Author: Allen Forte

My message today should not be taken as a license to be set free from anything.  Nor is it a message to make you feel like you must stay tied to something that isn’t working.  It should help you see how to pull together or to work together when the time comes that you cannot go at things alone.

In the beginning, God created for Adam a helper comparable to him.  This helper was Eve.  Of all the things God had created until then, He knew that none would be an equal yoke to Adam.  Eve was the first symbol of being joined together with someone comparable.  Genesis 2:20.

A yoke is used to join two things together so that they pull and work together.  The yoke in some ways makes a man and a woman to become one.  Because of the yoke, a man and a woman lose the identity of having ever been separate individuals.  They come to share a vision of what is ahead for their life.

But the need to pull together and the need to work together happens in more than just a marriage.  That is why Paul warns us to be careful how and to whom we bind ourselves.  2 Corinthians 6:14 says. “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.  For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness?  And what communion has light with darkness.”

Here Paul is saying to believers, believers should be careful not to join themselves with unbelievers.  Such an arrangement will make for a hard and difficult way forward.  We mostly apply this scripture to the idea of marriage, but it has greater implications and value to us.

A believer is not the same as a nonbeliever.  And a nonbeliever is not the same as an unbeliever.  Believers working together with other believers should be easy for us to see.  When yoked together, what you see ahead is the same for believers.

You share the same reasons for moving forward and you respond to the things around you in much the same ways. Zacchaeus was a believer.

Believers working together with nonbelievers is different.  A nonbeliever is simply someone who has not yet made a decision to believe.  They are belief neutral.  They don’t deny the existence of God or the work of the cross.  They simply have not come to a place in their lives where they can believe what they do not deny.

Believers and nonbelievers can coexist and work together because the nonbeliever is not necessarily going to attack the believer’s beliefs.  In fact, they may look ahead after they are yoked, and they may be amazed at what they see and are drawn to it.  Nicodemus was a nonbeliever.

Believers working together with unbelievers is different and probably impossible.  I believe this is what Paul was warning against.  An unbeliever is someone who denies that God exists and actually works against your belief to prove they are right, and you are wrong.  An unbeliever will do anything and everything they can to undo what is believed about God and Jesus.

Pharoah was an unbeliever.  Goliath was an unbeliever.  Haman from the book of Esther was an unbeliever. Pilate was an unbeliever.

The unbelievers are the problem for the believers.  From these examples we should see why we are warned never to be voluntarily yoked to an unbeliever.  The path forward will be difficult or even impossible.

Goliath tried to make a deal with the Israelites.  If they defeated him, the Philistines would serve them and their God.  But if Goliath defeated the Israelite’s champion, then the Israelites would have to serve the Philistines and their God.  Do not be yoked to unbelievers like this.  The yoke is meant to share a burden not to be a burden.

So, how do we guard against becoming unequally yoked?  We learn to develop how we think, and we learn to be discerning about how others think.  And we help others to see how we think more than to just helping them to see what we want to do.

Yoke yourself to the Lord first. The Lord is on every path there is, but He only wants you on the path that He chooses for you.  Make sure you are on the right path so that you pull in the right direction.  

If you find yourself yoked to someone who fights against God, or against your belief in the Lord or against the path He has chosen for you, then you may be yoked to an unbeliever.  If the unbeliever’s way causes you to stray from God’s desired way for you, then you probably should consider if warning of Paul’s scripture is meant for you.

Whether in marriage, or friendship, or work, or play, or whatever the situation where you cannot go at it alone, pray for help that is comparable to you.

If your circumstances cause you to live like you are an unbeliever, then you may be unequally yoked.  In this case, pray that the Lord will help you change your yoke.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ on the third day after His death.  Resurrection means to give life again to something that was dead.  It is important for us to know this because God wants us to know we have a living Savior, and we serve a living God.

In the 24^th chapter of Luke, the Bible says some of the women who had been followers of Jesus went to the tomb where He was laid three days before.  They were bringing spices to anoint His body—a dead body.  But when they arrived, they found the stone sealing the door of the tomb had been rolled away.  They entered the tomb, but they did not find Jesus’ body there.

Instead they saw two men standing by them in shinning garments.  According to Luke 24:5 the men to the women, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?  He is not here but is risen!”  Easter is more than about bringing a dead person back to the life they had before.  Easter is about resurrecting a dead life, to bring forth a new life that didn’t exist before.

