Question on the Spirit

It has been a few weeks since I have posted – thanks to those who asked about the absence.  The absence was a result of a perfect storm of life events, church events, and a vacation.  I will be on vacation again in a couple of weeks so there will be one more bare spot this summer in the posting and to go with that, being summer, it does not make posting as often as I would like possible but I will do my best to get a few up in the next couple of weeks. They might be some short thoughts and questions about life and faith. 

Now that being said let me share something I read last night and get your two cents on it…

“The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is larger and richer than it has ever been before.  Yet we are falling further and further behind in our calling to fulfill the Great Commission.  Why?  Because somewhere along the way we lost our dependence on the Holy Spirit, and we have tried to win the world through clever mottos, persuasive speeches, manipulated emotions, and useless gimmicks.  But it isn’t working.”  – Charles Stanley in Handle with Prayer (location 658 on the Kindle)

When I read this it really struck me – not about other people or even about the church but about me.  I began to wonder in myself -  is this me?  Have I gotten away from dependence on the Spirit and into dependence on me?

When I questioned myself on this and answered honestly – I would have to say yes I have. 

Let me ask you – what are your thoughts on the quote?  What about thoughts on you and your dependence or lack thereof on the Spirit of God?

Getting Refreshed

I wrote a post back on the 20th of March about it being a busy season for me in ministry and it has been.  We had a dear lady from the church have an aneurism and stroke and then heart issues which led to her going home to be with the Lord.  Through that time I knew that my calling was to be with the family and encourage and support them – it was an intense time of ministry.  Her funeral was this past Friday and it was an honor to minister at and through her funeral.  Jesus was lifted on high through the funeral and all that happened around it.

I am now at a point  where I am renewing and refreshing in Him.  Monday is my day off – I have not had a whole day in a few weeks and it has worn me down.  Yesterday was a whole day off and it was good.  I did some spring cleaning with my wife,  some  errand running, some just hanging out with my bride, and just soaked in a beautiful day. 

In all this I am reminded of this being Passion Week.  This week as we who are believers in Christ head toward Resurrection Sunday let us soak in the beauty of what it means.  Let us get refreshed and renewed by our Savior and the beauty of what He did for us on the cross and in the grave and in the resurrection!

I apologize for not being around too much in recent weeks but I am sure you understand it.  I will most likely not be around much this week as I contemplate the meaning of the week and continue to be refilled so I can minister out of the overflow – because that is where we need to minister from.

I will spend some extra time in the Word this week and listen to some music and read some other things to be refreshed and be refilled in the time I would normally spend doing the blogging thing so that I can minister out of the overflow.

What is it that you do to be spiritually refreshed and refilled?

What Does Forgiveness Mean?

Here are three things I picked up and adapted from others in regards to forgiveness.  We are continuing today talking about forgiveness and if you missed yesterdays post about it, then you miss a great conversation and click here to read it.  This all got started from this verse from Colossians 3 – (13) bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.

These are three thoughts are on what forgiveness means in a practical way.

The first thing that forgiveness means that we are not to bring up to the person whom we have forgiven the thing we forgave. That is to say we do not remind the person over and over of what they did and what we forgave. We are not to constantly harass them with reminders of the evil things they did in the past. Some marriages stumble greatly at this point because the partners not only get hysterical, they get historical during disagreements! They go back over the past, ready to trot it out and rehash it once more – even after forgiveness has been asked for and granted. That shows that it has never truly forgiven in the first place. Parents can do the very same thing with their kids when they continue to point out things that they have supposedly forgiven that the child has done. Know that God does not do that or treat us like that. How terrible it would be if he did, if we had to constantly faced reminders from him of the awful things of our past that He has forgiven! Forgive and more forward and do not bring it up again.

The second thing forgiveness means is that we do not tell anybody else about the matter that is forgiven. We do not gossip about it to others or say I will tell you but just do not tell anyone else. When it is forgiven it is gone. It is not that we actually erase it from memory because we may think of it from time to time but when we do, we are not to dwell on it and certainly not tell others all about it. Too often we tell people we have forgiven them and then talk to everyone about what the person did – if forgiveness was asked for and granted – it should never be a topic of conversation with others. Again, God does not treat us that way and we should not treat others that way. Treat others the way you want to be treated and that would be when it is forgiven it is gone!

Then the third thing forgiveness means is this: that you do not sit and think all about the offense or offender that has been forgiven! Even in your private thoughts, never allow the offense to come up and to color your attitude toward the one you that you have forgiven. If it does come up, you must put it away and remind yourself that you too need to be forgiven for many things in life. You do not want people mulling over your forgiven sins and dredging them up all the time do you? Forgiveness means to put it aside even to yourself because that is what Christ has done for us.

