The Imminent Return Of Christ

Luke 21:25-28 & 34-36

The Imminent Return Of Christ

     “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth dismay among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

     “Be on guard, that your hearts may not be weighted down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of life, and that day come on you suddenly like a trap; for it will come upon all those who dwell on the face of all the earth. But keep on the alert at all times, praying in order that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

     This is a clear word to us as Christians. Jesus says to be on guard and to keep on the alert at all times lest the day of His return come upon us suddenly. In other passages of scripture it says that the generation that sees Israel regathered as a nation will not pass away before He has returned. Israel was re-gathered in 1948 which is around the same time my Mother was born. (Just to put things into perspective) Jesus could return in my Mothers lifetime. So let us think earnestly about what Jesus is saying here, and that He is not trying to keep these things hidden from us but is speaking plainly. Let us think in terms of being a soldier and on guard duty. We have heard that a great army is approaching and that we must give warning to the rest of the troops before they get close so that everyone might have time to get ready and defend the fort. Now, it would be nice to think that we could establish a certain time every day on the wall and that the enemy should only try and attack during the time we have designated. However, the enemy looks for a time when we are not at our post or at least not going to be very alert so that they will have the advantage. We can see how foolish it would be to assume that the enemy will only attack when we are on duty. Let us compare this to our Christian walk. As long as the Lord returns on Sunday or Wednesday night we will be alert at His coming. Or as long as He comes when we are half asleep and trying to read our Bible just before bed, then we will not be taken by surprise. We can see from these examples that it is easy to treat our alertness for His coming too casually. Examine your day and ask yourself just how much time do you spend with Jesus in a day and honestly, how prepared are you too actually to meet Him?

     Jesus says to be careful not to be tangled up in the pursuits of the world and the worries of life. He was obviously quite aware of the daily struggles and earthly pleasures that we face. He did not make light of how hard it would be for us to hold on until His return and to be able to stand securely in His presence. He said, “Be on the alert at all times, praying in order that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place.”

     Let us look at the practical steps for being constantly on the alert. We can start by setting time aside every morning and evening to be with Him. We can begin memorizing verses in the Bible or sing worship songs in our heart while we work during the day. This really helps during the day when we are bombarded by worldly music and coarse language. We have to counter those things that fill our minds with evil thoughts and desires by replacing them quickly with whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is true and of good repute. We have to take every thought captive. To be on the alert is also to be constantly ready to help our neighbor and to share the good news of the Gospel of Christ. We are to be continually sowing the seed of His word and to be unashamed of Him so that when He stands before the Father He is unashamed of us.

     So let me encourage us to keep on the alert as soldiers of Jesus Christ who will soon return and will reward all those who have been faithful. God bless you all!

Today Jesus Is Coming To Your House

Luke 19:1-10

Today Jesus Is Coming To Your House

      “And He entered and was passing through Jericho. And behold, there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; and he was a chief tax gatherer, and he was rich. And he was trying to see who Jesus was, and he was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature. And he ran on ahead and climbed up into a sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way. And when Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” And he hurried and came down, and received Him gladly. And when they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.” And Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

     This story brings me to tears. I can’t help but feel the joy and thankfulness that Zaccheus must have felt when our loving Savior said, “Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” How can I expound on this? Zaccheus did it the best when he hurriedly came down and received Him gladly.

      Today Jesus is coming to your house. How will you receive Him? Zaccheus’ response was one of complete gratefulness and transformation. He immediately wanted to make right anything that he could, giving away his money and paying back those whom he had defrauded. These are things that will happen when Jesus comes to our house. Many of us are Christians who have felt this complete change of heart. This desire to make up for anything we have done against our neighbor and from then on to completely live for Jesus. It is a radical change that comes over us on the day we invite Him in. Our lives have never been the same! This demonstration of Zaccheus salvation is so touching and reminds us again of that day that Jesus came to our homes. The reason I wanted to ask the question, “How will you receive Him?” is because sometimes we forget our first love and we push Jesus out of our house as we bring things in that are displeasing to Him. Jesus makes His exit slowly as we allow these other things to take His place until finally we forget all about Him or even notice that He is gone. Our lives are too busy to notice that He has gone. Then one day as we are cleaning we see a Bible lying on corner table under a pile of magazines and coffee cups and realize that it has been a very long time since we actually sat down seriously for an evening with God. We don’t remember why we haven’t but something must have come up as it always does the moment you try and set aside some time for God. And suddenly we realize that we have allowed all sorts of vices and temptations to take root in the house and that it will need a thorough cleaning if we are going to invite Him back in again.

