The Spirit Of The Lord : Jonathan Crabtree
Trust to be Trusted : Jonathan Crabtree
Im telling you now, if you are the sort of person who has lots of trust in your own abilities you need to look to your left and right and give over some responsibility very now and then. It is awesome that you have confidence in your own abilities, but life is a team game, and so is church life, if anything is going to work, people need to distribute responsibility and build up a teams moral, self esteem, and more importantly, create more leaders to branch out and achieve more than you could ever imagine. Also, if you know you have abilities and your not being chosen often to head up teams, or you aren't being trusted with the level of responsibility you feel you can cope with you need to take into account the "team" aspect I spoke about earlier. Leaders trust leaders who trust, and if you cant trust the rest of your team to do a good job, you need to get your priorities right. The task you as a team are tackling together at that time will last a day, or a week, or a month. However, giving someone a chance to shine, showing them the ropes, giving them a hand, and leaving perfection to one side will change that persons life for much longer than a month. Life in the church is not all about the end product of your task, but its about the end product of your team, invest more of your time in them and less of your time in your task.
I pray that god would give you patience to co-operate with your team, take time out of the schedule to invest in the individuals and place them before your task, let your leadership have a healthy balance of task and team, and may all your hard work be noticed and give you influence with your leaders. Amen
You Are The Future Right Now : Jonathan Crabtree
This is a post to every young person who thinks they aren't good enough, thinks their time is later on, wants to wait till they are older to get involved. To all of you I want to say this, Why wait for heaven when you can bring heaven to earth? We live in a society that tells us that we are nothing, it says we will amount to nothing, we amount to nothing now, we are lazy, we are disrespectful, we are antisocial and manny other things. Why should we let them dictate what we do, who we are, what our values are? We are a mass for god, a group of young people who have a purpose, and our job is to be salt and light to the earth, and the best way of doing that is to prove them wrong, let us not be lazy, but energetic, let us not be disrespectful, but a generation who honours others and puts them first, and if you think there is no point in trying, look to the bible for inspiration, 11 young people under the age of 21 lead by a 30 odd year old man shook the world with their message of love and because of them we are christians now! don't let life pass you by, yes we are only passing through this world, but make the most of it and bring heaven down to earth so you can bless others!
My prayer for you this week is that you would come to know your value in christ, know that he has a plan for you, not just in the future, but right now, and that god would supply you with the strength, courage and determination to see those plans and purpose come to life in your life. Amen.
Be Naturaly Supernatural : Jonathan Crabtree
One thing that I have been finding recently is the diversity of talks and styles to do with the holy spirit, and the use of spiritual gifts. Now I as a person love the spirit and try and use those gifts practically as much as possible, wether that be the fruits of the spirit, (e.g. kindness, goodness, faithfulness) or the gifts, (e.g. prophecy, speaking in tongues) but I find that pastors and preachers can never seem to agree on how to use them. The main trend I find is preachers are Either Pro Fruit, Pro Gift or just off their heads on spirits, which makes it hard to discern which is right or wrong.
I realised at this point that I couldn't just take someone else's word for how I should use my gifts, but i should go straight to god's word and miss out the middle man, and the conclusion I came up with is that we shouldn't look directly at the gifts and how strange or mundane they are, but we should look at ourselves and our comfort zone. I know that we need to push our boundaries and move out our comfort zone to become better men of god, but the fact is we need to start from a point and move forward, and preachers of today always seem to miss out the mid ground, you are Either "super gifted" a "super fruit" a "super human" or none at all, and so from the outset we have a mentality that we either have it or we don't, even when the bible clearly splits each category up and states that each individual is gifted in different ways, so we shouldn't be jealous of others gifting and fruit salads. Just because you don't speak in tongues or prophesy over people doesn't mean you don't have any gifts, its not an all or nothing package, you just have to let god show you your gifts and he will do so.
