Wednesday, March 30, 2016

Don't ASSUME what the Bible says, READ IT for yourself.


My pastor has mentioned several times in his sermons that "just because grandma said it don't make it Biblical." For instance, my mom's favorite saying is "God helps those who help themselves." Benjamin Franklin used to say that. But, it is nowhere in the Bible.

I remember when I was reading the Bible for the first time as a child. Mom wanted me to clean my room and quoted that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". She said, "THAT is in the Bible, so you need to do it." Determined to prove her wrong, I read every word of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

Guess what? I proved her wrong -- but I still got into trouble. LOL

This Kingdom (Lyrics) - Hillsong featuring Darlene Zcheck

Friday, March 18, 2016

Pray for those doing God's work...



Thirza Peevey writes:

Dear Lord, the meme below is convicting me that it is some time since I have last invited prayer for clergy, laity and missions. Dear Jesus, thank you for inviting us into your work, that we might see the change in the world and participate in it. Thank you for giving us the blessing of participating in your redemption of the world and of the individuals in it. Thank you for those who have gone before us, and planted the seeds that are now flourishing and blooming: those brave souls who have entered into pagan lands, often at the cost of their entire life, or their immediate death. Thank you for the Adoniram Judsons, the Stanley LIvingstons, the David Nitchsmans, and Hudson Taylors who have carried your word into the far corners of the earth, where it is beginning to bloom now.

Lord, the work is often dangerous. There are missionaries all over the world right now. Lord, please grant them protection and peace where they work. Keep them from harm. But if harm must come, redeem it with a vast harvest. May those who would harm your missionaries to prevent your word from spreading find that each missionary they cut down cause hundreds to spring up, until they fear to touch one of yours. May every drop of blood that is spilled from your saints result in thousands turning to you and becoming your follower and disciple. Lord, make the devil tremble to touch any of yours, for the number of his that it costs him. We are not fighting a flesh and blood war, but one of spiritual principalities. Lord, go before us and teach the devil FEAR!

Lord, the work is often hard. Lord, put heart in your servants all around the world. Give them courage to face what often seems a losing battle. Keep before them the tiny seeds planted by the generations before them, and the vast harvests coming from those seeds now. The handful of missionaries in Asia 150 years ago must have felt so inadequate to the task of bringing China, India and the smaller Asian nations to you. The population was vast even then. But the small seeds they planted are bearing fruit, and China is on the brink of being the most Christian nation in the world. Keep this before your servants, and give them courage and heart for the work, and for the small seeds they plant.

Lord, the work is often thankless. Help them to do it as to you, and not worry if others thank them or not. Encourage them, Lord. Fill their hearts with joy and song, give them courage to praise you no matter what the day brings.

Lord, the work is often overwhelming. Give them inspiration from your Holy Spirit. Give them resourcefulness and creativity. Send others to come alongside them in the field. Send them a Boaz, who will order grain to be pulled from the sheaves and spilled on the ground, that they might have plenty to find and to glean. When there is nothing else to work with, give them the jawbone of an ass or a slingshot and a few smooth stones, and the ability to wield it against large armies of well-armed giants. When you withhold the rain, give them the hand full of meal and dregs of oil that never run out.

Lord, the hearts of the nations are often like stone. Pour out a spirit of repentance on this land and this world. Send old women to pray for the church, as in the Isle of Lewis and in the church of Jonathan Edwards. Send faithful pastors to preach your Gospel of repentance and redemption. Stop the mouths of false preachers, that the people might hear truth. Give your pastors the inspiration and the words they need to speak. Lord, make this the year that revival breaks out in this land. Make this the year that hearts return to you. Lord, make this the year that the churches of this land, the many little abandoned chapels that dot our landscape, are pressed back into service because there aren't enough buildings to contain all the new believers, and the year that people go even to wrecks like tiny Hurricane Lake, because they are seeking for you and they know not where else to go. Let them show up even at long abandoned churches, seeking a man of God to tell them what they must do to be saved.

