What Price Will You Pay

What Price Will You Pay?

Can we be perfect? The bible calls us to aim for perfection but can we really accomplish this. The common excuse amount men in this is the excuse that "no one is perfect". When we are challenged in sin or something in our character it is tempting to make this excuse!

James 4:4-10

What is the price that we need to pay for a relationship with God? It's our pride! We have to humble ourselves and pay that price. In that he will lift us up and give us more and more grace. In his eyes we will reach perfection through Jesus! 

Romans 6:11-14

God has something for me that my pride and my own desires can never offer me! Through humility and drawing close to God we will have the life we were meant to have!

Philippians 1:27-2:1-5

What price do you have to pay to be closer to your brothers? The same price! Through humility and only through humility can we be devoted to each other! Humility breads openness and confession! My pride holds me back!

1 Corinthians 9:19-

What price will I pay to reject the world and at the same time love people enough to win as many as possible? Paul made himself a slave. What does that mean? He refused to view himself as his own master! God was his master first and he humbled himself to consider himself a slave to all men!

This what the church should be...a tight nit group completely devoted to each other with no regard for our own but for each other!

No Limits!

No Limits!

Mark 5:1-34

How far am I willing to go for God? How far was Jesus willing to go? He was willing to leave the comfort of his home, to be poor, to suffer and eventually sacrifice his life for God.

Do I have a limit for what I would do for God? There should be no limit. When there is no limitations, we allow God to open and close doors in our lives and we allow God's will to prevail in our lives!

When we think about Jesus we typically see four types of people around Jesus. There were gatherers or watchers. There were those who followed Jesus but only at a distance. There were those who pressed in and tried to get as close to Jesus as possible to check things out and see first hand what Jesus was all about. Then there was the one who would reach out and touch Jesus! To be one with Jesus. To be connected to him! This fourth person separates themselves from the crowd!

Jesus did not respond to the followers, gatherers but always responded to the ones that reached out and touched him. No one who touched Jesus left the same person. There was change. Their life changed!

Just as Christ had no limit to what he would do for us we too should have no limits for what we would be willing to do for God!

Devotion through strength and honor!

Devotion through strength and honor!

Daniel 3:8-12

Our world is in desperate need of men who are strong emotionally and strong leaders that are willing to stand up for him regardless of the cost! A real man is willing to take responsibility for his own life, for his house hold! A real man of strength and honor know how to handle temptation and how to glorify god in everything!

God is calling me to be a real man. A spiritual man of God full of strength and honor for him!

These three men had an opportunity to fold or stand up and believe that there is a God and that he should be served with complete devotion in strength and honor! The only way that we can follow this example is by relying on God through our relationship with him. Our strength has got to come through Him!

God always blesses us when we take a stand for him! Everyone around theses guys decided to bow down and worship these Gods!

Isaiah 14:13-14

Revelations 14:6-7

Satan wanted to be God. He wants us to worship anything but God....anything!! We may not quote unquote worship satan but when we chose to worship something other than God, what is the difference? Nothing can come between me and God!

Daniel 3:13-18; 19-30

I am not going to be Satans puppet! Through temptation and sin, satan wants me to be his puppet! God is my master and I am HIS puppet! 

Even in a hopeless situation with no way...God is God and he delivers! God will not abandon me! If I was threatened to bow down, what would happen? I have to be a man that refuses to bow down! These three men new death was not the end!

The bible says that anyone who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted! Sometimes serving god their is a cost and sometimes there are hard times but I cannot forget that God is faithful! God is in control and will deliver me at some point!

When I stand up for God he will stand up for me! Men that stand up in a bowing world! A&M I willing to pay the price? Until the day I die!

Recalculating

Recalculating!

Story recently about a woman in Belgium that was following her GPS and ended up 900 miles away in Croatia lost. She blindly trusted her GPS.

A construction crew showed up and destroyed the wrong house because they had the wrong GPS coordinance!

People in life are looking for direction. What am I following? How am I going to get there? This is not a knew thing...from the beginning of time man has been looking for something to follow.

Joshua 24:14-15

Joshua at the end of his days...wants to set Israel on the right path! He gives them a choice of two different directions. Serve God or tradition! What path am I on today? It's easier sometimes to trust in our past and in traditions of our past rather than trust in God!

James 1:22-27

We have to intently look at Gods word and then DO WHAT IT SAYS! The bible is our GPS and does not recalculate. The directions that we receive is faultless and true. It will not leave us lost or uninformed!

A lot of us have our religion past down to us by our parents and regardless of what back ground we have or from where we come from. Our religion is worthless unless we live it out.

Where does what you beliefs come from? We cannot rely on anyone else for our convictions. They have to be grounded and rooted in Gods word. Spending time studying out the scriptures for our selves is the only way to accomplish this! 

