The blessing the love of family brings us

Have you ever been on fire for God so much to preach and spread his word that it makes it almost hard to get it all out. I feel so convicted right now the words escape me; I don’t have the hours in the day to devote the time I want or need to. God has led me to pour this attention and love into my family, and I have never been happier or felt more blessed to have them. I see an excitement to learn from my children, which makes my heart overflow with joy. They truly are and always will be my greatest ministry and next to our Lord Jesus Christ, my wife and my children are the best thing to ever happen to me. Please take a moment to marvel in the splendor of what God has given to us in family, and recognize the blessing the love of family brings us.

Thanks for checking in and God Bless>>

Hold fast, help is on the way.

God uses pain to shape our faith. Sometimes God allows our heart to feel the sorrow of loss so that it will know the depths of hope and patience that only the pain from loss can teach once it has healed. I believe we grow in the valleys of life, pain and sadness force us to examine where our strengths lie and who we put our faith in.

The burden of going through this life is too much for us to carry on our own, it takes a strong person to swallow their pride and ask for help. With Christ Jesus we can do anything.

Because of our pain and hardships we will enjoy the glory of God that much more the day we go to be with him. People who suffer and still have faith, have a way of touching and empowering others, this is a tool of God. I think we all have been in awe of someone who has survived unspeakable pain and still maintained their faith in God.

The Apostles realized this, all of them suffered very much for their faith and all but one were killed for it. That is faith. Look what Jesus went through for us so that we, we who love him and believe in him, can have a loving, pain free eternity.

Suffering is a hard concept for most Christians. If God did everything for us, protected us from everything how would our faith grow? That would breed complacency and we would not grow our faith. Just like our children, something’s they have to learn own their own. You let them try and fail so they learn and when they succeed it is that much sweeter for them and us! God looks at us like that, but we live in a broken world and bad things happen.

This life is just a moment in time when compared to eternity. The treasures and glory that await us in heaven are far more than anything we can conceive. I have never felt calm or comfort in my life the way I have when I completely committed to Christ. I step out of my comfort zone for God so I can grow. This blog and Podcast are just that.

We are justified through God grace through our faith alone. God loves you so much; he wants you to accept him no matter what. Nothing we do can get us into heaven….only our faith in Jesus and his word. That is ALL you need.

Thanks for checking in > John

This post was taken in part from my response to a question on faith and suffering in 2009.

Excuse me, may I poor this into your cup?

“His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’-Matthew (25:23)

Matthew (24:45-51) tells us that getting ready for Jesus’ return demands us to be faithful in doing the work he has called us to do. This was a warning to all disciples and even more so toward Christian leaders.  I am sure we all can guess why Christian leaders are held to a higher standard in Christ’s eyes. Just look at the backlash we Christians face when our leaders fall and the damage that can be done by leading people astray. Non-believers judge our entire faith based on those failings of a few which I find ironic to say the least.

We are given an opportunity here on earth to multiply what Jesus has entrusted to us. Matthew tells us in Matthew (25:15), that the master gave each according to his ability. Christ knows our abilities but he expects more of us than to just keep our heads down and be good.

24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’ 26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. - Matthew (25:24-26)

Jesus promises eternal reward for those who prove worthy of his trust. I think it is reasonable for us to agree that if someone can’t be trusted with what is his own or just a small amount, how could they be trusted with what concerns others or a large amount? I use this story to explain trust with my 16 year old. She wants to be trusted with bigger things such as dating and driving but can’t be trusted with small things like turning her hair straighter off, cleaning her room and our little household rules. I try to explain that trust built with small things leads to trust with big things. None of us are above this rule… some just choose to opt out and settle for giving back what they were given and some just choose to use it up.

This same pattern is mirrored across most anywhere in life if you want to move up and lead. Christ has provided us with endless amounts of Love, Grace and mercy. Imagine a world where people didn’t just receive those gifts from God, but from each other.

May your cup overflow, but more importantly, may you help overflow the cups of others.

Thanks for checking in…

The truth is hard to swallow

Below is a prayer Pastor Joe Wright gave when asked to open the new session of the Kansas House of Representatives on January 23, 1996. I find it a very insightful prayer, a kind of prayer that will bother those who do not want to admit to being a sinner. It will bother those who believe this countries moral compass is already pointing true north something I think even the most lukewarm Humanist would agree is not the case. It will bother those who deny Christianity, the validity of the Bible and Gods grace to justify their wrong doing.

