Poised for Promotion

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

Ephesians 6: 5

Slaves, be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in the sincerity of your heart, as to Christ.

Just in case you thought Friday’s word was a fluke and could ignore it, here is another book in which God commands us to be good employees. God is concerned with the condition of our spirits and our testimony. In everything we do, we are representatives of Him. If we talk about others behind their backs, then we are being bad stewards of the faith God has placed in us. That is especially detrimental when that person is our boss or pastor or some other person God has placed in authority. You are damaging your own spirit and spiritual growth as well as sowing bad seeds and disobeying the directions of the Lord.

Your boss or whomever that person of authority is, will account to God for their actions and that really is none of your concern. Your calling requires you to be the best employee you can and to pray for all of those who are in authority positions. God wants to be able to use you. He wants to be able to send you into situations where you can do His work. You have to take your eyes off of yourself first. Do not be self-concerned but instead pray. God might have put you under that person just because they do need help. How is God supposed to move in the earth if every time he sends a Christian into a situation, they gripe and criticize, worrying only about themselves and their rewards? If the circumstances are not perfect where you work then maybe it is that very brokenness that has attracted God’s attention and the reason why He has sent you there. Be faithful in your current position. Show God you have what it takes to be one of his lieutenants. Then you will be poised for promotion.

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Talking to Rocks

On May 12, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Numbers 20: 8, 11

Take the rod; and you and your brother Aaron assemble the congregation and speak to the rock before their eyes, that it may yield its water. You shall thus bring forth water for them out of the rock and let the congregation and their beasts drink. Then Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came for abundantly and the congregation and their beasts drank.

This is undoubtedly one of the hardest lessons for us to learn. Moses sure learned it the hard way. God told him to speak to the rock and the rock would then yield its water. Moses, instead, struck the rock with his rod. It was an act of pure defiance and it cost Moses dearly. Because he disobeyed God, striking the rock instead of speaking to it, Moses was not allowed to go into the land of promise.

I don’t believe Moses was kept out of the Promised Land as some form of punishment. I think God couldn’t use Moses to take the people into the Promised Land. God was teaching His people that you must speak to your mountains if you want them to move. When they finally did enter into the Promised Land behind Joshua they took Jericho with obedience and a shout. God knew what lay ahead and He had a plan to turn over the land to the Israelites. In order to receive their new land the Israelites need to learn obedience, when to speak and when not to speak. There is a deep message here and it has a great deal to do with the words of our mouth. 

Our words are containers for God’s power. However, if we cannot marshal our tongues then He cannot give us His power. When God instructed the people to march around Jericho He also gave them explicit directions about when to keep silent and when to speak. When the appropriate time came they were instructed to shout. Then the walls of Jericho fell at their feet and all they did was march, obey and speak.

Jesus told us to speak to our mountains in the same way that the Israelites spoke to those walls. (Matthew 17: 20, Matthew 21: 21, Mark 11: 23). He learned from his father that the way to get water from a rock or to get a problem to desist was to speak to it. This is the lesson we must learn if we would live the life of success and grace that Jesus meant for us. Jesus did not say that if we would pray to the Father the mountain would get up and jump in the sea. Now I believe most earnestly in prayer but I am also fervent about doing what Jesus said. That means that I must eventually embrace this notion of speaking to the rock and commanding it to give me water, and talking to that mountain and ordering it into the sea.

I do not expect this teaching to be comfortable. It isn’t to me but I understand that this is where a great number of us are missing it with God. He has told us to speak to the rock and we’re running around hitting it with a stick. There is a time to pray. There is a time to seek. There is also, though, a time to speak to that mountain and this we must learn. Whatever that mountain is that is blocking your way, start speaking to it in the name of Jesus. Tell it what the Word says and tell it to move out of the way. It has to obey.

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The Tail of the Snake

On December 22, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Exodus 4: 2 – 4

And the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” And he [Moses] said, “A staff.” Then He said, “Throw it on the ground” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from it. But the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand and grasp it by its tail” – so he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand.

I wonder how much time elapsed between when Moses fled and when he picked up the serpent by its tail. I think most of us would have fled when the staff turned into a serpent. What distinguishes Moses from many of us is that he did grab the serpent’s tail. 

