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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.