In the Beginning

On February 3, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   1 Comment

John 1: 1

In the beginning was the Word.

As I journey through life, I find there are few people who don’t need healing in some part of their body. This Word of the Day devotional actually began because of this truth. In 2006 my father died of cancer. Within months of his passing, my brother was diagnosed with cancer. I knew immediately that he needed to hear what the Lord had to say about healing.

As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a great deal of misinformation and confusion out there about God’s will and thoughts on healing. When we, or a loved one becomes sick, we turn to prayer relying on God’s mercy to save us. At the same time, I frequently hear people accrediting their sickness to God. That is schizophrenic at best. Why should we pray to the one responsible for our sickness for relief from same? Yet, this incorrect theology plagues the church. When people die, some attribute their passing to God thinking it must be God’s will even though the Bible says differently. It is clear from these statements and ideas that we are confused about God’s position on healing, health, life and death.

In 2006 when my brother received his diagnosis, I thought to send him a list of verses on healing. My first thought was just to send the list of verse citations like Proverb 4: 22, Jeremiah 30: 17 etc. I had a Word document with the healing verses listed. No sooner had the thought formed in my mind, though, than I came to understand how overwhelming a long list of citations could be. So, I quickly revised my plan to sending one citation a day. Instantly I realized that to make the Word meaningful, I must make it accessible, so I decided to type out the verse itself rather than just sending the cite. Okay, I was on the right path. However, I couldn’t finish that thought before this other one occurred to me; my brother was not the only person who needed to have the healing scriptures. Then I realized that lots of folks had some ache or illness that needed the touch of God. So, the epiphany was in full bloom, finally. I would send a healing verse, one a day, typed out with the verse citation to anyone who wanted to receive them. Thus, the Word of the Day was born.

As I type this, I am both reminiscent of those early revelations and aware there are new ones coming to light even as I type. Clearly, this is about God’s desire to heal His children, but in that brief story, I, you, we, see how He speaks to us. That entire idea about sending the healing verses, even with all its revisions probably took less than one minute to come to me. Even as one iteration began to be revealed, the next one was awakening. God took me to His desired end in a matter of seconds even though my brain had to go through a sequence of ideas. Further, the ideas did not have to develop into full sentences like one would speak them. No, it was more like they flashed, fully formed, onto the screen of my mind. I saw them in an instant and then the Father moved on. I guess it might have been more like a very quick slide show. As soon as I grasped the idea or image, He moved to the next. It is a lesson in God communication. He can transfer tomes of revelation to us in a moment. Also, even though the ideas were “like” sentences to me, the message really was visual. I find that fascinating. Yahweh knows I am more of a linguist than artist, so He used words to paint the picture on my mind’s canvas. Amazing!

I hope you have enjoyed this story, but I have additional purpose for bringing it to you today. This introduces a new series we will begin. It is a series on healing combined with some attendant faith scriptures which are necessary for applying our faith for healing. I will be trusting the Lord each day for a fresh, anointed message on each scripture which is full of His revelation on healing. I expect Him to tell us things we haven’t known before. This is a personal series and not intended for your intellect. This series is meant for integration with your spirit. I pray these verses and the explanations Father provides will bless every hearer of the Word. This may be a good time to invite someone to the Word of the Day. Who do you know that could benefit from hearing God’s Word on healing?

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Prayer Relief

On February 2, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Job 42: 10

When Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes.

When you are going through a tough time, the last thing you usually think about doing is praying for others. Challenges tend to turn us inward. We are not out looking for whom we can bless. However, that is the very message of this passage.

It is interesting that God told Job’s undisciplined and antagonistic friends they must take their offering to Job and ask him to pray for them. Wow! That is some humble pie. They spent chapter upon chapter haranguing him, telling him how wrong he was and what a great sinner he must be for God to punish him so severely, never knowing Job’s problems were not God’s workings. God told them they needed to repent for their criticism and false teaching. He made them humble themselves to Job in order to receive forgiveness.

I can imagine how little Job wanted to pray for them too. He must have thought some choice things when God told him to pray for those fools. Fortunately, though, Job obeyed. The result of obedience is always the same, blessing. God completely restored Job once Job prayed for his friends.

It is this way with our lives. I used to know someone who advocated, when in a time of need, find someone to pray for. I subscribe to that advice. Many times, the best medicine is to get our eyes off ourselves. You would be amazed at how you open up the flow in your own life when you get out of yourself. When we focus on ourselves and our own problems we tend to close off and that stifles the flow of the Spirit and blessing.