(In Jesus' Holy Name, Amen, Amen and Amen!)

Thursday, March 17, 2016

God Gives His Blessings Freely

I had just arrived home from work, settled in and turned on my computer. On my home page was a story about The Christian Prayer Center being shut down by the Washington State Attorney. The reason was because the so-called Christian Prayer Center was charging people for their prayers.

Back in the old days, before there was a protestant denomination, the Catholic Priests used to make people pay for forgiveness of their sins in a myriad of ways. Sometimes, the priests would offer forgiveness of sins if the "sinner" agreed to fight in the Crusades.

It doesn't matter who steps up to take the initiative to have people pay for hope, it is just plain wrong -- and anyone who knows anything about the Bible should know that you can pray to God for forgiveness in Jesus Christ, and He'll do it for FREE.

Romans 8:32
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

So, if you ever come across a man who calls Himself "called by God" to take your money for the blessings He has to offer, then get away from him as fast as you can. He is a FALSE TEACHER, and one day, he will have his reward.

Romans 16:17,18
Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

St. Patrick introduced Ireland to Christianity. It was his use of the Shamrock to explain the Trinity that made the St. Patrick's Day symbol stick. "Is it one leaf or three?" "It is both one leaf and three."

Legend has it that it was St. Patrick that got rid of all the snakes in Ireland. To this day, there are no snakes in Ireland.

Read more by clicking HERE

Friday, March 4, 2016

God Warns of His Judgment and Offers His Sacrifice


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This was written by Thirza Peevey and posted on Facebook. When I asked her if I could post it at God Inspires, she gave her permission saying, "All credit belongs to God, to use as He wills." So, with that, here is a message from God through Thirza Peevey!

Come, Holy Spirit. Lord, give us an overwhelming desire to be obedient, to do exactly what you said, to have circumcised ears and a circumcised heart, and to do it joyfully because we love you.

ESV

Jeremiah 6
1 Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem! Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem, for disaster looms out of the north, and great destruction.
2 The lovely and delicately bred I will destroy, the daughter of Zion.[a]
3 Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her; they shall pitch their tents around her; they shall pasture, each in his place.
4 “Prepare war against her; arise, and let us attack at noon! Woe to us, for the day declines, for the shadows of evening lengthen!
5 Arise, and let us attack by night and destroy her palaces!”
6 For thus says the Lord of hosts: “Cut down her trees; cast up a siege mound against Jerusalem. This is the city that must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her.
7 As a well keeps its water fresh, so she keeps fresh her evil; violence and destruction are heard within her; sickness and wounds are ever before me.
8 Be warned, O Jerusalem, lest I turn from you in disgust, lest I make you a desolation, an uninhabited land.”
9 Thus says the Lord of hosts: “They shall glean thoroughly as a vine the remnant of Israel; like a grape gatherer pass your hand again over its branches.”
10 To whom shall I speak and give warning, that they may hear? Behold, their ears are uncircumcised, they cannot listen; behold, the word of the Lord is to them an object of scorn; they take no pleasure in it.
11 Therefore I am full of the wrath of the Lord; I am weary of holding it in. “Pour it out upon the children in the street, and upon the gatherings of young men, also; both husband and wife shall be taken, the elderly and the very aged.
12 Their houses shall be turned over to others, their fields and wives together, for I will stretch out my hand against the inhabitants of the land,” declares the Lord.
13 “For from the least to the greatest of them, everyone is greedy for unjust gain; and from prophet to priest, everyone deals falsely.
14 They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.
15 Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not at all shamed; they did not know how to blush. Therefore they shall fall among those who fall; at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the Lord.
16 Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’
17 I set watchmen over you, saying, ‘Pay attention to the sound of the trumpet!’ But they said, ‘We will not pay attention.’
18 Therefore hear, O nations, and know, O congregation, what will happen to them.
19 Hear, O earth; behold, I am bringing disaster upon this people, the fruit of their devices, because they have not paid attention to my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it.
20 What use to me is frankincense that comes from Sheba, or sweet cane from a distant land? Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.
21 Therefore thus says the Lord: ‘Behold, I will lay before this people stumbling blocks against which they shall stumble; fathers and sons together, neighbor and friend shall perish.’”
22 Thus says the Lord: “Behold, a people is coming from the north country, a great nation is stirring from the farthest parts of the earth.
23 They lay hold on bow and javelin; they are cruel and have no mercy; the sound of them is like the roaring sea; they ride on horses, set in array as a man for battle, against you, O daughter of Zion!”
24 We have heard the report of it; our hands fall helpless; anguish has taken hold of us, pain as of a woman in labor.
25 Go not out into the field, nor walk on the road, for the enemy has a sword; terror is on every side.
26 O daughter of my people, put on sackcloth, and roll in ashes; make mourning as for an only son, most bitter lamentation, for suddenly the destroyer will come upon us.
27 “I have made you a tester of metals among my people, that you may know and test their days.
28 They are all stubbornly rebellious, going about with slanders; they are bronze and iron; all of them act corruptly.
29 The bellows blow fiercely; the lead is consumed by the fire; in vain the refining goes on, for the wicked are not removed.
30 Rejected silver they are called, for the Lord has rejected them.”


