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Archive for March, 2012

Don’t Be Afraid

30 Mar

Psalm 27:1-3 – 1 The LORD is my light and my salvation—
   whom shall I fear?
The LORD is the stronghold of my life—
   of whom shall I be afraid?
2 When evil men advance against me
   to devour my flesh,
when my enemies and my foes attack me,
   they will stumble and fall.
3 Though an army besiege me,
   my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
   even then will I be confident.

We need to be confident.  It’s easy to look at this scripture and say, well that’s David and he’s in a time of war.  Also he was really good in his faith in this area.

No, we need to understand we are in a war every day.  The war is for your heart.  God wants you back and strong.  The devil wants you to rebel and join the darkness team.

Does that sound wild?  Only because we have become so attached to believing what we can see.  What we can’t see is very obvious.  We do things that we know are wrong.  Others do things we know are wrong.  We do things that we know is right.  We see others doing things we know are right.  How do we know this?

God has built that in as part of the creation in man.  Now we can slip so far into darkness and away from the Lord that we can fool ourselves.  People can get numb to their selfish living, but it’s still very apparent to everyone else that doesn’t go that far off the deep end. 

David is confident, because he knows the One who has his back is the only One we need to be concentrating on.

I’m reminded of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They were going to stay true to God’s command of not bowing down to idols.  King Nebuchadnezzar was furious and throw them into a fire that was heated 7 times hotter than normal.  What was their response?

Daniel 3:16-18 –   16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, “O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Don’t be afraid.  As it turns out they were spared by God for His witness, but I love their attitude.  But even if He does not, we want you to know we won’t go against God or His decree.

We need to be ready to take this stand for our Lord and have no fear.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation

 

So How Bad Is Too Bad?

29 Mar

Humans are pretty amazing.  You ask them about people who are mass murders, Hitler, the guy who burns down his house with his children in it and boy those guys are worthy of hell.  However, when it comes to asking the standard of how we’re all doing and the bar is somewhere below each one of us.  I’m not that bad many will say.  Look at such and such, they live a lot worse than I do.  On the curve, I’m actually quite good.

What’s wrong with this thinking?

Our opinion in the grand scheme of things doesn’t matter.  The devil wants you to think that the most important thing in the world is your right to be your own little god and make your decisions.  That is what he sold Eve in the garden.  You’re an adult, you have free will, you have that right.  No one including God should have a right to tell you what to do.  Is that right?  That’s the way a lot of proud people think.

Jesus said he who is the least is the greatest.

Mark 9:35 – 35 Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

He washed the feet of His disciples and died for all of us.  This was an example of God humbling Himself out of love to show us the way.

Will it always be that way?  Actually God wants us to repent and come back to be with Him forever.  He wants us to worship Him and follow Him like it was supposed to be in the beginning.

Throughout the Old Testament we see God’s judgments and wrath and we also see it coming in the book of Revelation.  God is loving and patient, not a pushover like many of those who mock Him.

The answer to the title is we are all too bad on our own.

Romans 3:9-12 –  What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. 10 As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
11 there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.”

So we all qualify.  What’s the answer?  Where’s the hope?

Romans 6:23 – 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We need to make Jesus our Lord.  If we are making Jesus our Lord then being the God of our own lives makes it too crowded.  We need to seek more Jesus and less of ourselves.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration

 

Mighty, Strong, Loving, And Just

28 Mar

Psalm 62:11-12 – 11 One thing God has spoken,
two things have I heard:
that you, O God, are strong,
12 and that you, O Lord, are loving. Surely you will reward each person
according to what he has done.

He is all those things.  I know I see God loving and he shows strength in His patience.  To see people blatantly thumb their noses at our mighty God and He continues to allow them to go about their business for now.  Slow to anger and abounding in love.  However, there is coming a time soon that those who don’t want God or anything to do with him will find themselves on the wrong side of the fence.  Their choice.

Our God is loving!  He wants you to have a loving relationship with Him.  You’re not a windup toy that He sets in motion and then forgets about you and runs off somewhere else because you bore Him.  He also didn’t make us to be independent from Him.  That’s the devils doing.  He wanted to do things his own way.  That philosophy comes from Satan, not God.

Strengthen your relationship with your Mighty, Strong, Just, and Loving God.  Seek Him and His Word.

 
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Posted in Inspiration, Motivation, Reflections

 

Living Differently Than We Did In The Past

27 Mar

Titus 3:3-8 – 3 At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. 4 But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

Repentance is turning away from our old sinful nature.  If we don’t head into a new direction and focus on it, we’re heading back to the familiar digs.

We called to be a new creation.

2 Corinthians 5:17 – 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

We need to devote ourselves to our loving God and Savior.  When we are serving Him, some come closer in their relationship with Him and others find God for the first time.  This is profitable for everyone.

It’s even profitable for the atheist.

