Our Hope is not in how much money we have or how powerful we are. We can not rest our destiny on our character, or our good choices, or what great things that we do in our life.
Our Hope is in Jesus Christ’s blood from the cross redeeming us … paying for us … and holding us up from being dropped into the pits of Hell.
If we choose to be Unsatisfied … with our things, our status, our relationships … it will ultimately be the undoing of us. Because our pursuit of finite things with an internal soul that is, in fact, infinite, will end up empty and without hope.
But if we choose to be Unsatisfied with our longing to be with God, then we will be filled to the brim.
In Hebrews 11, people did remarkably unselfish things in their pursuit of God. This is because they were sold out for God.
Hebrews 11 says:
Hebrews 11 He (Abraham) was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
I love that chapter. It isn’t just Abraham. It is God telling us about men and women who pursued God with an Insatiable spirit. They pursued Him because it meant everything to them. They pursued Him because He was the most important part of their very being.
And He did not disappoint them.
He was the architect. He sat in the high rise office and dreamed of the city.
And He was also the builder. He went down and rolled up His sleeves and prepared a place for them … and for YOU.
The only thing remotely close to this on earth is the mom of a child in anticipation of her child. She dreams, and prepares, and puts together a place for her baby that is perfect. In anticipation of her child, she is maniacal about preparing a home.
That is our God.
He is worthy of our pursuit.
In 399, I said don’t be insatiable.
In this blog, 400, I am encouraging you to do just that.
He will never let you down.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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I have heard this before and I think it is a great word for today.
The reality for most of us is this: We grumble. We grumble and complain. And we want more. The words of scripture are not put there for us to judge others — they are put there so that we can judge ourselves.
In Exodus, the Hebrew people constantly complain and grumble.
Exodus 15 24So the people grumbled against Moses … (and God)
And it what did they grumble about? Security, food, water, the flavor of the food, how hard it was, and the list goes on and on.
The disciples judged someone for wanting a prominent position … because THEY wanted a prominent position.
Matthew 20 25Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. 26Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27and whoever wants to be first must be your slave– 28just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Watching “A Football Life”, Bill Parcells tells his friend Mickey, “If I could just win ONE Super Bowl.” They win one, and later he tells Mickey, “If I could just win just ONE MORE Super Bowl.” How many Super Bowls would have satisfied Bill Parcells?
Bill Gates once made the comment that “he could not afford to NOT work on Sunday”, that church and religion were detrimental to his financial security. How much money would satisfy Bill Gates?
But these are not the questions that we must answer.
What WE must answer is what it would take to satisfy us.
What is it that we truly need?
The reality is that our desire to fill ourselves up NEVER be satisfied. We are simply, when left to our own devices, INSATIABLE.
Much like the freed Hebrews, and the disciples, and Bill Parcells and Bill Gates, our desire for more will never be satisfied. We will always want what we do not have, and what we can never get.
2000 years ago Jesus stood over the city of Jerusalem and it simply says, in John 11:35, “Jesus Wept”.
As we approach the Christmas season, let us understand that our stockings are full. Let us understand that our cupboards are full of food. Let us understand that when we complain of high prices or political situations that we do so from a place and time that might be the easiest time to be alive in the history of the world.
Let’s all purpose to pursue something that will bring us to fulfillment … the Living God. For in Him … we have life.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Do Not Miss The Entire Message Of The Gospel- it is Jesus delivering us from an unbeatable enemy.
2 Corinthians 110 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
If we think the enemy that stands before us is formidable, think about Moses. His adversary was none other than the Egyptian army. And he was already a reject. In a moment of anger, Moses killed an Egyptian soldier. Moses then escaped from the King who wanted him dead, and fled to the land of Midian. He was, by all accounts, a fugitive.
So what does God ask him to do? He wants him to go back and confront the King. Living in comfort and peace, Moses had to wonder: “God, what are you thinking?”. In a face to face encounter with God, he asks the very question that I would have asked: Who Am I?
