Year: 2014

Covenant Friendship

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Covenant friendship is one of heaven’s greatest blessings. I believe it was Michael Smith who said, “friends are friends forever if the Lord is the Lord of them.” We catch glimpses of it, between Ruth and Naomi. “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” (Ruth 1:16, 17).

God owns everything but these

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I have no complaint about your sacrifices or the burnt offerings you constantly offer. But I do not need the bulls from your barns or the goats from your pens. For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird on the mountains, and all the animals of the field are mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for all the world is mine and everything in it. Do I eat the meat of bulls? Do I drink the blood of goats? Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God, and keep the vows you made to the Most High. Then call on me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give me glory.” (Psalms50:8-15 NLT) I have always heard it said, “God doesn’t need anything from us.” But today I will shock you by telling you that is a false statement. Even thought God owns everything, in His infinite wisdom, He has given away His ability to control, …

The Weakness of Great Men

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The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you? 15 Statements About Gideon the Mighty Man of Valor. Judges 6 Sometimes great men are found in lowly places. See verse 11 Sometimes great men have a false sense of humility. See verses 12, 13 Sometimes great men doubt God and question His faithfulness. See verse 13 Sometimes great men fail to realize that it is only in their weakness that God shows up strong. See verse 15 Sometimes great men fail to realize that victory is only certain if God is in it. See verse 16 Sometimes great men don’t recognize their greatness. So they waste their time devoted to common and frivolous things. See verse 11, 14 Sometimes great men doubt their greatness even when repeatedly reminded. See verse 12 Sometimes great men lack perspective in difficult surroundings and circumstances. See verse 12 Sometimes great men just don’t have a clue of how to take next …

Monday Night Meditation

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Your God has Summoned Power for you   A few weeks ago Didi Higgins walked into our church with Breast Cancer. She shared her story with us and our hearts broke for her. A bunch of women gathered around her praying and crying over her. We put her on our prayer chain for continued prayer. Yesterday she showed up at church with a report from her doctor – cancer free. God healed her completely! I am so thankful to The Lord for his healing. And to Him be all the glory. Psalm 68:28 says, “summon your power oh God. Show us your strength like you have done before.” In most Hebrew manuscripts, the phrase is – Your God has summoned power for you. So let it be tonight. That God’s power will heal, save and deliver everyone needing his mighty hand.

Do not let your good intensions grow stale

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But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also. I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:7-9 ESV) The church in Corinth was a very dynamic yet dysfunctional church. They were experiencing the supernatural workings of God, and excelling in their ability to channel those supernatural workings of God to the benefit of the entire community. They had: 1. Faith to move mountains 2. Speech like the tongues of men and of angels, gifts of prophecy, 3. Knowledge to understand all mysteries 4. Earnestness to surrender their lives as martyrs for the kingdom At some time, they had made pledges to support the church in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, they …

Where are the modern day Watchmen?

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On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the LORD in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth. Isaiah 62:6-7 I hate to sound judgmental especially when it comes to prayer. After all, it is something we must to pursue privately. Yes! I agree that we are to stand in concerts of prayer or hold public prayer meeting  – the one held in the upper room and like the one, the apostles held when the place they stood shook after they got through praying. Unfortunately, we are not seeing that passionate pursuit both from those sitting in the pew and those standing in the pulpit. The statistics are quite heart-breaking. Prayer is not high up on our priority list.  Because of our lack of prayer, we are not seeing the hand of God in and around us. Here are a few things we miss out on: The …

15 Prayers for the Big C Church

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My teenage daughter was at youth camp last week. They had the young and dynamic preacher named Isaiah Saldivar as the speaker every evening. It was really good. At the end of the week when I arrived to pick her up, they were doing a Q&A session and a few people were sharing. A young man got up and began to share about how frustrating it is for him when it comes to denominational differences. He is from a Nazarene church, but is cool with coming to a camp at an Assembly of God Church. I applaud him for speaking his mind about the frustrations too many young people face when it comes to this subject.  His willingness to seek God with friends from other denominations is a good step toward creating a friendly attitude to denominational differences. Having said that, I think too many Christians are mistaking to think that denominational differences are of the devil. I believe that there are denominational differences today because people naturally choose to align themselves with groups that hold or espouse their …