What’s amazing is the godless atheist enjoys living under the moral law, but doesn’t want God as a part of it.  When God is completely taken out, the moral society goes with Him and chaos and evil erupts.  Evil selfish men aren’t concerned about atheists who want to live by good moral standards without God.  When the Christian wants rules put on society of morality, we point to God as why.  If an atheist tries to do that, they would get the backlash we are receiving now, but have nothing to point to as a foundation.

When we devote ourselves to God, everyone profits from that.  Plus that’s what God has called us to do.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation

 

Truth And Light

26 Mar

1 John  1:5-10 –5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

God and Jesus are Truth and Light.

Darkness is a place further from God.  The further you get the darker it gets.  Lies are the same way.  The further you get the worse the lies get.

I really enjoy how the above verses tell us we need to walk in Light, but we are not to kid ourselves into thinking we are without sin.  Still choosing to walk in darkness is a bad ploy.  We are not to abuse the grace on purpose.  The more we tread out in the darkness, the harder it is to understand the Truth.

 
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We Need To Make The Most Of Every Opportunity

23 Mar

Colossians 4:2-6 –2 Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. 3 And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains. 4 Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should. 5 Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. 6 Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

We need to pray for each other and ourselves that we will be able to clearly spread the Gospel the best we can possibly get it across to others.  If you could help pull someone out of a fire, would you help?  I believe you would.  We can’t let the world tell us that we are not so share with others.  We cannot be ashamed of the Gospel.  Pray that the Lord opens the door in a conversation that you may wisely share Jesus with them.

 
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Posted in Inspiration, Motivation, Uncategorized

 

The Springs Of The Great Deep Burst Forth

22 Mar

Just a brainstorm for the day.

Genesis 7:11 – 11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened

No doubt almost all of us miss that the first time we read through the story of Noah in the Bible.  We all remember as kids that it rained for forty days and forty nights, but the majority of the water came from underneath and came quickly.  How do we have much of our fossil record?  From mud and sediment covering things rapidly.  We look in our oceans and see mountain ranges.  I’ve heard it explained that those are the tears of where the springs burst forth.

They believe there was a canopy over the earth that help preserve life to almost a thousand years before the flood.  After all the rain, it has gone down to 120 since.

It’s a neat study and creation scientist have alot of stuff like this to look at. 

 
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Posted in Inspiration, Reflections

 

One Day Closer Than Yesterday

21 Mar

Romans 13:11 – 11 And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.

This is a fact for each believer.  We are one day closer to our salvation than yesterday.

Did we do the most with that day?  Paul reminds us that another day is gone so let’s remember to love our neighbor and quit doing things that are self centered or contrary to that.  We must quit living for the darkness as our day of salvation is one more day closer than yesterday.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation

 

The Rules Are The Rules

20 Mar

God is not a liar, so when the wages of sin are death, God meant it.

Someone was going to pay the penalty for sin.  We’re all sinners and we all qualify for death.

In God’s laws He made an out for man.  It was by no means an out for Himself.  He sent His Son to die in our place.  That’s love and we have a tendency on a regular basis to not be very lovable.

Romans 3:25-26-  25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

To be allowed to be back with God, Someone had to pay the price.

That’s where we stand today.  Either you or He will die for your sins.  If you die for them then you are forever cast into darkness for rejecting God.  He paid the penalty and it’s free for the accepting.  There are no excuses for those who won’t take two seconds to find truth.

God doesn’t have to go back on His ways, because someone greater than ourselves paid our penalty.  He is still Just and Loving at the same time.  We are justified through Him as long as we accept Him as Lord.

The wages of sin is death.  We are so blessed that a loving God was willing to take our place.  The rules of a perfect God cannot be broken.  However, if one doesn’t accept His death in the place of their own and make Him Lord, they will follow through with the original setup.

That can be hard for some people to grasp who live in such an unjust and lenient society without absolutes.

 
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Tower Of Babel

19 Mar

Genesis  11:1-9 –1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The Tower of Babel was man trying to build a tower to reach Heaven without God.  Man that was on the earth had came together and was working towards this.  God confused the language so they all dispersed.

Today man is trying to bring the world back into a one world system.  There are many different reasons why they are trying to achieve this and most of them have to do with preserving the earth so we don’t destroy it and all the people on the planet.  However, there is one thing the Tower of Babel and the New World Order have in common.  They both have no regard for having our God that we read about in our Bible in charge of either of them.  The One World Order crowd may be trying to organize a One World religion, but that’s to try and please the differences, not to give God the lead.

God is not interested in man creating his own system so they may work together on their own.  One thing men in the dark don’t understand is that the devil was behind the Tower of Babel and he is behind the One World Order also.

For Satan to run the earth, he needs it to all be run under one system.  For him to be in authority on demanding worship, he has to be the One World leader.  That’s what Revelation writes about.  God isn’t happy about it and does more than disperse people and confuse their language on this go around.  If they want to serve Satan and reject Him, it’s bad times for them.

 
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Posted in Bible Prophecy, Reflections

 
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