have my doubts. When I was asked to preach the funeral of a two year old child, I had a few sleepless nights struggling with doubt. When I hear on the news how a wonderful ministry as providing food for the poor can be destroyed by the stealing of thousands of dollars by its own ministers, I have doubts. When I sit on the porch of the church trying to help a teenage girl make sense of why her mother and father would be taken from her within just months a part, I have doubts. When the ministry that you have sacrificed and poured your life into is kept from moving forward because of personal differences between two people, I have my doubts. There are times that I doubt.
I also have faith. When I go to another country and give a bible to a mother that has never owned one and watch her face light up and tears roll down her face, I have faith. When I see a vision become reality, I can have faith. When someone I have been praying for commits their life to Christ, I have faith. When another person I have been praying for finally returns back to the faith after years of staying away, I have faith. When I have those moments where I catch a glimpse of the vastness of God’s love for me, I have faith.
Most of us grew up believing that faith and doubt cannot possibly happen together. We were taught that if I had doubt then I was lacking in faith. Many hold to the idea that if I allow any room for doubt then it shows that I lack faith. We place doubt opposite of faith and believe that they cannot go together. And yet, when something occurs in our life where we have not been called on before to have faith and we begin to have doubts we feel paralyzed, inadequate, and less spiritual. We have been taught to believe that faith is like certain knowledge. We must either believe it to be true or spend eternity in the flaming fires of hell. Instead faith is an invitation to adventure. In the journey of faith there is times we find ourselves in situations and circumstances where our faith has never been and we may have doubt but depending on where our confidence is faith always has the opportunity to catch up.
Faith is the courage to live in a world of doubt and believing that God loves me so passionately that God will stop at nothing until my world and the whole world are gathered together in that love. Faith is the courage to live beyond the uncertainty of the evening news. Faith is the confidence to live with hope surrounded by reasons to doubt.
I believe it is okay for faith and doubt to be a part of anyone’s journey. The challenge comes when our life journey is pushed to the edge. Having our faith challenged is necessary for growth. Weeds of doubt grow in a stagnant faith. But I also know that the danger is that when faith is pushed to the edge that some people will walk away from the faith while others will grow deeper as a result of the experience. What makes the difference? I believe it is where our hope lies. Hope is seeing ourselves and our world as God sees it.
In the book of Revelation there is a description of a letter from God to the Church at Pergamum that says, “To everyone who conquers . . . I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.” God has a name for each of us, which has already been given to us. This name will be like the name “Peter” which Jesus gave to Simon. The name means “Rock,” and Jesus said, “On this rock I will build my church.” Peter was not yet a rock. He would still deny Jesus three times and run away in fear and guilt. But Jesus saw him already as he would become, and the name expressed this. Hebrew names express what a thing is, and are not arbitrary like most English names. Each one of us has our own essential name on a white stone, and we have the hope that we will be able to become what is named by that name. What is our ground for this hope? It is the faith that God already knows that name and calls us by it. Faith is the title deed to what we hope for or as the Bible says, “the substance of things hoped for.” God knows us already as we are in Christ.
God is bigger than our questions and so doubts are okay. But we are not to be weighed down by our doubts because God does not define us by our doubts and neither should we. We are not to be a prisoner of the past. What we hope for will influence, condition, and make us into the person that we want to be. What are your dreams? What are your visions? I want to challenge you to spend time with the Lord and ask him to reveal to you how he really sees you, ask him to reveal to you the new name he has given you.

Serve and Dance

One day I am going to take my wife dancing . She wants to learn how to do "ball room" dancing. The only problem is I can't dance. Really, I have no rhythm. The beat of the music gets lost somewhere between my brain and my legs. So either I am one (or two) steps behind or in an attempt to not be caught off guard I jump to soon. I really want to do this for her because it is something she wants and as a "good" husband I want to serve my wife. I am not always good at that either. I don't always lift her up. God has called me (and every person in a relations) to strive to make the other person the person that God desires for him/her. The only problem is that I can get needy and put myself first. I notice when I do get focused on myself that my life gets out of rhythm.
So two things I need to learn: dance and serve. What if at the end of our lives the person speaking over us said, "He served and he danced." Not a bad way to live or die.

