Live Delivered

Ok, it’s time for a message.   What’s going on?  Proverbs 10:12 tells us that “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sin”.  We live in a world today where we have in some ways legitimized hatred because of hatred.  When hatred is alive nothing is ever dead.  Hatred won’t allow things to die.  Hatred will seek to punish what should be forgiven.  God may sometimes become angry towards us but He is never mean towards us.  Today it is the social norm for us to uncover more than we cover.  We want to stir up old stuff that has already died.  You see, hatred tells us that we do not have to live in peace with anything that was hurtful in our past.  So hate stirs  up strife in our lives and we then stir up strife in the lives of those around us.  But Love!  Love says to us, stuff is going to happen to us; we are going to do some stuff; and we are gonna know about some stuff.  Stuff is what should remind us to be grateful and understanding and to appreciate that sometimes it’s the stuff that happens to us that makes us better;  and it’s the stuff that we do that we hate that makes us better than that;  and it’s the stuff that God keeps from ever happening to us that makes us our best.  Love doesn’t say stuff is ok; Love says let stuff die and bury it so that the best you can live with your old stuff right where you are.  If it happened five minutes ago it is old stuff.  Get hatred out of your life.  Let it die and cover it with love and let the best you live.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.  Listen Up!  Scripture in 1 Samuel 3:10 tells us this – “Now the Lord came and stood and called as at other times, Samuel Samuel! And Samuel answered, speak for Your servant hears”.  The Lord was trying to get Samuel’s attention.  Sometimes we can be so busy talking that we cannot hear what is being said.  It is a good thing that we have only one mouth and two ears.  Perhaps the Lord wanted us to know the importance we should place on listening and on hearing.  The answers to our prayers come in hearing; healing comes in hearing; faith comes in hearing; restoration comes in hearing; life abundantly comes to those who hear more and speak less.  The Lord looks to raise up faithful people among us who will live and do according to His heart and His mind.  Our part in all this is to shut up and to listen up.  Not our wills but His will be done.  Too often though we live as though we will tell the Lord how to be a good God to us.  We think we help the Lord see more clearly, the more we talk about the things going on around us, about what people are doing to us and about how bad other people really are.  I have learned the Lord sees as much of me as He sees of the things around me.  So I shut my mouth and listen for what I can learn from Him.  He comes; He stands and He calls to us all just as He did with Samuel.  Do I give Him my attention?  With my mouth all I really do is to call attention to the problem I believe you are and with my mouth I actually reveal the problem I am.  But with a listening life and a quiet tongue, I call attention to the work God has done to perfect His heart and His mind in me.  Listen up and speak less.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.  Silver and Gold.  In the Book of Acts, scripture tells us of a lame man who daily asked people for money as they entered the temple.  And on one such day he happened to ask for money from the disciples, Peter and John.  Expecting to receive something from them, scripture in Acts 3:6-8 says Peter responded to the man this way saying “Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give to you:  in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk”.  We are living in a world and in a time where many of us want things to be made right for us or for someone we know or for people we believe are being hurt or persecuted or enslaved or wronged in some systemic ways.  We want justice; we want what’s right; we want redemption; we want the rule of law to be held up against those who have brought or are bringing or will bring us pain or hurt or or harm or dishonor in any way.  We will go to the courts to ask for this; we will go to the authorities to request for this; we will go to public opinion and the court of ridicule and scorn and condemnation to demand this of people we don’t even know and even in some cases of people who love us.  Unfortunately for us, the world becomes our temple and it will be happy to listen to our cases and to help us put our cases and our voices on the world’s Facebook for everyone like us to know, so that we can get what we want even if we must shame and condemn others to get it.  Seeing that those who hurt us are brought to justice is the silver and gold we request.  But when we get that type justice, do we have really what we should have?  I don’t know about you, but as for me, I know I could not stand before the world’s Facebook judgment and live.  Who I was in times past is not who I am today.  My past is not clean enough for me to have to live it daily before you and everyone else; if I had to live daily making right all my wrongdoings against you and everyone else, I would die not from what I had done but from trying to atone for what I had done. So that reminds me to never live or to judge or to give in to the way the world has made it right for me to live.  Silver and gold I do not have nor do I want.  But I have Jesus.  And now I try to live like Him snd to forgive like Him and to give like Him and love like Him.  I don’t need people who hurt me or are mean to me or are spiteful toward me to have to live trying to make things right with me.  I use the hard things of my past – things I have done and things I have had done to me – to make me a better person today.  I don’t want to be buried by my past nor do I want to bury others in their past.  I want to help others learn from and to rise up and be better.  I don’t want the pain of my past to cause pain in the present for me or anyone else.  