Where Did It Go?

Time...
Where does it go?
Can you believe that we are fixing (good ol' Southern term) to turn the page and move into September?
It seems like we were in January just last week.
Huge snowfall here on January 10th. Shut down most businesses and factories. Of course down here in the South the least amount of snow will accomplish that feat.
Vicki and I are now moving into areas that are truly from the Twilight Zone.
High school reunions that fall in the realm of "40 years".
Tomorrow is our anniversary. We have been married 39 years.
My best friend, Jim Bentley, I've known for 43 years.
All these numbers sound like something old people do.
Something my parents would have done.
In fact, next month I turn 60.
Now that really is someone else, not me.
I look in the mirror and I see a 60 year old man standing there staring back at me.
"Who are you and what have you done with Michael?"
Inside my head, I am a rompin', stompin' 18 year old trapped in a 60 year old body....excuse me....59 and 3/4's. When I think of my body...well, it is 60 and there are mornings that I feel 60.
Time move on.

One of my most favorite verses in Scripture is Job 42:16-17: After this, Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children and grandchildren for four generations. So Job died, old and full of days.
Isn't that a great verse! Job died, old and full of days. For all the terrible things that Job went through, at the end everything was set right. God restored and gave him a good life as Job grew older. Job got to see not only his children but on down through 4 generations. It doesn't mention it, but I'm sure Job told them his story and how the God he loved and served was faithful through out the ordeal he suffered. I would love for my life to have that kind of ending. To have someone speak over me and say, "Michael lived to be old and full of days."

If my time should come today and God sees fit to bring me home, let it be known that I have had a wonderful life. I have loved and been loved by the most incredible woman God every gave breath to. I have two godly sons who have married godly women. My grandchildren are being rasied and taught the truth of God's word.

I have seen the hand of God in so many ways, I can't begin to number them.
I have seen Him heal...everything from cancer to brain tumors...from tear ducts to back pain.
I have seen Him free people from demonic oppression.
I have seen salvation fall on a room full of men and fill them with such gratitude that weeping becomes a part of their lives. These were men who were hardened beyond belief to the things of God.
I have seen the touch of God in the lives of babies as I held them to pray over them.
I have seen the hand of God be so heavy on a room of people gathered to worship that we simply sat in silence, not speaking a word for fear we would undo what God was working among us.
I have seen the Holy Spirit of God come upon my wife and usher her into the presence of the Lord where she sings of His majesty and greatness. My wife, who does not sing in public, sings with the voice and heart of one who has been freed from all earthly constraints to worship at the feet of her Lord and Savior.
I have baptized men and seen God's Holy Spirit come upon them as they were coming up out of the water. Men who truly were made New Creations as according to II Corinthians 5:17.
In some ways, I think I have seen more than most. For that I am grateful, and at the same time I have a "why me?" feeling that I carry around. The main thing is that I am thankful for life and for every person I come in contact with. I want them to know the Jesus that I know.

God on you....
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It's The Time...Of The Season...When Love Runs High

Luke 10:33
But A certain Samaritan.......

If you read the passage above, you'll see that Jesus is telling religious lawyer (part of the ruling elect of the Jewish faith) who his neighbor is.
The man had asked Jesus what must he do to inherit eternal life. Jesus countered his question with a question (that Jesus is smart...he knew this guy was simply out to trick him). Jesus asked him what did the law have to say about the matter. The man quoted from Deuteronomy 6:5 and from Leviticus 19:18 that he should love God, love himself and love his neighbor. It might have gone well if the lawyer had let sleeping dogs lie, but he just couldn't quit or help himself. Wanting to justify his outstanding reputation, the lawyer asked one more question...."Who is my neighbor?" Jesus had him.