Do yourself a favor! Find someone to pray for. Better still, join the Ivey Ministries prayer team. It’s easy, it’s a blessing and it is the effective work of the gospel, to which we should all be a party. Every week, or so, you will receive an email with prayer requests. Pray over those people and those requests. It couldn’t be easier. Let me know you will join us in this important work, work which will benefit you as well, by replying to this Word of the Day. Just click reply and let me know you want to join the team. You will be a blessing and will be blessed.

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Read and Review

On February 1, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Habakkuk 2: 2

Write down the vision and inscribe it clearly on tablets, so that one who reads it may run.

It is now a month since January 1st. Hopefully you wrote down some goals and have been pursuing them. It is time to go back and look at what you wrote down.

In this verse, God tells the listener to write down the vision. There is a second part, though. It is recorded so that it can be read. We have to go back and review the words God has given us and we need to do it frequently. Some of our goals develop into plans of action and then come forward into our daily activities. Perhaps you write them on your calendar in the daily to do items or track them on a monthly calendar. Regardless, we must have a way to track the pursuit of the goal. Are we taking the necessary steps, daily, which will lead to the attainment of our goals? Of course, if one of your goals was to read your Bible daily, then, obviously that is a daily activity and easily tracked. Other goals may not lend themselves to daily accounting as easily and this is where we must apply the second part of today’s verse. We need to make sure we are reviewing our goals daily so that we are in pursuit of our desired end result.

I wrote one down on January 5th that I fully intended to do. However, I was still in the process of setting and refining my goals and never got it transferred to a daily action item. Fourteen days later, I reviewed my written goals and realized I had let this one slip right through the cracks. Setting goals usually means we are initiating new patterns, things outside our normal habits. It is so easy to follow habitual patterns and not even see where a goal is being missed, even when we are sincere about that goal.

Big goals must be broken down into actionable items. The ones that happen daily are a bit easier to track than the ones that are only a weekly item. Here is what I am doing to help myself. I am writing my to do’s down on a monthly calendar and then I highlight that day when I have accomplished them. I also am journaling which gives me a place to write out my thoughts about why I might not have done all items for a day. The printed monthly calendar creates a picture. You can use multiple colors to indicate different items and also different indicators for completion or days you didn’t get it done. At the end of the week, you can see where you succeeded and which areas might need more attention. It is a very easy way to see, at a glance, if things are proceeding as planned.

I am sure you have some other good ideas of how to keep your goals and to do’s in front of you. Click the link below and share them with the group.

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The Love of Salvation

On January 31, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 John 4: 8

God is love.

Let’s talk about salvation a little bit today. We have all kinds of thoughts and theories about salvation and from many different perspectives. I would like to focus on love today. Dare I? What’s love got to do with it? I think you already know the answer. Absolutely everything.

From where does salvation come? We know that salvation is the product of Jesus’ sacrifice. We also believe that we have a responsibility to share the good news of Jesus’ offering to others so that they may know that the price of salvation has been paid for them? So, here is the question, what happens if a person dies having never encountered a person who told them about the love of God?

John 3: 16 reads, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” Jesus went on in verse 17 to say that he did not come to the earth to judge and condemn, but rather to save. So, God, who is love, offered his own son as a sin sacrifice for us because that is what love does. Another way of thinking about Jesus’ sojourn on earth is that the entire trip here was so that people would be saved.  If God sent Jesus to earth to save us, doesn’t it stand to reason that He would provide assurity that we all get multiple chances at salvation.  Would God go to such extreme measures and then leave salvation to chance?  Love saves. Love does not condemn. Love doesn’t judge, banish or kill. Those are the things of the thief, not of the Father. God gave everything so that each person on earth might be saved. Let me say this again, “Love Saves!”

So, now let me ask the question again. What happens to a person who leaves this earth having never made a confession for Christ? The answer is, Love saves. God is not dependent on me to have preached this glorious gospel in order for Him to save someone. God did not leave salvation to people. He and Jesus provided it. If you think about it, you realize it is very arrogant of us to think that we are the source of salvation. We tend to think that a person’s salvation is decided here on this earth and because some person preached him the gospel. Don’t get me wrong. I am all for everyone of us telling the good news of our salvation. I just don’t think God has left this important matter to such tenuous circumstances.

