A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/pro.18.24.KJV
Category: Religion
Writing for the Lord
At some point in the past seven or eight years, I have been told to abandon this blogging thing. I was told this by some well-meaning people but I cannot stop doing this because it is as much my job as being a preacher is. God called me to do this and until He stops me, I will continue. Last night, I wrote an article about my early life and it caused me to think about why I do this and who I am doing this for. It is not for myself, it is for anyone who will read and be searching for their Savior specifically. I do this for the same reason that I preach.
God gives each of us a talent or an ability and if we belong to Him, we should use it for His Kingdom and glory. There are many in the world who are using their talents for making money or to push a cause forward that they believe in. My cause is the cause of Jesus and why He came to Bethlehem so long ago. Why am I trying to push this cause out into the world?
Because the world matters to God and each of you who read this matters to God which is why Jesus was sent to die on the cross and rise again! God could look through the ages and see that mankind would need a Savior and the only Person Who could fill that job was One of the Godhead.
Mankind, then and now, is predisposed to sin in some form in this world. We are hard-wired this way because of the sins past down through the lineage of Adam. Whether you believe that we are created in God’s image or not makes little difference. The point is this: our ancestors rebelled against the way that God had set things up. Even though they had everything at first, they were tempted to seek a way that put them in charge rather than God. We have been doing this ever since then.
Why? Because we are stubborn and like little children, we want to do it our way.
God knew this and He saw it coming. Although He could’ve put a stop to it He didn’t. People have been asking why for thousands of years. The only reason that I have been able to grasp from my Bible study is that God has always allowed a choice to His creation. Even the angels had a choice of serving Him. But why did God do this? Because of His love for His creation, that is why.
Taking “choice” away from angels or humanity would make us and the angels more like animals living by instinct than created beings with a soul. God has always wanted fellowship with His creation and that is something that only comes by voluntarily worshipping Him. Make sure of your relationship by seeking Him today because He is waiting for you…patiently.
I don’t know you…
What does this mean? “I don’t know you!” It is a putdown from some today and an eternal sentence from God. There is another way which Jesus put it in His teaching in Luke 13:27. He said this: Jesus answered, 24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. 25 After the master of the house gets up and shuts the door, you will stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ But he will reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’ 26 Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’ 27 And he will answer, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you are from. Depart from me, all you evildoers.’
31 When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit on His glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate the people one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will place the sheep on His right and the goats on His left.
34 Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you took Me in, 36 I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you visited Me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 When did we see You sick or in prison and visit You?’
40 And the King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’ 41 Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, I was naked and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 And they too will reply, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ 45 Then the King will answer, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.’ 46 And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
God can use you if you will obey Him. Not acting like a Christian or going through the motions to appear to be a Christian. The disciples walked with Jesus and they still had trouble believing Him until He rose from the dead. When He came into their midst after they had seen HIm flogged and whipped and crucified and then buried…then their faith exploded! From the day of Pentecost onward the church was persecuted mercilessly but their numbers still grew!
Why? Because they knew that the disciples wouldn’t believe in a lie. They would not preach a lie and you couldn’t be healed by a lie. That is what the church today needs to see in faith and then walk in that faith!
Be a humble servant
Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Philippians 2:3-4 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/php.2.3-4.KJV
My early life…
Life, for me, was not easy. Especially when I was young. I had known that my family was broken and the school did not help. None of my classmates except for maybe one or two had a stepdad or mom. So nobody could identify with my family life. Most of them didn’t want to know me or who I was, regardless of my family situation. Because I didn’t live in town.
I lived in the country with my grandparents. I had to ride a school bus to get to school. I know, all of these reasons don’t sound like a real reason to look down on someone but I could feel it. Even though I don’t remember anyone saying anything to me, it was the tone of their voices or the way they looked at my clothes or my shoes. Did all of this affect me?
YES!
Not just this but also the custody and child support hearings which my parents were going through at the time added to the anxiety and the feeling of being less than what others expected. I was never told this, of course, but looking back on it from the point of being fifty years older I can recognize the feelings which were there. Even if I didn’t know what they were at the time. I mean, how can you know about these things when you are six or seven years old?
Now I can look back at the self-destructive behavior which I began even before I was a teenager and I can see that this was caused by my situation and not by myself.
Do I blame my outcome on my classmates? NO! In many ways, being in school with them very likely helped because most of them came from Christian homes. I did as well, but I was angry. Angry at God and my own Dad and my mother…truly I was angry at everything around me in some form or another. As I got older, I turned that anger inward and began smoking and drinking. I had a few wrecks before I graduated from high school because I was so drunk at the time I can barely remember them. Even on my senior trip, I had gotten so drunk the night before until I have no idea how I made it home. The next morning I still had enough alcohol in my system that even drinking coffee before going to school made me drunk again.