     So, again my question is, how will you receive Him? With gladness or with heartache that He will require you to let go of the things that have displaced Him from your house? Are you willing for Him to take charge of cleaning your house from the things that displease Him? We have a very crafty and intelligent enemy who is always looking to infiltrate our home with the things that corrupt our minds and hearts. Things that make us forget what was so wrong with the world’s pleasures and pursuits. The Devil’s goal is to get us into arguments with our conscience over whether or not something is really that bad. The argument worked with Eve in the garden and it still works today. Are we willing to take an honest look at our lives and see how they measure up to the Ten Commandments? Are we willing to not let ourselves off the hook so easily and ask ourselves if we are really obeying them? Obedience to God’s laws will change our lives and seem to restrict us from the things we are so used to doing. Are we willing to accept the fact that God’s laws will not change and that it is we who must change. God’s Ten Commandments will be our laws for eternity. If we don’t like them now then we won’t like them in eternity either. This is a simple truth and is a good point to ponder. In John 3 Jesus talks about bringing the Light and that men loved darkness rather than the Light. What is the Light? It is the clear view of the perfection of God and His glorious righteousness. And why do men hate it? Because they love to live outside of God’s rules. Jesus calls it Lawlessness, that is, breaking the laws of God. Jesus is not going to change His laws simple because man does not want to obey them. The law shall remain. Jesus says that if we love Him we will keep His commandments, that is, we will strive to live in obedience to His laws. He also says that if we love Him we will not find His commandments to be burdensome. And David says it clearly in the Psalms that his delight was in keeping the laws of God. Obedience is delightful and full of the fruits of joy!

     Jesus says that we will have joy in our trials. However there are two types of trials, trials that come because we have broken the law and trials that come because we are obeying the law. The trials that come from breaking the law are meant as chastisement and not meant to be joyful anymore than you would expect your child to enjoy being punished for doing something wrong. In fact, it would be very inappropriate for him to be joyful in being punished, but rather, you expect him to humble himself and apologize for his actions. The other trial comes from obedience to Gods laws and having an enemy who is bent on keeping us from obeying them and encouraging others to do the same. There is joy that comes from God which comes welling up within our hearts when we keep away from temptation and honor His laws. Every day that goes by in which we stay out of the sins that have continually made us stumble in the past, our joy grows stronger. Our time of reading the Bible becomes clearer with greater understanding and our love for the Lord grows. This is why Solomon said that the fear of the Lord brings wisdom. The fear of the discipline of the Lord keeps us from sinning and the farther we stay from sin the more God gives us understanding in His ways. A child that drinks poison every day will live in an unhealthy state without the full use of his mind, but the moment he stops drinking the poison his mind starts to recover. Sin is poison! We need to stop drinking it!

     So I just want to encourage each of us to look closely at our lives and ask God how He wants us to live and then to be willing to have our lives cleaned up and made fresh and clean. Jesus is coming to our homes; let us receive Him with gladness!

We Are To Be Faithful

Luke 16:10-12

We Are To Be Faithful

     “He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much; and he who is unrighteous in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much. If therefore you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous mammon, who will entrust the true riches to you? And if you have not been faithful in the use of that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own?”

     Jesus tells us that the whole world belongs to Him, and that we are to be faithful stewards of what He has given us to work with until the day of His return. I would like to take a few moments and ask us to think about some questions.

