"God isn't OCD: He just loves you THAT much!"

I can remember being at the fair or in Sunday School when someone would have filled a large jar with jelly beans or even candy corn. There would be a contest to see who could guess how many beans were in the jar. The one who guessed the nearest to the correct number would win a prize. 

I can also remember playing with the sand at the beach and being completely amazed at the amount of sand on the beach and even in the world.

It is amazing to think that while it is silly for us to imagine knowing the exact number of sand on a beach, beans in a jar, stars in the sky, birds in the air, or even hairs on your head......God knows the EXACT number!

"And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered."

(Matthew 10:30) 

So is God trying to show that He is obsessive compulsive, or just extremely organized?  Probably not...

What it all boils down to is that God loves you so much that he knows every detail of your life and was so intentional about creating you, for a purpose, that he knows the very number of hairs on your head.

Not only did God create you, He created you in His own image!

Not only did God create you, He created you for a specific purpose!

So the next time you hold a hand full of sand or try to figure out the exact number of jelly beans in a jar, remember that God loves you so much that he knows the exact number of hairs on your head - - and that He knew long before you were ever knitted together in your mothers womb!

God has a specific and unique plan for your life!

Blessings! 

"What about the roof?"

There are two things that I have to constanly remind myself:

1.  Faith is willing to do the unorthodox.

2.  Faith does not stay in a rut. 

The usual way to enter a house is through a door, never through the roof (excluding my time as a firefighter, when I often entered homes through holes cut in roofs.)  

But for the men in this story, that was the only way to get to Jesus, and so as unorthodox as it was, that is what they did.

¹ A few days later, when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people heard that he had come home. ² They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. ³ Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. ⁴ Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵ When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” (Mark 2:1-5)

A church that is stuck in a rut, or a church that sits around saying, "We’ve never done it that way before," or, "We tried it once & it didn’t work," will never succeed in its God-given tasks unless it dares to try something different once in a while. 

I've often wondered which one came up with the idea or if it was all of them.  I'm sure there was one guy who must have spoken up and said; "Wait! What about the roof?"


The example of these men teach us that faith will always continue trying, no matter what the obstalces or oppostitons are; no matter what the bi-laws or traditions are, and no matter what has always "been done in the past!"


What kind of faith do you have?  


The kind of faith that turns around when you see a crowded house and a blocked door?

or the kind of faith that sees a crowded house and an empty roof?