WHERE ARE YOUR AFFLICTIONS TURNING YOU?

Oh the lessons that can be learned from the Bible. Every book and every chapter is full of knowledge and wisdom to be gained... if we will simply read it, study on it, giving some thought to it and obey what God reveals to us through the pages.

In the book of Job we learn that man can trust God even when explanations are missing. Like Job, we can learn that God's silence does not mean His absence. His control over nature and creation assures us, of His all sufficient ability to care for us. 2Cor. 12:9 even tells us that His grace is sufficient for us. That means we need not worry about anything, but simply and quietly accept God's designs, knowing that all things work together for those that love the Lord.

While we can go to God and ask Him why, so that we may better understand His ways for our benefits....we should never question His wisdom or reasons as to why He does what He does or allows things through His own Sovereignty. For God does not report to man and man must learn to remain content in the things that he can not understand; and that because we are but mere men and women, we are finite and that keeps us from having eternity's perspective, which only God possesses.

God has reasons for everything He does or allows and they are all to better His children because of them and through them. The scripture tells us that God knows the plans that He has for us, and they are to prosper us not to harm us.....Whereas satan intended to use Job's afflictions to move Job away from God, God's intentions were that those afflicitons open the way for Job to experience God in a deeper way comprehending His person and Character in a more surreal way than before his afflictions.

The story began with satan's charge that Job was serving God for the profit motive and that his affections was payment for blessings only. If God removed or withheld His blessing form Job satan accused... then Job would curse God and therefor both God and man would be belittled and mocked. The reputations of both God and man were at stake. God bribes no man to worship Him, like the angles in heaven they freely want and desire true worship of their own free wills. God does not dangle rewards in front of us to entice us to serve Him, but blesses the humble and shows mercy and grace to all out of His great love.

Like Job, we have the honor every time we are slandered by satan to be used by God to refute satan's accusations that we too serve God for only the good that He allots us and that we will curse Him when He withholds a blessing or two. As Job questioned his wife, we too must ask ourselves the same thing: will we receive good from God but not bad?

Jesus told Peter that the devil had ask permission to sift him.....and that is what he ask of us as well. God allows the sifting to show us our true commitment lever for Him. Jesus told Peter...."but I have prayed for you"....and he does the same for us....His Spirit intercedes on our behalf to help us stand. Job had it in him...after he had been sifted by satan he had what it took to honor God with his life, even when he had nothing but his life left to give God....he chose to keep on honoring and serving no matter what he lost.

Let us search our own hearts to see what is in us. Don't wait to be sifted by the devil. Start today searching and cleaning house.....God is searching for those whose hearts are really turned toward Him...

Remember, Never let your afflictions turn you away from God.....but always turn you to God!
Praying for your steadfastness today and loving on you as well!
Bren

GOD DEMANDS RIGHTEOUSNESS

Whether dealing with the individual or the nation, the prophet Amos always called for a steadfast pattern for right living and he refused to accept any substitution which might be offered in God’s name by men. His prophecies never compartmentalized life into the secular and the sacred... because, he viewed religion and righteousness in daily living as inseparable from one another....and this is how we should view our lives if we are God's Children.

While there is a special sense in which we are accounted righteous through Christ now for those that belong to Him, seeking God’s righteousness must be our ultimate goal as a Christian. That was what Jesus meant when He said “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect…” Matt 5:48.

Every moral judgment that we make must be made in the light of God’s moral character.

God demands righteousness in every area of our personal and corporate life, not in the areas that we choose to be or allow Him to work.  His Word tells us to be Holy even as He is Holy!

God never ask more of us than we are able to give, He has made us overcomers; and that is why we need His power to overcome the things in our lives that seperate us from His best for us. Sin always seperates us from God. While we may no longer be seperated spiritaully from Him, if we belong to Him, we can break fellowship with Him by our sin. So, we must always be ready to confess the moment we realize that we have sinned and make every opportunity to correct, stop, and prevent those sins from happeing again.

If we love Him....we will obey Him!

We are mighty in His Power and in His Strength! Put on His full Armour....and be strong to endure and withstand whatever may come your way!

Loving you today!

Bren

RESISTING GOD'S WILL FOR YOUR LIFE

In spite of the work that we know God does in and through us, we still resist and doubt Him at times. That resistance comes from unbelief. Despite all the answered prayer and work around us that we see Him doing and know that only He can make happen, one would think that we could never doubt or not trust His timing or judgment for our lives, yet we do; and time and time again we demonstrate that resistance toward Him through our disobedience and lack of trust.

We first and foremost resist God willfully, by closing our hearts to what He may be saying to us…and do what we want instead of what He may want for us. Maybe God has not come through for us on our time line. We shrink back from what seems hard to us by fearing both the real and unreal difficulties that our minds present and picture before us. We resist Him by our unbelief.

Many people thwart God’s will and plans by simply neglecting to know it. They may think that as long as they don’t pursue to know it, then they will not be held accountable for it…. but in the end we will all be held accountable for neglecting to know and pursuing His will.

