Today’s blog contribution comes from Colleen Watamaniuk, Colleen has been connected to Grace Walk Canada since it was launched over 8 years ago.

“What Not to Wear” was a TV series hosted by TLC for many years, featuring style experts “Stacy London” and “Clinton Kelly”. The premise of the show was to ambush “a style felon” and critique them on their style choices. Often the participants used clothing as a way to hide or bury who they thought they were. The hosts not only addressed the issue of clothing, but sought to get to a deeper place of why and help these women overcome some misconceptions they held about themselves. The transformation that often occurred in the participants was very touching, but I suspect often temporal.

I think many of us are like the unsuspecting participants in the What Not to Wear Show. We either dislike who we are, have been lied to about who we are and the value we have, or we simply do not know the truth of our identity.  Consequently, we go out and about, trying to cover up or bury ourselves in things that really do not look good on us.   Continue reading →

Thanks to my friend Ken North for today’s Blog submission:

Sometimes I feel like a broken record. I keep repeating the same thing over and over. Why? Because this is SO important… for me, for you… for all. In a nut shell what I am saying today is this … you are loved. But you know what?? Sure, sure … I am loved… loved by God … yadda yadda yadda… heard it before. I could have NEVER comprehended the immensity of this truth had I not gone through the most intensely painful journey, I have just come out of. God is not just some lofty impersonal spiritual being that ‘by chance’ created us, and we are left to flounder looking to Him for guidance. NO… He is all knowing, all loving, and intentionally made us …humans. But wait .. he intentionally made YOU. Yes you … He intentionally made you, and yearns for you to not only know that fact, but for you to know HIM.

Classic existentialism says this, … Continue reading →

I’m planning to do something I have never done before.  I’m taking my daughter to New York City for a fast paced, sightseeing adventure.  Daddy & daughter time is rare and I’m thrilled to be able spend some time with her.  Tickets are booked, and now there is much to do, plan the itinerary, figure out transportation, etc.  This advanced planning will save us a ton of headaches and potential travel glitches.  It will be fun trying to pick the key places we want to see, figure out how to get there easily.  Whatever we do end up doing, will be awesome, mostly because we are doing this together,  it will be a fun & meaningful time.

Imagine trying to plan out your journey of ‘maturing into Christ’, sorting out each potential step.  There will need to be some significant planning otherwise you could arrive at a place you didn’t plan on!!  Wait a minute now, the journey of maturing into Christ cannot be ‘self-planned,’ instead it is done by the Holy Spirit.  He is the one whispering directions and instructions deep into your heart & mind moment by moment.  As we learn to recognize his voice and learn to listen to him, the fruit of our ‘awesome obedience’ will cultivate more faith as we mature in life.

What does the map of maturing look like?  How do we move between ‘Child, Young Adult/Teen, and Mature Adult’?  From a Biblical foundation, here is the best picture/diagram of what each stage can look like.  The Holy Spirit will be your ‘GPS’ as you trek on this journey, listen for His voice.   I hope you find it helpful. Continue reading →

Growth.  It all begins with a seed.  My wife has already begun the preparations for our vegetable garden, and yet the entire backyard is still covered in a foot of snow.  She has this little ‘greenhouse’ type thing and all that I can see in it is a ‘green-box’ tray full of dirt.  Clearly nothing was going on … or so I thought.  A few days later I began to see little green sprouts penetrating the surface of each little dirt square.  Yesterday, my daughter noticed that the fast growing plants were all leaning towards the sunlight coming through window, and that the plants closest to the window were larger than the ones further back.  Wisely, my daughter took the big tray, and rotated it so that the small sized plants would now be closer to the window, giving them a chance to catch up to their larger species.  It will take a few more months for these little ‘baby plants’ to be ready for the big transplant into the outdoor garden.

Spiritual growth. Begins with a seed.  That seed is ‘The Light’ that shines in and through darkness.  When we recognize Continue reading →

We need ‘friends’ to make it through to the next stage of life.  Some of those individuals will remain friends for the rest of your life, others are there only for ‘a period of time’.   I have a couple friends that I don’t see very often, but when we do meet, we just take off from the last time we met.  Something we need to realize is that we have not been created to ‘do life’ on our own.  We have been designed to do life in the proximity and in relationship with other people, not in isolation.

A great question worth asking is ‘who is your good friend’ and, ‘are you’ a good friend?  It is one thing to have a friend, but it must be a two way relationship.  There are a number of verses in the Bible that suggest the importance of friendship:

• There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother (Proverbs 18:24)
• This is my command: Love one another the way I loved you. This is the very best way to love. Put your life on the line for your friends. (John 15:13 msg)
• Proverbs 12:26 (NLT) 26 The godly give good advice to their friends; the wicked lead them astray.
• Proverbs 22:24-25 (MSG) Don’t hang out with angry people; don’t keep company with hotheads.
• Bad temper is contagious—don’t get infected.
• Proverbs 27:17 (MSG) You use steel to sharpen steel, and one friend sharpens another.

