Author: Allen Forte

The Lord is careful never to address our feelings. But He will always respond to our persons.

The Lord will never ask you “how about that?”  That is my message for today.

When God told Moses to go to Egypt and bring His people out, He didn’t ask Moses how about that? When He told Mary she was going to have a baby, He didn’t ask her how do you feel about that?  When He told Paul to go preach the gospel, He did not ask Paul what do you think about that?

Moses, Mary and Paul were each asked to do something they had no experience doing before.  I’m sure they had feelings about what the Lord wanted them to do.  But they did what He asked without hesitation.  You and I will not be able to do the things the Lord asks us to do if we must sift all things through our feelings.

In Luke 5:5, Jesus had been sitting in Peter’s boat teaching the people on the banks of the sea of Galilee.  When He finished, He asked Peter to move the boat out to deeper waters to catch some fish.  Peter responded this way.  “Master, we have toiled night and caught nothing; nevertheless, at Your Word I will let down the net.”

Peter was saying, Lord I really don’t feel like fishing any more today.  There are no fish to catch.  But in spite of how I feel, I will do as you ask.  Of course, when they dropped the net, they caught so many fish they had to ask others to help bring them in.

Moses delivered the Israelites.  Mary had the baby Jesus.  And Paul preached the gospel all the way to Rome.  Many of us allow our feelings to rule our lives and because we do, we miss out on many blessings that come and pass us by.

Your feelings generally do not care much about what goes on around you.  Your feelings want others to care about how you feel about what goes on around you.  Your feelings will make you believe you must have more than a choice, but that you must be the choice in all that goes on with you.  Your feelings want to hear others say how about that?

You will hardly do the thing that you should do in the way that it should be done when you allow your feelings to be the standard for how you live. How about that? Others will hardly be open to you or be themselves toward you make them responsible for not hurting your feelings. How about that?

Your feelings are very shallow; they keep others from having deep relationships with you. Your feelings want to avoid pain and hurt but it will be painful and hurtful for others to connect with you because your feelings will prevent that.

Your feelings want to keep you safe from what you do not understand but they will keep you from understanding how safe it is to live while not understanding all that you want.

Your feelings will demand that you are considered in everything while they will fight to keep others from being considered in anything. Your feelings look for others to control as much as they are in control of you.

In John 21:19, Jesus says to Peter “Follow Me.”  Peter, seeing that John was also with Jesus responded by asking Jesus “But Lord, what about this man?”  Peter’s feelings were hurt because he wanted to be the only one Jesus asked to follow Him. At that moment, Peter’s feelings took over his life.

The Lord responded to Peter – not to his feelings by saying – “If I want this man to remain till, I come again, what is that to you? You follow Me.” John 21:22. In a way Jesus was now saying how about that Peter?

Don’t allow your feelings to have your life. The Lord will never respond to your feelings; He will speak to the person He created you to be but not to what your feelings want you to be.  He wants us to control our feelings so that our feelings will not control us.

Your feelings will make you live like you are the center of your world and ours too.  Your feelings will not allow you to feel like there is a reality greater than the one you live.

Your feelings don’t want you to feel like you have failed at anything.  But sometimes failing will help you learn to be better.

Your feelings will make you do the things you do poorly and with a poor attitude and for the wrong reasons.

Cain got his feelings hurt when God didn’t accept his offering, but He accepted the offering of Abel his brother.  This bothered Cain so much that he killed Abel. Cain wanted someone to sympathize with him. God is not going to do that with us. He wants us to grow up and control the one thing we can always control – ourselves.

How about that? How does it make you feel to know the Lord will not usually ask you how you feel about the things He wants from you? If you want to get beyond being led by your feelings to the place where you respond to the Lord with confidence you must learn to never want Him to ask you how about that?

The Lord does not ask us to agree with the things He wants us to be and to do. He wants us to be and to do what He asks because He is Lord. It is not likely He will ask how you feel about the things He wants from you.  You place a burden on relationships when you expect others to give in to your feelings.

God asks us to have no other God before Him.  He doesn’t get His feelings hurt and pout when we don’t do this.  How about that?

Yes, I know He says to us He is a jealous God. He tells us this so we will know He is after who we are and not how we feel.

Don’t get your feelings hurt when you learn your best friend does not have you at the top of their favorites list.  Amazingly, you will live through that.

