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  You and I were created by God, and He has made known to us the mystery of His will and purposes through Christ, according to His good pleasure…and not the other way around. (Eph. 1:9; Rev. 4:11). The sooner we come to a place of realization that we exist to please Him, instead of pleasing ourselves…which comes about by aligning our lives and purposes with His will, the sooner we begin to walk in His peace and come to know His goodness and love. This is called walking in covenant with Him, and reaping the blessing that come with being a child of God. Clearly…not everyone will subscribe to this mindset nor surrender to this way of living. (John 1:11; 3:19-21) Have you ever been accused of being a ‘people pleaser’? You probably know what that is all about. Or have you ever known people who ‘lived to please themselves’? That doesn’t sound like any better of a reputation to have, to me at least. But then we read in the Bible about a man named Enoch…”who had this testimony, that he ...
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  If you missed yesterday’s message, may I encourage you to stop right here and just scroll back and read it now. And for those who did read it, it might not be a bad idea to go ‘review’ it one more time before continuing on here today; just saying. :- ) I would like to think we all know the difference between a ‘threat’ and a ‘warning’. God has never been in the business of ‘threatening’ mankind, but He sure gives us plenty of ‘warnings’…offered up in ‘love’, because it’s NOT His will that any suffer or perish…but that we would all come to __________ (2 Pet. 3:9). So consider a warning that Paul issued in Acts 13:40, where he admonishes us to “beware therefore…lest what has been spoken in the prophets come upon us.” Paul then quotes a rather obscure passage from a minor prophet known as Habakkuk. If you’ve never heard me point this out before, I’d be curious to know how many actually have gone and done a semi-deep dive on what Paul was referring to here, by going back and looki...
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  I’ve heard the expression used both ways…where folks either lament over preachers who ‘never preach against sin any more’…or… complain how ’all that guy ever preaches is …‘against sin’. I’ll be honest with you…I’m not even sure if I know what that means…to ‘preach against sin’. For that matter, I don’t know that I have ever heard, even a ‘lukewarm Christian’ ...make the case that they were ‘for sin’. Now…if all you hear from the pulpit of your choice is the repeated warning…”Y'all better quit sinning unless you wanna bust hell wide open”… then I can see why some might get tired of hearing that; especially…if they have struggled continuously with the same old sins while no one has ever taught them from scripture how to be ‘free indeed’ (John 8:32-36). On the other hand…churches that have backed away all together from addressing the one thing that is responsible for bringing pain and suffering along with death and destruction into people’s lives…which is what sin does…then ‘woe unt...
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  “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons… having their own conscience seared with a hot iron…” (1 Tim. 4:1) “We should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and ‘carried about’ with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting”( Eph. 4:14) “Do not be ‘carried about’ with various and strange doctrines.” (Heb. 13:9) I mentioned in yesterday’s message how this ‘spiritual flood’ that is coming, and already here…oftentimes comes in ‘two waves’; the first wave being a flood of deception, followed up by a wave of destruction. We are seeing that happen now, and have been. You should revisit what Jeremiah had to say about the ‘latter days’ and warned of listening to what some have termed the ‘pillow prophets of peace’ --- “Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you. They make you worthless; they speak a vision of t...
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  Whether you are talking about torrential downpours where rivers are overflowing their banks, or expected tsunamis from a recent earthquake, or maybe ‘high tides’ as I have come to learn about out here on the coast…when extraordinary amounts of water are predicted to ‘flood the area’…the warning for folks in low-lying areas is always the same: “Seek higher ground immediately”. Seek. Higher. Ground. A more melodramatic ‘slang’ expression might sound something like this: “Ya’ll better head for the hills…thar’s a flood coming!” Head. For. The. Hills. Did you know there’s a passage in Psalms that begins with a question, followed up by the answer, and it has to do with seeking ‘higher ground’. Perhaps you’ve come across it or heard it before… “Who may ascend into the hill of the LORD? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive blessing from the LORD, And righteousness ...
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  The 2026 hurricane season officially began about 6 weeks ago, on June 1. As of this writing, I am not aware of any impending storms brewing in the Atlantic…yet. Now if you are like me, when those storms begin to form, your interest level begins to rise, especially if you live in the path of those destructive storms, or any violent weather for that matter. I’m using hurricanes today because we tend to get much more advance warning on them in order to prepare and take proper action to avoid the potential coming danger. And as you probably know already, when serious weather begins to arise, the Weather Channel, and other weather related news organizations go on ‘high alert’ as they begin to broadcast of the impending threats. They ‘live for this’ and because of the media access we have these days, the coverage is usually non-stop, or 24/7, as we like to say. Extreme weather is a ‘media magnet’ for sure. So imagine if you would, how odd it would be to sit down this evening to ca...
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  I’ve heard it said for years: ‘Deceived people don’t know they are deceived.’ We read in Matt. 24 where Jesus met with His disciples on the Mount of Olives, where they had come to Him privately and asked Him about the ‘end of the age’, and what ‘signs’ might point to His ‘return’ (3). As Matthew records for us, the very first words out of His mouth were: “Take heed that no one deceives you.” (4) Anyone care to guess why Jesus might say such a thing? I’m pretty confident when I say that Jesus knows how easily…we can be deceived. I know that you know what that word means, but as a matter of record, let’s just put this out here in print- ‘to be deceived is to be tricked or misled into believing something that is untrue. This deceiving, or deception… is usually a result of someone deliberately withholding or distorting the truth for their own advantage. I would also have to add that deception can result unintentionally…when a person who is deceived themselves then pass on errant in...
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