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In Luke 10:25-29, scripture says a lawyer tested Jesus by asking Him what he had to do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus responded by asking the man what the law said.  The lawyer responded to Jesus this way: “So he answered and said, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’”  He was saying to Jesus we must love a great God in a great way, but we should love our neighbors in the same way that we love ourselves.  Jesus told the lawyer that he had answered correctly, but wanting to justify himself, the lawyer then asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?”

Loving God in a great way we can all understand; we conclude God deserves our best because He is God.  But, but like the lawyer, we sometimes ask who is our neighbor?  We do this because sometimes we may know a few people who get on our nerves, who do us wrong, who are impossible to live with, and so forth.  Surely, we think, there must be a limit on how far we go with some people, so we ask, “Who is our neighbor?”

Here are some truths I have learned from life with God.  If I am your father or mother, that makes you my child; if I am your child that makes you my father or mother.   If I am your husband, that makes you my wife; if I am your wife, that makes you my husband.  I believe it would be difficult for anyone to rightly argue the truth of these statements.  Likewise, If I am your neighbor, that makes you my neighbor.  And, if you are my neighbor, that makes me your neighbor.  These are truth also.

To me it doesn’t seem like God would be completely satisfied that we would only love those that we think of as neighbors as ourselves. What about everyone else?  Not all people are our neighbors in the way we think of neighbors.  This is how we might see a neighbor: the people who live near us; the people of our community; the people with whom we share something in common; the people who do good towards us; the people who are our friends. These we could think of as neighbors.  But God doesn’t see a neighbor the way we see a neighbor.

The lawyer is saying we can love our neighbors, but perhaps we don’t have to love those people who are not our neighbors or who are against us in some way.  He was saying could there be room in the law for us to decide how far to go with non-neighbors.   He is saying there will be people who are mean to us, there will be people who will persecute us and behave hatefully towards us, there will be people who betray us, so surely it is within what is right in the law to withhold love to people like that.

Well, we must be careful not to turn God’s desires into a law that we blindly follow.  If we look deeply into God’s wishes of how we should relate to others, we will find a Spirit that goes beyond the law we see on the surface.  The law is specific to a particular event or circumstance, but the intent or Spirit of the Law relates to all that we are and all that we can ever be.  Who then really is our neighbor?  I must say my neighbor is probably more than the people who live nearby.  In trying to justify himself, the lawyer asked the wrong question.  It is not just knowing who is my neighbor that matters.  Rather the question should be, “Lord, would you show us how to be neighborly towards others?”

Jesus describes a scene for the lawyer in which a man leaves Jerusalem and is robbed and left to die by the roadside heading into Jericho.  Three people going to visit Jericho pass by this man.  Two of those people, a Priest and a Levite, see the man, but they pass by without stopping to help him.  But the third person, a Samaritan, sees the man and stops to give him help.  He probably saves the man’s life as a result.  Jesus asked the lawyer which of those three people was neighbor to the man who was robbed.  The lawyer responds, the one who showed mercy on him.  Jesus tells him that is right.  The Priest and the Levite were people of God so we should have expected them to help the man, but they did not; the man was not a neighbor of theirs. The Samaritan person was not thought to be a person of God at that time, yet he stopped and was neighborly towards someone who wasn’t his neighbor.

God wants to keep us from getting the right answer to the wrong question.   The question is not “what we should do to inherit eternal life”, nor is it “who is our neighbor.”  Eternal life is not the wages God pays us for the work we do.  Rather, eternal life is the gift of God for the condition of the hearts we have towards Him.  Jesus describes a neighbor as anyone, even those who may not be neighbors in the way we know it, who lives in a neighborly way and who does neighborly things towards anyone else.

So, while we must learn to rightly understand the letter of the law, we must also learn to correctly discern the Spirit of the intent of God’s Word.  Perhaps the Spirit of the law is this: that we learn to live in a spirit of love towards God and towards all people, and by doing so we will do neighborly things towards all people.  A neighbor isn’t just the person who lives near us.  We have the power to make everyone our neighbor by the way we live towards others.  Learn to ask God the right question so that you come to the knowledge of the right answer, so that you learn to live in the right ways, and so that you can be the person that God points to when He says, “See how he lives?  He has the gift of eternal life; go and live likewise.”  Live in a Spirit of neighborly love, and you will make neighbors of all people you encounter.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

There is a Proverb that I like to remind myself of daily.  It says, “I went by the field of a lazy man, and by the vineyard of a man lacking common sense; and there it was, all overgrown with thorns.  Its surface was covered with needles; its stone wall was broken down.  When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and this is what I understood.  A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest.  So shall poverty come upon you like a robber.” (Proverbs 24:30-34)  What this says to me is simple.  If I live a lazy, irresponsible life I will get lazy, irresponsible results from what I do.  If I live a sloppy life, I will get sloppy results.

The devil will be most happy with me if I choose to live this way, because he knows that I will be wasting away the life of abundance God has promised me.  I have come to learn that I do not want to do anything that would make the devil happy.  Scripture tells us to be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  In James 4:7 scripture tells us, “Therefore submit to God.  Resist the devil and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.”

