They Cut Like A Knife ---- Plus Update On Charlie Pitts Grand Daughter

Update on Charlie Pitts Grand daughter, Elyse:
Texted to me:  
"Dr, just spoke to family. Not looking good. Tumor larger than expected --- like a small orange. Suspected of possible malignancy. Won't know until first of next week. Please continue to pray. We stand on God's word by His stripes, Elyse is healed. We praise God that she is healed.

Please keep Elyse, her parents and grand parents in your prayers.
Let's not just pray FOR healing....
Let us join our prayers and PRAY healing to her.

While we're on the subject, pray for a friend of mine whose son has struggled with alcoholism for years. In and out of rehab's. Does well for a while and then returns to his old lifestyle. Preparations were under way to get the son into a treatment facility, but Sunday he left and has only had contact with family through texts he sends. This man (the son) doesn't have many trips "out there" left. As with most alcoholic's, he has no quitting sense once he starts drinking. Our prayer is that God would "catch him". If that means going to jail, so be it, but do whatever it takes to save his life. Pray for the family as they are really trying to deal with the situation in the appropriate manner, and not rush in and try to save the son by enabling his behavior. Tough love is exactly that.....tough. Tough on everyone involved. But such is needed if one is to save the life of a loved one.
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Ephesians 4:29
Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers.

Words are merely evidence of what the heart is filled with.
Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.
You want to know where a person is spiritually....listen to their conversation.
They may sound religious, but do they sound like they have a real relationship with Christ?
Or is their sentences merely stuffed with terms and catch words that convey the idea of salvation?
To me, you can only do one of two things with your words. Build up......or tear down.
In Strong's Concordance, the word corrupt means "rotten / filthy". This doesn't always imply cursing....it implies words chosen to impact the one who is listening. Impact in a negative manner. TO damage or hurt, wound or cut with out words is sometimes the cause of some of the greatest pain a person could ever experience. Tell your children that you'd wished they'd never been born, do so out of anger, and watch the damage that is brought to those young lives. Unless God intervenes, those wounds never heal. Those wounds grow with infection and affect that life for a long, long time. 

Addiction unleashes the tongue to do damage on a grand scale.
It sets fire to everyone around within listening distance.
It judges, pronounces judgment and then becomes the executioner of family and friends.
The one thing I hear over and over from those who are coming out of addiction is the regret from having talked to family the way they did. 
Cursing the Mother because she wouldn't give money so they could buy more drugs.
Cursing the Father because he just expected to much from them. Expected such things as "getting a job"......."supporting yourself"......."Having a future". You know...unreasonable things. So the weapon of choice is "words". Lash out and try to return fire by name calling and accusation. 

I love the part in the Ephesians passage that tells us we have the ability to impart grace to those who hear our words. How cool is that? We can become grace-givers if we allow the Spirit of God to work in us. We become grace-givers to those we once tried to destroy with our dark words.
Build up?
or 
Tear down?
I think I'll be in the building business with my words....

God on you..
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Changing Buses...Changing Kingdom's (Plus An Update On Charlie Pitt's Grand daughter!)

Update: Thanks to everyone who prayed for Elyse, Charlie Pitt's grand daughter. Here is the latest that Charlie sent me.
"Praise God! The Doctor's say that the tumor doesn't appear to be connected to the brain. They are amazed at this. There will be no exploratory surgery. Plan is to go in tomorrow and remove it. We serve a Mighty God!"

Keep this young girl and her family in your prayers if you would. Thanks! And by the way....you guy's are the best.
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Colossians 1:13
He has delivered us from the power (the kingdom) of darkness and conveyed (or transferred) us into the Kingdom of the Son of His love."

This is the heart of God in action in our time and space.
This transfer of spirit, soul and body into a new way of living.
More than a change of thought....
More than a change of behavior....
It is the very essence that includes a life of recovery from addiction.
Keep in mind, and always remember that when I use the word addiction, I'm not talking about the usage of drugs and alcohol. I'm talking about the brokenness inside an individual that began with a single choice. A choice that lead down a deep, dark road to personal destruction, as well as the destruction of everyone around the user.

So really, you have two powers at work here.
Two powers in conflict vying for the soul of an individual.
If the word of Colossians 1:13 are true, and I believe they are, then one of the two powers would have to be stronger. One of the two powers would have to be capable of bringing about such a deliverance. Such is the POWER of God. Part of the deception that the devil and his kingdom of darkness uses against us humans is to suggest and implant into our thinking that God is not who He truly claims to be. That God is powerless to break the bondage of addiction. That God is powerless to do anything about a life that is bound and serving in the kingdom of darkness. Living each day out under the heavy hand of an evil taskmaster whose only desire is get even with God any way possible. You see, the devil knows that he can never truly defeat God. I believe that he knows that he is doomed and his time is short here on planet earth. For that every reason, he seeks to take as many of God's creation with him as he can. Talk about the ultimate picture of rebellion!

