Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
We have entered a new year, and God is calling us into another measure of His story. We had a wonderful time at Alife yesterday in Bellingham. Pastor Jonathan challenged us all to hear God for the new year; a word, a phrase, some specific direction for our lives for 2025 that we can set as a base as we move forward in this new season.
As we have closed 2024 and entered into 2025, I have been contemplating the past season and considering what is in store for us in this new year. I believe that this new year is not disconnected from where we have come from but is a furtherance into another measure of God’s story in and through our lives. This year I will enter into my 70th year and a new decade will be given to me. I consider my 50th decade to have been a blessed season in my life. My 60th decade was a greater measure of who I am in Christ and a time of challenges but also great victories. As I enter this 70th decade of my life I have a great expectation for what God is going to do.
In the decades of my life I have learned that everything in life is a matter of relationship. It is a matter relationship with God and with one another. What is it that makes our world a place of blessing. It is a personal relationship with God and a relationship with others in the context of being family – a family of God. The highest call of God in our lives is to be sons and daughters of God who grow to know the joy of also becoming dads and moms for the purpose of God’s family in this world. Great joy is not merely found in the place of being blessed, it is found in the place of being a blessing. This is the place of God’s purpose in our lives.
I believe that God is extending His hand to us to partner with us for a new adventure into the writing of His story in our world. We must celebrate the blessings and joys that we have known in the past, but to experience what is new we must enter into it. To move forward we must find the desirable place of knowing God in the testimonies of faith, hope, and love. These things are found in the place of knowing God’s manifest presence in our lives today. We cannot find it in the memories of our past. We must return to our first love. Our first love for God is not found in any circumstance of our lives. It is found is the place of love. It is a place of knowing that today is the first day of entering into all that is new through a relationship with God whereby we know we are loved by God.
The first letter in the Revelation of Jesus Christ was to the Church of Ephesus. The word Ephesus means, pleasure or delight. This letter depicts the language of God in the beginning of Adam and God in the Garden of Eden. The word Eden means desirable, in synonymous terms to the meaning of Ephesus. In this letter Jesus is seen as “the one who holds the seven stars in His right hand”. He is seen as Lord, because He is the one who loves us. His love holds us in all things!
The language of this letter to the Church of Ephesus is that of the Garden of Eden with terms like “works”, “labor”, “patience”, and the knowledge of hating “evil”. These are garden tending terms. In this letter Jesus comes as the one “who walks in the midst”, as He walked in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3:8). Those in Ephesus had done well at knowing who true apostles were and who were false. They had the knowledge of good and evil, but they had left their first love. They sought the labor of the garden, but they had lost the testimony of the ‘desirable place’. They were missing the purpose of the garden as a place of knowing an intimate walk of love with God whereby they could be empowered to live for His purpose in their world. Knowing God’s presence of love in our lives empowers us to love Him and to love one another.
Whatever the present circumstances are in your life, only a partnership with God and His love will bring about the testimony of Eden, the desirable place of knowing the newness of God and the newness of His purpose every day. I believe we are entering into a productive season of life, but the secret to that place is returning to Eden in our hearts. We must look to our life today and not the life we had yesterday. We must look to find Eden in our present circumstances.
The desirable place is a place of eating from the tree of life. It is not a place of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a place of being loved by God to find love for the day at hand. It is there that graves can turn to gardens. It is there that impossible things become possible. It is time to enter the new but to enter the new we must find the place of Eden today in our everyday world.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
Donations can be made at the link on the home site of:
Checks can be made payable to House of Bread Ministry and sent to:
House of Bread Ministry, 3210 Meridian St., Bellingham, WA 98225
To avoid us paying a transaction fee from your donation, you can also set up a payment or an automatic payment from your bank to House of Bread Ministry. Just set it up as a ‘bill pay’ through your online bank account and your bank will mail a check to House of Bread Ministry. We will record your payment as a donation to House of Bread Ministry (E.I.N. 91-2009037) and we will send you a contribution receipt at the close of the year.
Our Ministry Information Is:
House of Bread Ministry
3210 Meridian St.
Bellingham, WA 98225-1728
