Spiritual Reboot

Well I’ve just spent about four hours of my off day dealing with computer junk. I’ve done virus scans, reboots, reset modem, talked to another stupid computer automated help desk, and finally a live person. After all this I’m finally online and typing a long overdue blog. So to overcome my computer frustration I thought “Ok God, What kind of spiritual application can I get out of this seemingly wasted afternoon.”

Sometimes we just get in a rut of living life and we take God for granted. Just like I took turning on my computer and getting online for granted. I was willing to spend the four hours to get it fixed and working. So why is it that when life is offline we are not willing to invest that kind of time with God? Notice I didn’t say spend time with God. Any time we are in communion with our heavenly Father is not spent time and diffinitely not wasted time, but it is time invested! As any good invester would want return on his investment(I know big joke right now), We will always get a return out of time invested with God! As with any investment, some are short term and others are long term. Even though you may not see instant return(although with God they can be instant!), be willing to do what the Wallstreet gurus say and leave it alone and wait. The bible does say that those who wait on the LORD will renew their strength. Like you I’m not that confident in my 401k, but I’m very confident in my God! He’s always right on time!

So the next time life gets offline or maybe you are having computer problems, just remember to put your investments in the right basket(time invested with God). Just consult your spiritual helpdesk(the Bible) and get some live technical support(Holy Ghost) and let God give you a spiritual reboot.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

In my current sermon series I been teaching on prayer. The past few weeks we’ve been talking about the most important part of prayer(hearing God’s voice)! Now I’ve never heard God in an audible voice as some people have, but I do know when the Holy Ghost is talking to me! Like the bible said about Elijah in 1 Kings 19:11-12; it’s that “still small voice” (gentle whisper NLT) that I hear my Father speak to me in. It’s those quite intimate times that our love is expressed through a gentle whisper to our spouse! Our children have to prefer us taking them up in our lap and whispering things in their ear versus us yelling at them across the room. So shouldn’t it be those gentle whispers from our loving Father that we cherish and long to hear! The point being here is that we as children of God need to be hearing His voice! I haven’t heard my earthly father’s voice in almost five years since he died( and I do wish I could once more hear his voice). But I know if I heard him speak behind me today; I would recognize his voice. Isaiah 30:21 says”Your own ears will hear Him. Right behind you a voice will say, ‘ This is the way you should go,’ whether to the right hand or the left.”(NLT) So if Father God is speaking then shouldn’t we be hearing what He is saying!

So let’s look at some reasons why we are not hearing God’s voice. First, you may not be His sheep. John 10:1-16 refers to Jesus as our shepherd and He says that He calls His sheep by name and they hear His voice. If you’re not hearing God speak then you must start here first! If you’ve never come to the place in your life that you realized that you are a sinner and that Jesus has paid the price for your sin;  all you have to do is ask Him to forgive you and receive Him as your own personal Savior! John 1:12 says “as many as received Him ,to them He gave the right to be children of God”. After you receive Him you now have the right to hear His voice!

Second, you may not be hearing Him because you are a stubborn sheep.If you have a constant lifestyle of sin that you are unwilling to acknowledge and repent of, then you can be certain that it breaks your fellowship with God. Isaiah 59:1-2 talks about our iniquities separating us from God. Even as children of God we can hinder our fellowship with God if we are unwilling to confess and repent of our sin. The good news is that we only have to be willing to do these two things and we are instantly restored back to right fellowship with our Father! (1John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from ALL unrighteousness.”) We can then once again start hearing His voice!

Next, we may not be hearing God’s voice because we are distracted sheep. I know that most of us can fall into this flock. Life gets busy but we have to make sure that we don’t get so distracted with everything that’s going on that we forget  about listening for God’s voice. Jesus told the parable of the farmer that planted seed in Matthew 13 and in Luke 8. He said that the seed was God’s word. He  talked about those who hear but it gets crowded out by the cares, riches and pleasures of this life. He said the seed that fell on good soil represents honest, good-hearted people who hear God’s word, cling to it, and patiently produce a huge harvest.(NLT)   Jesus said in Matthew 13:12 that the harvest we reap is more understanding and an abundance of knowledge. I don’t know about you but I’ll take all the “more understanding and abundance of knowledge” that I can get when it comes to God speaking and His word!

Last, we can miss out on hearing God because we are static sheep. In Proverbs 8 it talks about Wisdom calling out and raising her voice and all the rewards that come from listening to her. God has given me some understanding on this scripture so I share it with you. Wisdom or God’s voice is like radio waves that are constantly going through the air even as you are reading this. Just like a radio must be tuned in to the right frequency to hear what is being sent out by that particular station; we must have our” receiver” tuned into God’s frequency so we can hear what He is sending out! Too many of us are either tuned in on the wrong station or no station at all (hence the “static sheep”). What are you listening to ? Join your spirit and mind with me as we determine that we are going to work on our listening skills and hear all that God is saying. “He that has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit is saying”!

