The Essential Nature of God

On April 2, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 John 4: 8

God is love.

1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8

Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes al things hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

God is love. It is His essential nature; what He is, what He is made of. Love is not an attribute of God, not one of His characteristics. It is the substance of who and what He is. We cannot separate love from God but many people, even those of the church, have lost the certainty of that statement. We understand with our minds that God is love but in our hearts we still hold onto a God who is vengeful and wrathful.

When we combine the two verses for today we get an accurate picture of God. God is patient, God is kind, and is not jealous; God does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; He does not seek His own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes al things hopes all things, endures all things. God never fails.

Our God is the perfect parent. Love drives everything He does. His love is sacrificial and unselfish. He is everything we want in a friend, spouse or parent and He is all those to us. He is perfect love. There is no fear in His presence because perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4: 18). Our God who is mighty in deed is as gentle as a lamb. 

We really must get a deep revelation of this lover who is our God. We need to hold deep within our hearts the absolute truth of the Father’s love for each one of us individually. There is no power until there is this abiding truth within us. Your Father loves you absolutely and unconditionally. Meditate on that until you cannot be swayed. Then you will soar with wings as eagles.

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On April 1, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

James 4: 7

Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

I read something that Gloria Copeland wrote which had a profound effect on my thinking. She was in prayer one day when the Lord told her, “Separate yourself and you’ll be separated.” She went on to write, “[F]ollow God and separate yourself from evil (then) you will be separated from evil.”

That took hold of me. I thought about how applicable that is in an everyday sense. Gloria Copeland was writing on Psalm 91 and the protection God has provided for all of us. So many times bad things happen to folks and thus they are looking for relief. Well, the devil is in this world and he is going to make life difficult, if he can. One of the best ways to cut him off though, is to separate yourself from him and separate yourself unto God. What does this mean?

It really is quite simple and that is one of the things I liked about it. If you want evil out of your life, separate yourself from evil. In other words, bad things come from Satan, not God. As you live to God there is a greater and greater chasm between you and the effects of the devil. If you continue to dally in lies, deceptions, gossip, unkindness, etc., you are allowing evil to maintain a place in your life. As you separate yourself from those things which are not of God, then you are separating yourself from evil and then it is much harder for the evil to get to you to harm you.  It is a two edged sword, you cannot practice ungodliness without it biting you too. Don’t give the devil a place in your life. Separate yourself from the things of the kingdom of darkness.

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Increase of Favor

On March 31, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Proverb 11: 27

He who diligently seeks good seeks favor, but he who searches after evil, it will come to him.

Here is another way to gain favor. Seek and go after those things which are good. If you look for evil, it will find you. If you look for the good things, the righteous things, then favor is going to follow you.

This is about a condition of our heart as well as a decision of our will. When we set our eyes and our hearts on God we end up seeking His righteousness. When we seek His righteousness, then all that we need will be added to us (Matthew 6: 33). Our Lord taught us that this is a clear way to relieve ourselves of anxiety. Pursue those things which are good. “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude” (1 Timothy 4: 4). Seeking God necessarily means searching for goodness and kindness. The other proverb which speaks so clearly of favor is Proverb 3: 3 – 4 which tells us to bind ourselves to kindness and truth. When we seek good, truth or kindness we are in fact seeking God and His ways. Therefore, unmerited favor finds us.

If on the other hand we toy around with the things which are not of God’s kingdom, then evil will find us. And that is a clearer characterization of what happens because most of us don’t go out seeking after evil but rather we tolerate things that we ought not and we sort of play around with things that we know would not please God. When you play with fire, eventually you will get burned and this has happened to so many of us. We listen to a little music that we probably wouldn’t play if our pastor was in the room. We give in to some movies that we certainly wouldn’t want God to watch with us. A little of this and a little of that and we have paved the way for the things that we don’t want in our lives to come to us. We have all but sent an engraved invitation and then we act all surprised when things happen. 

We are little magnets and we are going to attract that which we set our eyes upon. That is exactly what Solomon was trying to get across to us. If we seek good we shall attract good into our lives but if we look over in the devil’s backyard he is going to make sure that we get what we are seeking. Seek goodness, truth and kindness, bind them around your neck and the favor of God and a good reputation with God and man shall be your prize.

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Care Giver

On March 30, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 55: 22

Cast your burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

Jesus made us the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5: 21). That means we need not ever be shaken. That is good news, yes? But there is another aspect of this right standing with God that we need to appreciate. Peter wrote about it in 1 Peter 5: 7, “casting all your anxiety upon Him, because He cares for you.” The King James Version says to cast all your care upon Him. The promise of God is that He will sustain us but we must first cast our care upon Him. How can He sustain us if we are carrying the burden? We have to give Him our cares if we want Him to carry them.

