The Peoples’ God

God is the peoples’ God.

He is not a God of dignitaries, kings and religious institutions that you must belong to or become before you can reach Him. He is a God of the common folk, the ordinaries, like you and me.

He loves to show Himself strong, and how can His strength be best shown except when compared to the weak? God is our, your, my strength-a very present help in time of trouble. And we seem to have a lot of trouble lurking around in our lives sometimes, don’t we?

He is the God of the ordinary people.

He is for the people.

We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

All of us.

All who believe.

Which means:

If you’re ordinary, you qualify—

You qualify for all God has stated in His word.

They shall be My people, and I will be their God. Hebrews 8:11

Positive People

Most of us like being around positive people; most of us think we are positive people.

Did you know God wants us to be positive people? He created that desire in our lives. He is a positive God and He wants us to be positive people. ‘Yeah but’ and ‘what about’ you start to say. Nope, the choice is ours. God said to choose this day, to choose life, to choose to believe.

Without even realizing it many times we slide over into the negative and let that affect us, our decisions and our families.

People secretly want to be positive since that’s the way we’re designed, but often give in to negative out of fear of bad happening if they get too positive, too happy, too joyful, too expectant of good things in their lives,  so they ‘play it safe’ and stay either neutral or negative. ‘I don’t want to get my hopes up and then they get dashed to the ground.’ And so, all the joy is sucked right out of their lives under the guise of playing it safe. It’s no fun to live like that!

Then to keep ourselves ‘safe’, we try to tone down other’s excitement lest we get excited too and that might cause a ‘scene’. What would people think if I were actually happy every day?  Bah, Humbug isn’t only around at Christmas time. We have to guard against him on a daily basis!

A joyful, happy, merry heart does good like a medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.

Happiness, joy, positive attitudes and good health go hand in hand.

Don’t miss out on your good life.

Take it.

It’s yours.

Start today…be positive and good towards yourself!

A New and Different Way

I believe God has called us to a different way. Jesus said I will show you a better way.

In Moses day,  God distinguished Himself and His people by the way they dressed, what they wore, what they ate… that was how others knew they belonged to God. It was also one way God’s people would remember who they belonged to. It was part of their identity.
Since Jesus came, God said he was showing us a new way. He says people will know we are Christians by our love. No, it’s not by our address or how we wear our hair, or how much jewelry we do or don’t wear, or if we can or can’t wear fingernail polish, short sleeves, hats or beards. Those are not to be our identifiers. Our identifiers are that we show love to the world in the way that Jesus did. We overcome evil with good…we give a soft answer to turn away wrath… we become peacemakers instead of fault finders.

‘Why should I do something good for that person? They don’t deserve it, in fact they did something bad to me and they should pay for it.’ That’s returning evil for evil and will cause more hard feelings and nothing will be changed except the walls of hate and bitterness grow higher.

Jesus is the great reconciler who made us and wants us to be at peace with each other. Return good for evil even when it is not deserved. One quick look at how much we ‘really deserve’ helps us keep things in perspective.
Actually we’re all the same, seeking love, forgiveness, help; we want reconciliation, but we’re stuck hiding behind fears of abandonment, isolation, rejection- thinking if we can only get even it will fix their (our) problem. But it doesn’t work that way in God’s economy.
Jesus went about doing good, and He hopes we’ll do the same.
When we do good, were tapping into a higher strength than our own. We’re tapping into God’s power and He will do the work that needs to be done.

The interesting thing about doing good is: when you do something good for someone else, you always feel good too.

Who in your life today needs you to shower some good upon?