|City on a Hill - Writings for Refuge

John 14:3 When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am. This is the story of the Bible. God made us to be with Him. It is why He put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, why He rescued Noah, why He chose to reveal Himself to Abram. It is the truth David discovered, and what fueled his songs of love back to God. It is what Jesus came for, so that we could someday be with Him where He is, and it is the grand finale of ur story in Revelation 21: 1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. 2 And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, "Look, God's home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no

I used to think of Jesus clothed in a white robe, clean and gentle, holding a lamb or something. The more I study what He is like, the more I realize that is not really an accurate picture. Definitely He is merciful and kind....but the picture is much more full than that. Revelation 1:14 describes his head and hair as white, like wool or snow, his eyes like flames of fire, and his feet like polished bronze. I have been asking God to give me a mental picture of this for a while....months, really. I have always had my own picture that i fabricated from these words and my imagination, but recently, I received what I asked for. I was running on my elliptical trainer, and talking to the Invisible God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when for a moment, in my mind, I saw the one with eyes like fire! As soon as I saw Him, I realized I had a pretty weak idea of white!.... His hair was like lightning, blazing white. Electric white. His eyes were intense with passion, but He was smiling. But what go

Mark 5 :35 While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, "Your daughter is dead. There's no use troubling the Teacher now." 36 But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, "Don't be afraid. Just have faith." I heard a preacher say once that faith and fear are both spiritual connectors. Faith connects you to what you hope for and fear connects you to what you are fearing. Fear is a feeling and faith is a choice. You can put away fear by asking God to destroy your fearful thoughts and not allowing a spirit of fear to dwell with you. You can put on faith by remembering how faithful God has been in the past and by simply declaring His faithfulness. Try it out! It will completely change the dynamics of your situation.

Why do you send a postcard to friends and family when you are away? To let them know where you are and what you are doing, so they can feel close to you and part of where you are. In Revelation 4, God sends us a postcard from His throne in heaven. He wants us to know where He is, what is going on around Him, and what He is focused on. This postcard is so amazing though, because when we use it the way He intended, it actually tells us not only where God is, but also where we are. When you pray, and you actually talk to God as He sits on the Throne, your spirit really goes before Him (on the sea of glass). When I started talking to God as I pictured Him in Revelation 4, instead of talking to the air and hoping He "caught" my words, it changed everything about my conversations with Him. If you read the passage below, you will see He LOVES creation, especially humans. He has surrounded His throne with people and angels. He loves to be with us, He is not distant and unconnected, H

One of the most powerful ways to impact the world around you is to live before God in the "secret place" and grow in your capacity to encounter Him. Then He can set you as a Holy Standard. A standard, like a ruler or a measuring cup, doesn't speak. It doesn't determine what is measured against it. It simply is what it is. When you live in the secret place with God, your heart changes. When your heart changes, people notice. When we stop telling people what is wrong with them and how they need to change, and focus on our conversation with God, we become a powerful living standard. Everyone is a standard for something. (Mat 5:15-16) No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father

When God formed you, He had a perfect plan in mind. Although we might not see it, the way He made us lines up perfectly with what He had in mind. He chose you for His purpose, but because of love, you have to choose Him, too. God doesn't force you to respond to Him, or agree with Him...but He loves you no matter what. He formed our heart, then He gave it to us. Our heart is ours to give to anyone or anything we choose. We have complete control over where and what we give our heart to, even though God created and owns all things. What dignity and freedom He has given to us. Where we decide to give our heart determines everything about our future. No one holds his heart to himself, we all give it to something or someone. What I have found, often by tragic trial and error, is that to give my heart to anyone or anything but the One who made it and knows it, ultimately separates me from the perfect plan that was in the mind of its fabricator. To give my heart to anyone but God is to ch

There is a spiritual principle that God actually gives us what we really want. He loves us perfectly and has made plans to give us an amazing future, so when we desire things that agree with His perfect plans for us, the result is excitement and blessing, peace, and joy. It might be in the midst of hardship that we experience these things, but they are always present when we walk in agreement with Him...When we want what He wants. When we desire things that are not in agreement with God, the result is a lack of excitement (spiritual dullness, and often also earthly boredom), a lack of blessing, a lack of peace, and a lack of joy. When I follow my own way, it might seem at first like I am getting what I want, but I eventually experience the emptiness of my own wisdom or desire. Agreeing with what God says is good actually produces the exciting and fulfilling life we all long for. If you have tried your own way for a while, and it hasn't produced excitement, fulfillment, peace, and

This is an end time prophecy made 2700 years ago about Jesus: Isaiah 52:13 See, my servant will prosper; he will be highly exalted. 14 But many were amazed when they saw him. His face was so disfigured he seemed hardly human,and from his appearance, one would scarcely know he was a man. (Fast-forward to the future) 15 And he will startle many nations. Kings will stand speechless in his presence. For they will see what they had not been told; they will understand what they had not heard about. This passage about Jesus is an end-time passage. It is describing how the world knows Jesus as the one who suffered under Pontius Pilate and died on the cross, but didn't realize He was about to return as the most powerful warrior-king the world has ever known. A powerful warrior-king who is motivated by LOVE! We have never seen anything like King Jesus! His judgement and His love are the same thing. His judgement will get rid of everything that stands in the way of love on earth. We don'

If Jesus is your savior, your history is being re-written by God. This is His promise: I will forget your mistakes that you repent of (it will be like they never happened) but I will remember even your slightest efforts to agree with me. This is such an unbelievably good deal, but this is the promise! The key is to trust that Jesus paid the price for your mistakes when He died an unjust death (He is perfect and should not have had to die), and to REPENT. "Repent" is an old word, and is very misunderstood. It just means this: agree with God and stop disagreeing with Him. If He says something is wrong, agree with Him that it is wrong and you don't want it in your life. If He says something is good, agree with Him that it is good and ask for it to grow in your life. Run TO Him and not FROM Him when you mess up, and He promises to completely restore you on the spot. The enemy wants you to feel guilty because He knows that will separate you from the One who loves you perfectl