So this idea of being moved from living under one kind of rule to another is at the heart of God's kingdom and plans. Such a move would mean that since we have been delivered, then a new way of living must be a part of this transfer. A new way of doing business with world must be in order. A change of heart. A change in the way we think. A change in the way we view life must all be a part of living in this Kingdom or rule of God's light.

II Corinthians 5:17 reads: Therefore, of anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold all things have become new.
Old things....
Old ways of living....
Old ways of thinking and arriving at decisions....
Old ways of how we see ourselves....
These have passed away.
Behold ( I love this word)...that is Biblical talk for "Pay Attention son!"
All things.....(and what fall's under "ALL"?)
have become new...
Not refurbished...
Not re-tooled....
Not remade...
But brand spanking new!
New life...
New way to see life...
New relationship with the POWER that brought about this transfer from our old lifestyle to this new one.
Jesus....
Just Jesus. He is the reason I can celebrate this morning.

God on you...
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Healing Needed

E.M. Bounds wrote that "Prayer was the currency of heaven." We should never doubt the power of prayer, or that it is true and real communication between us and God. I have struggled with prayer, often feeling like I am a miserable failure when it comes to praying. I think maybe that such thoughts might be from myself and not from God. I don't see myself as what some classify as a "prayer warrior", but at the same time, I do pray. And pray often I do. In fact, I have learned the secret of praying without ceasing that the apostle Paul wrote about. Such is an attitude of prayer that we are to carry with us through out the day. It is wonderful when we can pull aside into quietness and solitude to spend time in prayer. But the day has demands that must be met. So I pray all day. Short, sentence prayers. As thoughts come to my mind and my heart, I shoot them up to heaven. I also try to keep myself open to hearing God. After all, prayer is a two way conversation. We have seen something powerful, wonderful things happen when we pray....I mean really pray. So I need your help.

Charlie Pitts, who runs the Celebrate Recovery for New Seasons Assembly of God in Southside, sent me a text yesterday asking for prayer. His grand daughter, Elyse, was at the doctor. She'd been having some trouble and had gone for a check up. After getting the text, I began to pray asking for God to cover this situation and to heal and/or correct anything that might be found.

This morning around 4:15, I received another text. They have found a tumor on Elyse's brain and are planning on doing surgery today. God has given us an assignment. We are to pray for Elyse and for the family. Such news like this sometimes opens the door for fear to come into a family. So pray for God's Spirit to hedge them around and bring peace to them. Pray that God would remove this tumor from this child. We believe strongly in doctor's and medicine, but God ultimately is the healer.

Father....
We thank You that we can come to you with our prayers. More than that, We thank You that you hear them and move on them. So this morning, we lift Elyse, Jeremy and Shana to you. We ask you to bring healing to this young girl and to this family.

Father, I speak to that brain tumor right now, 5:05 a.m. and I say be removed from this young girls brain. I ask that you would heal and correct any damage that might have been caused by this tumor. We pray this, not with the notion that we possess any power of our own accord, but humbly acknowledging the power and authority You have given us to operate here on planet earth in Your kingdom. 

Thank You, Lord
I pray this in the name of Jesus....
Amen.

Let's keep this family covered with prayer as they move through this situation.
Thanks for being the body of Christ.

God on you...
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We All Need Some Good News

Post by Vineyard Recovery Church.

Danny Daniels shared this song with us years ago when he first came to visit with us.

He called the service "Gospel And The Blues". The very fact that God does want to "Take Care Of Us" is a glimpse into the incredible heart of love He has for His creation.

SIn has dominated humanity.
Sin has taken us farther than we wanted to go.

Kept us longer than we wanted to stay.
And cost us more than we wanted to spend.

Yet God has never stopped loving us.

The funny part in all of this, it that the solution to the problem was for God to send someone to intervene on our behalf.

Someone who could break the power of sin.
Someone who could stop the penalty for sin.
And someone who could destroy the presence and works of sin.

Jesus!

The mandate for such an endeavor is found in Isaiah 61:1-4

The Spirit of the LORD God is upon Me.

Because the LORD has anointed Me to Preach good tidings to the poor.

He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted.
To proclaim liberty to the captives

and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.

To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD,

and the day of vengeance of our God.
To comfort all who mourn.
To console those who mourn in Zion.
To give them beauty for ashes.
The oil of joy for mourning.
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,

that they may be called trees of righteousness.
The planting of the LORD, that He may be glorified

And they shall rebuild the old ruins.

They shall raise up the former desolations  of many generations.

Sounds to me like restoration is the order of business.

Restoration of all the destruction that sin/addiction has wrought in the lives that were once trapped in it.
That is some kind of good news. Is it not?

