What do I do when I am afraid?

        A lot of the world is under the fear shock right now, whether it is from COVID 19, mass shootings, or any number of topics nowadays. And that’s exactly it, fear is running rampant right now and we don’t know how to handle it. Even we as Christians have our moments of disbelief, doubt and fear and we ask where God is? What is He doing? What do I need to do as a Christian when I am afraid?

The first thing we need to do as Christians when we are afraid is pray. In Philippians 4:6 it says “Do not be anxious for anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” And to reassure you David said in Psalms 34:4 “I sought the Lord, and He answered me; He delivered me from all of my fears.” When we are afraid we need to seek the Lord, we need to be praying to Him. Who is your go to when you are scared or anxious? Where do you turn? Is it your spouse, your pastor, best friend, siblings? Not that these are not great resources to turn to, and we need to have these people in our lives to help us through difficult times but with all of these we need to turn to God first! He is our strength and refuge (Psalm 46:1). Others can help, but we need to turn to prayer together as a team.

The second thing we need to do is read our Bibles. I have changed things a lot with how I do these blog posts, relying more on scripture than what I think is right, because guess what? I am wrong a lot of the times! Shocking I know. But when we rely on the Bible and His word we can get a lot more right than normally would. James 1:22 says “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” We need to rely on His word more than anything else right now, the more time we spend in His word the more comfortable we are calling on the name of the Lord.  His word has all of the answers we seek in these difficult times, and if we know the word we know Him.

 I have stressed this many times before that we need to have a relationship with God. That is the most important thing we can have in our day to day Christian walk! How do you have a close relationship with Him? We read the Bible and we talk to God! Prayer and studying His word helps us get to know what it is that He is doing, and what he wants from us.  God is there for us right now, He was there for us yesterday and He will be there for us in the future! He is readying His church for what is to come in the next weeks and months. I have heard the whispers of revival and people turning to God but we need to be ready for it by having that close relationship with Him!

I hope that this helps someone out in at least some way. I hope that through this you can have a closer relationship with God and learn to turn to Him with all of your needs, your fears and anxieties. If you have any questions or if you just need someone to pray for you I would love to hear from you.

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

The importance of fellowship!

1 John 1: 1-10

“that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (1 John 1: 3-4)

There are so many passages that I could use in regards to fellowship and how important it is, look for yourself as Paul makes reference to this in numerous letters to the early church, but this conveys to me why we need fellowship and what it means.

The Greek word for fellowship is:  κοινωνία Koinonia means communion, joint participation; the share which one has in anything, participation, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution, etc. It identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ. (source: Wikipedia)

This is the fellowship that I want to speak of; this something more than just meeting together on a weekly basis, it has to do with more than just the people and their conversations but something much deeper than that. This is the fellowship that is severely lacking in our church circles and our walk with God. It is all about unity, participation and contribution! How many of us can actually say that they have all of this on any day in a given week? How about in a month? I will be the first to admit that I know that is not very prominent in my relationship with God or fellow believers. We may have one or two of these in our fellowship on Sundays but I think if we are all honest with ourselves it is very rare that we have all three.

So why is it so important to have this koinonia? And what happens when we are lacking in this communion of fellow believers?

The importance of this lies in one thing, and that is relationship. It all keeps coming back to this. It is about relationship with one another and with our heavenly Father. We need the support of fellow believers, we need their encouragement their understanding and every once and a while that kick in the butt to put us back on track. This is the unity, participation and contribution that I talked about. When we share and build relationships with one another we can have unity with each other, when we care enough about each other we contribute to our fellow believers walk with God, and when we hold each other accountable we participate in the growth of faith in one another.

In all of this we also build up our relationship with God and “our joy may be full” (1 John 1: 4). Unity with others gives us unity with God and the plans that He has for us, and to the great commission that He gave to us. When we contribute to others lives we contribute to God’s kingdom and He in turn contributes to our lives with His love peace and understanding. When we participate with other Christians we participate with God and what He wants to do in others lives and in our own life.

So what happens when we are lacking in koinonia?

We lack growth.  Your Christian walk begins to become stagnant and stale, you start to lack direction and you are no longer unified with the body of Christ. I have experienced this myself time and time again, I am just as guilty of this as the next person is. When I lacked true fellowship I stopped reading the Word, I stopped spending personal time in worship with God and my prayer life was seriously lacking.

