On Wednesday we read John 11:1-44. It’s the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It’s not just a story about an incredible miracle, Jesus reinforced that the Kingdom of God is a present and future reality. When Jesus told Martha, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha replied, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” Martha understood that God’s glory would be made known on the last day because Jesus had said it earlier (John 6:39-40). However, Jesus corrects her and says, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live…” Jesus clarifies her understanding of the Kingdom of God. It’s both a present and future reality. Every time we see God’s glory in the present, we are getting a glimpse of the future Kingdom of God that will come on the last day. At small group, we laid hands on Holly and prayed for healing for her borderline diabetes.

You guys are really doing a great job memorizing these Bible verses! This week’s memory verse is Matthew 4:23.

Matthew 4:23 (NIV)
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Matthew 4:23 (NLT)
Jesus traveled throughout Galilee teaching in the synagogues, preaching everywhere the Good News about the Kingdom. And he healed people who had every kind of sickness and disease.

Brian

John 14:23
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

Last week we learned from John 15 that we are to obey this command from Jesus, “Love each other as I have loved you.” John 14:23 says that our obedience will result in the Father loving us. When I initially read this, I said to myself, “What? I thought the Father loved the whole world before we loved him!” That is true, John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world…” Is the Bible contradicting itself? Not at all!

The love that is described in John 14:23 isn’t the result of our own religious efforts. This love is God’s “grace” (or favor/special blessing) that is poured out to those who abide in Christ. Paul talks about this love in Ephesians 1:5-6, “In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will… to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.” Did you catch the last part? Grace is freely available to us because it is found “in the One he loves.” The “One he loves” is Jesus! Since the Father loves the Son, and we abide (or remain in) the Son, we are loved and become his adopted sons.

Think about the Father/Son relationship for a moment. When the Father wants to leave something for his children, how does he do it? If we read on in Ephesians 1:13-14 it says, “…you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance…” Father’s will leave things for their children with an inheritance! According to Ephesians 1:14, the Holy Spirit was given to us as a “deposit” to guarantee our inheritance. A deposit is the equivalent of a promise. Jesus has promised to return for us because he left the Holy Spirit as a deposit.

When we read the rest of John 14:23 it says, “and we will come to him and make our home with him.” Not only did the Father and the Son leave us a deposit; they put that deposit within us in the form of the Holy Spirit! Ephesians 1:13 says, “Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” This seal is God’s signature of ownership and it has been stamped on our hearts when we make Jesus our King.

At my place of employment, Team Fishel, I work in the Information Services department. We encountered a problem with Microsoft Word documents that were protected for form fields. When the form was printed, the text within the form would overlap on top of each other and create a single hieroglyphic character per line. We discovered they were normal characters, they had just stacked on top of each other. Here is an example of what the problem will look like on the screen:

This issue would happen on both the screen and the printed paper. We had gone through exhaustive troubleshooting with no luck. We checked Print Driver versions, printed to other printers, tried various compatibility settings in Word, we launched Word using Start > Run… by typing in winword /a to use the default program settings, we deleted the normal.dot file and let word recreate it, we captured the print job to a PRN file and analyzing it, selected all the text and did a CTL+Q to remove the text formatting, we scrubbed the document of meta data using a 3rd party program, and even recreated the document from scratch! Nothing worked!!!! The problem just didn’t go away…

We broke down and paid a fee for Microsoft Support to help us. Their support tech logged into the machine using Placeware (a desktop sharing program). He had me try a variety of settings and we stumbled upon the solution!!!

STEP 1:
Close out of Microsoft Word

STEP 2:
Open up Microsoft Word. There is no need to open the document you want to print.

STEP 3:
Go to…
Tools > Options… > Print (Tab) >

STEP 4:
Uncheck “Background printing”
Click OK

STEP 5:
Close out of Microsoft Word

STEP 6:
Browse to the document you want to print and double click it or open Microsoft Word and do a File > Open…

STEP 7:
PRINT!

If this solution fixes your problem, please post a comment on my blog. It gives me warm fuzzies inside when I get comments. By the way, if you know of anyone who has this problem with Microsoft Word, email them the link to this page. Good luck!

Brian

The topic of Wednesday’s small group was “As I Have Loved You” and the passage was John 15:9-17. We talked about Jesus’ love, what is means to remain in his love, how obedience/loyalty relates to love, how the ultimate expression of love is dying for another person, and how God chose to love us before we loved him. Here is the memory verse for this week. As always, there’s a goodie bag at stake!

John 14:23 (NIV)
Jesus replied, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

John 14:23 (NLT)
Jesus replied, “All those who love me will do what I say. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and live with them.

My lovely wife posts pictures with a short recap of my 27th B-Day over the weekend. CLICK HERE!