Divine Intervention

When your philosophy of life is limited by the laws of science, then you are left without explanation when miracles happen.  But when your beliefs are rooted on Colossians 1:16-17 which states all things were created through Jesus Christ and are held together by Jesus Christ, the miracles can then make sense, because you understand that this world is governed by a God who transcends the laws of Science.  Take the following story for example.

Tony was a diesel mechanic.  On August 4^th, Tony and his wife went to bed like normal.  Little did they know that the next morning God was awaiting them with a miracle that would change their view of Him forever. 

When Tony’s wife woke the next morning, she knew her husband was seriously ill, as Tony was not breathing. Immediately she called an ambulance and he was transported to the hospital.  Doctor’s rushed to figure out why Tony was not able to breathe.  A few hours later, Tony took a turn for the worse when his heart stopped beating.  The doctors were left scrambling to revive Tony but to no avail.

On August 5^th, Tony was pronounced dead at 37 years old, leaving a wife and two children behind.

The sudden death of Tony shocked the family, and they called their friends and Pastor to the hospital to mourn with them.

Nurses prepared Tony’s lifeless body to be seen by his family.  Tony’s teenage son came into the room to see his father one last time.  His pastor accompanied him as he looked upon his dad, who once resembled a man of strength, as he lay on the bed motionless.

Lawrence, Tony’s son, was not ready to lose his dad and told his dad that today was not his day to die.  As Lawrence left the room 45 minutes after his father was pronounced dead, his pastor saw something on the heart monitor still attached to his chest; a flutter, then another, and another.  No human hand was on Tony as the Pastor witnessed the invisible hand of God revive him back to life. 

With absolutely no scientific explanation available, Tony was fully awake four days later, with no remembrance of the situation.

Do miracles still happen? Absolutely!  We have a God who is actively governing not only this world, but every breath you take. 

I personally praise God regularly for granting me life, for holding my life together through his Son Jesus Christ.

So the next time you are left scratching your head at something that defies science, turn your thoughts to God, who may have just proven his existence to you.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/ohio-man-pronounced-dead-tony-yahle-back-life-20045339

Make Believe God

The last time I talked to my good friend, Brad Pitt (it’s awesome knowing someone like Brad, or as I like to call him, B), was about two weeks ago via Skype.  We were chatting up a storm over, believe it or not, fishing.  Many people don’t know this but Brad loves to fish, and I don’t mind it myself!  In fact, the two of us are planning an offshore fishing adventure early next summer. It’s going to be a blast. 

Fishing wasn’t the only thing we talked about. Throughout the conversation, we talked about various subjects such as, the Hollywood life, Midtown, and weight lifting.  One interesting topic that came up was facial hair (I told you it was interesting).  I told B that I’ve always envied how he can seemingly grow a beard over night and it was always full.  My facial hair tends to come out in patches, what’s up with that?

Well, he said he had to run and get to some hair swinging, eye stunning Hollywood scene, but we plan to talk again, real soon.

YEAH RIGHT!  That only happened in my head.   I couldn’t even begin to tell you the names of the movies he’s in, let alone the color of his hair.  The only reason I know anything about “B” is because he is constantly plastered on my television set and on the tabloids.   I do not have a friendship with him.  It doesn’t matter how much I know of him, how much I have read about him on E! or Wikipedia, we do not have a relationship since he doesn’t know me.  I can make believe that we have a friendship, and play it out in my head, but that doesn’t mean that we actually do.

Unfortunately, some people have this relationship with Christ.  They have learned about Him through church, and possibly even through media or snippets of verses littered on billboards, yet they do not have a relationship with Him because Christ doesn’t know them in return.  We see a vivid picture of this in Matthew 7:21-23 ,

“²¹ “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ ²³ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

These individuals duped themselves into believing that they had an intimate relationship with Christ.  Their proof was, “everything we did was in your name.”  Basically they told God that because they talked about him, did acts of kindness and accredited them to Jesus, and even told demons to scram by Jesus’ name that they must have had a relationship with Him.  They are also implying that these were things Jesus would do, and they were emulating him, therefore they must have known each other.

Clearly, Jesus is saying that it is possible to have a make believe relationship with him.  We can be deceived in believing that we have a relationship with him because we say the right things or do the right things in his name.  But our mental knowledge of Jesus can deceive us into believing we have a real relationship with him.

The fact is, Jesus must know you also, that salvation does not take place because you know what to say or what to do, or because you can rattle off Jesus facts better than the average Christian. 

