focus

Your Home, God’s Home?

/ Mark Brady / Leave a comment

8-9 Then God said:

“Here’s what I want you to do:
    Climb into the hills and cut some timber.
Bring it down and rebuild the Temple.
    Do it just for me. Honor me.
You’ve had great ambitions for yourselves,
    but nothing has come of it.
The little you have brought to my Temple
    I’ve blown away—there was nothing to it.

9-11 “And why?” (This is a Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies, remember.) “Because while you’ve run around, caught up with taking care of your own houses, my Home is in ruins. That’s why. Because of your stinginess. And so I’ve given you a dry summer and a meager crop. I’ve matched your tight-fisted stinginess by decreeing a season of drought, drying up fields and hills, withering gardens and orchards, stunting vegetables and fruit. Nothing—not man or woman, not animal or crop—is going to thrive.” Hag. 1:8-11 (MSG)

While I was reading the verses above, the Holy Spirit prompted me to include them in a blog post. So here they are. “Why?” you might be asking yourself. I observe people. I listen when they talk about their lives, and many times, I hear what is consuming their time and consuming them.

A lot of people are focusing on their own lives. They are building new homes or moving into bigger ones. Purchasing the latest car or trying to acquire a higher-paying job. Others may be in pursuit of a relationship.

On the other side of the coin are those that are consumed while trying to make ends meet. Wondering how they are going to pay the electric bill or feed their family.

There is nothing wrong with trying to do the best you can in life. There are no issues with wanting bigger and better things, but when your pursuit becomes all you can think about, it becomes wrong. On the other hand, worrying about how your needs will be met can be bad, too.

If the things in life become more important than your relationship or trust in God, then they are wrong. That is what the scriptures above are talking about. You see, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God doesn’t want to be ignored or take a backseat to anyone or anything else. Nor should he. Don’t be surprised if God backs off from your life. Not to hurt you but to turn your face back to him.

Keeping our focus on our relationship with God should be our number one priority in life. Doing so helps us with the other things in life that compete for our attention. A right-side relationship with God puts the other things in our lives in perspective. Keeping our temples pure and holy pleases God, and then he will be happy to dwell among us.

Copyright © 2024 Mark Brady. All rights reserved.

What To Do

/ Mark Brady / 2 Comments

A whole lot is going on these days in our world, in America, and most likely in your private lives. It would be easy for one to look at others and focus on what they are saying or doing. One may be invading a country another maybe ignoring that a lot of Americans are financially struggling, and a lot of people are more concerned about their own selfish rights than the life of a child who can’t yet protest their opinion of wanting to live.

I can just see the devil having a hay day laughing while so many people are running around screaming trying to get their view heard. He is behind these evil things, unjust actions, and selfish rights.

Instead of joining those trying to be heard I implore you to keep your eyes on Jesus! To keep a good, strong, and tight connection to the vine. Continue to bear, produce much fruit, the fresh fruit of God.

Psalm 1   The Message

1 How well God must like you—
    you don’t walk in the ruts of those blind-as-bats,
    you don’t stand with the good-for-nothings,
    you don’t take your seat among the know-it-alls.

2-3 Instead you thrill to God’s Word,
    you chew on Scripture day and night.
You’re a tree replanted in Eden,
    bearing fresh fruit every month,
Never dropping a leaf,
    always in blossom.

4-5 You’re not at all like the wicked,
    who are mere windblown dust—
Without defense in court,
    unfit company for innocent people.

6 God charts the road you take.
The road they take leads to nowhere.

Copyright © 2022 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.

There’s No Other Way!

/ Mark Brady / Leave a comment

It happened before I knew it. Facing a trying time, where facts were present regardless of having an understanding as to why, was very difficult for me. When you have to do another withdraw from your savings when in your mind you keep saying, “But, God, I know for sure we heard you!” I don’t understand why this venture has cost us financially, when it should have grown our finances.

By Saturday, while sitting in front of a warm fire, I realized I had not read from my current devotional, “Jesus Calling” all week. I went to get it. Ironically? No, but smacking me in the face was the overall theme for the week was, regardless of the circumstances, keep trusting me, and obeying also.

I needed to read that message every single day of this past week, but I wasn’t. Funny how quickly we take ownership of our situations in our minds. Then what’s odd is we seem to allow those situations to take ownership of us.

There are SO many good stanzas in this old hymn. Words that need to be taken to heart, and lived by.