The Secularist main stream and the Liberal media have cloaked a veil over our eyes to make people think anything is permissible as long as you feel it is okay. Day by day our children are being poisoned by moral neglect and an indifference to common decency. Some want to deny their accountability to God over their morality, belief and acceptance of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. I think this line of thinking is akin to a teenager denying their parents authority over them, the old “You are not the boss of me!” argument. My children at one point truly believed that if they covered their eyes I could not see them because they could not see me. No matter how much they believed that I could not see them, it never changed the reality. So too is it with God. The truth is hard to swallow



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THE PRAYER

The response was immediate - with a number of legislators walking out during the prayer. In six short weeks Central Christian Church logged more than 5,000 phone calls, with only 47 of those calls responding negatively.

Commentator Paul Harvey aired Pastor Joe Wright's prayer on the radio and received a larger response to this program than any other program Paul Harvey has ever aired.
In addition, Central Christian Church is now receiving international requests for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea.

The prayer is reprinted below:

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and seek your direction and guidance.
We know your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that's exactly what we've done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that we have ridiculed the absolute truth of your Word and called it moral pluralism. We have worshiped other gods and called it multiculturalism.
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem.
We have abused power and called it political savvy.
We have coveted our neighbors' possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our fore-fathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us O God and know our hearts today; try us and see if there is some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by you, to govern this great state.
Grant them your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of your will.
I ask it in the name of your son, the living savior, Jesus Christ.Amen.

***text taken from http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/k/kansasprayer.htm
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Wright later explained, "I thought I might get a call from an angry congressman or two, but I was talking to God, not them. The whole point was to say that we all have sins that we need to repent – all of us . . . The problem, I guess, is that you're not supposed to get too specific when you're talking about sin."

Why the Atheist doesn't exist

This is an Excerpt from God Doesn't Believe in Atheists by Ray Comfort

There can be no such things as an atheist. This is why: Let's imagine that you are a professing atheist. Here are two questions for you to answer: First, do you know the combined weight of all the sand on all the beaches of Hawaii? We can safely assume that you don't. This brings us to the second question: Do you know how many hairs are on the back of a fully-grown male Tibetan yak? Probably not. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that there are some things that you don't know. It is important to ask these questions because there are some people who think they know everything.

Let's say that you know an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. To know 100 percent, you would have to know everything. There wouldn't be a rock in the universe that you would not be intimately familiar with, or a grain of sand that you would not be aware of. You would know everything that has happened in history, from that which is common knowledge to the minor details of the secret love life of Napoleon's great-grandmother's black cat's fleas. You would know every hair of every head, and every thought of every heart. All history would be laid out before you, because you would be omniscient (all-knowing).

Bear in mind that one of the greatest scientists who ever lived, Thomas Edison, said, "We do not know a millionth of one percent about anything." Let me repeat: Let's say that you have an incredible one percent of all the knowledge in the universe. Would it be possible, in the ninety-nine percent of the knowledge that you haven't yet come across, that there might be ample evidence to prove the existence of God? If you are reasonable, you will be forced to admit that it is possible. Somewhere, in the knowledge you haven't yet discovered, there could be enough evidence to prove that God does exist.

Let's look at the same thought from another angle. If I were to make an absolute statement such as, "There is no gold in China," what is needed for that statement to be proven true? I need absolute or total knowledge. I need to have information that there is no gold in any rock, in any river, in the ground, in any store, in any ring, or in any mouth (gold filling) in China. If there is one speck of gold in China, then my statement is false and I have no basis for it. I need absolute knowledge before I can make an absolute statement of that nature. Conversely, for me to say, "There is gold in China," I don't need to have all knowledge. I just need to have seen a speck of gold in the country, and the statement is then true.

To say categorically, "There is no God," is to make an absolute statement. For the statement to be true, I must know for certain that there is no God in the entire universe. No human being has all knowledge. Therefore, none of us is able to truthfully make this assertion.
If you insist upon disbelief in God, what you must say is, "Having the limited knowledge I have at present, I believe that there is no God." Owing to a lack of knowledge on your part, you don't know if God exists. So, in the strict sense of the word, you cannot be an atheist. The only true qualifier for the title is the One who has absolute knowledge, and why on earth would God want to deny His own existence?

The professing atheist is what is commonly known as an "agnostic" - one who claims he "doesn't know" if God exists. It is interesting to note that the Latin equivalent for the Greek word is "ignoramus." The Bible tells us that this ignorance is "willful" (Psalm 10:4). It's not that a person can't find God, but that he won't. It has been rightly said that the "atheist" can't find God for the same reason a thief can't find a policeman. He knows that if he admits that there is a God, he is admitting that he is ultimately responsible to Him. This is not a pleasant thought for some.
It is said that Mussolini (the Italian dictator), once stood on a pinnacle and cried, "God, if you are there, strike me dead!" When God didn't immediately bow to his dictates, Mussolini then concluded that there was no God. However, his prayer was answered some time later.

Excerpted from God Doesn't Believe in Atheists by Ray Comfort