Do not forget that we are an army.
Legions upon Legions of angels stand alongside us, beating their sword on their shields, marching out unafraid.
We have a shield too. As well as a sword.
We match forward in boots and helmet that are a little too big because we are still growing into them, making Jesus smile. He bends down and lifts our visor, looking into our eyes with a huge smile.
Then, as the leader He is, He stoops low and tightens our boot laces before taking our hand and leading us forward. He knows we cannot fight alone.
He knows we are broken and scared. He surrounds us with His army of angels and sends us forward despite our weakness. But not alone. The King and His army fight with us.
Category: Devotional
Bridges
We are all walking along a long, wood plank bridge. A chasm stretches out under us and as we strain past the lurch in our stomachs to see the bottom we find that all we see are the tops of whispy clouds. A gust of wind blows and the bridge sways, causing us to grasp the sides and close our eyes.
But who made the bridge? Where did it come from? It is the only way to travel unless you go back, and you know that you can’t go back. Someone must have built it.
The bridge is the path we follow. God made it. It began in Genesis 1:1. Then came the snake in the garden and pieces were lost from the bridge. But God would not let our path to Him be fully destroyed so He made a way. He was always making a way everytime we broke a part of the bridge. But those sections that were replaced were quickly old news as a new section was destroyed. It was never enough. So finally God made a stability chord that ran the length of the bridge from one end to the other. A chord that could not be broken. A chord that looks very much like a cross.
People still break sections out of the bridge, but the chord holding the bridge to the other side will never be broken.
Now that the chord is there to keep the way secure God let’s the travelers repair the broken slots. Where the world has thrown a rock that breaks a plank from the path and creates a pitfall, God has provided is with the way to repair the hole. The deciples began by reinforcing the rope sides and adding stable blocks that connect the path to the chord. But people have tried to break away those blocks. They have tried to destroy everything that connects the path to the chord, to Jesus who is the stabilizer and strength and hope and purpose of every path. They knew they couldn’t break the chord, they could never destroy Jesus. So they have tried to destroy everything that connects to Him and leads to Him. But we as Christians have the task of repairing all that the world has destroyed. We wear our tool belts as we walk this narrow way. When we see a hole in the bridge or a Crack in the bonds, we kneel down and take out our tools. The Bible has equipped us with all we need on our journey, not only to help ourselves but also to help others.
As we repair the places where people have tried to destroy the path we kneel on sections already repaired by others, knowing that someday someone will step on the repair we have made and find it solid.
We are all sojourners together and the devil attacks us all in different ways making pit falls in our path, but God has given us the blessing of each other. We pray for each other, guide each other and help each other, even if all we do is quietly hold hands in the presence of Jesus. Sometimes we can’t fight the wind. Sometimes we have fallen through the cracks and cannot pull ourselves back up. Sometimes our questions and doubts are too loud. But Jesus is the chord stabilizing our path and our walking companions on the road are there to repair the gaps and to take our wrists and pull us to safety.
You may never see how the work you have done for Jesus has blessed or helped others, but nothing you do for Him is ever a waste. Keep repairing the wounds and the gaps and the needs in the path before you. Someday, someone will be able to keep going because of what you have left behind for them.
Hate looks strong, but God is stronger
Today I have been reminded of the old Christmas song that says but hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth Goodwill to men. Then rang the bells more loud and deep, God is not dead nor does he sleep. The wrong shall fail, the right prevail. With peace on Earth, Goodwill to men.
When you are hated openly for being a Christian on the same sites that promote everything else, from witchcraft to pride parades, you can’t help but wonder. Why just me? I will go out and see these people and they will ve nice to my face but they show their true colors when hidden behind a laptop. The thing is, they hate your light because it shines on their darkness and these people cannot handle that. They are promoting bills that will make public Christianity illegal and instead of being fired for public religous discrimination, they are patted on the back. It is easy to see this and feel hurt and abandoned. But the Bible speaks constantly about not letting yourself get down when you see those who have declared themselves your enemies prosper. If you were a Christian who never felt hate and who never saw cruelty simply due to the fact that you were a Christian, then you wouldn’t be living as a proper Christian. It hurts. It makes us angry. Yet God told us these days would come and these things would happen. He also told us to keep on the Narrow Path and to fight to win the race, to keep the faith, and someday we would see right prevail and wrong fail. Hate maybe strong but God is always stronger. God is not dead and he does not sleep he will save us.