Learn that things will be ok even if all things don’t go your way.  How about that?

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Faith without fruit is like clouds that never rain.

I often wonder how it is that great amounts of rain can fall from the clouds.  Well, I have learned that clouds are actually made of water droplets. Within a cloud, water droplets stick onto one another, causing the droplets to grow. When these water droplets get too heavy to stay suspended in the cloud, they fall to earth as rain.

So, clouds carry the water that ultimately is needed to sustain all life here on earth.  No clouds – no rain.  No rain – no grass or trees or even you or me.  We need the clouds for the good that they bring to us. – their rain.

We are warned not to be people of faith who produce no fruit of our faith.  In the book of Jude, 1:12-13 it says this.  “These are spots in your love feasts, while they feast with you without fear, serving only themselves.  They are clouds without water, carried about by the winds, late autumn trees without fruit.”

For all the good we want to do in life, our good is really not much good at all if it is not the product of our faith. Jude is warning the people about others who talked about doing the good God wants but their lives did not produce the fruit of good.

A cloud that is swept around by the wind doesn’t have a chance to catch and then deposit the rain that should be its fruit.  Clouds like this are mostly dark times in our lives. Empty clouds may be beautiful, but they are of little value to us unless they produce rain.

Many of us are this way.  Our own faith is swept about by the things we face daily.  So, we produce little fruit.  And the fruit we do produce is not heavy enough to cause our faith to drop its fruit wherever we are.  We are clouds with rain that never falls.  What good then is the good we do when it is produced through our efforts but not produced by our faith?

For all their good, people like this are believers with faith that does not work.  They are believers with faith that does not produce.  They are clouds with water that never falls.  They are waves without an ocean to catch them.  They are wandering stars that do not know their place in the sky.

So, what should we do to build up faith that produces fruit?  Let’s be like those drops of rain.  A single raindrop will never be heavy enough to break through the cloud and fall to earth.  Raindrops must bind together to become heavy enough to break free of the clouds and fall.

A single faith encounter is never enough to produce the fruit of faith.  Live such that you look for daily encounters of faith.  Faith that is strong is faith that can wait for the Lord to do what you cannot do with what you have.  Look for times when you resist acting in your strengths as you wait for the strength of faith.  Faith looks like failure being changed to success.

Learn to resist trying to do for others what you have not learned to do for yourself.  This produces faith that is tested.  Tested faith will stick together and be strengthened.  The stronger the faith the faster it will fall from you to others.

If your faith does not produce fruit that falls, it will eventually dry up and die.  Remember, doing what you think is good is the enemy of faith that produces good as its fruit.  For all the good you want to do, do not let your good cause others to wonder about your faith.

If your life is not heavy with faith, you will not be able to produce the fruit of the faith that should fall from you to the earth around you to glorify God.  Don’t let weak or no faith make you like a voice without words our sounds.

Do not have faith with fruit that does not fall.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Don’t live alone. The Lord will walk with you if you ask. Seek His presence more than His miracles for your life.

When He shows up.  That is my message for today.

Moses had an encounter with God that I wonder if many or any of us have had anything like it.  Moses had visited God on the mountain and had returned with the two tablets containing God’s commandments to the people.  While he was away, the people had sinned and turned away from God.

Moses interceded for the people and asked God to forgive them.  Moses actually asked God to promise that His presence would go with the people if they were to leave the valley.  Luke 33:14-15 tells it this way.  “And God said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest.  And Moses said to God, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up from hence.”

Moses was very wise.  He knew that the people would be considered nothing unless God was with them.  And If God was with them, it would show all the people around at the time that they had the grace of God.  It would show all the people of the earth that they were God’s people, and He was their God.

We pray for many things.  But do we pray for the simple presence of the Lord to be with us wherever we are?  Do we pray for His presence to be so strong around us that the world would see the essence of His power and His glory?

Learn to ask the Lord sometimes for the simple gift of His presence to go with you where ever you walk.  You will be amazed at how things will change for you.

When He walks into the room of your life, sickness will have no place to stay. He will watch over those who would watch over your health.

When He walks into the room of your life, you may get burned by some things or by someone, but you will come through it never smelling like smoke.

When He walks into the room of your life, you may walk in the same shoes along the same road for many days, but your shoes and your clothes will not wear out.

When He walks into the room of your life, you will not be drowned by the storms of life that are sure to come your way.