DOG Walking in the FOG

No, this is not a story about me walking a dog in the fog. For starters I don’t even own a dog. It’s not because I don’t like dogs or I like saying no every time my kids ask for one. It’s because we have had two stolen right out of yard and the kids were heartbroken. Don’t worry I promised we will get one when we get moved and have a fenced back yard. Anyway, this is a blog of my personal opinion about a lot of the teaching I’m hearing lately about the FOG(the favor of God).

Don’t get me wrong I do believe as a blood bought child of God that I have been “rescued from the kingdom of darkness and transferred into the Kingdom of His dear Son”(Col. 1:13). And as a part of this Kingdom I have been given certain rights and privileges and I have His favor and I’m blessed because of it! But a lot of the teaching I’ve heard is all superficial and is just being used to give people a false feelgood and a false sense of security. These “exhort er” preachers quote a lot of good scriptures about God’s favor and blessings and get the people all excited about how good it is and nothing bad is going to happen. But what happens to these hearers when the bottom does fall out? All the feelgood quotes in the “favor arsenal” won’t do people a bit of good if they haven’t been grounded in the full truth and the whole council of God!  Paul warned us of this in 2 Timothy 4: 1-5.

Let’s look at some people in the bible that we would considered to have been living in the FOG.We have Joseph in Genesis.It was apparent that God definitely had His hand on Joseph’s life. God even gave him dreams of the greatness and favor he would have on his life. While living in God’s favor, Joseph was: sold into slavery by his own brothers; he was given charge over Potiphar’s whole estate; he was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife and put in prison; he was put in charge of the whole prison; he was brought out to interpret Pharaoh’s dream and put in charge of all of Egypt. I’m sure Joseph enjoyed the mountain top experiences but  I don’t think he was shouting the rooftop off when the bad stuff was happening to him. But during the bad stuff I believe he was standing on the “voice of truth” that  God had revealed and spoken to him. He wasn’t standing on some feelgood sermons he had heard some man speak to him. Also Mary in the New Testament was referred to by Gabriel as “blessed and highly favored”. Do you think she was feeling “highly favored” when she was an outcast of society for being pregnant before she was married. Or when her son was being crucified for doing nothing wrong in and of Himself. Paul was chosen by God to spread the gospel into the then known world. God did some pretty awesome things through Paul and wrote most of the New Testament through him. But read some of the things that happened to him in 2 Corinthians 11:22-28. Did he have God’s favor on his life or not? In these examples God had something great in mind when he chose them to carry out His will through there lives!

This is where the DOG (Depending on God) comes in. We must depend on God in every situation of life   we may be in(good or bad), and we must “walk by faith not by sight”. We still have to walk the DOG in the FOG. Like our Bible contemporaries we have  also been chosen by God to carry out His will here on earth! God is not being mean to us or punishing us when bad things happen to us but He does allow certain things to happen in our lives that are ultimately a part of us carrying out His will. Are we only going to confess His favor when all is well or are we going to be real people of faith and confess His goodness and faithfulness even when we are going through some stuff in this journey called life! God is real and all His promises are yes and amen in Christ, so let’s be grounded in the Word and say with Paul that “God’s grace(favor) is sufficient” and “though I’m weak (God) makes me strong”! We are difinetly people of God’s favor and we can expect Him to do some awesome things in and through our lives! God will bless the righteous and His favor does surround us like a shield(Psalm 5:12) So don’t go tell your friends that I don’t believe in the favor of God. The next time the enemy knocks the bottom plank out from under you remember a glorious truth from the Word of God “There is no one like the God of Israel. He rides across the heavens to help you, across the skies in majestic splendor. The eternal God is your refuge, and His everlasting arms are under you!’(Deuteronomy 33: 26-27 NLT). Don’t let your DOG get away from you when your walking in the FOG!

If you catch hell don’t hold it! If you’re going through hell don’t stop!

Just start with a good Ron Kenoly song and apply it to real life and you’ve got a good formula for living a stress free victorious life. If you’ve never heard this song it is on his ” Welcome Home ” C D. I don’t know about you but I still catch hell and go through some at times. The other day I was going through some stuff and the Holy Ghost reminded me of this song. Naturally I started singing it and soon got encouraged in the Lord and realized my help comes from LORD and from Him alone!

