Words of Life
“The Bible will keep you from sin, or sin will keep you from the Bible. The Bible was not given for our information but for our transformation.”
Dwight L. Moody
life
We all Need Encouragement
Who is someone you could go out and encourage today? What random stranger could you give an unexpected, unknown encouragement to? Your encouragement to them today will mean a lot coming from you. You could give a random friend a hug and tell them you’re happy that the two of you are friends. You could call up a random friend and tell them you miss them and are praying for them.
Be Still…I am God
We go days, weeks and months without purposely being still. When we are caught in a situation where we must wait we are bored out of our minds. We’re impatient as we wait and become crankier and more irritated the longer that waiting lasts. Some of us have ways of dealing with these times and they often involve either taking a nap or whipping out our smart phone to surf the internet, text, e-mail or something fun or work related to pass the time and feel productive.
God’s Good Plan for Your Life (Sermon)
But then I got a letter from Moody that read, “We’re sorry but there’s no more room for you at the Moody Bible Institute”. In other words, “We’re sorry but your application wasn’t good enough and you’ve been rejected”. But, but, but, that WAS the PLAN! My thoughts raced, why had God allowed this road block? How was I going to serve God if He didn’t let me go forward with THE PLAN???
God’s Will
So many Christians in our day and age wonder what God’s will is for their lives. When we read Jeremiah 29:11, we wonder what plans God has for our lives. Sadly, we’ve somehow been lead to believe that we must grope about in the darkness for this secret plan God must be hiding from us, since we don’t know what it is. The first problem with this subconscious view on our lives is that if God had a specific plan for us, why would He hide it from us? If He truly loves us, which I do believe—would He hide His plan for our good from us, if we needed to know it to somehow follow it??
God’s Good Plan for Your Life
To me, the “PLAN” was falling apart, this was not how it was supposed to go. But let’s remember, that God’s definition of “good” isn’t always our definition of “good”. See when I think of “good” I think “happy”, “comfortable”, “cool”, “not-stressful”. But see often God’s good plan for my life is for the good of my character, and He knows that my character won’t get stretched and I that I won’t grow if I’m always “comfortable” and never “stressed”. “Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)
The Father’s Work (Sermon)
We often we find in our lives that God seems nowhere to be found. We cannot see Him, we cannot smell Him, we cannot taste Him or feel Him. Yet He is there. We know this because if we’re still for long enough we can feel the effects of Him working and moving in our lives. Jacob wrote, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:16) He is there… always present. He is at work. He is busy doing His God-sized projects.
Dying to Self
Every single day we must wake up and allow Christ to kill the old man. The flesh must die. The old man must be killed, the desires that raise up within you that desire things of the old man must die. Let Christ kill the old man every time he rears his ugly head. The old man will look strangely familiar—he will look more like you and be more dear to you then anyone else you know. But if Christ is to grow the New Man within you that looks more like Jesus, then the old man must go. There is no use in keeping him around, he will only drag you down to hell. The old flesh must die.
He is a Paradox to the World
He is the Father to those who hate their fathers. He is a dictator to those who refuse to be ruled or surrender. He is a lover to those who have been burned by love. To those who do not believe in the unseen, He is unseen. To those who are blind, He is visible. To those who are wise, He is foolishness. Yet to those who are foolish, He presents Himself as wisdom and understanding. To those who would pray to false gods, He reveals their fabrication. To those who say that He is not there, He is present. For those who spread falsehood and lies, He is truth and honesty. To those who are judgmental, He is merciful and full of grace. To those who shake their fists demanding God give an answer, He is silent and does not respond.