Will God Win?

                God set out to prepare Elijah to be a great man of faith and prayer.  To do this, He set up and obstacle course of tests.  To this point in I Kings, Elijah had passed everyone, and God has met Elijah’s every need.  When Elijah feared for his life, God showed him where to hide.  When there was no food, God sent ravens to feed him.

                   When the wadi dried up, God sent Elijah to a widow in Sidon.  When Elijah discovered that this poor woman had no food left to share, God provided flour and oil every day to feed them all.  At this point God designed another crisis.  It was the greatest test Elijah had faced thus far.

               If you are at the end of the rope and you can’t see anything left to help you then you must depend on God.  When you think that there is nothing left to feed you physically, emotionally or spiritually then you must understand that God operates in the extra-ordinary and not the ordinary.  You may have been put at the end for a reason, at the point where you see no help or resolution.  For it is as that point where you decide if God will be allowed to win or lose in your life! 

                God has food for you every day! You must pray!  Pray and ask God to feed you.  Prayer is the feet to God’s will.  It sets God’s desire and power into action.  I challenge you to turn off the radio, turn off the TV and computer and spend 30 minutes a day in prayer!  Watch what God can do for you if you only take time to tell Him your need!  It is not that He doesn’t already know your need, He does!  The point is that God wants to hear you ask! 

Is God Involved???

     Genesis 18:14 “Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

     

     Have you ever taken the question, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” and put your specific topic into that question?  “Is it too hard for the Lord to provide money for my bills?”  “Is it too hard for the Lord to fix my marriage?”

     If you had been Abraham and you had that faith that you have today…would you really have bothered to even let it cross your mind to say, “Lord, I will return and Sarah will have a son.” Most people wouldn’t because their faith wouldn’t be stronger than the physical possibilities they see.  You would have seen an old lady and the circumstances and said, “ no way.”

     Do you know we serve a God that has created every single thing we see, every single person that has ever walked on this earth, He knew.  He knows every person that will ever be born, knows how many stars hang in space and yet we place Him in a box of possibilities and we limit him to what we think He can and can’t do.  Shame on us! 

     You are the child of a King, now act like it! Your “daddy” can do anything, anytime and anyway He wants! All you have to do is ask and then have it done!  Make it a priority this week to live in the possibility and not what you see!

     Church growth would never take place if we only believed in the things that we see.  To walk into a church meeting and see only a handful present is sometimes discouraging but not with God.  God wants us to become evangelist because His plans are not ours and His desire is to have churches larger than anything we have ever saw, Christians in less financial problems than non-believers, Christians with stronger marriages than anyone in the world!  Church growth and evangelism can never be carried out in the physical sense, but must always be carried out in the spiritual realm! –Go make “daddy” proud!

 

How Not to Be a Cuckoo

You ability to reach people with evangelism, and your ability to perform church growth is simple...don't become like a cuckoo bird!  You have to feed yourself good quality "spiritual food." Once you feed yourself that food then you will be able to carry out the functions of church builder and evangelist.  Here is what I mean...

     The cuckoo is a common bird in England. The first sign of spring is that bird's call. The cuckoo never builds its own nest. When it feels an egg coming on, it finds another nest with eggs and no parent bird. The cuckoo lands, hurriedly lays its egg, and takes off again. That's all the cuckoo does in terms of parenting. (We have a lot of cuckoos in our society today!)

The thrush, whose nest has now been invaded, comes back, circles, and comes into the wind to land. Not being very good at arithmetic, it can't imagine why it immediately begins to list to starboard. It gets to work hatching the eggs. Four little thrushes and one large cuckoo eventually hatch. The cuckoo is two or three times the size of the thrushes.

Mrs. Thrush, having hatched the five little birds, goes off early in the morning to get the worm. She comes back, circles the nest to see four petite thrush mouths and one cavernous cuckoo mouth. Who gets the worm? The cuckoo.

Guess what happens. The cuckoo gets bigger and bigger; the little thrushes get smaller and smaller.