So how do you resist the devil, and how do we draw near to God?  Well, I believe you can do three things that would make it difficult for the devil to find you while he wanders about, and these same three things will bring you closer to God who then will come closer to you.

First, every day—each and every day—we should all wake up with the mindset that as soon as our feet hit the floor from a night of sleep, we will be focused on chasing something that the devil would never chase.  You see, you don’t need to necessarily fight with the devil each day.  Sometimes the best way to resist him is to chase something that he would never chase.  So, the first thing that you should chase each day is the presence of God Himself.  It doesn’t matter what your situation is at the moment.  If you decide you are going to chase after God, you will be putting distance between you and the devil, and you will close the distance between you and God.  For every step you take toward the presence of God, He will take two steps towards you, so that your effort to find Him is made easier by Him.  And God is not difficult to find if you learn to wake up chasing after Him.  Don’t wake up and go through the day pursuing things the devil can help you to get.  The devil will never help you become a better person, nor will he help you have a closer relationship with the Lord (or anyone else!), so if you chase after these things, he will flee from you.

Then you should wake up chasing after a particular place to be.  Just like he wanders about each day seeking whom he may find and devour, the devil hopes you will live your life wandering about without a real purpose of life or a place to be.  Don’t give him this power over you.  You ought to wake up each day chasing after something specific, a specific place, a specific location that you want to be because someone else expects you to be there.  Now this may be to be a better person in your spouse’s life, or a better parent in your children’s lives, or a better friend to your friends.  When you chase after being in a special place for someone else, the people who need you will find you more easily because they look for you to be where they need you.  If you don’t have a specific place to be or purpose to fulfill, you give the devil the opportunity to entice you with the spirit of laziness.  Your fields will be overgrown, your work will be of lower quality, and your relationships will be weakened, all because you do not chase after being where it is most important for you to be.  The Lord saw that we would have this need, so He decided to be where we could always find Him: right in the middle of our hearts.  So, learn to wake up chasing to be in a place where others can always be assured to find you.

Finally, wake up chasing after the need make yourself a better person so that you inspire someone in a positive way each day.  Have something of yourself to bring each day and to transfer to someone else so that they will be inspired to pursue being better.  They will find it if you inspire it.  So, wake up each day chasing after being a better you.  A lazy person will find a reason why things do not go their way, but the inspired person will chase after being better because they know someone else is counting on them for that.  And they also know that a better person will do better things to make things better for other people.

Wake up determined to be something for someone else.   In this way God sent Jesus to die for us. When God is for us, who can be against us?  What can stand against us?  Likewise, we ought to wake up each day chasing after the privilege of being there for others and to stand for others, so that they are not easily overtaken by those do not care for them.  When God could do nothing better, He decided to send His only Son to save us.   We can do nothing better when we choose to wake up and chase after being in the hearts of someone who needs our presence in their lives.

When God’s greatest people wake up each day to fulfill these expectations, they place themselves to help others live more abundant lives here on earth.  If you learn to chase yourself in these ways, people will journey with you because you travel with them.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

In Matthew 28:6, scripture captures the account of the risen Christ this way: “But the angel answered and said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here; for He is risen, as He said.  Come, see the place where the Lord lay.”

On the first Sunday after Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and another Mary had come to the tomb where Jesus was laid.  An angel met them there and told them He was not there, that He was risen from the grave.  That is the essence of what we acknowledge as Easter Sunday, the day that Jesus was raised from the dead.  Everyone should be happy that He indeed was raised to live again at the right hand of God and in the middle of our hearts.

Jesus told the disciples many times that He would be crucified and buried and on the third day, He would be raised again.  So, the empty tomb was the proof of that.  He said it; so now if they didn’t believe it before, they should believe it now.  Jesus said it; so the question is do you believe it?  But more than acknowledging or celebrating Easter as just a special day, I want to encourage you to be inspired to hear and to be moved by many other things He said, and thus we should believe.

“I will never leave you nor forsake you.”  He said it; do you believe it?  To many of us never leaving and never forsaking are Words that we miss the true meaning, so let’s give that some meaning today.  Perhaps the Lord is saying to us, “I am risen because I want you to know I will walk with you; I will go with you; I will be at your side always, and you can count on the fact that once I am with you I will never leave you alone nor will I ever forsake you.”  To forsake you would be akin to more than just leaving you by yourself but to leave you to yourself.  The Lord is saying to us that we can count on Him always walking with us, and that He will never leave us to ourselves.  Now that is a benefit of His being risen for which we should overflow with gratefulness.  He said it; do you believe it?

“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him.”  He said it; do you believe it?  Many of us do not understand Love the way Jesus describes it.  In our carnality we have come to understand love as a compilation of acts towards others.  But God is Love.  And because He is love He does loving things.  Jesus is saying to us here that if we are Love towards Him, we will do the loving thing of keeping His word.  And when we are this, God the Father will, in return, be Love to us.  Love is what took Christ to the cross.  Love is what allowed Him to go to the grave.  Love is what raised Him from the dead.  And love is what saved us.  Easter is then to me the expression of Love that loves.  If you can see that then perhaps you should use this as a reason to become Love so that your acts of love come from the love that you are.  He said it; do you believe it?