God's Strength

When you consider God's strength, is it mighty enough? That is like asking if you are being robbed in a dark alley who would you want to show up Barney Fife or Walker Texas Ranger?

Who shall I fear? We can trust because God is mighty?

Fear

In the struggle for the release of fear I have learned an important truth. “You cannot love what you fear.” This principle applies to all of life. For you it could be the person that betrayed your love. It could be your children. It could be your spouse. It could be your job. Fear keeps you from truly loving. We cannot love what we fear.
Most of us go through life plucking petals from daisies. With every situation we ask ourselves does God love me or have I done something to disapprove of his love. We don’t do it intentionally because we have been taught that God’s love is infinite and never changing but yet we cannot help to react this way because we find this is how life works. We have discovered what pleases people and we either do it so we can be loved or we do not do it so we can get the attention we may be lacking. We grew up knowing what pleased our parents and if we wanted to go to a friends house on the weekend we did what pleased our parents. We know what pleases the boss and to get a pay check we do it. We get a reaction from our parents as a child that we didn’t expect and we say, “Do they love me?” We get a reaction from our spouse and we ask the same thing. We go through life playing this game: He loves me. He loves me not. We are left with a life filled with fear, doubt, anger, guilt, and worry.
Over the next few weeks we will explore how to live life beyond a daisy petal existence. My goal for this series is that all of us will understand that God’s love is constant no matter if our reality changes. I want you to know that you can live your life from the center of God’s love and not have to be questioning whether he loves me or he loves me not. Life does not have to be full of fear, doubt, anger, guilt, or worry.
We start with fear. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve have sinned by disobeying God’s command. When God seeks them out for their daily walk we find them hiding. The bible gives the reason for their hiding – they are afraid. And we have been afraid ever since. Afraid of God and of life. (Show video)
Every one of us can name our fears. We know what scares us. I am afraid of disappointing people, of letting others down. Some of us are afraid of getting sick. Some of us are haunted by being alone. Some of us have nightmares of finding out the truth so we live a lie. We are afraid of death. We are afraid of living. From a religious perspective we are afraid of displeasing God. We are afraid of failure. We are afraid of being made a fool. We are afraid of losing all we have worked so hard to get. We are afraid we have not done enough. Afraid of being found out that I am not who I really say I am.
One time I went to a church to preach. I had never been there so no one knew me. I walked around talking to the folks introducing myself only by my first name. I sat down beside this one woman. Introduced myself and we talked. She poured out her life story. She talked about how sorry her husband was, how rebellious her children were, and how boring she found her job. Later in the evening, the minister introduced me and the woman felt embarrassed that she had just told her miserable existence to the preacher. Here she was a leader in the church thinking she is telling this to some visitor and it turns out to be the guest preacher. When you are the “guest preacher” or “preacher” in general it changes the dynamics. Because this person represents God we cannot be real. We must put on a front, be something that we are really not, we must act as though I have it together and that nothing in life scares me. When we do this and we all do, it reveals more about our understanding of God than most of us realize. We believe that God cannot handle the real me. We are afraid of what God may think. The underlining truth about fear is that fear is the belief that God is unable or unwilling. When we fear something or someone we are stating that God is unable to handle the situation or the person. We cannot love what we fear. As long as fear remains in our lives we will never love life or others the way God intended.