I would rather have Jesus and give others a life devoted to Jesus too.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.   Lord, remember me.  I have often wondered if things will be the same for everyone who gets to heaven.  Two criminals were crucified with Jesus, one on His right hand and the other on His left hand.  Scripture,  in the Book of Luke, chapter 23:39-43 gives an account of their conversation with Jesus as they were all hanging on a cross that day.  It says one of the criminals blasphemed Jesus saying “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” But the other, responding to him , rebuked him saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we deserve it, but this Man has done nothing wrong.”  Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom”.  And Jesus said to him, “assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise”.  I don’t know if this gives me a clear answer to my question about how things will be in heaven, but one thing is clear.  It won’t matter what it’s like if I don’t get there in the first place.  When we come to know the Lord, He changes our hearts such that He can change our ways.  And He changes our ways so we can be open to a change of heart.   It is clear to me that I may be a criminal here on earth but I have to change that lifestyle if I want to get to heaven; there are no criminals there.  I don’t believe we will have Believing racists in heaven nor do I believe we will have Believing haters of believing racists in heaven.  There will be no loving adulterers there nor will there be any Believers who made there way in because they are haters of adulterers.  There will be no lovers of murders  in heaven nor will there be those who hate murderers there.  I could go on with this list for it has no end.  So I will end with this.   Life with the Lord is really simple.  Don’t allow a judging, hating, condemning spirit keep you from heaven.  If you rightly condemn the person who has wronged you – what do you have?  It is nothing that is valued in heaven.  But rightly judge how you respond to the times when you are wronged, then you will be demonstrating what it takes and what is likely to be found in heaven.  If you don’t have this spirit in you today perhaps you ought to stop and think about on which hand of Jesus you are living – the right or the left.  Right could mean the right to eternal life and left could mean left behind. Life is simple  – God didn’t make it so difficult that we would get it wrong every day.  Do these three things and perhaps when you get to heaven you will find others having lived a lifetime doing the same things:  Love God; Love Your families and Love others.  Lord remember those who hear this message.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Ok, it’s time for a message.   Take off before you put on.  The scripture in Ephesians 4:17-24 says to us “ This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God … and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”  Being a believer is much like giving the Holy Spirit the freedom to get to work in us, birthing forth the life God intends for us to be.  Our belief allows the seed of that new life to be planted right into our hearts so that His Spirit can help us take off the old person we are and to watch the new person be born.  Believing is an event – just as having a baby is an event – but becoming a believer happens over time because it is a Spiritual pregnancy.  Many of us remember the time we first believed because it was a joyful unforgettable time.  But few of us can remember becoming a believer because that happens in the pregnancy of our new birth and it is a hard process – a process many of us use our old lives to avoid.  Everyday the believer becoming a believer should enjoy putting off something old about their lives and bringing forth something new.   If you wake up today and you see more of the same person you were yesterday looking back at you, perhaps God is trying to tell you that you didn’t put off enough.  Be careful too for the world will tell you if it’s too hard to be a new you where you are, go someplace new and start new.  You cannot take an old you to a new place and become a new person.  The work of becoming a new person happens in the place where you are now because it is there you can be sure it is the work of the Holy Spirit in you and not the old you simply putting on some old things you haven’t worn before.  You should feel like you are in the beginnings of a Spiritual pregnancy where there is a new you trying to be born every day.  If your marriage, your work, your children, your hopes, your dreams are not working out like they should – perhaps it’s because you are refusing to put off more of that old unbelieving person you are and refusing to become more of the person God intended you to be.  The world will give new things to that old person you are to keep you being that old person; but God makes you a new person and in doing so He helps you give old things new meaning in Him.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.   Our Champion is a Champion!  Recently, I asked my son Jered to put a song that I like on my phone.  Well he did that but he also put a song that he likes on my phone as well and he said “you will like this song dad”.  The title of the song is “Champion”.  Well he was right  – I love the song – it is the basis of this note to you.  1 Samuel 17:37 is part of the account of the fight between David and Goliath.  Scripture records David saying “ the Lord, Who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”  Because of their numbers and the giant size of Goliath, their champion, the Philistine Army had the Israelites afraid to do battle.  The Israelites didn’t think they could defeat the champion.  But when  David showed up at the Israelites camp,  he brought their Champion with him – a Champion of Champion – the God of all creation.  David reminded the Israelites that Goliath was a champion about to lose to an eternal Champion.  