“In my Father’s house there are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told.  I go to prepare a place for you.”  He said it; do you believe it?  I know some of us can’t really understand what Jesus means when He says that He is preparing a place for us.  But if you listen intently perhaps you would hear that He is saying that we are living more in the world when we should be living in the Spirit.  We are wandering about in our living when He has a permanent home for us.  We may be living in a place that keeps us from having an abundant life while He has prepared a home where all our living is abundant and beyond what we can imagine.  When we learn to live with Jesus, we are not guaranteed we will be free of trials and some of the messiness of life, but we can be assured that we will be able to live through our trials and come out better than we were.   He has a new address for the believer where your mess is turned into your best.  The question is will we move.  He said it; do you believe it?

So, this Easter lets look at the many things He said that we should believe.  Lord, You said it; help us to believe it.  Help us to believe the impossible because you have already shown us You do the impossible for us. Help us to believe in Your miracles because You have already shown us the miracle of the Risen Christ.  Help us to believe that this mountain can be moved.  Help us believe our chains can be broken because we know You move the impossible, and You are a chain breaker.  There is Power in Your Name and in our believing for all the things that You have said.  This Easter, help us believe not just that you were raised from the dead but in all that You have Said.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Good Friday is the day that many people understand to be the day that Christ was crucified and died for people of a sinful fallen world, people like you and me, people who have gone before us and for all who will come after us.

For the believers, Good Friday can be seen as a bad day along the way to a life of eternally great days.  Good Friday cannot really be understood for its goodness unless you keep it in context of the part of the journey of life it represents.  Our week consists of seven days – what happens on Thursday alone cannot by itself define your week because your Fridays will always come; and your Fridays can bring good from the things that happen on the Thursdays before.  We cannot have a week unless we have Sunday through Saturday.

So perhaps we ought to think of and view Good Friday in that way.  We cannot have eternal life unless we had a Good Friday.  By itself, there was nothing good about Jesus being crucified and dying on a cross like any criminal in His time.  But thank God that He created us in His image.  When He breathed into us the breadth of Life, He made us living souls who could enjoy life eternal just as He is.  We are not an event that lives and dies and is forgotten; we are part of God’s dream to have someone who will choose to live, die, and live again with Him forever in eternity.

For me, what makes Good Friday good is not just what happened on that day; crucifixion is really a bad way to die.  But Good Friday is good because God was smart enough to make a way for each of us to have eternal life, a way that the devil cannot steal away from us.  He made a way for each of us to be winners, and He made a loser of the devil.

God revealed the secret to eternal life right before satan on a day like Good Friday but satan is too focused on himself to see it.  On Good Friday, God placed into our hearts the secret to living with Him in eternity.  He placed into our hearts the secret to salvation.  And because He placed this right into our hearts, satan can’t find it there because he looks at all the other stuff he has and all the other stuff he tries to entice us to want, hoping he will find our secret.  But he cannot look into and take from our hearts what God placed there on a day like Good Friday.   You see, if you are a believer, Jesus lives now in your heart, and satan doesn’t want to be anywhere around the Lord.

Enjoy your day today, for on a day like this God made a way for you to Live a Delivered Life.  And that indeed makes it a Good Friday.  Live A Delivered Life.  Love you. 

Scripture tells us that long ago when the Israelites were about to cross the Jordan River and enter the promised land, they had to first defeat the people who lived in the city of Jericho.  After 40 years of hardship in the desert, after over 400 years in slavery in Egypt, I imagine the people wondered if anything would ever come easy for them.  Life had been tough for them, and it seemed that it was about to get a bit tougher.  Or was it?  

Jericho was positioned along the river and fortified by walls to give it a strong defense against an enemy.  In Joshua 6:1-2 we read, “Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel; none went out, and none came in.  And the Lord said to Joshua:  See, I have given Jericho into your hand, its king, and the mighty men of valor.”

Each of us need to have some of the qualities that made Joshua the man God choose to lead His people after the death of Moses.  Joshua had walked with Moses and had been his servant most all his life.  He had witnessed firsthand many of the miracles God had worked on behalf of the people.  But there are several things about Joshua that made him the right person to lead the people to conquer the Promised Land.  Everywhere Joshua would go, walls would fall around his enemies.  Joshua had no failures in his life.  So why is this so?  Well, for every external enemy he saw, Joshua conquered within himself an internal wall that would have kept him from the successes God had planned for him and the Israelites.

First, Joshua had the character to see what God saw.  For every problem he had seen and faced, Joshua saw things the way God saw things.  There was never a problem or circumstance that was too big for God to handle.  When people saw the Egyptians as oppressors, Joshua saw them as a path to God’s deliverance.  Joshua did not focus on what seemed like the problem, he focused on the surety of the Problem Solver.  Joshua wasn’t afraid of what he saw or what he faced; he was afraid of what he might miss if he didn’t focus on the strong hand of God.  Joshua broke down the walls of fear and hopelessness within himself that would have kept him from seeing the never forsaken presence and favor of God.

If you have something that has beset you for a time and you cannot break down its walls, perhaps it is because you are looking more at your circumstance than at you and your God.  If you cannot find something within in you and about you that you must overcome, you will make it difficult to overcome the things that go against you.  God’s favor and power comes to us more directly and more easily when we come to Him with our needs to overcome our own selves.