When we resist what we ought to know from God… we thwart what His will and way should be for us. The scripture gives us many stories about how the children of Israel thwarted God’s will for them time after time. It also tells of the great consequences that followed after they stubbornly disobeyed Him. There may have been times, after they had turned away from God, that they seemed to have prospered for a time…but in the end, their very prosperity led to their undoing.
In the times that they served God and walked in His ways, He provided them protection from their enemies, granted them deliverances and when they turned away from Him, they found themselves no longer under His umbrella of protection; therefore, their territories were laid waste, and they were brought into the greatest misery.

Many of the evils that came upon the children of Israel had their root in their refusal to obey God. In one account, had they followed God’s plan, the Israelites would have gone directly into the Promised Land; but, they resisted what God had told them, listened to the fearsome tales of the ten spies, disbelieving God, and refused to obey Him….. and consequently, they had to take the long, dangerous, and distressing route by way of the of Sinai… with its burning desert sand, blistering hot winds, the shortness of water, the feared serpents and scorpions and the constant dealing with sand in their water, their food, their belongings.

There was no other way for them to reach the Promised Land when they refused to go by the way God would have led them. Like the Hebrew Children, there are many people today in their own Sinai Deserts, because of their resisting the will of God, and unwillingness to be led in the shortest way to peace and happiness but have opted to go the directions of their own choosing. There are many people however, that looking back over their lives, can now see where by resisting God’s will they brought upon themselves unhappiness and weary toils, and had to travel in a desert way, when they might have had a fair and pleasant way had they been content to submit to God.

Many of the evils that came upon the children of Israel had their root in this one refusal... to obey God. Oddly we are all as the scriptures says we are....we are but sheep that have gone astray, each to his own way. As we go our own way, we need to remember this....we go without the protection of the Father. While God never forces His way on us....His absence alone will always drive us to our knees in the end.

So, it is far better that we obey at the beginning of what He may ask of us and not resist His will or direction for us. For the road through the dessert, is very dry, and holds no rest for us!Psalm 143:10 "Teach me to do Thy will; for thou art my God; Thy Spirit is good; lead me into the land of rightness."
Loving you and praying God will work in and through your life in a very REAL way today!
Bren

THE SECRET CODE OF A CHRISTIAN

One of my favorite verses in the Bible and there are many….is found in John 13:4…”He…laid aside His garments; and took a towel…” This was the secret…the code that the disciples were to live by.  Not the kind of towel that you see on the back of a golf cart, nor a sports towel with a favorite sports team on it signifying who you support or stand for….but a simple hand towel, use to dry the feet and help wipe the dirt off another who needs to be washed.

This is also the secret to personal ministry and service. The Lord not only washed His disciples feet to show part of the real meaning as to why He came….to seek, to serve and to save all those that would come….but He does this for all those that belong to Him. Every time we sin, He says come, sit down let me minister to you and wipe off that old in you and love on you a while. You will feel better once you are clean.

Recall with me when Jesus was about to wash Peter’s feet and remember how he responded to Jesus….the God of the universe bending down to wash his old dirty stinky, calloused feet.

NO!…you shall never wash my feet, Peter said… in verse 8 of John 13! Jesus responded to Peter by saying….”Unless I wash you, you have no part of me.” Then Peter said….uh….Lord, not only my feet but my hands and my head as well.

Jesus went on to tell Peter that “A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean, though not every one of you…”… in verse 10…and of course he was replying to the one who would betray Him as he ended that statement….so I’m sure Judas heard that part as well….

In verse 12 after Jesus had completed washing all the disciples feet He said to them…”Do you understand what I have done for you?...He said in verse 15 “I have set you an example and that you should do for others as I have done for you”…..going on to say in verse 16 that “no servant is greater than his master.

You see what Jesus was saying to the disciples, Paul himself learned through his own walk with Christ “……all the things that I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant….I’ve dumped it all in the trash….I gave up all that inferior stuff, so that I could know Christ…” Phil.3:7-10

We must all reach the same place that Peter and Paul reached….to know Christ on that level. Yet many will never know Him, for they unlike Paul will not be willing to dump it all in order to know the high privilege of knowing Christ and serving Him at that level.

We all must be willing to serve no matter where, no matter the cost, no matter who it may be. We are not called to help everybody, but we are called to help somebody. Jesus is asking us... what are we willing to lay aside to serve Him….for Peter, he laid aside his pride….many times to serve….he allowed God’s love to break through in those areas needed to take him to the places that he thought he could not go….to feed God’s sheep….to win the lost...to wash some dirty old stinky feet!

When it says that Jesus laid aside His garment to take up a (lowly) towel…that my friend is some powerful stuff right there….He laid aside a Heavenly and Royal Garment that heaven revered as costly, to pick up that little towel, bend down lower than the person he was serving to do one of the dirtiest jobs there was in those days….to wash the feet of another.

Let’s think about what we may need to lay aside to go and love on somebody today!

