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When we feel insecure it causes us to turn inward and steals our presence, which is a big deal because I believe presence is one of the greatest keys to God's grace flowing. Insecurity usually causes us to get into our own head and magnify things that will probably never happen. And this robs our presence and awareness of what is happening around us in the present moment. Insecurity steals the gift of the present moment. 

Our security is supposed to be found in God's unconditional and unfailing love for us. In perfect love there is no fear. But this does take trusting in him. When we trust in his unfailing love our security grows, and when security grows it leads to more presence, then presence causes joy to flow, and when joy flows God's grace and power flows with it. I like to think of joy as my indicator of presence. If I am lacking joy then I am probably not very present. 

As we take communion today let it be a time of thankfulness for God's unfailing love. T...

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We are in a time of year where things are cooling off and many transitions happen. As we transition to the next level it will often seem like things slow down and during these transitions it's important to settle into new habits... Beautiful habits. 

A beautiful habit is one that God prompts and helps to install in your life and it creates a virtuous cycle of good. In all of my books I tell of how our bodies are a form of a liquid crystal, think LCD display on your TV or phone screen. These LCD's have the amazing ability to adapt and create order. Our bodies and lives are like crystals and according to a book my daughter found at a book fair a few years ago every crystal has a unique set of habits. 

 As crystals are heated and cooled back down they settle into habits that are crystallized. The more slowly the crystals cool the more beautiful their habits become. Therefore cooling slowly and taking our time leads to more beautiful habits in our lives. 

In today's...

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Last night my daughter was searching around on YouTube for new Christian songs and she came across a song by Aaron Cole called Right on Time. One of the lyrics in the song is...Love is always right on time.

God is love, and he is always right on time. A few years ago I was in a very stressful situation where I really needed God to come through and during that time he taught me that he is always on time. During that time my daughter was practicing the piano on an app that tracked her playing. She was playing the correct notes but she was playing them too early and the app wasn't giving her any credit for playing the correct note. 

As this was happening God began to teach me that he is never early and never late... always right on time. He began to teach me that our lives are like a beautiful song and if he played the right note too early it wouldn't sound right. God has a perfect timing and rhythm for everything and it's still amazing too me that he gives us the o...

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We are moving into the cooler time of the year when many transitions happen. Don’t be surprised if God starts shifting things around. If you are in a leadership position, there will often be some shifts in people during this time. Transitions can be messy and some people will choose to leave or do something different during this time. During transitions, stay calm and be at peace because they can often be overwhelming, but you can be assured that God is working it all out for good. God transitions things slowly so that nothing tears or breaks. If things feel like they are slowing down the most important thing you can do is stay positioned in thanksgiving, praise, forgiveness, and love and keep doing what you know you can do TODAY.

Sometimes when transitions happen people freak out and you may see a side of them that you've never seen before. If this happens make sure to be gracious and gentle with them, the way God is with us. 

We just finished going through the ...

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As part of the Daily Communion Meditations we have been asking God to expand our capacity to receive from him and to flow through us so that we are a blessing everywhere we go. To expand capacity is to expand the ability for more work to flow through the system. Think of this like a pipeline of living water and in the living water is everything God has... His love, peace, joy, wisdom, spirit, energy, health, and much more. 

Recently, I have been gaining some insight into how this happens based on the 4 fundamentals we have been discussing. Here are the 4 fundamentals we review before taking communion each day along with how they impact our capacity for God to flow more through us. 

1. Positioned in the light

Positioned in the light means being positioned in forgiveness, thanksgiving, praise, and love. In the light God has given us everything he has and we are either in the light or we are not. There is no middle ground. This step opens us to be able to receive f...

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Love for God and people is supposed to be the underlying motivation for everything we do. What we do is important but how and why we do things also matters. If we think about this...God is love, so to be motivated by love is to be motivated by God. Love was God's motivation for sending Jesus. 

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says... 

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

This reminds me of something I once read in the book "The Greatest Salesman in the World," by Og Mandino. He said that one of the most important keys to selling successfully was saying..." I love you, I love you," in your heart while you...

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In my time of training clients in the gym relationships and results were both important. Good relationships were needed for clients to trust us but it was also important that they saw progress and got results. 

In our walk with God, both relationship and results are needed. It all starts with our relationship with him. As we connect with him we get to know him and trust in him more and more. This connection with him should produce fruit in our lives. Jesus said that if we abide in him our lives would produce much fruit. But, Jesus also gave the example of rebuking people doing miraculous things in his name that didn't really know him. God wants to make our lives fruitful, multiply us, and increase us greatly, but it's our relationship and connection with him that produces all of this. 

God wants our relationship with him to lead to a transformed life that is a living testimony of his love and faithfulness. Everything comes out of relationship with him. To see fas...

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Recently I was reading Romans 4 in the MSG version and thought it was really powerful. Here is Romans 4:1-9 MSG. 

Trusting God

4 1-3 So how do we fit what we know of Abraham, our first father in the faith, into this new way of looking at things? If Abraham, by what he did for God, got God to approve him, he could certainly have taken credit for it. But the story we’re given is a God-story, not an Abraham-story. What we read in Scripture is, “Abraham entered into what God was doing for him, and that was the turning point. He trusted God to set him right instead of trying to be right on his own.”

4-5 If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gi...

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Sometimes in life we have points of contention with others. A point of contention is an area of struggle, strife, and opposition. It is the main point of debate, controversy, or argument. These points of contention are very important, because even though they can be small things that are argued over they can have much bigger effects. The other day we said that points lead to waves, which leads to cycles. 

Small points of contention can cause side effects through our whole life and lead to a vicious cycle that plays out over and over. However, the good news is that if we will learn to handle points of contention God's way they can become a point of trusting in God that is like the first domino that sets a series of good things into motion. 

In Genesis 13 is the story of Abraham and Lot separating. They had grown wealthy and their herdsmen were fighting over the land. Abraham knew God's way wasn't strife so he suggested that they separate and he gave Lot whatever l...

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Psalm 18 is a song of praise after God delivered David from all of his enemies. It tells us God's unfailing love, faithfulness, and power. 

This is a longer Psalm so here are some of the highlights to meditate upon today.

• God was David's rock, source, and the one he depended on.
• When David was surrounded by enemies he called out to the Lord who saved him
• David praises the greatness of God continually. 
• God rescued him out of impossible situations against enemies who were too strong for him.
• God made him strong and fit for battle. 
• God brought him to a spacious place and it was God's gentleness that made him great. 
• God is faithful to the faithful, pure to the pure, but he is shrewd with the devious.
• God turns darkness into light. 
• God shows unfailing love to his people. 

I am praying for you. 

Daniel