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The more the Lord reveals to you about yourself the more you will know the Lord!

How great is little we know about Him?

Scripture says this in Psalm 71:19, “Also, Your righteousness, O God, is very high.  You have done great things; O God, who is like You?”  These are the words of King David. He is having one of those moments where he is exclaiming to himself and before God, how great God is.

We should all want those moments in our lives.  The more we learn about Him the more we come to see just how little we know about Him.  It is cause for us to try to tell ourselves just how great and awesome He is.  David was doing that before Him.

Have we stood before our prayers and asked ourselves out loud, Lord, who is like You?”  This is not a question as much as it is a declaration of just how great God is about the things we do not know about Him.

God loves those moments when we declare to Him how vast is the lack of knowledge we have of Him. When we have those moments, all we can do is to say, “Who is like You?”  Nobody. Nobody is as awesome; nobody is as holy; nobody is as majestic; nobody is as powerful; nobody is as wonderful as is the Lord our God.

But even more is how awesome are the things we still do not know.  Have you ever been so amazed at how much you thought you knew of the Lord only to learn that it is impossible to even think of how much you know because that is overshadowed by just how little you know?

Think about this. Ponder this. We cannot know more about the Lord because our minds cannot hold the knowledge there is about Him.  But the way we can know more of Him is to realize how little we know of ourselves. God wants to tell us more about ourselves than we know. Allowing Him to reveal more about us to us is the best way for us to know more about Him.

There is no one like Him. He is the One. When there is a question that cannot be answered, He can answer it. When we don’t know what question to ask, He can ask. When we cannot decide on what to decide, He will guide us to the right decision.

David is saying to God, of all that I know of you, I am still left to exclaim, Who is like You?” We can find all the words we can find, to say what we know and how we feel, but to acknowledge the greatness of what we don’t know is better.  Who is like You Lord?

Matthew 7:29 says there was a time Jesus taught the people.  When He was done scripture says this is how the people responded.  “And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority, not as the scribes.”

The people were saying who among us is like this Man? No one. For He spoke not to teach us about something He knew like the scribes do daily.  He did not teach us about what we did not know about the commandments. He opened to us what we did not know about ourselves.

How did He do that?  No one else has ever done such a thing as that.  If you want to have a deeper relationship with the Lord, consider doing what the people did in Matthew in response to Him and what David did in acknowledgement of Him.

Teachers teach but the Lord transforms.  Teachers show but the Lord involves.  Teachers tell but the Lord reveals. Who is like You Lord?  Who?

Let this be your prayer someday. Lord, Who is like You? Of all the things I know of You, it is nothing compared to the things about me that I know that You want to reveal to me and to involve me and to transform me.  Help me to learn to allow Your Word to read the book of my life to me.  Help me to see what You see in me when You read my life.

When you ask for this in prayer, the Lord will show you more of Who He is by showing you more of who you really are.  And yes, indeed, what you didn’t know will be greater, for each time you learn more about Him you learn that there is so much more about yourself that you do not know.

He loves that we acknowledge Him in this way. For indeed, Who is like Him?  Who can accurately read our lives to us and tell us what He knows about us that we don’t even know?  Nothing that calls itself a god is like our God.  Who is like You Lord?  No One!

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Do not go into the New Year carrying baggage from the old year

Exodus 12:2 says this.  “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.” Sometimes we can have the start of a thing but there is no end to a previous thing.  We can start a fire when there was no fire before.  But then there are times when something new happens because something old ends.  This is the way the Lord wants us to view our lives, especially with Him.

The beginning of the year means the end of the current year.  The Lord does not expect us to show up at the beginning of the year with our luggage full of the things we used and needed for the year before.  The New Year is a new year. Many of us find it difficult to enjoy what is new because we keep trying to relive our old ways in the old year again and again.

In fact, most people find that things never change for them because they will not stop trying to live like they did yesterday.  You may put a new car in your old garage, but you do not drive a new car like you drove the old car.  They are not the same.

So, the first day of the New Year 2025 is upon us.  And like times of old, the Lord wants to remind us that this will be the first day of the first month of the year.  Exodus 12:2 was the time of the first Passover.  God was saying to the Israelites, tomorrow you will start a new life in a new way.  You must leave this old life behind you.  You cannot take your life in Egypt with you into your New Life.