Like we looked at yesterday:  forgiveness is a powerful and freeing act and unforgiveness is bondage. Live in the freedom of forgiveness – you will not regret it! Some today need to find that freedom that comes from asking for forgiveness and some need to find the freedom in granting others forgiveness. God has freely forgiven us and now it is time for us to do it for others and ourselves.

Any thoughts on these three things that I see that forgiveness means?  What would you add?

The Results of Revival

In a time when Revival Services are fading – we still do them at the church I am blessed to Pastor.  Here is what we did:  Sunday we had two services – 11AM and 7PM and then Monday through Wednesday we met at 7PM.  We had a speaker who feels called to do Revival Services who was the local weatherman and got fired last August for doing a revival service and would not leave the revival when some bad weather came this way and they want him to come be on air.  He was a draw in and of himself .  When it comes to numbers, we had well over a hundred people every service and that is in a church that has about 110 – 120 each week on Sunday Morning.  We had some people from local churches who came but also people who do not go to church anywhere. 

Let me share with you what God did in those services – we had somewhere around 10 people come to Christ this week and we had just about 75 who rededicated their lives back to Christ.  The front of the church was filled with people who were weeping and crying out to God.  It was not high pressure that brought the people down because he was not high pressure at all – it was the Spirit of God.  The Spirit could be felt in the services in a very real way.  I have near been in services like this in my years of ministry.  It really was powerful and I was in awe of God and what he was doing.

The speaker the last night said and I did too that the end of the revival service is really the beginning of the Revival.  I have received phone calls and visits from people since and they are in awe of what God has done in their own lives.  Now the exciting part for me – I am being asked consistently where people should start reading in their Bible because they are starting to read it.  I am being asked about how they should go about forgiving people who have wronged them.  I am having people send me emails talking about never feeling the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  It is the kind of stuff you dream of as a Pastor.

Charles Finney said Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one’s will to God in deep humility.  I am seeing this in action.  Vance Havner said that Revival is falling in love with Jesus all over again.  I saw and am seeing people who have been Christians longer than I have been alive really falling in love with Jesus all over again.

It is truly spurring on revival in my own life – God has been doing some powerful things in me the last couple of days.  It has been powerful to see and feel what God is doing.

Has there ever been a time when you really had a personal revival and what was the catalyst to it in your life?

It is ALL God

Let us continue on in 2nd Samuel 7 and the prayer that David is praying after finding out that his dream of building a temple for God is going to die but his legacy is going to live on forever through the Messiah.  Yesterday we saw David focus on the present and today as we continuing looking at this prayer we will see David focusing on the past and what God did for Israel.  So let us look at 2nd Samuel 22-24 today : 22 "For this reason You are great, O Lord GOD; for there is none like You, and there is no God besides You, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 23 "And what one nation on the earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people and to make a name for Himself, and to do a great thing for You and awesome things for Your land, before Your people whom You have redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, from nations and their gods? 24 "For You have established for Yourself Your people Israel as Your own people forever, and You, O LORD, have become their God.

Verse 22 tells us that O Lord GOD; for there is none like You. What we see here is that David is in awe of God and that quite frankly he is blown away with God’s answer to him. David in his reaction to God has it right. There is none like God. If you study the beliefs of the Mormons you will see that they teach that we can become gods, we can’t. Why, because there is none like Him. Those whose beliefs are found in the New Age movement will try to tell us that in some ways that we are all gods, but we aren’t. Why, because there is none like Him. Do not ever think yourself anywhere near to being God like, because the truth of the matter is that you are not and you never will be. The closer you get to God the more you will see this truth!

We saw yesterday that David understood that God favor was falling on him and reacted to it in his present state by sitting, humbling, and praising God for his grace and greatness. Now we see in this prayer that David is praising God for what he has done in the past. David understands that it was God who brought them through and redeemed them. He understands that it is God who established them.

Let me hit you with a bunch of questions that hopefully help you in understanding who God is and who you are.  Do you understand that it is God who has blessed you in the past? Do you understand that it is God who has brought you through or do you think that is all about you and your ability? We are often quick to say that we understand but our actions tell a very different story. Do your actions show that you understand that it is God who has brought you to this point in your life? Do you understand that it is God who redeems you and not you or your good works? It is all about God not you.

I pray you understand that this is all about God plain and simple and that is really the theme of these posts this week.  I do not want to just put lip service to my thinking it all being about God but I want to actively live in a way to makes it clear to anyone who I come in contact with that my life is about God the Father, his Son Christ, and the Holy Spirit. 

What is the most powerful thing that God has done in your past apart from Salvation? 