God on you....

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L.U.I. -----Not D.U.I.

Romans 8:12
The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as He raised Christ from the dead, He will give life to your mortal body by this same Spirit living within you.

One more great night at VRC last night.
I'm always living in a place, mentally, where I'm never quiet sure how things are going to turn out. Shouldn't be, but I do. Without fail, God shows up and things happen. Then after the meeting, as I'm making my way around the room greeting people, you get the stories.
Visiting couple makes the comment that they have never felt such peace in a place before. That it caught them totally off guard. Another shared her story with me of praying during worship to "See God".  He showed Himself to her. Isn't that just like God to do that for His children.

We started off the evening with a song that contains a message from God to every person on planet earth, an old blues song by Bobby "Blue" Bland..."I Will Take Care Of You." That kind of set the tone for the evening.

Message was "living under the influence."
I asked if anyone could explain to me what "driving under the influence" means. That brought about much laughter as we are a recovery church, and such things as D.U.I are a part of the past history. I asked how you could know someone was driving under the influence. The response was "You could tell by their behavior". Then we moved into what it would look like for someone to be Living Under The Influence. If D.U.I.'s were evident by behavior because of ingestion of drugs and/or alcohol, then wouldn't it stand to reason that if someone had ingested, or taken in God's Holy Spirit, that there would be certain behaviors that marked them as "living under the influence, Or L.I.U?  I think so.

Romans 8:12-13 reads: So dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation whatsoever to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you keep on following it, you will perish. But if through the POWER of the Holy Spirit you turn from it and its evil deeds, you will live.  Living under the influence means that you are relying totally on the POWER of the Holy Spirit to guide you, or influence your decision making daily. Such is the POWER that has been missing in our lives. We have relied on self and that has taken us over the edge into the abyss of spiritual darkness and destruction. Or, as the big book of A.A. states it, "Self will run riot" has brought us to this point to whether we either get better or we die.

Saturday nights meeting is a brief stop along the way. We've moved from Sunday to Saturday. We've had some good days, and maybe some bad along the way. But here we are together, sober and ready to get our spiritual batteries recharged so we can go back out into the world.
There are people out there who need to hear our stories. There are people out there who need to know that they matter to someone. That there are others who fully understand their plight and struggle with drugs and alcohol. Someone who can point them to the life and POWER  that will take them to the next level out of the darkness. Someone who will love them in spite of the mess they have created. That is our goal at VRC. Equip to go out and rescue those in addiction.
Our call is to love them into the Kingdom of God, and help them to see the God they never knew. That He is totally different from the God they created in their minds. 

Here is the video of our friend, Danny Daniels, singing "I Will Take Care Of You". Enjoy!

God on you.....
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No "IF'S" In the Kingdom

It took God six days to create everything we see, touch, taste, smell and hear. Granted, He could have done it all in a nano-second. He chose to cover six days. But the bottom line is, creation was a process. It was the ultimate definition of chaos. Chaos to the max. Planets that were formless and empty, void of any purpose at all were spoken over by God and brought into alignment. Perfectly arranged around our sun, moving in sync so as not to collide with one another. Creation was a process.......not a single event.

Life is a  process, if we will let it be. It isn't an event. I know we celebrate the day of our birth, an event, but each year added is a series of events that, hopefully, aid in our growth and maturity as human beings. Same with God and His desires for us. Salvation is an event that leads to a process of growth. Step #1 is an event that leads to a process of growth and maturity as we learn who God truly is, and what He truly desires for us.

In this process of learning about ourselves and about God, we will find something very interesting. Jesus isn't into "What if".  In fact, I don't think He likes the word "IF". Mark Chapter 9 has a story of a father who brought his young son to be healed. Jesus was up on a mountain doing a "transfiguration" thing, having a little conversation with Moses and Elijah. His disciples were down below probably trying to act like Him. But they had run into a little trouble. A man had brought his son, who was demonized, to Jesus to be healed. He was looking for the "A" team and had run into the "C" team.  What I'm trying to say is that the disciples weren't having any success in dealing with the demon, or healing the boy from the suffering he was going through. Jesus comes down and interjects himself into the situation. The man approaches Jesus and says (Message Bible) "This has been going on ever since he was a little boy. Many times it (the demon) pitches him into fire or the river to do away with him. If you can do anything, do it. Have a heart and help us!" I love the reply Jesus gives the man...."If? There are no 'if's' among believers. Anything can happen."  No "If's" in the kingdom. With God all things are possible. My heart lines up with His heart and He gives me the desires of my heart when I pray. I saw something in this statement the other day that I had not caught before. God gives me the desires. It isn't that He gives me what I desire, because I can get off into some pretty stupid "desire-stuff". Missionary to the Bahama's.......A Rolls Royce so I can be an example of God's goodness to others.....A T.V. ministry so I can impact the world and get myself seen on T.V. and the list would go on and on. No! God plants the desires He wants me to have if I open myself up and allow Him to work in me. Why would I not desire that alone, realizing what a stinker I could be if I were left to run the show. I could couch anything in a religious covering and pass it off as being what God wants.

