Greetings and Salutations,

    In our neck of the woods, February was the roaring lion and March is nurturing the off spring; think actual Spring is going to take a bit longer this year.

    It was nice yesterday seeing the blue cloudless skies, of course that also meant that we would have colder weather – at midnight last nigh my outside thermometer said 11 degrees.

    Clouds came in and we warmed up by morning to 24 degrees as I went out to feed the birds.

    I can remember when we first moved her Carla was excited because she had two to three months more growing time than we did in Redmond.  She could actually start planting in early March – it has been a little later it seems with each passing year – and it definitely going to be later this year!

    She has her seedlings in the windows though, ready for when she can plant!

    The “Hummers Heated Delight” worked very well last night.  Even though it got down to at least 11 degrees the fluid didn’t freeze and the little guys didn’t have to wait for me to get up to put the feeders out.  Good product as far as I am concerned.

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Mark 9:23-24  KJV  “²³ Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

²⁴ And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

        I have always struggled with this, do I truly believe or am I just saying so, I can sympathize with the father of this child who had a demon within and he wanted Jesus to cast it out.

    I want to believe when I pray, I want to think that whatever I ask for will come about because of that belief.

    Yet, I also know that God’s ways are not my ways and His timing is not necessarily my timing.  I want something to happen right now, but right now may be either inappropriate, or can bring more glory to God at a later time.

    Then of course it also depends on what we are asking for, we pray for the salvation of people, yet, it also depends on their willingness to accept Christ.

    Many times people will pray and then end the prayer with “but YOUR will be done.”  I may be wrong but I always thought that was ‘hedging’ their prayer.

    Any prayer request is going to depend on the will of God and there really is no need to say that unless you are questioning your own beliefs.  (Just my opinion, not shared, I am sure with a lot of fellow believers, but this is my meditation and thoughts.)

    And, then, of course, there are sometimes other criteria we may or may not be aware of; the father of the young man had come to the disciples to ask them to cast out the demon, they could not.

Verse 28-29  “ ²⁸ And when he was come into the house, his disciples asked him privately, Why could not we cast him out?

²⁹ And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”

    That is why a quick two minute thanks to God in the morning before we go about our business is just not enough – it IS better than nothing, but if we want to be truly effective for Him we need to be closer to Him.

    To get closer to Him we need more than a few minutes with Him, we need to study His Word and spend time listening to what He is telling us, not just telling Him what we want and expecting Him to grant it.

    Being a follower of Christ is serious business; and it ain’t easy if we are serious about it.  It doesn’t matter whether we are the Pastor or a member of His congregation, we have a duty to serve Him in thanksgiving.

    Our avocation does not let us off the hook.  With a few exceptions we can and must make time to put God on our DAILY schedule.  We may have days where we are limited more than others, but we still need to make that time count.

“This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.”

    We never know when we are going to be called upon, but God, to do a task that requires us to be fully prepared to deal with satan in extreme cases.  We need to be prepared and that only comes by spending time with Him.

    How much time depends on each individual Christian and God.

Acts 6:2-4  KJV  “Then the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them, and said, It is not reason that we should leave the word of God, and serve tables.

³ Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.

⁴ But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word.”

    We know spending time with the Father was extremely important to Jesus!

    The apostles found that they needed more time to study, pray and prepare their sermons unencumbered with doing daily chores that took them away from their primary obligation, leading the flock.

    We may not be ministers or teachers, but we do have responsibility to share the Gospel with others; there will be times we won’t have an answer and must tell them that we will get back to them.

    However, if we can draw from our relationship with God and the time we have spent with Him, we can most often answer those questions and keep the discussion going, rather than shutting it down for the day and find out they lost interest while we were researching.

    We want to be right, so that research is not a bad thing, but we can be better prepared the more we have at studied His Word and spent time with Him.

    It is not unlike doing our jobs.  The more time and experience on the job, as well as doing whatever study is required the better we can do that job.

    Police officers go to an academy, they work with a training officer (TO) that has been on the job for a while and is experienced in policies and procedures, and the law as well as everyday service.

    As the recruit gains experience the less they have to rely on their TO to guide them.  They know the law without having to run back to the car and look it up in the book to see what he should do with the offender.

    Some recruits learn quicker than others, sometimes it is just a better ability to grasp the work, sometimes it is because he has worked harder in learning the job – but either way, they all have to spend time with the process.

    As Christians our policy and procedure manual, and the ‘laws’ we follow are the Word of God.  Listening to the Pastor or teacher who is giving good information is good, but we still have to spend time on our own with the Word and with Him to better serve Him.  Some Christians grow faster and are more effective earlier than others, but even they cannot circumvent the process to be truly effective for Him.

    And that comes from not only reading God’s Word, but studying it and talking with Him, more than just a minute or two a day.

Later, Art (-: