"The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.”
I’m sure that there are people out there who do not want to blessed, but I don’t know any of them. Personally, I have never heard anybody pray: “Lord do not bless me today.” Even if a person does not believe in God, he or she wants to be blessed. I don’t know what they would call “being blessed” if they didn’t believe in God, but they want life to go smooth for them just all of us who believe. I can’t tell unbelievers how to be blessed, but I can remind believers in Jesus Christ how to be blessed. Now put this thought in your mind and heart: GOD WANTS TO BLESS YOU!!! What will be your part in knowing the blessings of God? If we want to realize the blessings of God, we need to stay close to Him. James 4:8a tells us to “draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” It doesn’t go any good to ask for God’s blessings if we spend our days ignoring His presence in our lives. The problem with many people is that they feel that God has forsaken them. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God has not forsaken you. One of my favorite stories is about a man and his wife out for a drive. She was sitting on her side of the car, and he was on his side driving. She did not drive, so he had to do all of it. She said to him: “What is wrong with us? It used to be that when we drove down the road, people couldn’t tell if there were one or two people in the car. He glanced carefully over at her as he drove down the road and said: “I didn’t move.” Understand that God promised that He never will never forsake you. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us to be in us all of the time. We can stay consciously close to God if we spend time in His word. If anyone thinks that he or she can be close to God and realize His great blessings without spending time reading and meditating on His word, they are wrong. The Bible is God’s love letter to us. It is from the Bible that we see God’s revelation of Himself. We come to know God by faith in Jesus Christ, but we grow in our faith by reading His word. The Bible is a perennial best seller every year, but I wonder if it is the most read book every year. God will not bless us just because we read the Bible; rather, it is from His word that we are able to discern His blessings in our lives. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the Bible, is the same Holy Spirit who guides us as we read the Bible, and He can show us the blessings of God from the pages of Holy Writ. We can stay consciously close to God when we pray. I have heard people say that they do not have time to pray. Wait! Do they have time to breathe? Praying should be like breathing to us. We just do it because it is our nature as believers to pray. There are times that we need to get alone with God, get on our knees and cry out to Him, but we do not have to have a certain kind of posture to pray. We can talk to God any time that we wish. I have often said that if we can think, we can pray. If we want to be near to God and realize His blessings, we need to talk to Him as naturally as we would talk to a person sitting next to us. The prayer closet in heaven is never closed down. We are reminded in the Bible that God never “slumbers or sleeps.” (Psalm 121:4) He will hear you any time – day or night. Psalm 40:1 is always true: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.” He will always hear your cry. You will notice that I wrote that we should do these things, which are the two most important in my mind, if we want to realize the blessings of God. Pay attention to the word “realize.” That intimates that God is blessing you, and if you don’t feel blessed, it is because you are not staying in close contact with Him through Bible reading and prayer. Sing this little chorus: “Every time I turn around, God is blessing me…..” He is! Claim it! Believe it! Bro. Joe
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“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
When I was little boy, we used to sing a chorus at the Smithville Baptist Church called “Joy Down in My Heart.” It went like this: “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart, I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay…” (If you have heard it, you are probably humming the tune as you read the words.) There were other verses, but it is this first verse that always comes up in my memory. One of my favorite themes as a minister has been about joy. I try to make it a theme of my daily life and not just a theme for preaching or writing. If I tried to convince you that I am joyful all of the time, you would know that I was lying. But one thing that I learned from John 15:11 that has helped me to know that though I am not always joyful, I always have joy. Jesus has placed His joy in my heart, “down in my heart to stay.” It is not always easy to explain what this means, because we confuse joy with happiness. They are not the same. A nice lady once asked me if I smiled all of the time. My answer to her was, “Heavens no. If I smiled all of the time, I would be lying a good part of the time.” If I smiled all of the time I would be happy all of the time. I am definitely not happy all of the time, and I doubt that anybody is. You see, happiness is a temporary thing. For example, your team wins the game and you are extremely happy, but the next week they lose and you are not happy. When good things happen to us, or to our children and grandchildren, we are happy, but when bad things happen we are not happy. Happiness just comes and goes, but joy we have always as a gift of Jesus. What does this eternal joy mean to us? It means that whatever we face in this life, we can rejoice in the fact that Jesus is in control. When I think of this, I think of an incident that happened when I was a little boy. We were singing the invitation hymn at a revival service at the Smithville Baptist Church. The preacher asked everybody who knew that they were saved and that they would go to heaven if they died that night to raise their hands. I looked up and my mama had raised her hand. I remember thinking, “I wonder how she knows that.” Well, I know personally now, but when mama died on September 9, 2010, I remembered that. I knew that she was a Christian and that her hope was in Jesus. Since her death, I often think of that incident and the joy of Jesus rises up in my heart. Mama is in heaven. I am not happy that she is no longer with us, but the joy of Jesus in me reminds that I will see her again in heaven. It means that when we are at the low points of life, we are not without joy. This came to me when I went through chemo-therapy in 2011 for lymphoma, and had colon surgery to remove a cancer in 2012. You know that I would be lying if I said to you that I was happy when I was skinny, undernourished, n and bald-headed at one point and in pain from surgery at another point. But I can tell you that I was fully aware of the presence of Jesus during all of this time. I don’t think that I have ever felt His love so fully and completely as I did during those times. I am not lying when I tell you that His joy came to my rescue and kept me from asking Him why, or complaining because of what I was going through, or blaming Him for letting this happen to me. Prayer came alive to me as never before, and the Bible spoke profoundly to my heart as never before. It wasn’t a happy experience, but it was an experience that brought forth the joy of Jesus that comforts me even to this day. I sincerely hope that you can sing, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart to stay….” Bro. Joe “And Moses called unto Joshua and said unto him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of good courage: for you must go with this people unto the land which the Lord has sworn unto their fathers to give them; and you shall cause them to inherit it. 8. And the Lord, He it is that goes before you; He will be with you, He will not fail you, neither forsake you: fear not neither be dismayed."
