I was raised in church. I can remember mom and dad getting ready every Sunday morning. Then they would get us ready. I didn’t really understand what was going on. I just watched everybody. I knew that there was more than what people said. I knew that I wanted to learn the truth. So I had to search for it. You ever listen to someone talk and you know that it is the truth. It is because it rings true in your heart. Whether or not it is the popular belief. I have talked to many people. Some believe and some don’t. But I have always found that people want to believe in what is good and right. Once you collect baggage, like a lost love or hurts that you can’t forgive, it is hard to go back. I wanted to believe so badly, but the pain got in the way. Thank God, He didn’t give up on me. When I was 8 years old, I gave my heart to the Lord. But by the time I reach college, I had walked away. God had a plan for me. When I was 28 years old, God called again and I answered. This time God had me to study and build my faith. One day I was stopped at a railroad crossing. I was waiting for the train to go by. God spoke to me and told me to get out of my car. He wanted me to tell everyone stopped that God loved them. I froze and the hand of God lifted off me. I thought I had really messed up. God was teaching me a lesson. This one was a practical lesson. God was going to send me to people to tell them what He said. I learned quickly. People want to believe. It is our job as Christians to give them that chance for life.
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Advent is the observance of 4 to 6 weeks before Christmas. It is observed by Western and Eastern Christians. It is to prepare for the Second Coming of Christ. Depending on where you live, the traditions vary from place to place. The Eastern Christians observe a fast for 6 weeks, while the Western Christians only observe Advent on the 4 Sundays before Christmas. It was started by the 12 apostles to mimic Yom Kippur. If you don’t know what Yom Kippur is, it is the preparation of oneself for the coming of the New Year. This was a time to repent of your sins and to get right with God. So everyone could start right with God in the New Year. This past Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent. Yom Kippur was an ordinance of God. That meant that everyone had to follow God’s commandment to get their lives right. Advent is voluntary. It is the difference between the Old Testament and the New Testament. With the coming of Jesus and opening heaven to everyone who will believe, it is up to the individual to respond to God’s calling. It is a good tradition and should be followed. Although Christianity isn’t popular in most western cultures, God still hasn’t given up on man. It is funny how when there is a national disaster, people seek God for help. As I see the national news there has been a national disaster almost every week. So why haven’t more people responded to God’s call. What are you waiting for? Does the disaster have to strike your family before you are willing? All you have to do is ask God and He will respond to you.
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The day after Thanksgiving is traditionally the biggest shopping day of the year. Most retailers make most of their income from sales on that day. As online shopping became popular there began Cyber Monday. It is a big deal for most retailers. They can make most of their income for the year. If sales go bad, some retailers don’t make it to January 1st. As I looked at the financial news, they estimated that the sales were down about 10 to 15%. It is understandable why people don’t have money. The unemployment rate is up again. In our area of the country, it is about 7% of the population or about 175,000 people. I worked in retail for many years. I worked in a big box store. Over the years I watched people come and out. It is not strange at what I saw. 2 or 3 weeks before Thanksgiving, people began shopping for it. Generally people were in a good mood and smiled. After Thanksgiving, the mood of the people switched. In the 1st week after about half the people smiled. Into the 2nd week about 1/4th of the people smiled. In the last 2 weeks before Christmas, people were fussing and fighting with their family and other people shopping. In the last week before Christmas, people were downright nasty. They didn’t want anyone to say anything to them. All of this was about money or the lack thereof. When our kids were little, we bought gifts for all of them spending a lot of money. As they got older, my wife and I and the kids started drawing names out of a hat and buying gifts for that individual. Gift giving was started in honor of God’s gift to us, Jesus. It is not an end to itself. We have to keep in mind that there is only one reason for this season, God’s gift, Jesus.
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It is simple question. How much do people love you? You parents loved you enough to raise you. You know that it is estimated that parents will spend over $250,000 in one child’s lifetime. A quarter of a million dollars on 1 child’s life. By any gauge that is still a lot of money. But how much do people around you love you? Would any die for you? Would any lie for you? Would any protect you? Are your friends and family here today and gone tomorrow? You might find 1 or 2 people in your lifetime that would actually die for you. You are blessed if you have those people in your life. If you find a wife who believes in you that much, you are truly a blessed man. That is something to be protected and cared for. In my life, I could never find a person who was willing to be that close to me. One reason was I wasn’t that loveable. But still I looked and looked. Until 1 day I found a person who had loved me just because I was me. The relationship turned my life around. I was just so angry about not being loved that it made me unlovable. As I began to walk with this person, my angry began to fade away and love in my heart began to blossom. What it did was awake the love in heart not only for Him but for people. I began to care about people and what has happen to them. Of course, I am talking about Jesus. As I walk with Him, I prayed and prayed. As God changed people’s lives for the better. And all the time God was changing me.
