Month: October 2017

GET TOGETHER-   We Need Each Other

Heb 10:25 not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. (NKJV)

 

     One of the greatest blessings that a lot of people are missing out on is being encouraged and exhorted by other Christians.  Some people miss out by having the “it’s just me and God attitude.” I understand that the church is not perfect, and that people have been hurt in the church. On the other hand, I would not be typing this message today if it wasn’t for the way that the Holy Spirit worked through other people in my life.

      Last week we had just come off a very powerful weekend with God’s people. The last few months have been a very intense time of ministry for us. There have been many wonderful things that God has allowed us to be involved in. Too many to name here, but they have all been awesome.  During this time we have had the opportunity to work with people all across the Body of Christ.   What a great blessing it is to be involved in Kingdom work. We do a lot of Kingdom work across denominational lines. Hell really hates that, because Hell would rather us focus on our differences than what we have in common with other Christians: our belief in the Virgin Birth, the life, death, resurrection, and return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

      To be honest the enemy had been really beating me up about this accusing me of being double minded because of ministering in different parts of the Body of Christ. This past Friday night I got a text from a dear brother about a special service at another church in another city.  Most times on Sunday nights I am very tired and that is one of our nights that we rest on. Well I went to the service and this dear brother was preaching on the Kingdom and how we are a net. When we focus on the things that we agree on we are forming a net for the Kingdom. When we argue about the non-essentials of the faith we are cutting holes in the net. What a wonderful message it was. The Holy Spirit used that message to help me be free of the oppressing voice of the enemy and be tuned in to the liberating voice of the Holy Spirit.

      I am sharing this with you to reemphasize how much that we need each other in the Body of Christ to serve in His Kingdom. The Hebrew term for forsaking here is egkataleipo. It means not to desert a person or leave that person uncared for. The Greek term for assembling here is episunagoge. It means to cause to come together at a location.  The Greek term for exhortation is parakaleo.  It means to encourage or to console someone by either verbal or non verbal means.

      This past Sunday night I was encouraged after a week of much spiritual opposition from the enemy.  The message that night really encouraged me. Since that time, I have met with two friends to pray together. I have met with two small groups here at our congregation.  The Holy Spirit has used all the above plus many others to bring encouragement and comfort.  Don’t let the enemy sucker you in by making you think that you don’t need to be active in the Body of Christ to fulfill your destiny in the Kingdom of God.  I don’t think that I would be typing this today if it weren’t for how God uses people here at Christ Community Fellowship and so many other Christians that have a Kingdom mentality in His church. When the enemy comes people are either going to run away from their congregations, or dig in closer. Or maybe I should say people will either run away from their calling, or draw closer to God’s house to help them to fulfil it. Stay plugged into a local congregation. You need to be encouraged, and others need you to encourage them. God wants to use you to advance His Kingdom.

 

Let us Pray

Lord we thank You for the saints. Lord we thank You for The church. Lord today help us to encourage others. Help us to be used in Your Body to encourage others so that the Kingdom of God may be advanced upon the earth.

In Jesus Name

Amen

 

Thanks for the many saints who pray for J.J. and I. We love you all!

Your Friend/Kinfolk

Preston

 

GET TOGETHER -Don’t Forget the Main Thing
1Co 13:1-5 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;
The Apostle Paul takes a break in Chapter 13 from teaching on the gifts of the Holy Spirit in Chapter 12 before He goes into teaching more on them in Chapter 14. I believe that one reason that he does this is that he does not want the Corinthian believers or us to forget how important it is that we are called to a life of loving God with all our heart and loving our neighbor as ourselves. 

 What a blessing it is to know that God has given us the gifts of the Holy Spirit to serve Him and to serve others with. What a blessing to know that God wants us to partner with Him in ministering to the poor. What a blessing it is to know that God loves for us to grow in and to exercise our faith. But He wants us to be sure that we grow in the right kind of spirit.

Paul list several characteristics of Christians who are loving God and loving people. We suffer with one another. We work through some things together. We are kind to saved people and unsaved people. We are not envious of other Christians or of non-Christians who may be prospering in some way. We don’t try to impress others, but what we do we do heartily to the Lord and not to men.