He wanted them to know that the way you enter the New Year will determine the way you live each day of the new year.  That was a great revelation then and it is a great revelation for us now.  Sometimes we cannot enjoy the new because we will not let go of the old.

Jesus said something similar when He said you do not put new wine into old wine skins. He was saying if you put new great tasting wine into an old wine container the new wine will take on some of the taste of the old wine still caught in the old wine skin.  You ruin the new wine that way.

So, as we look to the New Year let us encourage ourselves to make sure we are leaving the remnants of our old lives behind.

It is hard to have a joyful life if you hang onto your old sad life.  It’s hard to have a satisfied life when you won’t leave a gluttonous life behind. It is hard to have a life of peace when you will not leave a life of fighting and anger behind.  It is hard to have a life of quiet when you leave an open mouth behind you.

In life there is a principle of addition and subtraction.  I find that people cannot enjoy more success or better things because they always want to add something great to their lives while keeping everything else about their lives the same.

Sometimes you must subtract bad habits from your life before you can add better habits to your life. The New Year is an opportunity for you to enter something new because you leave something old.  It is an opportunity to subtract some of your old ways so that you can enjoy the better ways God has planned for you in the New Year.

Psalm 31 is a simple Psalm of Trust in the Lord.  It says “Lord my heart is not proud.  Nor are my eyes set on lofty things.  Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me.  Surely, I have calmed and quieted my soul.  Like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.  Hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.”

As you start the New Year.  Start it in humility of life.  Don’t look forward to high and lofty things but look for something new.  Do not be too concerned with the things that were great last year but focus on being as great in the New Year as you can be.  Last year things may have gotten you excited but go into the New Year with a quiet soul, controlling what you can control and leaving all else to the Lord.

Hope in the Lord for a great year.  That is most all you need.  And remember the Israelites.  The first month of their New Year came when God had delivered them from their bondage in Egypt.  Like that, learn to leave the bondage of your life last year behind and live like the Lord has delivered you to a new life in a new year.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

From Savior to baby Jesus to Savior – Merry Christmas

This is my message for Christmas 2024.

Luke 2:10-11 says this.  “Then the angel said to them, do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all people.  For there is born to you this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”

The angel is speaking to shepherds who were frightened at his presence.  So, the angel calmed their fears by telling them if they were willing to receive it as such, he had news that would make them happy.

You know a bit more of the news.  The baby Jesus was born the day the angels showed up. This was good news because it fulfilled a prophesy that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem.  Until that time, no other baby born to man was given a name that represented as much as does the name Jesus.  That was good news indeed.

There were some wise men who followed Jesus’ star and came to Jerusalem looking for Him so they could worship Him.  The shepherds were visited by an angel and the wise men saw the star of Jesus.  All of this was good news indeed.  So, they all set out to find the baby Jesus and to worship Him.

But for some people Jesus’ birth was troubling news.  And today, for some of us, the news of Jesus is still troubling.  This was troubling not because He was born of a virgin, but that He was born at all.

In the book of Matthew 2: 1-12, it says:

King Herod and many other leaders in Jerusalem were troubled when they heard that several wise men were in Jerusalem looking for Jesus so they could worship Him.  So, Herod sought them out, to speak with them so he could learn where Jesus was so he could kill the baby.

Herod did not want competition for the service of the people and other people in power wanted to keep the people living in fear of them rather than in the joy of a savior.  They were troubled indeed at the birth of a baby and what He would mean to the world.

Scripture says, Herod sent the wise men to Bethlehem to confirm that the baby Jesus was there.  He told them to let him know so he could come and worship the baby also.  But the wise men were warned that Herod was troubled, and he was up to trouble for Jesus.

They found Jesus in Bethlehem.  They gave Him gifts and worshipped Him.  And they went back to their homes a different way than they came.  They were overjoyed.  They did not tell Herod anything.

We have no reason to be troubled.  But we have much to be overjoyed about with the birth of Jesus.