Has God ever told you to do something that made absolutely no sense? What was your reaction? I know what I would have done if I was in Moses’ position. I would have said to myself, “That cannot be God telling me to grab the snake. Surely God wouldn’t tell me to grab a snake by the tail.” I would have talked myself out of it. There is an important life lesson in here. God is trying to lead us into the promised land but too many of us don’t obey His commands. When God told me to close my law practice and go into full time ministry I reasoned and thought until I talked myself out of following God. I convinced myself that I was not hearing God’s voice. It took a major event before I conceded that I was being led to leave the practice of law. I reasoned myself out of obedience. Looking back I can see that God had been nudging me for quite a while and I just couldn’t or wouldn’t hear Him. We will never get where we want to go if we do not follow God’s instructions. The road to the promised land is always paved with obedience.

When I think about some of the ridiculous things that God told people in the Bible stories to do it makes me laugh. The thing that makes them great stories, though, is that the people obeyed God and followed those outlandish directions. How many would-be Bible heroes do you think missed inclusion in the greatest book of all time because they reasoned away the instructions of God? Well, just be grateful that I wasn’t the one who was told to grab the snake’s tail. The nation of Israel would still be in Egypt. However, you could be the next great spiritual hero. Just do what God says. Don’t question His logic. Don’t reason. Just be a child and trust your Dad.

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Follow the Blessing

On August 27, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Deuteronomy 28: 2

And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you will obey the Lord your God.

When you read the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy you see that there is much blessing promised in that chapter. I quite like the idea of the blessing chasing us down in the street and overtaking us. And as much as we might relish that thought and even believe God, we still might question how it is going to happen. The answer, fortunately, is in the last phrase of the sentence. The blessing is in our obedience. That may sound more spiritual than it needs to. It is more basic than many of us appreciate. God will bless you even in tough economic times by giving you ideas and plans for gaining wealth. Maybe he is telling you to save 10% of your income. Maybe he is telling you to give money to a charity. We have to become sensitive to the urges God is using to prompt us and then we must obey. Maybe we have thought to give money to a minister but haven’t done it. Maybe we had a generous thought towards someone else and didn’t follow through. God isn’t trying to get something from you; he is trying to get something to you. He will prosper you in these times but you must obey. In the midst of a bad economy, God wants to prosper you abundantly. Listen to what he is telling you. Pray about it and by all means follow through.

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Our Gift to the Lord

On July 3, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

1 Samuel 15: 22

Samuel said, “Has the LORD as much delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, And to heed than the fat of rams.”

This is a fairly well known scripture, especially the latter part of it but let us also read it from the God’s Word translation: “Is the LORD as delighted with burnt offerings and sacrifices as he would be with your obedience? To follow instructions is better than to sacrifice. To obey is better than sacrificing the fat of rams.” This version speaks plainly about the weight of sacrifice vs. obedience.

Clearly we do not offer burnt sacrifices today so how do we equate this in modern terms? We would talk in terms of “works”. Our sacrifices are more in the line of working at the church, participating in all of the food drives, etcetera. There has never been anything wrong with the sacrifices nor the works. The problem lies in the fact that over the eons we have all substituted the true sacrifice desired by God with all of these other things. We need to be able to speak honestly about works the way the old prophets spoke openly about burnt offerings but in order to do that we must first agree that there is no open criticism about any of those things. Our projects are worthy. They just are not worthy as a sacrifice because what God is seeking is our obedience.

God wants to rule in our hearts. I remember when God told me to leave the practice of law and go into full time ministry. It made absolutely no sense to me. But why does what God tells us to do need to survive our scrutiny? Anyway, it took me a long time to heed God’s instructions. I was very active in church but I was in disobedience and things got messy for awhile. Eventually I got the cart righted and did as I was told and believe me, my life improved as a result. Being outside the will of God is just not a good place to be. I was trying to do all the right things but I was missing the big one, obedience. God was trying to lead me into a place of peace and blessing but I was too busy working myself to death to heed Him. It sounds silly now but I just couldn’t hear Him through the noise of my life.

This shows that you can have the very best intentions and still miss the mark by a mile. We busy ourselves with what we think God would have us do rather than simply spending some quiet time with Him finding out. I have learned that He doesn’t think the way we do so the only way we can know His mind is to give Him time to convey His thoughts to us. Ministers are the very worst about this. It is easy to spend so much time doing the work of God that we never spend any time with Him or in the Word. This is great error and will always end in trouble. We all must be still and listen to the voice of the Lord so that we can follow His instructions. He is always leading us on the blessed path but we must be able to hear Him. And then, once we do hear, we are really best served if we will hurry to obey Him. You don’t have to understand what He is doing or why. Just know that He has your interest in mind. He is leading you to the blessing place, the oasis in the desert. If you don’t heed Him, believe me, it is going to be barren and dry. 

