Live Delivered

When you are a thankful person; He is more of a gracious Lord to you.

Psalm 100 is a short chapter in the book of Psalms.  It says:

V1:  Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands!

V2:  Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing.

V3:  Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who made us, and not we ourselves; We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

V4:  Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him and bless His name.

V5:  For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting.  And His Truth endures to all generations.

This week we will celebrate Thanksgiving Day.  It’s the day each year we set aside to express our thankfulness and our gratitude for how life has been for us. Let your thanks be to Him just because of who He is.

Be thankful to Him and Praise Him and Worship Him because He alone is God.  Yes, you should be thankful for the things He does for you. But the better response is to thank Him for who He is.  You can say thank You Lord for all Your blessings or you can say thank You Lord for You are my blessing.  Which is your heart?

We have lots of needs that are always looking for blessings; but needing a savior is our greatest need and it’s one need we often overlook.  Because of Who He is we should be thankful beyond measure.  For if He were not our Lord and Savior, we would have no savior who would be our Lord.

There is no God but God; so, we should lift our voices and say thank You God for being our God. We sometimes thank the Lord the same way we would thank another person for what they do for us.  Indeed, someone has to be on the receiving end of your thanks.  Your thanks are of no value unless they are received by someone.  Thank people for what they do for you but thank the Lord for being the Lord of your life.

I ask you, who is Jesus for you?  He is not a man who does things; He is the God Who is the most important thing you can have.  Thank Him because He is to you someone no one else can ever be to You.  He is your Maker.  He made you someone and that is something no one else can do. Thank Him. You are His sheep, so He is your shepherd. No one else can be a shepherd to you.  Thank Him for being that.

If you think being a sheep is not such a great thing, think again.  Better to be a sheep than a lion.  No one takes care of a lion.  The lion must take care of itself. If the lion fails it dies.  But as sheep, we have the Lord as our shepherd Who cares for all our needs. We cannot fail when we are in His pasture. Thank Him.  Thank Him with gladness because He is our God our Shepherd and He is our Provider.

Being thankful makes you a giver.  Be thankful that the Lord was a giver first. Without Him as a giver you would live in constant need.  Without Him as a listener you would live in the noise of never being heard.  Without Him as a comforter in your life you would live in constant need of comfort you cannot provide for yourself.

Thank Him because He is good, and He is all things good to you. He is merciful and He always will be towards us.  He gives us all we have; He listens to all we have to say, and He comforts us with heavenly comfort. Thank Him because He is all this to you.

And if that is not enough, then you can thank Him for what He does for you. You may have to wait on others to do what you need but you don’t have to wait for the Lord to do anything.  Simply thank Him for what He is to you.  Wake up knowing what you have in the Lord.  When you needed a highway across the ocean, He built it for you.  When you needed sorrow turned to happiness, He did it for you.  When you needed your mourning to be turned to joy, He did it for you.

Philippians 4:11 Says this.  “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content.”  Don’t just be thankful when you have a need met.  Learn to meet all your needs and all your circumstances with the unusual contentment of a sheep following its shepherd.

Learn never to allow your circumstances to determine for you if you will be content.  You don’t have to be happy when bad things happen to you but learn to be content even in the middle of the bad that comes your way.  Contentment drives away discouragement.

Take your contentment into all your circumstances. When you do that, you will learn how to live a life of thankfulness.  And when your life is full of thanks, your thanks will bring you more of the good that comes because of Who He is to you.  You may never have all that you want but when you have the Lord, you always have all that you need.

Being thankful unlocks and releases more of the good the Lord wants to shower on you.

Have a great day giving thanks to our Lord Who is good and merciful towards us always and in every way.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The Lord will bring you out so He can bring you in

Your Passover.  That is my message for today.

Joshua 6:2 “And the Lord said to Joshua, see, I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor.”

Some 40 years earlier, the Lord had brought the Israelites out of Egypt.  One of their last evenings there was the Passover event.  God passed through all of Egypt and destroyed the first born of all living things.  However, He passed over the people of Israel.  God chose to spare His people.

