Nothing Surprises God

Nothing Surprises God

GOD is always previous, what does that mean to you? To me, it means nothing is a surprise to GOD. GOD knows everything about you, HE knows the past, the present, and your future. Nothing surprises HIM, nothing!

Here is where we struggle, we do not know the future. We know the past, and can do things to learn from our past, but in life, there are going to be surprises. So, when something bad happens in our lives, we feel all alone. We feel that we have to solve the problem all on our own. We might even get a little mad at GOD and ask how could You let this happen to me? Have you ever been there?

Now, here is what we need to remember. This bad thing that is happening to you, is not a surprise to GOD. GOD knew this was going to happen to you. Since GOD knows this about you, he has been working days, months, maybe even years to help or prepare you for this problem. So when we cry to GOD and say, “How could YOU let this happen?” GOD looks down, smiles, and says, “My child, I knew about this a long time ago, let me show you the way out.”

If you remember, we had a surprise this month. Remember the devotional I am Tested we had a surprise with the IRS and owing quite a few taxes. My first reaction was to freak out, but I really tried to put all my trust in Jesus and that He would take care of us. I am happy to say Jesus did. We had the best month in sales that we have had in the history of the company. EVER.

Jesus had been working even before our problem happened. I noticed that the first of this month we had unusually large sales, hence the saying GOD is always previous. GOD was working on my problem even before it happened. HE is amazing, isn’t He? 

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Are You Excited To Be A Christian?

Are You Excited To Be A Christian?

Focus Scripture
13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations-
I cannot bear your evil assemblies.

14 Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts
my soul hates.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I will hide my eyes from you;
even if you offer many prayers,
I will not listen.
Your hands are full of blood;

16 wash and make yourselves clean.
Take your evil deeds
out of my sight!
Stop doing wrong,

17 learn to do right!
Seek justice,
encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.

Thought for the Day
When you read this, you might think to yourself that this was written long ago for the people of Israel. But was it? Can’t you see GOD saying this to our culture? I cannot bear your corrupt churches. When you spread your hand out in prayer, I will not listen. Your hands are full of gossip, lies, jealously, and hatred. Sounds like verses that could apply to 8 out of our 10 dying churches in America.

It is so easy to get in a routine. It is easy to loose sight of Jesus’ vision for us. We live in a world where we are stretched out everyday. We have to constantly fight what society is tell us. Watch out for #1 or maybe, It is a dog eat dog world. It is easy to let satan in the middle of our church and let him start to pick it apart bit by bit. Soon, after fighting all this, you may find yourself going through the actions, church and worship become empty and meaningless.

I believe that we all need to do a heart check every month or so. Make sure that we are still excited, if not, what will make you excited? Are you just going through the motions at church? If so, what will make you become more involved?

Are you letting personal feeling; jealousy, anger, and bitterness interfere with your relationships at church? If so, what will it take for YOU to mend them? I am sure that you could come up with a few of you own. I know that I can.

So, when was your last heart check, how did you score?

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Love Your Enemy

Love Your Enemy

Focus Verses
Do not let your heart envy sinners,
but always be zealous for the fear of the
LORD.

There is surely a future hope for you,
and your hope will not be cut off.-Proverbs 23:17-18

Do not envy wicked men,
do not desire their company;
for their hearts plot violence,
and their lips talk about making trouble. – Proverbs 24:1-2

Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
when he stumbles, do not let your heart rejoice,
or the LORD will see and disapprove
and turn his wrath away from him. – Proverbs 24:17-18

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat;
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the LORD will reward you. – Proverbs 25:21-22

Thought for the Day
This concept is one that I have struggled with in the past. Well….. to be honest, it is still a hard one for me. I am getting better, I find the closer I come to Christ, the less this world appeals and has to offer me. So let’s take a look at what GOD is commanding us.

First, we are to keep our eyes and thoughts upward. This is not easy, because we live on this planet, and the things of this earth appeal to us. Let’s face it, we have to have money to live and function. Money brings some sort of a short lived, empty happiness. Plus, alot of the pleasures of this earth look appealing, sex, drugs, and alcohol to name a few, but these are empty. Some days it is much easier to be mean and hurtful to people, then to bite your tongue and build people up.

A lot of these acts that we discussed are the ways of a sinner. Some days when I am tired, and a little discouraged, the sinful ways look pretty nice. I sometimes get envious of how easy these people have it, having no moral rules to live by, it seems too easy. But, I am a warrior, so I tighten up my belt, pray, and continue to fight the good fight.

So then, when one of these wicked sinners falls, we are told not to gloat, or be happy, or think, HA! You deserve what you get! Then if that is not hard enough, we are told to be nice to them, and provide for them when they are in need. Are you sure that this is right, maybe this is one area that GOD really did not mean this? Right?