Joshua also had the character to believe what was going to be right and never what could go wrong.  I guess I should say Joshua was a positive-minded person who saw the world God created and promised to His people for all its good.  Joshua saw the Red Sea as the death of the Egyptians who pursued the Israelites while the Israelites saw it as a wall they could not overcome.  They saw it as a place where things were about to go wrong for them.  They were just as-good-as-dead, so they complained and made just as-good-as-dead decisions.  Joshua, on the other hand, saw the Red Sea as a pathway to their new life, so he made new life decisions.  He was thinking about his new home when the Israelites were thinking about going back to their old lives of bondage to save themselves from death.

We must learn to see life with God more than circumstances without Him.  To do this we must learn to break down our walls of negative thinking and as-good-as-dead living.  It doesn’t matter what we face, it doesn’t matter what we have done, it doesn’t matter what others say or believe about us; those walls will fall in us when we learn to believe God when He says He will never leave us nor forsake us.  We may not always see the way God will do things, but we must break down the walls inside us that say we cannot stand and wait on God.  If you want to overcome the mess that is round about you, learn to overcome the wall of a mess within you that keeps you from God’s favor and power.

Finally, Joshua also had the character of strong courage.  But this is not the courage to fight and defeat the enemy before him.  This is the courage to fight and defeat the enemy within oneself.  What is this enemy you ask?  The one who would make you think that you can handle some of your problems on your own.  Joshua was challenged by God Himself to be strong and courageous so he could observe and do according to all that God commanded him to do.  Joshua found this easy to do.  But today you and I find it hard to do what God wants us to do because we have become the type of people who want to bring justice to everyone who has ever done a single thing wrong towards us.

Favor does not come more easily to us because of what we say or do.  Favor comes more for the way we live.  If you want to walk in the favor and power of God, you must do is to learn to shut your mouth and learn to walk the way God would walk.  God can do His own talking.  But if we are going to be instruments of His voice, we must learn to overcome the walls of our own lips and desires.  God can do more in your life when you live in such a way that God speaks more for you than you do for yourself.  When you are your own protector, when you are your own judge, when you are your own avenger, when you use God to do these things for you, then you are living your way rather than His way.  Joshua lived in a way that the acts of God were manifested through him and the nature of God was glorified by him.

So, what about you and me?  Do we have the character to break down the walls in our lives that keep us from seeing things as God sees them?  Do we have the character to break down the walls in our lives?  Do we have the character to see life with Him and what will go right for us more than what could go wrong for us?  Do we have the character to break down the walls in our lives that keep us from living strong and courageously fighting the enemy that is within us before we take on the enemy that is before us? 

Seven days Joshua led the Israelites to walk around the city of Jericho before the walls of the city fell and the people there were conquered.  If you have the character to walk around your life even one time, you will find walls to break down, walls surrounding what keeps you from living a conquered life.  Then the favor of God will find a place to rest on you.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

A Roman Centurion came to Jesus, pleading with Him, saying, “Lord, my servant is lying at home paralyzed, dreadfully tormented.”  And Jesus responded, “I will come and heal him.”  The centurion answered this by saying, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof.  But only speak a word and my servant will be healed.” You can find this account Matthew chapter 8.

We must be careful about where we live.  We give more thought to that in a carnal sense than we do in a spiritual sense, but it shouldn’t be that way.  Having a relationship with the Lord isn’t like having a Facebook friend who is helping you find a home to buy.  When we say we know Him or that He knows us, it is expected that our hearts would become His home.  What would it be like if Jesus lived with you, but He could not always come home to you?  Scripture encourages us to be mindful of where we live.  We ought to keep our hearts as a place He would gladly call His home.  Scripture encourages us in this way in the book of Jude when in verse 21 it says, “Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life”.  What does it mean to keep in the Love of God?

There are several amazing things about the incident Jesus had with the centurion that can help us see just what it means to live in the Love of God.  First, since a centurion was a key leader in the Roman Army, he was a gentile.  But here is what is amazing about that: Jesus can be found wherever faith can be found.  The centurion, though he didn’t know or see the Lord the way the Jews did, knew that there was something special and divine about Jesus.  The centurion was usually served by others, but he showed himself to be a man who, without knowing Him directly, served the Lord.   When you learn to live in faith, you will learn to live in the Love of God.  Living in faith simply means that, whether you have much or whether you have little, you live under the knowledge that Someone greater than you is provider of all things.  If you want to live in the Love of God, learn to live in faith towards God.

If that is amazing and surprising to you, consider this.  The centurion was a gentile who had a natural sense of caring for someone that he didn’t need to care for at all.  His servant was certainly not a Roman, yet he loved him as a person which is why he sought Jesus’ help.  The centurion had an address in Rome, but he abided in the Love of God because he knew that he was blessed when he lived in Love.  We can find it easy to love those like us.  We can find it easy to love those who don’t need much from us, but it is amazing that the love of God makes it easy for us to be love to all those who we come into contact with.  If you want to live in the Love of God, love God and love people with the love which God loves you.

