So You Had A Bad Day

Have you ever had a bad day?  If you haven't you must be immortal.  Everyone has a bad day occasionally; sometimes there will even be a season that is rough.  But God does not change when times are bad or things get rough. 

The Word speaks to us about seasons in life, and also about test and trails of our faith.  

• I Peter 1:7  So that [the genuineness] of your faith may be tested, [your faith] which is infinitely more precious than the perishable gold which is tested and purified by fire. [This proving of your faith is intended] to redound to [your] praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) is revealed.

• James 1:3   Be assured and understand that the trial and proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and patience.

Some people think that when bad things happen God causes them.  God never causes evil.  But he is forever there with a watchful eye, waiting to see what we will do. And he is always as close as your voice.  The Word assures us that He is a present help in times of trouble and that when we pray, He hears and answers. The problem comes when we don't call out to him for help; when we turn angry or bitter against him.  Please allow me to give some good advice here, "When you are in a troubled season, it is not time to be angry or bitter at God, He is your way out."  

So many songs suggest on bad days and in bad seasons, when something has gone wrong, or someone has hurt you the answer is:  

• Go out and get drunk
• Go out and have an affair
• Go out and beat someone up or key a car  
• Some suggest going inward and reeks of depression.  But these are all terrible ways to handle bad days or seasons.  

A drunken person doesn’t know if they had a good time or not.  The person in an affair is hurting someone else in an attempt to 'feel' better, and feelings are fickle and subject to change at the ticking of a clock.  And to key a car not only enrages others, but can cost you a fine or time (maybe both).

If you are of the inward kind who like to closet drink or hold pity parties, you will simple lock yourself behind a door, and go inward causing physical and more emotional damage.  

The answer to bad days or seasons is God.  He will bring you out and hold you up.  He will never fail you.  

Some people assume God has failed them, or will fail them.  But that is a misconception.  Bad things do happen, and seasons can be cold, but God is Love and will never fail.  Things may happen you don't have understanding for, but love will bring you through.  

My past was a broken one.  I was lost.  I was without God.  I cried out He answered and helped me.  He loved me, healed me and has given me understanding of life.  I am grateful.  

In life we all have choices.  We can choose life or death, blessing or cursing.  God is good to allow men free will.  However, the things we choose will leave us with the results of those choices.  The grand thing about God is He is a God of restoration.  A broken plate may not go back together as it was before, but it can be restored or another can fill the empty space at the table.  

I have heard so many people, say things like, "But you just don't know what happen to me, or you just don't know what they did to me!"   And they are right I may not know.  But I do know the one who does know and understand.  And I can connect you with Him if you so desire help.  Some receive Him and get the help He has promised, others prefer glorying in their pain, or sitting in their darkness. Again, "That is a personal choice that God is willing to allot you."

So many people want to avoid their part of receiving healing. But with God there is always going to be a man side.  Throughout the Bible we find Jesus healing all sick and diseased (well all who would allow and/or receive).  You see in some places He could do no mighty works because of unbelief. Faith is a factor. And faith acts.  Just as I am asking you to ask if you are having a bad day, or hurting.  

As you browse through the scripture you will  find:

• A blind man crying out
• A bleeding woman pressing in
• A woman worshiping 
• A man drawing on Jesus for his daughter
• A Centurion asking for his servant 
• A man waiting by a pool, but willing to roll up his bed upon instruction
• A man stretching forth his hand at the Word of the Lord

The blind man would have continued to beg; the woman bleed; the woman suffer; the man grieve; the centurion suffer loss; the man lay around in pity at a pool party; a man continue with a swiveled up life. Each had a choice.

Today is a good day to choose Jesus.  Let him who authors faith; bring you to a good end.  Today is a good day to choose life and love and come out of darkness.  It is a good day to heal, be set free of depression or other sickness the enemy has set upon you.  It is a great day to past a test, be acquitted from a trail or loosed from an infirmity.  

Call upon the Lord, he hears and answers.  Ask him into your life; ask him to reveal himself to you, to help you.  He is willing.  

Maybe you are not sick physically or emotionally distraught.  Maybe you are already a Christian in the middle of a faith trail or a life test.  As Peter and James speaks, if that is the case this is still your day. Life test become easy in Christ, they are all open book.  