Jesus used a story of a man taking a journey "down" to Jericho. Did you even notice that there is always trouble when we move "down" and away from God. The call to follow Jesus is always an upward call (as Paul put it in Philippians 3:14). Anyway, the man on the journey was robbed and beaten by a bunch of thugs. (Why thugs run in bunches, I do not know. Why not groups? Or gaggles?)  Left for dead, the man lay there unable to help himself. Who should parade by but a Priest (Religious door #1) quickly followed by a Levite (Religious door #2), both of whom kept going. I'm sure they uttered a prayer for the man...."God bless you and be of good cheer my good fellow." On the inside they wanted nothing to do with him. It was too much trouble.

Then Jesus brings forth the hero of the story. The most unlikely person you could pick......a Samaritan!  The Samaritan is the reversal of the priests and Levite. Those two should of and usually would have been the heros if someone else had told the story, but not here. In Jesus' version, the Samaritan knew how to treat his neighbor. The man who was beaten was not someone the Samaritan knew or even someone of the same race...he was just a man in need. Binding up the wounds and loading the beaten man up on his donkey, the Samaritan took him to the nearest Holiday Express and booked him a room Told the desk clerk to see that the man gets what he needs to recover. Paid for it and then told the clerk..."If it turns out to costs more than I have paid, I will come back by here and settle the bill." The Samaritan was the one who stood to inherit eternal life more than the religious lawyer. The moral of the story is not that works save you and make firm your place in heaven with Christ, but rather works come from a heart of love that has been touched and changed by Jesus Christ. That our neighbor is whomever we come in contact with today.

If you have spent any time reading the 12 Steps, you will find that Step #12 is an action step.
Having had a spiritual awakening, practicing these principals in my daily life, I seek to take the message to others who are still in their addiction. This message we take to the "others" is more than words. It is a smile to someone who hasn't had anything to smile about. It is a cup of coffee and a cookie given in love. It is an invitation to "Come sit with me" at the meetings. It is one who was beaten up going down the road of life, helping another who still bears the wounds and open bloody places of life and doesn't know what to do.

I am your neighbor.....
You are my neighbor.....

God on you....
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The Theology Of Hot Dogs

Finding that "gratitude" today. It would be so easy to slide over into Lake "Whinny mouth", but I ain't going to do that. Life is hard, but it's hard for everyone. I notice that I want to be the single, central person that life has pegged to pour out all that is bad upon. But that wouldn't be the truth.  Truth is, God has been beyond gracious and loving to me and my family. So as I made my way over to the cafeteria for lunch, I spied hot dogs.

Hot dogs are a lot like life. They are what you make of them.
You can have them plain and simple, but there isn't much taste to them. Nothing that causes your taste buds to go "Whoooo Hooooooo!". Taste buds just kind of lay there while your stomach gives you a courteous nod for supplying it something other than things that are good for you.

Take that same dog and doctor it up.
Mustard...
Ketchup....
Slaw....
Some hot sauce.....
Kraut......
Relish.....
Onion.....
Now we are talking about a "Par-tay" in your mouth.
Something that wakes everything up.
I am grateful for that hot dog.
That is just one of the many things God places around me daily and I do not want to become such a gloomy-gus that I miss the blessings and directions of God.
No navel-gazing for me.
Keep my eyes up....
My focus on Jesus....
and a heart of gratitude for everything.....
even hot dogs.....
If I can get that whipped up by a hot dog, imagine how it should be if I find myself dwelling on my salvation? My relationship with Jesus? Life in the body of Christ? Man! Now we got us some A-1 gratitude fixing to erupt from my heart and mouth....
Big ol' "THANK YOU JESUS!!"
Gratitude..
Don't leave home without it.


God on you.....
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Twilight Zone/ Black Hole

Something strange happened today.
I posted to this blog this morning around 5:45 a.m. and it has disappeared. Gone! Vanished!
What could this mean? Nothing. Everything. It doesn't matter.
What matters is that God is in control.

Matthew 9:12-
But when He (Jesus) heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick."
V.13-----.....for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Funny how Jesus equates sin and its effects on a person as being like an illness.
The doctor comes to treat the illness and heal the individual who has contracted it.
It might take medicine.
It might take surgery.
It might take time and rest.
But whatever, the doctor's sole focus is to see his patient recover.
In the case of Jesus, the cure is already available. He has offered freely to all who are sick the cure needed to remove the sickness of sin.
This cure has been tested (on the cross and in a tomb) and has been found to be 100% effective.
It not only removes the presence of sin, but also the penalty of sin, the power of sin and replaces it with the Holy Spirit of God.
Total recovery.

