Third Day

  • The Most Important Word: Relationships

    “For God so loved the world that He gave…” (John 3:16a).
    There are many people who can be reached with the gospel if we are ready before God. Broken relationships hinder the work of God. When you and I set ourselves upright with God by meeting God’s conditions, then the Lord will weigh us with a burden to pray.
    Something happens which is inexplicable, humanly impossible, that only God can engineer when we decide God’s purpose is more important in our lives than our own  feelings or bitter feelings we have toward someone.
    God can bring more people into our lives to have their needs met when we are ready. We become fulfilled as we see the fruit of God’s Spirit impacting lives of those around us. Nothing ever becomes dynamic until we become specific in our doings before the All-Seeing God that we love. Love is meeting needs. God wants to reach others through us.

  • God Created Us for Relationships

     “Commit thy works unto the Lord, and thy thoughts shall be established” (Proverbs 16:3).

      When we do the right things we will experience God working in and through us that will change our minds and attitudes as well. We usually take the opposite approach. We try to change our thinking before changing or reforming our actions. Obedience and doing are the best ways to get your thinking in line with God’s ways.

       As we personalize God’s truths we will experience God working through us in touching others for Christ. Instead of evangelism being “something we do” it will become that which is natural. Why? Because it is of the outflow of the Holy Spirit working through us. It is the practicing of the truth we know.  What power and freedom!

     

  • Do We Fear God?

    “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction”

    (Proverbs 1:7).

    We can tell if we truly fear the Lord. How?

    1. We joyfully delight in the Word of God.

    Psalm 112:1 tells us, “Praise you the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the LORD, who delights greatly in his commandments.”

    1. We passionately apply God’s Word to our everyday lives.

    Psalm 128:1 proclaims, “Blessed is every one that fears the Lord, that walks in His Ways.”

    1. We place confidence in the promises of God.

    Psalm 147:11 has said to each of us, “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him, in those who hope in his mercy.”

    We need to get back to God’s Word! Anything that takes the place of God’s Word leads to idolatry.

     

     

  • Heaven Is For Real

    “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea” (Revelation 21:1).

    Too many of us do not realize that Heaven is God’s idea and not ours. We base so much from our humanness instead of God’s reasonableness. Satan has come to blaspheme God’s name and His dwelling place and those who live there (Rev. 13:6). He wants to skew God’s reality of a place called Heaven.

    Do not allow Satan to cause you to think less than God desires for you. Heaven is God’s idea for you and for me. It is the place we should long for and desire more than anything. Really, we do desire this place called Heaven. Every desire to be fulfilled and satisfied is based on the desire to go to this place and dwell there.

    Cyprian, the third century church father, said, “Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us from this place and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom. Anyone who has been in foreign lands longs to return to his own native land…We regard paradise as our native land.”

    God’s people are going to a tangible place, a real place, that is designed on God’s geographical map. It is not a place of disembodied spirits, for human beings are not suited for such a realm. What we are suited for–what we’ve been specifically designed for–it is a place like the one God made for us: Earth. God has never given up on his original plan for human beings to dwell on Earth. The climax of history will be the creation of new heavens and a New Earth, a resurrected universe inhabited by resurrected people living with the resurrected Jesus (Revelation 21:1-4).

  • As It Was In the Days of NOAH

    “There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).

    In Noah’s day the creation of the Creator chose to choose against God. They lived as if He wasn’t there. They were devoid of God. They were detoxing themselves from all that reminded them of the true and living God. They unanimously voted God off the island, eliminating Him completely from earth’s equation. Humanity hung by a thread of a thin, godly line. Though outnumbered by millions, Noah’s little family is the “why” God held back His judgment for 120 years.

    We see a sneak preview of things to come, an advance viewing of humanity in the last days. That generation was a God-hating breed, and their kind has returned in this generation. Noah’s contemporary message was ignored by the masses and the messenger was maligned and hated. They ate, drank, and pursued relationships without the acknowledgment of God at all.

    God was not in their human hard drive, erasing Him from their collective conscience and culture. They produced after their own kind, making more degenerates, just like them. They flocked together, sinned together, and hated together. Rejecting the words of a man who gave them the Words of God, they chose to suppress the truth and avoid all witnesses.

    We as Christians are, by nature, salt and light, we’re also masters at hiding in the salt shaker and hitting the dimmer switch. We must allow God’s Spirit to lift us and load us for love. For it is God’s people who again are postponing inevitable judgment. Noah’s world did not begin without God, but it sure ended up that way.

    Look around. Which way do you think we’re headed?

    And what are going to do about it?