Now the resurrected Jesus was still Jesus but much more.  He was and is a Jesus who never will die again.  Jesus brought many people back to life, but those people were not resurrected. Jesus brought Lazarus back to life, but Lazarus ultimately died again. Why is this important to us?

Because Easter represents God’s promise to believers that as Jesus was resurrected to a new life, never to die again, so it will be possible for all of us who are believers.  Jesus made it possible for us to die once, to be brought back into a new life and to never die again.

Now that is something worth celebrating!

If the thing we serve is dead, how can we live?

If the thing we serve cannot be heard, how can we obey?

If the thing we serve is silent and cannot talk, how can we hear?

If the thing we serve cannot move, how can we be found?

If the thing we serve cannot see, how can we be seen?

If the thing we serve cannot empathize with us, how can we be comforted?

I could go on.  But you should get the point.

Easter means we serve a living God.  And because He lives, He is our God while we live out our dying lives.  Then we can have time to accept His offer of being given a new and eternal life.

So, like the women who went to the tomb looking for Jesus, let’s make every day an Easter Day.  Let’s get up and go looking for the one true and living God.  But let’s not go looking in a tomb; He is not there.  God is closer to us than the tombs around us.

The women went to the tomb because they believed in Jesus and that is where they saw them lay His body.  Their faith is what made them go.  Today, He is alive and waiting to live in your heart.  You don’t have to go anywhere.  You need only believe that He is the Resurrected King and Savior.

When you do this, He will come and roll away the stone from the door of your heart.  He will come into your heart and there He will make His home.  And then you will begin to enjoy having a new life, one that comes into an old tired and dead life.  

Have a blessed Easter.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

In the book of Luke, chapter 6, Jesus teaches us about our attitudes and how we should live with others.  It is here that He chooses the 12 people who will be His closest followers.  He called them disciples.  Disciples are learners.  In this case, learners about Jesus.

We are all called to be learners of Jesus.  It’s easier to follow Him when we are learners.  It’s easier to be obedient to Him when we learn from Him.  It is easier to hear His call when we are learners of Him.  It is in being a learner that our faith in Him is perfected.

Perfecting our faith means we must first believe something so we can learn to believe more.  So, in Luke 6, Jesus is teaching the disciples about the many times when they will have to go first, before being first can come to them.  In Luke 6:31, He gives a well-known verse of scripture.  He says to them, “Just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.”

We sometimes say it this way, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  All throughout chapter 6 of Luke, Jesus gives examples of how, as disciples of Him, we must learn to do to others what it seems unnatural to do.  For instance, He says, if a man hits you on one cheek, turn and let him hit the other.

Well now, turning the other cheek, as we would say, doesn’t make any sense to us.  If I am hit once by someone, it is not likely I will gladly say, “Here hit me again on this side.”  So, what is Jesus getting at here?  Well, I believe He is saying this to us: think about how you want to be treated by others, and you go first, treating them that way.  Jesus wants us to learn more about Him in whatever our circumstances, then we will know what we need to know about man.

Jesus wants us to know that how we treat people usually comes back to us.  And here is the key to what He is trying to get us to see.  If we do not care about how we treat others, an uncaring way of being treated will come back to us.  If you don’t care about how you are treated because you believe you are tough and can handle anything, then you cannot care about how you treat others.  Caring about how you want to be treated is key to learning whether you can care about others.

So, what does it mean to care about how you want to be treated?  Well Jesus teaches us that too in Luke 6:31. Caring about you means you have more concerns for how others are made to feel by you.  It means the more you care for yourself, the greater you must care for others.  Jesus is trying to teach us that how we make others feel is directly related to how much or how little, or how good or how bad we want to make ourselves feel.

If we do not care about how others make us feel because we are tough and we depend on ourselves to get through anything, then we will find it difficult to make others feel like we care about them.  We will want others to grit their teeth and get through things just like we do.

Be careful in how you want to be treated by others.  The word careful means to be full of concern for the well- being and for the good that is needed.  What we are carful to do to ourselves is the same thing we will do to others.  But is that what is best for others?  Probably not.  We are not the standard for how we should treat others.  God is.

We must learn that we must go first in learning how we should act toward others.  Going first means before we drink and make ourselves full, we let others drink.  We take second in getting so we can be first in giving.

