Twenty Twenty

Volume 9 Issue 12

Greeting in His Name,

We made it! Not everyone can say that but if you are reading this edition, you can say, "I MADE IT!" May have had to cry, shut-in, make do, tighten up this year - but you made it. So with that being said, today's blog is entitled 20/20. Hope you find some inspiration, conviction, and queries.

shalom and love,

heidi

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I don't know if you remember crossing over into twenty-twenty; where you were, what your atmosphere was like, what your thoughts were for this year as you entered it. For me I remember hearing a lot about vision. I believe merely because of the association with the number 2020 and it's close connection to sight; the prophetic world was sounding off in regards to it. After the pandemic was brought to the mainstream I had to ask myself, what is God trying to show us in this season? Was God, in the midst of the pandemic, trying to do some corrective "spiritual" eye surgery? Are we seeing clearly or is our "religious" lives out of focus? I don't know about you but church life in the 90's was far more upbeat and thriving but I'm quite sure every decade before could probably say the same unless it was in the midst of a down turn. Is the church currently in a down turn due to our vision? Let's take a look.

Matthew 6:22 NIV

“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. The Greek word here for healthy actually means generous. Kind of a strange interpretation when associated with the eye. How can my eye be generous? Well if you look at a few more translations and dig a little deeper you see that your eye is full of light when you can see need and then help. That's a healthy eye. I guess I allowed myself to go in this direction because we have seen much need this year. And the need can be seen in so many ways. Starting with our need for a cure for the virus, to our need for justice and peace, and right on through to the need that is seen by so many - financial strain. As well, I can't neglect that many are in need of a comforter because they have lost love ones and weren't able to be there by their side to say goodbye. So much is needed. But if you had told me this as we closed out 2019 I would have probably doubted. Why? Because, twenty - twenty was suppose to be that place of movement and change, clear vision - 20/20 vision. Excitement - Expectation - Something New on The Horizon.

It's funny that even with my poor vision that after a eye exam my doctor will say you have 20/20 vision. Of course this is with the aid of eye glasses. My natural eye is not functioning at 20/20 vision, it need some help. America - Church - Christian - Non-Christian; We need some help. The help we need can only from a Savior. I ask you, is all of this being done so that the body of Christ we may come back to the drawing board of life and reexamine whether we are operating in the true will of God? At the onset of the virus, I found it quite pleasant that a lot of the distractions from everyday life was not in the way of spending time with God. We had more time to really pray, read, and meditate. The shutdown was good for the spiritual man. It actually took me back to those places in my earlier walk when I took intentional sabbaticals to see where I was in God and where He wanted me to be. I have to ask the hard questions, what were we offering "the church" before the pandemic and has this time of being in the pandemic made the body of Christ better, wiser, stronger? I ask because just this week a pastor friend of mine shared a video from YouTube of four young adults who says their life has improved since leaving the church. The video was thought provoking and I embrace the host attitude - we have to listen. Listening goes back to the word healthy. How can I have a healthy church, a healthy flock of people, a healthy Christian if I'm not open to entertain some of the hard questions that plague society and the church. The church itself is the HELP CENTER; a place of compassion and generosity. But on the other hand, if it's all about agendas that don't produce spiritual growth, changed lifestyles, right living and helping people to the throne of heaven then we are in a greater pandemic. I believed from the beginning that God was giving us some time to reevaluate our walk and see how we can best operate now and in the coming season.

Matthew 6:23a

But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. The Greek word for healthy is generous, so the opposite has to be true for unhealthy which is stingy. When a person is stingy they clearly have no regard for another. That's truly not God or god-like. Personally, it has been hard to see such stinginess in America. Disunity at an utmost high. Sinful life styles slung across the media like a modern day Ninevah or Sodom and Gomorrah. Everybody wanting their right to be unhealthy. MY GOD! The passage opens pinpointing that where your treasure is there your heart will be. America, the place that says In God We Trust, has your heart become so filled with the treasures of this world that you forsake the truth of God. My mind goes back to those who were in the aforementioned video. And one of the last statements the host shared was that she didn't feel the young adults before her didn't want to go to church but that they were more so against attending UNHEALTHY churches. I had to go and see where the numbers were and according to Barna nearly half of the people who were practicing Christians are no longer. From 45% in 2000 to 25% today, as well Wikipedia has this to say, ""In the United States, Christians will decline from more than three-quarters of the population in 2010 to two-thirds in 2050." This doesn't scare me but it does set off an alarm that we need to "see" what's going on. Christ told the disciples that God had sent him into the world and that he was sending us into the world. Why has he sent us? To help.

Matthew 6:23b

If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! Oh my God! The amplified Bible says, darkness is devoid of God's precepts. So, if the very light - generosity/help that is in us is devoid, without God's principles we are in for some dark and terrible times. We know that as we inch closer and closer to the end times that scripture says, men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these! (2 Timothy 3:2-5)

I don't believe that we are done with the need to help others, we may just be on the horizon of helping some people get through this. Now is a good time for church leaders to have a forum and discuss the morality and the immorality within the body of Christ. To discuss how we can train believers to become disciples for Christ. The pandemic has brought some hardship but I have seen it also bring out some of the better qualities of mankind. For one the church has not succumb to failure but has allowed itself to move into more creative ways to serve. Has every church done this, no, but a great deal have. I know that 2020 has been a window of time for God to clear our vision and show us what is most important about our walk with him. 2021 is ahead of us, and with every year there is the potential to do something marvelous for the kingdom, something over the top for society, and something great with your walk. If anything let's be one in 2021.

LIFE QUOTE

“A time to say goodbye and a time to say hello. A time to bid farewell and a time to look forward. A time to let go and a time to learn new things, that is what happens when the New Year rings in."

-Catherine Pulsifer

Let Us Laugh!

The future, the present and the past walked into a bar. You know things got a little tense.

(https://inews.co.uk/light-relief/jokes/best-pun-based-jokes-170096)

Hope to see you Next Year... Next Month....

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