He motioned toward me, and I responded, kneeling again before Him. Handing me the necklace, He explained, ‘This vial will contain the essence of Myself; a Seed to be placed in the womb of a young girl. Her name is Mary. She lives among my chosen people. The fruit of the Seed is the Son of God. Take it to her.’

‘But how will I know her?’ I asked.

‘Don’t worry. You will.’

I could not comprehend God’s plan, but my understanding was not essential. My obedience was. I lowered my head, and He draped the chain around my neck. Amazingly, the vial was no longer empty. It glowed with
Light.

‘Jesus. Tell her to call My Son Jesus.’ … .

On a wave of worship I flew, this time alone. I circled through the clouds and over the ground. Below me was the city where Mary was born. The Father was right; I knew her in an instant. Her heart had no shadow. Her
soul was as pure as any I’ve seen.

I made the final descent. ‘Mary.’ I kept my voice low so as not to startle her.

She turned but saw nothing. Then I realized I was invisible to her. I waved my wings before my body and incarnated. She covered her face at the Light and shrank into the protection of the doorway.

‘Don’t be afraid.’ I urged.

The minute I spoke, she looked up toward the sky. Again I was amazed.

I praised My Father for His wisdom. Her heart is so flawless, so willing. ‘Greetings. God be with you.’

Her eyes widened, and she turned as if to run. ‘Mary, you have nothing to fear. You have found favor with God ….

‘Yes, I see it all now; I’m the Lord’s maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me just as you say.’

As she spoke, a Light appeared in her womb. I glanced at the vial. It was empty.” [The Angel Gabriel]

Max Lucado- “Cosmic Christmas”

Christmas Collection
Games and Activities helping youth discover the Reason for the Season.Get more than 200 creative ideas for planning a Youth Christmas celebration or Christmas Party party. You can immediately download my best Christmas Icebreakers, games, illustrations, Christmas activity ideas AND MUCH MORE in a useful ebook!
=> Tell me more about the Christmas Collection

As you know, it is not often that I direct you to other websites. But this is one that you really need to take a look at.

The site is
http://tuggle.it

Social networking sites have become very popular. They allow people to post information about their interests, favorite movies, and a lot of other fun information. They also have an online place to hang out with their friends! The most popular are Facebook and Myspace.

• But what if you could have your OWN social networking site?
• What if it was Christian based?
• At no cost?

And even better you could not only give your youth a place to mingle on the internet, but you could also use it to:

• coordinate emails
• send sms messages
• plan and schedule meetings!

 

That’s what Tuggle.it does for you!

Go check it out now
http://tuggle.it

• You get your own personlized link… like (creativeyouthideas.tuggle.it)
• Manage your youth database.
• Create Sign up form for events and activities.
• Organize your youth into classes, ministries, teams and other small groups.

It builds community within your ministry in a way that Facebook or MySpace don’t have a prayer in achieving.

Find out more at
http://tuggle.it

 

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

Learn More…

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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“Spiritual forces and resources are available to all Christians. Because our resources are unlimited, Christians will be winners. Millions of angels are at God’s command and at our service. The hosts of heaven stand at attention as we make our way from earth to glory, and Satan’s BB guns are no match for God’s heavy artillery. So don’t be afraid. God is for you. He has committed His angels to wage war in the conflict of the ages–and they will win the victory. The Apostle Paul has said in Colossians 2:15, ‘And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them.’ Victory over the flesh, the world and the devil is ours now! The angels are here to help and they are prepared for any emergency…

Don’t believe everything you hear about angels! Some would have us believe that they are only spiritual will-o-the-wisps. Some view them as only celestial beings with beautiful wings and bowed heads. Others would have us think of them as feminine weirdos… Today some hard-nosed scientists lend credence to the scientific
probability of angels when they admit the likelihood of unseen and invisible intelligences. Increasingly, our world is being made acutely aware of the existence of occult and demonic powers. People pay attention as never before to sensational headlines promoting such books as ‘Chariots of the Gods,’ ‘Gods from Outer Spacer,’ ‘Rosemary’s
Baby,’ and ‘The Exorcist.’ Ought not Christians, grasping the eternal dimension of life, become conscious of the sinless angelic powers who are for real, and who associate with God Himself and administer His works in our behalf? After all, references to the holy angels in the Bible far outnumber references to Satan and his subordinate
demons.”

Billy Graham – “Angels – God’s Secret Agents”
1975, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, NY

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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“Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”
(Matt. 11:28 NLT).

