Month: April 2024

I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in Heaven. Luke 10:19-20 

Jesus sent out seventy-two disciples to go before Him and minister in every town He was about to visit. They had directions for success and rejection, social behavior and financial maintenance. They returned to Jesus, amazed at the power they were able to employ.

In creation, God gave man authority, or dominion, over every living thing. Stewardship is another translation meaning responsibility for something that does not belong to you. In this, God gave Adam power over Satan. The serpent challenged God’s authority and Adam caved at an astronomical cost. 

Adam’s mistake does not mean our failure is inevitable.  We are like Adam because we have a free-will, but we also have the same God-gifted supremacy over Satan’s ploys, no matter how crafty. Use your words! They are your power, and then put your words to action with your hands and feet. 

Our power is in God, not ourselves. Our victory and the greatest hint of Satan’s eventual, complete and total annihilation is his loss to Heaven’s love and your faith.

Blessings,

Gretchen

The LORD said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Genesis 4:10

Sin entered the world and changed man’s relationship with God, but from the very beginning God provided a means of atonement shown by the sacrifice Abel presented. Cain made an offering also, but it was unacceptable to God. His bitter resentment festered and eventually he took vengeance upon his brother, mankind’s first murder.

Blood speaks.  God knew what Cain had done and why he did it. The cries of Abel’s blood spoke death, an irreversible state.  Cain’s choices and his consequences were death, complete and total disconnection from God. 

Living blood, pulsing through our bodies, provides and sustains all we need to live. In contrast, blood spilled is death. In Jesus we find both a sacrifice of blood poured and a continuing source of life. He did not die. He lived!

Like Abel, Jesus was hated and murdered, but when His blood speaks, it says, “I love you and you can live!”

Happy Monday!

Gretchen

To serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you “What do theses stones mean?” Tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever. Joshua 4:6-7

(Forty years earlier) The Red Sea was an ominous barrier between the pursuing army of Pharaoh, and freedom for the Hebrew children. The people were terrified, but the Creator of all things drove a strong east wind, pushed the impassable water out of the way, made a dry path on the seabed for His people and when the Egyptians pursued the waves swept over them. The man who thought he was a god lost his army. This is what happens when the Almighty God hems you in on all sides.

Forty years later, a generation has come and gone and this young nation has learned that God is faithful and they must trust and obey Him only. It is time to enter the Promised Land, but there is another aquatic obstacle between the Hebrew children and their homeland; the Jordan River, swollen with spring snow melt. But, God was already there making a way. Several miles upstream an earthquake loosed rock that dammed the river making a dry place downstream.  Before the river banks refilled, Joshua had a representative from each of the twelve tribes retrieve river stones so an altar could be erected to remind the following generations what God had done. Why? Because we need to remember and KNOW that God will always protect and provide for those who follow Him!

As time whisks by, the excitement and crisp edged details of the miraculous things God does for us dulls to occasional thoughts and gentle smiles. It takes deliberate action to remember and retell so that those who come behind us will persevere.

Happy Weekend,

Gretchen

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.Isaiah 5:20

Isaiah chapter 5 refers to Israel as a vineyard. For centuries God has cared for His covenant nation. Rather than follow and obey, they became entitled, greedy and full of injustice. The rich became rich at the expense of the poor. Finally, God withdraws his protection. Israel withers, suffers and ceases to exist as a nation except as refugees, captives and exiles.

The attitude of entitlement brings us to the point of preempting God’s authority over good and evil. We want self glory, and autonomy. Money grants power……until we die….then we’re all equal in our speed of decay. Injustice follows greed. Serving others shifts to serving financial domination. Right and wrong get blurred by bias, personal agenda and passion.

With an open heart we must seek God’s Holiness. A pure heart waits for God’s provision and seeks His approval only.

Love,

Gretchen

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Matthew 16:16

Outgoing, impulsive Peter, who sometimes said the wrong thing, got this right. Peter’s spiritual connection to God in Heaven was the means to his faith on earth. Jesus had not announced Himself as God’s Son publicly, yet, Peter knew.

Petra is the Greek word for rock. Jesus gave Simon, son of Jonas, this name, Peter. It was on the rock of this revelation, Jesus is the Son of the living God, that our church is built. In verse 18 of this same chapter, Jesus says, the gates of Hades will not overcome ‘it’. It is Zion, the city of God, the church triumphant, the Body of Christ. Gate keepers control the city, everything from commerce to politics. They also keep enemies out and let in those who will prosper them. The Truth that Peter confessed is; Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life, The Son of God, is the gatekeeper of the Body of Christ.