Joshua 24:14-15

Am I going to serve the Gods of my past or am I going to serve The Lord? The call is the same today. Satan tries to deceive us and trick us into thinking that the way of the world has something better to offer.

1 Peter 4:1-6

These are the Gods of the land that we live in. Debauchery, greed, selfishness, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry! Satan loves to make these things exciting and glamorous.

How glamorous was the pain and damaged that these Gods have caused my family? How exciting is regret, self hate, shame, guilt and tortured souls? A life filled with these things lead only to death and destruction.

If I chose to suffer in sin the way Christ did; by putting sin to death...denying myself and taking up my cross, then sin cannot control me. I am done to it! Sin wants to in slave me.

If life to the full is not enough for me...it's not because it is not enough! It is because we are not content with what we have!

Joshua concludes..."as for me and my house we will serve The Lord!". We have to chose God because we love him, because we cannot live with out him. When we make a decision to serve God, it has an effect on the people around us. When Joshua made this decision, it impacted his house hold.

Luke 8:19-21

This was not Jesus turning his back on his family, this is an example of Jesus leading his family by example in Gods word. 

Jeremiah 40

Jeremiah 40:1-16

Vs 1 ~ Jeremiah would have been carried off with the rest of Israel and yet he wasn't! God remembered Jeremiah's service and protected him. God is faithful to his servants and does not break his promises!

Vs 3-4 ~ The Babylonians knew that the fall of Jerusalem was from God. They knew that God was in control and that God had sent them to carry out his will! God had a relationship with the Babylonians!

Vs 4 ~ Through Israel's tragedy and Gods wrath, Jeremiah receives blessings! God has the power to weave blessings and curses with a single action. We have no way of knowing what God is doing....we can only trust and know that he is faithful and in all situations God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28).

Jeremiah 44

Jeremiah 44:1-30

Vs 2 ~ Don't take Gods discipline lightly! Remember it and allow it to remind you of the consequences of sin. Allow it to help you learn from your mistakes and avoid discipline and hardship in the future!

Vs 3 ~ Gods anger is always justified. It is always a righteous anger so accept it for what it is. We have no reason to blame God!

Vs 4-6 ~ Gods warning to Israel last over 800 years. With patience and love God tried to reason with his people. His discipline was gradual and escalated to the point of Israel's complete destruction because they refused to obey or repent!

Vs 7-11 ~ Some people will never change but yet that did not deter God from being patience, full of grace and mercy. At some point enough is enough and God will punish us for our sin but every example in the bible of this is always a case of rebellion! 

Vs 15-19 ~ Sin distorts our judgment and clouds our vision to see the truth. When we give into sin it numbs us of the truth and hardens our hearts. Stubbornness and rebellion are the sons of temptation and sin. My heart can grow just as hard if I do not put to death my sinful nature. Israel had given into spiritual immorality for so long that they were completely confused in their wickedness and perversion!

Vs 24-30 ~ What a scary thought to see men with no regard or fear of Gods authority and power. How stupid it is to even for us to fathom fighting against God. You can't do it! God will break you! Humble yourself before The Lord and submit to him as your master and you will live! The story of Israel's unfaithfulness to God and Gods reaction towards sin and rebellion should send a clear massage that my relationship to God should not be taken lightly! Everyday that I wake with breath in my lungs and life in my body will be a day that I will serve God and obey his commands!!!!

Jeremiah 39

Jeremiah 39:1-18

Vs 4 ~ You can't run from God. Zedekiah was only looking out for himself. Had he surrendered his throne he would have saved countless lives!

Vs 5 ~ God pronounced his sentence on Zedekiah through king Nebuchadnezzar!

Vs 6 ~ Zedekiah's story could have been drastically different. In Jeremiah 38:17-18...God promised Zedekiah that he and his family would live if he chose to repent and surrender to God! Zedekiah chose destruction for him and his family by not letting go and trusting God!

Vs 10 ~ All the oppressed and helpless people that God had warned the nobles of Israel to not mistreat were finally given justice! God always wants us to look out for the harassed and helpless among us. God does not turn a blind eye to thoughts who are mistreated or unfairly treated!

Vs 11-14 ~ God was faithful to Jeremiah as well. God never allowed him to die and protected him from all harm. There were hardships and Jeremiah did go through a lot of hard times as a result of doing Gods will but God never forsake him or abandoned him!

Jeremiah 38

Jeremiah 38:14-28

Vs 14 ~ why does the bible go into such great detail on things that seem to have no relevance for us today? Why does knowing the Jeremiah was brought to the third entrance of the temple of The Lord significant?