This leads to other things seeping into your life, things that can get you completely off track of where God wants you to be and where your relationship with Him begins to falter. If you do not have koinonia with God your light can start to fade.

 Remember when you first became a Christian and you couldn’t wait to go to church on Sundays? You couldn’t wait to talk to other people about the things you learned from reading Gods Word or what God had revealed to you through prayer? Do you remember how good that felt? I miss that feeling a lot and it all comes back to fellowship.

Hebrews 10: 24-25 “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another – and all the more as you see the Day approaching”

Meeting and encouraging one another! Koinonia!

There is joy in fellowship, and in fellowship there needs to be unity, participation and contribution. Meet together with other Christians, help each other to grow in God’s grace and understanding, make it something more than the ordinary! Make it about relationships!

Forgive, forget and have fellowship! Let Gods will reign in your life!  

The Value of Your Relationship

The Value of Your Relationship

The Value of Your Relationship

I have mentioned this many times before in my previous posts, but I think it is time that I expand on it a little bit. I am talking about your relationship with your Heavenly Father and how it affects everything you do and how important it is to keep that relationship at the forefront of your life.

How often do you read your Bible? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? Sounds sad, doesn’t it, that last one. But I know people who call themselves Christians and they have not picked up their Bible in several months and their relationship with God has now become stagnant and boring. There is no joy in their life and they do not really pursue God.

I have heard people say that you can have a great relationship with God without reading His word, and I hate to say this but they are wrong, and I mean dead wrong. To not read God’s word and say you have a great relationship with Him is like saying that you have a great relationship with your husband or wife, son or daughter and you have never taken the time to get to know all about them. When you loose touch with God’s word, you are not making any effort in trying to get to know God, His plans for you, what He wants to do in your life or what He did for others like you in the past.

It goes in a circle, the more you read God’s word the stronger your relationship becomes and the stronger your relationship becomes the more time you want to spend in His word. But you have to put in the effort first, you have to want to get to know Him, you have to desire Him and seek after Him. And the easiest way to do this is through the reading of His Holy Word, and through prayer (that will be my follow up post J)

This is where we find out how much value you put into your relationship. Those who put in great effort like reading their Bible everyday, have a great relationship with God, those who do not value it as much and only read their Bible on occasion do not have the same thing, and eventually their relationship with God becomes stale.

I hope you are getting at what I am saying here.

Believe me, I am completely imperfect in this department, I do not read my Bible everyday, in fact I let life get in the way so much that I am lucky if I read it once a week, (you can yell at me later for that), but I think we are all guilty of it to some degree. There are times when we all get a little too comfortable and complacent with our relationship with God, and we take it for granted. We think that He is always going to be there, and He is, don’t get me wrong, but do we have the same outlook on things when He is not at the forefront of our lives. Do you not find life a little harder when your relationship is not as strong as it should be? I know I notice it allot.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing it and have taken something of value from it.

Start to build on that relationship with God, take baby steps. Maybe it is just one verse a night, or maybe a chapter but I strongly encourage you to read His word, it His story for you.

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

You can now follow me on twitter @guyfromchurch

Who is in control?

Who is in control?

            Who is in control in your life? What sways you and influences you? Where do you get your direction from? This is probably going to bring me some harsh criticism, but I believe that it needs to be said. This is my general view, and it is not necessarily true of everything and all churches, but I do believe that it rings true for a lot of them.

            Some of you, have read my previous post about my view on the church and how I feel that they have become more like institutions than vessels of God’s church, well I am going to go into more detail about why I feel this way and what basis I draw my conclusions from and what scriptural merit I have for it.

            Now before you get all mad and huffy about this and say that I am wrong in my views of the church or how they are run nowadays, or that I am just a person who has had a bad experience with a church and is bitter from that time, I am going to tell you right now that you are wrong. I have a great love for the church and the people that dwell in it, I have been to many different churches of many denominational backgrounds. My problem is not the church, my problem is that people have taken over church and left God out of the picture. We preach freedom and forgiveness but we tie people down to our creeds doctrines, rules and leadership that they become spiritually bound.

            Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to Father except through me.” John 14:6 NIV. He did not say, seek out your elders, deacons and pastors then you find me and then I will lead you to the Father, NO! He said I AM THE WAY THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE! NO ONE ELSE, NOT ONE CAN COME TO FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME!

