"Complete Devotion"
Ezekiel 14:12-16:42
Hebrews 7:18-28
Psalm 106:1-12
Proverbs 27:4-6
"Who can ever list the glorious miracles of God? Who can ever praise him half enough?" Ps. 106:2
Our relationship with the Lord is an incredible thing. I don't think we can understand the full magnitude of this, and how important this relationship is in God's eyes. In Eph. 5:31 Paul quotes a verse that we've heard many times at a wedding. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh." He explains something very important in the next verse. "This is a profound mystery - but I am talking about Christ and the church."
Our relationship with Christ is one of profound intimacy. In Ezekiel 15, the Lord is describing his relationship with his people. He talks about how he created them, and brought them to him, and then set them apart as his bride. The description of his love for them is quite vivid. It talks of gifts of clothing, jewelry, and how "you looked like a queen, and so you were!"
That's how God views each one of us. The bride of Christ. He loves us more intensely than we can realize. He can't wait to commune with us. To spend time with us. He is passionate about us.
Tragically, his people are not faithful. Ez. 15:15 says, "But you thought you could get along without me..." It goes on to describe how his bride becomes a prostitute to everyone that comes along.
We can be kind of flippant about "priorities" that are out of whack in our lives. Basically, we're talking about idolatry. About how we've found other things than the Lord to please us. To be our "lovers". We prostitute ourselves to flesh pleasing things. This separates us from God.
He created us for Him. We will never be satisfied until there is nothing that stains our intimacy with Him.
Proverbs 27:4 says, "Jealousy is more dangerous and cruel than anger." Do you know why that is? Because when we are jealous, we feel like we are not getting something that we deserve. The dangerous part of it is that it is God who gives all things, so in essence we are mad that God hasn't given us what we feel we deserve. Praise him for the fact that he didn't give us what we REALLY deserve!!!
When you sit down to do your "devotions" each morning, think of what "devotion" means. While often our time in the word can become a ritualistic task, we need to understand the purpose of what we do is to "devote" our heart to the Lord. "Lord, I give you me." That's all it takes.
We need to live lives of complete devotion. We must guard against jealousy, bitterness, and all other cancers of the soul.
As you spend time with the Lord today, open your heart to him and ask him to purify you of anything that clouds your intimacy with him. We can't get along without Him. Even if we think we can, we need to be desperately in love with him and devoted to keep our relationship pure.
Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!
Pastor Greg Lathe
Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship
Relationships Devoted to Unity
Empowered Through Biblical Training
Active Ministry Involvement
Mission to Reach our World for Christ
Tuesday, November 6, 2012
Friday, November 2, 2012
11.2.12 "The Intensity of the Mission"
"The Intensity of the Mission"
Ezekiel 3:16-6:14
Hebrews 4:1-16
Psalm 104:25-35
Proverbs 26:27
Your world is desperate for you to be who God created you to be. My family is desperate for me to be the husband and dad God created me to be. My neighbors are desperate for me to be the light God created me to be. Society is desperate for me to be the salt God created me to be.
We have a Mission to reach our world for Christ. There is an intensity to this mission.
People don't like to be held responsible for things. When pro athletes get themselves into trouble, many times a comment is made, "Hey, I never asked to be a role model. I'm no role model, I'm just doing my job." Well, it doesn't work that way. We each carry a significant amount of responsibility. As profile and exposure increase, the responsibility increases all the more.
I was meeting a friend for an early morning meeting at McDonald's. We were sitting in the booth talking, and just over his shoulder, across the room, in my line of sight was a girl in her early 20's who was crying. Her glasses were broken in half, and she was trying to call someone on her cell phone. It looked to me like she had been slapped around. As I was meeting with this friend I was thinking the Lord was telling me to go talk to her. I started to try to figure out if it was "really God, or just me". Have you ever done that? It was one of those, "ok, if she hangs up the phone in the next 5 seconds, i know it's God..." type of things. Of course, all of those things happened but I was still waiting.
I finally went over to her and asked if everything was ok. She said everything was fine, and she had a ride coming. As I was walking away, I thought to myself, "whew. I guess it wasn't a big deal. She didn't need to talk to me." Remember how a second ago I was struggling with knowing whether it was "God or me"? Well, it became very clear that my next thoughts were God and not me. The Lord spoke to my heart, "It wasn't about her needing to talk to you, it was about you hearing my voice and responding to me. Delayed obedience is disobedience." Ouch.