The Word teaches us Gods ways of living and doing things. Therefore, all we have to do is make the adjustments.  When we turn to the Word for direction and find we have been doing things wrong, all we have to do is repent (turn around) and make a choice decision to do things God's way.  When we do, we can expect the results that God has promised.  

If you are in the midst of a trail, you shall be acquitted if you will continue to allow God to be your advocate.  Allow him to give you the right words to say and say that and only that, if you will allow him to order your steps and direct your paths.  Not only will you come out of the trail free, you will receive a recompense of reward and or promotion established by the Father on your behalf.  

Just remember alone you can do nothing (nothing lasting), but with God all things are possible. 

"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.   John 15:5

It is a great day to attach to the vine.  It is a great day to be alive … and to really live!  

  

Be The Message 2014

Often we speak of being carriers of the Good News Message, and this is true we are carriers.  However, we are to be much more than carriers.  We are to be (The Message), the Word living in us in such a degree that we are living it before men; our lives on display before men; Jesus working with us to heal all who are sick and diseased.

 Paul was a carrier of messages, yet he was (The Message), Christ in Him the Hope of Glory.  Today it is Christ in us (each believer) as the Hope of Glory.  We not only carriers of the message, but the word alive we too are often carried. And, yet with all the grace carrying there is a "Walk".

Eze. 36:27

And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

There is a place we must come to where we recognize and live in unity with the Spirit of God.  

Gal. 5:25

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Eph. 2:2

Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:

Gal. 5:16

This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Walking in the flesh is summed up in Gal. 5:19-21

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these;

• ·      Adultery,
• ·      Fornication,
• ·      Uncleanness,
• ·      Lasciviousness,
• ·      Idolatry,
• ·      Witchcraft,
• ·      Hatred,
• ·      Variance,
• ·      Emulations,
• ·      Wrath,
• ·      Strife,
• ·      Seditions,
• ·      Heresies,
• ·      Envyings,
• ·      Murders,
• ·      Drunkenness,
• ·      Revellings, and such like:
• of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they
• which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

It is not enough for us to talk the talk (as in delivering a message of goodness) we must live well.  We cannot fulfill the lust of the flesh and set godly examples before men, neither can we walk in the flesh and call ourselves Spirit led people.

I do not suggest we are perfect outside the precious blood of Jesus.  However, I do suggest a life of on going change. A life that entails repentance and laboring toward something better through a grace offered us at a tremendous price. 

Jesus speaks to us right after reciting the beatitudes says:

“Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

He did not say, "Let your light so shine before men, that they hear only the message you carry".  Carrying of the message is of upmost importance, however to carry a gospel you refuse to live is a hypocritical dead religion.

Jesus also expressed that latter in Matthews teachings as he spoke these words concerning the Scribes and the Pharisees… “but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not”.    

Our Brother James also expresses that if any of us are hearers only, and not doers of the word we deceive ourselves. 

James 1:22

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves.

So it is not complicated to see in just a few scriptures that we are not only to hear the message and to carry the message of Christ, but we are to be living Messages. 

Peter called us lively stones in I Pe. 2:5:

Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.   

The Message we are to be becomes easy when we yield to all that has been provided for us through Christ Jesus.  He came to us as a living example. The very idea we speak of for ourselves in this blog. 

Jesus knew who He was and what He was sent to do, so He not only spoke of the goodness of the Father and of the Fathers greatness in power to usward who believes, but He lived it before men. 

However, He did not live it alone, nor are we ask to live it alone.  We have been sent a helper one just like Jesus himself to live in us and to be with us.  One who leads us, teaches us, stands by us, unctions us, aides us in prayer, and comforts us.  One who is everything that Jesus was and is to us while we are here in planet earth. 

In Johns teaching Jesus is praying in Chapter 17, He is calling out to the Father on behalf of the us (the church) and in this says:

… thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

Jesus even at one time told the people, “Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: (but) the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me.”  (John 10:25)

Our lives should align with our words, because a belief system that has no corresponding actions is dead.  But a true belief system is active and powerful in it's working. 

Even our faith is dead without works.  Our lives are not to be merely a life of words alone.  But words that move God, Angels, others, and ourselves to action.

 

Act 1:8 amplified

“But you shall receive power (“dunamis”) - ability, efficiency and might - when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends - the very bounds - of the earth”.