When He walks into the room of your life, your darkness will be turned to light and your light turned to joy.

When He walks into the room of your life, some may claim a victory over you in many ways, but you will never be defeated in any way.

When He walks into the room of your life, relationships with others may come and go but Love for you will be with you always.

Moses had the sense to ask God to go with them.  In this way he knew God would be present to see all their needs before they had to pray for their needs.

For sure, there will be times when many of us will be sick, we may be mistreated by others, we may work hard but not have what we need for the things must have, we may have dark clouds all around us and many will attack us and claim victory over us.

Learn to pray that the Lord would walk with you in all things and in every way.  He is never surprised by anything happening with us.  When we ask Him to walk with us, people and things that are against us will be surprised that we are not moved or undone by the things that move and undo others.

When the Lord shows up, people and things that would oppose us will see the miracle of His grace living in us.  They will see that the fire that burns inside us will smother the fires they try to throw at us.  When He shows up with us, others will see the light we bring to  and around all the darkness that tries to cover us.

When the Lord shows up with us, we learn to walk with one hand in His and the other hand raised in praise to Him for the wonder of His grace at work in our lives.  Learn to ask the Lord for more than just the things you need to fix your problems today.

Ask Him for the presence of His presence to go with you.  Let Him know that if He doesn’t go with you, then you don’t want to go alone.  Let Him know you are hesitant to walk anyplace without Him walking with you. 

Learn to stop living and traveling through life alone and calling on Him only when you need His help.  Ask Him to walk with you.  That is the help we all need most but few of us ever think of asking.

When He shows up knowledge and wisdom will come to you while fear and a lack of understanding will flee from you.  When He shows up everything against you will fall back. Ask Him for the presence of His presence.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Feeding our flesh makes the things bad for us stronger than us.

A Willing Spirit

The spirit is willing.  That is my message for today.

A grandfather wanted to teach his young grandson an important lesson about life.  He said to the young boy, “I have a fight going on in me. It’s taking place between two wolves. One wolf is evil – he is anger, envy, greed, arrogance, superiority, and ego.”  The grandfather looked at the grandson and went on. “The other wolf embodies positive emotions. He is love, joy, peace, hope, humility, kindness, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith.”

He said, both wolves are fighting to the death. The same fight is going on inside you and every other person too.  The grandson took a moment to reflect on this. At last, he looked up at his grandfather and asked, which wolf would win? The grandfather gave a simple reply. “The one you feed.”

In Matthew 26:31, Jesus tells several of His disciples a similar story.  He asked them to watch and pray while He we off a bit farther and prayed.  But as He prayed, the disciples fell asleep.  Jesus saw this and said, “What!  Could you not watch with Me one hour?  Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation.  The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

In a way, Jesus was saying to them, there is a battle going on inside each of you.  It is played out between two people.  One is your flesh, and the other is your spirit.  Your flesh and your spirit are battling for dominance over how you live your life.  Will you live for what you want for yourself, or will you live for the things the Lord wants in your life?

Your flesh wants to live by having things that make it feel good.  It wants you to get satisfaction and fulfillment from the things you get from the world. The problem with the flesh is that it is weak.  The more you give it the more it is controlled by what it gets.  It can never be satisfied because it is controlled by the things it wants.

Jesus tells us our flesh is too weak to be strong enough to win the battle for our lives.  But your spirit wants to live in submission to the authority and to the Love of God.  It wants to teach you to satisfy someone else more than yourself by the way you live.  Your spirit wants to teach you to get your satisfaction from submitting your flesh and life to the things of God.

Jesus is telling us, in this battle for dominance, our flesh is too weak to win.  The more we feed it, the weaker it becomes and the stronger we make the things that will dominate our lives.  The more we want the greedier we will become.  The more we want what you have the more envy will dominate our desires.  The more selfish we are the more we will be dominated by things like resentment, sorrow, regret and the need to belong.

Your flesh does not know how to fight for dominance of your life.  So, it will always lose the battle.  But all is not hopeless.  Jesus says our spirits are willing.  Willing to do what?  Willing to fight this battle for us.  The spirit knows how to fight for dominance of your life.

Our flesh has no weapons to fight with because it fights for things more than it fights against anything.  But our spirit is a weapon itself.  All we need to do is allow the spirit to fight against what fights to have our lives.  The spirit uses the spirit of satisfaction to fight and win over our greed.  It uses the spirit of appreciation and respect to fight against becoming envious.  It uses the spirit of selflessness to fight and win against resentment, sorrow, regret and things like that.