There it still more amazing stuff here.  Clearly, the centurion was highly regarded by the Jewish community, and he was a generous and very successful citizen of Rome.  But he was still a gentile.  Even with all his status and position, his humility was even greater.  The centurion had the sense to know that no amount of pride is greater than a small dose of humility; no amount of status is greater than the small status of a humble person; no amount of authority is greater than the position of being in humble authority to care for others.  The centurion showed us how to live in humble submission to the Love of God.  If you want to learn to live in the Love of God you must learn to live in humble sufficiency with the things that you have, wanting nothing more save for the needs of those you know and love.  The Love of God is powerful, and it is made even more so when it is handled by someone who is humbly powerful and still concerned for the welfare of others.  

The Love of God can do what authority cannot do: it can move things with just a word.  The Love of God can heal what medicine cannot heal: it can mend broken hearts.  The Love of God can restore what a law cannot restore: it can forgive the unforgivable.  The Love of God can find what all your searching cannot find: it can reveal your whereabouts.  The Love of God can cover what you have never been able to cover: it can put a lid on the most impossible things.  The Love of God can bring life to what has died right before you: it can help you live though the loss of the thing most precious to you.

If you want to live in the Love of God, you must learn to do what this centurion did.  Go out of your way to live as a lessor being, but live for something and Someone greater than you.  You may not be worthy on you own to entertain Jesus in your home.  But when you live in the Love of God, you make your heart Christ’s home.  And when you do this, you can always invite anyone over because in His home there is a place for us all.  Are you living in His Love with your love?  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

My message today is on Prodigal Living – Trying to Tell God What To Do.  This is the third message in this series on the Prodigal Life.  My scripture reference is again taken from Luke 15: 11-32.  Today’s message will focus on helping us recognize when we try to tell God what to do.

Starting with Luke 15:30, scripture tells us, “But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him!”  These are the words of the older son speaking to his father about celebrating the return of the younger son—his brother.  The older brother was angry, and here he is letting his father know as much.  Remember, prodigal living is a way of living and here the older son is saying, “Father your way is not the right way.”  He had it all wrong.  In fact, the older brother’s way was not the right way.  Let’s see why.

Many of us can find good reasons to agree with the older brother.  The younger brother squandered away his father’s livelihood.  That much is true; there are facts to support that.  But where this brother goes prodigal is the belief that his father should have done something different than what he did by celebrating.  He is judging his brother’s action and his father’s response against his own standard of right and wrong.  He is judging his father’s response for what he thinks it should be.  Judging is when we decide what should happen without an objective standard against which to base our belief; instead, we use our feelings.  But just the same, the father is free to use his own feelings and or his own standards for how he responds to the younger brother.  

Sadly, I must admit I have been guilty of this type living myself.  It’s an easy thing for us to do, and it’s a difficult thing for us to see.  We become offended when someone may appear to be let off the hook for something they do to us or to someone else.  We become angry when it appears someone escapes consequences for some behaviors that to us are offensive and warrant discipline, punishment, or some type of corrective action.  We become bitter because we believe everyone should pay a price for the things they do wrong, even when those wrongs may not directly impact us personally.

In many ways we have become a society of sideline judges, people who are angry, easily offended, and bitter, who try to police the wrong behaviors of others by whatever means we can.  Social media has emboldened this type of thinking, pushing us to demand consequences for people around issues that we have no real knowledge of the facts or circumstances.  Jesus warned us long ago against this type of social behavior when He said to a crowd that challenged Him about the law regarding adultery, “He who is without sin among you, throw the first stone at her.”  Their judging nature foreshadowed our Facebook-like culture in which we feel compelled to comment on the comments of people we don’t know about issues we don’t know.  

Jesus was saying don’t put yourself higher than the faults and failures you find or see in others.   We are not made better or stronger by highlighting the faults of others.  Tearing down others to their lowest only makes us look lower.  Elevating ourselves above the faults of others only reveals different faults in us.  In all this, we essentially are telling God what to do and how He should do things.  When this is the way we live, we are saying we want our ways to be His ways.  

If this resonates with you, there are three things you can do to make certain you do not come to live the prodigal life of telling God what to do.  First, learn to be merciful toward others; one day you will certainly need mercy yourself.  Learn to be forgiving towards others—not condoning but forgiving; one day you will need the forgiveness of someone else.  And learn to give and live with grace; one day you will need God’s grace and perhaps the grace of someone else.   

It was right that the father celebrated the return of his younger son.  His son was dead, but then alive; he was lost, but now he was found.  When we stop trying to tell God what He should do, we could learn to see that God does everything with Love, with Grace, with Mercy and with Forgiveness.  We might get more of our prayers answered, we might hear more of God’s voice, and we might learn more of His ways.

Yes, I know you have probably heard someone say there is a consequence for everything we do.  If people are not held accountable, if there is no punishment or corrective actions for the things they do, then they are likely to repeat those things.  Or worse, we may hold that no one should get away with doing something wrong when another person—perhaps someone less privileged—pays a price for doing the same thing.  But that type thinking sounds like it is something that could come from a bitter, unmerciful, unforgiving, and judging person.