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The blind leading the blind, you have seen it more than you want to recognize it. There are people who can’t see anything because all they want is what they want. Everything else is just irrelevant. I feel sorry for those people. They have no grasp of what is really happening in the world. Sometimes these people can be very dangerous. Because they get to a point where the only way they can achieve their goals is to destroy everyone else. And they will burn the world down just to get their way. You would think that only in this century do we have these kind of people. The Apostle Paul ran into these characters in the first century. Hate starts when a person is afraid or disgruntled or is jealous of another person. When it takes root, it becomes bitterness. Do did you know that hate causes cancer? So does anger. It is a spiritual condition that moves into the physical realm. We are spiritual beings that can bring things from the next world into our own. Unfortunately people don’t take that into consideration when they hate people. The Apostle Paul talk about this very condition and how to deal with people who live in their own reality. He said that you can’t fight them with their weapons. You have to fight them with truth, God’s truth. How can we fight ideas or people in this world with God’s truth? God said if you want to change a situation, then pray. What you need to do is ask God to change the situation, then believe and stand. Standing in the knowledge that God has heard you and is answering your prayer. What happens when you do that? The world changes. It is time to do the will of God and change the world.
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It seems that I am always talking about what man is doing on this earth. It is because man is always trying to burn this world down. I have never seen so many people try so hard to destroy everything that exist. Shall I delineate? Let us take the last 50 years. In the 1960’s, there was the counterrevolution, the Vietnam War and the Israeli war. The Israeli war went into the 1970’s. So did the Vietnam War. Then there was the plane hijackings. The bombing of embassy’s. Let’s see, oh yeh, Grenada, Panama, the Cubans in South America, Desert Storm, the Iraq war and of course the Afghanistan war. Let’s not forget the war in Syria. You may look at the world and think, why even try. They are all going to hell in hand basket. Well God sees it differently. In 1967, the Israeli’s took Jerusalem back. It was over 2000 years since the Jews owned Jerusalem. What did God do? He began to have revivals all over the world. The baptism of the Holy Spirit began to be prolific. Everyone who wanted could be baptized in the Holy Spirit. Missionaries went to every country. In the 1980’s, the United States had in 1983 the year of the Bible. Not since the times of Jesus, had a nation declared such a year. The GNP increased over a 100% in the United States. Churches began to fill up and enjoy peaceful times. When Elijah was running from Jezebel for his life. He said to God that there is no one serving God that they had all gone astray. God told Elijah that there were 7000 people in Israel that remained faithful to God. So even though you don’t see God working in your life or ours, don’t believe it. God is there before you even get there and He won’t leave until His job is done.