Dear Fathers
Dear Fathers.
Recall in the horse and his boy by CS Lewis? All the things that saved Shasta in the end, Aslan (the Jesus figure) says. Those were me.
The cat who protected you from the jackals in the desert by the tombs. The Lion who scared you away from the cliff edge. And the Lion who gave you strength of fear to run the last few miles. And the lion you do not recall, who pushed the boat to shore when you were a baby. That was always me. – Paraphrased
This makes me think of a story of Papa. When I got my first horse at 13 years old, I thought I knew everything. Papa knew an awful lot about horses and was constantly trying to help with him but you know it teenagers are like. In an old video I found of when I first had River and was saddling him, you see me put on all of his tack and then you say papa very quietly step up behind me and tighten the saddle. I never knew that he had done it until I saw the video. We don’t always see the things you do for us dad’s, but we will see it if they ever stop, because we have taken for granted a lot of your protection and your caring. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the times we woke you up a quarter to 1:00 because we had heard a big noise in the house. Sometimes we don’t thank you for taking time out of your meetings to help us figure out how to multiply decimals. Sometimes we don’t thank you for the days off work you took to take our pets to the vet’s appointments. Sometimes we don’t think to thank you for all those Christmases you lifted us up so we could put the star on top of the tree, a spot we could have never reached without your shoulders. Like our fathers quietly and constantly protecting us and caring for us we don’t always notice that God is. He’s always there protecting us guiding us comforting us and we don’t always notice and we don’t always remember to thank him but we should remember to thank him.
God is called our good Father because that who He is. He loves us enough to direct and discipline, but He also loves us enough to protect us at all cost. It takes a strong man to be the imitation of God as Father within the home.
Rise up men, daddy’s of courage, strength and Valor! We need you! And if we haven’t said it yet. We love you, thank you for all you do.
Nineveh
[1] Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: [2] “Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” [3] Jonah obeyed the word of the Lord and went to Nineveh. Now Nineveh was a very large city; it took three days to go through it. [4] Jonah began by going a day’s journey into the city, proclaiming, “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” [5] The Ninevites believed God. A fast was proclaimed, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
Jonah did God’s will and the people repented immediately. They were ready to accept God and to change.
How did Jonah feel about that? Look at the amazing thing God did through him. See him sitting on a hillside all…. not quite happy.
Jonah 4:1-3 NIV
[1] But to Jonah this seemed very wrong, and he became angry. [2] He prayed to the Lord, “Isn’t this what I said, Lord, when I was still at home? That is what I tried to forestall by fleeing to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity. [3] Now, Lord, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
Wow. Thanks God for using me to change these people, now I just want to die. As I said. Jonah hated these people. With just cause. He didn’t want to see them in Heaven! He wanted a plagues of Egypt response. Now he felt like he had been used to help his enemies. Which he had.
But what does God say?