Many people believe to be a witness is only to say something. I agree a witness has a voice and should be saying something. However, saying needs corresponding actions. 

“Dunamis” is a Greek word for Power and means:

“act of power” (Young’s); “miraculous power, ability” (Strong’s); “natural capability, inherent power; capability of anything, ability to perform any-thing; then, absolutely, not merely power capable of action, but, power in action” (Bullinger’s).

So let the Word this year become Power in Action!  Let us become a message sent, one that comes with gifting and power on behalf of others. 

Jesus working with us to heal all who are sick and diseased!

Live life to the Maximum in 2014

At the beginning of 2014 I challenged a group of people to daily, and thoughtfully read through the Proverbs with intend of living it out to the best of ones ability.  

One of the reasons for this is simply because, Proverbs are: brief popular sayings that give advice about how people should live their daily lives as godly examples.  They are maxims that are known phrases that express a general truth about life and/or a rule of behavior. 

As a member of clergy for many years now, I have watched many members of the body of Christ flail their arms in an attempt to stay alive in unpleasant conditions.  Some are extroverts with their flails and cries, so that everyone hears and often become boat rockers, stirring up chaos in others, while others put on a mask and decay from the inside never getting help. Neither of these should ever be the case.

As Christians we are to live the triumphant life, the overcoming life, the successful life of faith.  This doesn’t eliminate trials or test that every Christian will encounter.  But it does entail coming through those trials and test victorious, and to new levels. As Christians we should be moving from faith to faith, and glory to glory.

The word speaks to us of trials of our faith being precious.  But it also shares with us the truth of coming through all of them victorious. 

There are times when Christians will be knocked down in their stand, as Paul. He was knocked down, but he was not knocked out.  He was even left once in the street as dead, but the church gathered around him and prayed.  He recovered and continued in faith. Faith is the overcoming life, not one free of adversity or obstacles here in planet earth, but one with promises and good ends unto the day when there will be no adversities in our heavenly estate.

In this Challenge to obtain and retain the proverbs with application, my prayer is for the body of Christ to rise up to a new standard of living. One where wisdom becomes the principle thing in their faith lives again. And just for the record, I am not suggesting a life lived by works along, but on lived by faith that works; Faith that has been offered us through grace (grace that enables us to be free of sinful living and devoid of child play and deceitful lives). 

In the book of Acts there were needs within the local church body; needs for the people to be attended to properly, and for the ministers to have time to give themselves to the Word and prayer. So they quest went out to locate people not just full of the Holy Ghost, but full of the Holy Ghost and Wisdom as well as those of were of honest report.

The word honest report from this text in Acts chapter six means:

·      Those who have been a witness; they have seen, heard and or experienced something by divine revelation or inspiration.  It is those who live by and give honorable testimony to the truth. 

These were not just any people.  They were those who had witnessed the truth of the gospel in their own lives.  And in this filled with the Holy Spirit and Wisdom. 

Wisdom from this text defines as:

·      One to be broad and filled with intelligence, and having used knowledge in diverse matters in their lives. 

·      One commentary even says: varied knowledge of things human and divine, acquired by acuteness and experience, summed up in maxims and proverbs. 

These were men who were given to the science of learning; they were apt in dreams and interpretations and able to give good and godly advice to others.  They were men skilled in management abilities, who could offer Christian truth to 
those in need.

The people that were being sought out by the leaders were those who lived proverbial lives. The importance of this challenge of reading the Proverbs is not for a marathon read, nor is it a competition, but rather a personal assignment of life application unto Christian maturity.

·      As we read through the Proverbs we will find ourselves both rejoicing and pressed to new levels of life. 

·      We will find truth that will enable us to live happier and more successful.

·      Living the proverbial life will aid you, but it will also aid your family, friends, community, pastor and local church. 

I pray that you will make 2014 a year of spiritual growth unto natural victories by accepting this challenge.  

One chapter per day in a 31-day month will conclude your reading.  However, to go through these Proverbs each month will empower you even more this year. 

Faith without life application is dead.  As we read in the book of James, “Faith without works is dead.”   So let us live true faith lives, free of the deception of only hearing the word and not doing it.  Instead, Let us add to our faiths confessions this year legs, being doers of the Word … living our lives up to the Maxims!