Sunday, March 22, 2009

The "G"-Force.

G - OD IS LOVE...This foundational truth is the source for all of my gratitude...the GIL concept is ground zero for everything that I believe...

R - EALITY IS PERCEPTION...The reality in which I live is created through the gratitude paradigm...

A - TTITUDE IS EVERYTHING...My grateful heart informs my daily attitude, which, in turn, determines the quality of my day, every day...

T - HANKFULNESS IS CREATIVE...The more that I openly express my gratitude, the more that I have for which to be grateful...

I - NGRATITUDE IS DESTRUCTIVE...I do not complain, because I know that if I do, I will destroy that for which I am grateful, and will create more things about which to complain...

T - ODAY IS ENOUGH
...I believe that I will be given this day my daily bread, and for that I will be grateful. Period...

U - NAWARENESS IS BLINDNESS...My eyes are wide open, and so I am able to observe the abundance of miracles swirling all around me...I am not unaware that ALL THINGS (even when the Lord speaks to me, as He did to Job, through the whirlwind/storm/hurricane) are working together for my good...

D - ISCONTENTMENT IS DECEPTION...I only express my gratitude, because I know that to do anything else would create a false sense of my existence...gratitude keeps me grounded in the truth, and the truth is that I live an abundant life...to believe anything else would be to embrace a smokescreen...

E -VERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL...It is written: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men's hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:11 - AMP)

True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time...(Ecclesiastes 3:11 - The Message)

40 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW.....

YES

AMEN !

Peace,
Northern Light

Anonymous said...

STREAMING IN BELGIUM

YES. I want to shout it to the mountain top. JUST Praise...Hallelujah!

From Brussels I am Praising HIM.

Bishop that was like a subtle delicacy with a sweet- smelling savor.

You so spoke to my inner man. This is the GOSPEL message that needs to shared over the world. Today is ENOUGH.

Pastor M.

Unknown said...

Amen, Pastor M.! I'm thankful for YOU! What time is it there?

jules said...

Everybody said exactly what I was going to say about the WORD today.

So I will just add my own YES!


God answered all the questions I have right now with "Today IS enough"!

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much for today, Bishop. Something you said as we stood at the altar with our gratitude lists took me back to a book I read many years ago by Phillip Yancey, entitled "Pain, the Gift Nobody Wants." In it, Yancey told a story of a patient, a little girl that was brought to him for medical treatment. She was swinging her leg against the examining table when he entered the room and her foot was obviously broken but she was smiling and showed no signs of pain. He asked her mother how long she had been this way and her mother said that the first time she noticed it was when she was an infant. She heard her squeal with delight and when she went to check on her in her playpen she was finger painting with the blood that poured from her finger, the finger she had just bitten off.
Yancey explained to the mother that lepers and other victims of disease were incapable of feeling pain. He treated her and explained that she must be watched carefully. You must tell her when she's too close to a fire or she will reach in to the flames unaware. Several years passed and he saw the little girl again. She was nearing adolescence and had no arms or legs.
I imagined my life without pain (something I'd often prayed for). I crawled out of bed and slipped to my knees. I thanked God for my pain, for the gift.
If I never felt pain, then where would I be? How would I know when I was in danger? when I lost my
way or needed to pause or run or wait or...
Again, Bishop, a timely word that I'm GRATEFUL for!

Anonymous said...

From Wikipedia:

Gratitude, thankfulness, or appreciation is a positive emotion or attitude in acknowledgment of a benefit that one has received or will receive. The experience of gratitude has historically been a focus of several world religions,and has been considered extensively by moral philosophers such as Adam Smith.

The systematic study of gratitude within psychology only began around the year 2000, possibly because psychology has traditionally been focused more on understanding distress rather than understanding positive emotions.

However, with the advent of the positive psychology movement, gratitude has become a mainstream focus of psychological research. The study of gratitude within psychology has focused on the understanding of the short term experience of the emotion of gratitude (state gratitude), individual differences in how frequently people feel gratitude (trait gratitude), and the relationship between these two aspects.

Anonymous said...

Continued...

Gratitude and Well-Being

A large body of recent work has suggested that people who are more grateful have higher levels of well-being. Grateful people are happier, less depressed, less stressed, and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships.

Grateful people also have higher levels of control of their environments, personal growth, purpose in life, and self acceptance.

Grateful people have more positive ways of coping with the difficulties they experience in life, being more likely to seek support from other people, reinterpreted and grow from the experience, and spend more time planning how to deal with the problem.

Grateful people also have less negative coping strategies, being less likely to try and avoid the problem, deny there is a problem, blame themselves, or cope through substance use.