Now, they were ready to go occupy the land God had promised them. The first order of business was to destroy the city of Jericho.  It stood directly in the path God had chosen to lead the people into the land He promised.  Joshua sent two spies into the land to learn what they could learn.  They went to Jericho and by chance they stayed at the house of a lady called Rahab.

When Rahab learned the king of Jericho was looking for the spies, she hid them.  She told them everything they needed to know about the people and the land.  The people were afraid of the Israelites.  They knew God had chosen them as His people.  They knew what God had done to the Egyptians and to the kings in the desert.  And they knew what He would do to them.

In return for helping the spies, Rahab asked them to spare her and her family when the Israelites attacked Jericho. The spies agreed and told Rahab to hang a scarlet rope in the window of her house.  This rope would be the indication to the Israelites to pass over her house and allow everyone there to live.

God’s Passover in Egypt was to save His people from the destruction that was coming to people who had their own gods; He would bring them out.  God’s Passover of Rahab in Jericho was to save a family of believers from among a nation of nonbelievers; He would bring her in.  God chose to spare His people; Rahab chose to leave her people and to be in the family of God.

In a way, one Passover was to bring you out before destruction came.  And the other Passover was to take you in before destruction came.  Today, you and I get to enjoy the symbol of both Passovers.  We should all want to be of the family of God.  And we should all have a bit of Rahab’s Passover saving faith in us.

We should ask ourselves daily, do we live in a way that God will bring us out of the bondage and the destruction that comes to those who deny Him?  Most of us would find it easy to believe we do this.  But being out is not enough.  We must ask ourselves do we love the Lord enough to give up the things we get by living among those who do not live for Him?

If we are brought out, we need to be brought in.  Rahab showed us the type of faith that will cause us to leave a life that is selfish and self-centered for one that is selflessly focused on and centered on the Love of God. God is faithful to bring us out of the things that are against Him and so against us. To do that, He will often choose to deal with what is against Him so that we are freed.

Your Passover is to learn to never stay too close to the thing that is against God; He wants to free you from that.  God is also faithful to bring us into life with Him when we choose to give up life without Him.  We must remember never to stay too close to the things that used to keep us away from Him because of what we get from that.  We cannot love Him and love what we get from the world too.

So, ask yourself, am I living in my Passovers?  The Lord is always looking to bring His Passover to freedom to those of us who are living for Him and waiting patiently for Him.  He is always looking to bring His Passover into life with Him for those of us ready to give up life with everyone and everything else.

Don’t make it hard for Him to find you.  Hang the scarlet rope of your submission and your belief and your love for Him around your heart.  He lives there.  He will find it and He will know you are one of His.  This is your Passover to have Him living in your heart so the enemies and the nonbelievers in God would know He is real.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

What you think and feel cannot be the standard for what is right and wrong.

Judges 21:25: “In those days there was no king in Israel.  Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

Some years from now, I can see people then writing about us now saying “in those days everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”  Why is that?  Because today most of us believe we have the inherent ability to know right from wrong.  That is true. But unfortunately, that inherent ability to know right and wrong doesn’t mean we can typically choose right from wrong.

When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree their eyes were opened.  They came to know good and evil or right and wrong.  Why wouldn’t God want them to know this?  God even says that the two of them had become like Us – knowing good and evil. Well, we may know there is good and evil, but that doesn’t mean we know how to judge or choose good over evil.

With the knowledge of knowing right and wrong comes the responsibility and accountability to judge and to live righteously.  And to judge rightly we must have a righteous standard against which our thoughts and ideas are weighed.  A standard of right cannot be what we think and feel.  What we think and feel must be judged against the unchanging standard.

God knew that man would not be able to judge righteously once he became aware of good and evil or right and wrong.  He also knew that we would eventually create our own standard for what is right.  He knew we would naturally be drawn to do what is right in our own eyes.

