To know Jesus more in 2011

Grace and Peace,

First off I would like to say that this is a word for 2011. Straight from God! :)

Psalm 23:1;4

1The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.

4 Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

   I fear no evil, for You are with me;

   Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Acts 27:27-44 read it!

Ok brothers and sisters, I believe God's desire is for us to know Him more, waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy more than we can fathom and I believe this is what He will be accomplishing in our lives during this next year. He is our Shepherd, He will lead and guide us as He wills where He wills. In Acts 27 Paul as a prisoner was being led by a centurion with soldiers and other prisoners to Rome. The problem was, they were traveling after the fast was over, this was not a good time of the year to be traveling mind you. And Paul warned them of this, but to no avail. They got caught up in a horrible storm.

Anyway they ended up losing everything except their lives. The ship was lost, food, clothes, everything! All was lost except them. I believe this is something we have a issue with, suffering loss. We don't want to lose or suffer any set backs, failures, disappointments or any other form of loss. But this is what God is calling us to! 

Philippians 3:7-8

7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

 8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom  I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ,

And He is calling us to these things so that we may know Him more intimately. And you can be confident in this, the value of knowing Christ surpasses EVERYTHING!!!!

To know Jesus more surpasses the value of me desiring a new job, of me being hungry, of me having electricity!

Jesus is calling some of you to stay at that job this year!

He's calling others to fast!

He's calling others to go without "neccessities"!

But listen, if I  can know Jesus more because of it I'll willingly stay at my job, turn down the plate and go without! #ToknowJesusmore# I will forego every and anything and count it as loss!

He wants to take us to new depths and heights in Him! It will be extremely hard but extremely worth it and His grace is sufficient!

There will be storms ahead but as you are tossed to and fro being beat up by the waves remember that God is with you, don't fear any evil or harm. You may lose everything but you will make it out alive Lord willing knowing Jesus more!

There is a temptation for us to run from these but Jesus is urging you to lean into it, and I am too!

Let Him teach you how to trust Him, obey Him, pray without ceasing, to live by faith, love your neighbor, honor Him or your spouse or parents or employer, how to be faithful how to love Him.

LEAN INTO IT

God is dope,

Israel

God's Faithfulness

What it do family?

Psalm 119:90 states, " Your faithfulness continues throughout all generations; You established the earth, and it stands."

The author is referring to God in saying that His faithfulness continues (to) or throughout all generations. And that's what we're gonna focus on this time around. As I read this scripture I had to stop because it rocked me! God's faithfulness continues to ALL generations........Ponder that for a bit............THAT'S HUGE!!!!! THERE IS NO END TO GOD'S FAITHFULNESS (that's my quote by the way. lol :) His faithfulness is never ending. That's incredible!!!!

But you may ask what really is faithfulness? Websters defines it as:

1) steadfast in affection or allegiance : loyal

OR

2) firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty.

The Hebrew for faithful is the word Emunah (pronounced Em-oo-naw) it means firmness in it's literal sense but figuatively it means stability or steady. The greek word Pistos ( Pis-tos) means trustworthy, sure.

God is firm, stable, steady, trustworthy and sure!

What rocked me about this text is thinking about all the times God has bought judgement or discipline to His people and other nations and they would turn around and still call God faithful. Then I was reminded of something my professor said, "God is faithful across the board."  My question is, Do we really know that? If so, do we really live that way?

You see the tendency for us is to want God to be faithful in fulfilling His promises in our lives. We want Him to be faithful in the good stuff. But what about the bad? Are we brought to a place of awe and worship when God disciplines us for being disobedient because He is faithful? Hum...............

2 Timothy 2:13, " If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself."

As I look at my life I see the inconsistency and double standard of being faithful in the good but not the bad and wanting God to do the same. Quick example, there are times when my kids will be bugging out and I'll speak to them numerous times and say, "if you do that again I'm gonna whoop your butt!" And I ain't gonna say no names but NINA in particular will test the waters intentionally. And sad to say a lot of times I fail at being faithful in carrying out my word.