When we get started on this journey we need to start from a place that feels natural to us so we are not intimidated by the gifts that all of us possess, but also we have to start all together to get the ball rolling. We have a generation of young people who aren't taping into the arsenal that god has given to us to use against circumstances and to use to build each other up, and this is down to a bad image given to the holy spirit by pastors who take it to a massive level, or pastors who make it an elephant in the room. There is no need to go up to people and start shaking your hand over their head when you pray, that is not all the holy spirit is about, the holy spirit is natural and should be treated as such.
I challenge you to go and use the gifts god gave you, not to an extreme extent, but to your natural comfort, no one will be wierded out, but lives will be impacted by it, I promise you.
Good & God relationships : Jonathan Crabtree
In life as a 16 year old i know full well the pressure we are under as christians swimming against the tide. Everything you do seems to push against the norm and all your being wants to do is turn around and flow with the tide. The fact is being a christian isn't an easy ride, but its the best ride and the most contenting you can take, the problem with a tide is you can only really go two ways, against it or with it, try and go any other direction in a tide and it will sweep you away and make life very hard. It says quite bluntly in revelation 3:16 "So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth."
Although it seems a very drastic statement, it has a big impact in our lives, we either need to swim with the crowd, or swim against it, if we cant decide which one, or dabble in both we will loose our bearings in the water, go of course, injure ourselves, and all the way we will be strolling even more than we would if we had just chosen to swim 100% against it. This is where I come to the title of this blog Post, you need to apply this to your friendships and relationships. The people you let closest to you are the people who will influence you the most, and without even realising it you will be conforming to your crowd, wether that is in the church, in school, at work, where ever you are you will be taken by the tide of your friends. This is because god designed us to be in a group, he designed us to have relationships and follow as a group, this is why its important to have a strong group of relationships with other christians, and not just any christians, but christians who are swimming against the Tide 100%, because even if you aren't, they will push you to, and make it easier to push against the tide, and provide a slip stream for you to swim in, so the tide doesn't have a strong effect on you. in a group against the tide, its effect becomes weaker and it becomes easier to fight it, until it becomes a breeze.
So to sum this up, don't be swayed by the tide, stay consistent in your direction, and surround yourself with people who are swimming your way to make a slipstream for your life. I know its hard to put into practice, but if your willing to invest in your god relationships, your good relationships will gradually become god relationships! Trust me.
Fredom & Condemnation : Jonathan Crabtree
The problem comes when we fail to let go of the past and let go of our problems. Its one thing to know your forgiven, but its a whole other level to let that knowledge into your life and live within that truth. The devils biggest weapon is condemnation, if the devil can make you feel condemned he can make you feel unworthy, and then that feeling of unworthiness pushes you away from god, then you start praying less, and when you do pray you don't actually ask for what you want or need because you feel you don't deserve it.
The reason we feel this way is because its true, we have done wrong and we don't deserve the blessing god gives us. But the thing is he gives us blessing anyway, not because we have earn it, but because he loves us. We cant let ourselves be overthrown by the devil and let ourselves think like this, the reason the devil attacks us with doubt and twisted truth is because he dent have the power to touch us, if he did he would get some serious ass whooping, cos the fact is god has won the battle already, thats why he has to make us do all the work for him, he uses our doubts and insecurities for his own gain.
However, if we as a generation know that in christ we have no condemnation, and we do live in this truth, we will be unstoppable. if we not only know the word, but act it out in our life and live it, insecurity will have no foothold in our life, yes we all have things that we feel insecure about, but it will not control us and nor will the devil. God will reign, and we will live under it.
Try making an extra effort this week to push aside condemnation, and speak the word over you, if you feel insecure and you feel low in your self worth, tell yourself these things each morning "I am fearfully and wonderfully made" "you created my inmost being & you knit me together in my mother’s womb." (psalm 139) "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11) "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." John 3:16-17 These verses will help you realise that god created and designed you to the very finest detail, if he wanted you to be any different he would have made you that way, but he didn't, he made you the way he made you, in that knowledge you can throw your lack of self worth out the window, the god who breathed out the stars, spun the planets on his fingers, he decided you would have that nose, that little toe, that type of finger nail, knowing that puts everything in perspective and helps you to know that you don't need to change a thing. Being yourself is what god designed you to be.
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