There is a great example of this type of prodigal thought in the book of Jonah.  You probably know the story of Jonah and how he was swallowed up by a great fish.  This happened because Jonah refused to obey God’s command to go to the city of Nineveh to warn the people there of their sinful lifestyle.  Jonah judged that God would not likely punish the people for their behaviors, but rather He would give them grace and mercy.  Jonah thought that the people should be made to suffer consequences for their sinful ways.  He was unmerciful, unforgiving, bitter, and judging.  So instead of going to Nineveh, he went in the opposite direction.  Jonah was trying to tell God what to do.  The facts are that the people of Nineveh came to their senses.  They stepped out of their sinful lifestyle and returned to be a Certain people in the heart of God.  And God relented and refrained from bringing the disaster He had said He would bring upon the people.  Why did He do this?  Because the people were dead, but through their change of heart they became alive again; they were lost, but then they were found.  God was loving, and He showed mercy and grace toward the people.

Please don’t misunderstand what I am saying.  We must learn to be careful that we don’t live by the default that everyone will have to pay something for the wrongs they do, especially when those people wrong us. Instead, try to live obediently before the Lord in all that you are and be very careful to keep yourself from being the instrument that brings judgement to anyone because you could easily get that judgment wrong.  I think it is a good idea to leave judging to the Lord.  It is easier for me to work on listening to Him and to focus on living before others in a way that shows how the Word of God has worked to transform me.  Perhaps it would be better for us all that we didn’t propose to do God’s work, and that instead we try to show others that His work has been performed in our lives.

Let’s not be like Jonah.  God knows how to be God better than we can tell Him to be.  Let’s not be like that older son who became angry because his brother was given love and grace and mercy.  The scripture says that the father told his oldest son that he was always with his father and that all that he had was his son’s.  Do you know what that means?  Even though the younger son had squandered away his father’s wealth, the dad was still saying to the older son, I still have enough for your needs and that is always yours because you are always with me.  Listen, God has enough love to love you as if you are the only person to be loved; He has enough mercy to show toward you that you will never need more mercy from Him; He has enough grace that your cup of grace will always overflow; and He has enough forgiveness to take you from hell to heaven.  All of this is yours when you stop telling Him how to be your God and you start learning how to be a better child of His. Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

My message today is on Prodigal Living – Coming to Your Senses Again.  This is the second message in this series on the Prodigal Life.  My scripture reference is Luke 15:11-32.  Today’s message will focus on getting and keeping our lives on the right path.

Starting with Luke 15:16-21, scripture tells us: “And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.  But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!’”  So here is the situation.  The youngest son had squandered away his inheritance on wasteful prodigal living.  When he had nothing remaining from what he had, he found work feeding the pigs of one of the people of the land to which he had traveled.  And he was so hungry that he wanted to eat the pigs’ food.  Where does he go from here?

How is it that this young man found himself in such a dire condition of need?  Well, the short answer is sin.  I don’t mean the act of sin, though that happened.  I mean giving in to the thinking, desires, and leading of a sinful nature, the nature that is present in each of us.  The young man left a sound way of thinking and living with his father and followed the appeal of an indulging, self-gratifying way of thinking and living on his own.  He left good sense and followed nonsense.  With this, he found himself working in a pigpen, feeding the pigs, and he found himself hungry enough to want to eat the pigs’ food.  How is that for good thinking?

Now, some of you are probably saying that not all challenging things we experience are the fault of our poor thinking.  And that is true.  But the scripture is not talking about the exceptions here.  It is talking to us about those who trade sensible thinking for nonsense.  Our lives will follow hard after our thinking.  God did not create either of us to live, work and play with the pigs.  To even say we are better than that is to give more value to pigs than they deserve.  We leave what makes sense because we choose to follow what makes no sense.  We can only get back to our right minds when we recognize that we are in the wrong mind and place.  A pigpen is meant for the pigs, and pig food is meant for the pigs.  You are a child of God.  You have a place in the heart and home of the Lord.  He doesn’t ask you to share that with the swine.

This young man did two things that showed us he had come to his right mind.  First, he realized the gravity of his predicament; things were bad, and they were heading to a worse place for him.  Jesus tells the faithful believer that in His Father’s house there are many mansions, and that He goes to the Father to prepare a place for us.  This young man came to realize he could not find a mansion in the place the pigs lived.  He needed to return to a home meant for a son.  Often, we are unable to break free of the senseless way we live because we keep trying to make good sense of poor thinking.  We should be turning away from the thinking that changed the course of our lives.  The thinking that gets us into the grips of prodigal living will keep us there.  That thinking cannot be used to free us.

The young man also decided to get back to the place where he went off track.  Sometimes this can be a difficult thing for us.  Prodigal and sinful living often comes with consequences that cannot be easily changed.  If you have wasted all you had, you cannot get that back again.  What you had is gone; what you have now is what you have now.  But we can always return to the point of thinking that got us to where we are, stepping out from there again with sound thinking.  This is what the son did when he said, “I will arise and go to my father and say to him, ‘Father I have sinned against heaven and before you and I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’”  As I look back on my own life, I realize that often I could not change my circumstances because I was unwilling to go back and change my thinking.  I realize that God is a wonderful and great God capable of anything.  But because I often refused to change my thinking about my situation, I made it more difficult for Him to step in and to change my life.  If things are not changing for you perhaps it could be that you are not willing to change your thinking about you and your relationship with the Lord.

