March 28, 2010

 Deuteronomy 4: 23-24

  Jealousy, Honor, & Respect  

Deuteronomy

So be careful not to break the covenant the LORD your God has made with you.  You will break it if you make idols of any shape or form, for the LORD your God has absolutely forbidden this.  The LORD your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God.

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Thoughts...

I hear you saying, "Oh, I'm cool."  "I'm safe."  But are you?  How much time do you put into your cell phone everyday?  Or how about the TV, or your computer?  Perhaps I should have entitled todays message as 'obsession' or 'addiction'.  

Do you honor your relationships with people?  Do you respect the people in your life?  Do you spend as much time with them honoring and respecting them as you do on the cell phone, watching TV or playing with other people on the computer?  What investments have you made in your relationships?  What type of return do you desire?  Do you honestly think you will get it without an investment of time, honor, respect...love?

Strong's Concordance defines jealous as this:  ganna- jealous.  An adjective or title used exclusively of God, focusing on his desre for exclusive relationships.  

Ok, so now look at how much time you spend on relationships with loved ones vs relationships with things....or other people through things...or God.  

Do you respect and honor God's ideals and commandments?  Do you respect and honor God by your actions?  Do you respect on honor the people around you?  

When you walk into the house of the Lord, do you do so with respect, honor, reverence?  Do you turn your cell phones off?  When you walk into a sanctuary of the Lord's, you are to enter reverently, giving honor, respect, thanksgiving.  I said reverently.  Silently, with head bowed.  No chatter, no busy visiting, you are there to worship the ever living ever loving Lamb of God.  He is there when you walk in, and there when you walk out.  He is everywhere.  But in his sanctuary, only those worthy and willing to receive him should enter to bow down.  In silence you can best hear his voice.  In reverence, you can feel his touch.  In honoring him, you can feel his love.  In thanking him, you will receive his gratitude in blessings.  

Are you using your cell phone when with another?  How are you showing respect and honor if you do so?  How shall you be honored and respected, if you show it not?  What you give is sometimes all you get.

Why are you on the phone and on the computer at the same time?  Is that any different than being on the phone while with another in their presence?  Why are the people on a computer, or on a phone, more important than those standing in front of you?  They should not be.  You dishonor the one present.  You bring dishonor and disrespect to yourself.  You present as shallow and as indifferent.  Are you?  It is how you are being perceived.  Soul-less.  

It is said, you must be under authority to be in authority.  If you are under God's authority, you can be in authority.  If you say you are, and your actions prove differently, you will be perceived by others as not being under God's authority, but your own.  Your timing then, is not God's time, it is for your convenience, without thought of God or others.  Everything we need to know about  God, Jesus and Holy Spirit is in the Bible.  How to live, how to go about our day, how to make choices and how to honor him and others around him, so as to not provoke his angry wrath or jealousy...bring him down upon us as fire.  

Church should not be perceived as a social outlet, but as a place to bow down.  To learn more about who he is, that he is and how wonderful he is.  So what if you go to church every Sunday, and Bible study and fellowship during the week.  Are you honestly....honestly...applying the principles you learn, the love instilled by Father God Almighty to your life?  Have you shown that love and mercy to the people around you?  Have you shown yourself respect and honor, and embraced others with it?  

If you are constantly staying busy to prove you can, what are you really proving?  Could you be...be....busy at something productive...having an outcome of value....instead of something to just take up your time?  Is what you are doing valuable....countable in value...for the furtherance of your success in life?  Success...how do you measure that?  Are your relationships successful?  Why not?  Are your business relationships a success?  How do you measure that?  Are you measuring by your standards or theirs?  How about God's standards?  Are you trying to make your mark with one or two people or your primary relationship?  Will you leave a legacy....and what will it be?  Will only a couple people be aware of it, or will it be for the world?  How many lives will you touch before you die?  And what will you leave with them, emotionally, mentally, physically?  Can you change the world?  Maybe not.  But maybe.  Can you change your world?  Yes, you can.  How are you perceived...viewed by others?  Are you being honest with them?  Are you being honest with yourself?  Are they seeing the whole picture?  Are you making excuses for what you do, or others do, the cell phone, the computer, business, friendships...are they?  Do these questions provoke you and instill in you a desire to make a change?  