  Here is one that I had to repent of the other day. I was rude and impatient when a man was trying to park his 18-wheeler at a restaurant that I was pulling into as I was running a little late to meet some of my family for lunch. I didn’t say anything to him, but to be honest I was impatiently waiting on him to move the truck and he could tell it by the way that I was operating my vehicle. 

We can’t be rude in our conversations with non- believers, or people that disagree with us. We can state what we believe. But we don’t have a license to do it in a rude way. They are supposed to see something different in us.

As Paul points out we are to seek the will of God rather than our own will. There are plenty of things in our culture that we certainly need to be concerned about. And yes, we need to be bold. But sometimes people confuse boldness with arrogance. We often see people who disagree not really listening to the other person, but biting their head off before they can finish what they are saying. Paul was a very bold man. On the other hand, I don’t believe that he was an arrogant man. Paul tells us that love isn’t easily provoked. The Greek term for provoked is paroxuno, par-ox-oo’-no. It means to be upset with someone or something involving severe emotional concern. We are not to be quick tempered.

Sometimes some of us may be operating in the Spiritual Gifts, but not loving as God desires for us to love. Some of us may be serving the poor out of cold hard duty without really loving those that we are serving. Keep operating in those gifts. Keep ministering to the poor and others that God has called you to minister to. When you do ask the Holy Spirit to give you so much love that everything that Paul says that love does is evident in your life. And ask the Holy Spirit to remove those things that don’t reflect the love of Christ from you. Pray for me that I will do the same. Remember what Jesus said about the greatest commandment. Lu 10:27 So he answered and said,” ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.'”
            Let Us Pray
Lord Jesus we thank You that you have given us the gifts of the Holy Spirit to serve you and others. Today through Your Holy Spirit let love manifest in our lives in the way that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 13. Break off from us any of those negative things that Paul talks about in that chapter. Helps us to flow in our gifting in a way that Your love flows out of us. 

In Jesus Name

Amen

  
Thanks for your love good friends.

Your Friend/kinfolk

Preston

GET TOGETHER- NEGATIVITY THE OPPOSITE OF HOPE
1Co 13:13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
 It was not my goal to make anyone feel any false guilt last week as I shared about doing the 40 Day Word Fast. The Holy Spirit brings conviction, but not condemnation to those who follow Christ. On the other hand, if He did gently nudge you and say I want to help you with that thank Him for loving us that much. This week I must admit I blew it a few times during the word fast. On the other hand I always cling to this verse when I fall short. Pr 24:16 For a righteous man may fall seven times And rise again, But the wicked shall fall by calamity.” (NKJV) I asked the Lord to forgive me and to help me not to repeat that sin again. And Hallelujah He does both! 

So here is one of the areas that I fell short in this past week. It was negativity in my speech. I caught myself talking to someone about how bad things were in the culture more than talking about the solution. When we get into negativity we basically begin to talk like there is no hope for the culture, the circumstance, the person, or whatever that we may be talking about.

In 1 Corinthians 13:13 the Apostle Paul list the three abiding gifts of the Holy Spirit that every believer in Christ has. One of them is hope. The Greek term for hope is elpis, el-pece’. That term means to look forward with confidence to that which is good and beneficial. Negativity says that there is nothing good and beneficial to look forward to.

The Apostle Paul uses the term hope in at least thirty eight different verses. In the following passages we see the antidote for negativity. Ro 12:12 rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; and Ro 15:13 ¶ Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can rejoice rather than criticize and fault find. We can expect victory in times of trial. Prayer will do what negative words cannot do. Prayer will connect us with Heaven. Negative words hinder the Holy Spirit working in the things that trouble us. We can have joy rather than heaviness, we can have peace rather than turmoil. And according to Paul the Holy Spirit will give us an abundance of hope, joy, and peace.