I would say that I was on a self-destructive path, which is why I am writing this because I never believed I would live long enough to be in my late fifties. I pray that someone reading this who may be in a similar situation might turn away from their self-hate and seek the only One Who can help you.
Have I had other problems with alcohol? Yes, but not quite to the extent that I did during high school. I have gone out and drank alcohol but I have not gotten drunk enough to not remember how I got somewhere or with whom I was at the time. I also never drank beer to the point of being or getting drunk. When I drank, I drank whiskey or bourbon. I intended to get drunk.
Why do I write this now? Because things have changed. I am no longer angry and I am not trying to kill myself with whiskey. I am writing this to show that even though I am a pastor now, I wasn’t always someone that could get up and preach or tell others that living for Jesus and with Him in your heart is the way to live. Yes, I do buy whiskey occasionally but it isn’t for the reasons which I did over forty years ago.
If I buy any today it is for relaxing before bed or for making some home-made cold medicine, nothing more. I don’t get drunk and I don’t drink unless I am NOT driving. I am not claiming to be perfect or anything other than a recovered drunk. For a while, I had worried that I was an alcoholic but I think that most of my problems with alcohol were my own and not a disease.
God has been good to me these past ten years or so. His blessings and His grace have carried me through some hard times with finances and sickness but I know that He is in control and at some point soon, He will come for His church and hopefully take me home with Him. I urge you to seek Him out and give your heart to Him too because there will soon be a time which will test the whole world and it will happen after the church, the body of believers, are taken to Heaven. Make sure that you are part of that number who have gone with Him.
There is only One God.
For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time.
1 Timothy 2:5-6 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1ti.2.5-6.KJV
A love note from God
God loves us so completely and totally without reservation until He sent His Son, One of the Trinity, to pay for ALL of mankind’s sins. Not just those which had been done by Israel or those from centuries in the past, but for ALL of mankind until the end of the age of man. Love is the factor which brought God to Earth in the form of a man, Jesus the Christ.
We receive His grace every day with our life as we wake in the morning when we are bound to Earth by the gravity which God placed into creation or when we breathe the air given to us by God and recycled by the plants and trees and chlorophyll-laden plankton in the ocean. God provides for us in so many ways until we have come to take all of them for granted as if we have a right to them.
We do actually, as long as we are in love with Him too. But when we burn the forests down or pollute the oceans and streams which He gave to us to manage but not destroy, God doesn’t look kindly on us as part of His creation, which was made in His Image, while it destroys other parts of creation.
God tells us in His Word, the Bible, that He loves us. He does this so many times until it should register with you and me without it being pointed out by a preacher or someone who has taken the time to chronicle the number of times it shows up in the Bible. The numbers are not exactly staggering but they do show that God wants us to know that He LOVES us!
It depends upon which version/translation that you use to track the number, but if you use the King James Version there are 310 times in which it appears. Some translations use the word in ways other than what love should be used for but the fact is that God expressed His love for all of us through His grace and mercy and all of the blessings which we have in our lives.
Yes, we do take most of them for granted today and most of the world doesn’t notice any of them as being given to us by God at all. The air we breathe, the water we have to drink, the food which we have are all part of our inventiveness and our own work. Much of the world doesn’t attribute any of our accomplishments to God at all! It has all been done by the ingenuity of our minds and our talents.
Who gave us our talents and our intellect and ingenuity? God did. Yet, we treat our talents and our intellect as ours, as if we had a part in bringing it to bear in our lives. God gave each of us unique talents and abilities which only we, as individuals, have in our possession. While a degree or a talent for music may be shared in the general population, each person has some unique talent or ability which no other person in the world has.
So why do we seem to think that “natural selection” made such a difference in the world? Because of the scientists and legislators who have pushed God and any mention of Creation out of their curriculum. That is the reason most colleges graduate people who have no concept of God because He isn’t allowed in the classroom! So why would God bless our country so much when we have pushed Him out of schools and out of our government or public life? There is really only one reason which explains why He has not taken His blessings away from America.
He blesses the land which has blessed Israel and our country has done that. While it is true that a few others have blessed the land and the people that God holds dear in His heart, America has done it for the longest amount of time.
God is still active in Creation, whether we recognize His hand in it or not. The world is His and everything in it is His to do with as He pleases. So, forget the political processes and the parties, the Ruler of the universe is truly in charge of each facet of life here and we should be following Him as closely as possible every day.
The pain of change
Growth can be painful. Whether it is by working out or by any other exercise, muscles become painful when we use those which have not been used for a while. Sometimes the pain lasts for days, but if there is no pain then strength is not gained.