Jeremiah was known at this point to preach the truth...regardless of how his listeners would react! Why did Zedekiah feel he needed to encourage Jeremiah to tell him the truth? Maybe after being beaten and imprisoned, Zedekiah thought Jeremiah's story about what God was speaking to him would change?

Vs 17 ~ life through surrender! Is this not the choice that God presents to all of us? Surrender for Zedekiah meant giving up his kingdom. Giving up his plans for his life. Same cost that we face today in choosing God and his will for our lives.

As with us this choice of surrender not only affects us but the people around us. Zedekiah's decision to surrender would mean that his family would live!

Vs 20 ~ Obedience to God is always in our best interest. "It will go well with you" is found in multiple scriptures regarding obedience to God.

Refusing to surrender had a consequence. When we refuse to surrender to God there is also a consequence. When I rely on my own strength and try to do things my way it always ends in disaster!

Vs 24-26 ~ Jeremiah was ordered to lie by the king and he obeyed that order. Is that right? Did Jeremiah lie and disobey God because he was scared he would die? The threat of death never stopped him before from doing what was right. Was Jeremiah justified in lying before God in this case?

Devotion

New Years Midweek Service.

Devotion!

Acts 2:1-47

What better way to start off the years than with the good news of Jesus and Salvation. The whole reason we gather together is to worship God and remember the promise of God through Jesus.

As the first church was started, this is what was preached. The good news that Jesus was the son of God and that he offers salvation. The response from the early disciples were to be devoted. Devotion is the call today as well! Do you understand what devotion to God really means?

It is an unrelenting passion that does not give way. It's is really running the race and not growing weary! If you have true devotion then you will not let up. It's about attending to the one you love continually. Devotion never quits. Devotion is about loving people so much...even people that don't love you and other sending your son to die for them so that they may have salvation.

God is the ultimate example of devotion! 

Devotion cannot have two masters. You can't be devoted to Jesus and then Flirt with the world.

2 Corinthians 2:11

Jesus is not other only one that wants our devotion. Satan wants devotion as well. We have a choice. Am I going to be devoted to God and his will or to the world and its desires? Titus 3:3-15

Take movies for example: no one would go see a love story where one person is half way devoted to the other. We long for complete devotion from others. God is no different he wants complete devotion!

In Acts 2 we see that the early believers were devoted to each other as well. They stayed devoted to fellowship, the teaching, breaking of bread and to prayer and then ultimately they were devoted to God!

So why would we want to be devoted to God?

Joel 2:12

God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love! Why would you not want to be devoted to a God like this?

If I was to remove all of the convictions, courage and wisdom that God has given me in my life, over the years, where would I be today? Gods grace has been pored out on me with out measure! Genius is 6:6 says that good hurts for us and feels pain for us. Don't ever think that God does not care for us or understands what we are going through. Why not be devoted to a God like this?

There is nothing on this earth that deserves our devotion more than God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!!

1 Chronicles 28:9-10

What Matters Most?

What would you run after?

Andre Johnson gives to charity every year by allowing 12 kids buy what ever they want from Toys R Us for 80 seconds.

What really matters most in my life?

Matthew 6:19-24

If I could persue anything or have anything what would it be?
There are some many things to peruse in this world...what is your heart set on? We can set our hearts on heavenly things or worldly things.

We chase after worldly things that can never truly be ours! We can not take anything with us! Our worldly possessions all will expire. We need to seek treasures in heaven!

How do you know if your are seeking treasures in heaven? I cannot store up treasures in Haven by accident. If I do not decided to store up treasures in heaven then it will never happen. Is about a choice and a decision to put more value in Godly things.

No one would ever say that they serve money and that money is there god! We justify it and mask our idolatry under the curtain of a savings account, a new card that we MUST have...ect.

A good barometer of where our heart is, is by looking at what we invest our time in. Am I investing my time to advance Gods Kingdom or am I investing in storing up treasures on earth?

Matthew 6:25-34

God warns us not to run after theses things! What things? Everything in this scripture is a need . We have legitimate needs and God knows this!

The pagans run after these things because they do not have a God to meet these needs. I serve a God that will provide these things for me! Trying to rely on my self and provide for my self by chasing after these things is a a form of atheism! With out faith it is impossible to please God!

God says seek his Kingdom first! Is there a dollar amount that would take priority over my relationship with God?

What about dating? If your single do you have faith that God will provide the man or woman that you need? It always come down to faith in God and trusting that he has our best interest at heart!

"His Kingdom and his righteousness"! Means his needs and his will before my own. It's also about Lordship. Who is Lord? I cannot serve two masters!

Seeking Gods kingdom...how often am I sharing my faith, giving to others and laying down my life for God? When we seek God first and when he is priority our life becomes what it was intended to be!