In Psalm 27 we learn that David attacked his fears by focusing on God. Let’s look at Psalm 27 again. David says, “The Lord is my _____________” What? He doesn’t say God will give me a light but that God will be his light. He goes on to say, “my light and my ____________”What? He says the Lord is his redeemer, the one who saves. The next part of verse one David says, “The Lord is my _____________” What? God is the one who holds my life in the palm of his hand. He is the one who has the final say over life and death. God is David’s light, salvation, and refuge. The point is that God does not give us light, salvation, or refuge but that He is our light, salvation, and refuge. David does not pray for a light, nor does he pray for salvation, or for a hiding places because he understands God to be all these things. We are still playing the he loves me. He loves me not game because we have trusted in God’s provisions instead of God. We have never fully trusted God. We say we have, we may have made some type of profession but many of us have not fully placed our trust in God. Fear in our life shows that we have areas of our life that have fully never been given over to God. It says to God, “I’ll trust you with my salvation, my eternal destiny but not with my finances, job, children, or health.” This Psalm teaches us to go deeper than asking, “Am I afraid?” It challenges us to ask, “Why am I fearful?” Take a moment to reflect on your fear. Does it come down to the fact that it is one area that you have not surrendered to God yet? Is it an area you are still trying to figure out on your own? Is it a place in your life you have been trying to fix? The area of your life that you still fear is an area that you have yet to surrender to God. Jesus died on the cross so that you do not have to live in fear. When we fear we are saying we don’t believe that the cross has the power to overcome. The cross of Jesus Christ is not just about God taking on our punishment. The cross is about how much God loves us and shows us at what length He is willing to go to demonstrate that love.
So how do we live beyond fear? How do we conquer the fear in our life? It is really simple actually – focus on God. Turn your attention to God. David in the Psalm ask for one thing. In verse four he says, “One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” For an Israelite, the “house of the Lord,” the temple is what housed the presence of the Lord. If you wanted to hang out with God, you went to the temple. So what David is saying is “The one thing I want is to be in the presence of the Lord.” I want to walk in the shelter of God’s love. I want to be in constant communion with God. Now some of us think that we still have to go to a physical building to make that happen. We think that the only place I can do that is in a building on Sunday morning. But that is not true. After the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can have God’s presence constant in our life regardless of where we may be or what may be going on. When we make Jesus the leader of our life, really the leader of our life, we can walk without fear. Focus on God and your fears will disappear. As long as you fail to have Jesus at the center of your life you will always have fears. For this reason I believe that following Jesus is a journey. It is a journey to displace fears with trust. Some of you have come to a place in your life today that you need to do that now. You need to stop focusing on your fears and start focusing on God. Have you ever prayed this prayer, “God, please take away my fear?” How about if we prayed instead, “God, show me why I am so fearful?” Fears demonstrate a belief that God is unable. God is not unable but until you let go of those fears and trust Him you will be living your life with that understanding. I also know that trusting is one of the hardest things you can do.
I grew up on a dirt road and you know what people do on dirt roads? They dump their unwanted pets on dirt roads. We would always come across an abandoned cat or dog. We took in a few dogs. Remember me saying, “We cannot love what we fear.” Well that was the relationship I had with cats. I didn’t fully trust a cat so, well you know. A dog though, especially a puppy, I would feel sorry for. Have you ever tried to win the trust of an abandoned puppy? A puppy that was malnourished, abused, and abandoned. You get down eye level with it. So it can see you. The puppy tries to decide whether I’m safe or not. She makes a few steps forward, then thinks better and turns her head away as if to break the spell about to overcome her. On those occasions I would love to rush in, scoop her off her feet and convince her how safe she is, but if I so much as lean forward , she runs off further into the darkness. This little puppy has no idea what awaits her if she can overcome her fear.
In John 14: 2- 3, Jesus says, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” When we read this passage we normally think of what? Heaven. But Jesus is still talking about his first comimg – his death on the cross; and his second coming back – the resurrection. The cross stands as the event that opens the door for us to dwell in God’s love. Like David, Jesus is saying, “we can live constantly in God’s presence.” To be in the place that Jesus speaks of is not necessarily a place, heaven is a place we will one day experience, but it is a reality. It is a life without fear, a life of trust.
The puppy just outside my reach has no idea what awaits her is she can overcome her fear. All the food, love, nurture, and assurance of life that she needs I can offer if she can just turn her focus from her fear. The same holds true for us. We can fear less and trust more by focusing on God’s love for us – a love that is unchanging.