Sheep Food

  They say ‘hindsight is 20/20’. The only catch is that we don’t have that luxury of going back and doing things over again, in most cases. But that doesn’t stop us though from having those moments when we do look back and wonder ‘what if’...we had handled that situation differently, or spent more time exploring those options before we made that less than desirable choice we made. If you are not careful, you can get ensnared with spending too much time looking back, instead of forward. I suppose that is why Paul exhorts us to ‘forget those things that are behind...and press on toward the goal for the price found in Christ Jesus...’ (Phil. 3:13-14) I have wondered on more than one occasion how things might have played out back in the garden, had Adam and Eve handled that situation differently after they ate off the tree and their eyes were ‘opened’; and instead of hiding to cover up their shame and nakedness, what if they had run to God immediately when they heard His voice and co...

  God has been known to do things and say things, (or refrain from doing and saying things)... at the risk of being misunderstood by His creation. But who are we to try and ‘call Him out’ for what can often strike us as ‘PR blunders’ on His part? Are not His ways above our ways, and His thoughts above ours? (Isa. 55:8-9) Should the ‘clay be correcting the potter’? (Rom. 9:19-21). Does God not claim to ‘use the foolish things of this world to confound the wise? (1 Cor. 1:27) I often come across passages and stories in my Bible that leave me scratching my head and mumbling lame statements of admission that I ‘don’t get it’. But that’s just me. So when I read those examples where God seemingly refuses to extend mercy and forgiveness to someone who appears to be ‘repenting’...I have to defer to the One who does not look at people as we do, on their exterior...but looks at their hearts. (1 Sam. 16:7) There’s a reference in Heb. 12:17 about how Esau ‘found no place for repentance t...

  Have you ever read the parable of the two sons, as told by Jesus in Matt. 21:28-32? Take a moment and do that now, if you would. It tells of a father who had two sons, both of which he asked to go work in his vineyard. The first son refused, but then had a change of heart and did what was asked of him. The second son assured his father that he would indeed go and do what he asked, but then changed his mind and failed to follow through. That’s when Jesus asked: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” (31). You might jot down Matt. 7:21 next to that passage; I bet you have that one memorized by now? So picking up where we left off yesterday in 1 Samuel 15... For whatever his reasons, King Saul did not fully comply with God’s wishes, which we concluded in yesterday’s message. He spared the king of Amelek, from what we read there, along with some choice livestock.(9). Can I just tell you now that God was not pleased?!  (We’ve been studying this past week the differe...

  Dog ownership comes with responsibilities. Among those are cleaning up after them when they poop, be it after a walk through your neighborhood, a city park, and even in your own backyard. If you’ve lived in the country for any length of time, it takes a bit of getting use to when you move into town and have a dog that needs to ‘empty’ itself on a daily basis, sometimes more than once a day. And if you have a backyard...where small children play in, it becomes a factor. Trust me. If you were to bring your children over to my grandsons’ house to play in their backyard, maybe run around barefoot in a swimsuit around the ‘kiddie’ pool, I might tell you before we sent them out that I needed to go and ‘clean up’ the poop piles the dog had deposited. No doubt you would appreciate my efforts to clean the area up. Perhaps you watch from the window or porch as I take my little paper baggie or scoop shovel and begin cleaning the area up, but you notice there’s a pile I missed, despite gi...

  When you choose to please God above all others, that does not give you license to go out with a chip on your shoulder and a haughty attitude where you try to irritate and offend people...just to prove a point. We all know the kind of people I’m talking about. We are admonished to ‘speak the truth in love’ (Eph. 4:15), and when correcting others who are in error...do so with a ‘spirit of meekness, considering ourselves lest we are also tempted’ (Gal. 6:1) There will never be a shortage of people, especially ‘religious’ folks...who will take exception to what God has to say and be offended by His word. We see that repeatedly throughout the gospels when Jesus spoke the word, as with His followers in the Book of Acts. Speaking from personal experience, I can assure you this is an area that anyone who shares the gospel of Jesus Christ on a regular basis has to watch their attitude carefully, and examine heart motives. We are not here to ‘win battles and prove points’; on the contra...

  On the surface, living a life that is centered around pleasing others might sound like the noble and charitable thing to be doing, perhaps even the ‘Christian’ thing to do. But if pleasing God first and foremost is not your chief aim in life, I have a hunch that at the end of this road we call ‘life’, you might find yourself feeling shallow, empty, and used up. In fact, if you are not careful, you could very well hear those dreaded words that all you did was ‘unprofitable’...and then: ‘depart from Me, I never knew you’. (1 Cor. 13:2-3; Matt. 7:22-23). Yeah...take a moment with that one if you will. As I pointed out in yesterday’s message, striving to please people can be a clever masquerade to cover your true heart’s motive that seeks to please one’s self first and foremost; and trust me...it can be a very fine line there that escapes our notice. Were you aware that living a life that focuses on pleasing other people can actually become a bondage? Yet living a life that is cente...

