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Archive for the ‘Encouragement’ Category

The Greatest Commandment – Part 1

09 May

Matthew 22:34-40 – 34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:

 36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

The first and most important commandment Jesus reminds us is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Simply stated that’s a command to make him number one, before anything else in our lives.  Before we think of ourselves, our wants, our goals, even our family, we are supposed to give it all to God first.

Here’s where the trickle down method finally does work.  Once you serve God and love Him with every fiber of your being and seek what He wants for your life, the rest will fall into place.

You see He wants you to take care of your family.  He wants you to make Him first in your family.  He wants you to pass this commandment onto them and have you all serve Him every day. 

God wants you.  He wants your love and He isn’t looking for a robot that has no choice. 

But just as your children have a choice, you want them to love you.  You want them to make the right decisions.  You want them to have a respectful loving relationship with you.  Your desire is to reward them and take care of them.

Unless of course, they’re bent on evil.  They never call you on the phone.  They never care to know how you’re doing.  They’re too busy fulfilling their selfish desires, or worse.

Do you still love them?  Let me answer that one for you.  You should.  I would like to also add right here that if you are in this situation, pray.  Every day.  Don’t under estimate the power of prayer.  Satan would love for you to under estimate the power of prayer.

God has given us a model in many things in our lives that we either overlook or choose to ignore and this is one them.  God loves us as His children and constantly wants us to snap out of it and reconnect.

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.  Yet in our society and in these last days, were lucky if we squeeze in 60 seconds for Him.

Tomorrow is the second most important commandment, which “is like it.”

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration, Motivation

 

Even In The Small Things Praise the Lord

01 May

We all know we should praise the Lord.  Yet most of us don’t praise Him enough.  

I typed in -Praise the Lord- on the NIV version of the bible and it came up 100 times in the book of Psalms.  David knew the importance of praising the Lord in all you do.

We take for granted the small things in life.  The shelter we live in and the food He has provided.  The safety we have right now.

There are the other areas in our life when something may get canceled that we were looking forward to.  We don’t know the future and it may very well have been for our own safety.  Our car trip may get delayed just 15 seconds because of something that would have happened if not for the intervention of the Lord.  We need to Praise the Lord even when nothing spectacular happens, because even when you don’t understand it, He has your back if you are serving Him. 

If you’re like my wife and I and you misplace things more often than you want to, pray that the Lord helps you find it.  When He does and it’s usually right away, praise and thank Him for that.

I want to finish today by having you read a Psalm of David.  It is one many that he dedicated to Praising the Lord.

Psalm Chapter 145:
1 I will extol You, my God, O King;
         And I will bless Your name forever and ever.
 2 Every day I will bless You,
         And I will praise Your name forever and ever.
 3 Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
         And His greatness is unsearchable.
         
 4 One generation shall praise Your works to another,
         And shall declare Your mighty acts.
 5 I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty,
         And on Your wondrous works.
 6 Men shall speak of the might of Your awesome acts,
         And I will declare Your greatness.
 7 They shall utter the memory of Your great goodness,
         And shall sing of Your righteousness.
         
 8 The LORD is gracious and full of compassion,
         Slow to anger and great in mercy.
 9 The LORD is good to all,
         And His tender mercies are over all His works.
         
 10 All Your works shall praise You, O LORD,
         And Your saints shall bless You.
 11 They shall speak of the glory of Your kingdom,
         And talk of Your power,
 12 To make known to the sons of men His mighty acts,
         And the glorious majesty of His kingdom.
 13 Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
         And Your dominion endures throughout all generations.
         
 14 The LORD upholds all who fall,
         And raises up all who are bowed down.
 15 The eyes of all look expectantly to You,
         And You give them their food in due season.
 16 You open Your hand
         And satisfy the desire of every living thing.
         
 17 The LORD is righteous in all His ways,
         Gracious in all His works.
 18 The LORD is near to all who call upon Him,
         To all who call upon Him in truth.
 19 He will fulfill the desire of those who fear Him;
         He also will hear their cry and save them.
 20 The LORD preserves all who love Him,
         But all the wicked He will destroy.
 21 My mouth shall speak the praise of the LORD,
         And all flesh shall bless His holy name
         Forever and ever.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Motivation

 

Does The Idea Of It Being The End Times Scare You

29 Apr

If we are living in the end times, does the idea of that scare you?