I believe in love. I believe in a Father who gave His son specifically to save us. It stands to reason, then, that He has plenty of methods in place to assure that people get the chance to meet Jesus. Who says that has to happen on this earth? Does God not have the means to control the stars and planets? Can He not meet a person in the Spirit or in ascension? Who knows, but we know that God is big. He is not limited to this earth or our corporeal ideas.

I am not saying I believe in limbo, because I know that my salvation is not the product of my right or wrong behaviors. It is because of Jesus and him only. I know my Father well enough to know that if He gave His son to die a cruel death for humanity, He isn’t going to sit on His thumbs and let us go to hell. I am convinced He has His ways to preach the gospel to people after they leave the earth. And why not? Why do we think the whole universe is tied up in our miniscule realm of experience? God is big, the universe is big, and He has ways.

Do you have a loved one who passed away without a public expression of faith? Do not worry. Jesus didn’t die on a cross just to let them pass to eternal torment without introducing himself personally. And when someone meets Jesus face to face, they will make a proper decision for him. Everyone who meets Jesus wants to be with him.

Love saves. It sent Jesus to the cross for salvation. Will Yahweh Father not do everything He can to make sure we all get to enjoy that salvation with Him? What does Love have to do with salvation? Everything, absolutely everything.

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The Great Secret

On January 28, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Colossians 1: 27

For this is the secret: Christ lives in you, and this is your assurance that you will share in his glory.

Here is your answer Job. Yesterday’s Word of the Day saw Job lost without God and no way to find Him. Job wanted to speak with God directly but didn’t know how to find Him. What great news this would have been to him.

Can we even begin to wrap our heads around this? I cannot, yet I believe it and rely on it in no small measure. The Trinity has come to earth to make its abode with us, more importantly, in us. This is the great mystery, the super-secret. Paul was astounded that he got to share it with people but like John, he struggled for the words to make it come alive in people’s minds. How do we open ourselves to this truth enough that it becomes real to us?

One of our issues is that we have been trained to be more physically minded than spiritually minded. It shows up in this question, where within us, does God abide? Is He in our hearts? Is there empty space in our abdomens that He can abide? We think of empty spaces that he can fill. That is a very physical concept. However, God is beyond that. He can fill non-empty spaces.

Begin here. Imagine your spirit. What does it look like to you? Is it some ethereal cloud like form that lives within you? Now, imagine two clouds blending together. That’s not so hard to do. You’ve watched the clouds in the sky on a summer’s day and seen it happen. They simply become one cloud. The new looks like neither of the individual clouds. They have become a new thing.

Let’s go a different direction. Perhaps your spirit is more like oxygen moving through all the spaces of your body. It infiltrates every cell. This is how I picture the Holy Spirit living in my body. He lives within muscle tissue, in blood cells; he abides in the cartilage and ligaments in knees, in bones, literally everywhere.

This is the great mystery, and it is so fascinating, but truth be told, we do not have to unravel the mystery to appreciate it. The best thing we can do is to just accept it and live our lives in the reality of it. What does life look like if you really believe Christ is in you? What if you were aware that he goes with you in every appointment or every job interview. Would that change your confidence level? Think, too, is there any place you sometimes go that you would not want to take Jesus to. That is a sobering thought.

Enjoy this great miracle of the Holy Trinity living in you, living in your spirit and in your living tissue. That ought to impact the way you think about healing too.

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God is Missing

On January 27, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Job 23: 2

If only I knew where to find God, I would go to his throne and talk with him there.

Is this not heart-breaking? How sad! Have you read Job recently? It is quite the read. If you decide it is time for you to read it again, let me caution you. Do not take your doctrine from Job’s “friends.” You will see that God was none too pleased with their advice. Anyway, it is a very interesting book to read. We are in a very different place theologically than Job but some of the similarities are alarming.

You know the story, Job was living the high life and he loved God. Then Satan came along and destroyed everything Job had and loved, including his family. Job became very confused and eventually bitter. He worked it out in the end but throughout the book you hear him voice many of the doubts and complaints we have all thought.

Now, in his eighth speech he confesses plainly, “I don’t know where God is.” In the midst of his pain and devastation, he cannot find God. Let me ask you, where was God during this time? We believe God was within reach the whole time. Job was so busy blaming God that he couldn’t find him. I don’t think he tried. He believed God was in some far off place in the clouds separated from the woes of people.