  

            Paul told us “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 2 Corinthians 3:17. If we are busy tying people down with our human ideas, and thoughts and doctrines how can we say that we have the Spirit of the Lord in us? There is freedom where He dwells and in with whom He dwells.

            In our churches nowadays there are 2 rulers, either the Pastor or the people.

Pastors who rule their churches rule with their creeds and doctrines, they are bullies and make people fear change and the truth, and often discourage interactions with other church communities. They preach but they have no heart or conviction about what they are preaching because they do it for one reason. It has always been this way, and the old way is the best way. They are not free, but bound by their pride and lack of humility and compassion towards others.

People who rule their church think the same way but they have their pastors living in fear of either being fired, ostracized, or thrown out from the church. They dictate what should be spoken, and how it should be said, and who should be aloud to speak or allowed into their inner circles. They live by their creeds and doctrines and refuse change with harsh criticism. They are not free and captive to their own ideals thoughts and religious views.

Jesus came to set us free from bondage, to give us new life, and set the old church free from the rule of the Sadducees and Pharisees that seem to be ever present still in today’s church. He came to set us free from religion, and tell us that we are free to worship and praise Him how he taught us to, that in humbling ourselves and giving up our doctrinal views and focusing on only His word, and His truth that we could be set free.

God gave us pastors for a reason, as well as other church leaders. Not to rule over us, but to walk beside us and teach us the truth, no matter how hard or how harsh that truth can come across. The people are meant to walk hand in hand and learn from each other what God is revealing to them and His love for all people, no matter what denomination they belong to, or how they worship.

I love the church, but I love what God wants the church to be not what we want it to be. I love the church for what it could be, not for what it is right now.

I am not in anyway saying that I have it all right, or that I am perfect in my understanding, I am just saying what I think and believe needs to be said. I welcome any comments or ideas on this subject as it has been a great weight upon my heart, and as I hope to one day become a pastor I am hoping that the church will change and the people who attend it. I am seeking out God and what He wants in my life and what He wants me to become, I don’t always have it right but I am working hard trying to discover the truth that He is revealing to me in His word.

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

You can now follow me on twitter @guyfromchurch
Also if you want to read a great book on this I highly suggest “Joshua” by Joseph F. Girzone. He describes things in such way that I myself cannot do yet, but it carries the same thoughts and ideas. 

Fish Out Of Water

      At first glance I am sure you are trying to figure out exactly what I am talking about, and to be honest with you at first I didn't know either. Like so many of my previous blog postings it has not been about my thoughts or what I wanted to write about but what God wanted me to write about, but nothing could be more so than this one.

      I have grown very distant from God as of late due to circumstances and the going's on in my life, I have been very frustrated with how things have been going, and the change of events that have over occurred over the past few weeks. I had truly thought I was following His plan for my life and when everything fell apart I blamed Him, was mad and neglected my relationship with Him. I felt like I was drowning, life had become to overwhelming and very hard to manage. It was hard to come home to my wife and kids, go to church, have any kind of relationship because I was lacking so much spiritually. I became mad easily, and could not focus on anything.

      I began to realize what my problem was. I had not been keeping up my relationship with God, it was suffering because I was not tending to it. God was giving me love but I was giving Him nothing in return, our relationship had become one sided. After realizing this I spent some time in good solid worship, it had been a long time since I had just put on my head phones, turned on my music and tuned out the rest of the world. (Side note, if you have a lot of music on your ipod, mp3 player put it on random, God can really speak to you through it)

      That is when God said to me "Fish out of water." 

      I was like what?! What are you talking about? 

      "Fish out of water." And that was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Okay, I thought, that is odd but He is obviously revealing something to me. So I began to think about it, pray about, till it was revealed to me what He meant.

      I was a fish out of water. When I neglected my relationship with God, I had stumbled onto dry land. I was flopping about gasping for air, struggling to survive and make sense of what was going on.

      "37.On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.

38. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”

39. By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified."

John 7:38

      Living water, I was missing my living water. Just like a fish out of water, I was a Christian out God's living water. 

      It became apparent to me that I was the one to blame for all that was going wrong in my life, I had decided to walk on dry barren land, to step out from the waters edge and take life into my own hands, to say that it was better on land than it was in the water and that I could survive just fine there.

      Obviously I can't though. No one can, not well anyway. 

