What Is Your Life?

Jas 4:14  Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 

What an intriguing statement!  What a convicting statement!  Ask yourself that question, What IS your life?  This statement is in the present tense.  That does not meant what WAS your life; it means what IS your life.  I have met a lot of people who spend a lot of time beating themselves up for their past…guess what?  If you are saved by the Blood of Jesus, the Gift of Salvation, and the ONLY way to Heaven, then your history is simply that…..history.  With God, He wants to focus on the now and the future.  So let me ask you again, what IS your life?  Are you pleased with the way it is going…is God?  Are you pleased with your current status of “where you are going, and what you will do to get there”…is God?  Do you know where you are going and how you will get there?

There is good news…there is still time to change what is needed to change!  Someone does know what is needed and how to fulfill that which is needed!  That is Jesus Christ!  What a Wonderful, Awesome, Amazing, Magnificent, Superior, Ultimate, Heavenly, Perfect, Pure, Loving, Gracious, All-Knowing, Highest, and Patient Saviour!!!!!!  He is the answer to what we need!  While some men have some power, my Jesus has all power!!!  Have you accepted Him as your ONLY WAY to Heaven?  Guess what, it is free access to Heaven!  But it is only through the Almighty, Pure, and Precious Blood of Jesus!  Will you accept Him as your Saviour?  If you have, will you allow Him to salvage your life?  He can and wants to?  Last Question…..What is your Life?

 

 

Be The Horse

Luke 4:2   Being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, He afterward hungered.

How long have you been tempted lately?

We get so overwhelmed by our current life issues it hinders our walk with Christ.  We get tunnel vision and sometimes may forget the bigger picture.  40 day is a very long time to suffer through something.  For most of us four minutes is a long time to suffer through anything.  Jesus after being tempted by the best of tempters and not eating along with that just waited in faith for his father to help him.  He stepped back in all them small moments and noticed the bigger picture.  Of course, he was God in a human body but I am sure it was still mentally challenging.

I would like to challenge everyone this morning to take another look at what is going on in your life today. No matter how it seems right now IT IS TEMPORARY.  That is one promise this guy can make.  EVERYTHING here on earth is temporary.  Now, here is when it gets interesting.  You are not a prisoner to situations of your life.  You are an active and willing ACTOR in it.  That’s RIGHT.  You can choose to be or do anything you have enough FAITH to do.  If you have faith in God to see you through.  I really mean some active faith.   You will handle your “40 day temptation” with much faster results by being the horse.  Lets stop acting like the blade stuck in the ground.

Lets make a promise to each other today.  No longer will I be the tool of the harvest.  I will be the harvest itself with Christ’s guidance.

-ERN

No Trespassing!

Good Morning,

It was wonderful seeing you all this Sunday.  Look forward to seeing you at our mid week services.

Brother Ray Newmans

NO TRESPASSING

Psalms 90:12 – So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

Last week I had a very interesting time with my work.  I was blessed by being awarded a large Section 8 housing complex to re-roof.  With this working blessing I am never short of people to share the GOOD NEWS with at these locations.  Very poor and defeated people who by all means need the love the Lord has plenty of.  Amazing as it may seem my devotional today has nothing to do with them 100 or so people living in that housing complex.  It has to do with the couple just behind this complex.  I will be as brief as I can be,  I know your time is limited.  Please let me paint the picture for you.

Old man in his 80s at least.  Hard looking man.  Just not the one you would pull up a chair with.  Life had been hard on him from what I could see.  His skin was sun beaten and cracked.  His laser like blue eyes shined through his leather colored face.  He has some health issues, but was doing well for the years he had been allowed to walk around on this earth.  I thought of how many presidents, how many fads, and how many hard times this guy had lived past.  Then…  watching him walk in his back door.  I wondered how many books he could write about the wonderful things he had experience in his life.  He had a modest house.  He wife was always in the kitchen window.  I seen him smile once.  Of course not at me.  It was when he walk out of the house to get in his chair on the back porch.  You could tell he loved her more at them moments then ever.

