BLESSINGS & CURSES

Dearest Saints, When we talk about Blessings and Curses, I sense that many Believers often get sidetracked. The world would tell someone that when favorable situations happens to anyone, they consider it a blessing. And when unfavorable circumstances happen that are most unwelcoming, many consider these circumstances a curse. In a nutshell, I would like to define blessings as any situation (whether favorable or unfavorable) that is able to effectively deal with the heart and turn ones heart towards the Lord, or commit their heart by drawing closer to the Lord then before. When negative circumstances occur, if it turns our heart and affections towards God, it is equally a blessing. I like to consider alot of these circumstances as a "hidden blessing" all because it doesn't make sense to the world. During trials, the result of something that seems anything but a blessing is something that we may not want, but may very well need. Because in the end, the type of relationship we have with God is what is going to count and often times, it takes trials to draw our hearts away from the affections of this world and turn our heart to where it needs to be (to God). However, I believe that when good fortune comes to many people, including Christians and they don't bother to give the time of day to give God thanks, this becomes more of a "hidden curse" because of the accountability by failing to give Him thanks and remaining indifferent, which I consider sins of omission (failing to do what is right), which is sin before God (James 4:17). For Christians, if their heart remains complacent and their is no positive change through any good fortune that has come about, I believe it will be far worse for Gods people to remain unthankful with no change of heart to draw closer to God because these are the times we should be encouraged and bring hope to others through our testimony and praises. Complacency should have NO place in any Christians lives. Someone who continues to go through trials or any unfortunate set of circumstances while drawing closer in relationship to God is far better off then anyone who seemingly has everything going for them but has no desire for God or desire to draw closer to God. This is what I often call a "hidden curse" because most people don't understand the end result or the accountability each one will need to give. Therefore, we cannot afford to get ourselves trapped into assuming that blessings only come by favorable circumstances and curses are anything else but! Some of the roughest valleys of my life resulted in richer blessings then any other times because it drew my heart away from having any worldly affections and worldly ambitions that often got in the way with having the right relationship with God. My trials helped me to understand what is really important in life. I know for a fact that had I got what I wanted out of life, I would have remained complacent or indifferent towards the things of God which would have been anything but a blessing. When you read Luke 16:19-25, tells His Disciples about the rich man and Lazarus (the Beggar). A time came that they were going to give an account of their lives. The rich man was sent to Hades (a place of torment) and Lazarus was safe in Paradise (Abrahams bosom). The rich man cried out in agony for mercy being tormented in flames. Abraham mentions to this rich man that he had his reward by eating scrumptuously and living lavishly and while Lazarus was living as a beggar. To the world, the rich man would be considered most blessed and Lazarus would be considered accursed. I would dare say that the rich man would have been glad to turn back the time and trade places with Lazarus who ended up being by far more blessed then the rich man in all his comfortable life. So how can anyone who sees the end say that the rich man was more blessed? The main point I want to emphasize is that no matter what we may be going through, WE CAN NOT AFFORD LOSE HOPE by simply determining our circumstances whether it be favorable or unfavorable. The question we need to ask ourselves is: "Is our heart being drawn closer and closer towards Him"? This is why when we pray for others, we can't just pray that the storms would be diverted, or just pray for physical, emotional or relational needs. We need to pray the prayers that matter most. That peoples hearts would turn to God and those whose hearts are turned to God, draw even closer to have a deeper and closer relationship with Him than before. I would rather no prayers be answered for anyone if it is not going to draw the heart closer to God because that is what is going to count in the end. Like God tells us: "I would that we would all prosper AND walk in divine health, just as our soul FIRST PROSPERS" (3 John 2). Therefore, it is more important to God for the condition of our heart then to simply have our prayers answered the way we would want them answered. God cuts the bad branches off to get rid of all ungodly affections and ungodly ambitions from our lives. However, He not only cuts the bad branches, but also prunes good branches so that a person who may be bearing fruit, will bear more and better, more excellent fruit (John 15:2). Therefore, it is imperative that we put our Trust in an "all-wise" and "all-loving" God who knows how to bring us through the right circumstances to bring out the best in us and for us. We just have to make a decision to cooperate with Him. When we invite Him to help us turn our heart (our love) towards Him more and more, this is really what it means to be most blessed. In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Ministry Encourager Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/

