Author: Allen Forte

My message today is on what it means to Understand.

I’m sure if you thought for just a moment, you could find a handful of things about life that you do not understand, things you cannot comprehend, or things you cannot make sense of.  This message is not about how much or how many things you know and understand; rather, it is about your ability to discover what is not clear without using what is clearly before you.  It is about your ability to make sense of what is not known without using what you do know.  The ability to understand is vital to having a strong relationship with God for there will be more times when we will have to understand more than what God says; we will have to understand Who God is.

In Daniel 10:12, scripture speaks to our ability to understand. It tells of an Angel who came to Daniel and spoke to him. “Then he said to me, ‘Do not fear Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand, and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard; and I have come because of your words.'”  Now, we don’t know exactly what Daniel’s words were, but that is the nature of understanding.  I believe he was simply seeking understanding that could only come from God.  Whatever he said, his words obviously moved God to act by sending an Angel to Daniel with an answer.  Why?

Now, I don’t know about you, but I will acknowledge that I have struggled with a lack of understanding more than I would like to admit.  There are lots of practical things we just don’t get.  So I suppose that should explain why there are many more spiritual things about God that we do not understand but we should.  For me, I even know why I did not always understand as I should.  It is because I often waited until I had a problem then I went to God for understanding so I could decide what I wanted to do.  I’m sure there are many others like this, who foolishly live on their own understanding apart from Him until they have problems they cannot solve.  Then they run to Him with those problems seeking to understand what they should do.

But thank the Lord for examples like Daniel.  For he revealed to us the fallacy of our ways.  You see, Daniel did three things to become a person of understanding that we should all do.  First, he set his heart to understand His God and not just his problems.  Then he humbled himself with his need for understanding before his God such that he kept his fleshly understanding from controlling his behaviors.  And finally, Daniel did not seek God’s understanding just so he could learn how to get out of a tight situation – he sought to be a person of understanding so that in a tight situation the power and favor of God would be revealed to others.

So this is what it means to understand: set your heart to understand the nature of God and humble yourself in this need before Him so that you are not tempted to use your own strength or the devices of man to escape your tight spots.  To understand God is to Stand Under God for all that you are.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you. 

My message today is on finding delight in advice.

Throughout our lives, we will live and listen to a lot of things.  We listen to people–we listen to the media; we listen to teachers; we (or at least some of us, unfortunately) listen to the noise of social media–in a way you are listening to me right now.  But we need to be very careful about who we listen to.  The quality of our whole lives depends on the influence of the advice we hear and take.  My mom used to say to me, “Never take the advice or listen to anyone who themselves did not listen to the Lord.”  I also learned that I needed to love receiving the advice of those who loved and cared about me.

We cannot have or live the life possible to us when we live only on the advice we give ourselves.  We must allow for something or someone else to help us know what we do not know.  In Psalms 37:4 scripture gives us this advice: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”  This scripture is telling us that our attitudes should be to find our relationship with the Lord the most delightful thing.  I have come to love loving Him; that is my attitude and simple delight toward Him.

But there is something more with this scripture than just advice.  The most well-meaning person giving us advice cannot bring that advice to its intended conclusion.  Only the advice we get from the Lord can do that.  With this scripture we are told to delight ourselves in Him and He shall give us the desires of our heart.  Consider what this means: advice with a delight as a reward.  When we learn to delight in our relationship with the Lord, He returns our delight back toward us in the form of His own delight with us and with the heart and attitude we have toward Him.  He does this by searching our hearts when we don’t know it and then giving us the desires that He finds there when we don’t expect it.  He loves to do this.  Our delight in Him comes back to us as His delight with us.

You may still be missing the significance of what this means.  Some of us may find delight in a quiet evening, or a favorite book, or a child, or in a favorite food.  Our attitude toward having those things is always joyful.  Spiritual delight is like dancing before Him when He may not be looking. It’s never accepting hurt because you Love Him or love others. It’s like signing of Him when only you can hear yourself. It is living like heaven is right here on earth. When He is our ultimate delight, our attitude and our heart are always toward having Him.  And when we set our hearts to face Him this way, He delights to give us the desires of our hearts, even those we have not offered to Him in prayer.  Yes, when we delight in Him, He gives us many of our desires before we ever ask.  You will have very few unanswered prayers when you learn to delight in Him. So learn to find delight in taking advice from the Lord.  Delight yourself in Him today, and He will give back to you His own delight in you.  