WRONG! This is exactly what we are to do. We need to be the light of this world. Yes, sin looks and is fun, that is why it is called a temptation. But, sin is short lived and VERY EMPTY! It brings sadness and death. There are a couple of things that we need to remember:
Our joy and happiness are in heaven with Jesus, not here. We are just visiting here, this is not our home, so of course we do not feel at peace here.
Revenge is the LORDS, PERIOD!

I would guess that most of these “Sinners” are very lost and unhappy. They may have forgotten to be “Nice.” You may be the only ray of Christ’s light that they may experience, they are on their way to hell, to spend an eternity with satan. NO ONE deserves that punishment, we MUST rescue them.

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Unstoppable DVD By Kirk Cameron

Unstoppable DVD

Have you ever asked yourself:
“Why do bad things happen?”
“If God is such a good god why does he allow this to happen to me?”
“Why is there bad and suffering in the world?”
If you have ever asked yourself these questions, Unstoppable By Kirk Cameron is a MUST SEE DVD.

In this powerful visual journal, Kirk Cameron takes viewers on a personal, inspiring, and hope-filled journey to better understand the biggest doubt-raising question in faith: “Where is God in the midst of tragedy and suffering?” Going back to the beginning literally Kirk investigates the origins of good and evil and how they impact our lives … and our eternities.

After successful broadcasts to hundreds of theaters nationwide from The Vines Center at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA, Unstoppable, Kirk Cameron’s most personal film is going to be released on DVD January 28, 2014. This compelling documentary takes you on a journey to the beginning of creation, and chronicles events that offer a deeper meaning of the role that pain and suffering have in our lives.

Where is God in the midst of tragedy and suffering? In this powerful visual presentation, Kirk Cameron takes you on a personal, inspiring, and hope-filled journey to better understand this doubt-raising question that believers and skeptics ask. Going back to the beginning of creation, he investigates the origins of good and evil—and their impact on our lives today. Unstoppable DVD By Kirk Cameron UPC: 602341006293

Unstoppable DVD By Kirk Cameron. $15.99 Free Shipping. Buy Now.

How Honest Are You?

How Honest Are You

The LORD detests differing weights, and dishonest scales do not please him. Proverbs 20:23

When you read the above verses, at first you may think that they do not apply to me. I am not in business or I do not deal with money and selling products to people. But, I believe that these verses are more about being honest and the integrity of each of us.

When looking at these verses I looked at other translations, I like the way Eugene Peterson states the same verse in his Message Bible:

“Switching price tags and padding the expense account are two things God hates.”

After reading it this way, it brings more of a modern day flair to it. It makes the verse apply to more of a broad range of people. I would guess that we all at one time or another deal with people and their money. Maybe it is a personal sale, garage sale, EBAY, or it may be some kind of work issue.

These verses have always weighed heavy on my mind, especially since we have our own business and make our own rules. In dealing with other people, I have found they always have an opinion of your dealings, then, if you throw money into the equation it becomes very personal. I have found that you could give a person something free, and they would feel that they are being overcharged….. seriously, we have seen it.

So, sometimes you can’t rely on the opinions of others. And if you are like me, I feel bad or guilty when these people speak up about your dealings. GOD gave you intelligence and I know that HE does not want you being taken advantage of. So how are we to know when we have stepped out of line?

The Holy Spirit. If you have a good feeling and peace inside, I would say the Holy Spirit is giving you the OK on what you are doing. If you do not have a good feeling or you are uneasy about it, I might re-examine your motives, be honest, and see if you are not being honest with yourself or with God. One other way that I have done a self-check on myself; I imagine that Jesus is standing right over me and watching me. If I feel good, then it is most likely good, if not……. well……….

Remember that other people can not always be a gauge with your motives and honesty, the ultimate judge is Jesus and the Spirit that is within you.

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Commit Yourself To The Lord

Commit Yourself To The Lord

Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed. The LORD works out everything for his own ends even the wicked for a day of disaster. – Proverbs 16:3-4

In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps. – Proverbs 16:9

Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails. – Proverbs – 19:21

Thought for the Day
Stop for a minute and think of how many decisions that you make in one day? Hundreds…..maybe thousands? I would bet that a large portion of your decisions would be quick, split second decisions. What am I going to wear? What am I going to eat? What TV program should I watch?

On the other hand I would guess that you make some decisons that might require more thinking than just a split second. In making these decisions you might try and weigh the outcome of the decision. What happens if I choose this way, or that way????? Stop and think for a minute, how many of those decisions do you wish you would have chose differently, so that the outcome would have been different? I know that I have made TONS to decisions that I wished I could have changed.