Exodus 3 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
The Egyptians believed in multiple gods.
They built the pyramids and everything they had on the backs of the Hebrew people.
And they had a strong system of leadership with an army to back it up.
The rest is history. God wins. The slaves are freed. And the Hebrew people move on from the land of Egypt. They were, in fact, Delivered.
In 2022, we are in need of a different Deliverance. And this one is probably a higher priority than what the Hebrew people faced. The Hebrew people, while enslaved, knew who God was. Do we? I am not sure. But if we are looking for solutions in society, we need look no further than the gospel of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
IDENTITY We are children born of God. When we begin to question this, we will be lost. We are NOT the center of the universe—Jesus is. We are not amazing and able to do all things, we are sinners saved by grace who NEED JESUS. And we don’t need Jesus AND … we need Jesus ONLY.
MARRIAGE The building block of our society. There is nothing more vital to a community than a man and a woman working together to build the city that they live in. A couple unified in marriage and God-fearing in their everyday life will build a strong city.
FAMILY Children are a blessing from the Lord, but they are NOT to be worshiped, or hated, or both. They are to be corrected and guided and loved. They are to show respect, and holiness, and honor. And they are the greatest gift that God can give.
MONEY Give. Save. Spend. You can’t take it with you.
LAWS Given by God and to be followed by a God-fearing government that understands that, as individuals, like us, they will someday be accountable before Him. So whether they are just or unjust, judgment will await them, as it will all of us.
Our God is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah.
He has shown Himself as a Lamb but we have not seen Him in the form of a Lion. I myself shudder at the idea that I would like very much to be ON HIS TEAM. He was an incredible Lamb … and he will be an incredible Lion (Lord have mercy. Seriously … Lord, have mercy and I do not want to understate this. Lord, help me, help us, to fear You, and You, alone).
The Egyptians challenged this notion that God was in charge … and it did not end well. Their army was destroyed, in a matter of minutes, in the Red Sea.
And so it is with us.
The great armies of the world pay heed.
The great rulers of the world pay heed.
The rich and powerful pay heed.
Every living thing pay heed.
God LOVES us, And those who are born again and live out the call on their life have a promise.
John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
We have a perspective on the way that things should go.
We want things to be convenient.
We would like to “all get along”.
We want to be politically correct and not offend.
But the reality is that Jesus offended others.
Especially those with great power who inflicted laws and rules on their people in order to “keep order”, and “have peace”, and “control the masses”.
Do not be Deceived.
Be Delivered
And in your Deliverance, get along with others. I for one will “get along” with anyone who allows me the freedom to preach the gospel in freedom and understands that I follow His rules, not man’s.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Do Not Miss The Entire Message Of The Gospel- it is Jesus delivering us from an unbeatable enemy.
2 Corinthians 110 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
Our God is steady. He is reliable. He is patient.
To doubt these things is to miss the very foundation of what will save us.
As we stand in thanksgiving this week, let us allow our gratitude to grow, to manifest, to overflow … from our inner being.
Because by His blood we are truly free.
I have mentioned it before, but the gospel is worth repeating. We have three great enemies that we will never, ever, defeat:
Satan
Sin
Death
All of these are formidable foes—they will win without close margin. And, in fact, they win every day over our society.
And many days, they are victorious in us … inside the very followers of Jesus.
Because we carry something that enables them to win: PRIDE.
Our greatest enemy is sometimes us.
FACTS—we are FORGIVEN.
FACTS—we are CITIZENS OF HEAVEN.
FACTS—we will be BORN INTO ETERNAL LIFE.
But the FACT that we must all embrace is that NONE OF THIS, NONE OF IT, is the result of us.
By His blood we are healed. By His blood. By His choice to die on the cross. By His dying.
1 Peter 224 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
We are moving into a new season.