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.  “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, pride, superiority, and ego.” He went on, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, goodness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith – oh and did I say Love. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”  The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

One of the most troubling things for me has been the time I spent losing the battle for my life and I didn’t even know who or what I was fighting against.  I know now that battle was between sin and Spirit.  Scripture tells us about it this way in Mark 14:38 where it says “Watch and pray lest you fall into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”.    Because I didn’t know enough about the power of sin and the overcoming power of the Spirit, I spent many years strengthening my sinful nature so I could live the life I thought was good for me, not understanding every time I won at something in my flesh I lost another battle for my life.  The flesh is never strong enough to overcome sin; indeed as strong as we may be in the flesh it will always be weak against sin.

Perhaps some of you understand what I am saying.  So like the grandson in this story, I wondered one day, “Lord, why is it that it seems like I am always fighting against myself for myself?”  It was then I learned that the Spirit wanted me to always choose what was good and right, but my flesh wanted to choose what was appeasing and gratifying.  I also came to fully understand the nature of sin and to know that sin would always give the flesh what it wanted, so my flesh was kept weak to the power of sin.

So how did I overcome this fight?  For me, I had to learn to starve my flesh and to feed my Spirit.  You see, I knew I couldn’t just defeat my flesh; I knew that I had to kill it or it would always find a way to make me mess up.  So starving it was the best way to rid myself of it.  But I also learned that I had to feed the Spirit so that It would be strong enough to help me live the life God wanted me to live–the the life that I actually wanted to live for Him.  I also learned that the fight against sin and the fight to do the will of God has to be left to the power of the Spirit.  So we must learn that instead of fighting in our flesh to stay away from sin that it is an easier fight to give our flesh over to the power of the Spirit.  So we strengthen the spirit to subdue the flesh because the Spirit is indeed the only thing strong enough to fight and win again sin.

If you try to fight the battle for your life on your own, you will lose; so learn to feed your Spirit the things of the Spirit and to starve the flesh of the things it desires.  The Spirit is the champion you have inside you Who is there to fight and win your battles for you.  So feed Him and leave no food for your flesh.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

In the movie The Color Purple they sing the song “God is trying to tell you something”.  It is a classic song that speaks to the lengths God will go to speak to us.  In a way He must go to great lengths to talk to us because we will often go to great lengths to miss what He tries to say to us.

In Haggai 1:5, scripture brings this to the hearing of the people when it says, “Now therefore, thus says the Lord of Hosts, Consider your ways!”  This is a simple Word, and for me it simply says the way I live can keep me from understanding the way God speaks and ultimately whether I can learn to hear Him speak.

Sometimes we intentionally live in ways that we do not want to hear from God; and then there are times when we unintentionally live in ways that keeps us from hearing God.  Either way, He speaks to us about this in the same way – Consider our Ways.

When we decide we need rest before we can go to church – He says, “Consider your ways!”

When we decide we need to fix our house before we invite Him into our home – He says, “Consider your ways!

When we fill our hearts with worldly stuff that leave no room for Him – He says, “Consider your ways!

When we believe we do all the right things but right things don’t happen for us – He says, “Consider your ways!”

When we sow much, but we bring home little; when we eat all that we love, but we are still hungry; when we drink, but we are not filled; when we are friendly, but we have few friends; when we earn much, but we owe much more – to all this He says, “Consider your Ways.”

Consider this.  You live on the same street that God lives.  In one case, He lives in the house directly across from your house; but you are too busy with your stuff to ever invite Him to your house, so you never learn to hear Him speak. His message to you is to consider your ways.  Then He may live in the house next door to you, and you share a driveway with Him; but you never ask if you can give Him a lift, so you never hear what His needs may be.  His message to you is the same: consider your ways.   Then there is the instance where you lose your job and are unable to pay your rent, so He invites you to come live with Him; then you learn how He lives and how He speaks and He learns the same things about you.  His message is the same: consider your ways.