So, the question I have for us is this.  What is in your eyes? Right and wrong are fundamental truths that existed before we existed.  We do not determine what is right; we can only choose to do what is right against what is right.  So, we should be mindful of what is in our eyes.

God’s standard for right should be the thing we see in our eyes.  It should be the thing that gives us all our feelings of right and wrong.  It should be the thing against which we judge how we feel, not the things before us that we see each day.

When we choose to do what is right in our own eyes, we sin by deciding for ourselves what is a fundamental right.  We define our actions as right and we want to use them as the standard of right for everyone else.  When we do this, we go beyond being like God to wanting to be our own god.

Knowing what is right is one thing.  Knowing that you are right is a different thing.  Our sin today is to believe that we are right because what we see in our eyes is the right thing. The Israelites made themselves right back in their times, and we do it today.  But it is wrong.

In Exodus 20 we have what we commonly refer to as the Ten Commandments.  One of the commandments listed is this.  “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.”  The Israelites struggled with this simple but profound commandment back then and we struggle with it today.

We can know and understand and agree that God is saying we should not use His name in a worthless, degrading or in a way that does not exalt Him. This is knowing the right thing.  But knowing that you are right in how you use the name of God is different.

You may believe it is ok to use His name to express your frustration towards something since you do not intend to degrade Him but just to express yourself.  By doing this, you effectively change the standard for vain to suit what is in your eyes.  You don’t change your behavior; you establish your behavior as the standard for what is right behavior.

Right is good for everyone.  Wrong is wrong for everyone. Our behaviors can never be the standard for what is fundamentally right or wrong because we cannot be what is right or wrong for all people.  The best we can do is to have our behaviors judged against a fundamental right or wrong created by our creator. When everyone does what is right in themselves, we are at that moment less like God then at almost any other time.

So ask yourself if what is in your eyes is accurately compared to what is the standard that God has set for us?  If everyone does this and behaves this way, God would once again become the King we need to guide us in the days we live today.

So, what’s in your eyes?

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Work to live in a way to gain the Lord’s Appreciation

Genesis 6:8 “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.”

Tomorrow, November 11^th, 2024, is a day we set aside each year to acknowledge and to honor the men and women of our military services.  We call it Veterans Day.  It is a day we will do many things to show our appreciation to our veterans for their service to our country.

Appreciation is something less the things we do and more the persons we are as we do the things we do. It is to be humble enough to recognize the best of someone. It is the sense of value and respect and admiration of the person of others as we acknowledge the sacrifices others made for all of us.

The Lord appreciates us. He showed us the best example of appreciation when scripture tells us He was thinking of destroying all mankind, but Noah found grace in His eyes.  In other words, Noah was spared God’s wrath because God saw something in Noah that He appreciated.

What is key about God’s appreciation and our recognition of others is the sense of selflessness. The scripture may be a bit confusing until we listen closely to what it says.  Noah was not looking for grace. Noah was living and being the person whom He knew he was supposed to be.

Because of his selflessness, his sense of obligation, and his sense of honor, Noah lived in a way that he found something of great value that he wasn’t looking for.  He stumbled into the heart of grace.  And when grace found him there, grace said to the Lord, we must appreciate Noah because he lives selflessly in pursuit of the things We love.

In several ways our veterans share some of the same qualities that were found in Noah.  Every veteran knows these three words and what they mean, duty, obligation and honor.

It is a veteran’s duty to live a life given to the lives of others in their country.  They give up their lives so we can have ours. They do this because it is their God given duty to be this sacrifice for us. We should appreciate that.

It is the Veteran’s obligation to never give up on the task before them.  More than the fact that their lives may be at stake, they know that your life and my life are at stake so they have a self-prescribed obligation to never give up, especially when others would give in. We should appreciate that.

It is the veteran’s honor to serve the people of their country and all the good that the country stands for.  But honor to the veteran is not just what they do, they are the personification of honor in who they are.  In a world where honor is not seen, the veteran personifies honor in the most visible ways. They live it. We should appreciate that.