I'm seeing my way into this passage from the last verses first. It seems that God is explicitly saying here what I've been getting from the Old Testament for the last couple of years: he is demonstrating the need for Jesus by showing what doesn't work. In vain the refining continues, but the wicked are not removed because ALL are wicked. It isn't possible to get rid of wickedness by killing the wicked. You execute the murderers, and new murderers crop up. You execute the rapists, and the good guys start raping people. Short of simply crumpling up the universe and tossing it in the bin, there is no way to fix the evil of the world, save by the death of Christ. Every single person that has ever lived is hell-bound, and all deserve to go there. Only through Christ can any be rescued.

This passage is talking, not about the Moabites or the Philistines, but about God's hand-picked chosen people who spent forty years in boot camp in the desert with him being carefully trained. They have been in the refiner's fire, and the bellows have blown hotly on them. The dross was skimmed off over and over. Some were bitten by serpents and died, some were struck down, some the earth even opened up and swallowed them. Only the best were left each time.

Only a few centuries later, they have fallen into idolatry as bad as the people they were sent to punish. God gave them a system of laws, sacrifices and festivals designed to teach them about sin, justice and substitutionary grace, and they turned it into propitiation of gods. It doesn't take much to understand the difference. Only a little logic will reveal the truth of it. If God is a real God, what can you offer him that he didn't make? What can you offer that isn't already his? If you go to the furthest corners of the world to bring back the rarest and most precious thing, is it not already his because he made it? Where can you go that God is not already there? If you travel hundreds of miles by camel to bring back the rarest spices to burn on the altar, was God not already in the place where those spices were? And was he not in every place you passed through on the way there? What does your "better" sacrifice mean in that context?

God doesn't ask us to sacrifice our first born son in the fire as a better sacrifice. Your first born son is already his. You are not showing higher devotion or gaining any better standing by burning your child to him. Your child is his, and he made him. He was there with you when you conceived that child (sobering thought, huh?). He knitted that child together in the womb and brought him to birth. That child is already supposed to be set aside for his use. In fact, if you burn your child on the altar, what you are doing is stealing the child who is set aside for God's use, and rendering him unable to be used. If you take great pains to go get the best spices in the world to burn on the altar, all you have done is moved God's spices from one place to the other. It is, as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, vanity, useless, futile (depending on the translation). You cannot buy God's favor by offering him what is his already.

What God desires from us is obedience. That's all. He simply wants us to follow directions. If you are a parent, you know the feeling. If you call your child for supper, and tell that child to wash his hands, will you be pleased if twenty minutes later, supper is congealed and cold on the table and everyone is short tempered because that child decided it was better to take a bath, wash his hair, blow dry his hair and put on a suit instead? God simply wants us to do what he said. He does not want children burned in the fire. He is ANGRY about such things. His sacrifices are not about propitiation and manipulation, and there is no better sacrifice that will more completely curry his favor. That isn't what his sacrifices are about. His sacrifices are about understanding that sin requires the death penalty, but that he is going to send a perfect sacrifice which will pay the death penalty for all people.