His home was older then the Section 8 complex.  So, that means he was there first and stayed even after his property value took a big hit from it.  He didn’t build a huge fence.  He didn’t have 7 blood hunger attack dog waiting for someone to walk his way.  All he had was a little sign stuck in the ground stating “NO TRESPASSING”.  Sometimes the wind would carry the paper off our shingle bundles into his yard.  I would stop at the sign.  Look at him.  He would tip his hat.  I would run over get the trash out of his yard and hurry back to the “my side” of the trespassing sign.  My crew all followed the same rules.  NO ONE went into his yard unless he was on his porch and gave us the go ahead.  Needless to say he spent a lot of time on his porch Monday giving us permission to enter and then making sure we exited his unguarded grounds.

The next day we moved on to a different building and his yard was not in danger of trash any longer.  I still noticed him on that porch about the same time every day.  Then I was snapped back into your building something mode and just got busy with all my daily worries of roofing.

That same evening two men broke into that OLD MAN’s home looking for pain pills.  They found what they broke in looking for… 7 pain pills.  The cost!  They beat that old man so bad he died the Friday morning.  His wife placed in the hospital with a life no one wants to live.  A life of loss.  I didn’t even know his name.  I let the NO TRESPASSING sign hold me back.  Evil used it for a target.  I didn’t “GO” because I thought I had plenty of time. I would catch him in the yard and get him talking.  That day will never happen!

All our days are numbered.  I promise you this right now… If I could have that Monday of last week back.  I would know his name.  I would have heard them stories.  I would have ask that very important question.  If you died today, would you go to HEAVEN?

Give, Consider, Hearken

Psa 5:1 To the chief Musician upon Nehiloth, A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. 

Psa 5:2 Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray.

Psa 5:3 My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

     I believe that their are certain things that we as christians do that captures God’s attention better than anything.  One of those, things I believe, is when God’s people cry, or groan for God.  Many times God has been to the point with the nation of Israel that He wanted to destroy them or leave them to their own devices, but out of His great love for them and because of His remembrance of His covenant with them He comes to their rescue like their Hero.  The following verses are just one example of this:

 Exo 2:23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto Godby reason of the bondage.

Exo 2:24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

Exo 2:25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.

In this chapter of Psalms, we see King David asking three things from God:

1.Give ear to my words

2. Consider my meditation

3.Hearken to the cry of my voice.

I really like what David is doing here because it reminds me what God responds to.  David, a man after God’s own heart, is doing something that provokes a response from the One who loves him.  Being in a place that God does not hear you is a scary place to be.  But to do nothing about it, is even more scary.  If you ever find yourself feeling like King David in Chapter 5, then do what He did.  With his reputation of being a man after God’s own heart, his actions would be a good formula for getting close to God…again.

Bro. CW’s challenge for today:

Run to God today.  Pursue God’s heart today.  Cry out to Him.  His love for us causes Him to hear us when we cry.

Still Miserable

Pro 3:7 

Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil. 

Pro 3:8

It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones.

Pro 4:22

For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. 

Psa 43:5

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God. 

The following are spiritual things that are pointed out to me that is a good reminder of what happens to us when we are sick and sin-sick:

1. It took a process and time to get me to this miserable point.

2. I was taking medicine that worked at first, but now is no longer effective.  

3. My condition got so bad that I am miserable.   

4. I will not get better until I go to the Doctor. 

5. I had to be totally honest with the doctor about what was going on in my life. 

6. After I told him everything, I had to shut my mouth and listen to him.  

7.   The doctor did not force me to listen to him and take his treatment, I willingly went to him.  

8. He told me to avoid certain things and certain places that will make my condition “flare-up”.  

 9. The doctor did not heal me immediately, but instead gave me some medicine that will help me long term.  I really wanted something that would help me immediately, but the doctor knew that long lasting help comes slowly.  My body could not handle something that brings about immediate help, because those medicines are often very harsh and are really a “gamble”.  God sometimes will put us in a process that is slow.  Do not fight it.  He knows what your body can handle.  Most of the times, the best medicine will be slow, but it builds lasting strength and resistance.

10.  I have to go back to the doctor again this week for more testing and help.  Once the doctor helps me narrow down what I need, he can begin the slow process of changing what has been historically wrong with me…that continues to cause me to suffer with the same problem.  Our historical problems cause us to need many appointments with the Physician.  The more I go to the Great Physician, the more He can help me change my problematic history.

11. He will give me medicine on a consistent basis that will heal me and build up resistance in my body that will help long term. The Great Physician has given us daily medicine that will help us heal and help us long term.  This medicine may seem like it does not help or is not needed; but if we are given medicine from the doctor, we should take it.  He knows what will happen if do not take it, that is why he prescribes it to us.