Fruit Of The Spirit
Have you ever seen an apple tree grimace and groan while it was trying its hardest to make an apple squeek out of its limb? Of course not! God commanded creation to bear fruit after its kind. Which is why a grapefruit tree doesn’t accidentally put out limes, right?
When you are in a situation that requires kindness or gentleness, do you have to focus on making sure you act in those ways? It really shouldn’t be a grimace and groan kind of thing. It should be a fruit that naturally, through a supernatural infilling of the Holy Spirit, flows through you.
Caviat #1. If you act unloving to somebody, that doesn’t mean you have fallen away from the faith and the Spirit has left your life. But it could mean that you have spent more time in one area, ignoring another area, and you’re out of balance.
Caviat #2. If you act loving to somebody, it doesnt mean that you ARE walking in the Spirit either! I could hold my breath underwater for a minute or two, but that doesn’t mean I breath water, does it? Anybody can ACT like something they’re not — just look at the, “Oh Honey, I’ve really changed this time,” person who still wants to dabble in the things that caused the problems in the first place.
Number 3. Fruit grows. That whole, “Patience is a virtue,” phrase makes it sound like it’s instilled in someone the same way the gift of miracles or interpretation might be given by the Spirit. Nope! Patience may be a virtue, but it is GROWN my friends! It’s a fruit. It can grow fast, it can grow slow, but it has to grow, just like any fruit.
So spend time with the Holy Spirit, and allow Him to grow His fruit in your life. You’ll find that even though you may miss it from time to time, you grimace and groan a lot less and see more fruit in your life too!
What Day Is It?
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.
The Word Every Day!!
Just a quick note here: reading the bible everyday has been pretty amazing, huh? If you’ve dropped off, don’t worry but pick it back up!! God will speak through His Word! Keep going.
Reading Over The Past Week
Over the last week or so I’ve had a ton on my plate. The tyranny of the urgent! That’s what it’s called. This blog is important, just like watering the lawn, weeding it, and reseeding it for the coming spring are all important. But when you’re putting out fires, it’s a battle between the important and the urgent. Some things you can delegate, and some things require my personal attention. Pray for your pastors! 
In the last few days, our reading has been a lot…a WHOLE lot of what God gave to Moses to lay down as laws for the Children of Israel as they wandered around in the wilderness.
First, they missed their opportunity to trust in God and take the Promised Land. Side note here: Isn’t that awful that one People could just go where they wanted and take land by force? They would just wash right in, fight a war, kill all the inhabitants, and take over their land. That’s the way things were back then. It’s just the way things were. Anybody who buys into that whole, “These others were here first so they have the right to have it all back,” needs to look at the USA. Apache, Navajo, and all the tribes of Native America were here in their home, and settling immigrants took it by force. I’m here because of a violent taking of California. Can we please, please change our thinking to a place where we are where we are and let’s do as much good as we can! Okay, enough politics.
So they didn’t trust God enough to take the land promised to them. So God would have to march them around the wilderness for 40 years to allow a generation to pass away, and bring up a new generation that wasn’t stuck in the old way of thinking. That’s a key. Let’s let God change our way of thinking so He doesn’t have to wait on the next generation to do something He would like to do through you. Believe He can do a miracle, and bless your work.
While they’re traveling in circles for decades, I love the way the Bible takes a bunch of chapters and shows us all the rules God gave Moses. One reason is this. Lawlessness has always been shown in a godless environment. God gave 613 mitzvot, or laws, that would keep the children of Israel safely in His plan. And they would show anybody was out of line and not healthy for His children to associate with.
There are things ranging from how to prepare food to how to mete out judgment to how to live morally…it’s all in there! I’m not as hung up on WHAT those Old Testament laws were, as I am interested in HOW much God is interested in the tiny littlest things in life. For me. Today! He really does care how we present ourselves in private and public. Ex 23:4 says if you meet your enemy’s ox while you’re going about your business, take it back to your enemy. He’s talking about enemies INSIDE the family!? Day by day, finding a dollar that was dropped by somebody who owes me big time is not an answer to prayer. It’s a test to see if I’m honorable enough to return what is not mine.
See how the rule is the same for morality and Godly life, but not a stumbling-block that says, “You broke a law now you die!”
We don’t live under the Old Testement, we are living in the New Testament. We have a sweet liberty that is incredible! That’s why it’s so important to actually read the Bible. Knowing the voice of God through the Bible is the best…I said BEST way to recognize when something we haven’t read in the Bible comes our way. “Hmmm. That sounds like a great idea, and if it were in the Bible, it would agree with the rest of the book!” That, my friends, is exactly what we are looking for in life!
So enjoy reading the history of the children of Israel. Get to know the voice of the Father as He instructed them, guided them, and brought them through some incredible circumstances. I encourage you to try and take a template from their experience and layer that onto your own life. That doesn’t mean if somebody get’s gored by your ox, you have to go shoot the ox. (Okay, if somebody gets hit by your car you don’t have to take it out on the car.) But it does mean that when something happens to somebody else and it’s connected to you somehow, get involved in trying to make it right!
Keep reading. It’s the BEST way to get familiar with God’s voice in your own life. These last 2 days of this 21-day fast are the time to pray like never before. Pray!
What Have You Been Reading?
Karen and I have been in church all our lives. On the surface that sounds like a blessing, and it is a great blessing! But it’s come with a cost. We’ve heard soooo many different opinions placed forward as if they were the Word from on high! We’ve seen soooo many things in the church that it could cause us to make some decisions that would have kept us from filling our role in history.
I heard a minister on TV crying to the camera, “I’m the only one bringing the true Gospel through the airwaves, and if I don’t have your support…” You know the drill. Then I tune in a couple hours later and there’s a minister preaching the very pure truth of the Gospel, and not crying about needing more funds.
