Early Morning Prayer Why it is important to pray?

When you start your day by praying, you fill your mind with wisdom, peace, strength, revelation, joy and fellowship with your heavenly Father. At the same time your moving out of your way adversity, strife, fears, temptations and depression. And what do you leave in your wake? Joy, peace, love, gentleness, and kindness. Just a few minutes in the morning with your heavenly Father can make all the difference in the world. He’s waiting for you to talk to Him. He knows how busy you are, but can you at least say, Hi 

“I seek out God early in the garden, a place that I see his work being done through and in me” MP

My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; in the morning will I direct my prayer to You, and will look up.’ Psalm 5.3

Don’t Forget To Take God With You On Vacation

As the work week was coming to an end,  the excitement was thick in the air.  Room booked, car packed and the next day we would be on the road to the coast for Sandfest, a weekend vacation away from it all.   Three days in Port Aransas, on the beach, chill’in out, dude!.   We had a great weekend until the last day.   I believe that at the end of every vacation everyone experiences the “going home blues.”  Why?   I believe it’s because we did take a vacation away from it all, to include God

 Psalm 37:4,7
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass … Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him

1 Chronicles 16:11
Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His face continually.

^{Mathew 22:  37-38     37}Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[b] 38}This is the first and greatest commandment.

After reading these few verses I started thinking that if you truly love someone, why would you not bring them with you on vacation.  Spending one hour a day in the word, and with God could have been a great way to enjoy the beach,  after all he created it.

 

 

 

 

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKvzWHokwf8

Gardening with Friends

Gardening is a way to be truly neighborly, in a social, environmental, and spiritual way.  Growing food to share is one of the most satisfying things to do in life.   Environmental preservation and personal health and spirituality are so closely interwoven and desire to be.  I  think everyone on earth should participate in growing things or cooking or food processing.  So I guess that includes houses of worship.  The Bible is a book full of agricultural metaphors and concepts, so gardening and farming knowledge are important to understand what is in the Bible.  The sharing of food are so interconnected with church community life that it certainly makes sense.

We love sharing time with the Beltran Family.   Mario & Teresa brought the kids Ashly and Calob over to help plant new flower seeds.  Mario put in a great garden in his yard.

Our friends Larry and Ruth Geilenfeldt wanted a garden so we went to work.  They live out by the San Gabriel river and the soil is wonderful.

1 Peter 4

¹⁰Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.

Genesis 2:8 

 ⁸And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

Gardening with God

Humanity’s first glimpse of God happened in a garden. Since then we have tried to duplicate its beauty. We plant flowers, grasses, trees. Place fountains. Hang chimes. Augment anemic soils. We water, dig, and make our knuckles bleed. But Paradise eludes us. Our gardens are environments of perpetual change. The cypress reach their heights of glory as the fruit trees wane. The daffodils finish their blooms just as the sunflower begins to bud. Pansies and Bluebonets wilt in the same heat that brings the roses alive. We are not dissuaded. Just as a prism of glass  light and casts a colored braid, a garden sings sweet incantations the human heart strains to hear. Hiding in every flower, in every leaf, in every twig and bough, are reflections of the God who once walked with us in Eden.

When in the garden my mind is clear to listen, feel,  and pray. My heart is at peace and open to what God wants me to hear. I am not distracted with any false senses, needless worry.

^{Mark 4 13}Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? ¹⁴The farmer sows the word. ¹⁵Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. ¹⁶Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. ¹⁷But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. ¹⁸Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; ¹⁹but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. ²⁰Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—thirty, sixty or even a hundred times what was sown.”

If we are the seed that is sown then we must care for the soil around us. Be willing to receive his word, service, giving, and study of his word.

In one year we created a beautiful, life-giving garden full of food, herbs, fruit, and flowers. Most of all we have come closer to God.