The occasion of this text is about the culmination of Moses’ leadership of Israel, and the start of Joshua’s leadership. The verse that caught my attention was verse 8. Moses made a promise to Joshua that he knew from his own experience over the last forty years. As I meditated on this verse, I realized that the promises given are not just for Joshua, but looking at the totality of the Bible, they are for all of God’s people. They are promises that transcend time and reach out to all of us. Promise one: “He it is that goes before you…” God had gone out before Israel from the beginning of their journey from Egypt. He led them with a “pillar of cloud by day” and a “pillar of fire by night.” They never had to doubt that God was leading and guiding them in their journey. Though some did doubt and did not trust God, that did not make His leadership void. It is a promise that we can take to our hearts. God is out there before us through the Holy Spirit. God has gone before us and knows what we will have to face. We just need to trust that this is true. Nothing that happens to you will surprise God, for He has gone before you. The future belongs to God and you belong to God; therefore, there is no need to fear the future. If you do not know Him, you can know Him today by putting your faith in Him. Promise two: “He will be with you…” David claimed this promise in Psalm 23:4: “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me, your rod and your staff they comfort me.” Joshua needed to know that God was with Him each day that he led the Israelites to the end of their quest for the Promised Land. Like Moses before him, Joshua had to deal with the rebellious Israelites and with all of the other problems involved in taking the Promised Land. He needed to know that God was with him. We can claim this promise for ourselves. God is with us in all that we face in this life. Promise three: “He will not fail you, neither forsake you…” This doesn't mean that Joshua would never fail, because he certainly did – and we will as well. But we can depend on the fact that God will not fail us. It might seem sometimes like He has, but when this appears to be the case; we need to remember that our loving Lord has gone before us, knows what is there, and will not forsake us. If we ever feel that God has forsaken us, we need to realize that we might have moved away from Him, but He has not moved away from us. Get this down in your heart, mind and soul: God will not forsake you!!!!” Claim this promise for yourself each day. The results of the promises: “Fear not, neither be dismayed…” If we will realize that God goes before us, that He is with us, and that He will neither fail us nor forsake us, we will not need to fear or be dismayed. There have been times in my life, and no doubt in your life as well, that I have been afraid and dismayed. It is in these times that we need to recall these promises to Joshua and to us. These promises are as sure today as they were when Moses made them, for they are illustrated and proven throughout the Bible. Bro. Joe “Salvation belongs unto the Lord; thy blessing is upon thy people. “
In yesterday’s post we looked at how God is ready to bless us through His word and through prayer. In other words, we realize God’s blessings when we are in a good relationship with Him, and we can’t be in that relationship without Bible reading and prayer. It’s like we can’t keep going physically if we don’t eat and drink. God made us so that we need sustenance for our bodies, and He also made us so that we need sustenance for our souls. Let’s look at other ways God is ready to bless us – or is blessing us. God will bless us through fellowship with fellow Christians. This was one reason why God formed churches in the first place. We are saved individually, but we are not saved to stand alone. There is no such thing as “me and Jesus got our own thing going.” God made us so that we need each other. I think that it is time for us to begin to look at church as a blessing. Church is not made of wood and brick. It is made up of Christians in order for us to live in fellowship with each other. God intends to bless us through our fellowship with other Christians. There was a long period when I could not get out of the house except to go to the doctor. That meant that I had to miss church for a good while. I did not know how blessed I was to be a part of Christ’s church until I had to be away from it for awhile. I began to see that fellowship as something precious. I found that I could enjoy church fellowship when someone else was doing the preaching. Also, during that time of sickness, I was blessed by the prayers of my fellow Christians. God blessed me through His people. He wants to bless you through your fellowship with fellow Christians. We Christians need to stop “bouncing” off of each other and enjoy real good fellowship in the relationships that we have with each other. God will bless us through ministry to other people. I use the word “ministry” advisedly here, not meaning that one has to “be in the ministry” in order to be blessed by ministering to other people. Really folks, it is not rocket science. One does not have to have special training to minister to other people. It is just a matter of caring for other people enough to reach out a helping hand to them. You have probably heard me say that it is as simple as baking a cake and taking it to a lonely person in the name of Jesus. It is really that simple. You don’t have to talk in stilted “holy language” in order to