Finally, just like Noah, the veterans know they live this way because they are in the Army and service of the Lord. The Lord God Himself is the Commander of the Army to which they belong.  The Lord always goes before them into the battles they will face. Like Noah, veterans do not become preoccupied with the things of this life.  Instead, they focus on the things the Lord prescribes for them.

In this, the grace of the Lord finds them.  The Love of the Lord carries them.  And the appreciation of the Lord declares their value before others and for others.

This Veteran’s Day, I urge you to do more than to simply thank them for their service.  Show them your appreciation by acknowledging their sense of duty, obligation and honor for you and for our country.  If the Lord can appreciate them in this way, so can we.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The freedom to choose the bondage we live in. Choose the bondage that frees us from bondage.

In Joshua 24:15, The Israelites had just finished conquering all the people in the Promised Land. Joshua had allocated their lands to each tribe.  Now they were ready to embark on a life free of oppression and free of enemies.  Joshua challenged them to make a life defining choice; how would they handle life when the only life they had to handle was their own?

The scripture says he said this to them. “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether it be the gods whom your fathers served on the other side of the river, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell.  But as for me and my house we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua was saying to them, this is the moment.  Now you must make a decision that will last until and beyond your death.  Will you decide to live and die like your ancestors who, after God delivered them from the bondage of Egypt, they fell into self-made bondage of the wanting the freedom to do whatever they wanted?

This was the moment for them.  They would either serve the Lord or serve themselves.  They would either follow the Lord or they would follow their own desires.  They would either treat life the way God wanted life to be treated. or they would treat life the way they wanted.

This was the moment for them.  Would the freedom from a bondage lead them to a bondage of the freedom to have all they wanted?  It looked that way. Since they did not have a king at that time, every person wanted to do what they thought was right in their own eyes. Their own thinking and their own feelings were the standards by which they wanted to live.

They did not want to offend anyone or to be offended by anyone because of their beliefs.  They wanted the freedom to live as they pleased.  The freedom to is really bondage to the self.

Sadly, most of the Israelites chose what they wanted.  The removed God from the idea of marriage and did what they wanted.  They removed Him from intimate relationships and behaved the way they wanted.  They removed Him from being their King and decided they were king of their own lives.

Yes, this was their moment; they would either serve the Lord or they would expect the Lord to serve them.  Joshua tried to warn them of the danger in the choice they had to make at that moment.  The idea of freedom from oppression or from being denied individual freedom seems good but it can often lead to bondage to the idea of the freedom to make our own individual choices. The freedom to is not always best for us.

Adam and Eve had such a moment in the garden many years before the Israelites.  It was the idea of freedom from so they could have the freedom to.  They chose wrong.  The Israelites chose wron.

Tuesday, November 5^th is going to be a moment like this for us. Many of us will cast a vote for the next President and leadership of our nation. Will we see this as a moment where we choose the freedom to live the way we want or the freedom from living just for ourselves?

Just like it was with Adam and Eve and just like it was with the Israelites, the devil will always offer us the choice to be free to do whatever we want for ourselves.  But remember, nothing he offers you is good for you, even the idea of the freedom to choose your own way.

When you vote next week, and you should vote, be mindful of what you are really doing.  One of our parties offers us a choice for the freedom to live the way we want to live.  The freedom to make our own decisions; the freedom to have what we want to have; the freedom never to be offended by anything or anyone.  I could go on, but you should see.  For those of us who believe this way, this is the moment for us.

The other party offers us a choice for the freedom from ourselves. It offers us a moment to choose to have the freedom from living like we know good from evil; to have the freedom from living like we know as much as God knows; to have the freedom from redefining life to suit the way we want life to be for us.  For those of us who believe this way, this is the moment for us.

November 5^th will be our moment.  We will choose whom we will serve – those who say they will give us everything we want; or we will choose to serve those who will help us to live fully free within the bounds of how God has designed life to be for everyone.

Yes, our parties are offering us either a freedom to do as we want or a freedom from having all that we want. This is our moment.  Let’s not blow it.  The prosperity of your children and your children’s children and many generations that come after you will depend a great deal on the choice you make next week.