          1. Some examples of being faithful with money.

          2. Some examples of being faithful with our property.

          3. Some examples of being faithful in our friendships.

          4. Some examples of being faithful with our talents which bring people to Jesus.

          5. Some examples of being faithful with our time.

     Take a few moments to think about how each of these things can best be used in the service of Jesus. I find that the parable of the prodigal son in chapter 15 of Luke gives us a good illustration of how we are to view our lives as Christians. Just imagine that after the father has shown so much love and grace towards his unfaithful son, that the son starts to take his fathers love for granted and starts to steal from his father again or to try and make a profit for himself off of his father’s goods so that he can pursue the things that got him into trouble in the first place. It would be a great crime against the love his father had shown him. We also must not misuse the grace that our Heavenly Father has had towards us and use His blessings for things that got us into trouble before as well.

     Now that we have looked a little into being faithful let us look at the warning Jesus gives us. He says that if we are unfaithful in a very little thing that we will also be unfaithful in much. How many times in a day do we let ourselves get away with little things? It turns out that much of our character is developed by the little things we do or do not do. Let’s just say that a Mom asks her son to take out the trash, the son says yes and then puts it off for a later time and then completely forgets to ever take it out. Jesus says that how we deal with such a small thing is how we will deal with big things. I’ve been the son who has put it off before and I’m sure many of you have been the mother who has asked. Our integrity is built by such small stepping stones and they really matter as we grow up. I know that we all hope for the best as our kids grow up and that someday they will become “responsible”, but how they live now will not be easy for them to overcome when they are older, the same as a tree that is growing crooked and at a young age can be straightened with guide wires. However, when it is fully grown it will be impossible to straighten if it has been left to itself with no guide wires.

     These are all good things to ponder. We must consider all things to belong to God and that when He comes He will give us what will be ours if we have been faithful with what is His.

The Lost Coin

Luke 15:8-10

The Lost Coin

     “What woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

     Are you earnestly looking for the lost coin? Jesus defines the coin as a sinner and that finding that lost coin is to see a sinner turn to repentance. Heaven puts great value on that coin saying that the angels rejoice over each one that is found. This is a convicting word for us as Christians. If all of heaven has put such a great value on that lost coin should we not be in complete unity with this desire. Should we not be pursuing the lost with the great desire to rejoice with all of heaven’s hosts over each one? Our hearts should be burning within us to be searching for them and yet we have to ask ourselves if we have even noticed that we were missing a coin. All of heaven is watching for that one sinner who turns to repentance, should we be doing less? To any Christian these should be stirring words that cause us to look into the practical application of doing this.

     The woman began by lighting a lamp and then swept the house carefully until she found it. How do we apply this? First let me say that if she was not focused on finding the coin she may never have found it, for if she was daydreaming or wishing she was somewhere else or to preoccupied with other chores, that coin would have either taken forever to find or perhaps never been found. But that coin meant the world to her and she searched earnestly until it was found. So also with us, if we do not pursue that coin with our whole heart and just casually search the floor without really paying close attention we will also not find it. We cannot pursue the coin casually just hoping to possibly come across it while we do other things. Jesus’ example of being a fisher of men is a good description. A fisherman would not go out fishing and hope his net might fall overboard and possibly while it was down there, catch some fish. It takes a determination and physical labor to cast those nets and bring them in otherwise you will catch nothing.

     Let us look at the other point which is that she first lit her lamp before searching. These are not ordinary coins but sinners in need of repentance that they might turn their hearts back to God. The light is Jesus, and His words expose our sinfulness and bring us to repentance. Many times in the Old Testament a priest finds the laws of God that have been left neglected and buried for many years and brings them out and reads them to the people and exposes how far from God that they have strayed; whereupon there is much heart distress over what they have done and they make a recommitment to obedience to God. God’s light is powerful and always brings conviction of sin. It is only under His light that the lost coin will be found.

     So I just want to leave us with these convicting words. What is the net that you personally are casting, and where are you casting it? Each of us needs to ask ourselves these questions every morning so that when Jesus returns He will have found us faithful stewards of His talents. God bless each of you today and May He bless each of us with much fruit for our labors.