      So, I let God pull me back in, back into His living water and I can begin to breath again. I feel peace and assurance that everything is going to be okay.

      Are you struggling right now? Is life to hard to bear, do you feel like you can't breathe? Return to the living water, ask God for forgiveness and let Him pull you back into His living water.

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

You can now follow me on twitter @guyfromchurch or find my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ThatGuyFromChurch

Denial leads to Destruction

Denial leads to Desctruction

24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 

25 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.

26 What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul?

27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have done.

28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

Matthew 16: 24-28

      Pride comes before a fall, and denial will lead to your destruction. Sounds bad doesn’t it, and I will agree that the first part does sound really bad, but it is true, and I know because I have come face to face with my own pride and it has caused me to fall numerous times.

      The second part sound bad only if you take it that way, only if you see it as the way it has been written and not what it actually means scripturally. Carefully read through Matthew 16: 24-28, it is so important that Jesus mentions it twice, and it is mentioned in 2 other books in the Bible, Luke and John also mention this phrase. In Matthew 10: 38 Jesus says “Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. “

      So now why do I combine denial and destruction?

      It is simple really. When you deny yourself you deny that you are important, you deny that you have it all figured out, you completely wreck your thought process and your outlook on life. You are destroyed, but here is the good thing, now you are ready for God to make you new. Now that you have realized that you don’t have it all figured out, and the whole universe does not revolve around you, God can truly start to work in your life. I can tell you honestly that when God moves in to your life, anything is left that you haven’t destroyed, or that is not of Him will be destroyed.

      When you deny yourself you allow God to move in and when he moves in He will destroy everything that is not meant to be. Denial leads to your destruction, and there could be nothing better than that.

      You have to be wrecked to be made new and sometimes that means you take down the very foundation that the building was on, you tear it all down and let God build a new foundation. And that can be really hard, because when you think about it, most foundations are pretty sound, and they take a lot of work to break down, and a lot of blood sweat and tears will go into it. But it is so worth it because his foundation is always stronger, and more steadfast. You have to start a new way of thinking, and your life will be better for it.

      When you deny yourself you will find it easier to love your neighbor, to forgive those who do wrong against you, to trust God with your finances, your family and your life. The negatives seem a lot easier to deal with (they are not gone, and don’t ever tell anyone that I said they were gone).

      I will tell you one more thing though, that denial of self is a daily thing, you have to make a conscious decision to do it each and every day, you must choose to die daily, to take up your cross deny yourself and follow Him. You have to wake up in the morning and say to yourself that you are not living for yourself and ask God to continue to work on your foundation, to make you new, and to let him rule your day. Every single step of the way. 

Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

By the way, you can now follow me on twitter @guyfromchurch :)

What do you do when it all goes wrong?

What do you do when it all goes wrong?

      An interesting question, and one that does not have an easy answer. In fact the answer can be so hard to bear that it can break you, it will test your foundation, your faith, and question your purpose in life. Your values and your future rely on it though because at some point it will happen to you, at some point something will go wrong and you will find your heart filled with doubt, at some point things will get hard and you feel alone and the burden of life will become to much to carry.

      I know there are those of you who have gone through these things, or are going through them right now like me. You came to a crossroad in your life and you had to chose one path or the other. Both paths seemed great, both paths would make you happy and both had negative things about them that you didn't like. You know that only one path is what God want's you to chose, one is His perfect will and the other His permissive will. So you chose, without thinking about twice you chose and you wish you had never gone down that path, you wish you had taken the other path and you would do anything to take it all back again.

      I am going through this right now, I wish I had never made the decision that I did, I wish that I had taken the other path, or that I would have at least thought about the current one a lot more than I had. I had unfortunately chosen God's permissive will, because I did not seek Him in it, I never even asked Him which one was the right path, I never prayed to Him, sought Him in scripture or listened to the advise of others because I was so sure that I was right. Now, I have to deal with the consequences of my actions.

      So what do you do when you realize all of this? Do you roll over and call it quits because you made that mistake, do you push on and push through in perseverance, do you yell scream and blame others for something that was your fault? Or do you kneel, repent and ask God for forgiveness for not following His will for your life. This is why I said that it can make or break you,  unfortunately we are human, and our pride tends to get in the way and will not let us kneel at His feet, our humanity blocks us from admitting we were wrong, our fear refuses to let us turn back, and our anger does not let us move forward. If you do not chose to kneel though it can tear you apart, you and those around you. Doubt in yourself and doubt in God can destroy you, and it is a powerful tool that Satan loves to use because it is so easy for us to become doubtful.

