The Sun comes up and the Sun Goes Down.
So do my teeth, but all around.
The Sun follows its path faithfully.
But my mouth seems to go wherever it please-s.
The Sun doesn’t gossip, it simply perform-s.
How I wish my mouth would establish that norm.
By His Grace
“Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it before and the outcome is always the same.”
“Where have you seen it before?”
“It happens a lot of times in a lot of people.?”
“Does it happen in you?”
“I guess it does sometimes. Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly.”
“Do you think he does that all the time?”
“Probably not. It would likely kill him.”
“So you only caught him in one of your own moments?”
“That’s probably the case. Yes.”
“So then why did you judge him so harshly?”
“I’m not sure.”
By His Grace
The man said he wanted holiness. He tried with all his might but to no avail. Then someone told him, “You cannot have holiness except that it comes from God as a gift”. So as soon as he could, the man went to prayer.
The gist of his prayer was, “Oh God make me holy (for all the right reasons)”.
The man believed and got up and walked away. Three hours later he found himself embroiled in ungodly things. The man was dejected.
Later he found the one who had told him that holiness is a gift from God. “What you say can’t be true.” the man told him. “I asked and received, then lost it again. How could this be? For I have heard and believed that God’s gifts and his calling are irrevocable.”
The man he was talking to was the pastor of a church whose membership was nearly 200. The pastor told him that he would give him his answer on Sunday morning.
Come Sunday morning, the man walked into the church. Placed up front was what looked like a polling booth. Jokingly the man ask the pastor if that were his answer. The pastor answered, “It soon will be”.
The sermon had to do with honesty and integrity. And throughout the sermon the preacher rose to creshendo. All the people were visibly stirred. Each one was ready to tell the truth unto death.
Then the preacher spoke of the men’s difficulty, without mentioning his name. He pointed to the little booth and explained what was inside.
“On the table inside the booth, you will find two upside down funnels. One is marked man the other is marked God.
Before you leave today, I want everyone of you to walk into that polling booth. Push a single tiny object into your choice of a funnel. You will be answering a simple question. If a man has asked God for holiness, who is at fault when ungodliness arrives, God or man.
By His Grace
Okay. I’m going to do a little war hoopin here. But you likely haven’t heard this for a while, so you might think I’m being kind of mean. But on the other side of “takin it right” is all the peace and stability you can handle.
From the day of God’s blessing to Abraham until today, Israel has been in a state of war. Whatever tiny moments of peace they found in that time, were short lived. And the ensuing battles became worse and worse. (I’m including the Holocaust in this.)
In the meantime God sent his only Son, and the battle did nothing more than get really personal.
Today’s church knows virtually nothing about this as a whole. And this ignorance has given rise to a great influx of Tares.
Well if you’re willing to listen, there’s a fix for this. If not, may the will of the Living God be done in the advent of the end.
Look at what Jesus said here. He came to take away the “National” concept (not that it was ever God’s intention). But he distinctly replaced it with a personal burden.
34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10)
I have found this to be blazingly true! If you love the Lord you will be hated. And this to the extent that I will push the envelope a little farther: if you are not hated you might want to do a little pocket check to see if you love the Lord.
See how the war was intended to come home. But he hasn’t left any one as an orphan. Not only has he sent the Holy Spirit to help and to guide every individual, but the law of Moses remains among us as strong as it ever was. What was spoken in Moses’s day is not removed from anyone.
Not that we should be legalistic in our approach to God, but the fire of his words ought to live in every one of his people as a great raging holy fire.
One small portion of that entire law is one of the greatest encouragements to man ever to be spoken. It may ring out rather often from the pulpit. But it is rarely taken home. If it was obeyed, we would see an entirely different church.
4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deuteronomy 6)
Since the war has become a personal issue, by a straightforward challenge from the Living God’s Holy Son, each individual has become his own house.
Binding God’s laws on your hands does not necessarily mean a bracelet, but that everything our hands find to do should have the marks of our God on it. Obedience leaves a distinct holy mark.
And if we have the words of the Living God in us, our entire perception will be as if we wore a little case between our eyes which is filled with holy and good words.
As many as we can rally to understand these things, to that extent the church is transformed.
And I will add this: If you start to speak with every member of your church as if these things were alive and true, with all expectation that they agreed with you, the tares would not think it a gentle place to live any longer. The Christian social club would have to disband. And O the war would come home!
By His Grace
Raised in the desert, they were taught to eat sparsely. Water would come when it did. The sand has a way of making flesh tough. Strict adherence to strict laws forms a mind of steel. They were ready.
They watch their parents die. They knew they were the ones. An entire race of strong men were headed toward the test. All but one.
The Miscretin traitor. A hold over from that gaggle of greedy dead men. Because of him about 36 strong godly men lay dead in the promised land. Good godly hopes of 36 families crushed by the greed of one man.
How did thousands “get it” yet this one didn’t? He kept is father’s faithless, stone cold, lying heart. He should have left it in the carcass, as it lay in the desert to rot.
40 years he took them by the hand. 40 years he fed them. 40 years not a stitch of clothing wore out. 40 years he gave them shelter. He performed marvelous deeds to keep them safe. They lacked nothing but the heart he offered.
And what was it Joshua said? . . . . . Oh yeah.
“But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
Whose heart do you have?
By His Grace
Mary Magdalene loved the Lord, because she had nothing left to lose. The Apostle John loved the Lord, because he had everything to gain.
Why do you love the Lord Jesus? Or do you?
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”
By His Grace
We: Live, Die, Face Judgment. Jesus or die twice.
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