 It may sound like a small thing but I really do cringe when I hear Christians telling each other to “take care.” I have said that for so many years myself and now I try to arrest myself and even correct that expression when I hear it coming out of my mouth. It is unscriptural, unbiblical and it kinda bugs me because while it may seem like a small thing it still is undermining the operation of the Kingdom of God. There are properties of the Kingdom of God just like there are the properties of physics. If you try to defy the laws of physics you will get a revelation in a hurry. When we violate the Kingdom principles we will experience the ramifications of those choices as well. Then many of us end up saying, “This faith stuff doesn’t work” or “God didn’t come through for me.” That is like saying God threw me down on the pavement when you jumped out of the third story window. Hello! The laws always work. Gravity doesn’t turn off just because we pray. The Kingdom laws are the same way. We cannot concurrently take care and give our care to the Lord. It is one or the other. And the Lord cannot sustain us if we don’t give Him the care of things. Do you see how the package all fits together? Really it is about our relationship with Him and trust. We are encouraged to cast all of our burdens on the Lord and let Him take care of them. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Implied in there is that you are supposed to give him the weight of those heavy burdens. It is all consistent. God wants to be our care taker. He wants to sustain us and carry our heavy burdens but we must first release them to Him. Then we will not be shaken because He is the keeper of our souls, the bearer of our burdens and the sustainer of our lives.

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Living Long

On March 27, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 55: 23

But Thou, O God, will bring them down to the pit of destruction; men of bloodshed and deceit will not live out half their days. But I will trust in Thee.

So, do you want to live a long life? Well, there is a hidden pearl of wisdom here. Men of deceit will not live out half their days. Ouch!! Now you see what is happening to the life span. Honesty has life in it. Deceit carries death with it. 

Deceit is interesting. I think of deceit primarily as not telling the truth but that really does not represent the thrust of the definition. According to the New American Heritage Dictionary deceit is misrepresentation, deception. It is characterized by trickiness and falseness. Deceitful means: Given to cheating or deceiving, misleading or deceptive. Some of the words associated with this idea are deceive, betray, mislead, beguile, delude, dupe, hoodwink, bamboozle, outwit, and double-cross. So what is the point? 

Deceit is not simply telling a lie. That is part of it, of course, but the greater part of deceit is to be intentionally misleading. One could tell a truth then, answer a question true technically and yet mislead the hearer. This deception is often seen in how we couch our facts. It is deceitful to represent the facts in a way which best paints the picture you want perceived when you know it is not really truthful. It is a twisting of the truth in order to mislead someone. This is a manipulation of the truth and of the person being addressed. It is reprehensible to God and will limit the number of days of the speaker. Just ponder this for a moment. We have all seen this and some of us even been guilty of it. We speak what is 10% true and leave out the other 90% of the truth because we do not like how it reflects on us or that it won’t bring about the desired result. I have watched people completely reframe an event in order to look guiltless. They will argue they did not lie because they spoke a bit of the truth but the reality is that in cloaking the greater part of the truth they are attempting to deceive someone. Now I want you to search your gut at this moment and see if you can tell how incensed this makes God. “There are six things which the Lord hates, yes seven which are an abomination to Him” (Proverb 6: 16). Out of the seven two are about not being truthful. This deceitfulness is right in the middle of all that God hates. I am guessing that is not where we want to hang out.

Jesus is truth. We are called to be the people of Jesus, therefore people of truth. It is a slap in God’s face when we mischaracterize something even it if is not a bald-face lie. In the eyes of our Father it is exactly the same thing. And why do people lie and deceive? In the end of things it is because they do not trust the Lord, their God. How much more can we insult God? Do you want to live a long and fruitful life? Be people of the truth.

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Favor and Reputation

On March 26, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Proverb 3: 3 – 4

Do not let kindness and truth leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart, so you will find favor and good repute in the sight of God and man.

The secret to attaining what we want in verse four is found in verse three. We can have favor with God and man and we are meant to. We also should enjoy a good reputation. You can work hard for a good reputation. You can apply all of the world’s wisdom on how to gain man’s favor, read all of the Positive Mental Attitude and Sales books, or you can take the shortcut. 

If we want to apply the Father’s shortcut the first thing that we must acknowledge and accept is that this is heart work again. You cannot just read the Bible like it is a self-help book and reap the benefits. The power of the Word is that it lives in you, in your heart. We are supposed to take the things that the Holy Spirit is teaching us and write them on the tablet of our hearts. Writing on our hearts is a purposeful act of our own. We choose what abides in our hearts and in this passage our Father is encouraging us to make it truth and kindness. 

