Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

So fearfully and wonderfully made,
How could they say there is no God?
Reminded every breath that I take,
It´s by Your hand I have been formed
So what am I going to do with this life You gave me?
What could I do but live for Your praise?

You gave me this breath,
And You gave me this strength,
And every day I´ll live to obey You.
With all of my heart,
With all of my soul;
Let every breath I´m breathing display You God.

There´s elegance in all you create
Your grand designs leave us amazed.
The wonders of the way we´ve been made
Speak of Your power, tell of Your grace.
So what am I going to do with this life You gave me?
What could I do but live for Your praise?


So what am I going to do with this life You gave me?
What am I going to do with this life?
What I am I going to do in these days You´ve ordained?
What am I going to do with this life?

============================================

Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

Dancing in God's Grace

I don't usually forward emails but this one I got about dancing was just awesome. I've been getting into ballroom dancing lately so I absolutely love this. I hope all of you enjoy this!

Dancing With God

When I meditated on the word "Guidance",

I kept seeing 'dance' at the end of the word

And I remember reading that doing God's will is a lot like dancing.

When two people try to lead, nothing feels right.

The movement doesn't flow with the music,

And everything is quite uncomfortable and jerky.

When one person realizes that, and lets the other lead,

Both bodies begin to flow with the music.

One gives gentle cues, perhaps with a nudge to the back

Or by pressing Lightly in one direction or another.

It's as if two become one body, moving beautifully.

The dance takes surrender, willingness,

And attentiveness from one person

And gentle guidance and skill from the other.

My eyes drew back to the word Guidance.

When I saw 'G': I thought of God, followed by 'u' and 'i'.

'God, 'u' and 'i' dance.' God, you, and I dance.



As I lowered my head, I became willing to trust

that I would get guidance about my life and once

again, I became willing to let God lead.

My prayer for you today is that God's blessings

And mercies are upon you on this day and everyday.

May you abide in God, as God abides in you.

Dance together with God,

Trusting God to lead and to guide you through each

season of your life.

God Bless!

Leaving it All Behind

(Luke 5:1-11)

Today was just one of those days. I take a look in our boat... nothing... not a single catch for the whole night. I look at my brother Andrew, the look on his face, the sadness in his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. I was thinking the same thing. Another day without food. The fish that we catch serves multiple purposes. It serves as food for us and our families and it also acts as our wage. The more fish we catch, the more we can sell. Fish are in pretty high demand and people are willing to pay a lot for them. We have never had any problems selling out a big catch.

Lately though, we haven't been able to catch anything and it is beginning to take it's tole on us and our families. I knew that James and John were in the same situation as we were. It was a tough time alright.

I could see over the horizon that the sun was starting to rise. I look at my brother Andrew and say to him, "Lets call it a night." Looking down at his net he responded with a sad voice, "Ok." We pull in our boat to the shore. I look around and I see the other fishermen who were about to call it quits too. I bend down beside the boat to fold up my net when all of a sudden, I hear the sound of someone stepping into my boat. I look up and I could believe my eyes! The man who was sitting in my boat was was Jesus!! I look at him and he looks at me and says with a calm voice, "Lets put out a little from shore." Well, I've heard of so much about Jesus but never in my wildest dreams I thought I would meet him face to face. So I did as he asked. Andrew and I got in our boat and we put out a little from shore. After a few minutes, I could see a crowd gathering at the shoreline. Jesus then started teaching from where he was sitting. I've heard of his great teachings but I never expected to hear him in person. It was absolutely incredible! No wonder he's by himself right now because there is probably no one that is great enough to serve as his disciple.

After about an hour of speaking, he then looked at me and said, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch." Well, I was shocked at this point. First this great man is sitting in MY boat and he starts teaching from my boat. Now he's asking me to put down my nets? Well, the only thing I could say was, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets." I let down my nets. I wait, knowing that I won't catch anything. After a few minutes though, I feel the boat tip to one side, the side towards where I let my net down. It shocked both Andrew and myself and we stumbled over to the side to pull up our nets. They were heavy, we begin pulling them up and to our surprise, fish!! They were full of them! I have never seen this much in my life! We empty out our nets and throw our nets down again. Again, the nets became heavy and in record time. Any nets that we threw down, came up full of fish. Actually, there were such a multitude of fish that all of our nets broke. We signaled all of the others over and when they dropped their nets, they came up full of fish. We got so caught up in the catch that we completely forgot about the a maximum weight our boats can carry. We were starting to sink!