Going first means that before we say everything that comes to mind, we let others say the little that is on their minds.  We say less so we can say more.

Going first means that before we grit our teeth and say we can handle anything, we let others handle the little things that may be hard for them to handle.  We use our strength to support the weaknesses of others.

Going first means that before we say we don’t care about how others are made to feel, we let others tell us how they are made to feel by us.  We care more for others so others can care more for themselves.

Jesus is always trying to teach us about us, so that we can really care about others.  He is saying, it is not reasonable for us to want to be treated poorly.  So, we must go first in learning how to treat others in great ways.

If the circumstances of life have made you sour in how you feel about how you are treated, you must learn that is not the norm.  If you treat others with a sour attitude, you are saying to others, you don’t care about how you treat yourself.

Others will not respond to a sour attitude with a sour attitude in return.  Because others care about how they treat themselves.  Those who learn from Jesus will try always to treat you with a good that is better than the good in which they treat themselves. 

As they want to be treated by others, so they treat others.  You Go First. 

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

In our world people generally want all of what is rightfully theirs.  Some of us even want what is rightfully yours just so we can have more.  We believe if we can build it, create it, discover it, make it, or even dream it, then it’s in our God given rights to have it.

But is that really the way it should be?  In scripture, Paul warns us against this idea of having all that we can have.  1 Corinthians 10:23 says, “All things are lawful for me but not all things are helpful; all things are lawful for me, but not all things edify.”

Paul is saying not all the things that are rightfully ours to have are the things that we should seek to rightfully have.  Paul says this because if we get all that we can rightfully have, we will miss out on many of the things that are good for us but not rightfully ours to have.

If you can earn it, then its rightfully yours.  If you can inherit it, then its rightfully yours.  What is rightfully yours is yours only because you have done something to make it available to you. But, if you want all that is rightfully yours, you will miss out on having some of the more valuable things that must be given to you by someone else.  These are things we cannot earn.

You may have the right to free speech, but not all of your speech is free.  If you don’t learn how to hold your tongue you may never be given the respect of those who will hear and judge all that you say.  Free speech can sometimes cost you respect that must be given you.

You may believe you have the right to avenge yourself of any wrongs done against you, but, not all, if any, vengeance is right for you.  If you do not learn to leave vengeance to God, you may never be given the mercy of God when you need it.  Your time to need mercy will come.  It comes to all of us.

You may believe you have the right to have all the privileges that come with your job or your status, but not all privileges are meant for you to have for yourself.  If you do not learn that your privileges are best used to help others, you may never be given the privilege of being lifted up when you are down.

You may believe that you have the right as a child of God, to defend your faith and your beliefs from attacks.  But defending your faith may expose you to more attacks than you can handle.  If you don’t learn to leave defense of your faith to God, you may never have the blessing of the grace of God moving in your faith.

And finally, you may believe that having fundamental rights to be and to do and to live as you please are inherent rights for all human beings.  But having all these human rights may keep you from having the right to give up your humanity for the privilege of living spiritually before God.

Not all things that are right for us are right to us.

Not all things that we can have are things we should have.

Not all things that we can do are things we should do.

Having all the things we can have focuses our attention on ourselves when God wants us to focus our attention on Him.

Not all things will be good for you to have, but giving up things you could have leaves room for the Lord to give you good and better things that cannot otherwise be yours.

Feed His sheep and He will feed you.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Towards the end of the Israelites’ time in the desert, God chose Joshua to replace Moses as their leader.  After Moses died, God said to Joshua “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life.  As I was with Moses, so I will be with you.  I will not leave you nor forsake you.”  Joshua 1:5.

In just a few days after that, the Israelites would cross the Jordan river and begin their fight to take the Promised Land.  After more than forty years in the desert, the people were ready to lay claim to what God had promised.  God was ready too. So, He took time to encourage Joshua and to assure him that He was going before them to clear the way for them.

God is still in the business of going before us today.  No matter what your situation or circumstance may be, He is ahead of you.  Like Joshua, He will never leave you nor forsake you.  He will never fail you nor will He ever leave you on your own for the sake of anyone or anything else.  You are His reason for being.

When He is ahead of us, we are His priority.  The Israelites had spent four hundred years in bondage in Egypt.  And though they didn’t change their location during that time, God was still ahead of them.  Then they wandered for more than 40 years around the desert, yet still God was ahead of them.  He never left them.