I have some ideas of the answers I will get because I am thinking the same things for sure.

Surprise!

Matthew 1:30-33  ³⁰ The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. ³¹ “And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. ³² “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; ³³ and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”

The announcement of Jesus’ birth, which is formulated like Old Testament announcements stresses three things about Jesus: his position for it calls him Son of God, Son of the Most High, and calls him a ruler, his authority is seen in that he is seated on Israel’s throne forever; ruler of a kingdom that will never end and his divine ties which are seen in the Holy Spirit will come and overshadow you. In short, Jesus is the promised king of the Davidic line. Old Testament roots for this promise come from 2 Samuel 7:8-17 and Psalm 89 and 132. He is the promised One!

Imagine the surprise that Mary must have in thinking that she is going to be giving birth to the son of God.  Imagine what this would be like?  I would have to say that surprise would be an understatement.  I would say that surprised by the grace of God.

Have you ever been surprised by God’s grace?  Just think of how this just came out of now where for her?  Has you surprise ever been out of now where like that?

 

Radical Obedience at Christmas

Joseph as we see here was a man of obedience to God.  Look at these verses ²⁴ And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took Mary as his wife, ²⁵but kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a Son; and he called His name Jesus. What do we see in these verses?  We see obedience to God.  God told him what to do and he did it.

What about you?   Do you have radical obedience to Christ or is it just the everyday doing what I can get by doing as far as obedience is concerned?  You might be tempted to say, “but it is hard to always do the right thing”.  I would say to that that you are correct with that and I would also say so what.  Do you think it was easy for Joseph to do the right thing here and Marry Mary?  It had to be extremely hard to because again his reputation was on the line here.  He again knew that there would always be questions about him and Mary as well as Jesus.  That in the end did not matter because he went through and married Mary.  He went through and did the right and honorable thing, he showed mercy and love, he went through and was completely obedient to Christ.

You see it is about obedience and trust.  Joseph trusted God enough to obey him. Yet such obedience was costly. Because Joseph married Mary, outsiders would assume that he had gotten Mary pregnant before the wedding. Joseph would remain an object of shame in a society dominated by the value of honor. This was a stressful way to begin a marriage! You see though there is a difference with Mary and Joseph than many of us today.  Mary and Joseph also chose to embrace shame to preserve the sanctity of God’s call.  Many times today we run from the call of God, we will not do things that might cause a stir because we want everything to run smooth.  So we will let people with sinful attitudes set the agenda for what we will do in our lives and in our churches because we do not want to rock the boat.  Those who make a difference in the world for Christ do not worry about consequences or about people being stirred up.

Joseph’s obedience to God cost him the right to value his own reputation.  It is never about protecting our reputation as individuals or as a church but it about doing what is right, what is honorable, and being obedient to God.  That is the bottom line.

Walking in obedience to God may result in humiliation and disgrace before men. When we obey God, even in the face of adversity and public shame, He leads and guides us.  Again I ask you – do you have this kind of radical obedience to Christ?  Do you have this kind of integrity to do what is right and honorable?  Are you willing to have God guide you through times of adversity and public shame because you are radically following Him?

Share what you think today.

The Scandal (Part 1)

Everyone loves a scandal and that is why we have the scandalous things all through the news and many times when there are real things that are affecting us and we hear little about them.  You can hear all about the various Hollywood stars and their exploits on various televisions new shows – why – because we love scandals.  The story of Joseph  is a story of a scandal at the outset.  It would be a real scandalous story if it were happening today just as it was a scandalous story back then.

Here is a  scandal Matthew 1:18-19:  ¹⁸ Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly.

It  is a scandal that you have I am sure heard before – Mary was pregnant and Joseph was not the father and to go even further Mary was saying the father was God.  Matthew tells us quite plainly and without any detail that Mary was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. Matthew gives us the straight truth and that is the virginal conception and birth of Jesus. Understand this, the virgin birth was difficult for people to believe back then and it is difficult for people to believe now.  There are people today who deny that Jesus was conceived by Mary and the Holy Spirit.

Speaking of scandal, the enemies of Jesus knew there were scandalous circumstances surrounding His parents and make reference to it in passages like John 8:19 which says, So they were saying to Him, “Where is Your Father?” Jesus answered, “You know neither Me nor My Father; if you knew Me, you would know My Father also.” Lies spread that Mary had become pregnant from a Roman soldier.  I have a Pastor friend whose father believed that Mary got pregnant to a Roman soldier – that story is still around to this very day. Here, Matthew sets the story straight regarding Mary and the birth – both for then and now with the truth which was she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.  We can trust the Word of God and know that Jesus’ Holy Spirit fathered Him.