Sometimes we face some tough things – things that just seem like we cannot overcome them no matter what we do.  It’s at these times we need to remember we have One on our side Who has already conquered everything – we need but to go with Him and He will fight for us.  We cannot overcome our challenges when we stand before them in the fear that our strengths are no match for the change needed.  Whether it was a lion or a bear or a splinter in your finger, we must always remember the times the Lord came through for us.  Only then can we really remember to stop toiling with things we cannot win on our own.  Sometimes we can’t change the things we face because we want to be our own champion.  Please allow that wisdom to settle in your heart.  God is not anxious to fight your Goliath when you want to be crowned the victor.  Being a believer means have you a champion – Jesus!  Jesus never loses; has never lost; and will never lose.  No power is greater than He; no thing can overcome Him.  Nothing can stand before Him when we get out of the way and let Him fight for us.  Whatever stands before you today that is in opposition to the God of all creation – it cannot stand when you step back and allow your Champion to step forward for you.  You have a Champion of Champions Who is undefeated in fighting for you.  He will fight and defeat your Goliaths if you allow Him.  He is your Champion and you are His!  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you!

Ok, it’s time for a message.  Why don’t we hear more?The scripture says to us in 2 Timothy 1:12 “For I know Whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day”.  Many of us will never have changed lives because we won’t give up any of what the world teaches us so we can make room for what the Lord wants to teach us.  In this scripture, Paul is telling Timothy that he was happy to give up some things he had so he could have some things he didn’t have.  What about you?  Often times the reasons we cannot know more or do more or have more or change more is because the world screams at us that we must hold onto more of what we have already.  It is unnatural for most of us to want to eat when our stomachs are full from the meal we had an hour ago.  What we eat of the world limits what more we can eat and we are unwilling to make room for more until what we ate has all been consumed and digested.  But with believers in the Lord, we know that our tanks are not ever full but rather we allow things to pass through our lives so that we can always have room to have more of what God wants to give us.  The way to make this room in your life is to be willing to give up on some things the world does each day so you make room to have more of God.  You have an unlimited capacity to know and grow in the things of God but you limit your capacity by filling your life with what you have known and grown to be in the world.  Can you be persuaded to love who others say don’t deserve love; can you be persuaded to give grace where  people in the world say punish; can you be persuaded to say I am wrong when the world says you are right; can you be persuaded to stay where you are when the world says it is right for you to move on to something new.  I am persuaded we don’t know more because our lives are too full of world views that keeps us feeling full.  God wants you to be hungry for more when you are full; can He persuade you to believe that?  And can He persuade you to change some ways so He can make some ways for you?  You have an infinite capacity to have with the Lord when you allow Him to punch a hole in your tank so your world view can be pushed out to make room for the power and favor of the infinite presence of His view.  If you have ears, hear this.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you

Ok, it’s time for a message.    Choose ways that pleases Him!  Scripture says in Isaiah 55:8 says “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord”.  Sometimes the circumstances of our lives can become so boisterous, that we take our eyes off faithfully living God’s way and start thinking and living in our own way.  When it seems like we are drowning in a sea of bad luck and no luck, we turn to our own thoughts and ways to save ourselves – to turn our lifelong misfortunes into prosperities.  The man who has no seed or the woman who is barren may say “look at me, I am half a person”.  But the Lord says to both, “live faithfully anyway and keep My Love before you.  Choose what pleases Me and keep My ways.  And I will give to each of you what you cannot get for yourselves in a house I have prepared for you.”  The Lord will fix their problem when they learn to fix their thoughts and their actions.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember how to swim when it seems you are drowning in a sea of mess someone else has caused.  This is exactly the time when we must not think to fix the people who are causing our problems more than we remember how the Lord has taught us to swim.  I learned long ago that if I want to be loved in life, I needed to work on making myself a lovable person – someone that even my enemies would stop and treat in better ways.  You may be  barren now, but when you think on your circumstances the way the Lord thinks about them you may find a house full of children; a job in the highest place; love like you can’t imagine; respect reserved for a king; all this and more than you can imagine,  in your life right now and today,  right under your nose.  Focus on what the Lord has taught you to be and to do; don’t worry too much about the noise of your circumstances.  Flap the wings of your faith and you will fly high,  right in the middle of the stuff that doesn’t seem like it will ever change.  Stop trying to bring rain when there is a drought or to stop the rain when there is a flood  – you cannot control the weather.  Remember your umbrella of faith and live justly right where you are.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love You.