God wants more than just to live in the same neighborhood as you do; He wants more than to share a common driveway with you; He doesn’t simply want your life and His life to cross paths; He wants to share His life with you, and He wants you to give Him your life.  When God speaks to us it comes with blessings; so if you will consider your ways, maybe you would hear what He is trying to tell you, and perhaps you will find the blessings of life He has for you.   Live A Delivered Life.  Love you.

My message today is a challenge for us to make 2021 a year in which we live greater than we ever have lived before.

We are at the end of what has been one of the most challenging years I can remember.  At the same time we are at the beginning of what I hope to be a year where we meet the new challenges in an overcoming way.  In order to do this, a lot will depend on our mind and our resolve.

In Titus 1:15, scripture encourages our resolve in this way: “To the pure all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving nothing is pure; but even their mind and conscience are defiled.”

Do you know why oysters have no hands, arms or legs?  Over the course of the life of any oyster it likely a small irritant of some sort will become stuck deep in the soft tissue of their stomachs.  Once there the oyster has no way to get rid of the irritant since it has no hands, arms or legs.  Because it cannot remove the irritant, the challenge for the oyster is to learn to live with it.  So the oyster begins to secrete a material called nacre to surround the irritant and to make it tolerable.  Over many years the oyster does this – until – it produces what we know and value as a pearl.  Yes, pearls are the result of the hard work of the oyster to learn to deal with something that was otherwise an irritant to their lives.  The oyster responds to the challenge of the irritant in an overcoming way.

The year of 2020 has been a year of challenges for us in ways we could not have foreseen.  But 2020 is behind us now and 2021 is ahead.  How the oyster produces the pearl can help us develop healthier mindsets around how we see the world.  To those of us who are pure in our hearts and minds, it will be easy for us to see the purity hidden even in the most challenging and most difficult things.  This sense of purity is what we use to overcome the challenges that are before us.  The sense of purity is our nacre.  When we are faced with a difficult situation or an irritating situation, we go to work looking for the hidden purity there that we may be able to produce a pearl.

It is easy for us to be unbelieving and to have our minds and consciousness defiled with seeing all the wrongs and hurts and pains that are around us.  The least of us and the greatest of us can do that.  But it takes someone whose heart is to see as God sees; to see how God sees and to see what God sees to be able to take what may be an irritant to someone else and make that a pearl in our lives.  If God can use the dust of the ground to create man; and if Jesus can use dirt and spit to restore a man’s sight; surely we can use the blessing of being pure of heart to bring out the purity in the things that may challenge us to the point of falling.

So let me challenge you in 2021: make this a year in which you allow the Lord to purify your heart so that you can learn to see the purity hidden in the things that are your challenge. And if it is His will, you may be able to be like the oyster, producing pearls of life from things that otherwise would have been only irritants.  Be blessed in your 2021 in ways that you cannot imagine.

There are many ways believers act no differently from the nonbeliever, but there is one way that is particularly bothersome.  The nonbeliever doesn’t believe in the Lord, so he thinks he must make it on his own.  Then there are believers who know the Lord, but they act as if they must make it in life on their own.  Both fail to realize that the Lord is a heavenly father Who is interested in helping us live successfully here on earth as we are given to serving Him.

We see this desire of His for us in the book of Joshua, chapter 1:5 when God says 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”.  When God says He will not leave nor forsake you, He isn’t saying He will simply be there standing by to watch you struggle through life; He is saying that you should know He will be a part of your life to help you live successfully in all you do.  God doesn’t raise his children to failures.

So, what did Moses and Joshua do that we do not do today?  They gave God the type of effort He was looking for.  They gave Him a complete effort to be something that could only be fully realized when God finished things.  Moses and Joshua were farmers of sorts.  They planted and they watered then they stood by and watched God give the final increase to their work.  So, what about us?  Are we giving our effort at life to Him or are we doing it all on our own? Are we planting and watering and trying to bring about the increase from our efforts ourselves?  Are we trying to finish the things we start ourselves?  Are we putting the period at the end of our own efforts? Are we trying to live a successful spiritual life by using the ways of the world?