I know that Christ cares about every decision that you make. He may not be so concerned what shoes you wear, but He wants to see you make the best decisions for your life. He WANTS to bless you. So knowing that Christ wants to bless you, how many of you give Him the chance to bless you?

Alot of decisions that we make, do not have to be decided right them. We have time on our side, but we feel that we have to quickly decided right now. Why is that? Maybe we feel better when we can check that off our list of things to do?

As the verse say above, if you commit to what you are going to do for the Lord, He will make your plans succeed. You see if you included Jesus, He can direct you, or change events in your life to help you make a better decision. Jesus has all the events lined up to make you a sucess, you just need to ask Him to be apart of them.

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Do You Trust God To Provide?

God Provides For Our Needs

Have you ever asked the LORD to make you more patient, then you find yourself in situations where your patience is stretched? Or maybe you are trying to teach a friend how to hold their tongue, then you find yourself in situations where you really have to hold your tongue? If you think that those are just coincidences, think again. GOD is working in your life.

A like situation happened to me today. Usually, I read the passage we are going to talk about the night before, this allows time for me to think and the Holy Spirit to do some work in me. So, I read the chapters and I thought that it was interesting the infamous “Trust” verse came after a verse that talks about tithing. So, I chose to talk about that.

Then this afternoon I get an e-mail from our NEW tax accountant (Notice how I said NEW? Someone was not doing their job) this e-mail said we owe payroll taxes. The amount is not huge, but enough for me to stress out and wonder where it is going to come from. After Kim calmed me down, I had to laugh, I told GOD, “Ha, you are a funny guy LORD. Are you seeing if I practice what I preach?”

Usually, I would be totally stressed out, but I am at peace. Here is why. I do trust GOD, I am not going to lean on my understanding. I can’t control where the money is going to come from, but I know it is going to be OK. You see I have trusted GOD with little things in my life, and HE has come through, in fact HE has always come through. If you find yourself in situations like I am in, reflect back on your past experiences. Has GOD always provided for you? Has he come through for you in the past? I would trust that HE will again. Do not try and figure it out, GOD has it all figured out……. even before the problem came to be a problem.

The second reason that I know it is going to be OK, we take tithing very seriously. Now, I am not referring to GOD as a vending machine. I put the tithe in and I get a blessing back, but, I know that my heart is in the right place, and I know that GOD honors that. He will take care of me.

Do you take your tithing seriously? I really like how the verse says to “Honor GOD with the wealth of your FIRSTFRUITS.” Does GOD receive the last….. the leftovers of your money? Or does HE receive the first? If you have a budget, do you have a line for tithing? Again, I am not saying GOD and tithing is a vending machine, but trust and tithing do go hand in hand.

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Sex Gods Way

Sex The Way God Intended

Song of Solomon 7:6-9
6 How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
O love, with your delights!
7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8 I said, “I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit.”
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.

 

Thought for the Day
Wait a minute! Was that the Bible or was that a raunchy romance novel??? No, that was your Bible.
To read Song of Solomon you have to have the mind set of Genesis 2:23-25
Adam Said:
“This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman’ for she was taken out of man.”
For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

This is THE WAY GOD intended the relationship between a married man and woman to be. SEX is a gift from GOD, it is a wonderful gift. But, man giving into the temptation of sin, has done plenty to almost destroy this gift. satan is also doing everything in his power to take this wonderful gift, destroy it’s value, and turn it into his glory.

Today, instead of celebrating this gift, we spend a lot of time being ashamed, protected, and almost afraid of this gift. We abuse it and use it against each other. satan is doing a happy dance, but you can stop him from doing his happy dance by using GOD’s gift as it was meant to be used. By and through GOD.

I have been on both sides of this spectrum. I have abused GOD’s gift, and I have used GOD’s gift. I understand the temptation that the evil one gives you, and I now understand the amazing blessing that comes from GOD when HE is in it. Now to me, it sounded weird to include GOD in sexual issues, but again, it is HIS gift to us. Once I included GOD, I was blown away. I have never experienced anything like it.

I am not going to go into all the aspects of how GOD intended HIS gift to be used for MARRIED couples. But, imagine a triangle. This triangle would represent GOD’s gift. GOD has to be at the pinnacle of this triangle; the point, the lead. The man and the wife make the other two points. Once you have this triangle, go have fun and explore each other and the amazing gift that GOD gave you!

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What Does It Mean To Fear God?

Do You Fear God?