God doesn’t leave us hanging to wonder if we truly have a relationship with Christ or not.  Here are a few ways to examine yourself and to test your relationship with Christ. 

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 Do I love?  If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

John 8:31 Do I  hold to the teaching of Christ?  “So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,”

2 John 9  Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.

1 John 15:8 Do I  bear fruits of a Christian life?  By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

2 Corinthians 13:8 Does it bother me when I am disobedient?  “For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.”

Test yourself today; examine yourself to see if you are in the faith.  If you truly can ask yourself the hard questions, then I believe God will show you if your relationship with him is make-believe or if it is real.  The great news is this, if it is make-believe, then that can change today, right now by confessing that he is Lord and believing in your heart that God raised him from the dead!

 

 

Wise Living - Sermon

Living in harmony with one another is one of many characteristics of the Christian life.  But this is easier said (or easier read) than done.  This principle requires us to have a right "thinking" about ourselves and each other.

The one who thinks to highly of himself, becomes prideful, conceited, and puffed up.  The "know it all" is controversial in his conversations, always trying to prove himself right.  This personality does not lead to harmony.

On the other end of the spectrum, you can think to lowly of yourself, wallowing in the insecurity of a low self esteem.  This mentality also doesn't stimulate harmony as one remains self-reflective on his or hers faults.

But to live in harmony with others doesn't only require right thinking about yourself, it requires right thinking about others also.  You can think to highly of some, placing them as idols in your life, and you can view others as lower than yourself, both of which also do not promote harmony among people.

Living in harmony requires right thinking and right thinking only comes from 1 person, Jesus.

To learn more, listen here:
http://www.midtownchurchfl.org/living-wisely/

Abandon

Think about this question for a moment:  What does it mean to abandon yourself to God?

I have spent several weeks thinking about that question.

For me, that is one of those ambiguous questions that’s hard to wrap a clear answer around. 

In light of my daily struggle with the flesh, abandoning myself to God seems to be the answer that will allow me to live freely by his grace.  But what does that look like? Let me put a picture in your mind to help you understand this more clearly.

Picture yourself in a one man kayak.  You are on the Colorado River, in some of the fiercest currents.  Today, you have decided that you will paddle upstream against some of the strongest class 4 and class 5 rapids.  You drop your kayak in the river at a relatively tranquil location and begin to paddle.  But it’s only a matter of feet before the currents pickup speed as the river narrows and you begin to slow your pace. 

The farther upstream you paddle, the quicker the current gets and the harder it pushes against you.  In order to keep moving forward, you must paddle harder and harder.  Before long the kayak comes to a standstill, yet you are paddling ferociously.

The current becomes too strong for you, no matter how hard you paddle, you cannot make it upstream any further.  But you remain persistent.  10, 15 minutes later, fatigue is setting in, while the river remains relentless.

You back muscles are on fire, your brow is dripping in sweat, and the mental anguish of doing all of this work and getting nowhere is tormenting your mind.

After a long fight with the current, your exhaustion settles in and you know you are doomed to fail.  At this point you come up with another plan.  You decide to abandon yourself to the raging power of the river.  In order to enjoy the river and the power of the currents, you turn your kayak downstream and take off.  Now the power of the current is doing all the work.  Your exhaustion, your energy level no longer affects the distance you cover, rather now all you have to do is cooperate with the currents by helping steer through the river, dodging obstacles along the way. 

Before long the first mile is down, and your energy is slowly being restored.  Another mile passes and you are once again enjoying the river, instead of fighting against it. The currents of the river are now your greatest ally and not your biggest enemy.  The only thing you had to do was have a change of mind and decide to go with “the flow”.

Abandoning yourself to God looks very similar to this.  In life, you may be tempted to fight your struggles on your own, but this is about as effective as paddling upstream against the raging Colorado.

Rather Scripture says, ⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; ⁶ In all your ways acknowledge Him,
and He shall direct your paths. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

When we abandon our self to God, we learn to trust in his understanding, seeking His ways for our life.  In so doing, he directs our paths, he guides us through rough waters, and he empowers us to find victory over our toughest struggles.

If you have been fighting against your flesh, you know how tiring that can be without the Lord’s help.  You know because you have failure after failure after failure and before long the thought creeps in that says, “Why try any longer, I am destined to fail.”