So in the middle of this scandal Joseph is going to just point out that he is not the father and make sure there is no blame on him at all and have a big news conference pointing out all of Mary’s flaws and tell everyone that his going to divorce her.  Not at all – we see that the Bible says he is A just man, and not wanting to make her a public example: Considering it impossible to go through with marriage to someone who has been unfaithful to him, Joseph makes what we would say would be the “logical” decision to seek a quiet divorce.  He wants to put her away secretly: which is breaking an engagement by divorce. Keep in mind that betrothal or in other words, engagement was binding in Jewish culture, and one needed a divorce to break an engagement. We see that the Bible says, Joseph her husband, which shows us that even though they were not formally married at this point, Joseph legally at the time was still considered Mary’s husband by engagement.

What I want you to see here is that even in the middle of the scandal Joseph is doing what is right.  Imagine at this point how hard this all would have been on Joseph, He wants to do the right thing.  He was not about to disgrace Mary at all.  Even though it appears to the human eye at this point that Mary was unfaithful to him, he does not want to disgrace her.  He wants to do the right thing!

What about you, do you work to do what is right even when it is hard?  Even with it is scandalous?

What do you think about this?

Specific Prayers?

This week I will be talking about Elijah and prayer.  I will only be posting Mon-Wed this week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.

The post today regarding Elijah I want to talk about Elijah and specific requests in his prayers.  Elijah was one who prayed specifically let us look at an example.  1 Kings 17:21 – ²¹ Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and called to the LORD and said, “O LORD my God, I pray You, let this child’s life return to him.”

Here are just one example of Elijah praying specifically for what He wanted to see the Lord do.  The Lord did it and raise the child to life.  Another example for Elijah and his prayers we see that he declared or prayed very specifically for there not be rain, not even dew.  Later then after the drought he also prayed specifically for rain and again the Lord answered.

Let me tell you that I believe that the most ineffective prayers are mostly the ones that are nonspecific.  You know the type I am talking about the:  …bless my family, or the …be with me today or the bless all the missionaries.  I began to think about why we do not pray specifically.  Maybe we have a tendency to not pray specifically because we do not want to look foolish if is not answered.  Maybe we have a tendency to not pray specifically because we are lazy and it would take too long.

When we pray vague and unspecific prayers we never really know if or how God answered them.  We never give God a chance to tell us yes,no, or not now.  We need to tell God what it is that we really want from him, exactly what we want to see Him do. The Psalmist tells us, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” in Psalm 62:8. When we simply pray, “Okay, God, your will be done” we really are not pouring out our hearts to Him. I think we need to be pouring out our hearts to Him and then also being able to say at the same time, “Your will be done.”  Do you truly pour out your heart to God?

So let me encourage you to be praying specific prayers to God.  Lay out before God what you want to see happen in the circumstance or in the situation or in the life that you are praying for.  When you do this, you will be able to tell if God is giving you what it is your are praying for specifically or if God is giving you are partial answer or if God is simply just telling you no.  The thing is that even when you get the no answer you can have a sense of confidence knowing that you have poured out your heart to God and that His will is being done!

Let us pray specifically for what we want to see God do as we pour out our heart before Him and watch what God will do and grow in confidence in prayer and its power as God tells us yes, no, and no now.

Do you pray specific prayers?  Do you pour your heart out before God?

 

Prayerlessness

Daniel9:13-14 “As it is written in the law of Moses, all this calamity has come on us; yet we have not sought  the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our iniquity and giving attention to Your truth. “Therefore the LORD has kept the calamity in store and brought it on us; for the LORD our God is righteous with respect to all His deeds which He has done, but we have not obeyed His voice.

Daniel has been confessing all kinds of sins that he and Israel have committed and he comes to the sin of prayerlessness. What we see here is that even when Israel faced great trial and calamity, they did not make prayers before the LORD. When we sense trial or difficulty it should drive us immediately to prayer – when we are not so driven it should be a wake-up call to the coldness of our heart.

Do you tell people you are praying for them and you really are not?  Do you know that you should stop and pray but you quench the Holy Spirit prompting you and you do not?  Do you have a prayer list and yet you do nothing with it?  Do you have a cold heart when it comes to prayer?  Is the sin of prayerlessness prevalent in your life and do you need to confess it today?

Prayerlessness is something I struggled with in the past a lot and still have my days where it is a struggle.  I have worked hard at praying for people as soon as they ask for prayer.  I fight hard to not quench the Spirit and stop and pray with people.  I try to pray go through a prayer list but it is a struggle – I more pray through it in burst throughout my day.  I do not see a cold heart to prayer in my own life.  What about you?  How you handle prayer and prayerlessness?