Now that is a healing.
Are you sick today?
Do you need a healing in your life?
Dr. J has the cure.
Let Jesus diagnose and prescribe to you the medicine of heaven.
Forgiveness....
Cleansing.....
Re-birthing.....

God on you....
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Extra---Extra

Usually don't post on Sunday's, but felt the need to this morning.
Not that I have anything earth shattering or attention catching......
I felt the need to share about our service last night.

I love it when God shows up (a.k.a. Your suddenly aware of God's presence in the room).
Things happen.
Things change.
I had prepared the music for worship and felt pretty confident that they were the songs that God had given me, but I still like to hold things loosely in case God has a different agenda.

We were in the last part of the first song, things were winding down when my wife began to sing in the Spirit.
That may be a term that isn't familiar to a lot of you so let me explain. My wife is what I refer to as "a real worshiper." When worship begins, she just goes off and gets lost in the music. She doesn't concern herself with who is around or what are people thinking, it's just her and God as she pours out her heart to Him in gratitude. It isn't a loud, boisterous, look-at-me kind of attitude. It is a quiet almost whisper like voice as she sings. She sings what is on her heart and God seems to enjoy it. So last night, here we were finishing up the song, and my wife is lowly and quietly singing about the majesty and awesomeness of God. We, the worship team, pick up on what chord we need to play and we begin to back up Vicki as she sings. When this happens, the awareness of God really increases in the room. It probably goes on for 10 minutes and during this time, my thoughts are suddenly aware that we cannot do the next song I had picked out. It was not conducive to what God was doing in the room. So we shelved the song and moved on to another that I had asked Debbie to do before we started. The flow of the Spirit continued as we played and worshipped. Like I said earlier in this posting....I am perfectly fine with throwing away what I wanted to do in order that we might play and sing what was on God's heart.

Seth Barber spoke on having an "ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE." I hope to have his message posted next week so look for here at Greene Street Letters in the pod cast section of the blog.
Seth brought home the fact that gratitude opens the door for God to truly bless us and enable us to live this life He has brought to us.

It was a good evening capped off by sharing in Communion.
There was prayer for healing.......
Prayer for strength to not fall back into old ways and old habits.
Prayer for financial help in this time of a struggling economy.
Prayer for family and friends.

There were many hugs and handshakes...
You could hear, "Hey man, I love you." all over the room.
It was a night when our family gathered to honor and worship God.
It was a good night.

God on you.....
See you tomorrow....
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Catch Up

One of my hero's from childhood.......The Phantom. Cool outfit. Has a wolf for a pet. Rides a white horse (Of course) and live in the jungle.  If you followed the comic strip, at certain points during the story, the artist would insert the following........."For those who may have come in late..."

Then there would be recap to catch everyone up to speed on what was happening now.

God does this in the book of Deuteronomy. Moses is giving one final sermon/message to the people who are getting ready to enter the land that God had promised them. One final time of remembrance  for the people to not forget who had made this trip possible..God.

God came down into the middle of their messy, dark, lives of slavery and delivered them from the power and authority of the Egyptians. I mean God did a number on these guys. What's even better, God lured the Egyptians out into a trap. After Israel had departed on runway # 5 from Egypt, the Pharaoh suddenly came to his senses and said, "What have I done?" He called for his army to assemble and he went after the Israelites with a mad-on.

Meanwhile God had used Israel as bait for Pharaoh by the location He had them set up camp. The sea at their backs..and the oncoming Egyptian Army coming at them...no where to run, God had everything in place to work one more miracle. How did Israel respond? Not to good. Whining and crying and blaming Moses for everything. You know, if I'd been Moses, I would have been sorely tempted to just throw in the towel and head for home. I'm glad he didn't. God tells Moses,"Yo! Why are you still crying out to me? Get up and move forward." To which Moses probably thought to himself, "Forward? Excuse me there is one little problem and it's called 'AN OCEAN!!!!" You know what? Those little things don't stop God and with a blast from his nostrils, he sent an East wind that divided the ocean. Put that in your pipe Jacque Cousteau and smoke it! God rules! God is beyond comprehension! God is God!