Rest from the burden of a small god. Why? Because I have found the Lord.
Rest from doing things my way. Why? Because the Lord is my Shepherd.
Rest from endless wants. Why? Because I shall not want.
Rest from weariness. Why? Because he makes me to lie down.
Rest from worry. Why? Because he leads me.
Rest from hopelessness. Why? Because he restores my soul.
Rest from guilt. Why? Because he leads me in the paths of righteousness.
Rest from arrogance. Why? Because of his name’s sake.
Rest from the valley of death. Why? Because he walks me through it.
Rest from the shadow of grief. Why? Because he guides me.
Traveling LightRest from fear. Why? Because his presence comforts me.
Rest from loneliness. Why? Because he is with me.
Rest from shame. Why? Because he has prepared a place for me in the presence of my enemies.
Rest from my disappointments. Why? Because he anoints me.
Rest from envy. Why? Because my cup overflows.
Rest from doubt. Why? Because he follows me.
Rest from homesickness. Why? Because I will dwell in the house of my Lord forever.

Max Lucado from Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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“Our souls were made to ‘mount up with wings’ and can never be satisfied with anything short of flying. Like the captive-born eagle that feels the instinct of flight, and chafes and frets at its imprisonment, hardly knowing what it longs for, so do our souls cry out for freedom. We can never rest on earth, and long to ‘fly away’ from all that so holds and hampers and imprisons us here.

We might name our wings Surrender and Trust. By these, we are carried into a spiritual plane of the ‘life hid with Christ in God,’ a life utterly independent of circumstances, that no cage can imprison and no shackles bind…

Why do not all Christians always triumph? They do not ‘mount up with wings,’ but live on the same low level with their circumstances, powerless against trials and sorrows, overcome by and crushed under them…

The largest wings cannot lift a bird one inch upward unless they are used. We must use the wings we already have: Surrender and Trust, or they will avail us nothing. From high places we shall see things through the eye of Christ that change our lives! Instead of stirring up strife and bitterness, we will escape by simply spreading our wings and mounting up to where our eyes see all things covered with a mantle of Christian love and pity.

The mother eagle teaches her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable they are forced to leave and commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. God stirs up our comfortable nests and pushes us over the edge, forcing us to use our wings to save ourselves from fatal falling…

The promise is sure: ‘They that wait upon the Lord SHALL mount up with wings as eagles.’ Not ‘may perhaps mount up’ but ‘SHALL’…

Hannah Whitall Smith – “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life”

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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As I was nearing home after my morning walk, I noticed that a parking ticket was perched on the windshield of a car parked down the street from my house. Poor guy, I thought, that’s twenty-eight bucks out of his pocket. Then it occurred to me that it was then Tuesday between 7:30 and 9:30 a.m. Parking is prohibited along this street during those two hours each week so that the large city street-sweeper can swoop through and clean the street.

Uh-oh, I thought, did I forget, too? Did I leave my car on the street? I quickened my pace. I peered ahead. Yes, my car is on the street. And there is that blasted yellow citation envelope on the front windshield! Doggone it, they got me–again!

Don’t the police have anything better to do? Are there no more criminals to catch? Can’t a citizen park his own car in front of his own house without being harassed?

I was fuming. I yanked the envelope off the windshield, tempted to tear it up. In fact, several years ago, I had done just that, but I learned the hard way the folly of that reaction. (When I went to pay my annual vehicle registration fee, I had to also pay double fines for the two citations I had angrily torn up.) So, I was not in a pleasant mood as I strode into my house with my $28 parking ticket firmly in hand.

Still trying to calm myself down and to put this irritating event into better ‘perspective,’ I mentally reviewed the reasons for the parking regulation I had violated (and which was clearly posted on signs along the street). When I first moved here some years ago, my neighbors were angry because city officials had allowed this street to become very dirty. The residents wrote letters, circulated petitions, made phone calls, held meetings, lobbied, and agitated. They demanded that the city do something about it.

They got action. The city started cleaning the street every Tuesday morning between seven-thirty and nine-thirty. It was also, of course, made illegal to park on the street during the cleaning time. Signs to that effect were posted.

I began to realize that the law which had ‘bitten’ me was not bad, but good. If I wanted a clean street in front of my house, then I had to get my car off the street when the sweeper came to do its job. The law was for my good. It was certainly no fault of the law that I kept forgetting to do my part.

This is true in life. How many times we rail against the laws of God. We often feel that His laws cramp our style, deny us pleasure, block our freedom. It is more than just humor when we say, ‘Everything fun is either immoral, illegal, or fattening.’

But, in truth, we know that God’s laws are for our own good. They are written into the very fiber of our beings. They are there because God loves us.

When we sin, we don’t really sin against law, we sin against love. God wants us to be happy. Happiness and holiness go together. You can’t have one without the other. The psalmist says of the happy man, ‘His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.’ (Psalm 1:2)

‘Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.’ (Psalm 119:18)”

Donald Russell Robertson – “Dear You”

Read More:
Dear You

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

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God’s promises were never meant to be thrown aside as waste paper. He intended that they should be used. He loves to see His children bring them up to Him and say, ‘Lord, do as thou hast said.’ We glorify God when we plead His promises. Do you think that God will be any poorer for giving you the riches He has promised? He has said, ‘Come now and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as wool’ (Isaiah 1:18). Faith goes straight to the throne and pleads, ‘Lord, here is the promise. Do as thou has said.’ Our Lord replies, ‘Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ Our heavenly banker delights to cash His own notes. Never let the promise rust. Do not think that God will be troubled by your persistence in reminding Him of His promises. It is His delight to grant favors. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask. The sun is not weary of shining, nor the fountain of flowing. It is God’s nature to keep His promises; therefore, go at once to the throne with ‘Do as thou hast said.’