Grateful people sleep better, and this seems to be because they think less negative and more positive thoughts just before going to sleep.

Whilst many emotions and personality traits are important to well-being, there is evidence that gratitude may be uniquely important.

First, a longitudinal study showed that people who were more grateful coped better with a life transition. Specifically, people who were more grateful before the transition were less stressed, less depressed, and more satisfied with their relationships three months later.

Second, two recent studies have suggested that gratitude may have a unique relationship with well-being, and can explain aspects of well-being that other personality traits cannot. Both studies showed that gratitude was able to explain more well-being than the Big Five and 30 of the most commonly studied personality traits.

peacemaker said...

A message very close to my heart.

Gratitude is more than what I am when I recieve something, it is the constant state of being in which I strive to remain. I truly believe gratitude is not only the greatest of all virtues, it is the parent of all the others. Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life and life's abundance by way of it. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.
Meister Eckhart said: "If the only prayer you said in your life was 'thank you', that would suffice."
I believe that...
I guess you could count me in with Oprah as one of those "gratitude people".

Thank You!
PM

Larry Usher said...

As I was worshipping at the altar today and we were singing about the Lamb of God a further picture of Jesus the Christ came into my mind.
Jesus, the I Am, The Creator, The Word made flesh, allowed Himself to be stripped of all priviledge and position to Himself become a sheep. One thing in my recent study of sheep that keeps coming up is the extreme needfullness of the sheep for their shepherd.
I saw the totally identification of this man, this Jesus, as a sheep. I just saw more clearly than ever how absolutely capable He is to be our intercessor, our high priest, having been born a humble sheep, but dying a spotless lamb.
When Jesus was needfull(and He was just like us), He would seek out His Shepherd, His Father and commune with Him, often for hours to meet whatever need was pressing.
He was "In all points tempted like us, yet without sin.

He is the first born among many and we have the same ability to live and to do as He did. The Holy Spirit rested upon Him, the Holy Spirit rests on, and dwells in us now.
King of KINGS and Lord of LORDS.
By emptying ourselves, as Emmanuel did, of self-determination, we too allow the inpouring of Spirit abilities above the eartlhy realm.
Just as Jesus, we are simply sheep conceding our needfullness.

Great message today! I am grateful to all those that have accepted me like family at CITN! You honor me and I appreciate it so much! I honor you back!

Love y'all,

Larry

Larry Usher said...

Bro Chad,

Sometimes I know the revelations you get are difficult to convey by language. I understood what you were describing today, but I want to say because of the love and the God that flows through you, you could get up there and say "blah, blah, blah" and the Lord would bless us in it! Just the way I see it! Love you Bro!

Word ver VOCKDOG- just sounds cool!

Donald said...

I commented earlier about getting my favorite coffee cup broken today by my son's dog.
It was given to me years ago by him (my son, not his dog) and when he gave it to me he told me that I was to make that my new favorite coffee cup. That is exactly what I did.
I was outside this afternoon when I heard something hit the floor and break. When I walked in to see what had happened my initial reaction was to react the way I had reacted to similar events many times before.
I just turned and walked back outside and sat down in my imitation wood (plastic) adirondack chair and was all set to spiral down into a pity party.
It hit me almost immediately that there was no way that I could continue hearing the kind of word taught that I had heard only an hour or two earlier and continue to not act on that teaching and expect to see any positive results.
I got out of that chair and came in and posted the little comments on the last post.
That may have sounded like I didn't get the message this morning, but believe me, if you have ever seen the way I have been accustomed to b#$%h about simple little crap like that you would know that something had definitely impacted me in a positive way if I could come in here and find some way to react to it in a humorous way.
I realized that I was living in an absolutely gorgeous day and doing something (yard work) that I absolutely love doing and that I couldn't let something as minute as a broken coffee cup destroy the wonderful time that I was having.
Thank you Bishop for your obedience to teaching what you have been given because my day was not ruined (rernt) by letting the old man take control.

tracy said...

Anon-Pastor M- my thoughts were exactly : your words are like honey.
Donald- the word came back to remind me today when I was at the grocery store and saw a friend from church and said "here at Walmart getting groceries...most dreaded part of my week." instead of-"Damn! I get to get groceries this week!" Pastor Chad wow and wow. Sounds like a poolside conversation....Bishop excellent. As always excellent- you confirmed a lot and we even learned a lot. David has another round of labs tomorrow. They said they are thinking mono praising God for mono...because if that is the case it is at the tail end and he actually had the energy today to get up and come the worship ITB ..whole different story than streaming.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Bishop for the great word today!, and thank you Pastor Chad!-I love talk of the kingdom life, and seeking it first.

Right here, right now.