Sometimes I find myself in my own bondage or wandering around my desert.  In those times, I often ask the Lord, “Where are you?”  I guess I think sometimes that since I’m still in my challenge I must be alone.  Waiting on the Lord can make you feel like you are alone.  I had to learn that I am never alone.  He is always ahead of me.

So, remember this.  When you are in the middle of what challenges you the most, don’t panic or start to doubt where God may be.  He is a God who keeps His promises to us.  Jesus is always with us.  He never leaves or forsakes us.  He cannot fail.  There is no one more important to Him than you are at the moment of your greatest need or in your greatest joy.

God positions Himself ahead of us because He knows the way out of our challenges is to push through them. He is ahead so that He makes the way for us to follow. Being ahead of us helps Him to position Himself to get our attention so we keep our eyes focused ahead and not around.

We look for God to deliver us from what ails us or what is bothering us, but God often chooses to fix our eyes on what keeps us from living healthy or free even in our sicknesses and bondage.  God stirs the waters of our spirits not just our lives.

He gets our attention and tells us that it is time to stir up our faith and be cleansed of what our challenges will attack.  He wants us to look for the waves He makes more than the waves that come at us by our own making.

Sometimes, He uses the mountain of a problem before us to get our attention and to remind us that He is ahead of us and that we can trust Him.  No matter how high our challenges are, with Him ahead of us, we can always overcome.

Sometimes, when we are in a lions’ den, He may not kill the lions, but He will surely shut their mouths.  He wants us to allow Him to show our adversary that as we believe strongly, He will lead us to live safely in some of the most trying circumstances.

Sometimes, when we are in a fiery furnace, He may not put out the fire, but he will use the fire to show others that He will walk with us no matter where are.  He will not fail us in the hottest moments of our lives.

Sometimes, when there is a wide and deep sea blocking our path, He might not give us a boat.  Instead, He will help us see that if we are patient, He will make for us a way through the deep waters.  

Sometimes, He even uses a goliath to get our attention and to remind us that we must continue to serve Him when others would forsake Him to have the things the world offers us.

You can count on the Lord.  He is with you.  He is always ahead of you.  If you seek Him, He will answer you.  This why you should trust that He is ahead of you.  

He stands at the top of your mountain.  He protects you in the lion’s den.  He is with you in the hot furnace, and He is the One stirring the waters of your spirit, so you don’t waste your life looking for man to make miraculous things for you.

God is always ahead of you to make known the riches of His glory on people like you and me who live lives that are of grace and mercy.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Recently I had the opportunity to attend an arts festival displaying the artistic work of my daughter-in-law Sophia.  As I observed her work, I wondered how it was that she could conceive of something so beautiful from nothing.  She called her work “So It Was.”  When she explained to me how she came to create the piece, all I could do was to thank the Lord for a wonderful daughter with a creative mind.

As I prayed and thanked the Lord for all the beautiful work I saw that evening, I realized God is amazing at how He finds one simple thing that is seemingly nothing and uses it to make the things He treasures.  So it was, He helped me to see that many things that are insignificant to us are treasures to Him.

So it was, as I continued to observe things, it came to me that Sophia was blessed to do a little bit of something like what God does for us each day.  He is the master at taking nothing and making something amazing and unimaginable.  And so it is that even something as meaningless as nothing has value to God! 

So it was, that before there was anything, God created something called the Beginning. And from that beginning, He created the heavens and the earth.  So it is that you and I are here today in this place we call earth.  So it is, we get to enjoy the creation of earth because God created earth as our place to stay for a while.  Genesis 1:1.

So it was, that before there was a man, God had created every man there would ever be in His heart.  So it is that Adam was created and through Adam and Eve, you and I are here today.  We get to enjoy being something from being nothing because God created the first human beings in Adam and Eve.  Genesis 1:26.

Sophia explained how she started and stopped her work, then started again several times before she got things the way she really wanted them to be.  So it was, though man was created in the likeness and image of God, we started to live in what we liked and in our own ways.  So it is, today many of us still start and stop and start again trying to get our lives right.

So it was, that long ago, man’s behavior caused God to be sorry that He had made man at all.  Genesis 6:6. But so it was that God found one man, Noah, who lived in such a way that he found the grace of God.  God established a grace covenant with Noah, such that all men today are given another chance to live in His image and in His likeness. Genesis 6:18.

