Message

Overcoming Opposition When Following Jesus

God, Life, Message / By /

Whenever anyone makes a decision to follow Jesus and God’s plan for their life, there will be opposition. A lot of people are surprised and dismayed when following God turns out not to be the easy road they thought it was going to be. In fact, the Bible promises that when you follow Jesus, there is going to be opposition.

2 Timothy 3:12 (NIV) In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

Notice that persecution or opposition happens to those who strive to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. Opposition is not the consequences of wrong things that you have done. If you run a red light and get a ticket, that is not persecution, it is simply reaping what you have sown. Most of the negative circumstances in believers lives in America are caused simply by failing to follow biblical principles. However, even if you are living a godly life, there will be opposition.

Who is behind the opposition? The being behind the opposition to believers carrying out God’s plan for their lives is Satan. Now, I realize that many people do not believe that Satan is a real being, but simply a symbol of evil. Nevertheless, the Bible clearly teaches that Satan is alive and well and out to destroy you and your family. Those who ignore or don’t believe in Satan’s reality or power are the ones who are most easily overtaken by him.

1 Peter 5:8 (NIV) Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

So, if you’re a believer, you’ve got a prowling enemy looking to destroy you and your family. In fact, Satan is looking to destroy everyone, not just believers.  However, believers are his special target, since not only are you not going to join him in hell, but as a believer you are committed to rescuing others from his clutches.

So, how to overcome Satan’s opposition in your life? Be self-controlled. To be self-controlled is to basically keep your life under God’s control. One essential part of self-control is seeking God’s protection in prayer. Secondly, you need to be alert to what Satan is trying to do to destroy you and your family. Don’t compromise in any area of your life. Stay away from bad influences, whether people or various media. Pour yourself in living 100% for Jesus Christ, not just on Sunday, but everyday of your life.

Listen to my June 28, 2009 message “Overcoming Opposition” based on Nehemiah 4, to learn principles on overcoming Satan’s attacks in your own life (message notes).

How To Ensure Your Plans Succeed

Life, Message / By /

Planning is important. Those who do not plan, who put their emphasis in life on spontaneity, have problems. A wise person will take the time to make careful plans.

Proverbs 21:5 (NIV) The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty.

It takes time to plan, but planning leads to success. Doing things quickly, leads to failure and poverty. However, not just any type of planning leads to success. Some plans are doomed to failure because of bad motives. Other plans fail because the planner did not take all the necessary factors into consideration. Since none of us knows the future, how can we possibly plan for it?

In order to ensure that your plans succeed, you must align your plans with God’s purpose for your life.

Proverbs 19:21 (NIV) Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails.

God knows everything and He has determined a plan or course for your life. When you align your planning with God’s perfect plan, you will find success in life. Here’s the three-fold formula to ensuring your plan succeed.

  1. Read the Bible, pray and ask God to show you His plans for your life.
  2. Decide to overcome any fear and commit to following God’s plan.
  3. Take action with God’s help to put the plan into operation.

In the book of Nehemiah, we see how one man changed the course of history by putting God’s plan into action against incredible odds. Nehemiah accomplished this through total commitment to God and His Word, prayer and action.

In my message, “Planning with God” from June 14, 2009, I look at the principles of how Nehemiah was able to obtain resources from the world-ruling Persian empire to succeed with God’s plan. If you follow these principles, your plans and life will succeed as well. (Message notes).

The Misunderstanding of Church

Church, Message / By /

The number of people who never or rarely attend church continues to increase. A George Barna poll shows 38% of adult Americans are in the category of being unchurched. Of the people who regularly attend church, a staggering 45% are willing to try a new church. So we have a large group of people who see little or no value in church and another even larger group who are dissatisfied with their current church. I believe that behind these statistics lies a great misunderstanding of church.

Based on my understanding of the Bible, here’s my definition of a local church.

A church is a group of believers in Jesus Christ who committed themselves together to extend the kingdom of God in a particular locality.

