They liked him because when he talked about hell he did it with a tear in his eye.  Who cares if they don’t preach the Gospel, the music is kicking and the worship leader sure is cute and doesn’t she have the voice of an angel.  I shed a tear and felt goose pimples.  The building has Italian marble, sconces and Berber.  From the tower copula you can almost see where the orphans live on the side of the rail road tracks, we dedicated a bench there.  Parishioners enter, music, music, music, announcements, brief prayer, sermon, video, sermon, don’t worry I am winding up soon, music, music, rapid visit, pats on the back, pray for Ramona, get the kids we can still make the buffet, wave, wave, kiss-kiss, now move your stupid car.  We baptized three hundred people this quarter.

It’s alright for me to overlook my identity with Christ, right?  I can hold a grudge if she really deserves it, can’t I?  Can I cry foul when they count me among fanatics for the crime of speaking the name of Jesus?  We sequester ourselves to the room of twelve looking to private counsel making the public wait on bated breath for our verdict.  The Lord told me to love my enemies but I’m sure He didn’t mean that guy.  Can’t I just bully people at my day job and wear my Christian hat on the weekends, everyone else does it?  That can’t be what hypocrite means.  I thought that was some guy who knows the Bible and then does the opposite.  I am a good person and besides that is not my spiritual gift.

They were talking about someone else when they said, “I’m not religious, because they’re all actors just like pro wrestling”.  Run around using words like “authentic”, dressing like generation Y not even recognizing the scent of the world upon me.  Set apart, anointed, called out, those are just convenient phrases that I bring out in evidence of public piety.  Must I really love them on Tuesday, I thought every other Saturday was enough?  I already volunteered twice this week at the church.  Didn’t they see that check with my name on it?

Is there no fear of Almighty God?

Proverbs 22

A good name is more desirable than great riches and to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. 

The rich and poor have this in common; the Lord is the Maker of them all. 

A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge but the simple keep going and suffer for it. 

Humility and the fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life. 

In the paths of the wicked lie thorns and snares but he who guards his soul stays far from them.

Train a child in the way that he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. 

The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.

He who sows wickedness reaps trouble, and the rod of his fury will be destroyed.

A generous man will himself be blessed for he shares his food with the poor.

Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; and quarrels and insults are ended.

He who loves a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king for his friend.

The eyes of the Lord Keep watch over knowledge, but he frustrates the words of the unfaithful.

Lord Your word is faithful and true.  Just twelve lines of Your Word are enough to set the mind a-fire with reflection and contemplation.  Simple words put together in cogent and concise relationship that produce an effect unlike any pen of man.  A dozen sentences that on their own provide sufficient guidance for men gone astray leading them to the land of peace, community and contentment.  Correction, perspective, morality and recommended respect for a God who knows what we think, what we believe and what we do.  Words of sound financial and social prudence pleading sound judgment and ordered living.  Twelve lines of wisdom meant for the tender, open ears of sons and daughters seeking the right path in this life and the next.  Counsel for the wise and frustration for the foolish.  Twelve lines from a loving, instructing Father.  Praise You for all that You are Father, in Jesus’ Mighty Name.  Amen.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/18/free-syria-army-lebanese-border  The Syrian Escalation.  What does this indicate within God’s unveiling plan?

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/21/world/africa/egypt-protests/?hpt=hp_t1  The Egyptian Civic Eruption.  How does this relate to prophetic fulfillment?

http://youtu.be/p67IZrj312Y  Rejoice!  The Lord prevails in the midst of apparent chaos.

Isaiah 19:16-25, In that day the Egyptians will be like women.  They will shudder with fear at the uplifted hand that the Lord Almighty raises against them.  And the land of Judah will bring terror to the Egyptians; everyone to whom Judah is mentioned will be terrified because of what the Lord Almighty is planning against them.

In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord Almighty.  One of them will be called the City of Destruction.