  I am preaching to me as well as to you. The choice is ours. We can let negativity rob us of peace and joy, or we can fast from those words and speak words of hope, life, faith, peace, comfort, and joy. I think I am going to go on a permanent fast from negativity. Hold me accountable.
Let Us Pray

Lord Jesus we thank you that You are the God of all hope. Today we ask You to help us to eliminate negativity from our mouths. Lord help us be so full of you that nothing, but hope, joy, peace, and words of life come out of our mouths.

In Jesus Name

Amen
Here is another word that will help us.
Isa 58:9 Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; You shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ “If you take away the yoke from your midst, The pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness,
Your Friend/Kinfolk

Preston

GET TOGETHER- GETTING RID OF THE SALTY WATER
Jas 3:10-12 Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. Does a spring send forth fresh water and bitter from the same opening? Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.
Well this is my third go around at some type of word fast. In 2014 I did one from a devotional book titled The Tongue Fast. This is my second time to do The Forty Day Word Fast by Tim Cameron. In Cameron’s book we try to eliminate judgment, criticism, negativity, gossip, sarcasm, and complaining from our Christian journey. The next few weeks I am going to focus on some of these in our Get Together and pray that it will benefit you in some way. I am not suggesting that all of you are doing a lot of this, but sometimes salt water can kind of seep into where the fresh water is. I know that it happens to me from time to time because the Holy Spirit shows me when it does. 

We live in a culture that often thrives on these six elements that I just mentioned. Jesus has called us to be a people that speak a different language that what many in the culture speak. 

First, let’s look at judging. Before we go any further yes, God has a standard and yes God is the ultimate Judge. Sometimes when we make judgments we come to wrong conclusions. We also become bitter. And rather than praying for people we may begin to feel hostile toward them. Many times, we can be wrong in our judgments. In my truck right now, there is a white styrofoam cup setting in the cupholder. This morning when I left the house I made me a drink with almond milk, honey, and I poured cinnamon on top. If someone looked at that cup now with the cinnamon dried around the top they might make a judgment that I was dipping snuff, or chewing tobacco and that was my (pardon the expression) spit cup. That would have been a wrong judgment. Sometimes we judge people by the length of their hair, or other physical characteristics about them that lead us to wrong judgments

The next element that we want to eliminate is criticism. Certainly, as leaders there are times that we have to bring correction to people. But when we do it is good to point out what someone is doing good before you must bring correction. Then after you bring correction encourage them in the Lord. One area that we are quick to be critical in is leaders. Whether they be political leaders, government officials, church leaders, leaders where we are employed, or school leaders we can sometimes become very critical of them.

Here is a passage that I believe would help us to be less critical and less judgmental if we really lived by them. Mt 7:3-5 “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? “Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Most times when we are looking at the speck in someone else’s eye it inhibits the Holy Spirit from working on the plank in our eye. This past week while I was at a school where I teach Old Testament I kept smelling something that smelled like sewage. I asked one of the students had there been a sewer line burst in their community. The student assured me that there hadn’t been. My first thoughts were that the student was too young to know what I was talking about Well I made a wrong judgment on that one. When I got to my car I noticed something on my floor mat. It was also on my shoe. The neighbor’s dog had left me a little present and I hadn’t realized that I had stepped in it on my way out that morning. Sometimes for all of us there may be something that is putting off a bad smell and it may be coming from us rather than from someone else.

Ask the Holy Spirit if there are areas in your life where your words are judgmental. Also ask Him to help you with those words and to refrain from words of criticism. I have a feeling that if we do that He will eliminate the salt water that has seeped in with prayer for those that we tend to judge, or criticize and that fresh water will flow out of our mouths in a more productive way for His Glory!
Let Us Pray

Lord sometimes we honestly do see some things that may need fixing. Lord help us not to judge, or criticize, but to pray for those that we would tend to judge, or to criticize. And Lord for all of us we know that we have some areas in our own lives that salt water has seeped into. Lord get the salt water out so that those rivers of living water can flow out of our bellies and through our tongues to a world that needs fresh water so much.

In Jesus Name

Amen
                        
Thanks for loving us. We love all of you!

Your Friend/Kinfolk

Preston