In Service to the King

Here in the United States, I think that we don't realize what it means to have a king. Obviously because we threw off the yoke of being under a king to become our own nation. The very idea of having a king is really a foreign concept to us. But in the Kingdom of God, we do have a King and I think it would do us all well to try and learn what it means to be a subject in a kingdom in service to a king.

Few things have captured my heart like that of knights and medieval times. I can remember from when I was a young boy swinging sticks around, slaying dragons and rescuing fair maidens. There is just something about that time period that I've always loved. As I've grown into adulthood that fondness has never left me, although I must admit that I too don't really understand what it means to serve a king.

I remember a few years ago, I was at church during a Sunday morning service. We were in the midst of worship and I felt led to go down front and fall on my knees and spend some time there with my Lord Jesus. I remember being there on my knees in prayer when these words sprang

from my lips, "My sword is Your's Lord." I wasn't just saying words, it was a very solemn time for me, one where I felt I was actually in the presence of Jesus. It was a very holy time for me, and one that I will remember forever. I think it was at that time that I really began to think of myself as Gods1stKnight. (An online screen name that I have used for many years now.)

I look at the Scripture and see a man named Ananias, who was just a servant of the King, yet it was he that Jesus used to bring Saul into the Kingdom. It wasn't one of the original apostles that did this, just a normal everyday believer. That's encouraging to me, because it shows me that God does not just use the elite...He uses whom He chooses, and that is most often those that are willing to have bowed their knees to His Lordship on a daily basis.

It's a wonderful thing to call on the Name of the Lord and get saved, but are you becoming a disciple of His? A disciple is someone who does more than just prays the sinner's prayer and then shows up at church once in a while. A disciple is someone who is constantly on the look out for opportunities to learn about the Kingdom, share the Kingdom with others and just plain and simple does what Jesus did while He was here on the Earth.

I was born again a lot longer than I have been a disciple of His. But since that day of bowing my knees to my King and offering my sword to Him, I have made every effort to follow His leading and become the best subject in His Kingdom that I can be. How about you? Are you a disciple of His, one that has offered up your sword for His cause?

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

Grey Days and the Son

When a day starts out cold and dreary, it can, if not prepared for become a cold and dreary day in your soul if you let it. I've met many people whose outlook on life is determined by the weather around them. If the sun is shining and there are blue skies, then they will be happy and in a good mood. On the other hand, if the days tick off one after another with only grey, cloudy skies to show for it, then these same people will have a poor and sad outlook on life.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging these people or making light of what ails them. I do wonder however, how they function in the Kingdom. In God's Kingdom, the currency is faith, and faith is believing what God's Word says is true, even when the circumstances around us say they are not. When it comes to having a bad day because there are clouds in the sky, then I have to ask where is the faith? (That believing what God's Word says is true?)

We can have faith for many, many areas in our lives. Faith for salvation, (We must believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and confess with our mouths that He is our Lord.) faith for our finances, (It is God who meets all of our needs, wants and desires.) even faith for healing as well, (By the stripes on Jesus's back we were made whole.) These are just a few areas, but every facet of human existence on this planet should be operated in by faith. Remember, without faith, the Scripture states, that it is impossible to please God. (Hebrews 11:6)

We have faith in our every day walk too. When you sit in a chair, do you first pick it up and inspect it? Do you look to see that all of the welding, bolts and stitching have been done correctly before you sit down in it? I have never seen anyone do that, they usually just sit down. That is faith. You believe that when you sit the chair will hold your weight. You aren't scared about it, or concerned about it, you just sit down. You do that because you have faith that the chair will hold you up.

What about turning on the lights? Do you take a screwdriver to the light switch and remove the plate covering the wires to make sure that they are all connected properly? No, when you need light in a room, you flip the switch, believing that when you do so the lights will come on. That is faith too. You don't worry and fret over whether or not the lights will come on, you just know that they will.

Why is it that we can have natural faith for everyday common things, but when we bring this over into the realm of Christianity and walking with the Lord we have such a hard time having faith in His Word? I believe it is because of conditioning. We are conditioned to believe that the chair will hold our weight, or that the light switch will turn on the electricity required to light the room. Many of us have not conditioned ourselves to believe what God's Word says is true, for whatever reason. For some it is taught in their local churches that God doesn't heal anymore, in others people through their own life experiences have come to the conclusion that things won't happen for them.

What is so sad, (And not due to the weather.) is when a person accepts the fact that whatever they struggle with is their cross to bear for the Lord. That is sad because when Jesus told us to take up our cross and follow Him, He was telling us to put aside our selfish ways, He was not telling us to walk in poverty, or to take up the cross of sickness. I mean why would He have taken the beating He took? Peter says that He did that for our healing of sicknesses and infirmities. So if He did it for that reason, then why would He also tell us to take up the cross of sickness? It doesn't make sense.