Sometimes we are going through life minding our own business when we get blindsided. It may be stuff at work, family, or even an all out assault in the spirit realm. It’s usually some trivial junk we can do nothing about that we take offense to and HOLD onto. Sometimes it’s major problems that come our way. Either way we need to learn not to HOLD onto these things nor continually rehearse what may have happened to us over and over again in our minds! This is neither good for us spiritually or physically. We always associate hell and hot together but not one of us would catch anything hot and HOLD onto it for very long. The Greek word for hold is katecho and it means: to hold down, hold fast, keep in memory, possess, retain, seize on, or stay. So when we keep offenses in memory and are unwilling to let go of them, we in essence, HOLD onto hell itself. We submit ourselves to the work and oppression of the enemy, who loves to render us ineffective in our christian life.

So if we are going through hell what do we do? WE DON’ T STOP! As the song says “we go ahead, go ahead, go ahead go ahead go ahead don’t stop!” David said in Psalm 23 that “even though he walked THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death, he would fear no evil” It is your choice to go THROUGH or to STOP  right in the middle of the hell you may be going through. We wouldn’t stop in the middle of a fire so we don’t need to stop now. We don’t stop praying, we don’t stop reading and studying the Word, we don’t stop serving, we don’t stop giving, we definitely don’t stop going to church! The bible says in Hebrews 10:25 “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another…”(NLT). The last thing we need to do is remove ourselves from fellowship with those who can help us the most! So remember where it is your help comes from. First from God Himself, and from His church and the ones who have gone through some hell and have come out the other side victorious! So if you catch hell don’t hold it! If your going through hell don’t stop!

The Sin Cave

I was recently studying my bible in preparation for a sermon about the Christmas story. I was reading in Isaiah 9 about the prophecies of the coming Messiah. In verse 2 it says “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of  deep darkness a light will shine.”(NLT) Also in John 1:4,5 it says “The Word gave life to everything that was created, and His life brought light to everyone. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” The Bible also says this in John 3:18-21 ” There is no judgement against anyone who believes in Him. But anyone who does not believe in Him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgement is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing  what God wants.” After reading these verses I began to meditate on them and think about light and  darkness.

 I was reminded of one of my adventures as a teenage lost person concerning a local area cave that we used to venture down into. Some friends and I decided we would go caving to cool off on a hot summer day. We grabbed my propane lantern, hopped in my friend’s car and off we went(that was the extent of our preparation). We arrived at the cave, parked on the side of the highway and started our little “three hour tour, three hour tour”. Little did we know our “tiny ship was about to be tossed”. We hadn’t gone in far when we decided to check out a small opening to the right. We started out on our knees expecting that it would open up as we got into it a little more but soon found out that it only got smaller as we went along. We finally decided that it was getting too tight and we should turn around and head out. At the spot where we stopped, there was a wine bottle with a candle stuck in  it that I pulled out and stuck it in my back pocket. We crawled out and started our trip back into the depths of the cave. About a mile in we got to another dead end where my friend who was holding the lantern decided  to try to go up a small ledge into an opening in the ceiling of the cave. About half way up he slipped on the slippery rocks and was about to fall about 20 feet when he made the decision to let go of the lantern and stop himself from falling. Well the lantern didn’t survive the 20 ft. drop but my friend didn’t have to find out if he would have! Did I mention we were about a mile inside the earth? We soon found out what total darkness was really like! My other friend had a lighter in his pocket and I just happened to have a 4in. candle in mine. We lit the candle and started our slow escape from the total darkness we no longer wanted to be a part of! We finally made our way out after striking our heads and elbows on a few unseen hanging rocks but with no major injuries. We also had a  new found appreciation for light versus the total darkness we had just experienced!

“So what’s the comparison” you may ask? As the human race we have a desire for the adventurous and unknown. Sometimes we think it would be exciting to venture out into the darkness to see if there is something  fun or exciting we are missing out on.We like the forbidden and dangerous things of life no matter what others may tell us. As we grow up there are “voices” that try to teach us the right things to do. It may be our parents, other adults, our conscience, or the Holy Spirit if we are saved. Sometimes we listen to them and learn some things the easy way. Other times we choose to do what we think would be enjoyable and we wander into the darkness not at all prepared for what may be about to happen! Then after our light goes out we find out how dark the place we are in really is! This is when we will no longer desire the adventure that’s in the dark and we long for the light.  When we were small children we never told our parents that we were afraid of the light. We always cried out from fear of the darkness! It’s time we “become as little children” again and be afraid of the darkness of sin and what we have been warned about by the “voices” in our lives! We need to do whatever it takes to get to the light and to safety!