As I was watching all of this, I look at Jesus, I thought to myself, "He did this?" I immediately dropped to my knees, I was frightened. The only thing I could mutter was, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" Andrew, James and John stopped and they were astonished at this catch. It was by far the biggest catch we have ever made. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, I look up and it was Jesus. He says in a calm voice, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men."

This was incredible, Jesus just called Andrew, James, John, and myself to be HIS disciples!! I was so excited. But then... I looked at the catch that we just made... This is the biggest catch and I start to think about... how much money will this actually make me. Like... this boat is FULL!! I'll make a killing off of this.

It was then I realized that this is THE Jesus calling me. I am not going to pass this up. So as soon as we brought our boats to the shore, we dropped everthing and followed Jesus.

===================================================================

Sometimes, before God calls us to do something, He will fill our boats and let us have a choice between lets say a wonderful job with lots of money (full boat) or say full-time ministry with Him (following Jesus). I'm not saying that this is what happens for everyone but for me, it did. I have the potential to be very successful in Engineering and possibly also have the opportunity to fight against the water crisis overseas. This life would have been high paying, good security, ideal conditions for me to raise and support a family, etc. However... this isn't what God wanted me to do. God was calling me to something else. Full-time ministry with IVCF. God has called me into student ministry with IVCF and I have decided that I am going to trust and obey this calling and committ my life Him. No looking back now.

The Body of Christ (Part 3)

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

1 Corinthians 12:26

I wanted to leave this one last because it's so important to know that every part of the body suffers and rejoices with each other. As soon as "one part suffers, every part suffers." I want to explain this portion with this analogy.

Say your doing something as simple as walking. It is so easy to walk if all your parts of the body are working. However, say you injure your knee in a sporting accident and can't put any weight on it. Since your knee is out of commission, the rest of your body suffers because you can't walk anymore. So what happens now? You need to still get around but you can't walk. What you would most likely do is get crutches. In order to use these crutches, both your arms need to be used to operate these crutches and more weight needs to be placed on your non-injured leg. Here, the rest of your body is working together to allow the injured knee to heal.

The same thing goes for the Body of Christ. If a part of the body is suffering, the rest of the body needs to be there to support that suffering part so that it can heal. The whole body will suffer if we allow that one part to continue to suffer. It is so important to support each other.

God Bless

The Body of Christ (Part 2)

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

1 Corinthians 12:21-25

I never really took the chance to sit down to think about how important the smaller parts of the body can be. Lets say the big toe. How small and pointless it appears to be, but as a part of the body, it provides us with balance. If we did not have our big toe, we could never run/jog to our full potential. The whole body suffers in the absence of a big toe.

These last couple of days, I had an infection in my right thumb and boy did it ever hurt a lot to put any sort of pressure on it. I never realized how important the thumb was and how restricted I was in doing basic things like writing, driving, even zipping up zippers. Our thumbs are the strongest clamps on our body. Accompanied by four other fingers it assists you in a variety of things such as writing, turning on the tap, picking up items, flipping a page, anything that requires the joining of two fingers.

As part of the Body of Christ, there may be a small part of ministry that you do. For example, lets say your just doing something as simple as setting up chairs for the service. It's small and it seem so insignificant but, if you think about it, if you didn't do it, who would? It would be someone else in possibly ministry. By not setting up chairs, this other person in ministry now has to set up the chairs and that would take time away from their own ministry. They are now not as effective in their ministry. The whole body suffers for it.

I just want to say to not neglect these small but significant parts of the body. Even though they may not seem like they are doing anything. These "little" parts of the body are so important for providing balance and stability.