We live in fear of being ruined, disappointed, irrelevant, rejected, but Jesus is the Messiah and the Gates of Hell will NOT overcome any us whose hope is in the LORD.

Love,

Gretchen

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son. Hebrews 11:17

The promise God made, and the reciprocal commitments Abraham returned, define the infinite, omniscient and omnipresent character of the Creator of all things and His intimacy with mankind. Abraham and God entered into a covenant relationship. They didn’t just meet and shake hands, they did things that mattered and would always remind us of God’s mountain moving love. An exchange of first born sons is part of covenant making. So, God asked Abraham for the son He had given Sarah and her husband in their post child bearing years. 

Obedience was the promise Abraham returned to God. When God called, Abraham answered and from that moment forward, Isaac was as good as dead to him, but it was a long walk up the mountain.  Isaac asked, “Where is the sacrifice father?” Abraham replied, “God will provide.”  God did furnish a sacrifice and it was not Isaac. The covenant was sealed. Many thousand years later, God gave His only Son to complete this blessing to all who would believe.

Faith is not a moment in time. It is a life’s choice to never turn back. God didn’t need to know Abraham was ‘all in’, Abraham and Isaac did and we needed to know the end of the story. Obedience, faith in action, won! And it always will. The end.

Love,

Gretchen

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” Matthew 6:24

Part of the Sermon on the Mount, this verse is the concluding comment Jesus makes about storing up treasures on earth. The bigger picture is Jesus’ words on generosity, attitude toward others, intimacy with God and overwhelming worry about tomorrow.

Everything on this earth passes away, just take a look at the week old produce in your refrigerator, or the once beautiful homes decaying as long gone manicured lawns return to pasture land.  We give all our resources to things that will not matter when life gets real, because only God, through His Son Jesus can GIVE real life!

There are many things that become our master but it all comes down to money, because nothing is free………..excuse me, I misspoke! Grace and Mercy are free. Get you some! Get a lot! Share with everyone! The supply is infinite!

Throw Grace Like Confetti!

Gretchen

I am the bread of Life. John 6:48

In Old Testament Law there is a very elaborate and detailed process for making a covenant. A covenant is an all encompassing agreement between two parties, binding them together with very clear boundaries and obligations. The eighth step of this mutual promise is the sharing of a meal.  By feeding each other, the covenant participants express the act of taking one another into the each other’s life so deeply they become one with the other. We see this today in wedding celebrations where the bride and groom exchange pieces of wedding cake.

Jesus’ words are being spoken to the Pharisees following His feeding of the 5000. They are the leaders of the Jewish nation, but they are spiritually dull. Offended by these misperceived insinuations of cannibalism, they become outraged. Instead of comprehending Jesus is the source of endless fulfillment, and by accepting Him, life everlasting is secured, they sought an excuse for their self-righteous indignation.

Jesus completed the Abrahamic covenant. We are all blessed because He gave His life as a sacrifice and a curse breaker. By feeding ourselves with Him we receive life and power over death and THAT begins today.

Love,

Gretchen

“Look, He is coming with the clouds,” and “Every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him”; and all peoples on earth “Will morn because of Him.“ So shall it be! Amen. Revelations 1:7

This book was written in the glow of burning martyrs. Christianity was sixty some years old and growing fast and strong, even though suffering among believers was horrific. God sent words and visions to John to strengthen those being persecuted then and today.

It is ironic that the consummation of life is death. When this earthly existence comes to an end for each one of us, we are defined, our history is complete, except for the retelling. For those who refuse to believe Jesus is the Resurrected Son of the One True God, death is the great equalizer. The will see very clearly who is God and who is not. Redoes won’t be an option then and they will mourn.

For the believer, physical death is not our end, but a new beginning. Attempts to stop God’s victorious work proved a colossal failure in the early days of the church and it still does today. Jesus lives and so shall we.

Have a Beautiful Weekend,

Love,

If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 1 John 1:6

At the end of the apostolic age John remained. The others who personally knew Jesus were martyred across the Roman Empire. John lived in Jerusalem caring for Jesus’ mother, but at some time after her death, he moved to Ephesus where he wrote his gospel, three epistles and Revelations. By now the Church is sixty to seventy years old.

John’s letter was addressing a wrong theology suggesting  separation between spirit and body. Some believed that the two were completely unconnected, therefore, the body could engage in sensual activities while the spirit remained holy. Those who believed this argued that Jesus had never really become fully man, but just an aberration.

In the entire first chapter of this letter John addresses the absolute truth of the incarnate God in His Son Jesus. You can’t ‘sort of’ believe or ‘sort of’ be a Christian.Jesus brought hope and light into the world. Darkness is gone when you are facing the Son.

Happy Friday,

Gretchen