I can confidently tell you that you will not lose!  But, you will need to turn your kayak around and start going with the flow of Christ.  You will need to turn and repent of our sin and give your sin over to the demolishing power of Christ that lives inside of you.  You will need to call out to him prayerfully and through the reading of his word, begin to lean on his understanding, and then he will direct your paths.

God is at work all around you, the question is, will you fight against him or will you allow him to direct your paths?

 

Emoticons

Have you ever used super glue and never have gotten your fingers stuck together?  That’s the thing about super glue, it is made of chemicals that, when dry, form almost an unbreakable bond.  The church has been given a command in Romans 12:15 that has the same affect on those in the church as super glue does with whatever one is bonding together.  “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”  When we rejoice and weep with others, we form an unbreakable bond through humble love. The only way to enter into someone’s emotional estate is to sacrifice our momentary desires to place their emotional needs first.  This is a critical element that is needed in the body of Christ.  To learn more, listen to Midtown’s sermon titled “Emoticons” here:

http://www.midtownchurchfl.org/emoticons-mtc161/

PiNNED

After coming back from vacation and stepping on the scale, I knew I had some serious catching up to do with my weight.  So I decided to step it up at the gym while beginning to carve back on my calorie intake.

Eager to achieve new heights at the gym, I jumped straight in with chest workouts.  Any weight lifter knows that taking a few weeks off results in some muscle atrophy leaving you a touch weaker than before.  

Therefore, you need to invest some time to gradually get your body back to the strength that it was before you took a break from the gym.  Well, I pushed that theory aside and went straight for my maximum lifting weight plus an extra 5lbs.  In my sheer determination, I was able to do a few sets of 6 reps of my maximum lifting weight.  But, just when I was feeling good about myself, something happened that has never happened to me at the gym.

I was on my 5^th set of bench pressing.  I was aiming for 6 reps as before, but I could tell it would be a push, as my arms were shaking on the 2^nd rep.  I had barely pushed out the 3^rd rep, and the 4^th rep should have been my indicator that I was finished.  But I was determined to get to 6.  As I was lowering the weight to my chest on the 5^th rep, a thought flashed through my mind.  When you are in an extreme workout, the last thing you need is a random thought to pop into your mind to break your focus.

Well that’s exactly what happened, a stressful thought about work popped into my mind and I began to get anxious about it.   As I was lowering the weights, my mind wandered to this situation at work and I began to get anxious.  I started thinking about how I could fix the problem in order to make it go away and how to prevent it from happening again.

Then I remembered I had a couple hundred pounds of weight I was attempting to lift.  The problem now was I had no motivation to lift it as it rested on my chest.  My anxious thoughts stole all my motivation in that moment.  As I laid on the bench with the weight on top of me I thought to myself, “just grunt like a man and lift it.”  So I did, but the weights did not budge.  I tried it again and again, and I could not lift the weight even a half an inch.  I was pinned.  So I looked around me for someone to help, and there was an old gentleman with a walker to my left.  I hollered to him, but he didn’t hear me (probably a good thing).  So I did the only other thing I could think of, I prayed.  “God I really need your help right now, the issue at work will be taken care of by you, I don’t need to sweat it, but I am sweating this situation right here right now, could you offer me a hand?”  And then with everything I could muster, I lifted the weights off of me and re-hung them. (This was nothing short of a miracle)

It was a vivid reminder to me about the need to trust in the Lord in all that we do.  Peter was able to walk on water, as long as he kept his mind on the Lord.  But the moment he focused on the troubling waters around him, he began to sink.  Only the Lord was able to pull him out of his situation.

If you feel as if you are sinking or are pinned under a stack of weights in life and you cannot seem to move them, ask yourself, “Have I taken my focus off of the Lord and placed it upon myself?  Have I stopped lifting my requests up to the Lord and have attempted to fix my situations myself?”  Anxiety will cause you to sink in life and will steal the God given motivation from you to live life to its fullest.  But if you lock into a relationship with Christ, you will be able to do more than you have ever imagined, as He will set you free from your anxiety and strengthen you to conquer the day.

“The Lord is my strength and ever present help in times of trouble”.

He Willl

As I was closing out the Sunday service this past week, I closed with a passage from 1 Thessalonians 5:23.  It reads, “Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.”  But I glanced ahead to the next verse quickly and realized that I could not stop at verse 23, so I read 24 also’ “He who calls you is faithful, he will surely do it.”