Forget your religious sacrifices and traditions and seek His face. Ask Him if you are doing what He has directed you to do. If you have missed something, don’t fret, just get on track. Your obedience to His Word and to His instructions will serve you well because it will lead you to your anointed place. It will be well with you if you will obey the Lord.

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Jesus Reveals Himself

On June 2, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 14: 21, 23 – 24

Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him. If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. He who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.

What powerful words from our Lord Jesus! One thing you might find interesting is discovering how many times the Lord spoke about words. It is quite fascinating. In this passage Jesus makes an outstanding promise to us. To paraphrase; if we will keep Jesus’ commandments then he and the father will love us AND Jesus will show himself to us. Those seem like enormously great promises. One of the techniques you can use in helping you glean fullness from scriptures is to look at the reward and work backward. I want Jesus and the Father to love me. I want Jesus to reveal himself to me so all I have to do is to look backward and I can see what I need in order to see that promise fulfilled. It is honoring the words of Jesus that yield the reward. We begin by reading our Bibles but we do not stop there. Reading the Bible is great but think about it for a moment, a lot of folks read the Bible who are not Christians. That which makes us Christians is the implementation of what we read in the Bible.

We can work backward in the second part of the passage as well. When we do so we discover that those who do not obey Jesus’ teachings do not love him. This might cause us each to pause and consider our ways. Are we following Jesus’ teachings? If we do not then do we really love Jesus? Do we say we love Jesus but fail to do the things that show that love? Has our love grown cold? 

These verses certainly cause me moments of quiet contemplation. We might very well ask, “What are these words, teachings and commandments that we are supposed to be obeying.” Well, I say start with the red letters and work your way out. Every word in the Bible is divine because Jesus is the word. He has given us each of the books of the Bible in order to teach us vital lessons, sometimes even what not to do. When all is said and done, though, you will find all of Jesus’ teachings encapsulated in the One Commandment, the commandment of love but it takes the whole book including the divine revelations given to Paul and John for us to even know what love means much less how to walk in a command to love.

Further, when we understand that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus then we should embrace immediately Jesus’ statement that the words that he speaks are not his own. He spoke what he heard the father speak. This is a good model for us as well. Once we learn what Jesus spoke and how he spoke, once we connect with Jesus inside of us, then perhaps we can say that the words we speak are not our own but rather those given us by our savior and Lord.  

Ultimately, when we heed the words that Jesus gave us, the words of life, then we experience the life of Christ growing within us. When we honor his commandments with obedience we give permission for our life in Christ to swell and fill us. As we give way from our ideas to God’s ways the love of God and of His dear son fill us and we will see Jesus revealed to us. More importantly, others will see Jesus revealed through us. Amen.

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Power in Obedience

On April 17, 2014   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Joshua 7: 5              NIV

And the men of Ai struck down about thirty-six of their men, and pursued them from the gate as far as Shebarim, and struck them down on the descent, so the hearts of the people melted and became as water.


So to recap, Joshua is in charge of the nation of Israel. They have crossed over the Jordan River by a miracle of God and enjoyed a supernatural victory over Jericho. Jericho was a strong and fortified city but the Israelites took it without a struggle. Now they have gone up against a small town called Ai. Joshua’s advisors told him that he only needed to send up two or three thousand men because the enemy was few. So Joshua sent up about three thousand men but the text says, “They were routed by the men of Ai” (v. 4). So what has happened here?

After the defeat of Jericho, God gave the Israelites specific instructions regarding the disposition of the spoils of war. Some of the spoils they were allowed to keep but other material was designated for the treasury of God. After the defeat at Ai, Joshua fell on his face before the Lord perplexed at how a small band of men could defeat the nation that took Jericho so easily. Wouldn’t you know, when the army of the Lord entered Jericho some of the men took what belonged to the Lord and kept if for themselves. There they sealed their fate.

This would be an appropriate place to talk about the tithe and stealing from God but there is another facet of this behavior worth considering also. Our behaviors, our hearts condemn us. It is hard to receive from God when your heart tells you that you don’t deserve His mercies and kindness. One might argue in one’s mind that the benefits of being a child of God still accrue to them but their heart will not allow them to receive. True, God still loves us, Jesus still died for us but we separate ourselves from God because of the guilt and shame in our heart of hearts.  

If there is any sin keeping you from full fellowship with the Lord of Grace simply confess it and pour the blood of Jesus over it. You never have to feel guilt over it again. But make sure you renounce it and turn away from it too. You are made clean in the blood of the lamb and in Jesus you can and should enjoy the fullness of the abundant life. Be filled with the loving grace and mercy of our Lord.

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