God's Word is true, and we should believe every Word of it. But we have to condition ourselves to believe it, it won't just happen. We have to, as the Bible states, study to show ourselves approved, a workman needing not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the Word of Truth. (2 Timothy 2:15) That means that in order to do that, you will have to read your Bible. Your faith will remain small if your only experience with the Word of God is what you get when you go to church. Going to church isn't what will put you over in life, (Even though it is an important part.) you will have to read and study on your own, asking the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and direct you.

As you study on your own, you will see your faith grow. And as your faith grows, you will become conditioned to believe what His Word says about you, and then you will be operating in the faith of God that pleases Him. So don't let the grey days discourage you, go to God's Word even more when those days arrive and find the truth of who you are in Christ, and what you can do in Christ, and you will see the Son shine in your heart even if the sun outside is not. Get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom today!

In One Accord...and I'm Not Talking About the Car Either

In the past several months, we have been experiencing something wonderful in my local church body. People truly living in one accord, and working together for the common good. I for one have been more excited about being at church in the past several months than I have been in years. It really feels good too, that being a part of something bigger.

Which brings me to my thought this morning, being a part of something much larger than ourselves individually. Last night, I was waiting up for some of my daughter's laundry to finish and decided that in order to help me stay awake I needed to watch something on the television. Since I have just started to re-read The Hobbit, I decided that the animated version of this story would be a good one to view, and to help me stay awake. (Which sleep did find me anyway...it seems to do that more and more these days when I'm in my recliner.)

As Gandalf recounts the story for Bilbo Baggins about the Dwarves who lived in the Lonely Mountain and how they were the finest craftsmen around, the images on the screen were that

of a whole community of Dwarves working together to create these

wonderfully handcrafted items which they sold to men and elves. When I saw all of these people working together, I actually had the thought, "They are working for the common good of all their people. They are not working for themselves."

Now leave it to me to see something of how the Body of Christ should be doing things from an animated movie made way back in the early 1970's. But as I watched those Dwarves working together, under their King's direction for the good of the whole community I was struck with the power of working for something bigger than yourself.

We are admonished in the Scriptures to not forsake the assembling together of ourselves, (Hebrews 10:24-25) and about how we are many members but make up one body (Romans 12:3-5). These things were not put in the Bible just to be filler. No they are there for our admonition, to build us up and help us to be able to walk in our daily walk with Christ better.

When we serve something larger than ourselves, and pour our lives into it, we are more fulfilled. It's just the way that we are wired. I know from my own experiences that when I'm doing something that affects the bigger scheme of things, that I in turn feel more complete. And I think, especially in America, the tendency is to be more self-serving rather than more about serving a community, so this doesn't really come naturally to us. It is something that has to be cultivated in our lives.

There is power in unity however, and I believe that as my church grows in this we will see more and more of the increasing of the Kingdom of God in our lives personally. It's in serving the greater good, that we all become greater people, and that works out good for everyone. And if you are not experiencing that in your life or church, don't bemoan the fact that you don't have this, be the catalysis for change, ask God where He wants you to start and then get after it.

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

I Got Flipped Off...But I'm A Nice Guy!

The other day I was travelling from my hometown of Sapulpa, to take my son’s car to a mechanic we use in Oklahoma City. Micah’s car was in desperate need of some front end work, and when we’d drive it, it would bounce us all over the road.

As I was driving towards my destination, I found myself in the passing lane doing eighty miles per hour. (At eighty the car didn’t bounce nearly as bad.) I was boxed in on the right, front and rear by other vehicles travelling the road with me. We were this way for about five minutes, and there was absolutely nothing I could have done to get out of the passing lane except reduced my speed to fifty to try and get in the right hand lane and extricate myself out of the way of the guy riding my bumper.

Finally the traffic started to ease up and I was finally in a position to move my car to the right hand lane, when out of nowhere the guy who had been on my tail soared past me. It wasn’t until the back tires of his car were in line with my front tires that I realized he was flipping me off. Immediately something went off in my and the thought came to my mind to change lanes right then and push his car into a tail spin.

Whoa! What’s that all about? Where did that come from? I quickly realized that as not a viable option, and began to think things like, “Hey, that guy thinks I’m number one!” or “Oh look, he’s telling me his I.Q.!” I was really surprised at his reaction to me being in the passing lane and not moving over. I mean, I couldn’t, there was no way for me to. I wondered how worked up he had gotten while trying to get around me. (I truthfully wondered if he got as worked up as I have in the past when in traffic.) Had he flown off the handle and called me names too? How high was his blood pressure now?

It was about two minutes later that the traffic ahead of my new found friend began to slow again because two semi-trucks were driving neck and neck; one in the right hand lane, the other in the left. Well as luck would have it, the semi in the right hand lane was moving faster than the one in the left and I was in position to pull ahead of that other guy. So what does he do? He pulls in front of me blocking me from passing him.

I thought, okay and changed lanes moving into the passing lane again. I really am glad that guy had no heart problems because I’m pretty sure that he would have stroked out with his need to stay in front of me as he pulled back into the passing lane. He must have thought he was Mario Andretti I guess, and in the race of his lifetime.

