Promise Church

Okay, if you’re not up to date on the reading program, add together 31 days for January, then today is the 18th, so today is day 49.  Why do I add it like that?  Because there’s no benefit to saying, “If you were reading every day you wouldn’t have lost your place.”  I’m personally reading everyday, but I’ve not been reading the Daily Reading chapters everyday.  I’m doing my personal study.  I’m doing my church-focused study preparing for the Sunday service.  I’m doing my church-focused study preparing for Wednesday service.  And I lost my place on my Read The Bible In A Year plan.

So 49th day says to read Numbers 16 and 17.  Numbers 16 is a HUGE picture of today’s church!  I know, I know.  It’s Old Testament, and we’re under a New Covenant.  Yeah, and Jesus is still the same, yesterday, today, and forever.  See, God really does choose to put some into spiritual authority to help cover others.  He really does, in his sovereign and infinite righteous wisdom, tap somebody and say, “You are now an overseer because I say you are.”

But then the children of Israel — God’s people — had some that griped about not being part of the big-whigs who got to make decisions over the whole congregation.  “Hey! We’re just as righteous as anybody else!  We can help make decisions about what God says we should be doing!”

Lucifer wanted to be a decision maker too.  But God doesn’t share that responsibility with those who exalt themselves.  He chooses to bring up people who submit to Him in public and private.  Mostly in private.  Okay, it’s in private where the real work of the ministry takes place anyway!

I’ve seen times when somebody starts a bible study.  That sounds pretty good, huh?  I would LOVE to see a ton of bible studies get going and growing.  I imagine that would be pleasing to God too.  But look at this Bible example in Numbers 16 for a minute.  They said, “Hey! We can stand in big-shot authority just as much as you can.”  See the difference in heart?  What if the person who started that bible study did it because they felt they could do it just as good as the church’s authority does it…maybe better.  What if they really COULD teach and lead as good as the church’s authority does it?  That bible study I’m thinking of became a We’re Doing It Right As Opposed To Our Church kind of meeting.  I watched it go down, down, down, even as the attendance went up!

The leader of that group was confident that God was blessing it because his numbers went up, and after all — growth is the will of God.

Yeah, and the people in Numbers 16 learned that one pretty well too, huh?  Want me to tell you what happened?  I’m not going to!  Read the chapters!  I will show that in chapter 17 God made it plain that He is the one who chooses who He puts in spiritual authority over the congregation.

I find myself praying, “God, please remove those people who should not be in our church, and bring in all the ones who should be here!”  I want growth.  I want to fulfill the will of God in my life.  And I want to see God’s will fulfilled at Promise.  And if God weeds out those who would stand against His choice in leadership….you know what?  Nobody should ever try to be a leader in the body of Christ unless God make him.  Honest!  It’s just setting yourself up to get shot at!  If you put yourself into leadership, you have to keep yourself in leadership.  But if God does it, then God keeps it!

Psalm 127:1 says that if God’s not the One building a house, those who labor do it in vain.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t start a bible study.  If you know me, you know I’m not threatened or resistant to that at all!  Just the opposite!  But I will point to Numbers 16 and remind anyone, everyone, that if there’s an attitude of, “I could do it just as good as he does,” then you’re setting yourself up for an epic fail.

God’s plan is all about the heart.  No matter what you do, it needs to begin with a right heart.  Not with a heart that says, “Well, I am just as good as that other person is, so I’ll do it right.”  Nope.  Skills aren’t what makes a Godly leader.  They really aren’t.  It all begins and ends with the heart.

Purpose in your heart that you will focus on your heart!  Beg God to show you something else in your heart that needs to be changed to be more like His heart.  He has things in His hand, and He can take care of His plan.  Be part of it by leading with your heart.

http://www.promise.pro/assets/2012_Bible.pdf and tomorrow is day 50.  Karen and I love you.  Stay faithful.