There is an intensity to our Mission. The Lord spelled it out to Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 3:17-21 says, "Son of dust, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel; whenever I send my people a warning, pass it on to them at once. If you refuse to warn the wicked when I want you to tell them, you are under the penalty of death, therefore repent and save your life - they will die in their sins, but I will punish you. I will demand your blood for theirs. But if you warn them and they keep on sinning, and refuse to repent, they will die in their sins, but you are blameless - you have done all you could. And if a good man becomes bad, and you refuse to warn him of the consequences, and the Lord destroys him, his previous good deeds won't help him - he shall die in his sin. But I will hold you responsible for his death, and punish you. But if you warn him and he repents, he shall live and you have saved your own life too."
It is SO important that we learn to move when God says to move. It is a process. It starts with listening in small things. It becomes a habit of listening to his voice. This is why we're here. This is our purpose.
This is not only in relation to the unbeliever. as it said in verse 20, "if a good man becomes bad..." we need to be watching out for one another. We need to be intense in our discipleship. Too often we see someone making a bad decision, and we kind of shrug our shoulders and walk away "oh well, that's their own problem!" We don't realize that the Lord is directing us to watch out for one another, to warn each other about the dangers around the corner.
We lose the intensity of our mission when we become self centered and caught up in our own problems. We're concerned about our schedule. Our rest. Our time off. Our relationships. We forget that God has placed us where he has us for a VERY specific purpose: To Reach our World for Christ.
Listen today. Then do what God is directing you to do. If no one falls to their knees crying, "I wanna get saved!" don't feel like you failed, because that's not the point. The point is that you do EVERYTHING he commands you to do!
Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!
Pastor Greg Lathe
Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship
Relationships Devoted to Unity
Empowered Through Biblical Training
Active Ministry Involvement
Mission to Reach our World for Christ
Ezekiel 3:16-6:14
Hebrews 4:1-16
Psalm 104:25-35
Proverbs 26:27
Your world is desperate for you to be who God created you to be. My family is desperate for me to be the husband and dad God created me to be. My neighbors are desperate for me to be the light God created me to be. Society is desperate for me to be the salt God created me to be.
We have a Mission to reach our world for Christ. There is an intensity to this mission.
People don't like to be held responsible for things. When pro athletes get themselves into trouble, many times a comment is made, "Hey, I never asked to be a role model. I'm no role model, I'm just doing my job." Well, it doesn't work that way. We each carry a significant amount of responsibility. As profile and exposure increase, the responsibility increases all the more.
I was meeting a friend for an early morning meeting at McDonald's. We were sitting in the booth talking, and just over his shoulder, across the room, in my line of sight was a girl in her early 20's who was crying. Her glasses were broken in half, and she was trying to call someone on her cell phone. It looked to me like she had been slapped around. As I was meeting with this friend I was thinking the Lord was telling me to go talk to her. I started to try to figure out if it was "really God, or just me". Have you ever done that? It was one of those, "ok, if she hangs up the phone in the next 5 seconds, i know it's God..." type of things. Of course, all of those things happened but I was still waiting.
I finally went over to her and asked if everything was ok. She said everything was fine, and she had a ride coming. As I was walking away, I thought to myself, "whew. I guess it wasn't a big deal. She didn't need to talk to me." Remember how a second ago I was struggling with knowing whether it was "God or me"? Well, it became very clear that my next thoughts were God and not me. The Lord spoke to my heart, "It wasn't about her needing to talk to you, it was about you hearing my voice and responding to me. Delayed obedience is disobedience." Ouch.
There is an intensity to our Mission. The Lord spelled it out to Ezekiel:
Ezekiel 3:17-21 says, "Son of dust, I have appointed you as a watchman for Israel; whenever I send my people a warning, pass it on to them at once. If you refuse to warn the wicked when I want you to tell them, you are under the penalty of death, therefore repent and save your life - they will die in their sins, but I will punish you. I will demand your blood for theirs. But if you warn them and they keep on sinning, and refuse to repent, they will die in their sins, but you are blameless - you have done all you could. And if a good man becomes bad, and you refuse to warn him of the consequences, and the Lord destroys him, his previous good deeds won't help him - he shall die in his sin. But I will hold you responsible for his death, and punish you. But if you warn him and he repents, he shall live and you have saved your own life too."