For sure, there is a battle that goes on inside each of us.  It is not a battle against anything.   It is a battle for something.  Your flesh can never win a battle like this because it is deceived to believe it can have all that it wants.  Your spirit is fighting for you to give up more so you can gain more.  It will always win when you allow it to fight for you.

So, the grandfather taught his grandson a lesson on life.  Many of us can see the value and wisdom in what the grandfather taught his grandson.  We will probably say to ourselves, we would feed the positive wolf.

Jesus teaches us a life lesson.  The question is are we willing to hear His lesson the way we heard the message of the grandfather?  Living through the flesh only makes the things that are bad for us stronger than us.  Living through the spirit helps us discover the weapons we have to overcome the things that make the flesh strong.

Lesson taught.  Lesson learned. That’s the willing spirit.  Will we learn from what Jesus is teaching us?  Is the Yes of your spirit stronger than the yes of your flesh?

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

What you do today determines the quality of what happens tomorrow.

What to do about tomorrow.  That is my message for today.

About 430 years.  That is about the length of time the Israelites were in Egypt.  They waited for God to deliver them from the bondage they lived daily.  I’m sure with each passing day they must have wondered if tomorrow would be the day God would deliver them.

In bondage, the Israelites probably prayed daily that they would live till tomorrow.  And they probably lived daily praying that tomorrow would be the day of their deliverance.  God does not promise that we will live to see tomorrow, but still tomorrow is always going to come.  The question for us is this.  How should we live today knowing that tomorrow will come whether we see it or not?

The Lord warns us about trying to live our tomorrows today.  He also reminds us that tomorrow is not promised to us.  What we learn to do about tomorrow can be found in what we did yesterday.  Yesterday is often the reason we have the day that we are having today.

Proverbs 30:25 tell us this.  “The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their food in the summer.”  Summer is the yesterday for the ants when winter comes. The ants may be small and insignificant, but they are smart enough to prepare for the tomorrow they want to live to see.

What the ants do today determines a lot of what they will have to do tomorrow.  Like the ants, what we do today will impact our tomorrow in some way.  So, what should we do about tomorrow?  Well, we should prepare today for the tomorrow we would like to see.

How do we do this?  There are three things we can do today about tomorrow.  These things will prepare us for whatever tomorrow brings.

First, remember, today was yesterday’s tomorrow.  We must learn to live today from what we did yesterday.  Most of us don’t do this.  We try living today from the things we do today.  This is folly.  Today cannot give you much if yesterday you didn’t prepare for much to come your way today.

It is yesterday that determines the quality of your tomorrows.  So, what you do about tomorrow is found in what you did yesterday.

Next, remember that we work today so that we have wages tomorrow.  As we live, we must learn to work.  We must work today with the idea we are storing up something needed for our tomorrow.  We must remember what we get from our tomorrow is the wages we earned by the work we do today.  So, learn to work hard today because tomorrow you will be paid.

Finally, we must remember that as we live and work, the Lord is living and working perfecting each of us.  He does not want either of us waking up tomorrow the same person that we are today.  So, as we live and work today, we must learn to tarry on the Lord to finish the work He is doing on us.

If the work He wanted to do yesterday on us is not complete, we must learn to tarry on Him until He finishes what He has started on us.  If the persons He wants us to be tomorrow is incomplete, we must learn to tarry on Him until He finishes what He wants us to be tomorrow.

What we do about tomorrow is largely determined by the mindsets we have about today and yesterday.  Learn to live today, praying that you will have more to give than what you want to get.  Learn to pray today that you live in such a way that tomorrow needs what you live for today.

Although tomorrow is not promised to you, tomorrow is nevertheless coming.  Let learn to live in such a way that tomorrow will be better for others by the way you live today.  Each day, learn to tarry on the Lord.  When you tarry, you hang around the Lord longer than you do anything else.

When you do this, He will fill your today with some of what you did yesterday, and with some of what you do today and with some of what you will need for your tomorrow.  This is the one thing you can do about tomorrow even though tomorrow is not promised to you.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

The only prayer God cannot answer is the prayer you do not pray

The answered prayer.  That is my message for today.