I’m not going to lie to you, if you don’t have Jesus as your Lord and Savior it should.  I have studied Revelation, Daniel, and the end times in the bible and for those left on earth it’s ugly.

The seven year tribulation is God’s wrath for those who have rejected him.  The Last 3 and half years of the tribulation is the devils hell on earth tour, after getting kicked out of heaven. 

In short, you don’t want to be here.

If you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I believe you will be saved from the wrath that is to come.

1 Thessolonians 1:10 – 10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.

1 Thessolonians 5:9 – 9For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.

There are other scriptures also that I believe indicate Christians will be spared from the seven year tribulation.  I’m refered to as a pre-trib rapture guy.  I will be going over those scriptures more in future posts when I do write on the rapture.  However we still can go through trials and tribulation on this earth as it states in the Bible, just like many of our brothers and sisters in the Lord all over the world are experiencing today. 

What’s the difference?  The Bible says the seven year tribulation is God’s wrath.

Another personal thought I’d like to share is I believe Jesus wants us to be excited about his coming again for the Church.  In all honesty I trust the Lord completely and whatever plans he has for me in these last days I will do it and do it lovingly.  But if the Church is supposed to be slaughtered in the last days as tribulation saints, my excitement wouldn’t be there like it is right now.  I believe the scriptures give us a reason to be excited.    

As I stated I plan to do many posts on the rapture in the future, but right now if you don’t know Jesus as your personal Savior I want to encourage you to do so now.  There are tribulation saints that do have to reject the mark of the beast and will die for their faith in Jesus, but I believe those are new Christians that missed the rapture.  Don’t miss it.  Go over to the “How To Accept Jesus Page” on the upper right column of this blog.  It will show you the simple step of how to accept the Lord and how to get started in your new walk.    

 
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Posted in Bible Prophecy, Encouragement, Motivation, Salvation

 

Story of Joseph – Trust in the Lord Part II

26 Apr

Continued from yesterday…….

It says that when Joseph was in prison the Lord was kind to him.  In prison he found favor with the warden and the warden put him charge of all the other prisoners.

The two most notable prisoners were the cup bearer and baker of Pharaoh, which he had thrown into prison.  Both had a dream and Joseph let them know that God can interpret dreams. 

If you have never read Genesis, it is one of the best reads of the bible.  Genesis covers many important things that you will always come back to in your studies.  If you have not read it please do so sometime soon.

To paraphrase the dreams, he told the cup bearer that he would be restored and fill Pharaoh’s cup for him again in three days.  He interpreted the baker’s dream and let him know that he would be hung in three days.  It happened just as Joseph had said, since it came from God, and he told the cup bearer not to forget about him when he was restored back to his job.

Of course, he was forgotten for two more years.  Once again, in prison, doing well, helping others in high places, and it’s still not looking like roses.

Does he get discouraged?  No.  He trusts in the Lord.

Two years later, Pharaoh has a dream.  Nobody can interpret the dream.  Then the cup bearer remembers Joseph. 

Mighty nice of him, huh?  Actually I’m joking here, because it’s important to understand God is in control.  When you serve the Lord wholeheartedly, he provides the timeline and the path.  But that’s another post.  Back to this one.    

The cup bearer says to Pharaoh that he is reminded of a young Hebrew in prison that interpreted his dream along with the baker’s dream correctly.

So Pharaoh asks for Joseph and Joseph interprets his dream.  It is a dream that states seven good years of crops are coming followed by seven years of famine.  Pharaoh like everyone else that came into contact with Joseph, puts him in charge of everything underneath him.  That’s the whole country besides respect to the throne.

You see, Joseph never lost trust in the Lord.  He could have easily have done so with the path he was on.  He could have become discouraged, could have rebelled, decided that if evil is rewarded for good what’s the point?

But he didn’t.  As a result the whole region was spared from starvation.

We need to trust in the Lord.  We need to get our lives focused of the Him, live the way He wants us to, study His word regularly, and be ready for the plan He has for each and every one of us.

Your steps might not make sense to you now.  You might think God is not looking after you.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  But we need to trust and meditate on the Lord and prepare ourselves, so He has an obedient person to use.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration

 

Story of Joseph – Trust in the Lord Part I

25 Apr

The Last major story of Genesis involves Joseph, the oldest son born to Rachel and the eleventh of twelve, which belonged to Jacob.