     Repentance is hard, and I mean extremely hard. You have to admit that you were wrong, you messed up and that you want forgiveness for it. Sometimes it is easier to give forgiveness than it is to ask for it.

     Not only that is it puts you at a crossroads once again, you will face 2 choices once again, and they are a lot harder to chose from because instead of seeing positives all you can see are the negatives, all you can see is that the choice you made has made things more difficult than you thought when you first decided. 

      Look past the negatives though, and don;t forget you have someone to turn to in all of this. It may be hard, even harder this time because you did not turn to Him the first time, but remember He loves you and: 

"26. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 

27. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
28. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."  

Romans 8: 26-28

      He is your strength in the weakest of times, He can erase all of your doubt and insecurities, but only if you turn to Him, repent of what you did, ask for Him to forgive you, forgive yourself and move forward. Don't let you bad decision break you, don't let the devil use what you fear as a weapon against you. 

4. You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

1 John 4:4 

       Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

Forgiveness

Forgiveness

      I have talked about many things over the last year, grace, mercy, faith, righteousness and joy to name a few, but I neglected to include one thing. It is this one thing that I want to start my year out with, it is what I want have in my heart every moment of every day and it is an attitude that I want to develop throughout the course of this year.

      And it is forgiveness.

      Not a new concept, by far, but I am going to take a different approach to it. I love throwing out little twists when God reveals them to me. This one was a real challenge to me, and I had to reflect on it a lot. I looked back over the last year, and the years before that. I am sure all of you think that you know where I am going with this, and if after you are finished reading this you were right, I am happy that you realized it sooner than I did.

      What I had to look back on was not about forgiving others and what they had done to me, yes this is still important, and something to write about later on, God told me to look back at all the times that I refused to forgive myself.

      

      Some people may not think this is important, but I believe it is a key concept in our Christian walk.

      If you cannot forgive yourself, how can you be fully forgiven?

      Let me explain a little bit because I can see the perplexed looks on some of your faces.

I heard this story once about a man, who was sentenced to hang, and the President offered him a pardon but the man refused and was hanged. The courts deemed that in order for a pardon to be valid it must be accepted.

      The same works with us, I believe. Yes God forgives us if we ask it of Him, but if you do not mean it, and you do not accept the forgiveness that is given to you, you do not have full forgiveness. And I say full forgiveness with a cause, God will always forgive you so long as you bring it to Him and lay it at His feet, but your forgiveness will only be full once you validate it with yourself. If you do not forgive yourself for what you have done wrong, you will walk around life with a chip on your shoulder, and a cloud looming over you. The worst part is, is that you only have yourself to blame.

      Look back at your life at all the times where you asked for forgiveness, either from God, a friend, or a loved one, and then figure out if you ever forgave yourself for what you did wrong in that situation. It is a weight that will weigh you down until you LET IT GO!

      Don’t withhold that awesome blessing that God has given to you, and that He gives you each and every day. God forgave you, He loves you and always will, accept the forgiveness that has been given to you and forgive yourself. 

      And with a new year I offer a new blessing:

      Forgive, forget, and let God's will reign in your life!

A Stronghold in Joy

There is a Stronghold in Joy

“9. “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.11. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15: 9 – 13

“10. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

Joy; an easy and simple topic. No muss no fuss, just joy.  Let’s look a little deeper into that second passage, specifically at “for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” In Hebrew they used the word:

maoz or mauz or maoz or mauz: a place or means of safety, protection

Original Word: מָעוֹז

Part of Speech: Noun Masculine

Transliteration: maoz or mauz or maoz or mauz

Phonetic Spelling: (maw-oze')

Short Definition: stronghold

Don’t worry; I am not going to go into semantics, well not too much anyway.  But I think this needs to be covered. All too often we look at scripture verse and take it at just face value, but it is important to look at the meaning behind it as well. The joy of the Lord is your stronghold. Notice how it say the joy of the Lord, not joy in the Lord, this is important.

