Living Water Church

I love Biblical promises.  I tend to highlight them, write them on 3×5 cards, and memorize them.  However, there are some Biblical promises that are not quite so appealing to me.  One such promise Jesus made:  “In this world you will have trouble.” John 16:33  I have never posted that promise on my refrigerator.  Have you?

In my life, sometimes I feel like I go from one difficulty to another.  Just as one problem works itself out, another is waiting around the corner.  Beth Moore wrote a statement that impacted me.  She said, “But fear of trials sometimes depletes more energy than facing trials!  Once we accept the inevitability of hardship, we can begin to redirect our focus from fear of trials to faithfulness.”   Beth Moore, To Live As Christ, pg. 44

God allows trouble to come our way.  He uses tough times to soften our hearts, make us pliable and  teachable, so that we bear fruit that remains.  “It is necessary to pass through many troubles on our way into the kingdom of heaven.” Acts 14:22

Often when I pray, I cry, ‘Lord I want to hear Your voice.’  But the truth is, according to the scripture, I do hear God’s voice.  How can I proclaim that with such clarity?  Because God’s Word declares, “My sheep hear My voice.” John 10:27 Are you a sheep?  Are you a believer?  Then, you can know, that you know, that you hear God’s voice.  However, if you’re anything like me, it’s easy to doubt my ability to hear accurately.  The truth is that God is talking all the time.  Why don’t we hear Him more frequently?  More accurately?  Quite simply -   we’re too distracted.

There are two things in my life that distract me more than most anything else.  The first is the devil.  He is  the father of all lies.  He was defeated at the cross and yet he still has the power to lie to us, to deceive us.  Beware of the devil’s deception, because he is speaking too.  His goal is to get me to listen and respond to his voice instead of God’s voice.

The 2nd thing that distracts me from hearing God’s voice is entertainment.  I have read that entertainment is the god of our culture.  The Bible warns us to set no idols before us.  Can entertainment be an idol?  Absolutely!  Steve Sampson called TV – a Talking Viper.  Television and entertainment, in and of themselves are not evil.  But it is easy to substitute our relationship with God with entertainment.  If we want to hear God’s voice, we need to eliminate distractions, and tune into God.  Adjust your antennas.

This week I listened to the CD of Steve Sampson ministering to the youth last year.  I plead with parents to get a copy of this CD and write down the prophetic words spoken over your children.  Prior to the personal ministry, Steve spoke an admonition over our youth that seems applicable to us all.  Steve gave seven practical things we need to do to make our lives count for God.

Consider these admonitions:
1.       Keep God first.  Matt 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.”  Work on your relationship with God.  Make God your best friend.
2.      Have a relationship with the word of God.  Read the Bible everyday, make it a part of your everyday life.
3.      Set goals.  Write them down.  “Where there is no vision the people perish.”  Proverbs 29:18.
4.      Talk to God, and to other people, about your goals.  Steve said the more you talk about it, the more God will talk to you about it.
5.      Keep company with achievers.  Bad company corrupts good morals.  Don’t be around negative people.
6.      Redeem the time.  Use your time well.  Time passes away so quickly.
7.      Have an attitude to give your life away.  “Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.”  Luke 17:33

Fear is something we all struggle with from time to time.  I have read that the command given most often in the scripture is “fear not.”  It seems as though the enemy wants us to be consumed with fear because fear makes us ineffective for the Kingdom.  When fear rules our lives, we live in a self-focused, self-defensive kind of way.  Suddenly, we are no longer on the offensive, taking ground for God.  Rather, in fear, we tend to hide and shrivel in retreat.

In Isaiah 43:1-2, God declares, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine!  When you walk through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you.”

Notice that the Bible doesn’t say if you walk through the water or if you walk through the fire, but rather when.  Jesus said that in this world we will face adversity.  If you’re serving God, it’s going to happen.  But then Jesus said, “Take courage, be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”  So, today, be of good cheer.  God is with us; God is for us.  We walk under the shadow of the Almighty.  Fear not!

Ken  is a saver.   He loves making deposits into our savings account.  He finds pleasure in watching our account grow and frequently shows me the bank statements, so that I too might share the joy of saving.  I, however, love to go shopping, not window shopping, mind you – real shopping.  (My love for shopping makes saving money a bit harder for me.)