Just as many people who claim to be Christians, are not believers in a biblical sense, so many groups that claim to be churches, are not churches in a biblical sense. So, we have people who have left or are thinking of leaving “churches” that are not truly churches. That’s actually a good thing, as long as they are searching for a true biblical church. Unfortunately, many lump all “churches” together and think they are all the same. On the other hand, we have people who claim to be believers leaving or thinking about leaving biblical churches because of some perceived imperfection. That is not a good thing.

Is it possible for a true believer to exist outside of a church family? The surprising answer is that no, it is not possible.

1 John 3:14 (NIV) We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death.

Here the apostle John tells us that one of the proofs of being a believer is love for other brothers and sisters in the family of God. If someone claims to be a believer, but has no desire to be around other believers in a church family, it proves they are not a believer at all. So, for the true believer, a biblical church family is not optional, but a necessity and something to be cherished.

The importance of being part of the family of God is seen in the Old Testament. To be cut off from the people of God because of some sin, was considered a fate worse than death. In the New Testament, the concept of a believer who was not part of church family is almost unheard of. The only mention of it is when someone was put out of the church through church discipline because of sin. This process was called “being handed over to Satan” (1 Corinthians 5:5, 1 Timothy 1:20). The whole idea was that being outside of the protection of the church would drive the sinner to repentance and back into the church family. Today, we also see terrible things happen to people who have placed themselves outside of the protection of the church.

In my message, “Depending on God” from June 7, 2009, I look at the story of Nehemiah’s passion and prayer for the people of God in Nehemiah 1, as an example of what our attitude should be toward our church family today (message notes).

Waiting on a Big God

God, Message / By /

Waiting on a big God is a very important part of growing spiritually. Although none of us likes to wait, God seems to have a particular liking for making people wait for Him to act. The Bible is full of people who had to wait on the Lord. Moses waited 40 years before he led the people of Israel out of Egypt. Abraham waited 24 years until the son promised to him by God was born. The Bible has many verses that command us to wait on the Lord.

Psalm 27:14 (NIV) Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

It’s a strong person who learns to wait on the Lord. The bigger your perception of God, the more patient you will be in waiting for Him. If I pull up to the drive-though lane for a fast food restaurant, five minutes is too long to wait. However, if I have an appointment to meet with the President of the United States, I will wait until he shows up. God is far more important than the President.

Waiting on a big God has a lot to do with trusting God’s promises.

Hebrews 6:12 (NIV) We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Impatience is a form of laziness. In order for God’s promises to be fulfilled in your life, you need both faith and patience. It’s takes patience to keep on believing God until the answer to your prayer comes.

Why does God make us wait? There are a lot of reasons. First of all, the world does not revolve around one person. God’s purposes in the world are enormous and involve many people and interrelated events. Oftentimes, things that we want to happen yesterday, need to be waited on for God’s perfect timing. Probably, one of the most important reasons that God makes us wait, is that waiting changes us for the better. Waiting on God builds your faith, your patience and your strength.

Isaiah 40:31 (NASB95) Yet those who wait for the LORD will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, they will walk and not become weary.

Waiting on the Lord, empowers you with God’s strength. Sometimes you have the strength to effortless wait on God like an eagle soaring in the sky. At other times, God gives you to strength to keep on running until you reach the end of the race. However, there are times when God will give you just enough strength to keep putting one foot in front of the other without becoming weary.

What are you waiting on God for today? What promise in God’s Word are you praying will be fulfilled in your life? When you wait on the Lord, you will be tempted to give up. You will be tempted to think that God is not big enough to come through. Resist those temptations. Be strong, take heart and continue waiting for the Lord until the answer comes.

Listen to my May 31, 2009 message “Waiting on a Big God.”