I lost interest with him and backed off deciding I’d had enough fun for one day. I did think about this for a while as the highway passed beneath me. My greatest thought was, “You’re a pretty big man when you can drive past someone and not actually have to confront them personally.” I mean, if we’d been in a mall and a similar situation had arisen, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have chosen to flip me off.

I’ve been accused of having bouts of road rage in the past, mainly by my wife and daughter, and there may be an element of truth in what they say. But this incident and the rage that rose up in me at first has got me to rethinking what I do and say when I’m driving in traffic now. I mean, come on I'm a nice guy and still he flipped me off. Well, there’s that…get ‘em up folks, we need to go out and whip something for the Kingdom…and I don’t mean whip out your middle finger in traffic….

Christ's Passion

As I write this it is the Tuesday before Easter. Easter is that time in Christian circles where we celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The thought occurred to me this morning that this is His "Passion Week", and that spurred another thought, "What was Christ's passion?" To which I had to answer, "Us."

In the book of Luke, chapter 19 and verse 10 it states: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost." When we look at this Scripture, we have to ask ourselves what is it that

was lost? And to find this, we have to go back to the time of the beginnings, the book of Genesis.

In Genesis 2 we find the creation of man, and his job description. Look at verse 15 - 17;

15) And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it. 16) And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "You may freely eat of every tree of the garden 17) but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

Now we know that Adam and Eve didn't physically die once they ate the fruit. So either God lied, or He meant something else. Other more literal translations of this passage say that, "in dying, you will die." Meaning that it was not physically that they died, but spiritually they did. Their hearts within them, the real them, their spirits died that day. They

became cut off from God. This is what Jesus came to seek and to save, mankind's spirits.

Remember what Isaiah stated in chapter 53, verses 4 - 6:

⁴ Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;

it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
⁵ But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.

⁶ All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all.
.

The best part of the story is not shown in Isaiah, but in Matthew 28:5-7:

⁵ Then the angel spoke to the women. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified.

⁶ He isn't here! He is risen from the dead, just as he said would happen. Come, see where his body was lying.

⁷ And now, go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and he is going ahead of you to Galilee. You will see him there. Remember what I have told you.”

There can be no doubt that God loves us. He set in motion the rescue of mankind's hearts, at the very time that they became lost. Jesus definitely loves us, or else He would not have gone to the cross and taken the beating that He did. There is nothing else that either of them can do to show us that they love us, and the Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. So as we enter this week of remembrance of what Jesus has done for us, remember that His passion is you.

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

The Passage of Time

April 6, 2011 marked the one year anniversary of the death of my youngest son. As I spoke of in an earlier blog, the passage of time is an interesting thing. The other day I was out in the yard, looking around at the beginnings of spring with the blooms of all the many trees in my yard and some perennial flowers showing off their glory. It was then that I noticed Noah's tree.

Noah's tree, is what I call this little tree because we planted it after he died. A good friend of our family, Holly Jones talked her parents into buying us this tree last year in honor of Noah, who loved to climb trees. My bride planted it where it would grow the best, which just happens to be where I can see it from my rocking chair on the porch.

The blooms on the tips of this little sapling brought me some hope that day. Hope that with the passage of time I will see more healing. You see just as this tree is little now, it will eventually grow into a much bigger one through the years. And by watching it get larger each year, that will help me to keep track of the time where my heart will hurt less than it does right now for the loss of my son.

Who would have thought that a gift of a tree would help in the healing process of grief for me? Thank you Holly Wolly Bing Bong for your thoughtfulness in giving us that tree. You are a true friend to me and my family, and we love you very much! Get 'em up folks, let's go out and whip something for the Kingdom today!

Counterfeit or Real...How Do You Tell?

I was having a discussion the other day about hearing the voice of God with a friend, and as we discussed what the Scripture said, I made the statement that if we don't read the Bible, and find out what it says, then we would really have a hard time distinguishing the voice of God.

We have an enemy, the devil, and he is always trying to trip us up in our walk with God. He constantly is assailing our thought life with his thoughts in the hope that we will pick them up and run with them. Actually that is the only way that he can win in our lives, when we take the thoughts he's thrown at us as our own, or worse that they are God's.

We have to know what the "real & true" is in order to realize a counterfeit when we see or hear it. Years ago, I learned that bank tellers are trained in how to recognize real money instead of how to recognize the fake stuff. It's in learning what the real looks like, that when a bill comes past them that is not real, it just jumps out at them. Just like the bank tellers, if we don't know what the real (God) is, then we will find ourselves falling for the fake (devil).

But how can we learn the difference? It's really simple, the Bible is God's will for mankind. We have to put our faces in the Bible daily and learn what it is that He has for us, then when those thoughts come around that speak to us something other than what we've learned what the Bible says, then we know to leave those thoughts, and cling to the ones that come from our Father.

It's really not that hard, we just have to be diligent to read God's Word the Bible daily. One thing that I have come to learn over the years, is that the Bible really will create it's own hunger, if we allow it to. So get your Bibles out everyone, and begin a Bible reading plan and watch your hunger for God's Word really take off! Then we'll be able to tell the difference between the counterfeit an the real. Get 'em up folks, let's go whip something for the Kingdom!