For many years man struggled to live in the image and in the likeness of God.  We always seemed to find it more appealing to live like we wanted to live, in our own likeness and image.  These ways always reminded God of the times of sorrow He had with man.  God knew something had to change.

So it was, that God decided to put a plan in place for us that would keep Him from ever again being sorry that He created man, especially you and me.  So it is that He devised a plan to help us learn to transform our ways by being born again by water and by the Spirit of God.  John 3:5.

So, it was then; so, it is now!

So it is that God is faithful towards us.  He loved the earth so much that He sent His only Son to us.  That whoever believes in His Son should not perish but have everlasting life.  John 3:16.  We don’t have to start and stop and start again and again at life.

So it is that you may not feel like you know how to live like a child of God.  So it was that God planned for this too by giving us His Word way back in the beginning of nothing.  We have the best teacher we could ever have because His Word comes to live in us to change us.

So it is that you may feel helpless and without a sense of knowing how your life should be.  So it was that God planned for this too.  He tells us He has thoughts and plans for our lives and for a prosperous future for us.  We need only to live our todays guided more by Him and less by ourselves.  Jeremiah 29:11.

And finally, so it is you may feel like your life is a blank piece of paper and you have no idea of what should be written there upon.  So it is that God wants us all to know that we need only to write the obituary of death to ourselves so that He can write the amazement of the new birth of our lives with Him thereafter. 

So it was that we were lost in ourselves like the people of Noah’s time.  So it is that we are now found in Christ Jesus.

God takes something as meaningless as our lost lives and creates them to be of the greatest value they could ever be through the redemptive work of His Son.  So Jesus was, and so Jesus is, and so we are in Him.

You may think you are nothing, but nothing is just the right something God is looking for to create an unimaginable treasure for Himself called you.

Live a Delivered Life.   Love you.

The thing most important to how we live each day is to realize who we are.  I don’t mean what are our names or who are our parents or where we came from or even what things we do.  I mean to simply know who we are.

This is important because when we do not know who we are, we allow the devil the best opportunity to control our lives.  The best example we have of someone knowing who they are is Jesus.  The next best is John the Baptist.  We would expect Jesus to know Who He was.  But what about John?

When the Jews wanted to know who John was, they sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?”  John did not respond by telling them his name.  He said to them, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness:  Make straight the way of the Lord.”

John was saying “I am a voice.”  That’s who I am.  And because he knew who he was, he lived out his life with favor.  Just after Jesus was baptized by John, scripture says He was led out into the desert where He was tempted by satan over a 40-day period.

The devil attempted on three occasions that we know of to get Jesus to question Who He was.  In Luke 4:3-12 scripture says this.  “And the devil said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’  And again, ‘If You will worship me, all will be Yours.’  And finally, ‘If You are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here for it is written.’”

Each time He was tempted, Jesus responded by showing the devil He knew Who He was and what that meant. But Jesus didn’t simply respond for Himself.  He responded for you and me too.  In each case, He said to satan “It is written…” and, “Man shall not…”  Jesus didn’t need to prove His Being or God’s Word, and we don’t need to do that either when we know who we are.

Jesus was tempted in three areas He knew we would all be tempted to live like we are responding to someone saying to us, “If you are.”  It is certain that at some time we will be tempted in the areas of Provision, of Position, and of Protection.  Provision to have all that we need.  Position in the eyes of other men.  Protection from hurt harm and danger that will always come our way.

When you are a child of God, it means you have the power to live free from doubt about your provision in life, your position in life, and your protection in life no matter your circumstances.

A child of God learns to live in dependence on the Lord for the basic provisions and necessities of life.  A child does not have to turn stones into the bread needed to each day.  A child does not live just by bread but by the life and the provision of the Lord Who is our Bread of Life.

The Lord meets every hunger you will have as a child. If you are a child of God, feast on the Word of God and you will be provided the bread of God.  His Word is the way to all your provisions.

If you are a child of God, learn to reject a life that seeks after the position and the glory of man and what it can offer you.  Children of God are not here to have authority over others or to live above others or to worship and serve the things that others want and desire.

If you are a child of God, learn to live happily with the position in Him that is far greater than any position of glory man can give you.  Live in the position of glory afforded only the child of God. 