Joseph had a heart for the Lord that never quit.  As a result of the prosperity and favor the Lord showed him, he had jealous people around him, which caused him some undesirable mishaps.

His own brothers contemplated to kill him.  Reuben, his oldest brother talked the rest of them out of it, and instead threw him into a cistern that had no water.  Before he could come back and rescue Joseph, his brothers had sold him to some Midianite merchants traveling by in a caravan.

Why did the brothers want to kill Joseph?

One, because God gave him a dream, which signified he would rule over his brothers, father and mother.

Two, because he found so much favor in his father’s eyes that he gave him a beautiful robe.  This brought jealousy on from the other brothers.

He was sold by the Midianites to Potiphar, one of Pharaoh’s officers in Egypt.  It says the Lord was with Joseph and Potiphar put him in charge of his whole household. 

Things were going well for Joseph again.  Then Potiphar’s wife gets a wild hair that she wants to seduce Joseph and when he doesn’t cave in, she tells her husband that he was trying to make sport of her.  As a result Potiphar had him thrown into prison.

Once again, here is a man, who is earnestly seeking God and trying to do what is right in the Lord’s eyes. 

He goes from being his father’s most cherished son, to being a slave.  He goes from being the keeper of his Master’s whole household, to getting thrown into prison.

Why is he in prison?  For being a righteous man and not doing an evil thing, like sleeping with Potiphar’s wife.

It’s easy to understand that most people would start getting discouraged.  Most people would think, what’s the point?  The more I try to seek God and do what’s right, the more I get punished.

Joseph, however, continued to Trust in the Lord.

Continued to tomorrow…..

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Inspiration

 

It Matters To God

22 Apr

Many of my friends around the office get this one from me in different forms, but it’s a fact.

It matters.  It matters to God!

What matters?  Everything Matters! 

Are you saying that if I decide to watch a baseball game or if I want to go shopping it matters?  Yes.  It matters.  If your watching baseball everyday and giving no time to your family and especially no time to God and Jesus.  It matters!  If you’re out spending money you don’t have, if it takes your time away from your family all the time, or your spending your tithe on shopping.  It matters!

Now on the flip side.  If you like to shop and you’re being responsible, it just happens to be what you like to do in your special down time, you’re being a good steward of what God has entrusted you with.  It matters.  God wants you to enjoy yourself.  Same with sports.  As long as it doesn’t become you’re God and take your time away from him or your responsiblities, it matters.

God made you to have relationship and worship him.  He also made you to enjoy activities.  He made you to enjoy fellowship with each other.  The fact you like to golf, horses, or something else doesn’t mean it comes from the devil.  He made you to enjoy those things.  However, when they become your number one or first love, it matters.

God allows you to think on your own.  We want our children to think on their own.  What happens when they think on their own and it isn’t good thinking.  Well one example could be this.

Don’t fill up the bathtub full of water and jump in it with an electrical appliance plugged in.
Why?  It’s just a matter of choice, isn’t it?  We all do things differently, right?
Wrong!  We don’t want them to do this obviously because it will kill them.

God is warning us throughout his Word that we can’t do certain things or they are either going to physically kill us, like many of the scriptures in the Old Testament he gave to the Jews.  He has given us many times more of those things that will keep us from dying spiritually.  He doesn’t want us to die spiritually.  It matters!

It mattered enough, that after Adam and Eve decided to turn away from Him, He chose to have His Son come down and die in our place.

He didn’t have to do that.  But, YOU matter!  And what you do matters.

The next time you choose to lie to someone, it matters.  The next time you help someone, it matters.  The next time you tell someone about Jesus, who He is, and what He has done for all of us, it really matters.

If you choose not to accept the Lord before you die, I’m afraid it’s going to be the only thing that matters.  Don’t miss the most important decision you need to make in your life. 

If you haven’t accepted Jesus as your Savior, please do so now.  If you are wondering why I need a Savior, I have wrote an outline the best I could and condensed it  down for you.  You need another reason?  You’re not in control of your life on earth.  Someone can drive over the center line and in one second your dead.  Someone can be walking down the street and bang, your dead. 

If you want to say a prayer and accept the Lord, I have put a page in the right hand upper column to help you start a new relationship with your Loving Creator.

 
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Posted in Encouragement, Motivation, Opinion

 
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