Putting God First

Well it happened again, I got a couple of letters from my least favorite agencies.  I have someone that I believe was put into our path by God to help use deal with them so I scanned the letters in and emailed them to him, sure that I would receive a reply later that day.  Normally, that's all the time that it takes, out in the am and reply by the afternoon, this time was different.  No reply came Monday and while it was outside of what we normally experienced with him I tried not worry.  Tuesday came and went also with no reply.  Tuesday evening I was starting to listen to the lies of the enemy and was started to go into a light panic and I knew we needed God.  So I went to my wife and told her that I wanted to start praying again - together every morning and every night before bed like we used to.  She was very receptive and we began to pray before going into work and before going to bed.  Wednesday, we continued praying and went to Bible study after work.  I would not have minded skipping and going on home to watch TV or play video games, I have a lot of experience putting myself first, but I felt that this was the right thing to do.  In addition to praying, I came back to my blog and began writing again but there was still no answer from our man.  Each day the enemy would bring his lies back again and again, no matter how many times we would rebuke them he would wait for another opportune time and would try again.  But we did not give up, on Thursday, we went to another church that had invited our pastor to speak and what a service that was, the Holy Spirit was in the church that night!  But still no reply at the end of Thursday.  Friday morning came and as I sat at my computer and waited for the new email to load, I said that I knew that the reply to our message would be there in God's perfect time and as the messages loaded, there it was the message that we had waited all week for.  The difference between Monday and Friday?  We started putting God first in our everyday lives and it made all the difference.

Instruction Manual

 People complain all the time about not having an instruction book for life, for their children.  The bible is exactly that, if we can live our lives by God's instructions life can be so much simpler.  My son and I have been restoring an old for a couple of years and have many bought many repair manuals to guide us in fixing the broken things.  It occurred to me the other day that the bible is much more than an instruction manual, it is also a repair manual.  When you get off track, away from God it is the perfect "repair manual" a guide for fixing what is broken in your life and relationship with God.

He gives freely

Jesus shows just how freely he heals and forgives in Luke 8:43-48.

43 Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, 44 came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped. 45 And Jesus said, "Who touched Me?" When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, "Master, the multitudes throng and press You, and You say, 'Who touched Me?'" 46 But Jesus said, "Somebody touched Me, for I perceived power going out from Me." 47 Now when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling; and falling down before Him, she declared to Him in the presence of all the people the reason she had touched Him and how she was healed immediately. 48 And He said to her, "Daughter, be of good cheer; your faith has made you well. Go in peace."

When I read it as part of an email from Dr. Rod Hoskins this morning, it struck me that the woman was healed by Jesus when she simply touched his robe.  She had not spoken to Jesus, not asked him for healing first, she simply believed that if she could touch his robe she would be healed and when she did she was healed.  It says that the multitudes throng and pressed Jesus but it only mentions this one woman as being healed simply by her touching Jesus.  Jesus knew he had healed someone but not who, when she revealed herself he tells us what the difference was between her and the multitudes.  Jesus says to her "...your faith has made you well...."  Jesus could have healed her a number of other ways but shhe had faith enough that a simple touch of his garmet healed her, it was her faith that made that work. 

  Before I was saved I was Mr. Doom and Gloom, if a situation came up I would always look at the downside, never the optimist rarely believing in things going my way just on faith.  Recently I have begun a sort of self-censorship, instead of speaking defeat, speaking negative outcomes I speak faith over the situation and over the outcome that I desire.  I have finally learned in my life that there is no profit (spiritual or material) in being negative.  One of the ways that I do this is through scripture one in particular is Psalm 27:13-14  Yet I am confident I will see the LORD's goodness while I am here in the land of the living.  Wait patiently for the LORD.  Be brave and courageous.  Yes, wait patiently for the LORD.  Or as my good friend Pastor Mark would say Come'on Jesus! (this is good both before and after the victory).  (As I write this, good news came in that I had been believing for, Come'on Jesus!)    How did the woman in Luke know Jesus would heal her?  She believed, she had faith that healing would be the outcome of her touching Jesus' robe and that is exactly what happened.