Today after service I went through Taco Bell with a greater thankfulness for my burrito, and a simple cup of water...because some kids in another part of the world would have to walk a couple of miles just to get what I sometimes have as an afterthought..."oh, and add a cup of water, please, thanks"...first window, sure, no problem.

I'm also very thankful for just being able to keep in touch with you and everyone right here, right now.

I'm thankful more every day for learning more from God about His kingdom and my being part of that.

God bless you all, citizens of Zion!

Anonymous said...

Hey Bro Lar, souds like Bro Donald would have been grateful to have had your veriword from your 736 pm post. I'm not sayin I'm just sayin.

I like that little phrase, it makes me laugh everytime.

JB

Larry Usher said...

Right JB! Ha! We all have certain issues that are hard to let go, but we keep falling forward instead of back!

Lar

Larry Usher said...

Amen Karl!

Erik said...

One of my favorite Gratitude songs i s- 'I just want to celebrate' (another day of livin') by Rare Earth. It sums up the complete gift of God that has always been in and through us, with a great tune.

Ebony said...

You know Bishop, I hope it doesn't sound like a cliche at this point, but you never cease to amaze me with the messages you give us every week. Right after service I told my friends I loved them and I was thankful they were in my life, and I'll post a gratitude list on my facebook so others can pay it forward. if we get a gratitude flow going in the atmosphere, who knows what can happen!

Erik said...

Pastor Chad,
Your poem is right on, excellent ! Carved and sculpted from what you have always known. Fit well between the worship and the message. Thank You.

Larry Usher said...

JERUSALEM, March 22 -- A 200-pound car bomb malfunctioned near a crowded mall in the Israeli port city of Haifa on Saturday night, averting what could have been one of the largest such attacks in Israel in the past several years, police said.

From Wash. Post

I'm Grateful!

Anonymous said...

Great Word Yesterday Bish, I will graciously grab hold of gratitude graduating to a higher altitude with with G FORCE!

I started my list and couldnt stop at 25, made myself stop at 37.

BTW I love you putting the outline on here.....

Peace,
Dennis

ver word fownin...whats up with that...get behind me devil!

Anonymous said...

I have to add that I have preached many times defending the side that this could not mean "for" all things only "in" all things.

You have opened my eyes to a new paradigm and I like what I see....

Peace,
Dennis

Anonymous said...

I loved the gratitude list, it was kind of funny at first I put about 7 or 8 things then I closed my eyes and the flood broke. The next thing I knew there were over a 100 things on my list and there are still so much more.I thought it was so cool how much better my vision was after I closed my eyes. GOD IS SO GOOD. BiggKeith

Anonymous said...

Bishop, yesterday's message was a good word in season. I believe we do complain way to much about the things we don't have, the job we can't find or a government that seem to be so corrupt, when instead we should be so thankful for the things we have. We are so blessed and because we are not in a mode of gratitude we miss it. Just being able to eat, comb our hair, brush our teeth, or feel a cool breeze is so special but seem so simple, yet if we couldn't do it then we would realize its a big thing. There is a beautiful lake across the street from me, its part of the housing subdivision in the neighborhood. I go there a lot just to think and enjoy the view but no one is ever there and I think why don't the people use this, this is peace. We are always so busy that we don't take time to just enjoy life. Thanks Bishop for reminding us that a grateful heart determines the quality of our day but ingratitude is destructive. The list and song was a great finishing touch.

Anonymous said...

Good morning to you all

This Monday, one of God beautiful Georgiou’s Day!
And this is the Day that He has made!
Rejoice, rejoice I say! No matter the negative circumstances life can or tries to bring to life today. Rejoice! As you try to rejoice, joy and happiness will follow, where there, you know this or not Rejoicing in moments like this is the KEY to your BREAKTHROUGH.

Now! Praise is a mysterious weapon of VICTORY in the life of a Believer. I encourage you to apply it this week.
Instead of looking at a disappointments this past year, this past month (s), this past week (s), concentrate on praising God for what He has done and you will begin to enjoy the Full Manifestation of your Expectation in Jesus Christ Today.

The Word I received this Morning during prayer is: CLARITY.
When you have Clarity, you learn to appreciate and follow direction provides by God for your life.

PS. Bishop, what a GREAT and mighty Word! Awesome!

HAVE ONE GREAT BEAUTIFUL MONDAY TODAY!
ALL OF YOU ARE BLESS TODAY!

Peace, Joy and Love
Sister in Christ,
Kettly

Anonymous said...

Bishop:
Greetings...
Grace and Peace be unto you!

The G-Force is a great force to be apart of. The message yesterday was awesome. God always know what I need, when I need it.