We think differently today and yet . . . I would wager that over 90% of the people reading today’s devotional have thought the same thing Job said and felt as Job must have felt. Where is this God who is supposed to love us so immensely? Why is He allowing me to suffer?

Do you know where to find God? Do you know how to get to His throne room? Do you have a place you can go to speak with God? This is a matter that must be resolved! We cannot leave this to chance any longer. You are entitled to speak with God all the time and you need to.

When I first began learning to talk with God face to face, I had to get out of his throne room. When I was in the throne room, I always felt like a conscripted soldier kneeling at the throne awaiting my marching orders. This was not the posture of a love relationship. It was servitude. I am happy to serve my God, but He was not happy. He didn’t want a servant, nor a soldier. He wanted a child. I was not ready to be a vulnerable, loving child at that time, but I needed to learn to meet Him on more level ground; I needed to be able to speak with Him, actually talk with Him.

I began by picturing the two of us sitting at my conference room table. I could look across the table and see Him. He was in the dimensions of a normal person rather than a gigantic God. I could look at Him and not be intimidated or humbled into servitude. We began there. I could sit in the comfort of my living room but still picture us at the conference room table. With my mind’s eye trained on Him, I could talk with Him, and I began to learn to hear Him.

We’ve come a long way since then. Now He rides my bike with me. Imagine the picture of me, Yahweh, the Holy Spirit and Jesus all riding my bike together. Hilarious, right? I tried leaving Jesus and HS home, but they go everywhere I go, and they go everywhere He goes so we just had to invite them too. Then there was the day I was aware of angels with me too. Look how far we have come from kneeling at the foot of the throne. Now we look like a circus act.

Where is God Job? Where is His throne room? He is right there with you right now. He doesn’t need a throne or a throne room. He is happier sitting beside the creek or on the beach with you. Close your eyes. Picture Yahweh in a cozy chair across from you where you are both seated next to a crackling fire in the fireplace. Or picture the two of you in a two person kayak. Whatever your comfort spot is, close your eyes and see it. Then see Yahweh right there with you. Now, open up your mouth and say, right out loud, whatever it is you’ve been wanting to talk with Him about. Leave the holy prayers for Sunday and just speak. Talk with your best friend. He is right there with you, right now. How’s that?

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Forgiveness

On January 26, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Ephesians 1: 7        NIV

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.

Yesterday we observed a bit of what God’s grace does for us. Today’s verse adds another dimension. The grace of God provides for our redemption, restoration and the forgiveness of sins.

Sometimes I am awed at the amazing end play God pulled off to restore humanity. It is an amazing story and the devil played right into God’s hands. Then again, he was predictable, and God took advantage of the situation to install Jesus as the unblemished lamb who became king. This miracle of planning and execution brought humanity into an enviable position and now we walk as heirs to a mighty empire.

This thing about forgiveness is interesting though. I have met people who cannot receive forgiveness. It is truly sad that they would let the blood of Jesus, which was spilled for them, have no effect in their lives. The converse is true too. There are some who take the blood and forgiveness for granted. Most of us understand the blood of forgiveness which God’s grace and love caused to be shed and we are grateful. However, I wonder if the more we understand the forgiving power that was in that blood the more we are likely to take it for granted. Sometimes the biggest sinners are the most grateful because they feel their salvation and redemption as if it is close at hand. Others, perhaps, are not as keenly aware of the heat of hell that was burning for them.

The plan of God to restore us was intricate. However, receiving forgiveness, now, on this side of the cross, is actually easy. “Father, please forgive me.” In fact, we actually already have forgiveness. Our sins have already been forgiven. We don’t have to show up at the temple and offer the blood of animals to cover over our sin. It has been done in Jesus. Now, I know you already know this but here is my question, does this simplicity ever make it less frightening for us to sin? We know we have forgiveness so do we ever get complacent? Do we think we can sin now and pray later, and everything will be alright? Do we use our forgiveness as an excuse to be lazy about sin? What is the harm in a little sin behavior right now when we know we can ask for forgiveness later?

I like to think none of us does this consciously, but I do wonder if the benevolence and magnitude of God’s grace ever makes us a little sloppy. Some people have actually used the grace message to develop a doctrine around loose behavior. It’s crazy and I am not talking about those people. They are just being stupid, and they know better. I am more interested in us, regular, everyday Christians. Have we become desensitized to the point that we are no longer concerned about offending God? It is just a question I have been pondering and thought you might ponder with me. I would love to hear your thoughts. Click on the link below and share. Thanks.

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