Today is Day 26 on our plan to read the bible in a year.

At the risk of summing this up TOO completely, I love these 3 chapters.  Why?  Because it’s a beautiful example of how God wants His house built.  He told Moses to take up a love offering.  It’s not Tithes.   It’s not the sin offering, or the heave offering, or the wave offering, or an oblation or anything else that was not only needed, it was commanded.

Nope.  This time God says to have people give as much as they can give with a willing heart.  On the outside it looks like God is asking for money.  But think about that one and you’ll realize how silly that sounds.  So why would God want PEOPLE to give to something  that He could have just provided for — say, like they’re stomping around the wilderness and a goat falls into a canyon cracked open by a quake that reveals a huge gold vein…you know, something like that — but He says no, He wants everybody who is willing to participate, to jump in and do it.

Then there are a couple chapters about how excellent He wants the job done.

So here I am, just a willing pastor with a building program going on.  Hahaha.  Here’s God showing me in His word that I’m not the first minister in history with a calling to build a sacred place for His Presence, and need to pull some money together to do it.  I wonder if Moses looked around for a gold-filled canyon?

The real reason I think God wants them to give is so they can have the legal right to be blessed!  You have to sow before you get to reap.  Period.

There’s a truth in history: if you want Bible results, you need to do Bible things.  Dig deep, find the depth of your willing heart, and give!  We are going to finish the job God has put before us, and wouldn’t you like to be part of a great thing He has done?  From the Biblical example, I see that is His plan.

I’ve been putting this link into posts from time to time this year, but HERE is the Reading Plan we’re doing for 2012.  We got it directly from Pastor Jentezen Franklin’s website.  It’s a really good one, so jump in and start reading!  Today is Day 17 of the Plan.

In case that link doesn’t work above, cut and paste this into your browser:

http://www.promise.pro/assets/2012_Bible.pdf

The Word of God is full of life folks!  Read it everyday!

Jacob’s name is now Israel.  From time to time God’s chosen children, His nation of Israel, is referred to as the children of Jacob, and sometimes as the children of Israel.  Jacob means the one who grasps and takes what he wants.  Israel means the champion prince of God.  Have you ever heard a mother ask her husband, “Where is your son?” when it’s really both of their kid?  Or a husband say of his daughter, “She takes after her mother.”?

I think that sometimes when the Bible refers to the children of Israel as Jacob, it’s like a chiding, a sort of dig reminding them that they’re out of line.  And refering to them as the children of Israel is like saying, “Good children!  That’s my child.”

I don’t always feel like that’s what it’s saying, but it seems like it a lot.

Here in Genesis 46 and 47, Israel and all his household come down to a colony in Egypt seperated for them to flourish in.  On the way in, Pharaoh gets up from his throne, leaves his palace, and goes to meet a herdsman named Israel.

Do you get that?  Pharaoh was worshipped as a god himself.  The people didn’t just obey him because he had an army to enforce his bidding.  They considered him a god.  Tradition tells us that the masses never got to see his face, that it was covered from unworthy eyes.  But he didn’t summon Israel.  He didn’t call him, ordering this foreigner to come before him for account of all he planned.  He did not order Israel to report to the Pharaoh’s court to maintain the protocol that said: You come to me, I am the center of the universe.  Israel was not even of the nation of Egypt.  He had “nothing” to offer to the Pharaoh.  “Nothing” to enhance his holdings.  Pharaoh didn’t “owe” Joseph anything!  He promoted Joseph out of jail, pardoned a fake charge of attempted rape against Potipher’s wife, and allowed a foreigner to run the country.  As far as tradition dictated, Joseph owed it to the king to do everything and anything he was ordered.

No.  That pharaoh knew the truth.  Joseph had not only saved Pharaoh’s throne, but he had collected all the money, all the title deeds of all the property in the country, and had loan seed to the people with a 20% tax for all time.  Double-tithe to the king.  Joseph had made the Pharaoh the richest man, (oops, don’t tell anybody he’s not a god.  It would be bad press,) in the world and he knew it.

