SPRING FORTH NOW 2022

Meanwhile, Saul was uttering threats with every breath and was eager to kill the Lord’s followers. So he went to the high priest. He requested letters addressed to the synagogues in Damascus, asking for their cooperation in the arrest of any followers of the Way he found there. He wanted to bring them—both men and women—back to Jerusalem in chains. As he was approaching Damascus on this mission, a light from heaven suddenly shone down around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” “Who are you, lord?” Saul asked. And the voice replied, “I am Jesus, the one you are persecuting! Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.” The men with Saul stood speechless, for they heard the sound of someone’s voice but saw no one! Saul picked himself up off the ground, but when he opened his eyes he was blind. So his companions led him by the hand to Damascus. He remained there blind for three days and did not eat or drink.

Acts 9:1-9 (NLT)

It is through the encounters of our lives, the casual and unexpected experiences that we meet and come to know God, to realize the power in which All Things Have Become New. All of us tend to believe that the experience of meeting and knowing God has to come through some supernatural or miraculous experience, although that can and does happen, it is not normal. God is alive in our everyday walking-around experiences and thus present, omnipresent, everywhere, and in everything. The critical issue is not the presence of God but the presence of the mind to be sensitive and know God and that is only developed as a result of being in a relationship with Him, a relationship with your life, and what can and should be for your life. Saul, a scholar of the Torah, the Word of God, and in his heart a true believer in the Messiah’s coming did not accept Jesus as the one because He did not fit his preconceived notions. Nevertheless, God, Christ Himself was present even in Saul's breathing out threats and slaughters against Him, Saul's sin and chaos, to connect with Saul in a space where he was, casual and unexpected, in which God/Christ was revealed. It is in the very space where you are in which you can see God that the challenges of your life make sense and you see your way over them to the place of life and life more abundantly, not because you see in the natural but because you receive insight from God, His Spirit. Breathe: New Life by your sensitivity to see God everywhere and in everything and in your very causal as well as unexpected life experiences you will be empowered by His presence, positioned to believe All Things Have Become New.