But consider this, God is kind of like a bank.  You get out of Him what you put into Him.  If you go to the bank and keep making deposits, the money is going to be there.   In the same way, the more you put into God – a deposit of prayer, a deposit of time, a deposit of worship – giving Him your heart, you will get all kinds of benefits.

Jesus declared that the most important commandment was to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.  Mark 12:30  Sometimes love is spelled TIME.  How much do you love God?  How much time do you spend with Him?  Start making deposits.

“When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O LORD, I shall seek.’”  Psalm 27:8

Love is Patient

1 Corinthians 13:4

Patience is the red carpet upon which God’s grace approaches us.

The Greek word used here for patience is a descriptive one. It figuratively means “taking a long time to boil.” Think about a pot of boiling water. What factors determine the speed at which it boils? The size of the stove? No. The pot? The utensil may have an influence, but the primary factor is the intensity of the flame. Water boils quickly when the flame is high. It boils slowly when the flame is low. Patience “keeps the burner down.”

Helpful clarification, don’t you think? Patience isn’t naive. It doesn’t ignore misbehavior. It just keeps the flame low. It waits. It listens. It’s slow to boil. This is how God treats us. And, according to Jesus, this is how we should treat others.

By Max Lucado, “A Love Worth Giving”

By Pastor Ken Urban:

I love many things like cereal for breakfast, especially in a bright sunlit room on a cold winter morning.  I love my best friend…my wife.  I love to hang out with her, talk to each other, eat dinner together, just all around be together.  Exercising is one of my favorite things to do, particularly running and swimming and going to recreation centers.  I love skiing with my Dad, staring at the beauty of the mountains, talking with my brother.  I love laughing with my boys, making them happy, seeing them grow closer to the Lord.  I love worshipping Jesus, worshipping with the guitar, hearing the voice of God, talking to someone about the gospel.  I love the unconditional love of my God, being surrounded by His presence.

Everything you love makes life worthwhile.  Spend a few minutes writing down the things that you love.  God wants us to learn a life of love.

Ephesians 5:1-2  (The Message) “Mostly what God does is love you.  Keep company with him and learn a life of love.  Observe how Christ loved us.  His love was not cautious but extravagant.  He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us.  Love like that.”

“He will call upon Me, and I will answer him, I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him, and honor him.  With a long life I will satisfy him, and let him behold My salvation.”  Psalm 91

As I wrote about in my last blog, my 15 year old son has recently suffered an enormous amount of physical pain.  (He broke his leg and had oral surgery the same week.)   Tonight he and his dad are out to dinner (at Sweet Tomatoes) celebrating Ben’s return to full-fledged eating.  After dental surgery, it has been nearly a month since Ben has eaten anything he wanted.  He is enormously tired of ice cream, jello, soup, yogurt, and mashed potatoes.  He actually wanted salad – go figure.

Recently I posed the question – Does anything hurt worse than seeing your child suffer?  I have watched Ben suffer these last 4 weeks.  I wanted to step in and rescue him.  I wanted to fix it for him, to walk beside him and somehow help him endure it.  As I have watched him hobble around our home, as I observed him looking longingly at the open refrigerator (knowing that he couldn’t eat much of anything in there), it broke my heart. Wouldn’t you agree that it tears at your heart to watch your child suffer?

My relationship with my son made me think about God’s relationship with His Son.  It must have broken the Father’s heart to see His Son Jesus suffer.  In Psalm 91, God promises to answer us when we call out to Him; He says He is with us in times of trouble.  He will rescue us. God is a rescuer.  And yet…

And yet?  As I was considering Jesus dying on the cross, I realized that God didn’t rescue Jesus.  On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”  Jesus felt forsaken, abandoned, and alone.  Jesus was crying out to His Father … and yet no rescue came.

And as I have watched my 15 year old son suffer, it gives me a small taste, just a little glimpse, of the agony the Father must have felt in seeing His own Son suffer. I can picture God watching from Heaven, watching as Jesus was betrayed, arrested, and beaten.   Looking on as His body was broken.  He saw Jesus’ blood spew forth; He heard His Son’s cries.  He heard him moan, suffering in complete anguish and torment.

