In Love With God - lesson 9

In Love With God - lesson 9

     And the hand of the Lord was strong on me. - Ezekiel 3:14

     Does this not stir up your heart today? Just think about what  it means to have the hand of the Lord upon you. If your wondering about how close and personal your own relationship with the Lord can be, this is a powerful illustration of what you can have.

     Then the Spirit lifted me up. - Ezekiel 3:12

     How much we are in need of this! That the Holy Spirit would lift us up and the hand of the Lord would be upon us that we might be in close fellowship with our Creator! Look up! See His face! Oh how He will give you overcoming victory to raise you out of the snares and pitfalls of this life and give you a brand new one full of the character and honor of His own noble nature! Will we not have His noble nature stamped into us? Will we not have the character of His love, compassion and purity etched deep into our lives? This is what we are praying for! This is what we are desiring! To be noble like Jesus and to be a servant of all just as He is.

     Our work

     Now comes the job. Raising up the battle cry to wake up everyone around us to turn back to the Lord with all our heart. Why would God not judge us if even we don’t want holiness and righteousness? At least the world around us has an excuse because they never had the Lord before. The corruption in our society is actually beyond measure so that judgement must come. But if those who should be standing up and holding the line of holiness are instead full of the love of all worldliness, then who is left to hold the line? Christians are hostages to their sinful desires. The trouble with this kind of a hostage situation is that we don’t want to be rescued and rather than standing up to fight for the Lord we stand up and fight against the Lord’s men who came to help rescue us! It’s like going to a prison camp, fighting off the guards, throwing open the cell doors, and then having the prisoners come out and fight with you and purposefully close their cell doors back up again and even try to prevent any other prisoners who might have had a desire to escape, from getting out either. The captives have joined with their captors. This is the bondage that holds back all Christians from serving the Lord. The love of sin. 

     This is why we need to seek the Lord so earnestly!  What sins are holding us back from standing up for the Lord? What bondage are we in today that is causing our mouths to be silent? It is impossible to have any affect against sin with our words if we are secretly still living in that same sin. We are like the prisoners who do things for our guards that betray our fellow prisoners for the price of some earthly comfort. What is buying the silence of our tongue and the betrayal of our fellow prisoners even right now as we read this? What makes you silent? These are the things to be praying about in our prayer times today. Will we stand against our own weaknesses today for the sake of being part of the Lord’s army? Will we call upon Him that His Holy Spirit will lift us up today? Let us ask ourselves these questions and know that if we are earnest, God will raise us up!

     Now flee from youthful lusts, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. But refuse foolish and ignorant speculations, knowing that they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s bond servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. 

                              2 Timothy 2:22-26 (NASB)

      -Seth

In Love With God - lesson 8

In Love With God - lesson 8

The only thing that I want for this semester 

is for us to be in love with and on fire for God

     Then I noticed from the appearance of His loins and upward something like glowing metal that looked like fire all around within it, and from the appearance of His loins downward I saw something like fire; and there was a radiance around Him. As the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding radiance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. And when I say it, I fell on my face and a loud voice was speaking. - Ezekiel 1:27-28

     Then He said to me, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!” And as He spoke to me the Spirit entered me and set me on my feet; and I heard Him speaking to me. - Ezekiel 2:1-2

     Something about the words of Jesus command, “Son of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you,” is very striking. Something about it reinvigorates me and makes me suddenly aware that God will make a true man out of me. A man who must stand up in order to take action even if that action is simply to listen to the voice of God. 

         Jesus says stand up that I may speak with you, and suddenly enables Ezekiel to stand through the power of His Holy Spirit.

     We must rise up and listen to Jesus today. He is calling and says stand that I may speak with you. He is calling while we are lying on the ground from fainting over our circumstances or our seeming inability to do something that God is asking. We feel weak. We say all these things are to much for me. I am of no importance. I am insignificant. I have no power to stand for God or to even stand up in my circumstances.