It is a season of IGNORING GOD. Society has all but wiped Him out of the thoughts. He has been purged from the internet. There is a movement that is calling all of His followers haters.
We must rise.
Not in politics.
Not in fights for personal gain.
Not in our pursuit of worldly things.
We must rise in our Belief.
We must rise in our Faith.
We must rise in our Worship.
And in standing up for the broken, in our love, in our worship.
We have a chance to be rescued on this side of heaven from Satan, sin, and death.
I would even say that we have a RESPONSIBILITY to this call. To RESPOND to Him. To be who He has called us to be.
Deliverance is a RESPONSE.
It is a RESPONSE to His death on the cross. To the blood that was shed on our behalf.
Let Faith Arise.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Do Not Miss The Entire Message Of The Gospel- it is Jesus delivering us from an unbeatable enemy.
And it isn’t always a miraculous healing that all can see.
In His day, it wasn’t just the lame man by the pool.
It was the woman who committed adultery who could only get water at noon. (John 4)
It was the church leader who didn’t even know what God was truly doing. (John 3)
It was the “true Israelite” Nathanael who cried out for God’s help under a fig tree and found out that God actually heard him. (John 1)
2 Corinthians 110 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
As a friend of mine spoke in church this last Sunday, she convicted me on many things:
Deliverance- Removed from something that has ruined us.
Grace- Rewrites your story.
Jesus is in the business of delivery. And He isn’t someone who does half of the job.
A student once told me that he would never amount to anything, that he could never measure up, and that he would never, ever, meet his dad’s standard—so why should he even try? Upon further conversation, I realized that his own father had scarred him. When? In third grade. A junior in high school was scarred from something in third grade—and it was ruining him 8 years later even more than it did in 3rd grade.
Each of us contends with our past ruining our future.
All of us have scars and triggers and failures that absolutely obliterate everything that we are trying to do.
Each of us have a cross to bear.
But Jesus … is the great bearer of the cross. And as 2 Corinthians 1 tells us, Jesus does it in our past our present and our future.
2 Corinthians 110 He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us,
Why did God write that He has delivered us, that He is delivering us, and that He will continue to deliver us.
I have to think that this is a 3 dimensional promise for EACH of our issues.
As I was praying about this, I thought of that student, and I thought of myself, and I thought of everyone on our planet.
And this is my word for you today:
We Remember Our Past And It Ruins Us … Much like the student that I described in this story.
We Forget Our Past But It Unconsciously Triggers Us … Much like my reactions in my own life when I respond to something in my life that is a scar from my past.
We Remember Our Past And Where God Has Brought Us … Much like Mary Magdalene as she cried and washed the feet of Jesus.
When Jesus said “it is paid in full” on the cross, I have to think it was about more than just sin.
It was about giving us a new life away from our scars.
The Bible says that He will wipe out every tear, that He has made a home for us, that no eye can see what God has prepared for those who love Him.
These are promises for us in this life.
I pray that you and I WILL receive them.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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If you have ever seen a movie or footage of a wartime battle, I want you to visualize as you read this writing today. I always picture the movie “Platoon” and the night time battle that went from silence to utter chaos. Firing guns and explosions, in the midst of a black night with no real vision, are my picture of the night battle of utter horror. Picture that … as you read this:
In the spiritual picture of my reality, I was a sitting duck.
Mortally wounded and left for dead on the battlefield, surrounded by an enemy that was closing in, and in the darkness … I was a sitting duck for Hell.
The craving of the enemy for my demise can never be overstated. His insatiable pursuit of my brokenness, His desire to punish me, and to shame me, and to bludgeon me … it was unquenchable. His selfish and bitter motives without limit.
And so, my weakness, and selfish ambition, and pride, and my desire to feed my flesh … they lead me to a place of hopelessness.