Charles Spurgeon- “Morning and Evening” (Whitaker House)

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

Learn More…

“Our souls were made to ‘mount up with wings’ and can never be satisfied with anything short of flying. Like the captive-born eagle that feels the instinct of flight, and chafes and frets at its imprisonment, hardly knowing what it longs for, so do our souls cry out for freedom. We can never rest on earth, and long to ‘fly away’ from all that so
holds and hampers and imprisons us here.

We might name our wings Surrender and Trust. By these, we are carried into a spiritual plane of the ‘life hid
with Christ in God,’ a life utterly independent of circumstances, that no cage can imprison and no shackles bind…

Why do not all Christians always triumph? They do not ‘mount up with wings,’ but live on the same low level with their circumstances, powerless against trials and sorrows, overcome by and crushed under them…

The largest wings cannot lift a bird one inch upward unless they are used. We must use the wings we already have: Surrender and Trust, or they will avail us nothing. From high places we shall see things through the eye of Christ that change our lives! Instead of stirring up strife and bitterness, we will escape by simply spreading our wings and mounting up to where our eyes see all things covered with a mantle of Christian love and pity.

The mother eagle teaches her little ones to fly by making their nest so uncomfortable they are forced to leave and
commit themselves to the unknown world of air outside. God stirs up our comfortable nests and pushes us over the edge, forcing us to use our wings to save ourselves from fatal falling…

The promise is sure: ‘They that wait upon the Lord SHALL mount up with wings as eagles.’ Not ‘may perhaps mount
up’ but ‘SHALL’…

Hannah Whitall Smith – “The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life”

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

Learn More…

Excerpt from Ronald F. Bridges “Rediscovering Your First Love” (Here’s Life Publishers, Inc.)

A good friend of mine was aggressively pursuing a deeper worship experience with the Lord. His love for God was growing stronger and his desire to draw nearer to Him was sincere. After a couple of months of trying various activities to aid his worship, Rick came to me in frustration, saying that he was unable to feel a genuine sense of worship.

There just seemed to be something lacking, and he couldn’t put his finger on it. He was also finding it difficult to concentrate and felt restless during his quiet times…

All of us, at times, carry within us a certain amount of unresolved conflict that can affect us emotionally but not
necessarily hinder our worship. But in Rick’s case, he had been totally unwilling to forgive his father even after his
father asked his son’s forgiveness. When all of this surfaced, Rick finally realized his sin of unforgiveness toward his father was probably affecting his worship…

After several weeks of prayer and resolution, Rick was able to finally go to his father and tell him that he forgave him, as well as to ask his father’s forgiveness for carrying the grudge. As soon as he did this, not only did he renew a strong relationship with his father, but he also began to experience a deeper intimacy in worship with his heavenly Father.

It’s not surprising that in a growing love relationship with God, the closer we draw to Him, the more accepting we are when He reveals things we need to deal with…

In terms of our worship, there are at least four different kinds of hindrances that not only hinder worship but could also very easily hinder our progress in a love relationship with God.

Unconfessed Sin
…In order to clear our worship, we must cleanse our lives from sin (1 John 1:9), thus restoring our fellowship with God.

Unforgiveness
…unforgiveness must be humbly confessed to God and honestly resolved before our fellow man, in order to allow our worship to be acceptable to the Lord.

A Self-Centered or Prideful Spirit…
From a worldly perspective, it would be very easy to view the worship of God as a ‘what’s in it for me’ experience…we could also enter into worship with feelings of discontentment or impatience. But such negative feelings would indicate that we are not satisfied with God’s design for our lives…

Impurity
…we are not necessarily impure if we experience a sudden reaction to an initial display or suggestion of something impure. The impurity comes in if our second reaction is not to reject the temptation and flee from it…the psalmist provided the solution: ‘How can a young man keep his way pure? By keeping it according to Thy word’ (Psalm 119:9)

The worship of God is an awesome and powerful experience. We must never enter into it with a flippant attitude or an insincere heart. Therefore, our aids to worship must be activities that cause us to focus totally on God…

MORE IDEAS? See “Creative Object Lessons”

200 page e-book that explains everything you need to know when planning your very own object lessons. It contains 90 fully developed object lesson ideas and another 200 object lesson starter ideas based on Biblical idioms and Names / Descriptions of God.

Learn More…