To find a baby cuckoo in a nest, simply walk along a hedge row until you find little dead thrushes. The cuckoo throws them out one at a time. Here's an adult thrush feeding a baby cuckoo that is three times as big as the thrush.

And the moral of the story is this: you have two natures in one nest and the nature you go on feeding will grow, and the nature you go on starving will diminish. If there's going to be anything resembling that which God has in mind for us, it is going to come not through an annual attempt at the spirit of Christmas but a perpetual recognition of the Spirit of Christ.

Romans 14:12 says that each of us will give account for the things that we have done. Make sure that what you feed your soul is acceptable to God because it would be a horrible day if we are spit out like most of us do if we were to consume milk that had gone "bad."

Live strong, study God's word even if you don't feel like it! Pray, even when you feel like you don't want to! Christianity is NOT about emotion, but it is about the facts of God's word playing out to change our life! Be tenacious and have a plan for getting where you are going in life...work the plan! Live Free!

Grow yourself and grow a church.  Evangelism depends upon you and if you have grown in God's word and power then evangelism is no problem at all!

The Legacy of Failure and Success

Elijah is a stand out in Biblical history and was one of the most significant Old Testament prophets of all time.  Why did God use him in such amazing ways?  What was the true story of his life?

Elijah's success was based on no secrets.  The reasons for his success stand out clearly from the numerous events in his life as though they were three high mountain peaks standing out against the evening sky.  As the sun begins to set on this old prophet's life, we can look back and see three primary reasons God used Elijah to accomplish His purses in the world.  

Elijah was a man of God's Word (I Kings 17:2-10), A Man of Prayer (James 5:17-18), and lastly, A Man of God (II Kings 1:2-10)

As a man of God, he was one of the special people who had access to God's power to work miracles.  As a man of prayer, he was one the few men that saw God respond in most unusual ways.  As a man of God's Word, he heard God speak to him directly on numerous occasions, revealing His specific will.

If evangelism and church growth are ever to get to number one in our church we must be about God and about prayer to God.  Evangelism is based on the leading of the Holy Spirit and His power, mandated by Jesus and ordered by God's purpose for His Children.

This week ahead determine in your mind and heart that you will serve God and you will take on the role of evangelism by simply doing acts of kindness based on God's power!

The Disconnected Christian

Matthew 13 sure does a good job with showing how people are today. We have those that let God’s word be sown into their hearts and take root to change the field that they live in and grow amazing fruit for God’s kingdom. Also, we have people that appear to be faithful and amazing Christians but have no clue about God’s true power in their life!

“A farmer went out to sow his seed…As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up.” Matthew 14:3-4

Have you ever watched the movie Home Alone 2? In the end the character catches the bad guys by throwing bird seed over their sticky covered clothing and instantly thousands of pigeons attacked them and they were brought down. Notice that the pigeons took no time to jump once the seed were thrown. In our life today a small bird may not be an enemy to bring us down, but Satan is. He knows well the power that has been placed upon you. Does Satan easily take God away from you?

In today’s time people are so shallow with their Christian walk with God that I am sure Satan is not lacking for “seed meals.” Here is a simple test: 1. If someone cuts you off in traffic do you instantly get angry and use a finger to express your anger or do you simply say, “I’ll pray for you.” 2. If a friend were to post something negative about you on the internet would you get mad and post something negative back? 3. When was the last time that you spent more than even 15 minutes in prayer? The response to these questions will determine how deep your spiritual seeds are planted!

If you have only allowed God to apply His power, Spirit and word to the outer parts of your skin then Satan can easily fly down and attack you and devour those seeds so they may never take root and grow! Study God’s word, pray and seek God and you will see that those seeds will be deep within your soul!

I assure you that God has a desire to be planted far deeper than most people allow! Not only does he want to be planted deeper, He wants to be the only seed that grows within you! He can supply all your needs so in reality do you really need to plant anything else?