SPRING FORTH NOW 2022

Are they servants of Christ? I can go them one better. (I can’t believe I’m saying these things. It’s crazy to talk this way! But I started, and I’m going to finish.) I’ve worked much harder, been jailed more often, beaten up more times than I can count, and at death’s door time after time. I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day. In hard traveling year in and year out, I’ve had to ford rivers, fend off robbers, struggle with friends, struggle with foes. I’ve been at risk in the city, at risk in the country, endangered by desert sun and sea storm, and betrayed by those I thought were my brothers. I’ve known drudgery and hard labor, many a long and lonely night without sleep, many a missed meal, blasted by the cold, naked to the weather. And that’s not the half of it, when you throw in the daily pressures and anxieties of all the churches. When someone gets to the end of his rope, I feel the desperation in my bones. When someone is duped into sin, an angry fire burns in my gut. If I have to “brag” about myself, I’ll brag about the humiliations that make me like Jesus. The eternal and blessed God and Father of our Master Jesus knows I’m not lying. Remember the time I was in Damascus and the governor of King Aretas posted guards at the city gates to arrest me? I crawled through a window in the wall, was let down in a basket, and had to run for my life.

II Corinthians 11:23-33 (MSG)

All Things Have Become New to your life because you are willing to step back from the present state of your life and Breathe: New Life, discern the pros and cons of your situation and what you bring to the table, especially your expectations, your future to choose life. We all stand at the crossroads of life in each and every experience because it challenges us to choose a pathway, we can either maintain or expand our press toward our higher calling. Critical to our choice is our sense of confidence that though the choice may stretch us to press, our record, testimony is that in each and every experience we have chosen that will bring us closer to the expected end we have overcome. In our overcoming All Things Have Become New; a higher position that opens up our pathway to our fulfilled promises, God’s intent for our life and life more abundantly. Please be assured that our pathway will not always be easy or without challenges, it is the uneasiness and challenges that cause us to Breathe: New Life that All Things Have Become New in our mind first and then made real in our life.