What is it that you are saying and not carrying out? Or is it that you are being faithful in what you love to do (ministry, etc.) but being unfaithful in the unpleasant things that you hate to do ( work , etc.) Or is it that you are expecting God to be faithful to you according to His blessing but you want Him to be unfaithful according to His chastisement?

Hummmm........ Double standards.............. double standards.......... double standards.........

Well, I don't know bout you but I'm repenting and asking God to strip away my self and my hypocrisy and empower me to embrace Him in all of His glory, majesty and splendor. I want to be able to worship Him when He is blessing me and when He chastises me, in the good and the bad, happy and the sad. I mean He's worth it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We shouldn't have to wait til God blesses us (physically, financially or mentally) to praise Him. He alone deserves it and is worthy of it!!!! We should praise and worship Him just because.................

Check out what the Psalmist of 119 said in verse 75

"I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are righteous, And that in faithfulness You have afflicted me."

OR check out this passage from Nehemiah after God had Judah and Israel led into exile for turning away from Him.

9: 32 "Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness, Do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before You, Which has come upon us, our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers and on all Your people, From the days of the kings of Assyria to this day. 

33"However, You are just in all that has come upon us; For You have dealt faithfully, but we have acted wickedly. 

 34"For our kings, our leaders, our priests and our fathers have not kept Your law

  Or paid attention to Your commandments and Your admonitions with which You have admonished them."

I've said enough, but I would encouraged you all to examine yourselves and pray for God to examine you because

 "All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit"  Proverbs 16:2

I know I want to hear well done good and FAITHFUL servant. What about you?

God is dope,

Israel

God's power to use whatever HE wishes!

God is dope!!!! 

Psalm 119:91

"They stand this day according to Your ordinances, For all things are Your servants."

All things are God's servants, this truth is crazy profound!! Anyway you look at it! All things are Gods servants.

To me that's saying EVERYTHING is Gods servant! He has the power and authority to use ANYTHING, situation, person, circumstance,struggle, hardship, test, trial, even satan for His purpose. Now that's top heavy!

I was talking to a brother today who was in the DMV picking up a copy of his driving record, he was pursuing a dream job and one of the qualifications was that he could have no more than 6 points on his driving record. Well, he was told by his insurance company that he had 22 points on his record. :( But he went to the DMV anyway in faith, praying and believing that that wasn't the case. I had the opportunity to pray for him and I prayed for peace and for the revelation that God was/is sovereign and in control and for him to rest in that.

He called back 15 minutes  later (give or take) excited, he only had 3 points on his record!

The point of the story is this, that situation pushed our brother to trust God, stepped out in faith and lean on Him (regardless of the outcome.) Thus, that situation was Gods servant.

When I opened up Gods word and prayed that He would open my eyes to behold wonderful things out of His law and he showed me this scripture (after the situation with the brother) I was floored and re captured by Gods beauty!

This is a liberating truth if we take it and apply it to our lives! What circumstance or situation, person or thing are you stressing over?

All things are Gods servants. Rest in that and do like James 1 say count it all joy when you fall into various trials because it produces what? You know, and if not go read it........

Man, God is dope and beautiful,

Israel

Diamonds in the rough: Learning priceless lessons in the process

Grace and peace,

A lot of you know I've been walking on water lately :), and God has truly been blazing the stage!!! From my first step of faith HE has been providing people with the knowledge, wisdom and understanding to get things done, and favor as well. People have been seeing the vision and taking off running with it! Taking it upon themselves to do things I never asked or suggested and it's been beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, as soon as I thought the battles for me were dying down, as soon as I thought I made it through the rough part I get a call from one of my co laborers telling me he wanted to step back from it. Long story short he did, this was a hard blow for me!! This brother was very dear to my heart in being apart of this (HE STILL IS DEAR TO ME AS A BROTHER). It was discouraging.....