If you are a child of God, learn to live under the wings of God’s protection, safety, and security.  You do not have to prove that God is able to keep you safe.  The miracle of God’s desire to protect you and to keep you safe is best seen in the wisdom you acquire in His Word to live in the security and safety of His heart as your home.

When your mouth gets ahead of your life and proclaims your status as a child of God, satan will tempt you by telling you, “That’s not who you are.”  If you are a child of God your life will say to others, “It is written all over me that God is the source of my Provision, of my Position, and of my Protection.”

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.  

I routinely encounter people and businesses that pray for the blessings of the Lord in the lives of others or on the work they are doing.  Believers and even nonbelievers have the sense to pray and ask the Lord to bless the work of their hands.

The problem we face with this is sometimes found in the work we want to do.  Sometimes the work we pursue is not the work that should be blessed.  If we are working hard heading in the wrong direction, it isn’t likely we will get our heavenly Father to bless work that will keep us on the wrong path.

God is always ready to bless us and all that we do, but we must make sure we are doing the right work from the right place.  Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.”

This is a simple Word but it gives us some profound insights.  God blesses believers whose ways of living are pleasing to Him.  He does this because when our ways are aligned with the Lord’s desires, He blesses the things we do so we are encouraged to keep living the way we live.

God blesses how we live.  This is the way others see Him blessing what we do.  Often we get this backwards.  We pray and ask God to bless what we do or what we want though we may not be living blessed lives.

Praying the things we do are blessed looks like this:

• Loving others the best you can, then asking the Lord to make your love sure.
• Forgiving others the best you can, then asking the Lord to make others receive your forgiveness.
• Serving and doing neighborly things for others, then asking the Lord to make your work prosper.
• Praying for others and for their wellness, then asking the Lord to make them well.

All these things we ought to do for others and for ourselves.  God wants us to pray for others.  But sometimes we don’t always get what we want because we do things from the wrong place or from the wrong paths or in the wrong ways.

Keep doing things you hope the Lord will bless because God will often bless your work.  But there is a better way to live and a better way to bless others by your life.

Blessed living is living that is blessed before you do anything.  It is like going to God’s supermarket and coming home with a full load of blessed living.  It is like a blessed prayer, prayed for others in need of a blessing.

Blessed Living looks like this:

• It is being a loving person towards everyone in life.  You will always have favor on your life when love is the way you live and the path you take.  This is Blessed Living!
• It is having a forgiving spirit towards everyone in life.  You will always have favor on your life when a forgiving spirit is the way you are and the path you take.  This is Blessed Living!
• It is living a life that serves people who are in need.  You will always have favor on your life when you are a servant and a neighbor to others and when serving is the path you take in how you live.  This too is Blessed Living!

A blessed life is one that acknowledges God in the way it lives and one whose path is directed by the Lord.  A blessed life is like an angel of the Lord being sent out to respond to the prayer of need of someone else.  A blessed life always blesses what it is directed to do.

Learn to ask for blessings on the things you do from being a life that is the blessing of God.  God wants us to learn to accept the gift of the Blessed Life.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

The book of Acts, chapter 17, tells of Paul’s visit the city of Athens.  Paul saw that the people of Athens were some of the smartest people at the time, but the city was full of idols.  Makes you wonder how that was so?  How could a smart people be so wrong about something that is so contrary to knowledge of the truth?

The Athenians searched for knowledge for the sake of knowledge.  They wanted to know what you did not know.  Acts 17:21 says, “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”

In wanting the world to know how smart they were, the Athenians actually showed the world how dumb they were.  Paul even says because of all their knowledge, the people were so religious that they allowed for the worship of any god – even to the UNKNOWN GOD. Acts 17:23. They didn’t want to leave anything out.

Theirs is a case where the knowledge of God made the people ignorant of God.  The people of Athens were so smart that they were too smart to change their ways.  They used knowledge of God and other things to make themselves stand apart from normal things.  They were too smart for their own ways.

God warns us against becoming too smart for ourselves.  In James 1:23-24 we are told, “For if anyone is a hearer of the Word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror.  For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.”

The Word of God is not given to us to make us smart.  It is not given to us to make us intelligent.  The Word of God is given to us to reflect what it sees in us.  So, James encourages us not just to hear what God says, like the Athenians, but to do what God says because what we hear God say changes us.

So, what does the knowledge of God’s Word say about you?  Take your Bible and set it before you.  But now, imagine instead of you reading the Bible to learn more about God, open the Bible and allow God to read your life.  Let Him tell you what He finds there that is not what He says in His word.

