THURSDAY, July 3rd, 2008

Have I Told You Lately That I Love... JULY!!! This is such a cool month! It feels so good to be in July! Wow, I just can't contain it! :) Sorry Josh! July beats December! Anyway: Where in the world was everyone yesterday? There were not nearly as many comments yesterday, and it was a really great devotion! You guys missed out! I tell you one thing is for sure... I should have let Kacey preach for me last night! She was "on Fire" yesterday! GREAT JOB GIRL!

A Few Thoughts From Yesterday:
Brooke: What A Smile!! Your unbraced teeth look great! Congrats!
Josh L: I dont think that Gravity in this passage means to "obey the law of gravity"... it means to be serious minded. Nice Try Though! :)
Jessica B: You get the "AMAZING SISTER OF THE YEAR" Award!!!!!!! If Alex EVER says something about you again, He is in BIG TROUBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot believe you cleaned up His puke (what a disguisting word) yesterday!! You are GREAT!!!!!
Kacey: Did you apologize for that Amazing Devotional application? No need for an apology there! All I have to say is: AMEN SISTER!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Mrs W: It is nice to know that we adults like you care about us wnough to check us out and read our thought about the word of God! Thanks for being a blessing!
Amazing Grace: Keep up the good work! I am glad you are coming to our youth group! I hope you enjoy it! Let me know if I can do anything to be of service to you :)


John 11: 1-16
( I know that seems like a lot, but I was laughing out loud because the passage is so funny, so Just Read It!!!!)

1 Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 It was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
3 Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”
4 When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
6 So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.
7 Then after this He said to the disciples, “Let us go to Judea again.”
8 The disciples said to Him, “Rabbi, lately the Jews sought to stone You, and are You going there again?”
9 Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.
10 But if one walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.”
11 These things He said, and after that He said to them, “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.”
12 Then His disciples said, “Lord, if he sleeps he will get well.”
13 However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought that He was speaking about taking rest in sleep.
14 Then Jesus said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead.
15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.”
16 Then Thomas, who is called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him.”

Wow, This is by far one of the funniest passages we have read together! If you did not get it, don't worry, I will help you out! We see at the beginning of the chapter that Lazarus was sick. Mary and Martha went to get Jesus to save Lazarus before He died.

In verse 4 Jesus explains that He knew this would happen, so that He could do another miracle for the glory of God.

Then we get to verses 7 and 8, where we see Jesus tell the Disciples: "Lets go save Lazarus in Judea" and what do the Disciples say: "No Jesus! You will get killed!! Don't go!!"

* What great things do we fail to see God do because we are scared? The disciples would have missed on one of the greatest miracles of the word of God: "Lazarus!!! Come Forth!!" I believe that when the Holy Spirit convicts us of something and we ignore Him, we too miss out on great blessings because of fear.

In verse 11 we see Christ still willing to go in harms way to protect someone that He loves... He did that for us as well, He paid the ultimate price in the most horrible situation of "harms way" that we could possibly imagine, by going to the cross for us! What a Great Savior!

Then what do we see: The disciples got it all wrong... again! Verse 12 is so funny: The disciples tell Jesus: "If Lazarus is just sleeping then why do we need to go there, he will eventually wake up!"

In verse 14 we see jesus tell them as "plainly" as possible: "Lazarus IS DEAD!!!!"

If God did such great things with these disciples, even when they had no clue what was going on half the time... think about what great things He can do with us, when we know what is going on, because we have His word!! That is some GREAT STUFF!!

To finish this passage off: We read what Thomas said... Ok, let's go to Judea, so we can all die. ARE YOU GUYS CRAZY?!?!?!?!?!? Jesus is in charge! He is not going to get killed, unless He wants it to happen, yet these men think that they know better than the son of God... They think that Jesus is going to get all of them killed by making a bad decision... The cool part is they were willing to follow Him to the death!!

Sometimes in life we may not understand what God is doing, but we MUST follow Him to the death, knowing that His way is perfect!!

Sorry this was long, but it was INCREDIBLE!!
Some of you guys are starting to slack off in your application of the scriptures. Make sure that you really THINK and APPLY Gods word to your heart and life! Ya'll Are Great!!!!!