Your not alone!

Temptation! The ole devil sure is persistant isn't he? I want us to realize this morning though that there is not a temptation in this world that we will face that others have not already faced! Look at this verse:


1 Corinthians 10:13

13 No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

In the first part of this verse did you catch where it says "such is common to man"? Temptations have been around since Adam and Eve. What we face everyday in temptations has been faced over and over. Some overcome the temptations and some do not. Look at the next part of the verse...." but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able." In my human mind I wish it said something like there are some temptations that will over power you and there is nothing you can do! But it doesn't. We have a God who has given us the strength through Christ Jesus to overcome sin. So if we cave in to our temptation we have only one person to blame....ourselves. For God tells us in the last part of this verse that when we are facing the temptation there is a way of escape, and we are able to bear it. We can overcome temptation my friends....Jesus has paved the wave for the escape! No excuses...none.

So here is what we need to grasp from this lesson....you are not alone in temptation and God provides a way out! Stand in the strength of out Lord my friends and knock the ole devil right in the mouth!

Tom

My troubles are nothing!

Sorry I have missed a few days! I have had to replace a sewer line at my house and found I had some drainage problems too! Have you ever started a job and figured it was gonna take a certain amount of time and then got into the work and found out it was gonna take atleast twice as long as what you had figured? That is this job! My yard is tore up! We hit a gas line. We hit a power line. The leaves caught fire. It has been comical at times. The concrete we had to break turned out to be 8 inches instead of 4! I could go on and on but you get the picture. I praise God that no one got hurt and the main part of the job is done....just lots of yard work now. I tell you all this because I am pretty sure you have been in this same boat at some point. It brought to mind this verse:


2 Corinthians 4:17

17 Our troubles are small. They last only for a short time. But they are earning for us a glory that will last forever. It is greater than all our troubles.

We may have troubles. They only last for a short time. My troubles in last few days are over. Here is where the lessoon is for today. How did I handle these problems? Neighbors were watching. My kids were watching. God was watching. When things go wrong did I rant and rave and cuss??? No. Even in the truobles of life we are to represent Christ. Was I upset? Yes. Did I ask ...why me? Yes. You see when we have problems all we have to do is look around and we can see that someone elses problems are far worse than mine. Sickness, cancer, death of a love one, ect. My problems are nothing compared to these problems. The rest of the verse above tells us that when we endure our problems the way Christ has taught us we are earning a glory that will last forever and that is where we need to keep our focus through the hard times....on our heavenly home where there will be no troubles.

Have a great day and keep your eyes on Jesus!

Tom

How is your faith?

We must have faith in our walk with God. It is not an option. For many having faith in someone they have never seen is very hard. Let me ask you this morning how is your faith in God this morning?

Read this verse:

Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.

This verse is very powerful and imformative. In the first part of the verse it says we can not please God if we don't have faith. That is pretty straight forward and easy to understand isn't it? The verse goes on to expalin that if we come to God we must believe that He is. My brothers and sisters let me tell you this morning....God is! Look around...look at your children, look at nature, look at the universe, God is shouting to all of us I AM! Oh my friends I can not understand how folks can live a day without Jesus in their life. I remember how miserable I was...then I met Jesus and believed that He is and my life has never been the same. The peace God provides through faith is undescribable, you must expirience it for yourself. The verse goes on to say God rewards those who diligently seek Him. God knows those who are putting on a show and those who are truly following Him with everything they have to offer. God promises rewards to those who do seek Him. Now I just talked about the peace God gives and I believe that is part of the reward but the rewards more than we can comprehend we will receive when we get to heaven one of these days. What we gain here on earth are just bonuses because this is not our home!

So how is your faith this morning? Is it strong? Is it in the middle just kinda there? Or is it weak. Get on your knees and talk to God...He desires your conversation and wants a relationship with you. Get in His word! If you pray and read God's word I can promise you your faith will be strengthend.

Chcek this video out...what a powerful song about faith. It has become a favorite of mine.


http://www.tangle.com/view_video?viewkey=caaac134f59280ad991f

Tom

Stone Praise.

Check out this verse:

Luke 19:40
40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”


This is when Jesus was decending from the Mount of Olives on His way to Jerusalem. The disciples and the multitude began to rejoice and praise Jesus loudly. Then the Pharisees called out for Jesus to rebuke them. The verse above was Jesus reply! What an awesome verse. If people were not going to praise Jesus then His creation the stones would.