Long story short.
Israel cut and ran into the divided waters.

Pharaoh saw this and took his army into high gear and made hot pursuit after the former slaves of Egypt.

Israel made it. Came out on the other side, high and dry without a scratch.
Egyptians?
Not so much.
As Larry Norman put it so aptly, "God closed up the waters and the Egyptians all took a bath.

Moses was instructed by God to tell the story once more for the people to hear.

I'm not Moses and I don't lead a group of former slaves, but God has had me remembering this week.
I have started transferring my messages and sermons from the early 90's to digital. Listening to my messages, I find myself remembering a lot of what God has done that I had forgotten. It is so cool to hear stories about things that have left my memory (That is a scary thought that the ol' noggin might have run out of storage room or, even worse, sprang a memory leak). I am grateful that I hung on to these messages and can go back remember from my past. It is an encouragement to hear stories about healing and salvation and times when God showed up in a meeting. It makes me have a greater appreciation of today and a realization that God isn't finished.

I guess I'm going through my own "Deuteronomy" moment.
God on you......

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Time Passages

Romans 5:8

Amplified Bible (AMP)
But God shows and clearly proves His [own] love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for us.

I never want to tire of seeing and understanding the nature of God. Each day is new. Each day I wake up I am jazzed about what God may show me today. Each day is an opportunity to know God better as He reveals Himself to me.
Sometimes it comes as I read my Bible. A verse just king of "boings" up off the page and catches my attention. Wow! I never read that before.....or.....That is what I needed for what I am struggling with. Sometimes it happens in conversation with someone else. They will say something that connects with your spirit...a knowing...an assurance that God has spoken to reveal Himself to you.

KJV  says that God "demonstrates" his love for us. That means that there is action to what God holds dear. He can't simply come up with good and holy ideas that then keep them to  Himself. He puts legs (or angels) to his plan and demonstrates before us His truth. Every day in the fallen world filled with blind and deaf people (Of which I use to be on) God is speaking and demonstrating and revealing and showing. It isn't a desperate measure on His part, NO! IT is a heart of love for his creation to see it redeemed from the mess that sin brought in.

S0, what did God show me today?
He showed me that He loves us so much, even when we are completely in rebellion that He will turn us loose to pursue the very thing that is not good for us. You may be saying, "Well,that doesn't sound like love to me." It not the kind of love that we see much in this world. Oh, it's out there but you have to ask God to give you vision so you can see it. God knows that sometimes the best thing for us is to let rebellion run its course so we can get skint up pretty good. God is always faithful and ready to heal us, love us and take us back when we cry out to Him. Not just for help but for HELP!!!! You know the prayer. I'm sure some of you have prayed it.....it goes like this. "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, Oh God." God hears that prayer and He comes to take back and destroy the works of the devil in our lives. He replaces all the cruddy stuff with all the God stuff. You know, clean us up and fill us up with His Holy Spirit. Bam! Live is back on track.

I had to let someone go today. I knew that this was a decision they were going to make. Funny part is, they knew it was a bad choice and I knew it was a bad choice, but they chose anyway.  So I love them and let them go. I have prayed over this individual and know that he now resides in the hand of God. I pray that he will wake up and turn back from the direction he is headed in. I trust God to watch over and take care of this person and that there are things that God has planted in the heart of this person that will produce good fruit at some point in the future.

I don't have to have all the answers to life's mysteries.
I just have to know God.
Case closed. Oh yeah...one last thing. This "knowing of God' isn't an intellectual pursuit. It is a massive collision of God's Spirit with my messy, sinful life that produces a gigantic explosion. I have been changed. I know it because God told me so. That I'll take.

God on you....
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