But after I spoke with him God told me , "Pray for protection over you and your co-laborers." Something I hadn't been doing like I should of been. You see, I just knew God said do it and I was moving knowing God was gonna bring it about. AND HE IS!!!! But scripture also tells us the enemy roams about seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8).  So I took that lesson and continued moving although still discouraged..... but God strengthened me through His word,

Proverbs 4:25

" Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you"

He said, keep your eyes on the target, not to the left or right or behind you. And that gave me strength to proceed! But since then different things have been popping up, like our finances taking a turn for the worst( NOT BECAUSE OF CHRISTMAS TIME EITHER!!!!!!!! lol Actually we have not made any purchases for it as of yet, and don't really care to. But they just went astray with no bad stewardship or errors on our part.) And not just our finances but atleast one other family who has stepped out on faith with us.

And what's funny is as I was meeting and praying with a brother (who was a missionary for 13 years) yesterday he began to pray for protection over me and the first thing that rolled off of his tongue was how the enemy will attack your finances amongst other things to try to stop you from doing what God told you to. That prayer in and of itself was encouraging to me!!

Well, fast forward 2:00am December 14th, 2010 my wife and daughter are in the ER, my daughter with very bad asthma and a high fever, and my wife who was just in there last friday for ear ache, soar throat and chest pains now has pink eye. As I was laying there after they left I again felt God say, "go pray for protection over your family and your co laborers and theirs as well."  So I went downstairs and entered the throne room of grace BOLDY in faith and cried out for my family and everyone who is involved with this movement.

Hebrews 4:16

" Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

How can this event we're doing be a failure? [BTW that's a rhetorical question! :) ] It can't be!!!!!!!!!!!! Even if the event itself was a dud, as much as I've been stretched, as much as my faith has been increased, as much as God has show me about Him and myself, as much as I've saw Gods provision. It's already a success! Me and others around me have been changed , so if it never went any further it's been a success (although it is going further.) And I will continue to press in and learn all these valuable lessons from my teacher and lean into it!

May God be glorified and His will be done.

I ask humbly that you will be praying with me for me and everyone who is laboring with me in this endeavour to see the gospel proclaimed. Everyone matters whatever part they play, we all need each other.

Also, I want to encourage you to lean into God regardless of the attacks and trials that come your way. He wants to teach you invaluable lessons in and through it. And you'll come out like a pearl.

James 1:2-4

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."

I'm excited to see God glorified!!!!!!!!!!

God is dope,

Israel 

Bold as a Lion

What's popping family,

A few weeks ago I started looking for a venue to host an event that I'm planning, and I felt like God told me a specific venue to do it in.

So I went to the venue and spoke to the owner about hosting the event on this particular night. And his response was, "that's not a good night thats one of my busiest nights and I have tried to do events like that before and I packed out the place but made no money with doing it." He went on to tell me how he would have to charge a door fee only to say that he couldn't do that because he didn't want to take the chance of turning his regulars away (understandable). So he said, "pay me $800 dollars and you can do it."

WOW!!!!! I don't have that!!!!! Anyway, I ran this across my team at our meeting and they thought that it would be better to find a different venue for a number of reasons. Being that they out numbered me I humbly submitted.

As we began looking at different locations and getting quotes I was overwhelmed by the prices! Upwards of $2,000 for a 4 hour event! So I went back to God with it and I felt like HE said, "Go where I already told you to go."

So the next day I went back to the owner and said to him, "talk to me" , and he began to tell me all kinds of reasons why I should do the event in the summer time and yada yada ya. And usually I would have agreed with him and went along with what he said because of timidity, but I said to him, "OK, I hear you but I want to do it on this date and in this place, how much will you charge me?" And he look at me and said, "$300 dollars". My response was, "thats what I'm talking about!"

I was very humbled and encouraged at the same time by seeing God's faithfulness and HIS hand in all of this... And I'm praying that the owner who is far from God will come to know HIM.

God is moving in and through and around me and it's a priviledge, blessing and honor to be used by HIM! HE NEVER asks us to do something that HE hasn't prepared us for or that HE hasn't set the things in place already. So when HE tells you to do something step out in faith (which is confidence) in HIM. And depend on HIM because HE's looking for people who are dependant on HIM.

Proverbs 28:1

 "The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, But the righteous are bold as a lion."

2 Timothy 1:7

"For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline."

So kill timidity and walk in the power that God has given you, being BOLD as a lion by going for what God has told you and not settling for anything less!

God is dope,

Israel