This brings me to this thought. Are you praising Jesus? With your mouth, with your actions, or with your life? One way or another Jesus will receive praise. I would hope He is receiving it from the one's who bear His image! I was thinking throughout a day how many times do I hear Jesus being praised or worshipped. To be honest it is very rare except on Sundays! So who is going to change this? You and me! If nobody else is going to praise or King lets make sure we are for He is worthy!

So are you gonna let the rocks do the praising or are you gonna do the praising for the One who dies for your sins?

Thank you, thank you, thank you Jesus....what a mighty, glorious King you are!

Tom

Denial!

I went to our local High School FCA meetimg this morning and the devotion brought to mind some thinking about this verse:

Luke 22:61

61 And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said to him, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.”

This is another one of those times when we look at Peter and say "How could you do this?" The first thing that popped into my mind was I am glad I will never deny my Lord. But as I thought about that I found that in reality I deny Jesus nearly everyday. You see everyday we have the opportunity to serve Jesus and live our lives according to the written Word. If we choose to follow Jesus we must tell others about Jesus and live sinless lives as we deny our fleshly desires. As I thought about this I found I deny Jesus daily. I don't witness everytime I have the opportunity and I don't uphold to every teaching of Christ every second. So in reality I deny my Christ the honor and devotion He deserves. As I sit hear writting this it breaks my heart to say these things but they are true. In verse 62 of this same chapter it says this:

Luke 22:62
62 So Peter went out and wept bitterly.

If it doesn't bother you to fail our King then you had better check your relationship with Him.When I fail Jesus it don't get any worse than that. The guilt is overwhelming...I know how Peter felt...do you?

The good news is we have a forgiving God, who wants us to get up confess our sin and get back to serving and worshipping Him with all we have! Thank you Jesus for forgivness!

Think about this one today, I will be prayinf for you.

Tom

Using everyday conversation.

Last night at church I did an interesting lesson with the youth. I wanted to share it with you this morning and maybe make you think about your conversations that you have everyday. So here is what we did.

I started out by asking them how many have been watching the NCAA basketball tournament. Of course many raise their hands. Next I told them we will be talking about this tournament for several weeks to come. We also talk about many other things in a day with many different peoeple. Now what I asked them to do next was to find a way to use the discussiion of the tournament and turn it in a way to talk about Jesus. You should have seen the look on their face! haha I also said you have to come up with a verse to use with your discussion. Afetr a little moaning and groaning I gave them this example:

I said in our brackets we make many choices. We pick the teams we think have the best shot at winning. Now if I was witnessing to somepne I could say to them as we were discussing the choices we both had made in our brackets " did you know God has chosen us to be His people?"? I then would get my Bible out and show the person I was speaking to this verse:

1 Peter 2:9-10

9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

Now if I did not have my Bible with me I would need to have the verse memorized that I was going to use. I then would go on to explain the rest of this verse where God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light and how we have obtained mercy from God through Jesus. Now depending on how this person reacted would depend on how the rest of the conversation would go.

Back to the youth. I was very suprised at how well each of them did. I had them work with a partner and some of them came up with some very unique ways of how to turn their conversation to Jesus and they used sccripture along with their conversation.

We all need to think on our conversations and how we can bring Jesus into our everyday talks. We waste alot of time on conversations that are of no value but how much time do we talk about the most important subject of all time...Jesus???

Maybe you need to try this little project today...it is challenging but not as hard as you think. If you don't like basketball use something you enjoy talking about!

Have a great week friends and talk about Jesus!

Tom

Could you forgive?

Forgivness is so very hard. Paul shows us an example here of what we are to be doing.

2 Timothy 4:16
16 At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them.

To give you a little back ground on this verse Paul had a preliminary hearing before Caesar during his second imprisonment and everyone abandon him. It is very interesting to me that Paul is using the same basic language as Jesus when He was on the cross:

Luke 23:34
34 Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”
And they divided His garments and cast lots.

Stephen also practiced this teaching of Jesus:

Acts 7:60
60 Then he knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not charge them with this sin.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

As we see in these verses above all 3 three of these men were facing the hardest thing in life we all will face...DEATH. Not a natural death of old age but a death others for crimes they were not guilty of. All three set the example for us of forgiving their enemies and asking the Father not to charge their sin against them. In Paul's case to forgive those who turned their back on him. WOW! Stop and think about that.

Now the question for us...could we forgive if put in the same postiton? From what I see in these verses it isn't really a choice is it? It is what we are taught to do by our Lord!

Have a blessed weekend!

Tom