God does not want our leftovers.  God wants our first fruits.  It is how we are to respect and honor all of our relationships.  Spread too thin?  Prioritize.  God first, spouse next, children follow, then business, then extended family, then the world.  Can't?  Don't want to?  Time to close the door somewhere.  But not on God.  Time to find some quiet time to find out what HE wants you to do with your life...the perfect path, balance, journey.  He must be first.  And he must be always in your midst.  Anything else is not of him.  It is not acceptable.

Is Christ Jesus in all your relationships?  With the people around you?  With the cell phone, with the computer, with that bottle of alcohol, or those drugs, or cigarettes?  Addiction by any other name.  Ah...you say, "Me using the computer is not the same as being an alcoholic."  Or "Me drinking is not the same as a computer junkie."  Isn't it?  Anything that takes you away from him or away from those God wants you to love, and honor, and respect, or destroys the body, IS an addiction and are "idols of any shape or form".  Do you really want to provoke God's devouring fire?  

Spend some quiet time alone with him.  No noise, no other people around, no outside influences or worship of idols of any shape or form.  Just God and you.  Tell him you need some balance of rightness in your life and ask him to show you what you are doing that displeases him, and others, and what brings him and others around you respect and honor.  Tell him the empty sorrowness of your heart....pour it all out.  Go to the threshing floor where he will separate the chaff from the grain to bring you back to him and make you pure and holy.  And then, after you've heard from him in the stillness of your heart, the place where your soul seeks with an unmet thirst, now fulfilled, go to his word...the Bible...and learn more about how much he loves you and how you can best live this renewed life with him.  He's missed you....the fullness of your love for him.  He's missed that honorable respectful person he knew and groomed to be whole....you.  Embrace God now, go to your Savior and make him Lord of your life again.  Ask and receive all that Holy Spirit has to give you.  And then ask him what he wants you to do with all that love, honor and respect.  Ask him how you should live your life and whom you should have around you and what you should be doing daily to honor and respect him and do for him.  He has tasks set up for you.   He has a journey for you to be on to help him and others.  What will it be?  Will you walk the walk....while you talk the talk?  

Stop doing 'something' to stay busy, believing yourself productive.  Start receiving HIM who first loved you and really produce....with all the fruits....including honor and respect.  Let the world see a new you.  Set it ablaze with his love, honor, and respect through you.  Devotion....devote your life to him, he has already devoted his life to you when he said, "Your will be done, Father"... and carried his cross to Calvary...to be nailed to it...to die on it...so you might have life and have life abundantly.  

Make your life count for his.  Love him fully and then love yourself.  Then love others.  Fully.

***

Let Us Pray  

God, help me.  I have sinned and fallen short of giving you glory.  I've said these words a lot.  I want them to count today.  Help me make them count.  Help me remove from my life, or modify usage of, those things in my life that are counterproductive to honoring and respecting you and those around me.  Let me stop fooling myself and others by saying I am of you and then not proving I am.  Remove from me all those around me who are not of you, and let me not justify those relationships because they are saying they are Christian.  Just like me, some may say they are Christian or be affiliated with Christian groups, and are not really of you by nature of lack of respect or honor to you, or grounded and founded with you and your word as their foundation.  Those that blatantly refuse you, Lord, let me honor and respect you, and them, and myself, by closing the door, so that they might find you, or someone like them, who can give them the kind of relationship they are looking for.  A relationship different than the one that you want to give me, full of you, blessed.  I dishonor and disrespect them and you by keeping them bound.  And let me not seek another, but let you bless me by putting someone in place that is fully of you.  I will pray that I will become all the person who you put in my life needs...for you and them...preparing for the time when, and if, you decide I am worthy to receive another.  And I know you will have the other person preparing themselves for you and me...if it is your will for my future.  I have been wrong.  Please forgive me.  I will make every effort to be all that you need me to be now and in the future.  Please don't leave me, God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  Not only can I not live this life without you, I do not want to.  I accept you as my Lord and Savior, Jesus, and I don't ever want to be without you.  May I always bring you praise, honor, glory and respect.  May I never make you jealous to bring down your devouring fire from jealousy.  I want to make my life count...for you, myself, those around me and the world.  Help me find and know YOUR ways...your path...be on the right journey without too many more detours.  The right and only way.   Help me, please.  Please.  Thank you.  I love you.  Amen.            