So which one would you listen to? Truth is: they’re both men, and they’re fallible.
Then hear a minister who says, “We have a bunch of books in our church bookstore, and I don’t want anybody just running down to the local Bible book store to buy things willy-nilly. Don’t buy things there because we haven’t screened them. You just buy the things we’ve approved.”
And then I heard a minister trying his best to say that the things God tells him are as inspired and infallible as the words the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible writers to record, and that they’re just as legitimate for edification, correction, and instruction.
Ummm…wait just a minute!
There really is one Bible. The 66 books in what we call The Holy Bible are the Word of God. Apologetics is an entire study on how and why the books we have in the Bible are really the Word, and that study is a whole library by itself! But when somebody, anybody promotes his own words to the level of God’s word, that’s the same spirit that got Lucifer kicked out of heaven. And although I like the idea of a minister reading and previewing healthy materials and offering the to the congregation, I am a little skittish about telling people, “Only buy what I tell you.”
When I was teaching at the Bible school at Southhills, one day I brought out a genuine $2 bill and a high quality photo copy of one. (Relax, I destroyed the fake afterwards…I’m not a counterfeiter!) The whole exercise was to show that you can really tell a fake when you know the real thing very well.
I think that’s what I’m trying to say here. Get to know the real thing so well that anything that’s not, no matter how good it looks, can’t convince you it is the real thing. If you know what the real thing looks like and even feels like, you can spot a fake no matter how good it is.
Read the Bible. First, and most, read the Bible! When somebody prints a book about their life and what they’ve learned, you can tell if it lines up with what God says because you know what God says! For me, even when I haven’t had a black-and-white example in scripture, I can tell if something is of the same kind as scripture is. You know: it’s like I’ve said a ton of times. The Bible doesn’t say anything about bicycles or the Internet, but it says everything about the people using them.
Oh, and that minister who said his words are on par with James, Peter, and Paul? He’s still out there. Still stumping his wares. And you know what? He’s got a lot of fruit in his ministry that shows he is moving the cause of Christ forward. I’ll let God deal with him on His terms.
Meanwhile, you and I need to read the Word, get to know God’s voice, get more time spent with His Holy Spirit speaking into our spirit, and grow closer to God. That way He can whisper into our spiritual ear and tell us, “This is what I’m saying to you, and here’s how it applies to you, and here’s how I want you to tell it to others too.”
Exodus 25 – 27
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.
Bible Reading Plan for Promise Church
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!
Bible-reading day 16
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.
Promise Church Fasting and Prayer Day 14
If you don’t have a copy yet, print the Bible-reading plan we posted right here.
Today is Day 14 for the Promise Church Bible Reading plan on our corporate fast. Just yesterday morning Karen and I were talking with a long-time friend and the story of Joseph came into our conversation. Why? Because it’s fresh since we’re reading about his life’s story right now!
That’s a HUGE hint for all of us: read the Bible and the Holy Spirit will bring it back to your rememberance. But we have to put it in there to start with, huh?
So we’re talking with our friend, and I mentioned how God seems to very, very consistently move people into the *world* system for some kind of training, coupling it with the *God’s family* system training He has given them in order to complete their preperation process. Then, and only then it seems sometimes, are they ready for their Destiny to be fulfilled.
When I preach, I use my own life experiences as examples. Things like working the fast food restaurant when I was young, and the lessons I use today that I learned then. You know what I mean.
I don’t think it’s just that we should use all our experiences to help us today. I think the Bible shows us that God deliberately brings us through experiences that will enhance our ability and effectiveness. There’s no replacement for experience, right? That’s why I pay attention to other people’s experiences too. Sometimes I don’t have to go through things if I can learn from other’s lives.
So here in Chapters 41 and 42 of Genesis, Joseph is now brought UP. God’s miraculous empowering, (interpreting dreams,) coupled with God’s miraculous equipping, (Potipher’s house and the jail,) coupled together for the great promotion God had in mind all along.
We can’t look at the jail cell we might be in right now. We have to look at the Lord, and see where His eyes are looking. Why? Because He has a bigger idea in mind than anything we’ve considered so far.
And He knows how to use all that YUCK you’ve been through to make you the perfectly equipped person for the job!
Fasting and Praying at Promise Church
So excited to see REAL comments on the blog! I get so many comments every single day on this blog that it’s crazy! Why? Because they’re by Blog-bots spamming and looking for unmoderated blogs to slam their wares on.
But hooray! We’ve got a dialogue going!
We’re “in” Day #4 now, as we officially started Sunday at sundown.
What a great service tonight! Mainly because we’re not just Fasting! We’re Praying and Fasting, so having a Bible study on praying was entirely appropriate. The Lord’s Prayer is the model Jesus Himself gave to his disciples, so I think it is a perfect pattern for us to follow too!
Yes: Pray your prayer list. But at the end of the list, when you’ve prayed about everything on your page, we can still follow Jesus’ example and declare our Heavenly Father is Holy. That His Name is Holy. We can still announce out loud in our prayer that we pray His kingdom comes (and the sooner the better I say!) and that His will takes place in our homes, neighborhoods, workplaces, everywhere on earth like it does in heaven.
I love verse 8 of Matthew Chapter 6 because it comes right before a prayer that says ask God for our needs, but it says right up front that God knows our needs before we ask them. Yet, we are to ask them. Thank you God!
Forgiveness is a book series, sermon series, and television series all in one, and yet the crux is that you and I must must MUST forgive others. Period! God forgives us as we forgive others. Be eager to forgive.
Read the Lord’s Prayer. Pray it. Begin with it and then move to your personalized heart-felt communion with the Lord! I promise He will honor it.