God’s Blessings Come With Giants

God’s Blessings

Come With Giants

     Here is a very interesting thing that God has been opening up to my understanding over the past week. Question, Why is it that so often when we go to God with a prayer request that is very important to us, we seem to get the opposite thing we have asked for? Maybe we are praying for the salvation of a loved one and we go to God with His promises about answering good requests like this, and instead of seeing some good sign of change in their life, they suddenly hate us, or ignore us, or never have time for us anymore. Or perhaps God seems to have promised us some good thing and instead of seeing an answer we come against a wall of impossibility or great discouragement. We all have many things we are seeking God for and we give Him His promises that He doesn’t give a stone instead of bread or a snake instead of a fish (Matt. 7:9-10) and yet, very often, it feels like we get the stone instead. So we grumble at God and get mad at Him and use these unanswered things as an excuse to go back to the world and our old lives because God hasn’t fulfilled all He said He would. We get mad at God, is all it really comes down to.

     Why is this? Why do these things cause us to turn back from serving the Lord with our whole heart and allow selfishness and rebellion to grow in our hearts against Him?

               A Gift

     When we think of a gift (Which is what God’s answers to prayer really are) we think of someone wrapping a present and giving it to us and the only part we have to do is to open and enjoy it. This is our concept of a gift. Well, God’s gifts seem to be more like if we picked out a really wonderful Bible for a child and then told him that he had to buy it himself but that we would give him a job so he could earn the money for it. It’s a gift picked out by us and made possible to earn for by us, but requires effort on the part of the child in order to receive the gift. God’s gifts are real but they require work from us. The work part, however, is not normally in our concept of what a gift is. But the gift is not less valuable because we have to work for it. God still chose it for us but He will not raise spoiled children. He wants appreciative children who will understand the value of the gift. How many times do we hear about someone who won the lottery or inherited a large fortune and they either die of a drug overdose or wish they had never won because of the devastation it brought to their family and also how quickly they became broke again? This is not how God would have us to turn out.

     The children of Israel crossed the Red Sea and the desert and when they got to God’s blessing for them they found giants and enemies and tall fortresses! God! This is not the gift You promised! Our children will be slaughtered! Better to have died in Egypt then die here instead! If this is Your blessing we wish we had never followed You! They went back into the wilderness and died. God then raised up their children to enter the land instead.

     So we see, God’s blessing came with giants. God’s blessing came with work. Work that God promised He would make them victorious in and they would indeed posses their own land flowing with milk and honey that would belong to them forever. However, they had to fight for every inch of ground. Sometimes battling in the mountains, sometimes battles on the plains. Sometimes battles with huge walls, sometimes battles with enemies to numerous to count. Each one a promised victory, but different from the last battle and requiring new faith in order to overcome the fear of the enemy. Here is the scary part. Any city they did not go up against, God left in their midst. He did not defeat them if they did not go up so these parts of their blessing were lost. They had God’s promise of victory if they had had courage but if they didn’t go they didn’t receive it.

     God’s blessing was no less a blessing because His people had to work for it. This lesson gives us a new courage and expectancy that the giants and sudden discouragements are not a sign of God’s failure to answer our prayers, but rather, that His gifts are also a job and will end in the fulfillment of all that He has promised us. This renews our courage so that when we set off with God’s promises in our hand for any area of our life and we immediately meet with things that are so discouraging that we might say in our heart, God has let me down, God has not answered me, God misled me, we can say, “God’s blessings come with giants.” God is accomplishing at least two things in this way. 1. He is training His children to be bold and courageous, like Himself, and 2. He is ridding the land of actual enemies who have been oppressing people for many years. If you have been praying for the salvation of someone, that person is in complete bondage to the devil and when you set them free by not giving up in prayer, you don’t know how many others you are setting free at the same time. Jesus says that we will bear 30, 60, and 100 fold when we start to serve Him. Everyone you set free sets others free!