So how then can we give the type of effort that God would say to us “I can work with that”? Well, first like Moses and Joshua, we have to have the courage and strength of self to know that we do not live and behave like the world acts and behave.  The world tells us to reap much so we can take care of ourselves; but we have to have the courage and strength to know that we must sow more than we expect to reap to take care of others as God cares for us.  God can work with that.  Then the world tells us that only the strong survives so we must listen only to ourselves and be better than others; but we must have the humility to know that we must have something higher than our own thinking and higher than the world’s thinking in order to survive.  There is always someone greater than you; there is always someone who has greater knowledge and more resources than you but there is never anyone higher than the Lord Who is with you and beside you.

If you want to work out you own life on your own, you had better be stronger than the next person of the world who will rise up against you and take what you have sown and watered for himself.  But if you want to give the Lord an effort He can work with, learn to stay close to Him and learn from Him for then He says, “you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success” because He will fulfill His promise to complete what you have started.  Learn to give Him a dependent life He can work with and He will give an increase to your obedient and humble effort.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you. 

Christmas 2020

Long before He was born, the Lord was at work making a way for your life to be blessed.  He put His name on you before you had a name.  And now, as we celebrate His birth this Christmas Day 2020, receive this blessing from Him.

In Numbers 6:22-27, God says – “the Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace”.

2020 has been a year we will remember for its challenges and how things have caused us to change how we live.  May this blessing come to life in you and may it become the reason you change who you are as much as circumstances have changed how you live.

Let His goodness be upon you always and let His favor go before you and keep you.  And may the wonder of His graciousness towards you be the reason you change your ways and come to live even more for Him.  And may His face and His presence shine upon you like the brightest stars illuminating the way for many who are lost.  And finally, may He give you peace in the midst of all that is storming around and about you.

Love those you should love; bless everyone; be gracious towards all; let your favor be upon all those you know and love; turn your face towards good and towards those who need to see the unimaginable; have no issues with anyone and be no issue for anyone but be at peace with all.

Now, if you are not ready to accept this blessing for yourself, the Lord is gracious and patient even in that.  But accept it then for your children and for your children’s children and for their children and their children and the generations of all those who will come after you.

Merry Christmas!

Be gracious to us Lord!

Amen

Today my message is about the genealogy of you, but unlike the many ancestry tools we have today that are supposed to take a sample of your DNA and trace your beginnings back to someone or some people, the question we are asking is in whose life can we trace   your future?  In the book of Matthew, Chapter 1: 1-17, the genealogy of Christ is recorded for us.  Verses 1 and 16 of Chapter 1 says to us “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham”.  And Jacob had Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called Christ”.

When we look at the genealogy of Christ, we will find 42 generations of some simple people who were amazingly different from the people of their times. Abraham and David are two of those people.  Abraham was a faithful man – he is our example of one who walked with God all his days. Abraham learned the hard way, with the birth of his son Ishmael by someone other than his wife, to depend on God for everything.  After that failing, Abraham seemingly never took matters of his own life into his own hands because when he did that, he knew he was taking matters of his own life out of the hands of God.  Abraham stands at the beginning of the genealogy of Christ because he was a faithful believer and follower of God.  Perhaps Abraham’s faith and his obedience and his dependence on God were the reasons he made it to be a part of Christ’s genealogy.  

What about you?  Is your faith simple enough; is your obedience consistent enough; and is your walk guided enough by Christ that you would make the genealogy of Christ’s future today?  

And then there is David. Scripture tells us God chose David to become His king while David was still a young boy playing with his sling shot.  David stands at the middle of the genealogy of Christ because he helped us to see that we cannot have our way with our lives and yet live the life God wants us to live.  We must choose to live with our hands-off to allow God room to have His hands on our lives.  And even in a great sin of his own, David is an example to us of how acting in the dark in your relationship with the Lord will become a very low point in your life; but he also showed us there is nothing greater and nothing higher than acting in the repentant and obedient light of your love for God.   Perhaps it was David’s hands-off way of life; his love for the Lord; his child-like running after the Lord and His unashamed adoration for the Lord that were the reasons he made it to be a part of Christ’s genealogy.  