It’s not a good idea to think that over 350 million people can live happily together with everyone free to live as they want.  There must be a standard for life against which we all must stand before.  It is not my position over your position.  It is my position against the same standard as your position.  Look for the party that understands and represents more of the standard against which we should live.

Joshua made sure the Israelites understood that standard was God.  They would either live for or against Him.

I believe many of us should do something next week that we have never done.  We should stop voting for those who offer us the freedom to and cast our vote for those who help us to plainly see that what is best for everyone is to be free from wanting the freedom to have everything we want.

Don’t vote for anyone who promises to give you what they cannot give. You already have that.  Though some of us may not accept this, good is only good if it is good for everyone – not just you.  If it is possible to make things good and better for you it is probably true that what is good for you is not always good for someone else. If you always get your way in life, you will never grow to be better than who you are today.

God wants to give you the good that you do not have.  Only God can free you from your bondage to want the freedom to do all that you want; He can strengthen you desires to be free from the bondage of yourself.  And only He can develop your heart to be fully satisfied in the bondage you enjoy by the freedom you have in Him. 

This is our moment.  The freedom to do as we please is a slippery slope; the freedom from ourselves is solid ground; but freedom in Him is the best.  Cast your vote for the freedom we find in Him.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Unbelief is the inability to disbelieve that your circumstances will never change and be better.

Mark 9:24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.”

I promised some time ago to do another message on our unbelief.  Unbelief robs us of the full joy of knowing the Lord.  The father in this scripture had a young son who had a mute spirit.  The father had taken his son to the disciples for help, but they could not help them.

In what was probably another of many acts of desperation, the father brings the child to Jesus and asks for help.  He actually says to Jesus, ‘If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” Mark 9:23.

Sometimes our situations can be so dire that even as believers, we can act in the unbelief that is still present with us.  Peter did this when Jesus called him to walk on the water.  Peter did fine until he looked around at the waves.  Then he panicked.  The waves were stronger than his belief.

Thomas showed his unbelief when he said I will not believe Jesus has risen from the dead until I put my hands into his side.  Thomas was saying, I must see it for myself before I believe it.  Thomas’ natural sight was stronger than his belief.

The father of this young boy, Peter and Thomas all had this in common.  They believed Jesus was Lord, but they did not recognize the limit they lived by in their circumstances.

The father had probably been living with grief and pain of not being able to help his son all his life.  He had probably done everything he knew to do to help, but still his son was not healed.  His request for help from Jesus is a statement of unbelief, if You can do anything. He believed in the Lord, but he allowed unbelief to exist, and he didn’t even know it.

Peter, in his request to the Lord to call him to walk on the water was an unbelievable request.  He said, Lord if it is You, call for me to walk on the water.  Jesus did.  And Peter walked on water for a few steps.  But an unbelieving request will usually lead to unbelieving results.  Peter’s request was an unbelievable request.

And then there was Thomas.  When the disciples told Thomas they had seen the risen Lord, Thomas found that too hard to believe.  And though he was not speaking directly to Jesus, he was saying what I see for myself is stronger evidence of what is than what I believe can be.  His was an unbelieving statement.

The father’s unbelief was real in his lifelong circumstance.  Peter’s unbelief was real in his need to believe what was possible.  Thomas’ unbelief was real in his need to believe only what he could see.  You must never allow your circumstances, or the impossible, or what you see to dictate your belief.

So, you can see what is common in these three people.  You should be able to see yourself in them as well.  I’m sure we have all said or done or even live this way today.  The problem for us is the same as it was for them.  We do not recognize our unbelief as unbelief because we live with it in all our circumstances.

But the Lord is gracious.  Even though the father, and Peter and Thomas came to Him in a state of unbelief, He had compassion on them and grace toward them and Love for them and helped them.

