Finding Your Way

June 25, 2016 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

Finding Your Way You run to work. You run home. You run to gatherings. You run to family events. You are always running, somewhere, but do you ever feel …”lost”? Do you ever ask yourself, is there more?

I have recently “unplugged” from life feeling perhaps I wasn’t on the right road. I’m one who usually is very confident about where I am going. So much so I tell my GPS where to go, but yet I was feeling like I needed to for a few days, (94 Days) a season, pull over, and yes ask for directions. I was in need of finding my way. Perhaps re-calculating.

The best source I have found for asking directions when it comes to life is God. God hasn’t showed up yet to give me my destination, but He has made it very clear I was right by pulling over. I was reading from the book of Psalms last week from “The Message”, and I could identify with the writer. I looked and it was chapter 94. I was at my writer’s conference two weeks ago and I liked what one of the speakers read from her book, so I bought it. It turns out to be, “Finding Your Way” by Jane Rubietta. The short daily devotionals have been amazing. Then this very morning, again reading from “The Message” Psalms 101 I read this:

Psa 101:2 I’m finding my way down the road of right living, but how long before you show up?

God is truly amazing. If you are feeling uneasy, perhaps lost, pull over. Ask for directions, but be sure to seek those directions from God, and not some other place where anyone can tell you where to go who doesn’t really know you. God knows you. He knows where He desires you to be. He created all of us for more. More to life. More of Him. You will find God, in finding your way.

Your Father’s Shoes

June 19, 2016June 19, 2016 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

Shoes When I was in fourth grade we were given a writing assignment. We were asked to write about a typical day the shoes of our father has. So off I went writing. (Actual writing pictured to the left.) I think I got a C+. There was one day I came home from school and found my father’s work boot in the garage covered with blood. Due to one of the hazards of working with glass I later found out a piece had broken and it cut the main artery in his leg. He stayed home while it healed, but I never thought about growing up and doing what my father did for a living.

In biblical days a young man would fill his father’s shoes and eventually carry on the family business. Even Jesus when he was young learned to be a carpenter, but when he got older he begin to do the work of God, his real father.

Luke 2:49 And he said unto them, Why were you looking for me? Don’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business?

Now I am older. I too want to be doing my heavenly Father’s business. I want to be like his son Jesus, doing what God wants me to do to advance his kingdom. Oh, and there was one day when Jesus’ work shoes were bloody too. One of the hazards of being a savior, the Messiah, and dying to cover the sins of others.

Just Imagine

June 11, 2016 / Mark Brady / 1 Comment

Dust 01 (2) When I got married I thought I had found the perfect woman. She hated to mop and I hated to dust, so I would do all of the mopping and she did the dusting. Most of us think of dust as a nuisance. Something that none of us want to collect, yet we all do.

God looks at dust a little differently. He actually loves dust. How do I know that? Because He formed, or made, man from dust, and God loves us.

Gen 3:19 “…for dust you are and to dust you shall return.”

Yep, that’s right, you came from dust, and you are loved by God.

While I was attending this year’s writer’s conference, held at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois I was getting away for a moment and went to the 5^th floor. I started noticing some really cool art. Then my eyes became fixated upon the image posted at the top of this blog. It was so beautiful. Then I read the little white sign to the right of the art. The title of this piece of art is, “Corpus” by David JP Hooker. The art piece is the contents of vacuum bags collected from all over the campus of Wheaton College.

If a man can make a master piece like this from dust imagine what God can do with dust. Just imagine what God can do with you.

Do You Window Shop?

June 5, 2016June 8, 2016 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

Have you ever noticed how something in a store window looks great, and you get this sense that if you were wearing that outfit it would look equally just as great? You think everybody that sees you in that outfit will just ooh and awe as much as you did when you saw it in the window. Well if you are honest then you know it doesn’t really go that way. You have learned the store has professionals dress their windows to suck you in.

On a recent trip where I picked up my mother and drove her to another state to meet her great granddaughter I witnessed another kind of window shopping. Not only did my mother meet her new great granddaughter for the first time, but she also got to meet my ex-wife’s husband. At the end of the day we were reviewing the events that had unfolded. My ex’s new husband came up. My mother went on and on about how wonderful he was, and how funny, and smart, and had the most beautiful eyes, and nice curly hair. I finally had to shut her down by saying, “Mom, I get it. My ex-wife traded up!”

My point is this: Anybody can look good in a window where the lighting is good etc., but when you really get to know someone you see through the window and into the heart. When you see their heart are they still so attractive? God is not fooled by the view through the window, but he always sees the heart. The truth is we need to be more concerned about how our hearts look, and when the heart looks great the rest will too.