     Jesus says rise that I may speak with you and just as He said that to the lame man who suddenly received strength to stand, so also will He give us strength to stand! His Holy Spirit will enter into us with new life and victory and bring songs of rejoicing bursting from our hearts!

     Today in your prayer time the Lord calls and says, “Son (or daughter) of man, stand on your feet that I may speak with you!” Expect that as you begin to pray that He will suddenly give you new life by His Holy Spirit and you will be able to rise up and speak with Him person to person. He will raise you up and make you into a son or daughter of God this day. Expect that He will radically change you this very day! Seek Him earnestly and you will find Him! Call on His Name and He will hear you! Lift up your voice today and say Jesus I want to be like You with all my heart! Please raise me up today!

     Jesus will make us brand new in every area of our lives. Victory over our old lives is in His hand. He will conquer all our fears. He will give us strength to walk victoriously in the way He has called us. May we seek Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength today!

-Seth

In Love With God - lesson 7

In Love With God - lesson 7

The only thing that I want for this semester 

is for us to be in love with and on fire for God

               The Lord gives gifts that no earthly king can give. 

He can promise true preservation and safety that cannot be undone.

     Thus says the Lord, “Do not deceive yourselves, saying, ‘The Chaldeans will surely go away from us,’ for they will not go. For even if you had defeated the entire army of Chaldeans who were fighting against you, and there were only wounded men left among them, each man in his tent, they would rise up and burn this city with fire.” - Jeremiah 37:9-10

     Go and speak to Ebed-melech the Ethiopian, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, behold, I am about to bring My words on this city for disaster and not for prosperity; and they will take place before you on that day, declares the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men you dread. For I will certainly rescue you, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as booty, because you have trusted in Me,” declares the Lord. - Jeremiah 39:16-18

     Here are two things decreed by God that are actually impossible to break. The first is that God’s judgement could not be stopped by men, even if it looked like they were beating back God’s word by defeating the army He sent against them. God promised that even wounded and bedridden men would complete the job if no one else was available. The second is that if God desires to bless a man, no one can stop the blessing even in the midst of God’s judgement.

     These two points are incredible because no earthly king could make statements like this! No earthly king could say that an army will not fail no matter what, or that a man could be perfectly preserved in the midst of that same land being wiped out. Our God decreed that a man would be preserved as a blessing because he had taken pity on Jeremiah and rescued him from death. (Jeremiah 38)

     As we seek to draw close to our God, it is good to understand that He always keeps His word. It is so important to stand firmly with Him. My heart literally rejoiced when reading how God blessed Ebed-melech! “and you shall not be given into the hand of the men you dread. For I will certainly rescue you, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as booty, because you have trusted in Me,” declares the Lord.” 

     This is an encouragement to make the Lord the center of our lives. His words actually cannot fail for He is not a man but God! He is the Creator of All! Who else is like Him? Who else could you ever entrust yourself to who could give you a safer protection or more sure words of comfort? As you take this day to get closer to the Lord, think on these things. You will bless His heart as you marvel at His faithfulness! He continually offers compassion to all who turn to Him. And if we turn back from our old lives He will make us radically new and unrecognizable from who we were and even from who we were a few days ago!

     This is my prayer.  Lord make me more like You today than I was yesterday and more like you tomorrow than I was today! I don’t want to walk towards you! I want to run! Make me more like You than I ever have been before!

-Seth

              A question for anyone who would like to take time to think on these thing.

_   and they will take place before you on that day, declares the Lord, and you shall not be given into the hand of the men you dread. For I will certainly rescue you, and you will not fall by the sword; but you will have your own life as booty, because you have trusted in Me,” declares the Lord. - Jeremiah 39:16-18

Read this statement a few times. Who or what is it that you dread? I think this statement has a lot of application for us. We have things deep in us that we don’t realize are the things we dread and prevent us from moving forward in the Lord. They seem to remain unnamed mysteries but are the very things that direct our steps and our thoughts each day. God has promised deliverance from these things and if we knew we had deliverance we would have peace wouldn’t we?  Write out some of things that you think of which are affecting all your decisions.