Let the Word look into your life and tell you what it finds. This is the best type of knowledge.  Life changing knowledge.  The knowledge that works in you to transform you into the thing looking at you.

So, as you look into the Bible and read God’s Word, understand that the Word is as anxious to look into your life and read back to you.  Just as you would read a book to child, let the Word of God read the book of your life back to you so that you will not go away and forget who you really are.

Knowledge is what you get reading what you do not know.  God wants us to be knowledgeable.  But growth and development in Him are what you get when you allow knowledge to read your life and to lead you to change.

The Lord wants to write a book about what He finds in your life.  He wants to help you grow and to develop into a deep mature believer who is filled with insights that only come when you allow yourself to be read daily by the Word and changed daily by the Spirit.

So, I encourage you to never stop reading the Word.  But start allowing the Word to read the book that is your life.

In Matthew 5, Jesus taught the people about the attitudes that we should have that would make us blessed.  We ought to have those attitudes of being.  And likewise, we ought to let Him continually come to us and teach us telling us about what He finds in us.

If knowledge of the Word of God is found in you, it will say to others, “I am fast at work transforming this person from knowing about Me to becoming more like Me.”

When you allow the Word to read your life, it will be impossible for you to walk away from that mirror and forget what that knowledge is saying about you as it works in you.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

During the times before, during and after Jesus, most people were poor, at least by the standards we would use today.  They had to depend on a harvest of some sort to survive.  Things like food, water, shelter, work, health, clothing—the most basic of needs—were all daily challenges for most people back then.

In Matthew 6:31, Jesus said to the people of His day, “Therefore do not worry, saying what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear?  For after all these things the gentiles seek. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”

Things are different now, and things are the same now.  Most of us don’t have to rely on a harvest to meet our needs, but we must still rely on something beyond our own capabilities.  To eat we must work.  To work we must find and keep a job.  To find and keep a job we must have some sort of skill.  To gain a skill we sometimes must pay to be trained.

The cycle of chasing after our needs seems to go on endlessly.  And there are many today who wake up, live, and go to bed seeking all these things.  Jesus invited the people of His day to trust our Heavenly Father enough to seek His Kingdom first as pursue all the things we need to live each day.  He continues to invite us today.

Jesus reminds us continually, just as He told satan long ago, that man does not live by bread alone but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  He is saying to us, the way to get all these things is to first get on the right road to live out our lives.

We typically look to get on the road called Wants and Desires when we want to fulfill our basic needs.  But this road leads us to a place of dependency on ourselves for all these things.  The Lord wants us to get on the road called Provision because it leads to a place of dependency on Him for all these things.

Jesus says to us life is easier when we put first things first.  In 1 Kings 17:13 the Prophet Elijah meets an old woman who is in desperate need for basic things.  There was a drought in the land.  There had been no real harvest for the previous three years.  Elijah asks this woman to please bring him a morsel of bread and some water to drink.

She tells him, she and her son are destitute and that she has only enough flour and oil to make one last meal for them before they die.  Then he says this to her.  “Do not fear; go and do as you have said, but make me a small cake from it first, and bring it to me; and afterward make some for you and your son.  For thus says the Lord God of Israel:  The bin of flour shall not be used up, nor shall the jar of oil run dry, until the day the Lord sends rain on the earth.”

She did what he asked her to do and God did what He said He would do.  Jesus speaks to us like He spoke to this woman.  When we put first things first, we place ourselves in position to have the provisions we need to be provided by the God we serve.  He provides all these things to us.

So, when you wake up each day make sure the first thing that you do is to make it a day that you seek the Kingdom of God.  With your life, make the Lord a little cake and provide Him a little water.  When you do this all the things you need will be provided to you.  Get on the road to provision and you will see the bountiful harvest of all the things available to you.

If it is food you need, the road to Provision will lead you to the Word of God.

If it is healing you need, the road to Provision will lead you to the healing of God.

If it is shelter you need, the road to Provision will lead you to the Arms of God.

If it is work you need, the road to Provision will lead you to the company of God.

If there is anything that you need, the road to Provision will lead you to the blessing and favor of God.

All these things and more He will provide when you wake up and get on the road to Provision. The little water and bread you have will never run short with God when you first get on the road to seek His Kingdom.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.