There is one astounding promise in those two verses that is repeated twice by Paul.  Do you see it?  If not, re-read the passage until it jumps off the page and grabs you.  If you believe you have found that promise, say it to yourself, “God will _____________________________________.”  If you need to, say it again and again until it begins to penetrate your heart. 

Here is the promise, the Lord Jesus Christ will sanctify you (will grow you and mature you into His likeness).  He will keep your entire self, body, spirit and soul, blameless until his return.  He is faithful, He will surely do it.

Have you been wrestling with your sin?  Have you been working hard to present yourself blameless to God?  Have you wrestled with addictions for years on end and have never found true freedom?  Do you wonder why you can’t seem to stop your mind from agonizing over anxious thoughts?  Are you tired of being an angry person but you don’t have the motivation and ability to kill that anger?  May the God of peace sanctify you, may Jesus keep you as blameless.  He will surely do it.  Jesus has the power to set you free from the struggles you are entangled in day after day.  But you have to let go of yourself and give it to Him.  He wants to set you free, but will not until you have given it all to him and until you recognize that He is the only source of true freedom.  I know it’s tough to let go of control, especially in those areas of life that we feel like are completely out of control.  But picture this, if somehow you found yourself in the pilot chair of a 747 that is on a crash course to earth, and the pilot is looking at you saying, “Hey, just let go of the wheel for a second and get out of the seat, and I will get in that seat and take over and save you, but you have to trust me.  If you don’t we will crash, because you don’t know how to fly this plane.”  Would you let go and allow yourself and the plane to be without a driver for a brief second?   Would you entrust your life into the hands of the pilot to be saved?  Of course you would!  Jesus is saying the same thing.  He will surely sanctify you.  John 8:31-32 says,  “If you hold to my teachings, you are really my disciples, then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”  The truth of Jesus Christ is the only thing can set you free in this world, and the truth is, He will set you free.

This promise breathes life into the Matthew 11:28 passage that say, “Come to me all you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  There seems to be nothing more in my life that wears me out than trying to stop sinning.  What a relief to see that Jesus will fight my battles for me if I allow Him, and that I will begin to find true freedom from the snares of life.

 

Prayers of the Persecuted

Persecution is a word that doesn’t carry the weight behind it in Western Cultures as it does in the Eastern ones.  But, undoubtedly, if you are a Christian, you know what it means to be persecuted.  John 5 tells us that if we are a disciple of Christ, we will be persecuted.  Be it physical, verbal, or emotional persecution; persecution is bound to come.  The question that I want to answer is, “How do I respond to those who persecute me?”  Romans 12:14 says to bless those who persecute you, bless and do not curse them.  That is a tough response to someone doing you harm, oppressing you unjustly.  What does blessing them mean?  How do I go about blessing them, and how does Scripture guide me through times of persecution?  To learn more listen here.

http://www.midtownchurchfl.org/prayers-for-the-persecuted-mtc160/

70x7

Yesterday was a tough day.  It seemed like every time I turned around, every word out of my mouth, every thought that passed through my mind was a constant failure in the sight of God.

I mean, when it comes to sinning, I have my good days and I have my bad days.  There are those days that honestly, I look back and think, “I can’t recall anything to ask forgiveness for.”  Then I have my days like yesterday, where there just is not enough time in the night to seek God’s forgiveness, let alone, the guilt I was in was a prison for my mind and my emotions. 

I could not shake the thought, that there is no way God would want to forgive me as much as I needed it yesterday.  I felt like every 10 minutes I was asking him to forgive me for something, and after a while, I felt foolish and no longer wanted to seek His forgiveness.

Then that passage popped into my mind where Jesus told his disciples not to forgive 7 times but to forgive 70x7.  He basically instructed his disciples to forgive that person in their life that was completely annoying, and sinful, as many times as they would ask.  He said to them in my words, “There should be no limit to your forgiveness.” (NAS Matthew 18:21-23). 

As I thought about that verse, I realized that Jesus instructed his disciples to follow his example.  That Jesus himself was saying, “This is how much I have forgiven you, therefore do the same.”

The thought is still sobering; that Jesus would want to constantly forgive me of my sins, even on those bad days. 

I honestly cannot fathom that.  I cannot wrap my mind around that concept.  Because it is very hard for me to love those around me that are constantly doing me wrong.  From my human perspective, I cannot understand how Jesus can effortlessly forgive me 70x7 (And I probably asked that many times yesterday).