What about you?  Are you hands-free enough of your life; is Christ the Love of your life; do you run hard like a child to find Him in your life; and are you unashamed in your adoration for Him such that you would make the genealogy of his future? Things like ancestry.com are a look back at what can be found in your past.  But the genealogy of you is a look to your future to learn if Jesus will find that you have lived as one of His children.  The genealogy of you is decided by you.  You have some Abraham in you and you have some David in you but greater than that, you have Christ in you.  Live like you belong in the Genealogy of His family today; if you do so, He will make it so.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

My message today is about something in which we should take great pleasure. There is a scripture in the new testament where Jesus warns us about being the kind of people who trust in themselves that they are righteous and they look down on others.  But before that, He issued a stronger warning to us about this very thing when in the book of Jeremiah, chapter 9:23-24 scripture says “Thus says the Lord:  Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom; let not the mighty man glory in his might; nor let the rich man glory in his riches; But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me”.  Everywhere we look today there is evidence of man’s quest for wisdom, might and riches.  We can now travel to and from space as easily as we travel across country; and we have built telescopes and computers so strong that we can see and do what was unimaginable yesterday. And now we can dive deep to the bottom of the ocean to learn about what is there.  If it is unknown we have to know it; if it is big and strong we have be better; and if there are riches to be had we have to have those and have more.  We have to be first at anything and the best at everything and we want everyone to know this about us.  All this though is transitory and folly because we establish our greatness against the weaknesses of someone else. We establish the value of what we have against what others don’t have.  So does that really make us great or does it make us look selfish and self-righteous? There is really one thing that we lack and one thing that really matters – that is to understand and to know God.  Nothing is greater than this. In this is everlasting and true wisdom and great strength and riches like nothing else.  In this is real righteousness.

Real wisdom is to listen to and to hear so clearly what the Lord says that you learn to discern what cannot be known by your own strength. Real might and strength is to be strong enough to help others enjoy the glory of overcoming something or someone greater than they are.  And real riches is to deposit more of God’s love into the hearts of others  – more than all the money and riches you have acquired.  All these things are everlasting and they are a delight to the Lord.  And a life such as this is a grateful life, one that takes what little knowledge and wisdom and power and riches it has to shine in the lives of others here on earth. Here is a statement of real knowledge, and wisdom and power and riches – live a life of gratitude because gratitude takes what little you have and makes it more than enough for you to live joyfully; and more amazing, it will make your life a life in which others will find joy and peace and happiness.  This is the life that we should live so we can hear and understand the Lord and live to His glory. Live A Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.

Now just before Jacob (Israel) died, he had the occasion to bless the two sons of Joseph.  The account in scripture is found in Genesis 48:14.  This is what is says “then Jacob stretched out his right hand and laid it on Ephraim’s head who was the younger, and his left hand on Manasseh’s head, guiding his hands knowingly because Manasseh was Joseph’s first born”.  Now Joseph was not happy with this because he knew his firstborn son, Manasseh, was supposed to get the greater blessing of the right hand.  So Joseph grabbed his father’s hands and tried to reverse them. But Jacob knew what he was doing – God had plans to make the younger boy greater, so Joseph would have to live with that.  God’s ways are not our ways – we have to learn to live with that.  Now many believers are just like Joseph and make this same mistake today, but in a greater way. We say we have given our lives to the Lord – many of us can remember the exact day and time we did so – but then there are those times when we take the Lord’s hand and try to move Him to bless the direction we want to go with things.  We act as if our plans for the life we gave Him are better than His plans for lives that are now His.

Listen, if you say you have given your life to the Lord then your life is now His and not yours anymore.  To give is to exchange ownership from the giver to the receiver.  If you have really given your life to Him, it would be great for you to learn to keep your hands off what belongs to Him.  Now don’t be discouraged; I know this can feel like a hard thing to hear.  I know because I have been guilty of this sin many times myself, so I am speaking to you about something I know very well.  But there are blessings for you in what I am saying.  I’ve wanted to go in a different direction than the path I was on. I have taken hold of my life and tried to change things on my own when God was saying “let Me handle this for you – I know what I am doing”.

When you give your life to the Lord and then take it back, you set yourself up to get the lessor of any blessings from Him you would have received because He will not do things your way.  If you want the blessings of the right hand of God, you need to learn to keep your little hands off your life and let Him do with it as He pleases.  He knows what He is doing – His way will be better and greater for you. We have to learn to live the life that He gives back to us and to stop trying to live the life we gave Him.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.