In the backdrop, screaming men, and flashes of light, and the utter violence that accompanies war, they were in full force. As men cried out for help, it was all I could do not to do the same. And yet the silhouettes of the enemy were all around me, looking, and with each flash of life there was a new shadow, a new question, a new horror.
I was a dead man.
And then He showed up.
Fearless.
Loyal.
Single minded.
Focused.
Kneeling and calculating, the shots he fired were each perfectly on target.
And as He surveyed an impossible situation, He was there for the possible.
With total composure, He pulled the pin and threw 7 grenades to surrounding hot spots. And as they began to explode, He moved in perfect rhythm. I was on His shoulder and being carried through the darkness at an incredible rate.
He hurdled fallen trees, cut behind ground cover and moved through strafing bullets as if He knew how to escape them. As we got to a place of cover, He stepped out and, again, fired His weapon with precision. These bullets, I surmised, were not for men. They were for the forehead of the enemy. And He fired them perfectly. Drawing a round to the shoulder and right thigh, He barely flinched, almost as if He knew they were coming. It was as if He knew that to protect ME, it would cost HIM.
And before I could process, or as I was processing, I was back on His shoulder and moving.
The blood and wounds that were on Him did not deter Him. He moved with single minded purpose, and before I knew it, I was on the rescue chopper, and as I looked up, so were the other men in our unit, ALL OF THEM.
As we began ascent He was back to the advancing enemy. He was the tip of the sword. And His goal was single minded. Fight off an advancing enemy at the cost of Himself, that we might live.
As we began to fly away, His fate was painted. And they advanced on a broken body to finish Him.
Not swiftly, but slowly. They punched His wounded body, and spit on Him. And cut Him. And they celebrated in His pain, and His shame, and His exposure. They celebrated His waning moments like it was the greatest thing they had ever been a part of.
And I flew away to be rescued.
Revelation 5 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
I do not worship a God who is beyond me. I worship a God who came into the jungle and rescued me. At His demise, He gave me life. At His demise, He gave me a second chance. At His demise I am free to choose, or to reject, Him.
Before you come at me with science, let me come at you with a little of my own.
We, as people, are the most finely tuned instrument in all of the universe. Our eyes focus, our thumbs operate to grip, and open things. Our bodies are put together like a city of 3,000,000 people: Waste disposal, nutrition disbursement, electrical power, the ability to heal, and the ability to fight outside intruders. Our planet rolls around the sun at an alarming rate of speed and gravity keeps us from flying off into space.
Before you call me an idiot for worshiping a God I can’t see (I am an idiot) I say that you breathe an air we can’t see, you receive information from waves you can not see, and you listen to a radio that is unseen.
Is it really that foolish to believe that you—-were created. Not to me.
My wife does not like halloween. And while I am more neutral than she might be, I love that about her. I married the most beautiful person on the planet—-she puts the important things first and the other things—not at all. She fights for her kids and loves her God and worships in spirit and in truth. She prays for others and contends for the good of all. She is proof of God in her own right.
We will all face death and take a last breath.
We will all lose our chance to live in the flesh.
We will all perish.
Make sure you get in that chopper.
He didn’t rescue you because our enemy was easy. He rescued us because, without Him, we are sitting ducks for Hell.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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He is the God of grace, and mercy, and restoration.
He is also the God of Respect … and Honor.
The traditions of Jesus’ time called for men to be kicked out of the temple and SLAPPED across the face by all the members should they defame God, or things He stood for, or His people.
When Jesus stood up to those men, He told them that He would give them both cheeks to slap. He was not excusing them from their culture of Respect and Honor — He was “one-upping” it. Our God will hold up the standard of Respect and Honor.
Not men.
Let us not forget these things—or be discouraged.
Psalm 16
1 Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I said to the Lord, “You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.”
3 As for the saints who are in the land, they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight.
4 The sorrows of those will increase who run after other gods. I will not pour out their libations of blood or take up their names on my lips.
5 Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.