Ok, it’s time for a message.    The Dead Life.  1 Thessalonians 5:19 says “Do not quench the Spirit’.  God gives us His Spirit which lives inside each of us.  The life of the Spirit is there to teach us how to have and to live a life in Christ.  The Spirit wants to teach us to learn about life from what is within us more than from what is happening around us.  But sometimes we don’t listen to the Spirit.  Instead, we listen more to the world, which then shapes who we are.  We start to believe we live more before others than before God.  So we believe we need to act in ways others will respect and respond.  When we do this we  start to live a dead life.  A dead life is one where we lean more on what we know than on what God tells us; a dead life is one where we talk more about others than we walk more for others; a dead life is when our mouths move faster than our favor; a dead life is when we make a desire of life for us greater than a fact of life; a dead life is when we seek man’s acceptance and submission to our position and power more than we are powered and set in our position and status by God.  A dead life listens to what we want more than it listens to the Spirit.  In all these things we quench the Spirit of life so that It is smothered out by our own cares.  God warns us to be careful and do not quench His Spirit because when we do a dead life will eventually die and we will be as a living dead where we talk more than we walk; where we will have all we want but not the Holiness we need; where we will be loved by man but without the favor and grace and mercy that is of God. When the Spirit is alive in you, you will by your quietness of life, say more to others than the words you say or the things you do before them.  So watch that you do not live a dead life because a dead life will eventually lose its appeal and it will die.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Ok, time for a message.  Be still so you don’t sweat. Psalm 37:1-2 encourages us saying “Do not fret because of evildoers.  Nor be envious of the workers of iniquity.  For they shall soon be cut down like grass, and wither as the green herb”.  Why does it seem like there is more bad stuff happening around us today?  Are there simply more bad people now than before?  It’s sad and wrong that Mr. George Floyd died as a result of being arrested by police.  That can never be changed by anyone.  But since his death, we have had people to die protesting on behalf of Mr Floyd, as they tried to do something about what they believed caused his death.  Their deaths are sad and wrong too.  The Word today encourages us not to worry about what evil people do; but that is a hard thing for many to accept because we don’t like to see or even think that people are mistreated because they are just people.  So those people say to themselves, they must do something cause they worry if they do nothing, that nothing will change.  God sees all this before we see it.  But He is not worrying about the evil doer; He has a time and place in mind to take care of that.  He worries however about the good people who cannot wait for Him to deliver us all from this evil.  But that is what He needs us to do; to wait for Him.  Because to change what we face today; We have to allow God to change something that goes on within us – our hearts.  Evil cannot exist where Love exists.  If we want what is best for Mr Floyd, we must learn to sit down and Love more and let the process of our laws take care of the wrongs done by evil.  I know some of us would say our laws permitted the wrongs to occur but law did not do that – people with evil hearts break the laws but the laws do not make evil hearts.  If we learn to love more loudly with quiet lives filled with God’s Love, we wouldn’t have to yell so loudly about the evil that is with us daily; evil that seems to never go unpunished.  We want God to change the way things are going on around us, but the way He wants to do that is to change the way we live towards Him and then towards others.  God does not protest the work of evil doers; that brings light to evil in ways that others will envy.  Laws can never deliver us from bad people nor can laws make bad people good.  only Love can do this.  So quiet your life and your spirit today and love more.  Live in such a way that people come to envy that fact that when they have occasion to interact with you, they find a quiet, caring and loving person who will never wither away even when the evil all around us seems to get hotter.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you