In that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the Lord at its border.  It will be a sign and witness to the Lord Almighty in the land of Egypt.  when they cry out to the Lord because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them.  So the Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the Lord.  They will worship with Sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the Lord and keep them.  The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them.  They will turn to the Lord , and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria.  The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria.  The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together.  In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth.  The Lord Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Brothers and Sisters have peace about the current global events.  They systematically and cumulatively point to the imminent return of the Lord Jesus.  I have yet to hear a sermon regarding these verses and that arouses my curiosity.  However, this segment of the Lord’s prophecy from the Book of Isaiah, (A prophet who coincidentally has been 100% correct throughout history) indicate a coming time where Syria and Egypt both join Israel in worship of the Lord God.  Coincidentally these two nations are not included in the adversaries of the Gog/Magog battle #1 of Ezekiel 38 & 39.  Could it possibly be that even now the Lord is turning their hearts and minds to Him?  I don’t know but looking at studying and relying on this prophecy wouldn’t that be a wonderful occurrence to see in these coming months/years?  I do know this that it is my duty to pray for these nations in anticipation of this glorious word.  Won’t you please join me.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

http://youtu.be/2q2t4k9F9_g  Jim’s commentary on Jordan as Key

http://youtu.be/QAuBc_cbXo0  Israel/Palestinian Conflict: The Truth

Recently I have asked many of my Christian Brothers and Sisters, “If you would have to sum the message of the Bible up in to one word what would that be”?  Without question, the consistent response was “Love”.  If this word is the single idea that comes to most of our minds as the central theme to the Lord’s “Good News” message then shouldn’t it consume the majority of our conversations, teaching, learning and practices.  First responses are funny that way you often wish that you could take them back once they have been uttered.

By and large we all would admit that our first answer is usually the one closest to the truth, before we get the chance to obfuscate, gerrymander or dodge.  So what is your first response when someone asks about love?  How would you define it, describe it, explain it or demonstrate it practically?  How would you teach a child about it?  We have all heard sermons on the four types of love but I think that is man’s attempt to categorize and simplify a word for which there is infinite depth.  Just like the Lord’s word this simple term can have unlimited layers when peeled back continue to deliver new understanding, meaning and revelation.

There have to be some good examples out there and I really want to hear them, because we cannot deny the importance of our collective understanding of this principle issue.  How much does God love you?  How do you measure it, contain it, resist it or deny it?  Love is unavoidable, indescribable, uncontainable, unexplainable and just like the Lord, we crave it.  You want to fill someone up or measurably improve their existence next time they ask you for some spare change, give them love instead.  Lord Jesus is coming soon.  Amen.

Might as well play.  There is a song, a word, an invention, a thought, a prayer, an action that the Lord placed upon your heart or whispered in your ear as He prepared to send you to the world.  God’s will for your life is sing, dance, build, share or write down that word for everyone to see and hear.  You are His creation, this new man born again to His glory equipped with all the talent, energy and spirit to proclaim the message He placed upon your heart.  So my prompt to you is SING or SHOUT to this world because as Mordecai told Esther 4:14 “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.  And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”  The Lord placed each one of us in the circumstances, relationships and time periods in which we now find ourselves for His Purposes.  The moment I surrendered my life to His will I found fulfillment beyond what the trappings of manna can provide.  Right now, I am doing the works that the Lord designed for me before the beginning of time.  What a relief, what a peace, what testimony to the truth of the Lord’s Love and Existence.  Find that one thing that the Lord created you to do and shine for this world which so desperately needs the light.  And when they come to you and ask you how you did it, tell them who really deserves the glory.  King Jesus, I praise and serve You alone.  Amen.

http://youtu.be/YpNwQM9DpXc  Commentary – Be Ready! 11/20/11

The Path to holiness, righteousness, purity and maturity as Christians, may have plateaus but possesses no destinations.  It is not a mathematically similar, linear-learning paradigm that produces a verifiable, end result.  The end result, the final destination are beyond this world.  In fact the learning, work and growth doesn’t even stop there but appears to continue throughout eternity with the Lord.  Praise Him for His incomprehensible plan and thank Him for its revealing glimpses He has provided in His Word.

SELF RIGHTEOUSNESS is the failure or conscious refusal to understand that Christianity is a LIFETIME, continuous-growth process.  The Bible is a living document and will continue to produce new insight, discernment and wisdom to the seeking observer.  This world will continue to provide us the same lessons allowing a live platform to test our growth in the Holy Spirit.  This is the job from which we should never want to retire, because to do so is to become stagnant in our walk with the Lord.  Yes we become more like Jesus but that only prepares us for the more difficult work and circumstances remaining before us.  I have come full circle and find myself remembering where my conscious walk with the Lord began.

When I began this journey it was out of the excruciating pain brought on by my charade of victories.  That moment when a man falsely believes that this world possesses the silver lining, the gold at the end of the rainbow.  Yes, i had achieved.  The small script is appropriate in describing the tainted shadow of my real self, bloated, stinking, puffed up, being all that it could ever become in the confinement of this dimensional plane.  My misery was complete, thankfully so, as i realized there were no heights to obtain only greater depths in which to descend.  Without God’s understanding and response to my desperate cry I would have become liken to the beast which I unwittingly served.