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Some 400 years ago, 250 people sought religious freedom. They were seeking a place where could live their lives as they saw fit. They were willing to risk their lives to obtain this freedom. They loaded a boat renamed the Mayflower. In July, 1620, the Mayflower left Southampton, England for the new world. The voyage took 3 months. The North Sea had nothing but storms. By the time they reached Plymouth, over 150 people were dead. The remaining Pilgrims prayed and fasted on whether or not they would stay. After they decided to stay, they all came to an agreement, The Mayflower Compact. They pledged themselves to each other to make the colony strive. Everybody owned everything and they would share all. They built homes and farmed the land. But it wasn’t going well. They needed help and no one was coming to help. They pray for deliverance. God heard their prays and sent an Indian. His name was Squanto. He had lived in Europe and spoke English. Squanto taught them how to grow corn and to fish for food. The Pilgrims, not like the Puritans, had made peace with the Indians. They traded with the Indians and lived in peace with them. The Pilgrims had grown enough food to survive the hard winter in Massachusetts. The following year they grew enough food to last most of the year. In November of 1621, the 53 surviving Pilgrims held a feast to thank God for the bountiful harvest. They invited their Indian friends. For 3 days they played games and ate from the bounty. Philippians 4:6 “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”
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I have seen people pray and think that God didn’t answer them. I have never seen God not answer a just prayer. God may not tell you the answer but one will come. When I was younger, I had a roommate 1 summer. He kept asking God for answers and he said he hadn’t received any. That summer he was inspired to write 25 songs. He was a musician. Take a wild guess where the answers were to his prayers. This is the 3rd story about God’s providence. This story is from the 1970s and 1980s. This story is about a young black man born in poverty. He went to a public school and excelled in basketball. His mother was raising him alone. She prayed that the inner city wouldn’t take her son away. The city was going to move the family into the projects. She knew that her son would have no chance to survive. She went to mayor of her city and asked if she and her family could stay out of the projects. The mayor knew who the young man was and agreed. Not only did he agree, he help this young man to get into a private high school. The only problem was this young man’s education was poor. He had to build his vocabulary. He had to learn 5 new words every day for a year just to catch up. He did. In his junior year, he led his high school team to the state championship. In college, he did the same. He was drafted into the NBA in 1981. He was the #2 pick in the draft. He went on played in the NBA. And final ended up coaching. Of course I am talking about Isiah Thomas. Without his mother’s prayers and God providing for his family, you would have never known about him. God takes what you have and uses it to provide for you and your family. It doesn’t matter what we think, God is always there and working in our behalf. It is part of God’s inheritance for His children.
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There are 3 stories about God’s providence I want to tell. I don’t know if I can tell them all in one blog, but I’ll try. They are all true stories. My first story happened about happened about 2800 years ago. One of the preachers in the school of the Prophets suddenly died. He left a wife and 2 sons and vast amount of debt. The creditors weren’t going to take his house, they were going to take his sons as bondsmen. Literally they would be slaves unto the debt was paid. His widow went to the head of the school, who at that time was the prophet Elisha. She asked Elisha for God’s help in this situation. Elisha asked her what she had left in the house. She said all they had left was a pot of oil. It was about 1 or 2 gallons of oil. Elisha told her to go to her neighbors and borrow pots. As many as she could get into her house. Then he said, shut the door with your 2 sons and pour the oil into the pots. She did exactly as Elisha said. She filled all the pots she had. When there was no more pots the oil stopped flowing. Elisha said sell the oil and pay the debt and the rest you can live on. And so she did. God took what she had and used it to provide for her and her sons. My next story happened in the 1950’s. This was a very similar story. A young woman lost her husband. She had three young children at home. Her husband was the bread winner. She was a housewife. After the funeral was over and the family had gone home, she didn’t what to do. She was praying, asking God for help. Every time that friend or family would come over to see about her, she would bake a pie for them to eat. She was a very good cook and her pies were delicious. Friends and family started asking her to bake pies for them. They paid her for the pies. At first it was just to help out financially. But the volume of sales of the pies began to increase. Until it became a business. God had answered her prayers. God took what she had and used it to provide for her and her family. I’ll tell the 3rd story next time.
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There are many romance novels that are read by lonely hearts looking for that connection. People want to make a connection with people to feel whole again. Some look their whole life and never find it. Some find the love they need immediately. I had a father, mother, aunts, uncles, grandparents and brothers. Yet I didn’t find that connection my heart was looking for. My heart was always heavy. I knew that there was a person out there for me. I just had to find that person. I dated all through college. There was one young women that I wanted to make my wife. But my stupidity got in the way. So I carried around a pain in my heart that never seemed to go away. One summer a friend ask my brother and I to join their business. I agreed and began going to a business meeting each morning at this friend’s business. Each morning this friend and an associate would talk about the strangest subject, Jesus. They would talk about how He helped them solve problems. They would talk about how real He was. After 3 months they asked me if I wanted to meet Jesus. I said yes. The day that I met Jesus, I knew that this was the person I had been looking for all of my life. As I began to read the bible, I wanted to find out who this person was and why He loved me. As I read I came to a book in the Old Testament, The Song of Songs. I began reading and discover it was a book about the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. I couldn’t believe God had put this love story in the middle of the bible. He put the book in for a very important reason, to show how much He loves us. And to what extent God will go to bring us home. I found the person that loves me for me. Have you found that person yet?
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