But, the Apostle Paul’s words ring loud and clear from Ephesians 3 when he says;

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Called

While driving back from Mississippi last week, my wife and I conversed about the vacation we just had and what a delight it was.  Usually, a vacation requires a vacation to recoup from, but not ours.  We returned well rested and excited about tackling the road of life that lied ahead of us. 

There were a few key things that helped make this vacation worthwhile.  First, we were invited to stay at friend’s house, lifting the burden of paying for a lodging place.  Second, the trip was mostly paid for by this friend, relieving the financial burden a vacation places on a family.  Third, we had no agenda except to follow the agenda of the folks we were staying with.  There were days I laid on the couch for hours, fighting back illegitimate feelings of guilt because I was not used to being in a horizontal position while the sun was up. 

But think about how awkward it would have been if I would have called my friend and said, “Hey, we are coming to visit in a week.” Then, as we pull into her driveway, she peeks out the window to see us open the hatch of the car and start pulling out suit case after suit case.    As she watches in amazement, we take our bags into her master bedroom and begin to unpack them.

Then she sees me walk over to her fridge grab a tub of ice-cream, smile at her and say, “Cookie dough is my favorite!” and then plop down on the couch, putting my smelly feet up on the arm rest and as I turn on Judge Judy.  (You may not have to imagine this. You may just need to look over to your couch and see that family member who should have moved out 20 years ago).  If this would have happened, she would have kicked us out because we were not invited and she was not prepared for us; and on top of that, we were pushing our agenda and our needs onto her, cramping her style.

What made our vacation so awesome was the fact that she initiated the call for us to come and stay with her, she asked to provide us with care, and she fed us without us ever asking.  What a blessing.

With the memory of the vacation so fresh in my mind, I was reading in Colossians 1 and I saw a parallel between the call I received from this friend to have my family stay with her and the call we receive from Christ to do His mission. 

Colossians 1:25 …”of which I became a minister (Paul is speaking of his sufferings he is traveling through for the body of believers, the church) according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known.

I read that verse several times, and the question popped into my head, “Does God call an individual to do His work, or do his children come to him telling Him what they want to do?”  In my research, I found that the majority of the time, God called an individual to a specific work instead of that person telling God what they wanted to do. Take these characters as examples.

Noah didn’t run up to God and say, “God, I really want to build a huge boat and look like a fool to my neighbors”.  No, God called on Noah when the time was right. (Genesis 6:14)

Jonah tried with all his might to run away from God when he called him to service.  He found out through the intestines of a large fish that when God calls you to something, he will accomplish that mission through you, if you like it or not (Jonah 1:1-2).

And Saul was on his way to kill Christian,s when God diverted his path and called him to a new mission, a mission to convert people to Christianity (Acts 9:15).

There is also the example of the man with the legion of demons.  He told Jesus he wanted to follow him, but Jesus did not give him permission because it was not his agenda for the man. Rather, Jesus told the man to go back to his family and tell them how much God had done for him (Mark 5:18-20).

If those examples are not enough, how about the individuals who were all called to God’s work by God: King Saul (1 Samuel 9:16) or King David (1 Samuel 16:1), Esther (Esther 4:14), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:1-3) and the 12 disciples (Mark 2:13-19)

Through these examples, it is evident that we don’t tell God what we are going to do for him, instead, we ask God what he calling us to.  When we approach God with our agenda, we face the likelihood of being ill-equipped for the job that we want to do. But when God calls us to a mission, he gives us the specific gifts, talents, and resources needed to accomplish that mission

Paul showed us in Colossians that he was given the necessary resources from God to make the Word of God known to those whom he was ministering to.  God did not leave Paul hanging.  God called Paul to be a minister of the word of God and he equipped him to do so. 

When God calls you to something, he equips you to be successful at it.  The fruit of your ministry may never be seen by you, but God’s plans are accomplished through you when He calls you to a task.

Maybe you are in a situation now that looks hopeless.  Possibly, God has placed someone in your life for you to minister to, someone you are revealing the Word of God to, and yet, they seem closed to you or they are constantly taking advantage of you.

Don’t lose heart.  If God has called you to the task, then he has given you everything you need to fulfill the task he wants you to fulfill.  It’s ok if you do not see that person, or the group of people ever turn to Him, just stay faithful to your call and keep moving forward. 

My vacation was a vacation because of the person who invited me there.  She provided everything my family needed for a good vacation.  Likewise, If God calls you into ministry, he will equip you with what you need to accomplish the ministry.  And, if you need to, take a vacation every once in a while, it just might be what you need to move forward in the work you are doing.