Today, if you will look within yourself for the hidden unbelief that lurks with you, He will have the same compassion and grace and Love for you.  A bit of unbelief is in each of us.  Accept that this includes you too.  Ask the Lord to help you with your unbelief.  He will do it.

Do not be so willing to live by what you have come to accept and know that you block what you do not know that is better for you.  Just because you have always worried about tomorrow doesn’t mean there is something about tomorrow that warrants worry.

Learn never to pray from an unbelieving position.  Just because the Lord doesn’t change everything you face in life doesn’t mean He does not change the things in your life that need changing.  Sometimes He allows the sickness so that you will appreciate being well even more.

Lord, help us to believe so strongly that our unbelief has a hard time finding a place to work its ways into our lives.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

When God plants His garden in your life, He will till and tend your life for you.

Genesis 2:8 says this.  “The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.”  The bible says God wanted Adam to tend and keep it the garden.

I have often wondered how it is that God chose to put Adam into a garden.  Why didn’t He just build him a house along some river where Adam could live and thrive? Now, I’m not saying a garden was a bad idea.  In fact, a garden is great place.  And in this case, we know God Himself planted the garden.  So, we know that it was a great place that would be cared for.

But how come the choice was a garden?  I guess if we will call it a garden, the place must be an intentional place.  Gardens do not just spring up and grow in the wild.  There seems to be more here than God’s simple desire for Adam to tend and till His garden.  But what more?

Perhaps God knew Adam and eventually Eve, would need some help learning how to live in the world with each other and with others. They would need to learn how to care for children from birth to death. The garden is a perfect place for God to practice being a Father before Adam so that Adam could learn how to be a son and in time learn how to be a father himself.

Perhaps God did not want to see Adam and Eve struggle with life before they understood what was important in life.  Many of us do that today.  Before we really know what life is and what it is supposed to be, we pursue our desires before we know how to care for our needs.

So, a garden was a perfect place for God to do several things:

• Create a place of development and provision for Adam and Eve. Since any garden is intentional, it stands to reason, the person who plants the garden will care for all that is there. With the garden, God could keep them from developing a sense of self before they developed a sense for others. For sure, Adam and Eve would learn the benefits of working with their hands by tilling and tending the garden. But they also learned that God would till their lives there and He would show them how to be His children before they learned that lesson from social media.
• A garden teaches you that life is more about what you give than what you get.  The garden is perfect to teach you to do what is right so that you get the right result from what you do.  You learn to be dependent on what you cannot provide.  And you learn to be responsible for doing what you must do so you can have that benefit of what you do.  A lazy gardener will go hungry, but a responsible gardener would live as much as he was willing to give.
• A garden was perfect to teach Adam and Eve that they would need to be shepherds not only of the animals around but also of their children that would later come.  God used the garden teach them to think like sheep but to act like a shepherd.  Wouldn’t that be great today.  If we could see ourselves as sheep in the Lord’s pasture but shepherds of the Lord’s sheep.  The garden gave God the controlled environment to teach them this important life lesson.

Many years later, Jesus would come along.  He would spend most of His life teaching His disciples in and around the garden of Gethsemane.  In a way, He lived there.  It is from there He was taken to His death.  He was buried near there and so He was raised to life all from a place in a garden.  The garden is God’s way of teaching us the cycle of life in Him and the way we should live while we are here on earth.

We are born.  We live.  We die only to be born again in the life of Christ.  If you give your life to the Lord today, He will have a place to plant the garden of His life into you.  In this way, His Life in you becomes the garden of your life.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

This is what the kingdom of heaven is like.

In Matthew 5:3 Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”  Jesus is not saying – it will be theirs.  He is saying to those who are of a poor spirit, the kingdom of heaven is theirs.  They have it and are enjoying it today before they leave this world.

The Word makes it seem like an individual can have the kingdom. But how is that so? What is that like? Can more than a single individual have this promise? Sometimes, we do not have the things the Lord promises because we have a believer’s unbelief.

In our humanity, we are limited. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are temporal things.  They exist and then they do not exist. We live in time and space, and we are limited by time and space. And so, we wonder how it is that multiple people can have the same thing – in this case, the kingdom of heaven?