There have been times where I have faced circumstances that seemed too far gone to change.  I’ve actually said to myself “if things are going to get better now it will take a miracle of God.”  I was probably feeling helpless, defeated and hopeless.

Often it is feelings like these that keep us from praying as we should.  But we should remember, no matter the circumstance we may face, it is never too late to pray.  The answer to your prayer is always coming especially when you pray in earnest.  The Lord does not have a “to do list” of unanswered prayers.

The book of Daniel, chapter 10:12 scripture says this about Daniel.  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.”

Daniel and the people of Israel were in the early years of captivity in Babylon.  Daniel had prayed to God for discernment and the insight to understand so that he could help the people through what would be 70 years of captivity.  But he didn’t get a response right away.

Daniel could have thought that God was not going to answer his prayer.  Scripture says Daniel mourned for three full weeks waiting for a response.  At the end of three weeks, the angel Gabriel came to Daniel and delivered that message to him.  We may not face 70 years of captivity today, but we have our own Babylon’s.

You must learn to pray no matter how things may look for you.  And because it’s never too late to pray, you can be assured that a response is always on the way to you.  The scripture says from the moment Daniel set his heart to understand the circumstances and to humble himself before God, his words were heard, and an answer went out.

Daniel wasn’t asking God to free the people sooner.  He wasn’t asking God to take revenge on the Babylonians.  He wasn’t asking God to return the people to Jerusalem.  He was acknowledging before God that he and the people didn’t understand what was ahead of them.

The people felt helpless, hopeless and defeated.  Sometimes, things can look so bad to us that we don’t know what to pray for, so we don’t pray at all.  But God has an answer for a helpless prayer.  He has an answer for a hopeless prayer.  And He has an answer for a defeated prayer.

But, you get the answered prayer only if you pray. The only prayer God cannot answer is the prayer you do not pray.  We can learn three things from Daniel that will help us in our own lives and in the circumstances we face.

• Pray first and pray last.  We must never forget to pray no matter how dire our circumstances may be.

• Look for understanding.  Understanding will help you learn to look for a response that may be better than what you are asking.  If it is healing you want, God may choose to give you the strength to live and to serve with a sickness in a way that heals others.

• Humble yourself.  Learn to go to the Lord in humility.  Hopeless, helpless and defeated feelings do not make the Lord move faster on your behalf.  But a humble spirit, strong in hope and steadfast in faith will set your answered prayer into motion.

When you pray and live in this way you can always have access to the answered prayer God has waiting for you. It is never too late for God to move on your situation.  Nothing will keep God’s answered prayer from you when you pray in earnest even if you do not know what to pray for.

If you don’t know what to pray for, pray for understanding and discernment and wisdom.  God will always respond to those.  The Lord loves you, so He has an answered prayer waiting for every prayer of yours.  Remember, you do not get answers to prayers you do not pray.

Pray.  There is an answered prayer waiting for you.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Never listen to anyone or anything who doesn’t listen to the Lord.

You heard what?  That is my message for today.

Sometimes, we try so hard to depend on the Lord that we actually become independent of Him. We all know that God is good to us. When we are in the middle of our troubles, we can often hear ourselves or others saying, “God is good to us.”  That would be true.

But we have also heard it said, “God helps those who helps themselves.”  This is not a statement of God’s.  It may be how we want to believe but there is no scripture reference to support this statement.  We are very self-seeking and impatient people.  When we do not hear God say what we want to hear, we turn to ourselves or to our social network to hear it.

And there are always people ready to say what you should not want to hear.  When they do this, they steal from you the glory of patience and dependence you should reserve for the Lord only.  The devil uses the feelings and emotions of weak people with loud mouths to cause us to believe we can do the good that God is slow to do.

Instead of waiting for God’s good come to us in the way we want it, we follow what we have heard others say to bring about the good we think is needed.  Our dependence becomes our independence because we listened to something we heard from a source that didn’t listen to the Lord.

Have you heard it said, “we must love the person but hate the sin?”  Well, I hope not because this is not a biblical statement.  Yet, many of us are easily influenced and predisposed to believe we must love everyone no matter how they live.  We should love everyone because God calls us to do that.  But loving how others live is not what we are called to do.

In Matthew 17:5, God says this about Jesus to Peter, James and John, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.  Hear Him!”  Listen!  We must stop listening to what we have heard from others and hear what the Lord is saying to us and about us.