     Arming ourselves with this understanding will help us to be courageous instead of discouraged and grumbling against God. So many times when we set out to pray and be a soldier for Christ, the devil just whispers something in our ear about something God hasn’t done for us and so instead of our prayer time being a time of victory over the devil we immediately turn on God and fight Him instead over all that He has failed to do in our lives! We are constantly turning on our own commander instead of fighting for Him! That is a very real truth and one of the reasons the body of Christ is so ineffective against our enemy! Working for the gift God gives does not lessen or devalue the gift. So be courageous and full of joy as you seek the Lord in prayer. The giants will be part of the promised victory and others will benefit by every answer to prayer you receive!         God bless!

To Be A Disciple Of Jesus

Luke 14: 26-35

To Be A Disciple Of Jesus

     “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him. Saying,‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and take counsel whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks terms of peace. So therefore, no one of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

     

     The first verse speaks volumes. As I have been dwelling on these verses for the past week God has been continually bringing them to my attention each time that I begin to pray. I find my heart is full of its own desires and rather than being fixed on Jesus and His good purposes for my life, I would get tangled up in a battle of wills, my will verses God’s will. I will not say that my desires were necessarily wrong but they kept me distracted from enjoying God’s company and delighting in His plan for my life. Many times Jesus says to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all other things will be added to us. He says this because He knows that the Devil will keep us at the door of God’s throne room by too much emphasis on our own cares and worries and desires so that we won’t be able to get past them and actually enter in and lay them at His feet. Jesus very much desires that we would give all of our relationships and desires to Him and seek Him first above all else. He wants us to delight in His company and just spend time with Him. After which He will take care of all that we need above and beyond our highest expectations.

     So now we start to understand why Jesus has to speak so strongly about our family and friends and our own lives. We need a strong word so that we will stop our arguing with Him and start enjoying His love. He really really loves us and He has a wonderful plan for each of our lives, but we won’t accept it from Him while we are arguing with Him and fighting with Him over all the things He allows to happen to us. 

     Jesus continues on to say that there is a cost to being His disciple, a cross to bear and that we must spend some time counting it so that when the troubles and trial come upon us we endure them patiently without complaint If we have counted the cost than we will have embraced the commitment to serve Him no matter what. Jesus does not try to gloss over the hardship we will have to endure but He does say that His burden is light and His yoke is easy. If we have put Jesus above all others in our lives than we will not fall away when disaster comes upon us.

     This leads me to what Jesus says about salt which is that if it loses its saltiness it is good for nothing. And what does this mean? It means that if we are walking with our eyes fixed on Jesus abstaining from the earthly lusts which were ours in our ignorance than Jesus is going to use us for His work, but if and when we take our eyes off of Him and look back again at past desires for the things of this earth we immediately lose the conviction and saltiness of Christ in our testimony and our lives become compromised with our old sinful pursuits. This happens on a minute by minute basis for when we become partial to the things of this world we lose our voice to speak against it. I deal with it all the time. The Devil continually tries to entice me back to my old sins and if even for a moment I begin to harbor those desires again in my heart The Fire of the Lord grows dim in my life. And trust me, the farther you come in your walk with Christ, the more God is making use of you to the people around you and in equal proportion the enemy is trying to make you fall back into sin so that he might also drag down all those who are looking to you for Godly support. To keep our lives pure from immorality and selfish ambition is to remain salty and to show partiality to these same areas is to lose our saltiness.

     So let us pursue Holiness and Righteousness with our whole heart and walk in the love and strength of our Lord Jesus Christ in Whom is found all that we will ever need both now and for eternity.     God bless you all!

A Heart That Is Grateful

Luke 14:16-24

A Heart That Is Grateful

     But Jesus said to him, “A certain man was giving a big dinner, and he invited many; and at the dinner hour he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, Come for everything is ready now. But they all alike began to make excuses. The first one said to him, I have bought a piece of land and I need to go and look at it; please consider me excused. And another one said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please consider me excused. And another one said, I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come. And the slave came back and reported this to his master. Then the head of the household became angry and said to his slave, Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the city and bring in here the poor and crippled and blind and lame. And the slave said, Master, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room. And the master said to the slave, Go out to the highways and along the hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For

I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste of my dinner.”