The things of God are not physical or temporal things like we are. They are Spiritual just as He is Spiritual. So, the kingdom of heaven is not a physical house in a physical place nor is it like owning the only gold coin of its kind. By the Spirit, we can own but not possess.  We can enjoy but not keep.

The kingdom of heaven is the spirit of the joy we get when we live knowing we have a room in heaven. It is like knowing that by living under God’s authority, we actually have more authority than those who seek to authority. Nothing can take away your joy when you realize joy is something to make your life better but not something to possess.

Matthew 13:44 is one of several places where the Lord tells us what the kingdom of heaven is like.  He says “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Think of you being that treasure.  Think of that field being all the people of the world.  Think of the man being the Lord.  He finds you from among all the things of the world. To make sure He can have you, He goes and buys everything around you.  He is happy indeed.

But think of the joy this will be to you.  Knowing that you have been purchased by the Lord from among all the worthless things of the world.  In this way, the kingdom of heaven is really the attitudes by which we learn to live our lives in a world that wants us to waste our lives by having worldly attitudes.

Your attitude is a choice.  In this instance, you find it is joyful to be poor in spirit unlike those around you.  Being poor in spirit makes you mighty in spirit because God rewards those who choose to live poor no matter how much they have.

He chooses to reward those who live poor no matter how little they have.  He chooses to reward those who live with lack and want and with fullness with the same attitude of gratefulness and respect and hope for others.

This is what the kingdom of heaven is like. And this is why it can be yours and anyone else who chooses to live with the attitude of gratefulness with the things we have and endure.  It is a blessing for us when we learn to keep our emotions under control of our spirits. So we can choose an attitude that is ok with what life brings our way. 

The kingdom of heaven is like this.  You don’t have to thrive so that you can have a great attitude.  You learn that a great attitude is the reason you can thrive no matter your circumstances. Now isn’t that heaven?

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

We are of little value until God claims us

A fifty-dollar bill, lost and blowing across the ground, is like any other piece of paper we find.  It is nothing but trash.  That is, until you or someone else finds and claims it. You give the fifty dollar bill its value when you pick it up and put it into your pockets.

While it is unclaimed, it is of no more value than the next thing we would throw away.  In many ways, you and I, until we are claimed by Jesus, are of no more value than an unclaimed piece of merchandise.  We cannot make anyone value who we are.

Now do not be offended by this. We actually refer to a thing that seemingly has no value as a piece of trash.  But with God, we are not trash. We are not helpless but priceless.

Why is that? Well, because God, is all His wisdom, made a way for us to become people of great value.  Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 6:18 “I will be a Father to you. And you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”  Only a living God can change you from being an orphan to dead parents to being alive again to a living God.

Value in life is something given to us more than it is achieved by us.  It is important for us to know from where we ultimately get our value. The people of the world look for their value from what they can get in having the things of the world.

People look to get wealth from the world. They believe wealth gives them value.  Children of God are given wealth by being a child of God.  Being a child makes them wealthy. By the world standard, wealth is caught up in what you have.  But by God’s standards, wealth is found in who you are.

People look to get position, status, place, and privilege from the world. This they believe gives them value.  But we are given position, status, place, and privilege by God when we become His children. This makes us priceless in His heart.

People look to find the gold and the pearls, and all the things of the world others seek after for their value. God makes us pearls and gold and all the things that are priceless even when no one else would own them.

People of the world get this all backwards. People want to claim what they cannot claim. Own what they cannot own. And show what they cannot show. God is not lost. He cannot be found and claimed by you or me. He finds and claims us. Only a living God can do that.

God is not made by our hands, so we can show our work on Him to others. God made each of us to show His greatness and His glory in the world that seeks this for itself.

God cannot be owned so He cannot be bought by us.  He is priceless, so we have nothing that is of sufficient enough value to trade for Him. He is the one who trades for us. Only a living God can do that.