Now hear this.  Our love for others should be part of the reason they would want to turn from what is or might be wrong to what is right.  If by our love, others are made to feel comfortable in their wrongs, perhaps our love is really not love at all.

The Lord probably scratches His head and says to us “you did what because you heard what?”  For sure, Jesus loved and still loves each of us no matter who we are.  But His love does not make us believe it is ok to live a life contrary to the life that is obedient to Him.  He loves us all and He lovingly asks and places the expectation on us all to sin no more.

We need to learn to stop acting on what others tell us or on what we say to ourselves.  We must learn to hear what God says to us about us. When we take what God says and shape it into what we want we open ourselves to live by statements of emotion and feelings.  You heard what?  That should be our own question of our own selves.

Emotions and feelings will lead you to believe if you are not loving then you are condemning. Jesus never condemned.  He does not ask us to judge or to condemn the behavior of others.  But by our attitudes others can judge their own behaviors and attitudes.  We need to make sure our attitudes are sound and founded on something other than feelings and emotions.

Our attitudes are one of the main reasons we live more by what we have heard or what we want to say, than by what really is.  In the book of Matthew, Jesus takes specific aim at teaching us to clean up our attitudes.  He wanted the people then, and guess what, He wants us today to base our attitudes on what the Word says to us about us more than on what we hear from ourselves or from others.

Matthew 5:43 Jesus says this.  “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.”

Jesus makes several of these type statements.  I call them His “you heard what?” statements.  He is telling the people don’t believe and act on all the things you hear from others.  People will make you emotional.  Your emotions will make you live by your feelings more than by factual realities.

Jesus wants you to live by what He says to you.  In a way He is saying listen to Me.  “I don’t want you to love on one hand and to hate on the other.” “Don’t listen to what you heard, listen to what I tell you.”

My mother used to tell me, “Don’t listen to anyone who does not listen to the Lord.” Why did Eve listen to the devil when we know the devil doesn’t listen to God?  The devil heard what was said but he didn’t believe what was said. Eve tried to make sense of what God had said in relation to what she heard the devil say.

How crazy is that?  If God says don’t, why would we listen to anyone or anything that says but you can now because you are smarter. Learn to do what God told the disciples.  Jesus is His beloved Son.  Listen to Him.  Never listen to what you have heard, seen, or read on Facebook by people who only listen to themselves and who want you to listen to them. They are simply trying to live their lives through your life.

Listen and hear the Lord.  Don’t put the Him in the position of saying to you, “you heard what?” 

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

If you haven’t developed excellence to be a part of you it will be difficult to do things that will return excellent results

Skillful Living Series – Message # 12

The message today is Delivering Excellence and Results.

Have you even been asked, what do you do for a living?  Most of us should say, I work at learning how to be excellent and successful.  Many will work at acquiring skills and talents, but few will be willing to work at delivering excellence and results.

God says something like this when He says in 1 Samuel 15:22, “Has the Lord as great a delight in burnt offering and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord?”  Samuel is speaking to King Saul a sacrifice Saul had attempted to offer God.  Why does He ask this question?  Because many of us would rather do what is easy and convenient than to change something about us that would change what we choose to do.

God did not accept what Saul did (his sacrifice), or his heart for doing it (his mindset).    Because we do this, we fail at things we do because success and excellence are not a part of who we are. Saul wanted to focus on doing something when God wanted him to focus on being something.  Many of us are like Saul.  It’s easier for us to do things than it is for us to be something better than what we can do.

Life and living are not the same things. Those who are the most skilled at life are the most skilled at living.  Life is knowing who God made us to be.  Living is doing the things in life that are the expression of who we are.  Life is the I am, and living is the I do.  The two need to match.  King David understood life, so he lived and had an abundant life.  Saul understood living, so he did all that he could to live abundantly.  He failed.

Excellence and Results are really more a state of mind in who we are than a thing we do.  If excellence is not in you as a part of who you are, it is not likely you will be able to do things of excellence. Both life and living worked for David because he started with being skillful at life.  Neither worked for Saul because he was unskillful at life.

Some of us would think God is silent on the idea of results.  But He is not.  Jesus says as much when in John 10:10 He says, “I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.”  Jesus says, He is the Way and the Truth and the Life.  So, if you want a life of abundance, you must learn to skillfully develop more of Him in your life and in how you live.