Continue reading →

Growing up is hard, maturing is even harder.  Someone once told me that it is so much easier to learn from other people’s mistakes but learning from our own builds character and maturity.  The Bible is full of advice encouraging us to avoid and participate in certain behaviours.  In essence, the Scriptures seem to have been provided for our good in order to help us know who our heavenly Father is and to help us navigate this temporary earthly life.  This is where the stage of “Young Adult’ comes into play.

There are many words of wisdom given to us in order to help us overcome the evil one (1 John 2).  In the past, I have understood the directives in the Bible to be laws you must do in order to become acceptable or to remain in ‘good standing’.  Upon further investigation, I have found that ‘the commands’ are designed to help us navigate forwards in our maturing journey.  It is like someone who has been there before (the Apostle Paul) mentoring all the new believers in what clothes they should be wearing.  Some clothes look great on you, and others look terrible.  Paul is encouraging us to wear what we have been destined to wear, our robes of righteousness.  When we do, we fully reflect the nature of our new identity:  Our union with Christ.

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I remember having a few good friends in my high school years who influenced me in both positive and negative ways.  The opinions of my friends were far more important to me than the opinions of my parents.  There were many times I would lie to my parents by telling them I was going to ‘youth group’ at the church, when in fact I went to the local movie theatre with friends instead.  Since they both ended at the same time, there was no problem of my deception being discovered.  Just as the influence of peers and friends plays a major role in the social and life development of an individual, in the same way, I have found this to be true in my faith development as well.

The most awkward times of our lives are the teenage years.  These years are filled with brutal changes in hormones, brain development, physical changes, attraction awareness, and the infamous constantly asked question, ‘why?’  It is during this stage of life we begin to challenge everything we have been taught, questioning all opinions and rationale.

Moving from a child stage of faith to a young adult stage is very much the same.  We suddenly begin to question our faith. Continue reading →

My friend Reg Chute wrote this next blog, I hope you enjoy.  (Thanks Reg) 

Suppose I were to describe a person to you that you have never met. I could tell you everything that I know about that person right down to the smallest detail. I could impart to you every thought and even every emotion that I associate with this person. I could so thoroughly describe this person to you that it would be “as if” you knew this person too but in reality, you would only have “head knowledge” of this person.

Now let’s suppose that a friend of mine described this same person to you in as great a detail as I have. Would my friend have imparted the exact same “head knowledge” to you that I have? Or, would our descriptions reflect our own bias of that person based on our individual experiences with that person?

Since it is quite unlikely that either of us knew exactly everything that the person was going through or experiencing, or the choices that had to be made depending on varying factors, it is quite unlikely that both of us will draw identical conclusions of the person. It is therefore, reasonable to assume that the head knowledge that I have imparted to you may contain a certain amount of bias that may misconstrue the truth to some degree or another.

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The Apostle John has the most profound explanation for what it means to journey into maturity.  He describes it in three different stages, such as Child, Young Person, to Adult.  They are categories that each of us can identify with, after all, we see evidence of them physically all around us daily.  In this particular text he describes two determining factors that define what a ‘child’ level faith is.

• I am writing to you who are God’s children because your sins have been forgiven through Jesus.
• I have written to you who are God’s children because you know the Father.

Every single believer needs to know and believe these to profound things before they can move on towards maturity.

Forgiven

The first thing to know is that we are completely forgiven.  Why is this so important?  Growing up, I was taught that Jesus only forgives when we ask.  It was ‘conditional’ forgiveness.  It was always up to me to stay forgiven, to make sure I ‘confess’ every single possible sin I ever did.  The rationale implied that if I was driving a long and was suddenly killed in a car crash, I may not make it to heaven because I had ‘unconfessed sin’ in my heart.  The good news of the Gospel is that Jesus took away the sin of the entire world at the cross, once and for all.  If we don’t get this, we will be walking out each day in a very unhealthy fear of our heavenly father.  Our entire focus is not to be on sin, but rather on Jesus.  Sin consciousness will lead you to greater darkness in your mind that you could ever imagine.  Are you a Child?  Do you know your sins are forgiven?  If you don’t believe they are, may I suggest you may actually only be a baby infant, and not even a child yet?  The work of the cross is now finished, now believe it!

Who’s your Daddy Continue reading →

Young children love playing with whatever you give them.  Some parents buy awesome toys with many fancy gadgets and mechanisms built in, only to find that the spaghetti pot and lid seem to be just as entertaining.  Give a child an old spoon and a sandbox, and you will see a kid entertained for hours as they dig and build.  I’ve even seen children playing with ‘grown up toys’, toys that are made for kids but represent adult activities.  Items like, easy bake ovens, a toy chainsaw, toy cars, and even toy lawn mowers.  One time I witnessed a young boy pushing his ‘plastic mower’ on the already mowed grass while his parent used the real gas powered John Deer.  The little boy gleefully yelled out, “look at me, I’m all grow’d up”.

I think many adults who authentically love Jesus have done the same thing as that little boy.  They have mimicked what they have seen other believers do, and by doing so they think they are now ‘mature’.  I have sad news, it is not the ‘things you do’ that make you mature.  It is what you believe and how you allow the power of Christ, who ‘is’ your belief, to live his life out through you.  That is maturity.

Continue reading →