When a person sneezes and you say "Bless you," what do you really mean?  Be blessed for sneezing?  Be blessed for getting that tingling sensation out of your nose? Be blessed with physical health, material things, or spiritual strength?  Most likely it is a rote response to someone's sneeze.

Perhaps you can bless someone with something more specific rather than saying something without meaning anything. By doing so, it might bring some identifiable answers.  Imagine how one would feel encouraged that you cared enough to bless them thoughtfully and God cared enough to fulfill your blessing over that person?

Or, you can bless God by expressing praise and thanksgiving to Him for what He is and/or for what He has done, is doing, and will be doing in your life or in the other person's life. Blessing God also takes place through your service and your desire to serve Him.  When He is first in your life, He is honored.

The Lord provides a vast array of good gifts, and your desire for such benefits is normal and universal. Actually, as you yearn for divine blessings, apply the golden rule as a motivation to bless others.

EXPERIENCE THE SUPERNATURAL

The first session of the Lion's Den Weekend Mini-Conference will begin this Friday evening, January 27, at 7:00 p.m.  Pastor Hansel, who is the director of the Lion's Den School, will lead out in this event, together with our local leaders and faculty.

 

Sessions will continue all day on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. till 10:00 p.m., and again on Sunday from 10:00 a.m. till noon.

 

Dustin and Savannah Box of Vallejo, CA and Keith and Heather Ferrante from the Mission at Vacaville, CA will also be here as guest faculty.

 

There is a good number of pre-registered participants for the conference, which promises to give a taste of what the ten-week Lion's Den Summer School of the Supernatural is about, to those who will participate this time. 

 

Registration is $50.  Those who wish to attend segments of the conference may wish to register for $15 per session.

 

 

 

 

We won't get tired reminding you to drop your pledge cards into the "treasure chest" parked against the back wall of the church sanctuary at Gospel Life.

Please take a red "Ministry of Giving Commitment" card, fill it in according to your choice, and drop into the "treasure chest." You will find a stack of red cards beside it.

Use this chest as well for your "Million Dollar Fund" donations to retire our church's mortgage.  Be sure to properly mark the envelopes in which you put your donations. 

  

"Even one of their own prophets has said, 'Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.' This testimony is true. Therefore, rebuke them sharply, so that they will be sound in the faith and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of those who reject the truth" (Titus 1:12-15).

 

In December 1983, The Princeton Religion Research Center published a landmark survey conducted for The Wall Street Journal by the Gallup Organization. The researchers measured a wide range of moral and ethical behaviors, such as calling in sick when not sick, cheating on income tax, and pilfering company supplies for personal use. The results were disappointing, to say the least.

 

But what the researchers found most startling was that there was no significant difference between the churched and the unchurched in their ethics and values on the job. In other words, despite the fact that more and more people were attending churches, churches seemed to be having less and less of an impact on the moral fiber of their people, at least in the workplace.

 

To quote the researchers: "These findings will come as a shock to the religious leaders and underscore the need for religious leaders to channel the new religious interest in America not simply into religious involvement but in deep spiritual commitment."

 

"Either these are not the gospels, or we're not Christians," said Thomas Linacre, Henry VIII's doctor and Renaissance thinker, after given the four gospels in Greek. Linacre recognized a great disparity between those who proclaimed Christ and how they lived their lives.

 

If our faith life is not validated through our behavior then one must question if we even have a genuine relationship with Christ. The apostle Paul didn't like what he saw in the believers on the island of Crete. They proclaimed Christ with their mouth, but their behavior looked no different than those who did not claim Christ.

  

Pray that your faith is "proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:7-8).

 

(Today God Is First (TGIF) devotional message, Copyright by Os Hillman, Marketplace Leaders.)