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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We see this desire of His for us in the book of Joshua, chapter 1:5 when God says to Joshua, “No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, So I will be with you.  I will not leave you nor forsake you”.  When God says He will not leave nor forsake you, He isn’t saying He will simply be there standing by to watch you struggle through life; He is saying that you should know He will be a part of your life to help you live successfully in all you do.  God doesn’t raise his children to failures.

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

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

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

Christmas 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas!

Be gracious to us Lord!

Amen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, it’s time for a message.

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

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

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

Ok, it’s time for a message. But I will.  In the book of Isaiah 38:17-19, scripture recounts a conversation King Hezekiah had with God when he said “For hell cannot thank You; death cannot praise You; Those who go down to the grave cannot hope for Your Truth. The living, the living man, he shall praise You, as I do this day.  The father shall make known Your Truth to the children”.

King Hezekiah was sick and near death – but he was not going to give up living for God easily.  He was saying to God, remember now – others may not be able to thank you, or to praise you or even to hope in Your Truth, but I will because I live for You.  So I asked myself. What am I doing with this day today? And you – what are you doing with this day today? We are the living today – do we thank the Lord enough to keep someone off the path to hell?  Those in hell cannot thank the Lord.  Do we praise Him enough by the way we live that it will make someone else find in their lives some praise for Him? There are many who are living dead lives – living for themselves and for what they want and praising themselves and nothing more.  And do we by the way we live, reveal to others a hope that is strong enough that it keeps us above the things that take others to their graves? There are many of us who will go to our graves because we lack the hope in God’s Truth to live for or with something we cannot change.  It’s the living – not just those who are alive – but the man whose every breath is for Christ and in Christ.  It is this man who will through his life, praise the Lord louder than his words can do it.

The living man lives for Christ this day, and every new day becomes another chance the man living for Christ can proclaim to be a praise to Him. Others may not thank Him; they may not praise Him; they may not hope in His Truth – But I will.  Because I am a man who wants to live for Him.  Just as King Hezekiah did so before me; I will do so this day.  So what about you?  Live in such a way this day that your life alone will proclaim to the children and to others the Truth of Christ.  Don’t live a dead life. Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Thanksgiving is a Prayer and a Way of Life more than it is just a Day. Psalm 100 tells us to “Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands!  Serve the Lord with gladness; Come before His presence with singing. 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.  Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.  Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His Truth endures all generations”.  So we should live in a joyful state praising Him.  Be happy you get to serve Him.  Keep a song in your spirit as you stay in His presence because He made you.  You are His creation and His property.  You are not your own.  So when you get to the gates of His property – enter in a way of life that is a never ending expression of Thanksgiving to Him for all this and for all things that are a concern to you. But don’t stop at the gates, enter into the courts of His presence with a way of life that says to Him – I won’t stop praising You for all that You are no matter where I am or where I go cause You are great and great will be my praise for You.  Have a great day giving thanks to a great God and Creator.  Love you.  

Ok, it’s time for a message. It’s time to start speaking to ourselves.  Why can’t we make ourselves be what we try to make others to be? Why can’t we make ourselves do what we try to make others do?  Why don’t we view ourselves with the same judgment we view others?  We are encouraged to find the answer to these questions in the book of Psalms 4:4 as it says “Stand in awe, and sin not; commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still”.  Sometimes we say this about others “you can’t tell them anything”.  Often time we should be saying this about ourselves – “I don’t listen to myself when I try to tell myself what I want to tell others”.

It is sometimes a hard pill for us to swallow when we learn we have to speak to ourselves about ourselves.  I didn’t like it at all.  But the Word encourages us to do just that and to do it often. And, It gives us a way to speak to ourselves that makes it easier for us to hear and for us to do what we say.

It tells us to stand in awe of God; this means we should live in total amazement of Who God is and in the wonder of His Love.   And when we view Him in awe and adoration, we can better see ourselves for who we are in Him.  Then we stand a better chance to refrain from sin as a way of life.  After this we are encouraged to speak to ourselves – to our own hearts – as if we are asleep on our beds – in the quietness and stillness of life.  God is very specific about this because we tend to compare how great we believe we live to how poorly we believe others are living. We have the standard of measurement all wrong.  We must measure up to how God says we should live before Him and not before men.  He doesn’t need to compare us to a misbehaving person to establish our righteousness. And He doesn’t need show someone else their faults by comparing them to our life. This is what we do; it is not what God does.

So, we are encouraged to speak to ourselves in the quiet still moments of sleep where we can only compare ourselves to His Word.  It is there that we are able to speak to ourselves and to measure ourselves against His righteousness.  It is there that we are able to say to ourselves “The Lord will lift us up when we are down”.  And when we see His work in us, we may be a quiet example to others of how effective His Word can be in the lives of those who learn to slow down, to sit down and to speak to themselves about themselves.  Let’s learn to always speak and do to ourselves what we are always eager to tell others to do with their lives.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love You.

Ok, it’s time for a message.  Peace in the storms of life.  I was once a very fickle person; changing my mind often.  I cared only for what cared for me; I loved only what loved me and worse, I judged most things to be unworthy of my best cause I thought my best was deserved by only the best.  I was like many people whose natures is to run away from our storms and to the safety of the shelters we built for ourselves.

Then some years ago I saw in scripture just how fickle this was of me.    The book of Isaiah 38:17-19 says, “Indeed it was for my own peace that I had great bitterness; You have lovingly delivered my soul from the pit of corruption … For you have cast all my sins behind Your back”.  This is what I learned.  Challenging stuff is part of learning how to live a challenging Life for the Lord.  His way with us is to strengthen us to live boldly for Him in many of the things we try to run from.  Great peace happens in the middle of the pits of our struggles; great love happens in the middle of the sense of being unloved.  And stability and faithfulness and truth and mercy and justice and all that is great of the Lord happens in lives where He can manifest those things to people and in places where they seem to be missing.

I learned that running from my situations didn’t change me.  Instead it often weakened me because I was emboldened to remain as I was when I ran.  I wanted what I needed which meant I didn’t want what the Lord wanted in the storms I faced.  The only things that change things is to learn to live faithfully and dependently and to lovingly right where you are.  We must learn to allow the Lord to turn our fickleness into a picture of faithfulness for Him.  The praise of a person on the run is not the same as the praise of one who lives strong and steadfast right in the middle of the storms of life. Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.