Jonah 4:11 NIV
[11] And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Today is missions Sunday. For missions Sunday we all like to think about missionaries like David Livingston who was amazing, or like brother Andrew, or like David Wilkerson. We like to think of these incredible people who wanted to go and had a calling from God and a passion in their hearts to serve these people and to love them and to show them Jesus. But Jonah isn’t like that. He had one of the greatest revivals in history under his belt, but he hated it. He hated doing it he hated the good result. We feel like we are going to minister to and preach to and show love to people who are going to be wonderful and Worthy. But in truth at least half of the people you meet in your life will probably kind of suck. People are rotten a lot of the time and it’s because we live in a broken world and those who don’t have Jesus are broken by this world. We feel like if the people we are speaking to or ministering to are awful or cruel or Wicked then it’s probably not God’s will. We feel like if they are people we hate and are disgusted by then we should just leave them all to burn. But that’s not what God says. He says go to Nineveh and preach to those people who have tortured and killed your people Jonah. He says if you run I am going to throw you over the side of the ship and feed you to a big fish. Then he says when you’re angry about their transformation what right do you have to be angry I created these people too. There’s a lot of sinners in this world. People totally sold out to their evil desires. And not all of us want to see these people change. It makes me think of an African lady who was a missionary of sorts who rescued girls out of dangerous parts of Africa. She rescued them from horrible horrible things little girls of 5 to 8 years old. And when she was speaking about what she did the Christian man came to her and asked her please tell us the names of the men who are hurting these girls so we can pray for them to be changed. And she said no I don’t want them to be changed I want them to go to hell. Now that is between her and God. And I bet every last one of us standing here just judged her for saying that. But if we looked closer at ourselves there’s a lot of people we think are so wicked we don’t want them to change because they deserve to suffer for what they did. We think of murderers and child pornographers, we think of people who distort things and mess in the minds of the innocent, I personally think of animal abusers. Do we really want these people to change and come to know Jesus? Or do we deep down really want to see them pay for what they’ve done? That’s the thing with Jesus. When you repent he forgives you there is no more condemnation for that sin. So when these people who do deserve to suffer for what they have done change and become Christians and are set free, it’s easy to have a little feeling of but they’ve never suffered for what they did. And that’s really hard. It’s really hard because in the end Jonah was right. He was right to be angry that God wanted him to help people who had hurt his people severely change so they would not suffer for what they did. He was right in the thinking of people. But if we are living as Christians as representatives of Jesus and we think of him, what did he do? How did he deal with these people who deserved suffering for what they had done? From what I recall he died on a cross for them. The fact is we are all sinners. That statement has been taken and contorted so it is used to make it so people don’t judge sin as Sin. But what it’s supposed to mean is that we have all sinned we all ow Jesus for our lives we have all fallen short we have all deserved to suffer for what we have done, and we were going to suffer for what we did. But God in his mercy and Grace the same mercy and Grace that Jonah condemns him for, he sent his only son to suffer in our place. Does that mean that these people who were living in horrible Wicked Ways who are influencing the world in wickedness, who are causing suffering and confusion and illness of the Mind or pain and and death of the body, does that mean that these people have sinned no more than the rest of us so we should stop judging what they’re doing? No. We should always judge sin as Sin. But we must continue to hope that they will change and will stop living like this and will come to know Jesus. Yes that means they may never suffer or be punished for what they have done, but we will not be punished for what we have done either even if what we have done is nowhere near what they have done, I recall the Bible once said
Luke 7:47 NIV
[47] Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.”
Perhaps we have been forgiven for only little things. But those who have truly repented and have been forgiven for many, truly awful things, often become the greatest warriors for Christ. Why? Because they have known the devil and they want to see him be destroyed. We forget as did Jonah. The person who is doing this evil, is simply a puppet. The one pulling the strings is the one who needs to suffer. And he never will be forgiven. The devil is to blame. But it’s up to you whether you fight him or not. Jonah may have been miserable the whole time. But he still did God’s will. Let us not judge Jonah. But to instead realize we are all Jonah in some ways and we all run from God’s sending us. We all have people we don’t want to save. And we all must choose whether to follow God anyway and do what we don’t want to do, or to turn and chance being swallowed by a predetermined fish.
Who is your Nineveh?
A whale of a time
Jonah 2:4, 7-10 NIV
[4] I said, ‘I have been banished from your sight; yet I will look again toward your holy temple.’
[7] “When my life was ebbing away, I remembered you, Lord, and my prayer rose to you, to your holy temple. [8] “Those who cling to worthless idols turn away from God’s love for them. [9] But I, with shouts of grateful praise, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good. I will say, ‘Salvation comes from the Lord.’ ” [10] And the Lord commanded the fish, and it vomited Jonah onto dry land.
Okay. I know we all have read Jonah probably several times over. But tonight I read it and learned something new.
Jonah said that he felt God had banished him from his sight because he had run away. He thought he had gone so far that God had actually turned His back on him. Don’t miss this. His answer to that feeling was to pray. He called out to God. Even though he though God had cast him from His sight, Jonah’s answer we to pray. What faith!
Here’s the best part. When Jonah prayed, God answered. He heard Jonah and listened even though it had take a storm and a giant fish to get Jonah to pay attention to Him, as soon as Jonah turned his heart to God, God responded.
It doesn’t matter how far you feel, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. God will listen when you repent. He is not angry with you. Even if you’ve made it so He has to put you into the belly of a whale, God is still with you. He hears you. He loves you. All you have to do is call out to Him.