It is SO important that we learn to move when God says to move. It is a process. It starts with listening in small things. It becomes a habit of listening to his voice. This is why we're here. This is our purpose.
This is not only in relation to the unbeliever. as it said in verse 20, "if a good man becomes bad..." we need to be watching out for one another. We need to be intense in our discipleship. Too often we see someone making a bad decision, and we kind of shrug our shoulders and walk away "oh well, that's their own problem!" We don't realize that the Lord is directing us to watch out for one another, to warn each other about the dangers around the corner.
We lose the intensity of our mission when we become self centered and caught up in our own problems. We're concerned about our schedule. Our rest. Our time off. Our relationships. We forget that God has placed us where he has us for a VERY specific purpose: To Reach our World for Christ.
Listen today. Then do what God is directing you to do. If no one falls to their knees crying, "I wanna get saved!" don't feel like you failed, because that's not the point. The point is that you do EVERYTHING he commands you to do!
Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!
Pastor Greg Lathe
Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship
Relationships Devoted to Unity
Empowered Through Biblical Training
Active Ministry Involvement
Mission to Reach our World for Christ
Thursday, November 1, 2012
11.1.12 "The Root of Rebellion"
"The Root of Rebellion"
Ezekiel 1:1-3:15
Hebrews 3:1-19
Psalm 104:1-24
Proverbs 26:24-26
Are you a rebel? What is a rebel? We think of rebellious children who thumb their nose at their parent and do their own thing. I think of a time when I thought I'd impress my dad by putting my hair in a ponytail and putting on a gaudy clip-on earring. He looked up from his desk and said. "You look stupid." That was pretty much the end of that. What is rebellion? Well, we know it has something to do with an attitude toward authority.
"But now is the time. Never forget the warning, 'Today if you hear God's voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.'" Hebrews 3:15
Those rebels in the desert. Remember that? From this verse we see that the people rebelled against God by hardening their hearts when he would speak to them. We live in quite a rebellious age. Hundreds and thousands of people hear the good news each week, and yet live their lives unchanged. Their hearts become hardened.
How does the heart become hard? Is it a conscious thought? "You know what? Today I'm going to harden my heart." Where does it come from?
Let's look at where it came from in the "Desert Rebels":
"And who were those people I speak of, who heard God's voice speaking to them, but then rebelled against him? They were the ones who came out of Egypt with Moses their leader." vs. 16
Can you imagine walking across the Red Sea? That would be pretty unforgettable. Most of us have seen some kind of depiction of it through the special effects of a movie and we have some context to compare it to. But these people couldn't have seen anything close to this. It was absolutely AMAZING! How Awesome!!! But... it was these people who rebelled.
Vs 17-20: "And who was it who made God angry for all those forty years? These same people who sinned and as a result died in the wilderness. And to whom was God speaking when he swore an oath that they could never go into the land he had promised his people? He was speaking to all those who disobeyed him. And why couldn't they go in?..."
You ready? Here's the root of rebellion... it's coming...
Can you imagine making God angry for forty years? Walking through the Red Sea, and then dying in the desert because of your sin? What could cause this? What horrible act???? What could enter the heart of a man that could cause him to be so foolish??
Here it is. Verse 19: "And why couldn't they go in? Because they didn't trust him."
The root of rebellion is a lack of trust. Lack of trust is the door through which the awful stench of rebellion comes in.
Why is it that so many hear the Good News, and walk away unchanged? Because they don't trust God. They perceive that there is some flaw in this great plan of His. Lack of trust is the first step in the hardening of the heart.
What about me? I know God has told me to do something. I'm hesitant though. I don't feel like I can do it. I feel like I don't have the skills. I'm worried about what people will think. Guess what these excuses are: Lack of trust.
Living a life of radical trust would be an awesome thing. To know each day that when God speaks to our heart, we jump headlong into what he commands. But, we tend to be a hard-hearted people.
This lack of trust in God is one of the greatest hinderances to the Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship. Lack of trust causes us to worry. It causes us to try to mathematically figure things out on our own. All of that clogs the communication lines of heaven. It separates us from God. It is sin.