  So...are you? Many people are quick to confess that they are indeed ...’people pleasers’. And if you are one of those who do readily admit that you find yourself always wanting to ‘please others’, have you ever stopped to ask yourself why that is the case? Also...do you know the difference between ‘pleasing’ someone...and ‘appeasing’ them? That might be a better place to start before we go any further in this study today. Appeasing someone is not about wanting to bring pleasure to a person, but more about ‘pacifying’ them in order to bring some negative behavior to a standstill, as in getting someone off our back, be it even for a brief moment or two. Think in terms of a whiney child or baby and how you might cave and give in to their wants in order to simply quiet them down. Appeasing someone can also be about giving in to their demands so you can avoid conflict or anger. When we hear the loosely used expression about ‘appeasing the gods’, it can be a tongue and cheek phrase we...

  “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature together with its passions and appetites.” (Gal. 5:24) Should I say it louder for those in the very back? There really are not a whole lot of other ways to express or translate that statement. If there is another scripture found in our beloved Bible that can really ‘throw a wrench’ in our modern day Christian theology, I don’t know what it is... other than maybe John 10:27; and both verses seem to make very clear identifying remarks pertaining to those who belong to Christ. It can be quite easy as you well know, for anyone to ‘profess...they know Christ’ (let alone belong to Him)... but it’s in the actions or ‘fruit’ they produce that they are really known by as to who they belong to, or not. (Titus 1:16; John 12:34-35; Matt. 7:17-20; 1 John 3:10,7) How do we get around those words in Gal. 5:24 to make it say otherwise? If you or I or anyone else truly ‘belong’ to Jesus Christ, what has taken place? And p...

  When you ‘once walked’...according to the course or ways of this world...you were ‘dead in sin’...(Eph. 2:1-2); emphasis placed here on the past tense of ‘once walked’. This is how you use to walk...meaning you don’t walk this way anymore. These words were addressed to those who have been ‘made alive’ when they repented and turned from darkness and came to the light which is found only in Jesus. Apart from Him we have no life (spiritual) and we must come to Him in order to receive this God giving ‘life’ (John 5:40; 10:10). Friends...not only is it imperative that we come to Him, but we must also ‘remain’ ...in Him, or as John 15:1-8 points out...we must continue to ‘abide’ in Him. How else can one sustain this God kind of life apart from Him? How long can an child in its mother’s womb continue to develop, grow, and thrive without remaining attached to the umbilical cord? If for whatever reason that cord became detached, that growing child within the womb would not survive. Se...

  If you are among the many throngs of people today who are truly in search of answers, trying to make sense of the chaotic and often ‘dark’ world that we live in, then I don’t know of any better verses to point you to from the Bible than the ones I touched on the other day, 1 John 5:19, Acts 26:18; Rev. 12:9...and the one I have included here below, found in Eph. 2:1-3. “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others.” I have referenced this passage regularly here over the past few years and want to come back and ‘unpack it’ even more today, because there is so much to be gleaned from it that can bring so much clarity and...

  It is an age-old question that humanity has wrestled with and sought to answer – ‘What is missing in my life’? Perhaps you have heard it phrased this way: “Who am I ...and why am I here?” It has been described as a ‘gnawing void within’... in which man has pursued multiple paths in order to fill that void. I’ve heard it described as the ‘God hole in our hearts’ that can only be filled by the One who created us. Sadly, so many people tend to pursue every other avenue and exhaust all other options before coming to the conclusion that ‘God’ really is that ‘missing piece’. Needless to say, ‘many’ folks never do arrive at that revelation, according to Jesus (Matt. 7:13-14). What is equally tragic, if not worse... is the number of people who ‘thought they had tried God’, but ended up with a counterfeit version, or misleading ‘gospel’ that only offered up an empty religion which never led to true, abundant ‘life’ (or salvation). So our ongoing struggle to fill that void has usually ...

  “We know...that whoever is born of God...does not sin...and the ‘wicked one’ does not touch him. We also know...that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:18-19) If I was to 'question' anything there in those two statements, it would be the fact that there seems to be many people today who don’t....’know’ those things John writes about. I also suspect far too many people automatically assume they are in that group described as ‘we’. The first statement seems to be a bigger point of contention for many professing believers today, about ‘no longer sinning’; but it’s the second point of ‘assumed knowledge’ that I want to focus on today; and it’s a piece of important ‘information’ that I find myself circling back to often to address and remind us all - this world is under the sway or influence of a demonic force whom we know as ‘Satan’ or ‘the devil’ (Rev. 12:9). I know Flip Wilson made light of this truth back in the late 60’s wit...

  “I was blind but now I see...” How many times over the span of your life have you sang that line from the song, ‘Amazing Grace’...or at least have heard it sung? Now, imagine adding another stanza to that line that goes something like this... “I was blind but now I see...and yet I still run into trees and walls and trip over things because ‘my spirit sees but my flesh is weak and won’t really see until I get to heaven’. Do what? That...is exactly what a multitude of professing ‘believers’ subscribe to these days to hear them explain their theology. Now don’t get me wrong...I ‘get’ where they are coming from. I too...’used’ to believe that way, basically because that is what I was always taught to believe. We humans have a bad habit of doing lots of things (or believing things) because that’s the way we’ve always done it. I know that the subject of ‘English’ which we all had to take in school was not a favorite for many students, but there really were a lot of important thing...