You see, the baby Jesus had to be born of a virgin, or we would not have had the Lord Jesus.  He was God living as a human among men.  The baby Jesus now the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus had to live and walk among men in a perfect way, or we would not have had the persecuted and sacrificial, Jesus Son of God. Because Jesus turned people from themselves and from others toward God, He was viewed as a threat and so He was persecuted.  Still, He lived a sin free life which He sacrificed for you and me.  The Lord Jesus now Jesus, Son of God.

Jesus, Son of God had to be crucified and put to death, or we would not have had to resurrected Jesus.  He was a sin free sacrifice to God for the sins that you and I commit each day.  He paid a debt we could never pay. Jesus, Son of God now the resurrected Son.

The resurrected Son of God had to ascend back to heaven and to God, or we would not have the Savior we know and have in Jesus Christ.  His resurrected life is the redemptive life and savior required to make it possible for us become children of God.

Our savior then had to be born. He had to live.  He had to be persecuted. He had to die.  And He had to be resurrected, or we would have no reason to find joy at the birth of baby Jesus.  None of this is a reason to be troubled.  It is a reason to be overjoyed.

So, when the shepherds got to Bethlehem and the wise men saw the star hovering over where the baby Jesus was, it is said they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.  They had a Merry Christmas moment!

So, let us be like the shepherds and the wise men.  This is a time of the year where we can let go of all that troubles us.  Let’s look within ourselves to hear the voice of the angel and to find the star of Jesus.

Jesus’ voice will be in our hearts and His star will be hovering over our hearts because that is the place where He lives today.  Let’s rejoice with exceedingly great joy and shout to ourselves “this is indeed a Merry Christmas because I have found Him whom Herod wanted to harm.”

Let us give Him the gift of our worship as we accept the gift of His life to us as our Savior.

Merry Christmas to you all. 

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

Living without inner reflection usually leads to living in rebellion to the ways of the Lord.

In the animated Disney Movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves” the evil witch says, “Mirror Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?” The mirror responds, “Snow White is a thousand times fairer than you.” When you look into a mirror it will reflect your image.  When you talk to a mirror it will respond with the facts it has seen.

The witch wanted the facts to reflect her image.  She was mistaken.  A mirror can only reflect what it sees or what it has seen. A mirror will see you just as you are not as you want to be.  If you want to be seen as a fair person, you must live like a fair person.  But many of us today are like the witch here. We want to be seen in favorable terms no matter how we live.

Without the ability to reflect on ourselves, we will oppose anything that is contrary to how we want to be seen. What is right is what is right.  What is good is what is good.  What is fair is what is fair.  When you live in opposition to or in rebellion against these things, you come to live by your own standards and rules, and you want others to live by your views also.

Eventually you lose the capacity to see, to understand or even to comprehend what is right from what you have made to be right for you.  Ezekiel 12:2 says this.  “Son of man, you dwell in the midst of a rebellious house, which has eyes to see but does not see, and ears to hear but does not hear; for they are a rebellious house.”  The Lord was not happy with the people because they did not see themselves as He saw them.

When we ignore the truths and facts and try to live with our own truths, we become rebellious against what is true so that we can have what we want.  People who live in a rebellious state see but they do not understand, and they hear but they cannot comprehend.

We can see these people today. Their lives are dulled against receiving the truths of life. They do not even see their rebellion as rebellion because what they see and feel seems so right to them. When they look into the mirror, they see how great they are and how inferior and rebellious others are.

Have you considered that we may be living in a rebellious house today? When we no longer want to listen to and hear and understand what God says, He will give us over to our own thinking.  He refers to this as having a depraved mind (Romans 1:28).  A depraved mind is one that is given over to morale corruption.  It loses its ability to discern what is right from what it desires.

A depraved mind is not a threat to God’s Word, but it is a threat to us as people.  Consider that today it seems that more of us no longer know what a boy or a girl is. The mirrors we use today tell us what we want to hear and see. When we are in a rebellious state we look into the mirror and it says to us, you are the fairest of them all. Even the mirror is depraved – it is absent the ability to see as God has ordained things to be seen.

When we live in a rebellious state for long periods of time, we lose the ability to be introspective or to reflect on ourselves.  We cannot look at ourselves and even ask “is it me?” We cannot ask if we may be wrong.  We cannot ask if we may be on the opposite side of what is right.  When we are in a rebellious state, we have nothing that comes back to us saying this is who you truly are.

