Garden Ministries

Encounter the living God

General

What difference does it make if we don’t have LOVE?

To have LOVE, I must know LOVE. And God IS LOVE (I John 4:8). Therefore, I must KNOW God to LOVE like Him. I thought I KNEW all of this! It seems that my spiritual Drawing Board just got erased and I am on Ground Zero and need a super-charged revelation about God’s LOVE—again.

Super-talented, amazingly gifted, dazzle-your-socks-off performances, without first investing our hearts into God’s heart and caring about what He says to care about, counts for nothing. What a waste of time, energy, and personal resources. From God’s perspective, performance-based giving has no return on our investment because it was not given out of a First Love relationship with Him.

The “Align-Abide-Agree” strategy helps us discover the vital link between knowing and acting in the kind of love that I Corinthians 13 describes.

  • Align with God–who is Love–through reverent submission to and passion for Jesus, his beloved Son. Not my will but Yours be done God.
  • Abide with Jesus who intimately loves us. Get to know His heart for you and for others.
  • Agree with God who requires us to know his love more than any other eternal attribute. Above even our faith and our hope, the greatest of these is LOVE.

I Corinthians 13:1-3 (NLT): If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.

Character Qualities that Tell Me if I Know Him and Have His Love (or Not)
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.


General

Psalm 121

Psalm 121 – From the version of The Message (MSG)
A pilgrim song
1  I look up to the mountains; does my strength come from mountains?
2  No, my strength comes from GOD, who made heaven, and earth,
    and mountains.
3  He won’t let you stumble, your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
4  Not on your life! Israel’s Guardian will never doze or sleep.
5  GOD’s your Guardian, right at your side to protect you–
6  Shielding you from sunstroke, sheltering you from moonstroke.
7  GOD guards you from every evil, he guards your very life.
8  He guards you when you leave and when you return, he guards
    you now, he guards you always.

"I pray that this will be a living Word for ALL
  in this new season." – George 


General What's Happening?

Like Whirlwinds..an Invader Comes

By the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006, we will see signs of Isaiah 21 breaking out all over the place. “Like whirlwinds sweeping through the south land, an invader comes from the desert from a land of terror.” – Isaiah 21:1 NIV. The timing of these signs may be long-term in their unfolding.

In January of 2005, the Lord spoke to George through a dream in the night saying, “In a year from now, you will see Isaiah 21 breaking out all over the place.” George understood the word to mean that the spirit of Babylon in our country (i.e., the insatiable pursuit of materialistic gain and the oppression of the poor) would be judged and that God would raise up Deliverers and empower them to bring help and justice to the poor and oppressed in the land.

Is what is happening in our natural realm with hurricanes (whirlwinds) the entire scope of the calamity, or is it symbolic of another calamity to come, i.e., “an invader comes from the desert, from a land of terror?” Are these hurricanes a natural and symbolic representation of another invasion to come from a “land of terror?”


General What's Happening?

Change. Are you ready for it?

We’re not ready for change if we’re not willing to be changed. Resistance to change comes in many different packages. For example, we could be resisting change if we want everyone to act on their beliefs and values in the same way as we act. “Change Resistors” often call anything that confronts the status quo of established, expected behavior, “a rebellion.” Yet these very acts of perceived “rebellion” often serve as agents of change—or the impetus for new beginnings.

Whether the “rebellion” was born out of good or bad motives is determined in the outcome—both immediate and long term. Sometimes it’s a mixture, and the good must be extracted and preserved while the bad is disgarded. By the Spirit of our living God, we can be keen and unafraid as we discern the changes happening in our world. Our anchor point is the truth of Jesus Christ, and Jesus was the type to call a person out of a boat and expect them to believe that they could walk on water without fear or doubting.


General Performance and faith-based love Podcast Audio Messages

You cannot give what you do not own.

You cannot "give to God" what you do not own. If fear, jealousy, and control own any part of our heart about a certain matter or a relationship; then fear, jealousy, and control "own" that part of us and squash our relationships. So why are we fearful, jealous and controlling? Listen to the 8-21-05 podcast message for an indepth view. We value your comments about this subject or our podcast messages. Please post them by clicking on "comments" below.


General

BLOG: The Opposite of Love is not Hate

The opposite of love is not hate, it is fear.
Our worst enemy is not Satan–the devil.
Our worst enemy is our fears, upon which the devil preys.
Love actually drives out fear. If we follow the way of love, our fears will subside.

By his perfect example, Jesus has shown us the way of love. In order to become free from fear then, we are to follow Jesus’ example and direction. "There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life–fear of death, fear of judgment–is one not yet fully formed in love." I John 4:18 (The Message)