If you ever have any doubt about how God feels about you:
In Isaiah 41, GOD himself says "I have called you back from the ends of the earth, saying, 'You are my servant.'  For I have chosen you and will not throw you away.  Don't be afraid, for I am with you.  Don't be discouraged, for I am you God.  I will strengthen you and help you.  I will hold you up with my victorious right hand."

Prayer for the unsaved in our lives

Some of the entries in this blog are about a few of the many, many times that I was in a difficult, even life or death situation and was saved but what I can only attribute to the grace of God.  It occurred to me today that I may have neglected to mention that many, if not all, of them occurred before I was saved.  How can that be you might ask.  I asked my wife the same thing, for I now know just how far from God I was during those times.  I wanted to know why would God intervene so many times for someone who wasn't saved but rarely prayed and rarely went to worship.  Her answer was simple, she told me that she had been regularly praying for me for almost 25 years, in addition to that she knew that my grandma had also been regularly praying for me at least since I joined the sheriff's office and that there were others that she knew were including me in their prayers.  I had no idea all of those years that they were doing that for me but it made all the difference.  Are there unsaved people in your life today?  If there are, it only takes a minute of your time to include them in your prayers and speaking as a recipient of prayers of intercession it will make a huge difference in their lives.

Harvest

“I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase and the trees of the field yield their fruit.”

(Leviticus 26:4, AMP) This scripture got me to thinking of something that my good friend Pastor Mark told me during the darkest of my days.  Sow good seed and you will have a good harvest, but if you sow bad seed then the harvest will also be bad.  But since you have started to sow good seed, the bad harvest will come to an end and you will start reaping the harvest that will comes from the good seed you have started to sow.  The bad harvest will not last forever.  I know the truth of these words as I have seen my bad harvest pass and the good harvest return in my life and all I had to do is to accept that my life is not my own, it belongs to Jesus. For me, this is what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 10:39 " If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it." Ask yourself what kind of seed are you sowing?  It's never too late to change the seed that you sow and begin to reap the fruits of the good harvest once again.

God's grace

I think alot of us fall into the trap of thinking that we have fallen too far to be forgiven, that what we have done precludes us from the grace of God.  I certainly did.   What many of us don't consider is that our God knows the end from the beginning.  On the day that he made us our God knew every sin that we would committ, every unkind word or thought, every evil thing that we would do or say.  What did God do knowing all the bad things that we would do?  Well, he made us anyway he loved us so much that he made us knowing that we would fall.  So, when you think that what you have done precludes you from God's grace, remember that what has happened is no surprise to Him, he knew everthing that we would say, think or do from our begining and he made us anyway.  Repentance and acceptance of Jesus is not just about not going to hell, it's also about getting closer to God, fixing our relationship with him.

Romans 5: 8-11

8 But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.9 And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation.10 For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.11 So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. Romans 10: 9-13 9 If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved.11 As the Scriptures tell us, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced."12 Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord, who gives generously to all who call on him.13 For "Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD will be saved."

God sent Jesus as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, so that we would not have to be separated from him by sin.

John 3:16-17
16 "For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.

Mark 10:45
45For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Romans 3: 23-26
23 For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God's glorious standard.24 Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.25 For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood. This sacrifice shows that God was being fair when he held back and did not punish those who sinned in times past,26 for he was looking ahead and including them in what he would do in this present time. God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he declares sinners to be right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

I'm tired...

I'm otired of our habit of always looking for an explanation in the natural everytime that something good happens or goes the way that we want it to.   Why are we so willing to ask God for his help in our lives, but so reluctant to give Him the credit and the glory when He answers our prayers?  We are, after all, asking God to intervene in our lives because there is a situation that seems impossible, or there seems to not be a way through your problems.  So when God answers our prayers, when he makes the impossible possible and makes a way where there was no way, we should be praising and thanking him not trying to explain away our blessings as the product of something as mundane or nonexistant as luck. 

"Luck is for atheists, I rely on a hire power."