Bouncing Back From Failure

Life, Message / By /

Everybody fails in life from time to time. How can you bounce back from failure without it destroying your life? To answer that question, we need to look at what failure is all about. True failure is always caused by sin. The Greek word for sin is hamartia which means to miss the mark. The picture here is of an arrow missing the bull’s eye of the target. The Bible tells us in

Romans 3:23 (NIV) for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Here the picture of sin or failure is of falling short of what God created you to do, falling short of the glory God intended to receive from your life. So God is not happy when we fail to follow his plans for our lives, but He wants to help you escape from failure mode and get back on track with His purpose.

When people fail in life or face very adverse circumstances, they generally respond in one of two ways. Some people feel defeated, they lose hope, they feel paralyzed and depressed. Oftentimes, they look for someone else to blame for their problems, maybe even God Himself. They have a victim mentality and believe they are powerless to change their circumstances. People who lose hope  and are full of fear have great difficulty in bouncing back from failure.

On the other hand, when other people fail in life, they have a hope for life beyond their failure. They look to learn from their failure and see it as an opportunity to grow and do better in the future. Failure actually energizes these kind of people to work harder, to try something new and rise to the challenge.

How can you have hope and bounce back from failure like this second kind of person? Only through God’s help and presence. In Matthew 14, the disciples were in a life threatening circumstance. They were stuck in a ferocious storm in the middle of a lake in the middle of the night. In their time of great need, Jesus came to them walking on the water. He spoke to them and said:

Matthew 14:27 (NIV) But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

In the midst of your difficulty, whether your fault or not, you need to fix your eyes on Jesus. Notice that He commands the disciples to both take courage and not be afraid. The only reason these commands made any sense was because Jesus was there with them. So, whatever you’re facing today, give it over to God. Ask Him to fill your heart with hope and courage. Ask Him to take away your fear and worry.

When Jesus is with you, He is always ready to forgive and give you a fresh start in life. As long as you’re breathing, God has a plan for your life. He has a next step to take you out of your failure. Seek Him and He will help you bounce back from failure.

Listen to my May 24, 2009 message “Bouncing Back From Failure.”

071125.jpg

Living Your Dream

Life, Message / By /

Today, we are concluding our message series “Dealing with Difficulties.” In this series, we’ve looked at how the Bible teaches us to handle the tough times that we all have to face. As we finish the series, I hope you’ve noticed that we are now not just focusing on difficulties. Last Sunday, we talked about “The Joy of Thanksgiving.” As you focus on God and His power through thanksgiving, you gain strength and joy to face life’s difficulties.

Today, I’ve entitled the message “Living Your Dream.” It seems to me that most people are just wrapped up in the difficulties of life. Most do not have a dream for their lives beyond escaping their current difficulties. And of the few that have or have had a dream, most aren’t actually living out that dream. Without a dream or vision, life becomes a sad exercise in monotony, just a joyless day-to-day grind. The Bible says (NLT) Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. God wants to see you have dreams for your life and more than that, to see those dreams fulfilled.

God doesn’t want you to live an average, humdrum kind of life. He wants you to have a dream and live a life of adventure and joy. Today we’re going to look at the life of a man you may not have heard of. His name was Jabez there are only two verses in the Bible about him They are found in 1 Chronicles 4. You may have skipped over them if you were reading through 1 Chronicles, since the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles are a genealogy of over 600 names. Right in the middle of the genealogy, we read about a man named Jabez. The Bible says that Jabez was “more honorable than his brothers.” In other words, Jabez stood head and shoulders above the others of his generation. Jabez lived above average in God’s eyes, he lived his dream.

Let’s read those two verses about Jabez and see what was different about him. NIV 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. Now things didn’t start well for Jabez. His mother must have had a very traumatic delivery, so she named her son Jabez. In Hebrew, Jabez sounds like the word for pain. So Jabez was constantly reminded about his painful beginning, as was everyone who heard his name. I can imagine the jokes. Here comes Jabez, isn’t he such a pain. Yet somehow Jabez ended up being more honorable than the others of his generation. He stood out above the rest, he lived his dream. What secrets can we learn from Jabez that will help you live your dream?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my November 25, 2007 message entitled Living Your Dream

Scroll to Top