Jesus said “I am the light of the world”. So this Christmas as you hang your lights on your Christmas tree, remember that The Light came into the world to be hung on a tree for us to be forgiven of our sins! The bible tells us in Ephesians 5:8,9 “For once you were full of darkness,but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light!For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true.”(NLT) 1John 1:7 says “But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.” Therefore let us flee from the darkness and run to the Light!     MERRY CHRISTMAS

Blowout

I recently had a blowout on my personal vehicle. It all started a couple of weeks earlier. I started noticing a little shimmy when I would reach about 50 mph. As any other responsible driver would do; I walked around my vehicle, checked for flats, kicked the tires, made sure I didn’t have a loose lug nut; you know the usual stuff. I couldn’t find a thing wrong. I even told my wife that she needed to drive it to work so she could drop it off at a local tire store to get it checked out. But like most, we are busy going about life and we didn’t get anything checked or fixed. So the other Wednesday I dropped my son off at pre-k and off I went. I got on the fourlane and set the cruise on 70 mph and fell in line with the other drivers. That’s when it happened; a blowout! I pulled over as quick as possible and got out to inspect the damage. It was the right rear tire and it only did some minor damage to some fiberglass. I praised God, got back in and limped up the shoulder to a nice level place. I got back out and started getting all the right tire changing tools out so I could get started. Did I mention that it was only 20 degrees this particular morning. I had everything under control but it would have been nice if someone would have at least yelled “Need help” as they whizzed by at 70 mph. I finished changing the tire, got back in and started back on my way again.

So like any good pastor I thought “what kind of spiritual application can I get out of this”. Well here it is! Sometimes our walk with God may get a little “shimmy” and things just don’t feel right. We may try to access the problem to find out exactly what’s wrong. We may even talk to someone close to us to get their take on the problem.  Now I know my wife loves me and even has my best interest at heart, but she knows even less about tires than I do. We need to make sure we get the right kind of council when we turn to others for help! Don’t just keep going until the “blowout” happens! If you do and the “blowout” happens, STOP! Get out the Owner’s manual and the correct tools and fix the problem. The Owner’s manual is the Word of God(the bible) and the tools are prayer, study, meditation on the Word and listening to the Holy Ghost! Take your time and follow all the instruction you get from all sources. There may even be other church members “whizzing by” while you’re “out in the cold by yourself” but don’t get discouraged and quit! You’ve still got to get the problem fixed so determine within yourself that you can do what it takes to get back on the road of life again. Life is a journey and there will be some “blowouts” at times but remember that God has given you His Owner’s manual and the right tools to overcome anything life throws at you! God may even use you to help someone else who’s about to have a blowout or has already had one. Just keep your eyes open and don’t “whiz on by”!

Another Brick in the Wall

You may be thinking “Isn’t that a Pink Floyd song”. Well yes it is, but it is also Sunday’s message at Journey Church in Adairsville. We have been in our latest sermon series called “Happy Hour” talking about the Holy Spirit. We taught in our last sermon “Mr. Charisma” about the gifts given to the body of Christ(the Church) for the Church. We saw in Ephesians 4:7-17 that Jesus gave certain people or offices to the body. These five fold gifts were given to the body for the purpose of equipping and maturity of the body. We then looked in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11 that these gifts were given by the Spirit for the purpose of edifying of the body. We then went to Romans 12:4-13 and saw that God gave certain gifts for the purpose of serving the body.

We talked about how people have been drinking the dregs of religion and have become “comfortably numb”to the things of God and doing the work of God in the Church and in the world! We just want to come to Church and get our religious feel good and go home and live like hell the rest of the week. Then we show up next Sunday as if we are doing every one else a favor by being here. We need to repent and ask God to fogive us of our lazy grace-glutton attitude. Then ask Him to fill us anew with His holy fire and empower us to do what He has called and equipped us to do!

Which leads me to this weeks sermon “Another Brick in the Wall”.It is a call to all of us who name the name of Jesus Christ to step up and do what God has called us to do! There is the great story of Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem. All of chapter 3 is an awesome lesson for the Church today. From the Sheep Gate the work began and then this great little term was used over and over again throughout the whole chapter “and next to them”! Notice that it wasn’t just one person or just a small group of people, but it was every one doing his part of the wall right were he was! In just 52 days the wall was rebuilt despite opposition from without and from within. Imagine what we as a Church could accomplish if we would all just come and put “Another Brick in the Wall” after all WE are just another brick in the wall! We really are! Remember Peter said that we are “living stones”(1 Peter 2:5) So everybody grab your brick and get to work!