     I would like to talk about what it means to compel men into the banquet that our Lord has prepared, but first we must take some time to consider why there were empty seats at this banquet to begin with. Jesus says that there was a guest list for which the banquet was originally prepared, not strangers, but people who knew the gentleman who had prepared the dinner. Why did they decline to attend the banquet at the last minute when everything was finally ready for them? Let us examine their excuses. 1. I have bought land and want to go and look at it. This man’s life was caught up in the excitement of being the proud owner of a new piece of property and he was much to excited about going to see it that he couldn’t possibly make it to the banquet. 2. I have bought five yoke of oxen and am going to try them out. This man has just invested a lot of money in his business venture and is anxious to get to work and make some money. Buying five teams of oxen would have been very expensive, but they would be capable of covering many acres at a time, thus able to earn more money. This man refused because he was more excited about his business plans than he was about the banquet. 3. I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come. Oh how love makes one blind! He was to busy with his new marriage and establishing his new home to possibly have time to attend the banquet to which his neighbor had gone to so much trouble over.

     These three examples have a couple of things in common. First and foremost is a lack of gratefulness for the one who had gone to such great lengths to prepare the feast. The second was being so caught up in there own pursuits that they would not let go of them in order to attend. How many times does Jesus ask us to stop what we are doing and spend time with Him and instead we find ourselves to busy with our work, our pleasure, or something just coming up. How many of us consider that in Isaiah 58:13-14 God tells us to turn our foot from doing our own pleasure on the Sabbath and to spend time with Him calling the day our delight, the Holy day of the Lord and that He will bless us mightily for doing so. And that Keeping the Sabbath Holy is one of the Ten Commandments. How many things do we do on the Sabbath that are not spending time with Him. How many things do we do on that day that are for our own pleasure or earthly gain? The Devil works overtime to keep us from truly honoring God’s Holy day. He makes all the sporting events to be on that day. He makes it the day to wash the car. He makes it the day to catch up on our sleep or our cleaning. He does everything but let our hearts be truly focused on God in a serious way. However, in Deuteronomy God promises that if the people will truly honor His Holy day than He Himself will make sure that their children love Him and grow up partaking of His righteous blessings.

     Why don’t we give our whole heart to God especially on the Sabbath? It is because we have not understood and appreciated the banquet that even now our Heavenly Father is preparing for us. Jesus gives us a word of warning here, saying that just because we were originally on the guest list does not mean that we will taste of the dinner He has prepared. He wants Hearts that desire Him and Hearts that are grateful as we see further on. The ones that He says to compel into the dinner have no other pursuits. They are the blind and lame and crippled. Theirs is a grateful heart. God very often needs to shake us up and give us a lameness in our body just so that we will be able to attend the feast without the worldly pursuits being able to keep us from coming. God has to pry our hearts off of this world so that we might be saved. In His mercy He is willing to do this for us, for who can let go of the pursuits of this world without His help?

     So I want to encourage each of us today. Let go of the world. Hold on to Jesus. Love Him with your whole heart! Do not hold any of it back or reserve it for some other love. A good illustration is when the Philistines captured the Ark and brought it into the temple of their god and in the morning their god was on its face before the Ark. So they stood it back up and the next morning it was in pieces before the Ark. If you have brought God into your heart be prepared for your idols to fall before Him and if you put them back up be prepared for them to be smashed in pieces!

     We all try to include God with our other pursuits and they are continually being thwarted and broken. Put God first and let Him fill your temple with every good thing that He Himself will provide. It is God and God, there will be nothing else! I have tried to put my idols up many times and each time I do they are harder to put back together until I finally give up because of the futility of battling with what He has brought down.

     Our God is an Awesome God!  He is the Only Way, the Truth, and the Life! All He does is amazing! Let us give Him all of our heart and hold nothing back!     - God bless!