You always have access to a stronghold, all you have to do is realise what God is saying to you in all of this. God is a God of love, he delights in the ways of his children, He has joy in all that we do. God is joy!  Joy of the Lord, you understand now? Or are you completely confused? Been there done that, I was confused when God first brought this to me.

We have a stronghold in the Lord because He is joy, it is His joy that provides that stronghold, not our own joy but His. We have no reason to fear, be depressed or worry about anything if we rely on the joy of the Lord. God loves you and would never forsake you; He would never turn His face from you, or try and hide from you. Completely opposite, it is in the times that you are at your weakest, when you have done the most wrong things that you could ever imagine, and when you are filled with such great sorrow that it seems that no one would ever accept you that he takes you into His stronghold and holds back the weight that lays heavy on you, and holds back the attacks of the enemy.

Make sense now?

You might be wondering why I included 2 passages in this post but have only focused on one. Fact is I these were the ones that God revealed to me, and when I looked up the word joy in the Bible, it came up with 240 references to that word. (NIV Version) I think the Holy Spirit was showing me something with these Bible verses, first is that one is Old Testament and the other is New Testament, God’s promises are the same yesterday, today and forever more. Secondly is this, take a look at verse 11 “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” God’s joy, His everlasting and unfailing joy is in us, and it overflows in us, it completes the joy that we have, and fills in when our joy is lacking. If you love God, and obey His word, your joy will never be empty, and you will always have a stronghold to turn too.

Be blessed, and keep the faith! And may your joy always be full. :)

One Body

One Body

“3. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 

4. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,

 5. so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 

6. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;

 7 if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; 

8 if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Romans 12: 3-8

      A thought occurred to me while reading through someone else’s blog this past week and it has to do with the division of the church. It is not a bad thing, but I do believe it is a hindrance to the growth of the church.

There are many denominations in the body of Christ, Evangelical, Charismatic, Catholic, Reformed, Baptist, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Anglican, to name a few, and all of them have things in common and all them have major differences. None is wrong in what they believe or what in creeds and doctrines they follow all of them draw them from the scriptures and that is God breathed. Now, why do I call this difference a division and a hindrance to the growth and spreading of the church? It is because in the midst of all of this that we are no longer unified.

      I know where all of you can go with this, “But it says in the scriptures that we are all one body made up of many parts, that is the denominations of the church. They are the different body parts that make up the body of Christ.” And I agree completely, that is exactly what it is, but the truth lies behind it all. This is not something seen on the surface, it is spiritual wound, and it is Satan’s greatest victory over us as the church.

We and I mean all of us have drifted apart from God’s grand design to be unified under Him, we are all so caught up in our creeds, doctrines, and how we choose to run our services. Whether we choose to raise our hands, shout hallelujah or bow our heads and say a Hail Mary, that we have become separated. The body has split apart. The eye has said “I do not need you foot,” and the ear has said “I do not need you hands.” We have become blinded by our own humanity and forgotten that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.

Creeds, doctrines, and songs mean nothing to our Heavenly Father, at least when it comes to churches and how we do things. What matters to Him is that we worship Him and Him alone, that we do it with our whole heart mind body and soul, and that we do it as one! The Bible does not say that wherever 2 or 3 Evangelicals are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them, it says ” 19. “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. 20. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”” Matthew 18: 19-20. It is only when we come together as one that we will achieve what God wants to achieve, it is only as one body that we can step on the head of the Serpent.

      

      There is nothing wrong with denominations, in fact I encourage you to find your place, the one denomination that best suits you and the style that you worship and praise our God in. But do not discriminate against the other denominations out there, encourage them in their growth, pray for them on Sunday mornings that they too may see the glory of God that morning. Meet with them grow with them, share in their sorrows and in their laughter’s. As one body, unified under God we are unstoppable and we can change the world.

Be blessed, and remember to keep the faith!

Are You Strong Enough?

Are You Strong Enough?

On my weekly commute to BC, I was listening to the song “Strong Enough” by Matthew West and I came to a great realization and it brought me to a deeper understanding of myself and my faith in God. I am so weak.

Wow! Stupendous breakthrough! Ha-ha, I know that is what all of you are thinking right now. And I had to laugh myself when I thought of this. Why did I all of the sudden come this realization? Why did it hit me so hard? Because it was real, and because it was the Holy Spirit that revealed it to me, this is not by my own understanding but by God’s understanding that I came to see this. I saw how small, insignificant and weak I actually am. In fact he not only revealed the thought to me but showed it to me.