minister. All you have to do is follow the example of Jesus, who spent His entire ministry meeting other people’s needs. It can also be as simple as visiting a lonely older person in a nursing home. When my mother was in a nursing home, I noticed that a lot of people never got a visit from family, church or anyone else. God wants to bless people by leading them to visit people like this. We need to get outside of ourselves and love and care for others. There are many other simple things that we can do to be blessed through ministry. God will bless us through praying for other people. I have found it to be a blessing for me to pray for other people. Every day I pray for missionaries, fellow Christians, leaders in our country and in the world, etc. A lot of people are turned off by keeping a list of people to pray for, but I find that such lists help me to remember to pray for certain people. I think that if we pray for others, we will also minister to others. I also know that our relationship with God will be more meaningful if we are in a good relationship with other people, especially our fellow Christians. If a name comes across your mind that might be God’s signal for us to pray for them. As you relate to fellow Christians, minister to people and pray for them, you will surely be blessed. God is ready to bless you through other people. Let Him do it! Bro. Joe “The Lord will give strength unto His people; the Lord will bless His people with peace.”
I’m sure that there are people out there who do not want to be blessed, but I don’t know any of them. Personally, I have never heard anybody pray: “Lord do not bless me today.” Even if a person does not believe in God, he or she wants to be blessed. I don’t know what they would call “being blessed” if they didn’t believe in God, but they want life to go smooth for them just like all of us who believe. I can’t tell unbelievers how to be blessed, but I can tell believers in Jesus Christ how to be blessed. The premise of this article is that God really and truly wants to bless you. Now put this thought in your mind and heart: GOD WANTS TO BLESS YOU!!! What will be your part in knowing the blessings of God? If we want to realize the blessings of God, we need to stay close to Him. James 4:8a tells us to “draw near to God, and He will draw near to you.” It doesn’t do any good to ask for God’s blessings if we spend our days ignoring His presence in our lives. The problem with many people is that they feel that God has forsaken them. (Remember, I am writing to believers.) If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God has not forsaken you. One of my favorite stories is about a man and his wife out for a drive. She was sitting on her side of the car, and he was on his side driving. She did not drive, so he had to do all of it. She said to him:“What is wrong with us? It used to be that when we drove down the road, people couldn’t tell if there was one or two people in the car. He glanced carefully over at her as he drove down the road and said: “I didn’t move.” Understand that God has not forsaken you. In fact, He has promised that He never will. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to us to be in us all of the time. We need to stay consciously close to God. We can stay consciously close to God if we spend time in His word. If anyone thinks that he or she can be close to God and realize His great blessings without spending time reading and meditating on His word, they are wrong. The Bible is God’s love letter to us. It is from the Bible that we see God’s revelation of Himself. We come to know God by faith in Jesus Christ, but we grow in our faith by reading His word. The Bible is a perennial best seller, but I wonder if it is perennially the most read book. God will not bless us just because we read the Bible; rather, it is from His word that we are able to discern His blessings in our lives. The Holy Spirit, who inspired the Bible, is the same Holy Spirit who guides us as we read the Bible, and He can show us the blessings of God from the pages of Holy Writ. We can stay consciously close to God when we pray. I have heard people say that they do not have time to pray. Wait! Do they have time to breathe? Praying should be like breathing to us. We just do it because it is our nature as believers to pray. There are times when we need to get alone with God, get on our knees and cry out to Him, but we do not have to have a certain kind of posture to pray. We can talk to God any time that we wish. I have often said that if we can think, we can pray. If we want to be near to God and realize His blessings, we need to talk to Him as naturally as we would talk to a person sitting next to us. The prayer closet in heaven is never closed down. We are reminded in the Bible that God never “slumbers or sleeps.” (Psalm 121:4) He will hear you any time – day or night. Psalm 40:1 is always true: “I waited patiently for the Lord; and He inclined unto me, and heard my cry.” He will always hear your cry. You will notice that I wrote that we should do these things, which are the two most important things in my mind, if we want to realize the blessings of God. Pay attention to the word “realize.” That indicates that God is blessing you, and if you don’t feel blessed, it is because you are not staying in close contact with Him through Bible reading and prayer. Sing this little chorus: “Every time I turn around, God is blessing me…..” He is! Claim it believer! Bro. Joe |
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