Skillful living comes from a skillful life.  A skillful life comes from a life that is developed by the Word of God.  The book of Proverbs can be taken as God’s how to instructions for developing a life that is abundant.  Excellence and Results in living can be yours when you have perfected Excellence and Results in life.

Here are some helpful things about people who are more skillful at life than we are:

• Rule the things that would love to rule or irritate you.  An oyster has no arms or legs, yet it produces a pearl right in the middle of its belly using nothing but its own will.  Life is not about getting out of bad things.  It’s more about what you make of the irritants that are within you.

• Not what you must get but what you get to be.  Many of us live to pursue what we can get with life.  But the most skillful of us use life to be what is needed by others.
• Purpose more than passion.  In living many are pulled by desires that never cease.  But in life many of us are driven by the Purpose of Life that is defines how we live.

• Do successful things.  Many of us live by trying to make the things we do to work.  The most skillful of us learn to do what works so that life is full of excellence and results.

• Discover more of what you don’t know.  Many of us learn to live by doing what we know.  The most skillful of us learn to fulfill life by discovering what we do not know so we can have a life that could not be had.

• Be something of value.  Living tries to get more things of value; life tries to be more value than cost.

Excellence and Results are a natural part of life. Life is yours to have for eternity.  Living passes away with each day.  Living can be tossed to and fro by waves and winds, but Life with a Purpose withstands the strongest winds that come at the living.

Keep yourself sharp at all times.  A dull life is a wasted life.  Accept that you may lose sometimes at some part of living, but you are never a loser at life.  And finally, never rush to start to do something that you are not prepared by life to be excellent at doing.

The oyster uses a substance called nacre to cover an irritant it cannot rid itself of.  In this process it creates the pearl we all know.  You have something in you like nacre.  It is designed to help you learn to be skillful at life and to live life to its fullest.

What is that substance you ask?  Its your Will.  It is the will to learn to be what most people want to have in living that will enable you to live skillfully and to deliver excellence in all the results you achieve in life.

Living is easier than we make allow it to be. Be skillfully great at life is the thing that will make you more successful at the things you do in living.

Be skillfully great for someone today.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Your Edge is what makes you distinctive among things that look and feel the same.

Skillful Living – Message # 11

The message today is developing your Edge.

In 2024, it is estimated that there are over 8.2 billion people in the world.  That’s a lot of people.  None of us is exactly the same as anyone else.  Many of us will grow to do some of the same things.  But many of us will do the same things in different ways.

God created each of us to be unique even though we may appear to be much like each other.  We are alike, but we are all different.  We are all different, yet we are alike in many ways.  We have no control over how we are made.  But, how we choose to live – well we have total control of that.

Those of us who are skillful at life learn this from you as much as they learn about themselves.  They realize how alike and how different they are, so they learn to work on being better at the ways they are alike, and they work on being better at the ways they are different.  This is the Edge they have on us.

Psalm 139:14 says, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”  In this Psalm, David is praising the Lord for what should be obvious to everyone.  He is saying Lord, the work You did is something great, and You created something great when You created me.

David’s Edge was in knowing and living in ways that acknowledged God’s greatness in how he was created.  David was a child of God who acted like a child of God because he knew he was a child of God.  Now isn’t that amazing.  People knew when David was around because David acted like someone they did not.

David was skillful in how he lived because he knew how he was designed to live.  Your talents and your skills are never enough to make you skillful at life.  You need the work of your Edge functioning in your life to help you live skillfully at life.

What do I mean by your Edge.  Your Edge is the thing that makes you distinctive among many things that are just like you.  Your Edge is the thing that makes you unique among many who do what you do.  Your Edge is the thing that provides meaning for what you do and meaning for what others want.

Those who are skillful and successful at life work from their Edge more than they work from their talents.  If you want to be a magician, learn to develop the Edge of being a performer.  If you want to be a farmer, learn to develop the Edge of being a provider.  Your Edge is what sets you apart from others who do what you do.

Teachers teach, but teachers with an Edge facilitate learning.  Facilitating learning is their Edge. Two believers may know the Lord but one will know the Lord and walk with Him.  Walking with Him is their Edge.

Your Edge will help you live skillfully because you will learn to walk better, and you will learn to live free of and free for things others never think about. Every person has an Edge out there waiting to be discovered.  Every business out there has an Edge just waiting to be discovered.