“Father, I repent for taking my eyes off of you this past week. Please forgive me. I know and believe, that you are sovereign and you do know what you are doing in my life. I gave it to you. Help me not to take it back again. Thank you, God. Amen.”

Copyright © 2022 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.

It’s Christmas at Denny’s Tonight

/ Mark Brady / Leave a comment

I dream of what my life might have been, if only…

Do you live with regret?  I could, if I allowed myself to.  I sometimes wonder what the church would look like if I had stayed on track and became the pastor I believed God had called me to be.  Would we, the people of the church be an Acts chapter 2 type of church?  Believing in, and walking out the power of the Holy Spirit.  Would we see souls saved daily?  What about signs and wonders?  If only.

But instead, I stopped holding on to, waiting for the promises of God, and I accepted the devil’s substitute for my life, because it was there, now, in the moment.  I just had to believe the lies he was telling me that it was okay.  Kind of like accepting the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden.  As I mentioned in my last blog post, Satan tempts or attacks us where we are weak.

Life didn’t end there, for me, as I imagined it would.  I could have become a shell of a man.  I didn’t.  I received God’s forgiveness, asked that his Spirit not depart from me, and moved on.  That is what one should do when things don’t work out the way we think they should.

I read a post on Facebook the other day.  A young woman just had a child in the hospital, but after returning home her and her husband came down with Covid.  The baby was fine, but had to be separated from his new mother.  The baby’s father had to return to the hospital, this time in the intensive care unit.  The young mother wrote something along the lines of, “We dreamed of hiking in the mountains with a tour guide.  But now we are hiking through this with the Lord as our guide.”

Life is not going the way they dreamed, but her focus remains on target.  On the Lord.

That is the only way to deal with potential regret.  Give it to him, and continue to seek him for guidance, for his leading.  He knows the way.  Life may feel like Christmas at Denny’s, but it doesn’t have to.  It comes down to your perspective.  Your view of life.  Is your current situation a set back?  A delay?  A roadblock, or simply a detour?  No matter what it is, God can speak into your spirit and say, “Recalculating.”  God knows the way.  He will get you through the storm and to the other side.

Trust in the Lord completely,
    and do not rely on your own opinions.
    With all your heart rely on him to guide you,
    and he will lead you in every decision you make.
Become intimate with him in whatever you do,
    and he will lead you wherever you go Prov. 3:5-6 (TPT)

Copyright © 2021 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.

Don’t Look Away

/ Mark Brady / 2 Comments

Why are people changing because of what is going on in the world?  Does that make sense to you?  Who you are before hard times should only strengthen during those times.

Why let circumstances alter your relationship with God for the worse?  If it is going to change at all, it should grow and get stronger, but as I have heard from several others in the last few days, that is not happening with some.  As reported, a lot of people are turning away from God in these times, and the lifestyle that once fostered their relationship with God is being discarded.

“As for us, we have all of these great witnesses who encircle us like clouds. So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out before us.

We look away from the natural realm and we fasten our gaze onto Jesus who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this: Because his heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be his, he endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!

So consider carefully how Jesus faced such intense opposition from sinners who opposed their own souls, so that you won’t become worn down and cave in under life’s pressures.” Hebrews 12:1-3 (TPT)

God’s word (like above) encourages us not to look at what is happening around us, but to keep our focus on God if we want to be an overcomer.

Copyright © 2020 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.

Perfect

/ Mark Brady / 2 Comments

Charlie 234Perfection, is a difficult thing to achieve, for those who even try, but somehow, Jesus managed to pull it off.  His accomplishment has always intrigued me.  Many times I have wondered, If Jesus can do it, then why can’t I?  I now have my answer.

As I have studied the life and ministry of Christ, there are some consistent points he focused on:

  • Jesus was in constant communication with his Father, who just so happened to be God.
  • Jesus kept the will of his Father in the front of his mind.
  • Jesus only did what he had seen his Father do.

This kind of focused life got Jesus killed.

Ouch!  But God knew that would happen and was used by God to have a perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.  The very goal of sending your only Son to earth.

So if I achieved perfection, even for an hour, or a day, would it kill me?  No, but would it kill me to try?  If I prayed more I would know every day the will of God, and hopefully do what I knew my heavenly Father would do in all situations and in all conversations.  Dying to myself won’t forgive anyone of sin, but perhaps, it might lead others to Jesus, who can.

Copyright © 2019 Mark Brady.  All rights reserved.