I love you and am praying that your joy may be full as you serve the Master of Servants!

Bren

LEAVING ONE PLACE...GOING TO ANOTHER...

Leaving one place and going to another....Where are you headed? What direction are you going? What are you taking with you as you go? Those questions are simple questions that apply to any trip that we may take.

Upon telling Moses that the Israelites could leave Egypt, Pharaoh had his own demands in order to let them go… one was for the men only to leave without their families and go and worship their God. When that didn’t work, he said that they could leave, but without their flocks and herds… and Moses responded to that demand by saying, “… that there shall not a hoof be left behind…” Exodus 10:26…Pharaoh’s final demand was for them to leave, but not to go very far….just far enough for them to worship their God, yet close enough for Pharaoh to continue his control over them in the future if he so chose.

Those are the same demands that the devil gives us. When he sees that our level of commitment to the Lord involves a true commitment, he says to us…go ahead if you must, worship your God….but don’t bother trying to get your friends and family to go along with you. Then he sees that our level of commitment to the Lord involves surrendering our jobs, business and earthly possessions; and he gets bent out of shape, because he knows that when that happens, we are most serious about our commitment. You see, Moses realized that the Israelites must take it all, or nothing when they left the land of bondage and headed off to the promised land that God was about to give them. For God had given Moses the instructions on what to do and he could do nothing less than follow every one of them.

Decide this day, God’s Word says to us…..Whom you will serve….Joshua 24:15

Be sure that you know what your spiritual plans are, for you, your family and all that you have. God has given you His directions in His Word, but you must get in there… and find it out for yourself, leaving no foothold for the devil to bring you back to the land that you will leave….because I can promise you that anytime you leave the land of bondage, the devil sits and waits for your return and will try, as he did with the Israelites, to bring you back. But, if you are in God’s will, going His direction, hell itself can not bring you back. God is a Strong Tower and we can run to Him when we need Him… he can thwart and destroy the evil plans against us.  There is no safer place to be than on the other side, where God tells us to go… for there, the enemy can not touch us!

Loving you and praying for your Victory!

Bren

KNOWING GOD IN THE CALM

When fear hits our lives, we can do nothing but pray….and while God expects His children to be confident in Him in the midst of those storms, He equally desires them to rely on His steadfastness during those times of calm. There will most definitely be, stages in our lives where there are no storms, no crisis: and when there are, we are to still rely on the same staying power of God that is revealed to us during those times of uncertainty and worry.

If we are learning the lessons that God wants us to learn during those hard places, then we will find that it will be harder for the enemy to break our trust and reliance on Him when we are not stuck between those rocks and hard places. As our reliance on Him grows, it gives way to peace and oneness with the Father…and that sweet friend is what we really are seeking….to have Oneness with the Father!

Rest for us will only come as we give God our full and total devotion. He shares us with no one or no one thing, that hinders us from total surrender to Him….we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and all our souls, and all our minds...and when that happens, we become a great Joy to the Father, and there... we will see Him in the Light that He longs to show Himself to us in!

Loving you and praying that you will know His rest in your calm….
Bren

LET YOUR SPEECH BE ALWAYS WITH GRACE

Angry words spoken will only cause someone to withdraw, pull back or even shut down. But gracious words help them to open up, blossom and motivates them to reach for higher ground.

Every word that we speak today will either lift someone up or lower them down. Paul told us to “Watch the way we talk…..Say only what helps…Eph 4:29. Solomon told us that there is healing in the words of the wise… Proverbs 12:18. A wise man listens to instructions and obeys it.

You will find that most people will reproduce the seeds that you sew in their lives, be it bad or good seed. If we are telling someone that they are incapable or worthless, they will probably strive to fail and prove us correct. However, if we are encouraging them in grace and praising the good in them, they will make every effort to strive to justify our confidence in them.

Col. 4:6 says, “Let your speech be always with grace.”

Loving you today! Bren

UPCOMING LADIES EVENT JANUARY 21

TOPIC:

Sometimes God appoints spiritual storms to enter our lives to reveal something that we need to know about ourselves or about Him, most of the time it’s both. As we learn to walk closer to Him the storms are fewer and far between and seem less frightful, because we are learning to walk with Him in the light that He is revealing to us. Come learn how you can allow your storms to drive you to see Jesus and find the peace that you will need to stand the storms that will touch your life.

We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair…”
2 Corinthians 4:8

SPECIAL MUSIC by: Brandy Barrett 

Brandy is a part of the Praise  & Worship Team at Life Point Church in Senatobia, MS. She is a wife, and mother of a 4 year old little boy. With her combined musical gifts, soulful voice and vocal talent, Brandy delivers an infectious presence of worship with passion, emotion and depth in a contemporary worship format. God began using her musical gifts and talents as a young teenager and her heart beats only to sing the Praises of the One she loves and adores.

January 21, 2011

Woodland Hills Baptist Church

For more information Contact Bren @ bren.parsons@yahoo.com