Seven "Bottom Line" Thoughts

Every believer has the entire Christian life living in them right now.

Christ is all and is in all.

Colossians 3:11

The only way to grow the quality and the reach of our love is to grow in Christ as the center of our life.

"My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in in you..."

Galatians 4:19          

There is a difference between my soul and my spirit. My spirit is sealed and secure in eternal  connection to Jesus. My soul is imperfect and in the process of learning to love again.

Hebrews 4:12

For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

There is nothing the presence of Christ in me cannot cure.

John 7:37-38

On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

Jesus is my life, therefore, my life is perfect.  The sum of my experience in this world is far from perfect, therefore, my experience in this world is not my life.  

Philippians 1:21

For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

John 16:33

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will[a] have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Whatever gets my attention gets me.

Matthew 6:22-23

“The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

Underestimating Jesus leads me to my greatest losses.

John 15:5

“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.

Bud McCord

Abide International

The Way in 2016 “I am the way…” Jesus

There is a Way. There is a way that is not the way.

Acts 19:23

And about that time there arose a great commotion about the Way.

A way that satisfies. A way that does not satisfy.  

Gen. 2:15-17

Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

A way that leads to God. A way that does not lead to God. 

Gen. 5:2

And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.

A way that prospers us. A way that consumes us.

Psalm 1:1-6

Blessed is the man

Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,

Nor stands in the path of sinners,

Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

And in His law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree

Planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so,

But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,

Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,

But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

A way that ends well. A way that does not end well.

Psalms 23:1-6

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

He leads me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul;

He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil;

For You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

You anoint my head with oil;

My cup runs over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me

All the days of my life

And I will dwell in the house of the Lord Forever.

A way that is the truth. A way that is a lie.

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

A way that few find. A way that many find.

Matthew 7:13-14

“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

A way that harmonizes everything. A way that destroys everything.

Col. 1:15-20

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

Which way in 2016?

Bud McCord

Abide International