You and the person around the corner both own alteration businesses.  They can fix your clothes to fit you just the way you want.  But your Edge is not just changing how clothes fit people.  It is in altering how people feel about themselves in the clothes they wear.

When you discover your Edge, you will discover a way of life that is indispensable to others.  You are better at how you live because you are better at living in your best.   You are indeed fearfully and wonderfully made.  God was painstakingly detailed in creating you.

You are an exact replica of nothing.  You are no copy of anything.  And even though you may look like the people around you, with your Edge, you don’t have to be different to be better.  You don’t have to be the same to be better.  You must be better than you are to be better than you are.

Discovering and developing your Edge helps you live skillfully and successfully.  It helps you echo David’s words.  You are skillfully and wonderfully made – your Edge is what tells others how true that is.

Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

You will make better decisions when you learn to depersonalize the way you make any decision at all.

Skillful Living Series – Message # 10The message today is Decision-making. 

The history of man and probably even your history is loaded with times when you have made poor decisions.  People have come to expect that many of us will make poor decisions at almost all times.  Decision-making is the ability to choose and to do what is best to do when we don’t have the courage to wait for what is best to happen for us.

People who are the most skillful at life learn to become great decision-makers. They understand that life follows how they think.  So, what they do is first seen in what and in how they think.  They learn and understand that thinking is the key to acting so they focus life on becoming the best they can be at how they think.

Many of us are poor decision-makers because we have no inherent way to examine the merit of what we think we want or must do.  Many people suffer because those in positions of authority over us make poor decisions.  Many nations have been destroyed because of poor decisions made by their leaders.

Scripture is full of examples of people making poor decisions.  In the book of Genesis 13:9-11 Abraham allows his nephew Lot to choose the land to live on from among all the land before them.  Lot in his selfishness, chose the best of the land.  That happened to be the land of Sodom – the very land God later destroyed by fire because of its moral decays.

Lot decided to choose what was best for him.  Why didn’t he say to his uncle “you choose first – you are the elder?”  Why didn’t he have the insight to know the best land would have attracted the worst people?    Why didn’t he have the sense to know if it was too good not to have it was probably too good to have?

Well, Lot had no control of his basic desires.  He had no values or principles on which he based who he was, so he did what was convenient for him to do.  Lot had no wisdom.  Wisdom is the one thing that is key and even essential for us to live skillfully.  For the successful person, wisdom is the basis of their thoughts.

The Lord did not mean for us to go through life without a full tank of wisdom.  James 1:5-6 says this to us about wisdom.  “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” 

Skillful living and sound decision-making is found in living a life through the power of wisdom.  Many of us don’t ask for wisdom because we don’t really know what it is.  Wisdom is the ability to think about your thinking before you act on your thinking.  It is the insight you get from having the ability to think and act using the uncommon sense gained when you learn to discern what is learned from what you have already learned and understand.

Wisdom is enlightenment.  Wisdom is insight into what cannot be seen in the natural state of things.  It is the ability to restrain yourself from acting simply on what you see, or on what you want, or on what you desire.

So, if you want to learn to be more skillful at life and you want to learn to become a better decision-maker you must learn to act more with wisdom than with your skills, knowledge and understanding.  If you are too impatient to know wisdom for yourself, strive to know it for others.  How you live your life will impact how others live their lives with and around you.

Here are some things you can do to help you become a better decision-maker:

• Ask the Lord for the blessing of wisdom.  If you ask, He will give it to you.
• Never listen to anyone who does not listen to the Lord.  If in the secular world, never listen to anyone who does not listen to someone better.
• Often you must take your instructions for what you do from those who have authority over you.  Always do what a person of authority asks you to do; it will be better and safer for you.  However, give them your obedience but never give them control of your thinking.
• Test your thoughts to make sure they are sound before you act on unsound thinking.  Power, position, authority do not make your decisions sound.  Sound insights and wisdom are what makes your power and authority good.
• Make decisions of Purpose more than you make decisions of want and desire.  You cannot have all the things you will ever want in life.  Let that be your first decision of wisdom.

Those who learn to live skillfully, master themselves and how they think before they try to master all the things they will want to do and to have in life.  Let this be you.  Learn to live Delivered from your desires and from your wants.  You will become a great decision-maker when you learn to live skillfully with the wisdom that is right before you. Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.