This young man could not go back and change what had happened to him.  And his blessing was to come to his senses and to see clearly once again what he should do to change his course.  We often thank the Lord for blessings of life that we receive of Him.  And this is rightly so.  We are to always enter His courts with thanksgiving.  But we often miss something as valuable and life-changing to us as the blessing we receive.  That is the blessing of the blessing.  This young man did not miss laying hold of the blessing of his blessing.  The blessing changes your immediate circumstance, but the blessing of the blessing changes your future circumstances.  Prodigal living tries to take something from us and leave us with no hope of a future that is without the mark of a past.  But the blessing of the blessing is the way the Lord changes your past by helping you come to live a future that is beyond amazing.  Don’t miss the power of what I’m saying here.  When you come back to your senses with the Lord, He helps you learn how to live in the full favor of the blessing of your blessings.

Still, some of you may be saying, “But you don’t know what I’ve done.  You don’t know how bad I’ve been.  You don’t know how unforgiving the people are that I’ve hurt.  I can’t possibly change the things I’ve done by changing my thinking.”   I say to that you are partially correct.  You may not be able to change anything on your own, but with God’s help much can be changed.  Prodigal living is carnal living.  Carnal living makes you pay a lot more for what it gives you; and what is gives you has no real value in relation to the value of what you use to buy it.  You may not be able change the carnal circumstances you face, but you can change the Spiritual truth on which your circumstances stand.  So, to come to your senses you must be ready to lose the mind that is leading so that you can gain the mind of the Spirit of God.  He will teach you to live in the Spirit and to take your best shot at hitting the target that will change your life forever.  And even when you know your aim is just off and is sure to miss the bullseye, the Spirit asks you to trust Him and release your shot anyway.  You see, when you trust Him enough to shoot at something you know you are likely to miss on your own, He steps in.   And after you have done what He asks and let go of your best shot, and He moves the target into the line of fire of your best shot.  Instead of you hitting the target based solely on your aim, He moves the target into the path of your shot.  Only a great and mighty God can do this!

When we come to our senses, we come to a place of dependence on and guidance of the Spirit of God.  We stop relying on our carnal mind and senses to guide how we live, and we start living more under the leading of God’s Spirit.   Prodigal living says to us to life is short so we must enjoy it while we can.  And that is true; life is short.  Wasteful living will lead you to waste away your life in just a short while.  Prodigal living takes us off track from where we should be.  But hope is always with us when we are willing to come to our senses and let God lead us to where we are unwilling to go.  God wants to do this for us because it is in those places we are unwilling to go and to stay that we can live the abundant life God has promised to us.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

My message today is about being a Certain Person.  My scripture reference is Luke 15: 11-32.  Today’s message will be the first of what will be three messages from this passage of scripture that we typically know as the prodigal son or lost son or the prodigal father.

In Luke 15:11, Jesus says, “Then He said:  A certain man had two sons”.  Right away we should see something special about this man and this father.  Jesus referred to him as “a certain man”.  To be “certain” is to be particular, different, or better in some way from things around you that might appear the same.  To be certain is to demonstrate qualities of a higher standard than the norm.  Any one of us can be any old person, but the challenge for us is to want to be special—to be Certain—in the way this father was.  If you don’t think you have it in you to become greater than you are today, don’t worry.  Jesus has it in Him to do with you what you cannot do with yourself.  All that you need is to have the desire and the will to allow Him to work into you the things you need to work out of you the things that keep you from being a Certain Person.  Let me say that a different way.  Some troubling behaviors won’t leave us until we work into us the things that will chase our troubles away.  If you want to stop being unforgiving, you need to have forgiveness worked into you so it can send unforgiveness running out the door of your life.  If you want to be a Certain Person, you need some certain work done in your life.  This is the life of a Certain Person.

What can this mean about being a father or a mother?  Well, I believe they ought to be Certain Persons.  A real father is a particular person, chosen for a particular reason, and who lives in a particular way that is distinctive from every other father.   Our Heavenly Father is that example to believers.  Certain Persons create things that are distinctive and good.  As we will see again later in this scripture series, Certain Persons are amazingly different people who bring about amazingly different things in the lives of the people around them.  Certain Persons make the people around them certain.  You see, the value of your life is the value of Jesus’ life.  He bought you with His life so in many ways your life is as valuable as His life is.  So, what about you?  Are you a Certain Person looking to bring certain favors into the lives of others, or are you one of the others who is looking for a Certain Person to bring favor into your life?  If you want to change the lives of the people around you, develop certain things about you that are sure to change certain things about others.

Now remember there were two sons.  Luke 15:12-13 says, “And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’  So he divided to them his livelihood.”  What have we here between the father and this younger son?  Well, a Certain Person will live in such a way that he provides for his children; this father obviously did that.  But more than provision, a Certain Person will live in such a way to raise children who will themselves demonstrate Certain Person qualities.  The younger son’s request for his inheritance was the indication of the character of a worldly man.  But the father was a Certain Person who did things in a certain way so the younger son would eventually come to demonstrate better qualities.  