His sacrifices (are) about seeing your best lamb die for your crimes, and knowing, as any farmer knows, that the very best lamb in your flock is not perfect and without blemish. Every animal has some blemish. After you have searched through your flock for the perfect lamb and not found it, and had to simply bring your best, which wasn't good enough, you should be looking for God to provide a perfect sacrifice. You should be thinking this way because you know the story of Abraham offering Isaac, in perfect obedience, and God staying his hand and providing a substitute. God was telling the Jews, once and for all time, that he does not desire the sacrifice of children. He does not desire human sacrifice. He does not desire the death of any person. He will provide a substitute. And that "sacrifice" of Isaac took place on the temple mount, in the very spot where the temple stood. Those sacrifices were intended to train the Jews to look for God's substitute on that place, and until the time when he did, they were acting it out on that same spot.

By deviating from God's instructions, the Jews had removed all meaning from the sacrifice. This is precisely how the devil ALWAYS works. If you start studying the paganism of the region, you'll find that the pagan gods of the various countries are more alike than different. We state it up front that the Roman gods and Greek gods are the same gods. The Romans appropriated the Greek gods and gave them new names. However, when you look at all the other gods of the region, it is pretty obvious that the Romans were just the last in a long list of peoples doing just exactly that. If you look at Herodatus, he tells you that Mylitta is the Assyrian name for Aphrodite/Ishtar/Astarte. They are all the same gods/demons and they all require the same foul crimes against everything that is good and just. The devil is pretty much a one-trick pony, and whatever path he gets you on, they all lead to the same place through the same pitfalls of pride, lust and human sacrifice.

God has sent his people a warning through Jeremiah, but even as Jeremiah is faithfully proclaiming truth, imposters are proclaiming peace to the people of Israel. They are saying that happy days are here again when God is warning them that they are about to be punished severely. Those imposters are taking from Israel any hope of healing. They are not turning from their sins because they are being lied to. I can see that happening here now. It is the pinnacle of arrogance to think that we are going to "make America great again." We didn't make America great in the first place, God did it. D' Tocqueville told us that America was great because America was good, with a church on every corner. We weren't good because we built the buildings, but because we filled them, listened to faithful preachers and did what we heard. God blessed us because we had circumcised ears and hearts. Now we are worshiping sex and sacrificing babies, and we think that we will become great again by electing a "fighter?" Hitler was a fighter. Mussolini was a fighter. Stalin was a fighter. Did they make their nations great?

God is telling Israel that his hand is poised to go through them as a gleaner goes through grapes or grain. He's about ready to refine them again, and he's going to refine them hard. His hand is on the bellows to put them to the fire. He doesn't desire that any should perish, and sometimes that means he has to winnow through the wicked that babies might live to grow up without fear of being murdered by their own parents. That applies as much to this nation that was called by the name of Christ as it did to Israel, called by the name of El. It is past time for us to be putting on sackcloth and ashes, and lamenting our manifold and grievous sins. It is past time for those of us who stood by and held the coats of those sacrificing their children to admit that we are the worst of sinners. It is past time for us to heed the trumpets, and do what God says. We have committed all the same sins that God is calling Israel to task for in this passage. Do we think that destruction is far from us? By what right do we expect to be great again, unless we are good again? By what right do we ask God to bless us, when our necks are stiff, our hearts are hard, and we have our fist raised to God?

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Album Release Night of Music / Selah



Join the Journey Worship Team for a very special night of music!
Sunday, March 6 at 6:30 pm
Worship Center
Limited Run of CD’s for Sale at the Event

For more information, visit the Journey Community Church web site by clicking HERE

Here is a sample of their music: