Joyous Thirst

The past couple weeks I've been diving (pun intended) into the story of Jonah.  We all know that he spent three days in the belly of the beast, but do you know how he got there?  Jonah decided to disobey God by going towards another city.  Jonah got on a boat to run away from where God had told him to go.  Here are my three key takeaways from Jonah's story: 1) God will use "bumpers," 2) God can use you whether or not you're available, and 3) God is bigger than anything you can even dream of.  1)  God will use "Bumpers" Jonah decided not to go towards Nineveh, instead he headed towards Tarshish.  Jonah is on a boat with other sailors and as they are traveling they encounter a great storm.  The storm was so great that the ship "threatened to break up."  This storm and the risk to the ship was great enough for the sailors to start throwing cargo off of the ship and cry out to their own gods.  What was happening?  I am fortunate to k...

The past month my church group has been focusing on the Sermon on the Mount for which we get the Beatitudes from Jesus.  The cool thing about going through this has been that I learned that the order of the Beatitudes is important as Jesus was giving His people a road map of how to be transformed through Him.  Jesus lived His life perfectly and is our example for what we should strive for.  Two times Jesus talks about righteousness in the Beatitudes:  "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied" and "Blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."  As I learned more about this and dove deeper into my own prayer time it occurred to me that Jesus didn't say blessed are THE righteous, or blessed are those that are persecuted for THEIR righteousness.....no, Jesus said blessed are those who hunger and thirst, blessed are those that are persecuted for the sake of righte...