What specifically did the father do?  The father obliged his son and gave him the portion of his livelihood that would in time fall to the son.  Some of us would be quick to note that perhaps the father should not have given the son anything since he knew it would be wasted.  The word prodigal means wasteful.  To be sure, I believe the father recognized the son’s wasteful, self-centered, uncaring, entitlement and worldly nature.  But the father didn’t just give the son his treasures—things that could be wasted.  Giving his son what he wanted opened the door for the father to give him something he needed but didn’t see that he needed.  In addition to treasures, the father gave him something that could not be wasted.  The father gave his son something that would later help him want to live differently.  Those of us who see carnally would think that it cost the father his hard-earned worth.  But his worth did not and could not change his son.  No, the father worked into his actions love, selflessness, generosity, honor, humility, a sense of value and the love of God.  These would all be things the son would later need to root out of himself the things that were holding him back.

Sure, we ought to give others material help when we believe it will help them.  But when we are Certain People, we will give or withhold in ways that sow the seeds of the life changing qualities. Certain People do certain things in certain ways to produce certain results in the lives of those we want to become Certain People.

The younger son wanted what he thought was going to be rightfully his; he wanted his future, and he wanted it today.  Sometimes we live like this younger son.  We want to reach out into our tomorrows and waste away what we find today.  That only makes our tomorrows harder than they would have been.  But the father gave to his son something that is present today to make his tomorrow better.  He gave his son something that could never be consumed entirety.  He gave him something would be producing and reproducing.  He gave him freedom—freeing qualities that would help him find and live freely in his today and in his future.  He gave his son honor when dishonor was present; he gave his son selflessness when selfishness dominated; he gave his son forgiveness before the son knew forgiveness would be needed.

So, what about us?  Do we try to teach or our children (or others in our power) by withholding from them the things we have worked hard to attain?  Do we want them to learn to make it on their own?  Do we believe this is best for them?  Do we believe it is bad to give them all that they want from us?  Listen, it is not a bad thing to be prudent about what we give or to withhold from our kids (or others).  But it is more important that we learn not to withhold the things others need to break themselves free.  Our natural natures will offer the help of not helping.  But a Certain Person will use the request for help to sow the seeds of the character of a Certain Person.  A Certain Person will gladly help in one way so that he can help in the most important way: sowing the seeds of freedom into the lives of others so that they can learn to depend on something greater than themselves to make it in a world that tells them they can only make it by depending on themselves.

I am sure we all have some prodigal living in us.  I know that I do.  But each time we stumble across some of that prodigal nature, we should look more deeply within ourselves to see if we find the Certain Person quality that will root that prodigal nature right out of our lives.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

There was a man that used a camel to transport his straw. He would load as much straw as he could on the camel to get the most out of the animal.  One day, when he loaded the last piece of straw onto the camel’s back, the camel collapsed. His back had broken, and the man was unable to move any more straw.

This may just be a story, but it feels very real to many of us today. It seems we are stuck in a season of difficult times with one thing after another pilling up on our backs.  Last year we dealt with COVID, and we are still dealing with it this year. Then last week people all over had to live through some of the most extreme weather conditions we have ever seen.  Many of us, with everything else that goes on in life, may have believed we were at the point of our last straw, that we just cannot take another step.  

We must remember, we are not camels and we do not have a master or an owner. Instead, we have a God who loves us and will never allow the burdens we go through to break the backs of our wills to carry on with Him.  I know some of you might say, “But you don’t know what I’m going through”.  That is true; I do not know. But I know this: Jesus taught us that with Him we can always take another step.

In Matthew 26:39, we read the example of Jesus near the end of His strength. In this passage, Jesus says to God, “O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not as I will but as You will”.  The cup He speaks of is the last straw that would challenge Him the most.  It is the night of His betrayal, the night before His crucifixion.  But Jesus knew that though what He faced was difficult, there was more and better to come.  He needed only to be willing to take just one more step with God.  Jesus did not want to get out of something; He wanted to go through something.  

We often time think problems come upon that make our lives hard, and I do not deny that to be true.  But could it be also that sometimes we come to our problems because we are unwilling to see that God is trying to remove some of the heaviness of our wills and replace it with the straw of His will?  Life and difficulties teach us to want to get out of the things that challenge us the most.  But the Lord wants us to know that life is not what is happening to us now. Life is what lies ahead, beyond these temporary roadblocks. We must understand that no matter our situation, it is in our darkest hour that makes the coming light shine brightest.  From our coldest nights come our warmest days.  From our most difficult losses come our most precious gains. Through  our most difficult sickness we find healing for our souls.  From the greatest disappointments in our relationships come our greatest joys with those same relationships.  From our greatest falls come our highest achievements.  And from our greatest challenges we can find the desire to have the lives God desires for us.  

The devil wants you to stake your claim to life based on how you keep from taking on that last straw.  Do not believe or live this way.  Jesus wants us to know that an abundant life is one where we depend not just on the work He did to save us, but more so on the work He does to carry us through the burdens we carry daily.  He is always willing to take just one more step for us; let’s be willing to take one more step on His shoulders.  You are never at your last straw when you are on His shoulders.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.