Where Did That Come From?

I was talking to a customer this morning, and she asked me to do something which I have a policy against doing. When I explained the policy, she bowed up on me. Well needless to say, that didn't go over really well with me, and let me just state that I didn't handle myself in the most Christian of manners. But before you think I've sinned and completely blown it, everything that happened was internal with me, and she never even knew. After she left, I repented to the Lord for my internal struggles and asked Him, "Where did that come from Father?"

How about you, have you ever had someone rub you the wrong way? How did you handle it? Did you walk in the love of Jesus, or did you let your flesh rule the way you responded? I will say that today apparently my flesh had a little better grip on the reigns of the direction my life was going, and not my spirit. Yet one more chance to come to realize that I haven't arrived in my walk with Jesus.

I remember once a man saying that when our emotions are low, our intelligence will be high. Conversely, if our emotions run high, then our intelligence will be on the lower end of things. I had an opportunity to learn this the hard way once with another customer. She had purchased several pair of shoes months earlier and brought them all back. For whatever reason it really ticked me off that day, so my emotional output was at an all time high. I refunded her money, without looking at the ticket and inadvertently refunded more money than she actually had paid for the shoes originally. Talk about feeling like a lunkhead.

Sometimes when things like this rise up inside of us, we should stop and take an inventory of what's really going on. I like to ask God, "What's that all about? Where did that come from?" and then take a little time and wait on His voice to speak to my heart. Several times there has been a revelation in my heart about something that has gone on in my past that never fully was resolved. So I go back to that, ask Jesus to forgive me, or I forgive the person that wronged me and healing comes and a little bit more of my heart is restored.

Things happen to all of us. We face trials and tribulations daily, but remember what Jesus said, "Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) This passage of Scripture used to bother me. I would say, "Well that's all good for You Jesus, but I'm still here." Then the Holy Spirit showed me that if I would stay "in Christ" and walk closely with Him, then I would be in Him and as He overcame the world, so I could as well.

Stay close to Jesus friends, let's get out there and whip something for the Kingdom today!

Demoralization

There is this little insidious tool that the enemy has in his arsenal that he likes to use against believers. I have experienced this to a certain degree in the last few months and I can tell you that it is subtle and creeps up on you like a snake in tall grass. It's called "demoralization" and it can kill you if you let it. The definition for demoralization is, to undermine the confidence or morale of; dishearten. Let me explain what I mean with an example from my own life.

As you know if you have read my blog for any length of time, I am a Christian, a born again believer in Jesus Christ. This does not mean that my life is without challenges, not at all. Every life has its share of them, so to think that just because I'm a Christian will exempt me from problems is just not true. I have been walking with the Lord for a long time now, and I had, while I was in the shower yesterday this thought, (While coughing and hacking up a lung.) "Oh come on, are you kidding me? I'm going to have congestion and the mucus fun now? What the heck? It's just one thing after another!" And then my heart sank within me.

I'm no novice at this Christianity thing, I may not be a father in the faith yet, but I'm no novice. I realize that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, (Matthew 5:45) but for some reason I felt demoralized standing there in the shower. It seemed as if everything that I had ever wanted to do for the Lord was slipping through my fingers like the soap bubbles off of my body. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry, and I wanted to whine a little bit. (Yes, you heard my correctly, I wanted to whine.) I finished getting ready for church and my bride, daughter and I left to go meet with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

We attended both services yesterday and I am so glad that we did. The first service was good, and my friend Daniel Shirley brought forth a strong word from the Lord about how the stone had been rolled away and that we should stop living under the law, and live under the grace that Jesus purchased for us. But it was during the second service, while Daniel was preaching that he made a comment about something my Pastor David Emigh had taught him. He said, "Preparation time is never wasted time, unless you waste it." And that made me sit up and take notice.

For a while now, I've been trying to understand the movings of the Spirit of God in my heart. There is something on the horizon for me and my family, but I'm not quite sure as to what it is. I've been searching, and asking but as of yet it is still a little hazy, the clarity has not come yet. And while I await the clarity, it seems that there has been one thing after another that has assaulted my heart for quite some time now. The death of my son, business appearing to not go as well as it used to and my not knowing where it is that God is leading me and my family right at this moment, and yesterday the fact that God's provision for my health was not where I wanted it to be. All of these things have been sucking the life out of me, and the real problem is that I have allowed them to.

You see here in lies the problem, it's not really the subtle attacks of the enemy that are major issue, it's the response that we give to them. The Bible teaches that the power of life and death are in our tongues (Deuteronomy 30:19). So when the attacks come, what are "WE" doing with them? Do we take a que sara, sara, whatever will be will be attitude? Or do we look a little closer into God's Word and find out what His provisions are for the thing we find ourselves in and take action?

Daniel and I were talking last night at dinner and he made the comment to me that after the sixth day, God quit creating. He put His creative power in mankind, and it is now up to us to create using our mouths. We really do have what we say, so what we need to be saying is what God's Word says about our situations, and not what we feel like saying. I've heard people say quit telling God how big your mountain (challenges) is, and tell the mountain how big your God is. And if we'll do that, then the weapon of demoralization will not have any effect on our lives.

Okay, so there's that...get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom today!

The Kingdom of Heaven Is At Hand and Heaven, Are They Different?

Jesus made the following statement while He was on the Earth, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Now I think that anytime you see Jesus say something, then it probably is something that we should take note of. But I think this statement gets caught up in the religiosity of the Christian community and takes on something other than what Jesus perhaps meant.

Here is what I mean, Jesus says, "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." and we hear, "Everything you will ever need you will have in Heaven." You've heard it said, and maybe even said it yourself to friends, family members and co-workers that are not born again, "Don't you want to get saved so you can go to Heaven?" (And yes, I too have used that lame line to try and win someone to the Lord. Father forgive me for misrepresenting You in that way.)

Yes I believe that if you die, and have been born again you will go to Heaven, but I don't believe for a minute anymore that that is the end all of what Jesus purchased for us with His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. Everything that Jesus did, He did for us here on Earth. He came to return us to the original design. (That would be Adam & Eve in the Garden with a personal relationship with God the Father.) Yet, we cheapen it for so many people when all we try and do is get them saved without telling them what the real purpose is for that.

We were designed to have fellowship with the Father, Son & Holy Spirit, that is God's original idea. But because of the sin of Adam and Eve we fell, and that relationship was cut off. God sent Jesus to die for us, in our place, for the punishment of that sin so that we could return to the fellowship that God had desired in the first place. But until we actually accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we cannot be a part of that.

Look at Luke 4:17 -1 9: And there was delivered to Jesus the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." And then He sat down and said, "Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your ears."

Jesus told the people there that this is why He had come, to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth. We have everything that we need right now, are you poor, the Kingdom can make you rich; are you brokenhearted? Jesus was sent to heal your broken heart. Are you bound, then deliverance is yours. Can you not see (Either for real or spiritually?), then you can recover your sight. He has brought us liberty, and the year of jubilee, which when it happened meant you get all your stuff back! Hallelujah! That's good news.

So this whole thing is for the here and now, not in the by and by. We can have all of our needs met, whatever they are in the here and now, if we will just believe and act in faith. I don't know about you, but that makes me want to do a little happy dance. (Something I took time to do just now.) I am getting excited about my future, it is a bright one, and I will be operating in the Kingdom of God today, not when I get to Heaven, how about you?

Get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom of God today!