I think God wants us to expand our view and understanding of Him. To not limit Him with our unbelief. Like the father in the story from Mark 9, I cry out to God...."I believe! Help me with my doubts and unbelief!" Since life is a process and not an event, we all have areas concerning God that contain doubts and unbelief. We may not want to admit it, but they are there. Those are the very areas that God is desiring to work in to reveal Himself to us. I have no problem crying this prayer out to God..."I believe....help my unbelief".  Seems like this would be a healthy way to live.
Take the word "IF" out of your spiritual vocabulary when it comes to dealing with God, and with Him dealing with us.
Confess your doubts and fears and let Him have room to work in you.
Lay down your desires and let Him give you His desires.
You might be surprised what happens as the process of life with Him moves forward.

God on you....
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What Part Of Follow Do We Not Get?

Jesus has given me "a life".
In this life, I have taken on rolls and occupied jobs. I have been successful in some...and, well, not so successful in others.
I am a husband....
I am a father....
I am a grandfather...
I am a pastor / teacher....
And in all of this, every decision of importance that I have to make is laid at the feet of Jesus.
I wait for His direction.
As my wife so aptly puts it...."If He ain't talking.....I ain't walking." In other words, I wait until I have direction and confirmation from God on what the next part of the journey is.

That is the beauty of the Twelve Steps.
It provides a template of how to live for someone who is coming out of a terrible time of spiritual darkness.
The Steps are a simple guide on how to get on track with living.

Step # 1 through 3 -  We learn to trust God.
We come to some hard truth that (1) We ain't God and (2) He is. Such assumptions are made because of an inventory of our past accomplishments. We see that we are truly powerless over alcohol/ drugs. We have the want to...but lack the can do. We also see that our lives.........the daily affairs and relationships....have become out of control. In other words, our lives have become unmanageable. Funny part about addiction is that it will lie to you..it will get down into your psyche and tell you that you still are in control. What's even funnier is that we believe it. No matter that our decisions don't make any sense to rational sober people.The addicta-logic is operating at peak capacity. True healing begins when we know that we know we are in trouble. Life has become unmanageable.

Step # 4 through 11 -  Clean House
These are usually the steps that trip up most people. Working this part of the steps produces some emotional pain and is accompanied by a visit to our past. Focusing on the past is painful to someone coming out of addiction. I've seen many a person get to step #4 and 5 and simply quit because it is to painful for them. In step # 4 you have to take a "searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself". Such a visiting to our past dredges up old emotions and memories. Guilt and shame surface, but this time rather than letting them rule over you and dictate to you, you are moving beyond the emotion to find real healing through the process. The real healing comes in step #5 when "We admit to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrong." Rather than let the past continue to dictate our emotional response, God has lead us to a place where we are dealing with the issues and behaviors that have kept us locked up for the better part of our life. Step # 6 and 7 deal with letting the Holy Spirit of God change our character. We are experiencing a Genesis week of creation in our lives. God is changing our character as we submit to the Galatians 5 / fruit of the Holy Spirit work that occurs. The old stinky, filthy deeds of the flesh are replaced with the fruit of God's Holy Spirit. Peace, gentleness...patience...kindness....joy...love. Good stuff happening inside.

Step #8 and 9 help us to put legs to the changes that are taking place inside. Step#8 is where we make a list of people we have harmed. Step #9, we become willing to make amends. Up to this point all the work of the Step's has been centered on getting to a place where we are healthier emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Now we are going to take this healing we've experienced and begin to physically right some of the wrong we have done.

Step # 10 keeps us on track as we continue to take a moral inventory daily, and when wrong----PROMPTLY admit it. No time delay between when we mess up and when we confess our wrong doing. Secrets are the death of any recovery. No matter how small the incident may seem....we are bound not to live transparent and honest. We are only as sick as our secrets. No secrets in our life.....we are living healthy and free from the pull back to that old life style.

Step # 11 -- We continue to work on our relationship with Jesus through prayer and meditation. Not prayer and Medication. We seek only His will for our life and the power to carry it out.

Step #12 -- Give it away.
Sounds crazy, but the secret to sobriety is very simple. You give away what has been freely given to you. You take the message of hope and restoration to others who are suffering as you once did. And you continue to practice these principals in our daily affairs. How did you reach this point? You had a spiritual awakening....or a spiritual experience that rocketed you into a new dimension of living.

May you find the peace of God for your life today.
God on you...
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