Thanks be to the Lord of Lords, the Ancient of Days for answering the morbid tears of this worthless character with compassion, something akin to the first visions of a blind man.  i had a conceptual knowledge that somewhere out there other people had experiences with God and ignorantly called myself a Christian.  How can a man believe what he does not understand?  And although i prayed that God would save me i barely understood His precepts, history or nature.  Thank the Lord that He understood me.

i used to look upon the road to my salvation with shame.  However, now i am grateful for the tragedy and the hopelessness of my lost state, because like the woman who wept at the Lord’s feet wiping her tears with her hair, the Lord forgave my enormous sin-debt.  i used to envy those who had lived pure lives and now I just admire them.  my salvation is precious to me because i have been to the depths of depravity and know from whence i have been rescued.

i revisit those moments not because i have not accepted forgiveness and continue to listen the enemy’s condemnation, but rather because humility is rooted in the roots of my salvation.  Christian maturity is not a destination but an ever expanding circle of growth where previous experiences are observed with each increasing orbital pass.

This time I only need reflect upon the depths and remember the associative pain.  I am no longer that man and cannot join him in his pain but I can understand it.  I see his mistakes and also delight in that moment of glorifying epiphany when his cries to Jesus were answered.

The greatest moments of our lives are often those times we would have wished to forget.  That is the glorious God that we serve.  When this world abandons us at our worthless worst He meets us there in tragedy with love and forgiveness.  That is worth revisiting, each time I see it for the miracle that it truly was.  No tears this time around only awe of the Lord and thanks.  Praise you my Awesome God, to You be all the glory, honor and worship.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

http://youtu.be/DtX6Ois9zVw   Commentary Joy trumps happiness 11/19/11

“Choice” the greatest form of Love.  Grace is offered to all, it is only our response to the gift of God through choice that we are at all set apart.  At each threshold for growth in the Lord we are faced with that catalyst of “choice”.  Just as any child has the choice to obey a Parent’s rule, we know Father God’s expectations and consequences and may choose to obey or disobey.  Any Father who forces obedience through tyranny cannot love.  He must explain the rules, counsel wisdom and then deliver justice or reward based on a child’s choices.  No one can say that this is not what God has done.  He is Just, Righteous, Loving and Fair.  What we receive is entirely based upon our actions having fully known God’s expectations and consequences.

However God’s Love is even greater than just the extension of an option to His children.  Our natural state after the fall is one of “total depravity”, meaning because of the original sin we adopted a nature that had no love for or even fear of the Lord.  Absent God’s prevenient Grace, we at our core are “totally evil” incapable of the knowledge of God.  Jesus affirms this in John 6:44, where He says, “No one comes to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up a the last day”, and in Romans 3:10 where Paul states, “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.  All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” In order to even have the option of choice the Lord had to make His grace available so that we could even comprehend His existence.  Through this prevenient grace God extended the call to salvation for all men.  Now that is love.

Salvation was offered to all  through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross and His shed blood.  We must choose to accept redemption in order to receives its inherent benefit.  Again the love is extended but the choice is the catalyst for receipt.

Even as Christians having made the choice to accept Saving Grace we can forgo the subsequent choice of Sanctifying Grace and remain “Baby Christians” as it were wandering in the desert.  This is where so many believers reside in the churches, powerless, immature, unholy and unprepared to do the work or face the return of the Lord for His Church.  Just as the bridesmaids with no oil in their lamps they will find themselves scurrying to acquire the necessary filling of the Spirit to count themselves ready for the Lord’s anticipated return.  They will as believers have made the choice to disobey the Lord’s direction.  Each of us has the power, authority, gifts and joy to accomplish great works for the Kingdom, but we must choose to surrender to God’s will.  We can have treasures in Heaven that when subjected to the test of Holy Fire will remain, but we have to choose to store up these treasures as Christ commands.  Why do you think that the devil has used the twisted, carnal understanding of “Choice” to represent a woman’s right to end the life of her child?  Because choice is the catalyst by which we accept the Truth, Promises, Commands, Will and Joy of the Lord.  As always the enemy seeks to corrupt everything that the Lord creates, but we can choose to withstand the attempts of the enemy by standing on the Promises of God given us in His Word, Ephesians 6:11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.  Praise Jesus, Amen.