***

Sing these songs with love and praise, adoration and humility:

LORD YOU HAVE MY HEART *

Lord, You have my heart

And I will search for Yours

Jesus, take my life and lead me on

Lord You have my heart

And I will search for Yours

Let me be to You a sacrifice

And I wll praise You, Lord

And I will sing of love come down

And as You show Your face

We'll see Your glory here

I COULD SING OF YOUR LOVE FOREVER *

Over the mountains and the sea

Your river runs with love for me

And I will open up my heart

And let the Healer set me free

I'm happy to be in the truth

And I will daily lift my hands

For I will always sing of when

Your love came down, yeah

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

Oh, I feel like dancing

It's foolisheness I know

But when the world has seen the light

They will dance with joy like we're dancing now, yeah.

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

I could sing of Your love forever

LOVE YOU JESUS!

More love.... 

  Benediction...Blessing

Let us hear from Paul as he prays:  

When I think of the wisdom and scope of God's plan, I fall to my knees and pray to the Father, the Creator of everything in heaven and on earth.  I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resouces he will give you mighty inner strength through his Holy Spirit.  And I pray that Christ will be more and more at home in your hearts as you trust in him.  May your roots go down deep into the soil of God's marvelous love.  And may you have the power to understand, as all God's people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love really is.  May you experience the love of Christ, though it is so great you will never fully understand it.  Then you will be filled with the fullness of life and power that comes from God.

Now glory be to God!  By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope.  May he be given glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever through endless ages.  Amen.  Ephesians 3:14-21 NLT         

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Scroll down to read Jesus' Prayer of Thanksgiving...'The Unforced Rythms of Grace'.

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Definition of a Christian:  Anyone who believes in God, Jesus and Holy Spirit, and accepts Jesus as Lord and Savior.  Regardless of church name or religious affiliation.  

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If you feel that the Church of the Holy Spirit has inspired or helped you, we'd like you to prayerfully consider tithing regulary to us or gifting us, so that we can further the work and carry out the will of the Father as proclaimed in Matthew 28:16 NLT

 to

 "Go and make disciples out of all the nations

baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.  And be sure of this:

I am with you always, even to the end of the age."

***

  Our Current Cause

 As in all things, we need to test the waters to see which Spirit is speaking.  I have recently found myself ensnared in a barb unrelated to the sincere cause of furthering the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It is with much regret that I have to ask your forgiveness for having been human, and having been led astray on a path that could have taken me away from you, my brothers and sisters.  I thank and praise Father God Almighty, Jesus, and Holy Spirit for coming to my rescue 'in the nick of time'.  That having been said, I am back on Holy and firm ground.  The current cause I set before you is to ask for your fervent prayer for myself, and all Ministers, Pastors, Priests, Rabbis, and other Triune God ordained religious leaders, that I, and they, may be wary as foxes in these end times, surrounded and protected by the God in the Trinity, with all the love, care and concern, they possess.  May we rise up with one voice, and one Holy Spirit, to minister to the masses as one.  

Please accept my sincerest thanks....and may God bless you!   

 ***

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  ***

    One last thing....

 Jesus' Prayer of Thanksgiving

'The Unforced Rythms of Grace'

"Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer:  "Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.  You've concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people.  Yes, Father, that's the way you like to work."

Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly.  "The Father has given me all these things to do and say.  This is a unique Father - Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge.  No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does.  But I'm not keeping it to myself; I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen."

"Are you tired?  Worn out?  Burned out on religion?  Come to me.  Get away with me and you'll recover your life.  I'll show you how to take a real rest.  Walk with me and work with me - watch how I do it.  Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.  I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn how to live freely and lightly.

   Matthew 11:  25-30

  The Message

And the people said,

"Amen."

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I now write most prayers in the position of ' I ' (first person) because most people are sitting at their computer alone, not in groups, and it allows those reading and praying to personalize the prayer as coming from them going to God.  Variations may appear on holidays when families may wish to use the prayer provided.

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Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996.  Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189.  All rights reserved.

* LORD YOU HAVE MY HEART

Music and lyrics by Martin Smith c  1992 Kingsway's Thankyou Music (PRS)  All rights in the Western Hemisphere administered by EMI Christian Music Publishing p 1998 Furious ?Records / Sparrow Records.  Delirious?  appears courtesy of Furious? Records / Sparrow Records.

* I COULD SING OF YOUR LOVE FOREVER

Music and lyrics by Martin Smith, c 1994 Curious?  Music U.K. (PRS) Admin. in the U.S. and Canada by EMI Christian Music Publishing. p 2001 Gotee Records.  Produced by Jason Halbert and Dwayne Larring for Rythmic.  From the album SONICPRAISE on Gotee Records. www.gotee.com.

Both recordings from the Worship Together CD

 *