Now if you really think about it, you would expect a person to have favor and a good reputation who has prioritized truth and kindness in their lives. No one likes a liar and a person who is unkind will have no friends. I think, though, that we can go even a little deeper with this. First of all, we are not talking about being unkind as much as being affirmatively kind. That is different. It means that kindness goes before you. Overt acts of kindness become one’s calling card. People ought to be able to rely on us responding with kindness. We ought to be predictably kind.

As for truth, there is truth with a little “t” and Truth with a capital “t”. The difference is Jesus. He is the truth. When THE truth is what we bind about our necks and write on the tablets of our hearts then we certainly will be favored among all people. Then telling “the truth” takes on a more profound meaning. Jesus becomes “the way” in our lives. His ways become our ways. Again we become reliable. People can count on us and that is really very important. How many people do you know that you can count on? Those people become precious to you.

God wants you to walk in favor with Him and to have favor with all people. That is why He is telling us how to get it. Favor means that things just go your way, people do things for you, give you things. Sometimes it is nothing more than a good parking place. Other times it is the impossible happening for you. In any event, you are supposed to have favor with God and man and it comes by letting God express His essential nature through you in love, kindness and truth.

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Revealed Secrets

On March 25, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Proverb 3: 2

For length of days and years of life, and peace they will add to you.

Length of days, years of life and peace are all things most of us deeply desire. Too bad the author didn’t tell us how to receive them. Okay, he did, I’m kidding. It is in verse 1 which reads, “My son, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments.” Aw man, it’s the same old drill. God hasn’t changed his mind yet. The benefits of his promises are in following Him. Go figure!

You know, it kind of perturbs me today to listen to people talk about life expectancy and getting old. First of all, most people have no expectation of living long and this is true even of Christians in spite of the many promises from God about long life. The other point that is becoming all too clear to me is that we shorten our life expectancy in so many ways the loudest of which is in not following God. When Jesus left he sent his Holy Spirit to lead us in the way we should go but probably more Christians than not never listen to what the Holy Spirit is telling them much less follow his advice. I know this was true of me and it was really showing in my life and health. But now, I have a new lease on life because I have found God’s secrets. He hid them right where I should have found them but wasn’t looking – between the covers of my Bible. But now the lid is off because I know where His secret stash is and that knowledge is now showing in my body and health too. The comparison, in fact, is like night and day.

The first part of the equation is His Word. Hey guys, it really is no mystery. There is life in that book and as I got back into it and started applying the Word, things began to change. I went from hobbling along like an ancient person to riding my mountain bike 35 miles at a time. Doesn’t that sound like a miracle to you? Well, it is but the key for this one was that I was a participant. I helped Dad bring this miracle about by hearkening to His Word, believing it and doing it.

Do you want to know super huge secret number 2? Can you handle it? Okay. The second mystery is found in the 11th word of verse 1. It is the word “heart”. Do you hate hearing that as much as I used to? No, you guys wouldn’t but it used to make my skin peel back. I just hated all that goo-goo stuff that some preachers spoke, like love and heart. Do you know what I mean? I was so intellectually entrenched that I had lost track of where I had put my heart. And just because I say that I was intellectually entrenched that does not mean that I was all that smart. Obviously, because if I really was smart I would not have made my mind and my thoughts the center of the universe. Really? How smart is that? No, it was just that my approach to the world, to problems and even to God was to think about it, to reason. Wow! Find that in the Bible. Now, however, I am on a heart journey and literally that impacts every area of my life including my health and physical well-being. God is now at work within me healing, guiding and repairing the damage. His Word lives within me, in my heart and it is spreading through me like warm honey. And it really is making a difference in how I feel, how I am able to move and how healthy I am. His Word in my heart really does work. I know Dad has been telling us that for thousands of years now but I just finally heard it so I am catching up.

There is one last thing that I have noticed that damages our life expectancy. While today’s verse is good news there are also the verses that tell us what will happen when we don’t follow the good advice that God is giving us. Just yesterday we looked at Isaiah 41: 11 which tells us what will happen to those who hassle God’s kids or who do not treat us with love. They are going to disappear. And you see, this is even true for Christians who gossip, backbite and deal dishonestly. So one of the reasons that we are seeing people die before they should is because we have not been dealing fairly with each other. Brother, when you talk that negative junk behind someone’s back you are planting a seed that is going to produce a crop that you don’t want. Then when that seed begins bearing fruit folks start blaming God. Hey, we don’t have to blame God. He is telling us up front how to live long, healthy lives. Read the Word and do it. You are going to reap great rewards.

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