The picture that I have included with my blog post, I took on my drive to Cranbrook. (Don’t worry; I pulled over to take it), and the scripture verse came with it. “1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? 2 My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 3 He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber;” Psalm 121: 1- 3. Even now as I am writing this, God is speaking to me, I have chosen song at random to listen too from my library and they all seem to have the same theme, “My Hope” by Matt Redman, and “In Christ Alone” All have the same messages carried throughout them. Where does my help come from? To whom shall I turn, who can I run to, rely on. I AM NOT STRONG ENOUGH!

Guess what, we may not be strong enough, but God is! We can never carry the burdens of this world alone. The temptations that you face each and every day can only be brought down when we turn it over to Him. Together with God, we can face all obstacles that stand in our way.

God, I give up, I am not strong enough to do it alone, help me I pray, help me in the way that only you can. I am weak, but you are strong.

Remember this when you go through your day to day activities, whether it be work, school, or play, trials and temptations are bound to come your way, but when you involve the Lord they can easily be overcome.

I am hoping that all of this makes sense to people. I know it does to me. I am actually going to start writing my next sermon on this Bible passage, and go into a little more detail about all of this.

Pray to God and ask Him to reveal something to you in the next day, I try and listen to Him at every opportunity that I get, (I said try, I am not perfect and it doesn't happen as often as it should.) Read your Bible every day, if you need help set a reminder in your calendar, put an alarm on your phone, but spend some time in God’s word. Even 5 minutes a day can make a great difference.

Be blessed and remember to keep the faith!

Test Your Faith

Testing Your Faith

I know I have touched on this before, but I think it is something that needs to be constantly revisited. I hope that this approach will give you some new insights on faith and what it means. 

Luke 17: 5-19

5The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” 6He replied, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you. 7“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’?8Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’ "11Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” 14When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed. 15One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan. 17Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

Have you tested your faith recently? I mean truly tested it. This is not falling backwards into someones arms, that requires faith in man. I mean your faith in God? If you haven't then why not? And if you have were you rewarded for your faith?

This is a hard question to answer for all of us, and not something to take lightly once you undertake it. It is a hard action to even do, to live by faith, to rely completely on God and all that He has to offer, to trust in Him 100%. Wow, I think I just blew my own mind there. That is true faith, that is what God wants us to have with Him. That undying and unending faith and trust in Him. But here is the hard part, we are human and we are bound to fail in this area. We can strive for it but all of us have fallen short of it at one point or another.

This is the thing though, faith is a daily thing. You wake up each morning and pray to God saying, "God, I will have in you, in you and all you have in store for me today. I put my life in your hands." Each day you can start over, each day you can say that prayer even if you fell short the day before. 

Faith can do great things, even the smallest of faith can do great things. The key to faith is that it has to be for the glory of God. You can ask a tree to be moved into the ocean all you want too, you can have the greatest faith in it, but if it is not for the glory of God it is not going to happen. What rhyme or reason is there for you to put a tree into the ocean? How can God's glory be shown in it? Are you doing it just because you can or you told someone you could do it? That is not for God's glory. Or it can happen but if it is against what God wants you might end up losing it anyway.

I heard this story of a pastor once. (I can neither confirm nor deny that this story actually happened. Google it and come up with your own conclusions. :) I for one believe it.) This pastor's wife passed away, and the pastor prayed and prayed and prayed that she would be raised from the dead, he had the faith and it happened! She was raised from the dead. A week or so later she passed away again, he did the same thing again and she was raised from the dead a second time! It happened a third time where his wife passed away and lo and behold he did it again. Three times he raised her from the dead! This time though the wife had something to say about it. "Stop raising me from the dead! It is my time to go and God is calling me home." She passed away later that night. Quite the story huh? Faith can do anything, even raise people from the dead. Only when done in God's will and with his glory in mind.

God has a plan and a purpose for everything, His design is the greatest design, His picture is more beautiful than anything we can paint. We can have faith in God and all that He is going to do for us, we can have faith for someone to be healed, for the dead to be raised for that promotion that you have always wanted, or that perfect item that you have always wanted, but remember that Jesus taught us to pray saying:

"Our Father in heaven,

hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come,

your will be done,

on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread,

and forgive us our debts,

as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil."

Be blessed and remember to keep the faith!