Dragons
Dragons.
I recently watched a really great movie, in the movie The Dragon’s children were killed by people out of fear. In anguish the Dragon demanded a sacrifice from each generation of people from the bloodline of the murderers to atone for what they had done. For each of her children a human would be killed. A reasonable punishment coming from a Dragon.
It was not until later that I realized, we killed the child of not an ancient beast, but of a God. We tortured and sent to die the only child of not just some fake idol but of the one true living God. Why then did God not demand sacrifice and atonement for what we had done?
Because His son was the atonement. For that crime, for that sin, and for all the others. God could have demanded a sacrifice, He could have causes the whole world to be festered with disease and insects and caused us hourly suffering for every human. Just the humans. Nothing else was to blame.
But in His mercy God sent His son to us knowing He would die. In His love He held back all His anguish and rightful anger as the one He loved the most died for our sins.
It’s not that God does not have the power to kill is all horribly, it’s that His love for us and His grace and His Mercy cause Him to keep on giving us another chance. It’s by the stripes that He permitted us to inflict that we ate healed and saved.
God could have tossed this world away. But He holds on for the souls who are not yet saved.
We should have suffered for causing God to suffer, but instead He offers us a chance to be forgiven.
No turning back part 1
I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back. I do not believe that once you say I’ve decided to belong to Jesus you can then just go off and live however you please and when you face God at the bema seat you will be as saved as you were the first day you confessed it. Once you’ve made a choice to follow Jesus your life has to change. We love that whole God loves you where you are statement. And He Does. But he also loves you too much to leave you where you are. If you remain the sinful, worldly person you were when you first accepted Jesus, then you have not truly accepted Jesus because when you accept Him He changes you. We have tried to make God soft and panda like. Rolls with the flow and doesn’t care. But God loves you 💯. He did not die so you could stay the old man. He died so you could be changed.
The stupidest thing I have heard recently was a person who claimed that now that they had accepted Jesus he no longer saw their sin. That now that they had accepted him they could live however they please and the blood of Jesus blinded him to their sin and it was not sin in his eyes anymore. There is nothing more ridiculous on the planet than that. You think Jesus can’t see your sins? You think he doesn’t see what you’re doing? If you give your life to Jesus then you are going to change to live for him. Does that mean we’ll never sin again? No of course not. But it means that like Paul said I beat myself daily. Does that mean that Paul stood there and took a bull whip and flogged himself physically daily? No. It means that daily Paul beat down his sins, he rejected them he prayed against them and he fought them all to serve the savior he had learned how to love. Just because there was blood over the door of the house did not mean that Jesus didn’t know who was in that house. When the spirit of God swept through Egypt and killed off the first born child, he didn’t simply look at the blood on the door and go oh well I don’t know who lives there but there’s the blood on the door so that’s all good. He saw the blood on the door and left the house alone but he knew fully who was inside and what kind of people they were. Jesus forgives our sins. But we have to be repented, we can’t just stand there and go about our lives sinning and go oh well I belong to Jesus now I raised my hand one day in church so I can do whatever I please. Today at my church we’ve had a baptism. And baptism is the public Declaration of a person who does decided to follow Jesus. A person who stands there now and says I wash away my sins I Repent of the person I was and I reject the person I would be without him, and now I will live according to God’s word. Being baptized is kind of like being knighted. You watched the other Knights in their flowing robes and shining, dented armor amd wanted to join them. Now you have gone through part of your training and have been knighted by the King. Now the real work begins.
A mother’s impact
A mother’s impact
Exodus 2:1-3 NIV
[1] Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, [2] and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. [3] But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Moses’s mom doesn’t get enough credit. She hid her baby. She could have been killed.
She trusted God enough to put the baby in a river and know God would take care of him. She even dared to go and care for him in the house of the man who wanted him dead because God had delivered Moses to the one woman who could save him, Pharaoh’s daughter.
Exodus 2:5-6 NIV
[5] Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. [6] She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
We think because she was Pharoah’s she was safe taking the baby in, but she could have been in deep trouble for taking the baby.