God gives us free will but that doesn’t mean we are right and true in all the things we freely choose to believe and to do. When we are in a rebellious state we see with the eyes of our wants; we hear with the ears of what we want to hear; and we empathize with the things that don’t go the way we believe they should.  We live in our flesh and not in our spirits.

Sadly, we cannot know God’s Word when we are in a rebellious state. Scripture says we lose the ability to understand and to discern the real truths around us. As long as we are in a rebellious state, the Lord will keep spiritual knowledge, insight and understanding from us. We become like the witch who couldn’t see who she was because she could not look at herself to hear herself.

You may be in a rebellious state if you find that you never ask yourself, what is going on with me? Or if you never ask yourself, is mine the right view or position? If you never find yourself saying I may be wrong, you make it hard to be better.

If you say this is what God’s Word says to me, you may be in a rebellious state.  If you can say this is what God’s Word says about me, you are one of the few who can see yourself just as God sees you. When you cannot be introspective you can’t know when you are fooling yourself. You look into the mirror to see if God agrees with you. Here is the order of things. God does not agree with our positions. We must agree with His.

When you cannot be introspective, you want His Word to be subject to your views.  When you try to find ways to show that your position is supported by the position God has taken, you are in rebellion. God will leave you alone to your mind when this happens. God does not support our positions; we must be supportive of His.

God has a position on same sex marriage, and He has a position on your view of same sex marriage.  Think about that. When we are in a depraved state of mind, we spend more time trying to get God to accept our views because we are darkened to what are His views.

It takes insights to discover the deep spiritual things God has reserved for us.  A spiritual issue can never be solved with a carnal response. And a carnal problem usually demands a spiritual solution. Rebellion is to reject the spiritual truths needed in our carnal lives.

Stop and consider what you are thinking; think about your thinking.  Ask yourself what am I doing?  Ask yourself if you are living in rebellion to God?  I’m not talking about a single thing, but as a total way of living. 

If you do this, the Lord may help you see if you are in a rebellious state.  When He frees you from that state, you will be able to live with the reflections we all have when the Word of God says to us “this is what I find in you.”  Living without reflection is rebellion against what God has ordained for your life.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The attitude in which you do things is seen more vividly than the things in which you do.

Loving others means we will be willing to walk the path of love no matter the path others take with us.  This is hard for many of us because we believe we know people who will take advantage of the good we do for them.  We believe they will waste the good we do for them.  We walk in love not because we expect love in return but because that is how Christ walks with us.

Jesus has no limits to His love for us.  He has no conditions for loving each and every one of us.  The more of us He loves, the greater He is towards more of us.  I learned for myself some years ago that I needed to renew my mind and the way I thought about loving others and the things I do towards others.

I had a little attitude toward others.  You know it.  The one that says, I’ve given enough, now it’s time for you to give.  You know it, the one that says everyone should do right just as I was trying to do right.  You know it, the one that says I will forgive but I don’t have to forget.  And I emphasized the I don’t have to forget part.

But people saw through my acts to my attitude.  My good was seasoned with an attitude of pride and condemnation.  I was foolish.  That’s why I realized I needed to renew my mind so I could open my heart to others the way the Lord keeps His heart open to me.

Romans 14:16 says this.  “Let not your good be evil spoken off” (Romans 14:16).  Do you ever wonder what others say about the good you try to do?  I’m not asking you to start worrying about what others say.  Some people will say mean things about anything you do.  We know that.

But you should do the good in such a way that others would say to the Lord, “I saw the hand of Your work in the things he or she did for me.”  That is what they should say about your good.  But more importantly, the Lord is others should talk about when you do your good towards them.

When you have that mindset, it will change the way you are towards others and if you change your ways, you will change the things you do so that they are the good that comes from Him who is good.  We are not to use our status as redeemed children of the Lord to tear down the lives of others.  When Jesus takes up home in our hearts our nature is changed to do good always.

Serve then without an attitude.  Love without an attitude.  Be patient then without an attitude.  Give without an attitude.  Never let your good be served in unhealthy ways.  The characteristics of our Christian behavior are righteousness, peace, joy and love in the Holy Spirit.  When we exhibit these things in a spirit of love, our good deeds will be seen as of God and not as of man.