Lord, forgive me for my lack of trust in you. You've done awesome things in my life. In salvation you brought me through the Red Sea and out of the Slavery of my sin. That is an incredible miracle, one far greater than anything I can imagine. Help me to trust you more. Help me to recognize that my excuses open the door to my rebellion. Forgive me Lord. Help me to realize that when I don't trust those you've placed in authority over me, I'm opening the door to rebellion as well. Help me to radically live for you!
Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!
Pastor Greg Lathe
Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship
Relationships Devoted to Unity
Empowered Through Biblical Training
Active Ministry Involvement
Mission to Reach our World for Christ
Ezekiel 1:1-3:15
Hebrews 3:1-19
Psalm 104:1-24
Proverbs 26:24-26
Are you a rebel? What is a rebel? We think of rebellious children who thumb their nose at their parent and do their own thing. I think of a time when I thought I'd impress my dad by putting my hair in a ponytail and putting on a gaudy clip-on earring. He looked up from his desk and said. "You look stupid." That was pretty much the end of that. What is rebellion? Well, we know it has something to do with an attitude toward authority.
"But now is the time. Never forget the warning, 'Today if you hear God's voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts against him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled against him in the desert.'" Hebrews 3:15
Those rebels in the desert. Remember that? From this verse we see that the people rebelled against God by hardening their hearts when he would speak to them. We live in quite a rebellious age. Hundreds and thousands of people hear the good news each week, and yet live their lives unchanged. Their hearts become hardened.
How does the heart become hard? Is it a conscious thought? "You know what? Today I'm going to harden my heart." Where does it come from?
Let's look at where it came from in the "Desert Rebels":
"And who were those people I speak of, who heard God's voice speaking to them, but then rebelled against him? They were the ones who came out of Egypt with Moses their leader." vs. 16
Can you imagine walking across the Red Sea? That would be pretty unforgettable. Most of us have seen some kind of depiction of it through the special effects of a movie and we have some context to compare it to. But these people couldn't have seen anything close to this. It was absolutely AMAZING! How Awesome!!! But... it was these people who rebelled.
Vs 17-20: "And who was it who made God angry for all those forty years? These same people who sinned and as a result died in the wilderness. And to whom was God speaking when he swore an oath that they could never go into the land he had promised his people? He was speaking to all those who disobeyed him. And why couldn't they go in?..."
You ready? Here's the root of rebellion... it's coming...
Can you imagine making God angry for forty years? Walking through the Red Sea, and then dying in the desert because of your sin? What could cause this? What horrible act???? What could enter the heart of a man that could cause him to be so foolish??
Here it is. Verse 19: "And why couldn't they go in? Because they didn't trust him."
The root of rebellion is a lack of trust. Lack of trust is the door through which the awful stench of rebellion comes in.
Why is it that so many hear the Good News, and walk away unchanged? Because they don't trust God. They perceive that there is some flaw in this great plan of His. Lack of trust is the first step in the hardening of the heart.
What about me? I know God has told me to do something. I'm hesitant though. I don't feel like I can do it. I feel like I don't have the skills. I'm worried about what people will think. Guess what these excuses are: Lack of trust.
Living a life of radical trust would be an awesome thing. To know each day that when God speaks to our heart, we jump headlong into what he commands. But, we tend to be a hard-hearted people.
This lack of trust in God is one of the greatest hinderances to the Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship. Lack of trust causes us to worry. It causes us to try to mathematically figure things out on our own. All of that clogs the communication lines of heaven. It separates us from God. It is sin.
Lord, forgive me for my lack of trust in you. You've done awesome things in my life. In salvation you brought me through the Red Sea and out of the Slavery of my sin. That is an incredible miracle, one far greater than anything I can imagine. Help me to trust you more. Help me to recognize that my excuses open the door to my rebellion. Forgive me Lord. Help me to realize that when I don't trust those you've placed in authority over me, I'm opening the door to rebellion as well. Help me to radically live for you!
Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!
Pastor Greg Lathe
Dynamic Lifestyle of Worship
Relationships Devoted to Unity
Empowered Through Biblical Training
Active Ministry Involvement
Mission to Reach our World for Christ
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
