If you’ve just found this blog, you may wonder what I’m writing about, let me hasten to explain that for quite a few blog posts I’ve been trying to share an enormously important spiritual discipline that I call Going on a God Hunt.You see, I believe fervently that God continually reaches out His Hand of Love to touch our daily lives. He’s always present and always working to help us in our walk with Him. The problem is that we have not trained our natural eyes and our spiritual “eyes” to see Him working for our benefit.

So, through these blog posts, I’m hoping to nudge you into beginning to look for God at work in your life in four specific ways:

• Obvious answers to prayer
• Unexpected evidences of God’s care
• Help to do God’s work in the word, and
• Unusual items of linkage and timing,

Once you learn how to spot God at work in your life, it becomes very important that you take time daily to record your God Hunt Sightings. You can use almost any kind of notebook to keep this written record. And, the end of the day usually offers the best time to write down your Sightings. But, you can choose any time of day that best fits your schedule. What you’re doing is prayerfully replaying your day. As you start through the replay, you keep in mind the four types of God Hunt Sightings mentioned above. Don’t become discouraged. It takes time to develop any discipline worth adding to your life.

In my own case, I would feel badly if I went for even a couple of days and there was nothing that came to mind. That’s because I truly believe God actively involves Himself in our lives on a regular basis. And when we start to see this, it makes for a most delightful relationship.

I encourage you to deliberately expand your God Hunt knowledge this week to include help He gives you to perform your acts of service on the Lord’s behalf. Become conscious of His involvement with you as you minister in His name. Don’t be content to just do it on your own. Insist on His participation. He won’t mind. This is a lesson He’s been wanting you to learn for some time now.

Join in the fun, okay? Don’t miss out on this critically important spiritual disciple. As my wife, Karen, writes in her book The God Hunt: The Delightful Chase and the Wonder of Being Found:

 No matter what it is you are seeking—treasures on the ocean’s floor, designer labels in a resale shop, rare birds in the lofty tree-tops, pennies in the grass, the contents of a list for a teenager’s scavenger hunt, wildflowers in a spring woods or first editions in a used book store—there is a thrill when you find it. That same delicious anticipation, that same excitement should be present when we hunt for God.

Well, that’s it for today’s blog post. Tomorrow, I will post one of my “Preaching Tips”s for pastors. But, I’ll plan to be back on Thursday with yet another blog post about Going on a God Hunt. I very much hope you’ll come back to join me.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Once again, we continue today to explore a very critical spiritual disciple that we call Going on a God Hunt. What we’re doing is learning how to look for evidences of God making His presence known in our everyday worlds. Specifically, we’re exploring evidence of God giving us help to do His work in this world.

As we wrapped up on Friday, Sushannah was lost. I was sharing with you from Chapter 3 of the book, I Spy God.

 “Sus!” He shouted this time—wait! Wait! Someone was moving inside. It was Muffy! He heard Muffy barking.

But Loser’s heart sank again. A new and terrible thought hit him. What if Muffy had crawled inside and become trapped? He had done that before. What if Susannah had not wanted them to know she was sneaking around the cabin? What if she had gone off by herself, and this was where Muffy had been all morning, curled up and napping, while Sus slipped into the river?

Then Loser heard a little voice. It was a muffled and little and sleepy voice, but the most wonderful voice in the world.

“I knew you wash inshide, Losher. I knew all along you wash inshide. Let me out. I’m shtuck. Muffy and me’sh shtuck under here.”

Fearing I have now made my blog post too childish for some of you (if that’s really possible), let me offer you a quotation from Thomas Aquinas, brilliant Italian theologian and philosopher who spent much of his life writing about the conflict between faith and reason. Please read carefully what he writes:

Grant me, O Lord my God,
A heart to seek You
And a hope of finally embracing You.

Apparently even this man with a brilliant mind liked being on a God Hunt.

Please allow me now to put what I’m saying into a sentence that will succinctly summarizes my blog posts on this subject of helping to do God’s work in this world:

 “Serving God becomes most exciting when we look for divine help to do his work in the world.”

You see, you develop a mindset that expects this. You don’t just grind things out on your own. Instead, you almost automatically ask for help when you feel you need it. And then, almost before you know it, there it is! God’s activity never ceases to surprise you.

I’d say it’s that special factor that makes service for Him so delightful. And it’s all a part of being on the daily God Hunt.. May I share that key sentence with you again? Okay, here it is:

 “Serving God becomes most exciting when we look for divine help to do his work in the world.”

I think I will let you ponder that key sentence for the rest of today. I’ll plan to post another blog tomorrow to continue our discussion about seeing God’s Hand at work in our daily lives.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Going on a God Hunt. What we’re doing is learning how to look for evidences of God making his presence known in our everyday worlds. Specifically, we’re exploring evidence of God giving us help to do His work in this world.

Even children can understand what it is I’m writing to you about. Most kids are great helpers. They’re not bad prayers either.

In Chapter 3 of the book, “I Spy God,” Loser, Joey, and Jimmy are out looking for little lost Sus. Loser prays and asks for God’s help. And he gets it! Loser has a sighting that I’d put in the “help to do God’s work in the world“ category:

 “Su-us!”

“Sus-ann-ah!”

“Su-us! Where are you?”

You’ve gotta have a strategy if you’re gonna find things, thought Loser. Where was Muffy? Muffy could swim. He wouldn’t just let Sus fall into the river.

Unless he had drowned, too.

The voices kept calling from the riverside—men’s and women’s voices. “Sus-ann-ah! Where are you?”

Maybe if he went back to the last place where he had seen his sister earlier that morning—maybe if he went upriver to the shack, he would find some clues, some footprints in the soft mud around the shack, or something.

Loser ducked his head and began to run. He thought of Susannah’s dragging feet. He thought of her reddish-brown hair in the sunlight. He thought of how she found things for him when he lost them. He thought of her calling, “I know where it ish!”

Had Susannah really thought that he was somewhere else? She was a little girl, but she was a smart little girl. Didn’t she realize that if Schmidt and Schwartz were in the shack, he would be in the shack, too?

Breathless, Loser reached the tumbledown cabin. Sure enough, there were little footprints in the mud around the door. Paw prints, too. Loser went inside and looked out of the crack through which he had last seen Susannah. It would be good strategy to get inside her brain. If he were Susannah, what would he do if he suspected his brother was hiding in the shack?

Get out of sight, then circle back, creep up behind the shack, and listen to hear who was really inside.

Loser tore out of the door ran around the side of the shack, and slipped down the bank. The escape hole! There was a crawl space beneath the cabin with an inside trap door in the floor of the shack, underneath the metal cot. This was an exit to the crawl space in case of enemy attack. It locked from the inside of the cabin. There was another outside door on the river side of the shack, but it latched on the outside, and the boys had fixed a catch that slipped into place when the door banged shut.

Maybe Sus had found the outside door to the escape hole and crawled inside. Maybe the catch latch had slammed behind her, trapping her under the cabin.

“Sus … Susannah?” Loser whispered. He could hardly bear to call her name. What if she were not inside? What if her body were bobbing in the river? His heart was beating in time with the toll of the river bell. Oh, please, he prayed. Please let her be in here. Don’t let her be drowned.

That seems like a good place to stop for today. I will let you ponder Sus’ fate over the weekend. Just remember that God is always at work in our daily lives. We become better followers of Jesus when we learn to recognize His Hand. I’ll plan to resume the story on Monday and hope that you’ll be here, too.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy