Fellowshipping & Praise the Lord with Doc329 (21)

My new body from heaven;
The new body that I am going to have will not be passed down through failing man. It will be given to me from God. It is not going to be subject to pain, fatigue or other things I have experienced in this body. It will be a perfect body direct from God.
Paul calls this present body a tent ( 2 Corinthians 5:4 ). You never think of a tent as a permanent place to live. If you have to live in a tent, it is acceptable for a short time but not not as a regular dwelling. It is so much better to move out of a tent into a real house.
God is planning to redeem us completely. This redemption includes not just a redeemed body but a new body.

I want to live the kind of life God wants me to live.
There is no problem with my heart and mind. My problem is that my body keeps dragging me down. I cannot be all that I want to be, so I groan.
I am waiting for the day of redemption when God lays claim to what is his. He is going to say, " You have been bought with a price - the shed blood of Jesus!"
He is going to release my soul and spirit from my body and immediately incorporate it into that new body which is from heaven.

God's Ideal
We look around us and seek to understand God through his creation. We want to know God's purpose and intention in creating man and placing him on earth.
Yet we cannot discover this by looking around because people do not fulfill God's ideal.
The only place we find what God has intended is through His word were it is written, '' let us make man in our image, after our own likeness.''

What did God intend?
Look at Jesus and you will know. For Jesus said, '' I always do those things that please the Father.''
The Father said of Christ, '' This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.''
As we look at Jesus, we see what God intended man to be. We cannot look at Adam because Adam fell, even though God did not intend man to fall.

We cannot look at ourselves because we have fallen, even though this was not God's intention either. But if we look to Christ, there we find the divine ideal which God intended for his creation.
It is God's purpose for his Holy Spirit to work in your life and by the power of his Spirit to change you.
He will shape your life into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.

Follow Jesus in the way;
We Christians who have looked upon Jesus as the author of our faith will also look unto Him as our finisher.
If our eyes are truely opened to see Him, then our hearts are open to His love,
then we will follow His commandments.
As Jesus said, " If any man serve me, let him follow me."

O Christians, let us follow Him wherever He goes. Let us follow Him '' In the way ''
In the way laid down in His word, in the way opened by His providence, in the way which His Spirit whispers.
This is the way; as Christians let us walk in it.

Sometimes His way is in the sea and His path is on the great waters, yet His footsteps are not known by all.
The path for many of us lies in the valley of humiliation.
We believers must lay by the cross and the grave, but beyound the grave is the resurrection!
Then the crown of life forever!

Joyful heart
The kind of joy of which we speak is not far from those other giant words like faith, hope, and love. Joy comes when we are living our lives to the fullest, using the gifts with which God has blessed us, loving in the way Jesus loved, and trusting that there is something good and glorious beyond the pale of this world. Jesus says he wants to give us his joy.

It is the kind of joy that does not separate happy days from sad days, successful moments from moments of failure. It is a divine gift that does not leave us during illness, grief, oppression, or persecution. It does not depend on the circumstances of our lives, or even on our momentary feelings. It is that joy that erupts in our hearts because we know that no matter what we belong to Christ who loves us and gave himself for us

JESUS said "FOLLOW ME!
We seem to think that this is such a dreadfully hard thing! It IS, if we only think of the "task" of reading our Bible every day, and spending "so much" time in prayer.
But it is not an impossible task if we keep the real purpose in mind! We are making Jesus know that He is loved!
We are trying to get to know Him, and know Him better and better!
We are keeping HIM in first place!

Lord Jesus,
I know you can understand me when I feel weak because you became weak. You became weary and tired. You were exhausted at times and overworked – like me.
Sometimes I just want to sit down and give up and look for easier ways, but I know you don’t want that for me. Help me, Lift my feet to follow your steps. Extend my arms to reach others in love.
Wipe my tears of sorrow so that I can better see the path. Lead me on, Lord. Lead me on. Amen.

It is joy.
Where sin is absent, peace must reign.
Where God is present, happiness must overflow.
Heaven is a boundless ocean, in which each swelling wave is pleasure in the highest. It is a prospect ever widening, in which each scene is rapturous delight.
It is skies, forever brightening, in which each orb is sparkling ecstacy. It must be so, for love is the one pulse in every heart, praise is the endless sound from every lip, hallelujah the one ceaseless echo.

The blessed cannot cease to sing, because fresh views of their blessed state continually arise. It must be so, for they behold the glories of their Lord, not in dim distance, not through the varying medium of faith, but near, and never to depart, but clear, and ever clearer.
Transporting joy! daily to read new glories in the face of Christ, daily to dive into the deep wonders of the love of God.
Do we not long to be there?

I must say this is a difficult problem. There are so many wills and tastes, so great a difference in culture and habit, and that working together is almost impossible. But when we look at the Christian at the time of his surrender to the Lord, it will not seem so difficult.
I believe that every true Christian begins their service of the Lord with this question! " Lord what will you have me to do?"
And this becomes the first, middle, and ending question of the converted persons life. There are no jealousies between members, no complaining one of an other, but each bearing the burden assigned to them.
And then nothing will help to unite so much as a high appreciation of the work to be done.

To me one soul is worth more than all the world. There are millions that perish daily for lack of the Bread of Life.
With God no man has the right to engage in a work in which he cannot ask for His presence and blessing. We may be sure that God will not allow the Son's mission to fail. "Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that built it."
1Cor.3:9 For we are God's fellow workers: you are God's field, God's building

Stick With It
Psalm 119:31 I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O LORD, put me not to shame.
We live in a world of fads and crazes. Every other day it seems there is something new that everybody is doing. We chase after the latest thing and when we catch it, it is yesterday's news.

Just think about the books we read. For example, there was the "Chicken Soup" series. Self-improvement books just keep coming, and we keep buying. Many of them are full of good information and timely advice. But they all soon find themselves gathering dust on bookshelves while we rush out to purchase the latest book everyone is reading.
I am not decrying the reading of such books. I am simply making this statement: THANK GOD FOR THE BIBLE! It is NEVER outdated.
It is ALWAYS timely. It is as fresh when you are seventy- six as it was when you were fifteen. It is the book of the ages. In it is life. Abundant life. Eternal life.

Pick up that copy of God's Word laying beside you right now. Stick with it. It will never lead you astray. It will never leave you cold. It will never go out of style. In a world of change, God's Word is constant. Count on it.

Back when ice cream was a whole lot cheaper than it is today, a little boy went into a hotel coffee shop and sat down at the table. A waitress came and brought him a glass of water and said, "Can I take your order?" And he said "How much is an ice cream sundae?" and she said, "Fifty cents." And the little boy carefully dug into his pocket and pulled out his money and carefully studied and counted the coins, and then he said "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" And the waitress, aware that other people were waiting to be seated, shot back at him brusquely "35 cents". And the little boy again looked and carefully studied the coins in his hand and then he said, "I'll have a dish of plain ice cream." And the waitress brought him the ice cream and also brought him his check and then left. And the little boy ate his ice cream and then he went to the cashier and paid his check and departed the coffee shop. And a little bit later the waitress returned to the table and was wiping it down and then swallowed hard at what she saw.
Next to the empty ice cream dish the boy had carefully placed two nickels and five pennies. Her tip