John 3:16 says, “For God so Loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” Just like we give a piece of paper its value when we claim it, God gives each of us the value of Himself when we are claimed by Him. Only a Living God can do that.

 My mother used to make beautiful comforting quilts by piecing together old scraps of unwanted cloth materials good for nothing but to be thrown out. My mom was following the pattern of value she learned from the Lord.  She made something of no value to be valuable in new ways.

Only a living God can piece together with Himself, the old scraps of our sinful lives and create in us new lives of priceless value in Him.   Our value comes to us from Him because He changes us from being the simple piece of unwanted paper to a priceless person claimed by a living God.  Only a living God can do that.

God makes the simple people we are to be special because He chooses to be our Father.   We don’t need a big house because we live in a house built by His hands.  We don’t need fancy clothes because we are clothed in His love.  We don’t need to have all friends because He has chosen to be our friend.

Only a Living God can do this. Let’s stop living like we are our own and learn to live like we are the one and only thing He owns. Only a Living God can do that.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Before looking for what you need, seek Who can provide your needs.

There is a popular folk proverb that says, “God helps those who helps themselves.”  I say this is a folk proverb because it is not a Word found in scripture. To some people this saying may sound practical and sensible. But to the faithful, it should be a small little warning.

If you are out of work and need a job, people may tell you do not just sit around the house and pray. You must get out and seek a job and when you do, God will help you. If you want to stop a bad habit, then you should stop associating with people or things that promote that habit. When you do things like these, God will help you.

I find a little problem with the proverb.  It wants you to try to help yourself first and then seek God. But the Lord wants us to seek Him first and He will help us by directing our steps. So, the question is what do you seek first? To help yourself or to seek the One who can help you help yourself?

Matthew 6:33 says this. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you.”  So, what are the things Jesus reference here? Well, they are the practical things we all need in life – food, water, shelter, work, clothes and so forth.

Jesus is telling us that God knows that we have a need for many practical things in life. But to have those things, we should first seek after the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Then all those things and more will be added to our lives.

When the Israelites were wondering in the desert for 40 years, they did not lack for anything. Their clothes did not wear out. Their shoes did not become worn down. They were provided food from heaven. They were provided water from rocks. They were protected from their enemies. They were provided shelter from the elements.

God wanted them to learn to first seek Him. All that they needed was then provided to them. I know it’s hard for us to see this happening today. To many of us, our challenges, our enemies, our adversaries, our needs, seem closer to our lives than God is.

So, we feel compelled to try to solve our immediate needs before we seek Him for His help. But we must know this is all untrue. It does not matter how grave your circumstance is, the Lord is always closer to you than anything could be. So, what are you seeking?

Learn to first and always seek Him and His righteousness. Let this be your life. When you do that, you will learn that He is closer to you than you imagined.

If you need a job, you will find it more quickly and easily when you are seeking Him. He directs you to the work you need.

If you need healing, you will find it more quickly and easily when you are seeking Him. He will provide you a path to your healing.

If you need restoration in a relationship or deliverance from a sin, you will find it more quickly and easily when you are seeking Him. He has the fix and will provide the freedom you need for your broken relationships and from your bond with sin.

When you seek Him first, you are saying, Lord I am looking for You. Please find me and direct my steps and my paths. Life may be a struggle for you, and you may feel like you are going to drown in the waves and the swift cold waters of the things that keep you down.

But do not be discouraged. When you seek Him, you come to learn that the waters may be swift, but Jesus is the water. He is coming swiftly to you and carrying you to a place in Him of calm. Work may be difficult to find but Jesus is ahead of you directing you to the work that is best for you.

What are you looking for? Well, first let that be the kingdom of heaven and all His righteousness. Seek the work, healing, safety, food, relationships, and so forth that is found in His Kingdom and in His righteousness.

He is what you should be looking for. Find Him, and all other things you need will be provided to you.  Don’t just ask Him to help you find things you need here on earth.  Seek Him and His kingdom first and He will direct you to the things He has reserved for. Live a Delivered Life. Love you.