We, as believers, are not to be discouraged. We are not to conform. We are called to LEAD—young and old alike. We are called to stand up to sin and to respect our God with our actions. We are called to act a certain way—to respect, to show honor to others, to not act in immaturity or mockery. We are called to stand up for Jesus, not because He has called us to defend Him, but because we are to “confess His Name” in public. Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus disarmed His enemies and made a public spectacle of them. He plays no games—and when the door gets shut—will it be opened again? I don’t know. As the song in this blog confesses, Jesus is the ONLY ONE who can open our door to the other side. He is the ONLY ONE. As Jesus said in the gospels OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN — He is the ONLY WAY. THE ONLY WAY! And He is not to be mocked, or disregarded, or disrespected. He is OUR ONLY HOPE.
God promises (see above in Psalm 16) that when we make Him first, He will:
Counsel us at night
Give us an inheritance
Protect us—and our possessions
Rest in your commitment to God Almighty.
Repent of your shortcomings.
Declare Him Lord of your life.
It is in these things … that Jesus gives us life.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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It is to remind us who we truly are. It is to remind us that we need a new beginning.
As I was praying on the way to school, I asked God to renew me, to open up my heart and my spirit that I might again walk in His grace.
It wasn’t that I had ever left it or that I had totally gone away, it was the simple fact that I needed Him to “wake me up”.
We all need that.
Luke 16 20 … So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
The above verse is about the Prodigal Son. When He returns to the Father — He gets greeted like a KING. And that’s exactly how God wants to meet us.
With a ROBE to cover us
With a RING for authority
With a pair of SHOES so that we can walk
With a HUG so that we can feel His love
If you need a kickstart like I do, I encourage you to join me in this today.
Pray that God would give you a kickstart.
That He would reopen your senses.
That He would reactivate, and RESTORE, you.
As I prayed this this morning, I was reminded of a beautiful song by Kenny Chesney and Randy Travis about being baptized.
I need that.
Lord, renew me …
Today,
Tomorrow,
And Forever.
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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No one was a more perfect representative to speak to the Jewish people than Paul. He was perfect.
Written by Paul: Galatians 26 As for those who seemed to be important–whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not judge by external appearance–those men added nothing to my message. 7 On the contrary, they saw that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as Peter had been to the Jews. 8 For God, who was at work in the ministry of Peter as an apostle to the Jews, was also at work in my ministry as an apostle to the Gentiles.
And so why did God send Paul to the gentiles? And why did God send Peter to the Jews? It makes no sense … You send the Jewish scholar to speak to Jews, and you send the fisherman to speak to the gentiles.
But what does not make sense to us makes perfect sense to God. Because when God decides to move, nothing stops Him and nothing stands in His way.
So the fisherman went to the Jewish people, and the perfectly educated Jewish man went to speak to people who did not recognize him.
And what did they learn? They learned what God has been telling us all along. He could care less about who “seems important”. And He could care less about how qualified you are. It made “no difference” to Paul. And it makes no difference to God.
Your importance is based solely on one thing: Your standing with God in accordance with Jesus Christ.
John 3:16 is not a resume verse. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
It is not meant for just Jews.
It is not meant for just Gentiles.
It is not meant for the rich, or the popular, or the powerful.
It doesn’t overlook the broken, or judge the defiant, or condemn the shamed.
It is the offer of the living God to all of humanity.
To you.
To me.
To anyone who would receive Him.
God is going to move on our broken society.
And He is going to ask YOU to do your part. As I read scripture, I often wonder what He will ask of me next. But what difference does it make to me? Because if He gives me a job, and I say yes, then I am the ONLY ONE who can make the difference. Say yes to God when He calls on you. Because when He calls on you, YOU will be the only person qualified to do what He is asking. Why? Because a person marked by the Lord is the hope of mankind.
Our hope is in God working through the hearts of people.
When God calls you, answer the call
In The Name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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2 MINUTE WARNING 