Does anything hurt worse than seeing your child suffer?  God could have stepped in and rescued Jesus.  He could have prevented the suffering.  He could have stopped the abuse.  And yet He chose not to.  Why?  Because the Father couldn’t have saved Jesus … and still saved us.  If the Father rescued Jesus, Jesus couldn’t have rescued us.

For a moment try to imagine Him who has all power, choose to control that power, so as to allow such a thing as the cross to happen to His Child. What does it tell me?  He must so love us. “For God so loved the world that He sent His Son…”  God sent Jesus to earth because He loves us.  He watched Jesus suffer and die, because He loves us.

Jesus did it for us.  The Father allowed it for us.  For without Jesus’ sacrifice, we would not behold His salvation.  Oh how He must love us.

Wow, it has been a crazy couple of weeks.  I was thinking that once my boys returned to school after winter break that my life would slow down.  I daydreamed of time alone, peaceful and relaxing.  In the back of my mind, however, I knew that Ben, my 15 year old, was having dental surgery just a week after the winter break ended.  So I was mentally preparing myself for that – knowing that I would need to help him walk through the pain and suffering involved with oral surgery.

He was having this surgery because his two eye teeth went horizontal instead of coming in vertically.  The plan was for the surgeon to go in and open up the area where the teeth were, glue a wire to them, so that the orthodontist could pull them into the correct position (over the course of the next year).  We had put the surgery off for awhile because we knew the procedure, and the recovery, would be difficult.  Ben had been dreading it for some time.

Then four days before surgery, Ben rolled his ankle during his high school basketball practice, while shooting a lay-up.  When I picked him up at school that night he was in enormous pain.  At our pediatrician’s office the next day, we found out that he had broken his ankle, the growth plate in his leg had separated, and that a piece of bone had actually chipped off of his ankle.  So here in the midst of preparing for surgery, we now faced a whole new crisis.  Against the advice of the doctors, we went ahead with Ben’s surgery as planned.   This was Ben’s desire.

Immediately after the surgery, the nurse informed us that one of the teeth was very high up in the roof of Ben’s mouth and he would be in quite a bit of pain for several days.  That was an understatement.

Does anything hurt worse than seeing your child suffer?   Without going into a lot details (which would embarrass my son), he was bleeding out his nose, bleeding in his mouth, vomiting, and moaning.  His ankle was still swollen, bruised, and he couldn’t put any weight on it.  He was miserable.  He had to give up his two favorite things:  basketball and eating.

Sometimes Christians go through “Job-like” experiences.  As I watched Ben suffer over the course of the next two weeks, I realized (and accepted) the fact that God let Ben break his leg four days before surgery.  God could have prevented it and He chose not to.  I embraced the fact that God had things to teach Ben, and me, through this crisis in our family.

In all honesty, at this point, I don’t have any idea what I’m supposed to learn, except for one simple truth:  I can trust Him.  In the good times, in the bad times, I can trust Him.  I am choosing to rest securely in my God, knowing that He is involved in every detail of our lives.   He loves us, He watches over us, and He protects us.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress, My God, in whom I trust.’”  Psalm 91

I want God’s blessing.  I want to walk under the protective covering of the Almighty God.  I want the favor of the Lord resonating through my life.  And the amazing truth is that God wants to bless me, protect me, and shower me with His favor.  But as is so often the case, there is God’s part and my part.  God will do His part.  He is faithful to His word, faithful to His promises.  The question lies more in whether or not I will do my part.

Deut 5:29 is a promise I pray most everyday for my family.  “Oh that they had such a heart in them, that they would fear Me and keep all My commandments always, that it may be well with them and with their sons forever!” My desire is to have a proper respect, or fear, for God.  Additionally, this scripture declares that I must obey all His commandments.  God does not leave any room for me to pick and choose which ones I’ll obey, which ones are more appealing or require the least sacrifice.  To walk in the blessing of God, we must obey all.

And as we go through hard times, we must remember that God’s blessing doesn’t mean that He is trying to fulfill our every desire.  He’s not seeking to give us immediate gratification.  Rather, “He might humble you and that He might test you, to do good for you in the end.” Deut. 8:16.  In hard times, keep trusting, keep obeying, because God has a purpose and plan—to do good for you in the end.