Today’s Bible Verse
“Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:26-27)
I was excited to get up today. I have been looking forward – for a long time—to attend a Sunday service in Bethel World Outreach Center.
It is the church headed by Pastor Rice Brooks and is part of Every Nation Churches. Pastor Steve Murrell is my favorite preacher ever but Pastor Joey Bonifacio and Pastor Rice tie for a very, very close second.
Pastor Rice wonderfully talked about what we see – as human beings – as hopeless, Jesus sees a HARVEST.
Sometimes you and I get so caught up in this uncontainable exhuberance of sharing to other people the joy we have found in God.
That is actually a great thing.
But there are times when what we share is not met with any kind of enthusiasm – we might see it as hopeless.
Sometimes when we invest so much time in people to help them get their lives together and they don’t – we might see it as hopeless.
On occasions when we see someone we love so broken and lost and has not made any progress – we just give up and see them as hopeless.
Or… we just see them as a lost case, give up – because they are hopeless.
But through our Father’s eyes they are a HARVEST – the cream of the crop. Jesus sees the kind of people they can become no matter how miserable circumstances are for them at the moment.
It just reminded me once again that people’s most defining moments are not according to my terms but God’s.
I am grateful that God used Pastor Rice to remind this of me again today. He is such an awesome communicator. He always makes me feel “wow I am human to feel this way and I can do something about this to make it better.”
After service, I had an American Idol geek moment. We were talking to some people after service and then I stopped in my tracks, held Robert’s arm and said “Scott Savol!”
If you are not familiar with who he is, he is the 5th place in American Idol in Carrie Underwood’s year. And because I am a nerd, I shamelessly asked him if I can have a picture with him!
Robert and I decided to have lunch at Applebee’s right by the Gaylord Opryland Hotel in Nashville. I like trying things I have never eaten before so I ordered a quesadilla burger. Boy that was delicious!
We heard about how grand the hotel was so we decided to walk over to the Opryland Hotel and look around. Look at the picture below. Yes, that’s inside a hotel.
There is a mall right across the hotel called the Opry Mills. We went inside Dave and Buster’s and decided to go try the photo morphing booth – just curious to see how our future son will look like!
How do you think our “son” turned out?
I also got to shop a little bit in the Opry Mills mall. Lots of nice outlet stores! Looved it!
So how did my day have to do with today's challenge in exercising forgiveness? Absolutely nothing! I am grateful to God on directing me to another path to learn from and blessing me with such a happy day.
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