http://youtu.be/Z2z1syAsHQ8  Commentary of The Love of Choice 11/16/11

May I extend my deepest apologies to those who I have offended, harangued or who have experienced my impatience.  The work I do, does not excuse me from transgression only guarantees that I will have ample opportunity to avoid or commit infraction.  Unfortunately being an earthen vessel I am frequently prone to stepping on toes, giving bloody noses or generally bruising feelings of those around me.  A buffalo runs over a lot of wildflowers in his attempt to reach the high ground.  I cannot however, go and hide my head in the sand waiting for the day of my perfection as it will not come in this life.  I have accepted the fact that He is going to continue to use me no matter how imperfect, weak, fragile or unskilled I am at this point in my walk.  All that I can do is pray that He allows me to make fewer mistakes as I go forward and that my brothers and sisters forgive me.  I am accountable to God for the wounds that I cause.  Just as I will be rewarded for the seeds that I’ve planted.  I am okay with that, I only hope that you are too.  Praise the King, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Balanced thinking often occurs sitting out on the limb or when navigating the rope bridge over the precipice.  Often I find myself not only reading the historical episodes of Lord’s Testament but actually placing myself in the sandals of the servants of God.  To imagine living as John the Baptist, surviving in a harsh environment knowing that your life’s work is to proclaim the coming of Messiah.  Having no formal training yet having a diamond constitution, resistant to all the assaults of society and religious hypocrisy.  Needing nothing but the knowledge of fulfilling God’s will for his life.  Afraid of nothing but the Lord.

Or walking in Joshua’s footsteps, the protege of Moses, having thrust upon his shoulders the establishment for the nation of Israel.  Steadfastly executing God’s strategy for the methodical cleansing of the Promised Land and religious sturdiness of a stiff-necked people.  James a humble man of Nazareth, for nearly his entire life having denied the deity of his brother Jesus’, yet becoming so bold a witness that he became the first minister to Jerusalem.  Paul, a trained Pharisee, being so richly blessed in service of himself then realizing his entire life had been a direct, sinful conflict with God.  In consequence, devoting his entire life in becoming the greatest missionary apostle that the world had ever known.  Esther, having to marry a foreign, pagan king and risk beheading to plead for the lives of her people.  Moses, being thrust into a leadership position after swearing away his worldly entitlement.  Is there one of us that can imagine he wanted to lead anyone, never mind a fickle populace on a journey of forty years in the unforgiving desert?

Not one of them thought himself superior to other believers.  None of them decided to pursue the demands of God for personal gain.  Yet every one of them was challenged by those around them in fleshly opposition.  People will always question your motivations when doing God’s work, heck we even question ourselves.  This is part and parcel in delivery of God’s message and is frankly the icy surface on which Satan finds us vulnerable.  Stepping out on the battlefield by nature comes with the dangers enemy assault, “friendly fire” or challenges of authority.  We can only pray it is at that moment when we declare plainly that we come in His name not our own.  I wish to do what I have been assigned to do for the Glory of Him who sent me.  Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else will do.  Jesus be served and praised with all my heart, mind, talent, treasure and soul.  Amen

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/let-my-people-think/listen/he-saw-he-left-he-conquered-part-1-of-2-171604.html
http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/let-my-people-think/listen/he-saw-he-left-he-conquered-part-2-of-2-173775.html

(Powerful audio sermon by Ravi Zacharias)

Why Lord have you given us words, served upon corroded copper tongue, to deliver Your Perfect Word?  Why have you chosen any vessel, particularly this one, so frail, so wrought with crack and weakness, to hold even a measure of eternal refreshment?  Why have you placed a passion so pure in such a heart so wicked, that its clarion thunder causes all to take a breath and tremble?  How can it be that You would choose a man of such bankrupt history to tally any measure of Your infinite account?  You found me in the dirt, caked in rust and mud, discarded by all, forgotten in the despair of capitulation.  Only You could see a use for such a dilapidated instrument.  To this world that seeks proof for impossibility, sensory astonishment, awe through satisfaction I give you the miracle of transformation.  A man beyond consideration, used to heal the sick, raise the dead, set captives free and love even the contemptible.  A man deserving nothing, serving as herald to the Almighty.  Their is no answer like this Christ.  His love for me is all the proof any of us would ever require yet He would do the same for each man.  If you must give up, do so to such a King as Jesus who will use you for Heaven’s Glorious Purpose of Forgiveness, Love and Life.