Exodus 2:7-10 NIV
[7] Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” [8] “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. [9] Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. [10] When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
God used the courage of a baby’s mother to begin one of the greatest stories in the Bible. She never saw her baby deliver her people out of slavery. She never saw the pillar of fire of cloud. She never saw the red sea parted. She never set foot in the promised land. But she had a baby and he was hers. She loved him enough to risk everything to keep him safe, and she trusted God enough to keep that baby dry and protected in a basket in the river as he floated toward the next woman who would be used by God to help him get to where he needed to be so he could say to Pharaoh, “let my people go!”
We all get to leave an impact on the lives of the people around us, but what kind of an impact will we leave? Will we be Anna’s or Debra’s or Hannah’s or Anna’s will we be the mother of Moses? Will we be Pharaoh’s daughter? Or will we turn it all aside and be selfish and think of no one else? What impact will you leave? What Memories will your children have of you? Will you be the supporting power that through prayer and faith in God you have the ability to stand behind your kids and say I love you no matter what. Will your memories be what keep them going? We need you strong mother’s. Brave women of Valor. We need you to stand and when you can’t stand fall in the arms of the Savior. He will support you.
The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit.
I once heard a famous evangelist say, “you can’t fully know God and not have the Holy Spirit.”
That was the most accurate thing I had heard in a long time.
Many Christians of different denominations will accept God the Father and God the Son (Jesus) but shrink from the Holy Spirit, denying Him completely.
God is three in one. Not two.
You need the Holy Spirit to understand God’s word. We need Him to help us walk in line with God.
John 14:15-18, 25-26 NIV
[15] “If you love me, keep my commands. [16] And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever— [17] the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. [18] I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
[25] “All this I have spoken while still with you. [26] But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
The Holy Spirit is our gift. He is our helper. Jesus sent Him to us after He ascended so we would not be alone.
Some want to say that the Holy Spirit was for a time but is gone. Those same people want to claim that people do not speak in tongues but that those who do are pretending. They say that because they have never opened themselves up to the Holy Spirit and have never been able to speak in the language of Heaven, because they can’t they say no one really can. These same people claim that God no longer does miracle healing and no longer speaks to people. This is not true! I’m not very old and I have seen the Holy Spirit descend on a building. I have seen miracle healings. I have heard God speak. If you are open to Him and His presence you will see this happen too.
Some say, “I have sought God and wished to speak through the Holy Spirit but it never happened to me.”
This makes me think of Nikki Cruz. In his book he covers the time when he wanted to speak in tongues for the first time because He wanted that closeness, that sweetness of the Holy Spirit. He knelt at the alter day after day until the chapel closed and nothing happened. Eventually he decided that God didn’t want Him and that was why the Holy Spirit did not descend. He was going to give up school, give up trying to become a minister, go home to the slums in New York. But every time he tried to leave something got in the way and made it so he couldn’t. Very physical things. He couldn’t get the money for bus fare. He made up lies so that people would try and help him get back to the city but in the end they turned around and started benefiting the things he was lying about. For instance he said that he desperately needed to go home because a relative was ill and needed money and he needed to go to work. But instead of sending him the money he needed to get home the people he wrote to send the money they thought is relative needed to the relative. Just odd things like that making it so he couldn’t leave. Then finally he decided he was just going to hitchhike. So he got all his gear ready and was going to sneak out the window and off the campus in the middle of the night. But then one of his friends who was speaking at a nearby Church came and invited him to go to the service with him. Nikki was annoyed because the friend wouldn’t take no for an answer. That night there was an altar call for the receiving of the Holy Spirit. That night the Holy Spirit descended on Nikki and 2 hours later Nikki was still there on his knees at the altar. When his friend came to get him to go home Nikki said no just leave me here this is perfect this is all I want. The friend had to take him home though because the church building was closing and locking up for the night. But Nikki was so filled with the spirit that he went to his dorm room he opened up all his windows and he praised God until people threw pillows at him and told him to go to sleep. God wanted Nikki to seek him hard before he would answer. Some of us need that that throwing away of ourselves to find Jesus. Sometimes a simple service isn’t enough sometimes God wants us to seek after him everyday begging for the same thing because he needs us to be broken before him so he can pour into us and that is so scary and so wonderful all at the same time.
Acts 2:38 NIV
[38] Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Even if God has not given you a language yet, you still have the Holy Spirit near to you and accessible
Carried in the cross 