ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO

“Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith,
having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”   Hebrews 10:22

3 - EDITOR's CORNER  

Dear Friends,

Since returning home from the desert, life has been a challenge to return to the “routine” of normal living.  In many ways, this has been a blessing as this encourages me to examine my tasks, habits, and living style to see if what I am doing really needs to be done, or if it’s done more for my pleasure and comforts than anything else.  There are some areas in my life that the flesh wants to be fed and self-served again, yet there are other areas in the previous habits I am glad to see disappearing.

Life doesn’t have to toss you around a bit in order to wake you up and force you to examine what’s happening – but if it does, use it as a growing tool and allow the Lord to continue molding you into the vessel HE wants you to become.  We can at anytime take a step back and review what’s going on in our life and why things are occurring as they do.  I was blessed in an odd way to do this over the past 4 – 5 months.  Don’t get me wrong – I am not standing up saying I smell fresh and clean like a hand full of roses ready to be presented to the most beautiful person known.  In all truth and reality, the fragrance of my aroma is more likely that of manure and the fertilizer that goes on the ground to assist in the roses to blossom and grow in magnificence.

Returning home, the Lord blessed my wife and me with a sermon our pastor shared expressing how God doesn’t give up on us, call it quits, and embarrass us when we fall and fail.  HE stay’s with us and encourages us to get back up, dust our feet off, and try again.  That’s where I am now… trying again.  And by God’s grace, mercy, & love, I will keep learning and growing and becoming more like HIM.

How well do we know God?  What is HE like?  Is HE mean and angry all the time?  There are those in the world who claim HE is.  But scriptures reflect a loving God, ONE filled with mercy, patience, grace, peace, hope…. A God I want to know and grow closer too!

The first meal my family shared together, after my return home, was introduced with the question, “Who wants to say the prayer?”

I was amazed to see all four children excited and respond so quickly – so all four of them said a prayer of thanks for the meal and for our families’ reunion.  Jonathen, our youngest who was about ready to experience his 3^rd birthday an a few days, bowed his head, folded his hands, and mumbled a few legible words.  At the completion of his prayer, after concluding with an “amen!” Jonathen threw his arms as high into the air that his little arms would allow, and exclaimed with great enthusiasm and excitement, “I did it!”

What a joy and blessing my heart received that night.  Those words and the joyful attitude a near 3-year-old child shared with me still echo over and over in my mind and thoughts.  Immediately, after his exciting conclusion, I thought to myself how much we need to be like this little one.  To be so excited to be able to communicate and fellowship with the very God who made and created us – in HIS image!  To joy to know we can speak with HIM and to hear HIS calm voice speak as we fellowship through HIS Word.  Oh, how much I want to be like that!  Oh, how much I want the enthusiasm of HIS fellowship to flow through me ever so greatly that al I can do is express to the world… “I did it!…  I received HIS gift of salvation… I fellowship with the Heavenly Father… I have a personal relationship with HIM… and you can too!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

But we need to KNOW HIM…  We need to spend time with HIM and become intimate with our relationship with HIM.  The devotional is titled “WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW?”  Point 3 has a valuable lesson we all need to apply… that I must apply in my life.

During a recent family devotional time, our family voted on a goal for all of us to keep (individually and as a family) for this year.  We unanimously gave this year the theme for our family as “The Family For God – 2005!”  We examined what that would mean for us, how this might affect us, and how we need to live as a result of accepting this goal and theme.  We all agreed to take on the responsibilities and voted to accept the challenge and benefits of this accountability.

We want to know GOD…  We want a closer fellowship and relationship with HIM.  I don’t know how close you are in your walk with the Lord right now.  You may have the walk already that we desire and seek after.  If so… Praise HIS name and continue in that fellowship… and while there, pray for my family and me that we too will attain that walk and fellowship (individually and as a family).  Your walk might be at the same level as mine…  if so, let us take up the journey together and walk side by side in the fellowship of our lord and strive to walk even more closely than we are now.  Or you might be new in this journey?  You might be just staring out and experiencing the first time the joy it is to learn how to walk... to walk in the love of God’s grace!  If that is your experience… I exhort you to continue in the walk, to learn to keep your balance in the truth of God’s Word… to keep your eye’s focused on the finish line and to continue to be strengthened in God’s Word & love so that some day we all may say “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2Tim 4:7).

May we all continue in the walk to KNOW HIM MORE!

In “Service” for HIM,

Daniel 
Philippians 1:6

4 - PICTURE of the DAY!!!

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KNOW GOD   
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Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.  He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.  In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.  In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

1 John 4:7-11

Photo by Daniel
1986
Barnabas Ministries (E.C.H.O.)

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5 - DEVOTIONAL

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(1 John 2:3-14)

WELL, WHAT DO YOU KNOW ?

Julee prepared a tasteful soup for tonight’s evening meal.  We settled in our respective seats, said the blessing prayer, and began our dinner and fellowship.  After the main curse was finished, pulling out my Bible, we began sharing from 1 Timothy 1, where my most current personal fellowship with Christ is currently traveling.  We began to read about the law and how it was made for the unrighteous….  This then lead us on a trail where we began to discus how we need the law to show us we can not gain access to heaven on our own (Rom 3:20; 5:13)  “…for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”  And that the cost of sin is death (Rom 6:23).