So when Israel came into the countryside, this man of foreign blood brought his father into the Pharaoh’s presence.  Not as a dignitary coming to negotiate a treaty that would benefit both counties.  Not as an ambassador for a country Egypt feared.  No.  I think Joseph brought in his dad to talk to another dad.

No airs of, “Bow to the almighty Pharaoh,” and that sort of thing.  But 47:7 says Joseph brought in his dad and SET him before the Pharaoh.  I love that!  Can you imagine the throneroom guards that stood there?  Day after day.  Week after week.  Month and year after month and year.  They were honored to stand in the very room to guard this god/king.  And here comes a doddering old man who wasn’t even from their country, and he gets to SIT with the Pharaoh???!!!

They saw their Pharaoh so interested in Israel.  It was their Pharaoh who was privileged to meet Israel even more than Israel was excited to meet their king.  And it was Israel who blessed Pharaoh, not the other way around.  And Pharaoh was so blown away by Israel himself that in 47:8 How old are you?

A gueard hears him reply, “130 years old,” and maybe he thinks, “This guy is a liar, and my king is going to cut out his heart!  He’s going to kick these unworthy people out of our country!”

And it was Israel who blessed Pharaoh.

You and I may have some short-comings in this life.  It’s life.  We may wonder — at least I know I do sometimes — that even though God’s Word promises us harvest from our sowing, and abundance and all our needs met through Jesus, and *not* seeing that come to pass in the time that we want…well we’ve all got some place in our life where we think things could have been better if something had changed in the middle of that circumstance, huh?

If God had rescued Joseph out of that jail cell, he would never have ascended to a throne that was second only to Pharaoh’s.

We don’t own tomorrow.  And today you may feel like you’re in a jail cell.  You might see that a famine is wiping out all your worldly goods.  You know: the goods that God blessed you with!  And now they’re all being taken away in the middle of your faithfulness.

If you stay faithful, the bible also promises that you will reap if you don’t faint.  Don’t grow weary with what you’re doing for Christ.  Don’t let despair talk into your ear telling you it’s no use.  And don’t let others who wish they had a voice into somebody…anybody’s life just blab and blab into your life either!  God has a plan for you and it IS harder than you would have planned.  But it’s also BETTER than you would have imagined.

He is with you.  And when you get to the place God had in mind all along, it’s going to be YOU who is the blessing.  Yeah, the ones who get blessed by giving you a chance, the ones who get blessed by opening a door for you, they do get blessed.  But it’s YOU who will be a blessing to them greater than anything they have to offer to you.  Why?  Because you really are an ambassador.  You really do represent a nation that they want (or really should want) to make a treaty with.  Hebrews 11:16 refers to it as a Better Country.  You represent heaven here on earth.

So go!  Be a blessing!  Actually work hard to make your employer wealthy…or wealthier!  The world will stand in awe looking at you, wondering, “Where did this one come from?”

Don’t give up.  Stand strong.  God will bless you so much that you have abundance to bless others.

My stomach just asked my brain if my throat got cut.

Symptoms:

Hungry.
Headache.
Alert.
Slept pretty good.
I’ve gotten down to praying for things that I’ve prayed for before, and NOT had anything change.  That may be God bringing me to a place of trusting Him more and more, or it may be a place of finally I’m prepared to receive the answer.  Or both.

I don’t despise my water bottle (yet) and I’m really very, very pleased with my children because on their own they are making deliberate decisions on moving closer to God and fasting and praying and what more could a daddy hope for?!

Sunday sundown, Monday sundown, and it’s just Tuesday morning.  You can do it!  God is waiting on the other side of your sacrifice!  This is your year if you want it to be!  I’m not a motivational speaker…I’m a Bible guy.  And I’m telling you, this could be your year if you really want it to be!