Thanks for reminding me of His goodness and His mercy. If only we would connect with Him daily, it will allow us to be grateful always.
Attitude is Everything stands out to me the most. According to my attitude, I would have a grateful heart inspite of it all. According to my attitude towards the way I look at situations and how I accept it will determine how I act towards it. My attitude really will determine my Altitude.

"G"-Force'r',
Nicola

Northern Light said...

Interesting word vers in different rooms today...

"retag" ..TAG, You're it....now post/blog something!

"master"....Master....yes, Lord, YOU are indeed the Master !

"nolyi"..NO LIE.....seriously

Peace,
NL

Anonymous said...

Just checkin' in seeing how everyone is doing, thankful to be here.

Praise report...thankful that the US Census Bereau called me back this morning and that I was at home to get the call...should be starting a training session and 8 weeks of work beginning April 3!!!

Nancy said...

Praise report!
I'm thankful that my 12 year old does not have to have knee surgery!!!

tracy said...

Yay P Nancy! Weird how thru out the day if my words or even a thought would not line up with Sunday's teaching I really did hear the wrong answer buzzer in my head! Thanks a lot Bishop!!

tracy said...

yay to you to Karl---

Anonymous said...

That's great Nancy, God bless your son!

Thank you Tracy!

Northern Light said...

AMEN!

Been praying for you, Karl. Posted in the prayer room just a while ago about employment.

GOD is sooooooo GOOD !

Good for your daughter, P. Nancy! I know, as a parent, too, that is a relief to all.

Peace,
Northern Light

Northern Light said...

Northern Light said...
This is from an email a friend of prayer sent me this morning........it came with a picture of a woman hugging Jesus..(but that photo wouldn't paste here) I LIKE the sentiment, though, so I wanted to share it here with all my "sisters". You brothers will appreciate it too, for the women in your life !
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the ground each morning the devil says,
"OH CRAP, SHE'S UP"!

AMEN !

Peace,
Northern Light

Anonymous said...

You know Bishop, when I first heard you sing, there was something that reminded me of BJ Thomas sounding something like you...has anyone else mentioned that?

He was one of the first Christian artists that I began listening to after coming to the Lord in '84.

...thanks Northern Light!

Northern Light said...

OOPS !!

P.Nancy,
I don't know WHERE I got "daughter"...about the knee surgery. I apologize for that mistake, but the sentiment is suredly authentic.
(maybe the brain is still frozen here in the north...ha)

Peace,
Northern Light

Bishop Jim Swilley said...

Yeah, I've heard that a lot, karl, and it's cool...I love B.J. Thomas...

The Dreamer said...

God inhabits the gratitude of his people?

Erik said...

Hi,

Posting an exchange I had with God tonight. Entering kind of mid flow.

Me – So God, everyone has choice, and in that choice we have doubts to choose the best of everything, whatever that means to each one of us. As much as we have the authority and ability to create or perceive or experience complete freedom and abundance,
Somehow doubt and fear can be choices, even though we know better. So here is my thesis paper. Including the exchange.

God – Good to see you are interested. Choice is paramount, no matter how much any one knows, they can still choose what they know better than. As you know.

Me – Yeah, but since You create all things and all options, every perception is known first through You, it only exists if You allow it, You can, are able to, delete fear and doubt, that creates the perception of scarcity, limits, which some people, a lot of people, seem to translate into doubt, fear, frustration, stress, outbursts of these perceptions that manifest in perceived non beneficial expressions. It is possible for You to choose not to allow these realities. It is possible for You to make the light so bright, the vision so clear that fear and doubt are dissolved.

God – It has long been done, there is nothing that has been withheld, from the beginning.

Me – Yes, and apparently we do not believe the fullness of it. Which is something You can filter. I realize You choose not to, but You can. I imagine there is a reason that we grow through exerting the energy to break through the cocoon of fear and doubt to emerge the butterfly, or the lamb that has no doubt or fear of the lion, and actually casually interact with what can devour us, however, that is not required, Since You have all authority, it could, if You desired, be completely the full strength sans those experiences if fear and doubt, and the choices to break that cocoon. It is possible, but not chosen by You, to have each of us simply be the butterfly, the lamb, and skip the experience through doubt and fear.

God – You are using a lot of words to say a simple thing, say it without disclaimer.

Me – OK, You are master of all of us. Why the challenges. Remove them.

God – I already have.

Me – Why do I hold on to them.

God – Because you want to. It is not a commandment. Only Believe.

Me – I believe, but first I say ALL believe now.

God – I agree.

Me – You use few words to say a lot.

God – Yes.

Bishop Jim Swilley said...

Awesome feedback, people...I love it!