We are blessed to know God’s righteousness; we are not to use His righteousness to speak poorly of anyone.  We are blessed to know the peace of God; we are not to use the peace God gives to bring division among those still bound to the world.  We are blessed to know the joy of fellowship with the Holy Spirit; we are not to use this joy to promote ourselves.

The good we do must give revelation to the good that God is.  Good deeds are the result of our hearts wanting to pour the light and salt of God into the world.  But we must use God’s goodness in the right portions.  Too much salt spoils the meat; instead of good, it becomes evil spoken of.

Listen to the Holy Spirit as He guides your behavior in all things.  He wants to give you good things to do but without a vindictive attitude.  When this happens others will receive your good deeds as the glorious grace of God at work in their circumstances.

So, let your good deeds be highly spoken of because you have an attitude of goodness about you. Learn to serve without an attitude.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

The bigger the battle you face for the Lord, the bigger the Lord becomes for your battle.

The bigger our problems the less we should battle. That is my message for today.

1 Samuel 17:4 describes the size of Goliath.  It says this. “And a champion went out from the camp of the Philistines, named Goliath, from Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.”  Now a cubit was about 18 inches.  And a span was roughly 6 inches.  By the way we measure today, Goliath then was roughly 9 feet and six inches tall.

 I’m sure everyone who saw Goliath saw an imposing man.  A giant.  Larger probably than any man they had ever seen. But David wasn’t bothered by Goliath’s size.  David knew something Goliath didn’t know.  He knew that Goliath was an imposing enemy for men; but Goliath would not be fighting a man that day.  He would be battling God.

David knew there would be no battle between David and Goliath.  Goliath was not David’s problem; he was not the Israelites problem.  He was God’s enemy.  And the Lord will always fight His own battles.  We are never asked to fight His battles.  He is His own champion.  He is His own warrior.  He is His own Army. 

God doesn’t need to wage war with anyone.  And a battle – well it is just a small fight within a larger fight between enemies.  David knew he was only a soldier in the Army of the Lord.  He also knew and recognized that this was the Lord’s battle, so he was careful not to make it his own.  While David realized he did not have a problem, Goliath did not see the problem he was facing.

Goliath and all the Philistines could see that he was an opposing figure much bigger than anyone of the Israelites.  It wasn’t likely that any one of them could defeat him.  Goliath was a champion who had never lost.  He was itching for a battle. But we know that Goliath met his death the day he challenged David.  He was a big problem looking for a little battle.

We can learn some things from how David faced the situation with Goliath.  You see, the bigger your problems seem to be, the less likely you should feel like it is a battle for you.  The Lord has no size.  He cannot be measured in feet or in inches.  He has no height nor any weight.  If you believe you are facing a big problem, it’s a good bet the battle you face is one for the Lord.

We should have this confidence that David had.  He had killed both a lion and a bear with just his hands.  He was confident he could prevail against a giant like Goliath.  Still, David wasn’t stupid.  He knew the battle with Goliath was the Lord’s and not his own.

Goliath probably thought David was a loser. But Goliath didn’t realize that David was a soldier in the Army of the Lord.  And like David, we should see ourselves as soldiers in His Army.  When we do, we are blessed in that the Lord fights His own battles through us.

We may be seen as sure losers, but we never lose.

The lions and the bears we face probably think we are just small bites for their lunch.  But when we allow the Lord to fight His battles that we face, we may be fearful, but we never fear.

When we allow the Lord to fight His battles, we may grow tired but we are never tired out.

When we allow the Lord to fight His battles, we may trip but we never fall.  We may be knocked down, but we are never knocked out.  We may look small, but we are larger than how we look.

The bigger what seems to be our problems, the bigger the Lord acts in our lives.  When we allow Him to fight His battles that we are privileged to face, He shows Himself to be bigger than the biggest thing we have ever seen.  He is stronger than the strongest thing we have ever faced.  He is beyond the comprehension of anything we have ever understood.

If you are facing what seems like a giant problem today just remember, the Lord just wants us to let Him fight the battles we face. The bigger our problems; the bigger our Lord.

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

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.