As we discussed the law, and sin, I began to question our 7-year-old daughter about Christ and salvation.  She shared typical answers for those who did not know Christ, such as “we get to heaven by being good…”  But how good is good enough?  We discussed that even by one sin alone we are guilty and therefore deserve death and the consequences from our sin (Rom 6:23).  As we continued sharing about salvation, and how God prepared a way through Jesus Christ, Carolyn began to realize her confusion and recalled the day that her father shared with her the plan of salvation. That day she knew she was a sinner and she confessed her sin, confessed Jesus as her Savior, and asked Christ to come into her life to be her Savior from sin and (eternal) death.

Carolyn knows God… she even has a passion for HIM – I have no doubt of this.  She will often be the first to ask me if I had my fellowship (personal devotions) with God for the day?  I believe she desires a relationship with HIM.  But the fact that she did not answer my questions with clarity at first makes me wonder, how much do I KNOW GOD?

1 DO YOU KNOW IF YOU KNOW GOD? (3-4)

            "We know that we know HIM, if we keep HIS commandments.

 WE CAN KNOW GOD.

Ever try witnessing to someone, and they ask the question, “How can you really know that there’s a God?...”  A profound question.  How does one answer a question like that?  God isn’t tangible in the sense that we can see His face and body like we see each other, and quit often the humans mind states life as “unless we see it, we won’t believe it.”  So, with that in mind, George Washington never lived!  He never crossed the Delaware River, he was not first President of the U.S.A.

If I told you that as fact, you’d call me crazy because of the facts that we have from history.  Everyone knows that George Washington lived 200 some years ago.  Well, God precedes history!  He has given us a history book to take in many facts as well.  That book is the Bible.  In the Bible, HE gives His laws and commands.  If we abide by those rules, apply them in our life, and keep them, then we will know that we know God.  Why keep a bunch of laws and rules if we don’t believe them?  Why follows the Lords commands if we don’t believe He exists?  The world is living example of that. They don’t believe God, so they live as they please.  And living like the world is not acceptable to God. That lifestyle is coated with the jelly of death.  It may taste good, it may look fun, but it has a sting that will bite back hard!  By keeping the commands and rules of God, we will know that we know God, and the world will see that too.

2 DO YOU KNOW IF YOU ARE IN HIM? (5-6)

            "Whoever keeps HIS word, truly the love of GOD is perfected in him. By this we KNOW that we are in HIM."

 WE MUST ABIDE IN HIM.

Christ has an intimate, close, dear, personal relationship with the Father.  Jesus walked as God wanted Him to.  He lived according to the guidelines given by the Heavenly Father.  “Not My will, but Yours, be done” (Lk 22:42) was the mind set and attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We need to take on that same way of living and thinking.  Not to seek out our will and desires, but God’s will and desires. 

John 15:7  “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”

If we are truly abiding “IN” Him, then whatever we ask for will be in accordance with His guidelines.  Whatever we desire will be truly a desire of His.... for if we are “IN” Him, living according to the Word, then our hearts, minds, and desires will be focused on those things above and not here on the earthly things.

Psalms 37:4 “Delight yourself also in the LORD, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

To “delight yourself in the LORD” we must make HIS Word a valuable part of our heart, mind and life.  By doing so, we will be walking in the path of Christ.  We will be able to say that we know Him.  We will know that we know Him... and the world will see this and should desire to know Him too.

3 IF WE KNOW GOD, & KNOW WE ARE IN HIM... THEN WE MUST WALK AS CHRIST WALKED (7-14)

                 (9) DO NOT LIE

                 (9-11) DO NOT HATE

                 (12) YOUR SINS ARE FORGIVEN

                 (14) GOD's WORD ABIDES IN US

What more can be said?  Christ has walked on this earth giving us an example of how to live, act, think, and pray…  We must be imitators of Christ! Paul imitated Christ.  “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ”  (1 Corinthians 11:1).

“Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.  And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.”  (Eph 5:1-2)

“Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. He who does good is of God, but he who does evil has not seen God.”  (3 Jn 1:11)

APPLICATION: I MUST ACT upon the knowledge I have in God. Let it become part of MY daily life/living!  That’s the hard part… not just believing it, not just knowing it, but living it too!  Living without shame – allowing others to experience HIS love through me.

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“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.
Cleanse your hands… and purify your hearts…”  James 4:8

6 - NEXT ISSUE

Join us in the next issue when we will continue in 1 John 2:7-14
as consider “A NEW COMMANDMENT!”

7 - PARTICIPATION

This section is a revised section returning from the FIRST EDITIONS of E.C.H.O. where you can actively participate in ECHO and sharing encouragement with others.  E.C.H.O. is interested in your thoughts.  Do you have something you would like to share with others, a favorite web link, a favorite verse/passage of scripture, etc?  Please write to EncourageOthers@msn.com and share you thoughts.

 Follow the link below and you can share words of encouragement to deployed members from all branches of the military:

http://anyservicemember.navy.mil/

ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO

The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you,
Sincerely yours,

-=Daniel
  Philippians 1:6

ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO ~ ECHO

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