Just as the pain comes upon us when we exercise, we must also go through some pains while being a Christian. Because when we become Christians we are but babes. We are just beginning to learn about our salvation in Jesus and need to grow in grace with God. It is painful, to begin with as a Christian because we are still at war with our old nature as a sinner. Learning to be a Christian is a process and even though we receive Jesus and His Spirit when we have given our heart to Him, it does take some time to grow and mature in our faith.
Sometimes this growth is painful because we are not like we were before and we have moved toward God and away from the world. Our old “friends” are still in the world and they cannot understand the change which has come upon us. Is it painful? Yes, it very likely is painful when they want to do something which goes against your new faith. You would feel torn between serving Jesus or going with your friends. Some people choose to go with their friends and compromise their faith which causes pain to our new heart.
If you do this enough it will soon become easy to ignore the pain or not notice it at all. Some Christians claim that even though they are living in the world and not growing in their faith that they will still have a place in Heaven one day. While that may be true, your eternity will be different than it would’ve been had you listened to your heart and the Holy Spirit. Your rewards will be fewer and your life in Christ will be dull and lacking in the power to resist the temptations of the world around you.
Life has many times which are painful. Some of them come upon us because God allows them to, some of them come upon us because of our lack of growth and faith in Him Who saved us. We bring much of our pains into our lives because of our lack of growth in our faith and learning of God and His ways. Because there are many who think that once they have given their heart to Jesus and done the things which point toward a new life in Him, many of these so-called “carnal Christians” just wait until the day when they get to go into eternity.
The problem with this thinking is that if there hasn’t been a true change of heart which brings you to a true saving faith in Jesus, then you aren’t a Christian at all. You think you are because you do all of the things which a Christian does, mostly, but you still go back to your old life and your old habits. Without a change in your heart and a true repentance from your old ways, you can’t be seen as any different from the person you were before.
Without a broken heart knowing that your sins were part of the nails which placed Jesus on the cross, there will be no change. Because if you aren’t broken in your heart and your spirit knowing that you are responsible for Jesus’ death, you won’t reap the benefits of a resurrected heart as a child of God!
Listen to God’s counsel
The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.
Proverbs 15:31 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/pro.15.31.KJV
Do you seek God’s counsel?
Many of us pray and ask for God’s help in our lives, but are you listening for His counsel? Or are you just giving Him a list of things that you want, and then ending the prayer with “in Jesus’ name, Amen”?
Prayer is needed in our world today and it is necessary for us to communicate with God about our lives and our needs (although He knows what you need). But our prayers shouldn’t be like a child’s list to Santa in Jesus’ name!
Seeking the counsel and the wisdom of God can and should be done through prayer but in order to hear God’s counsel you have to be willing to do something…listen! You don’t just spout off a prayer and “thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ name, Amen” and then go about your business as if you haven’t engaged God in your day!!
When God called Gideon he gave him a command but He also gave him the ability to perform that which He was calling him to do. Read it here:
The Call of Gideon
11 Then the Angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the Angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon and said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”
13 “Pardon me, Sir,” Gideon replied, “but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonders about which our fathers told us, saying, ‘Has, not the LORD brought us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of Midian.”
14 The LORDa turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Am I not sending you?” Judges 6: 11-14
Gideon tested the Lord after this to be sure he was hearing Him right, but the point of this passage is that Gideon listened and obeyed God. It is likely that many in Israel had been praying for deliverance from the Midianites, but God chose someone who would do what He told him and how He told him to do it. God knew that Gideon would listen and obey and that is what is needed in the church today!
Our churches do some great things by shepherding the people who have been called by God to be the church. Teaching them from God’s Word and teaching the next generation about God and what His Word says. But…how many of the churches in the world today are stepping out in faith and walking with God in these things? Are the churches today more interested in how many people show up for services on Sundays or do they go out at all into the community and take the love of Jesus with them to those who need to hear it?
Those in the church may say, “Well, that’s the preacher’s job.”, today most preachers are busy trying to take care of their own families. Paying bills, working a second job just to make the ends come close during the month, that is what most pastors are doing. Some have the time but aren’t able to get out and make house calls on those in the community.
What would Jesus do?
If I asked that question today, most would say that He is God so He can do anything for anyone. Well, didn’t He tell us through His disciples to go and tell others about the gospel and take it to all generations and to all the world? Are we doing that or do we eat lunch and go home (or go home and eat lunch) and think that’s for someone else to do? Do you leave church feeling inspired to do something for Jesus and then the fire goes out on the way home?
Seek Him in His Word today, pray about what you read and listen for His voice in what you read and when you pray. Actively reading God’s Word with prayer is the best way to hear from Him that I know. Then, if He tells your heart to do something…go out and do it! God told Gideon to save Israel and he did, if He tells you to go and tell someone in your family about Him then do it!
The Living Message of Christ 