About a month ago I had a lady e-mail me, and express that her boyfriend had a hard time acceptng the phrase “Fear the Lord.” To him the word “Fear” was a bad or negative word. Why does the Bible and GOD ask us to fear Him? You fear a bully in school, you have a fear of flying, or maybe you are afraid of dying. In our culture, “Fear” is an emotion that rules us by a negative. So why the word “Fear”?

Let me give you two examples that hopefully change your view of the word “Fear.” First off, let’s face it, who really fears GOD anymore? Today, GOD is not a god to be feared, HE is a passive being. We have taken this amazing being, and fit HIM into a box so our minds can think we can understand HIM. In our culture, usually when something goes wrong we end up blaming GOD. The reason that HE is passive is because we do not want HIM interfering in our lives, or we do not expect that much from HIM anymore.

When the Bible was written they did not have the scientific knowledge that we have today. So, to look at the use of the word “Fear” you have to look at it from the writer’s point of view. Here are two examples:

We understand what creates a tornado; warm air, mixed with cooler air spins together in the clouds, as it spins more violently, it reaches down to earth and destroys whatever it touches. We have taken GOD out of the creation of this, we call it science, or mother nature. Can you imagine Solomon witnessing a tornado? This cloud came from the heavens, it must have been GOD. If I were Solomon I would fear this tornado, and pray that GOD would protect me from this terrible thing.

Here is another example, imagine you are with Moses when the earth splits open and swallows up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. They went down to the grave alive with everything they owned. Then if that were not enough, fire came from the LORD and consumed 250 men for sinning. Numbers 16:31-35

To the men and women of the Bible, GOD was this amazing force that had the power to consume them if they were disobedient. They knew this was a powerful being, and respected it. To us….. well, we struggle some days to even believe that GOD does exist, and as far as HIM being powerful…… well….. HE never gives me what I want, so how powerful can HE be?

My other thought is that we misuse the meaning of the word “Fear.” I looked up “Fear” in a dictionary, and here are the results. I think that we should use or remember the meaning #4.

1. A distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc., whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid.
2. A specific instance of or propensity for such a feeling: an abnormal fear of heights.
3. Concern or anxiety; solicitude: a fear for someone’s safety.
4. Reverential awe, esp. toward God.
5. That which causes a feeling of being afraid; that of which a person is afraid: Cancer is a common fear.

Reverential Awe……. I like that much better, don’t you? I hope that maybe you have a different outlook on our Fear of the LORD or Reverential Awe of the LORD. 🙂

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Are You A Toxic Christian?

Are You A Toxic Christian?

Kim and I were out running errands a couple of days ago. While we were driving we passed a church, with a large sign on the front of it. I looked at it quickly, then I had to do a double take to actually read the sign. When I actually saw what the sign said, my heart was broken and angered at the same time. Here is what this LARGE sign said that was smack in the front of the church.

NO SKATEBOARDING
NO ROLLERBLADES
NO BICYCLES

I do now know why they did not say:

NO KIDS
NO FUN
GO AWAY

This is a subject that GOD has laid dear to my heart; Toxic Christianity & Toxic Churches. Do you know that it has been said that 8 out of 10 churches are dead or dying? How sad is that? There used to be a time that Christianity was the religion of choice. When a person wanted to search for GOD, they would have tried a Christian Church. But that is not the case today. Christianity is just a choice among many religions and gods.

We had one of our good friends prove this. Her daughter went through a shooting at a shopping mall, as you could imagine she was very shaken up. So she went searching for something……. she had a Buddhist saying tattooed on her back. The comment of her parents is that they were glad she found some god and religion. With the statement like the one above, no wonder she found accepting Buddhists.

Some of our churches have become toxic. They are so focused on them and looking inward, that they have totally missed Jesus’ last command. They are more concerned with looking good, what type of music fits ME, and not accepting people that are not like them or that would fit into their church mold. What our culture is boiling down to is our Christian Churches do not carry the weight it used to, WE have to carry that weight. We have to be shinning examples of Jesus love and acceptance. Who did Jesus hang out with? The pretty, religious people? Or the lost, hurting, ugly, prostitutes?

You might be saying “What can I do”? Hopefully you are involved in a church that is carrying out Acts 29. One good gauge is to look at your baptisms, do you have them regularly? If not can you remember the last one you had? WE have to be the example of Christianity, church or no church, we need to reach out to the lost, the kids, and hurting of our culture. OK, OK, OK…. I could go on and on.

I believe that you are going to see a shift in our churches in the future. I think that you will see more mini missions going out into the people, instead of waiting for the people to come to them. One good example is a link that Donna sent me yesterday. It is Skate Disciples. A father and son mission to reach the young skateboarders. This is an awesome example of reaching out to a certain group of people that are lost and mislead, showing Christs’ love and acceptance. Awesome job guys! So, where are you on the toxic meter?