Enter Into His Throne Room

Dearest Saints, I want to share something special that God gave me a thought. It should always be a delight to hunger for a revelatory Word from God because it encourages us and strengthens us in Him. When we receive knowledge of a Word, it becomes a "knowing" in our minds. But to receive a revelation is to receive it with a "greater understanding" that is heart changing which is powerful. As I was watching a program and taking time to meditate on what was being preached, God gave me a neat revelation I want to share. Whenever we come to prayer, let's not just envision us being down here and our Heavenly Father sitting on His Throne multi-millions of miles away, even though we know our prayers are heard in Heaven and is being collected in golden bowls of incense (Rev 5:8). But when we come to Him in prayer, let's envision ourselves literally entering into His Throne Room in Heaven and falling down to worship Him in His presence in Heaven, praising Him and then giving Him our petitions, just like Isaiah was before the Lord in Isaiah 6. For He tells us in Eph 2:6 that we ARE already raised up with Him and are seated with Him in Heavenly places (and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus Eph 2:6). Notice He doesn't say "we will", but as His Children, we are already raised up with Him and are already seated with Him in Heavenly places. And He also tells us to draw near to Gods Throne boldly & confidently so we can obtain His Grace & Mercy in our time of need (Heb 4:16). So that means we should literally see ourselves entering into the Holy of Holies (in Heaven) and kneeling right in His presence as He sits on His Throne in Heaven rather then just seeing ourselves here and God "up there"! I believe this encourages our heart to know we can come right before Him and we can just be in awe of His presence. I also thought that when we do see ourselves approaching His Throne before our faces, we need to remove everything that hinders us from receiving this fully from Him simply by giving Him all our broken-ness and receiving His fullness of love for us, His Goodness and Divine favor He so much wants to bestow upon us. Anything that has negatively happened to us in the past, God is the One who always brings correction to those who oppose His commands and those who deal treacherously with His Children and we have that divine favor that no matter how bad our past has been, we can receive DOUBLE BLESSINGS (Isa 61:7 and Zech 9:12b)that far exceeds any trouble we have ever received. Let us allow Him to teach us to give Him all of our fragments and anticipate as we wait with that indescribable Hope of what He wills for you and wants to do for you and through you (Zech 9:12a). I also just received a thought that we "need" to first give Him all our broken fragments if we expect Him to use them to make a beautiful vessel as His chosen Ones. But He cannot use our fragments to fix them on our behalf if we don't learn to give it to Him in the first place. When we do, He can take every broken pieces from our lives and make it something far more beautiful then we can ever imagine. Let's see ourselves literally entering into His Throne Room (seated with Him in Heavenly places) and give Him "ALL" of our fragments (every circumstances you have suffered injustice, any wrong-doing for no reason or other fragments He reveals to You to give to Him) and expect Him to prepare a beautiful work for you, to you and through you to be His Adorned & Blessed Vessel that will move us to Worship Him in Spirit and in Truth (John 4:23) and in the beauty of holiness (Ps 96:9). We can receive this when we truly believe Jesus paid our ransom in full on our behalf!! In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Ministry Encourager Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/

Compromising is NOT an Option - Part 1

Dearest Saints of the Most High, I always want to share what has been a concern for me and what God deals with me to share with you. Because we should know that anytime God deals anything with us, it's because He wants to help us become more mature and be stronger in Him in order to become more like Christ. And when He teaches us, we need to STOP just keeping what we learn within ourselves and START helping others and teach others what God teaches us about. This is what Discipling is all about. We should "want" to help others when we know all the help we have been given. He tells us that when we freely receive from Him, we are to freely give (to others) Matt 10:8. What better gift can we give to others then to share with them what God is doing for each of us in our lives? Just recently, I have been thinking of how many times we may compromise God in our walk with Him. This compromising God takes in many variations. A good definition of being a compromiser of God is reducing Him to our level of thinking or understanding. We do this often by simply limiting of who He really is, limiting His great love for us, limiting His ability to care for us and so on. I think one of the reasons why we compromise who God is and His will for us is because we think too highly of ourselves and our abilities! I have to admit I have fallen into that trap more times then I care to admit. When we don't give His Word the "Highest Value" to live our life and seeking the highest wisdom that only comes from above, we are robbed by the enemy from ever living the abundant life that He tells us He wants to give us (John 10:10b). When we compromise, we are fulfilling the enemy's plan by allowing him to rob us of receiving Gods best for us. The enemy comes only to rob, kill and destroy (John 10:10a). But, Jesus has come to give us life and life in abundance (John 10:10b). We can only receive abundance of His peace and joy when we choose to follow the wisdom of His Word over our way of thinking and our own understanding. One of the main culprits of being a compromiser is limiting Gods total Sovereignty. When I talk about His Sovereignty, I am talking about His Omnipresence (He is everywhere at all times); His Omnipotence (He is "All-Powerful",able to do all things; His Omniscience (He is "All-Knowing" of everything created and for future events) and He is Omnisapient, (who is All-Wise) because He knows what is best for us by far more then anyone of us can ever think. We compromise when we know in our spirit (when God talks to us) to do one thing, but we make excuses to do otherwise. When we meditate on His Sovereignty, we need to just come to the conclusion that He is AWESOME and far beyond our own intellect and our own understanding!! Proverbs 3:5,6 is one of my favorite verses that tells us that we are not to lean on our own understanding, but to Trust in Him in All our ways! And He promises by doing that, that He will make our paths straight. If God is to be our God, that means WE NEED TO CHOOSE HIS WAYS REGARDLESS! One of the Brothers was having a disagreement with me about God's Foreknowledge. Just because this man couldn't understand how God can know future events when it has not yet happened? We need to come to that place to have the "Child-like Faith" and confess "I may not understand, but I trust You Lord". How was it that all the prophecies were written before Christ fulfilled each one of them? In Jer 1:5, He tells us that He foreknew each of us before we were ever born. Like I mentioned one time before, we have to STOP limiting God of who He is just because we don't understand. We have to come to the place that God is far greater then our limited thinking. This is one of the issues that we have to STOP COMPROMISING by limiting who He is. I like what I heard one time when someone said: "If we could always figure out God, then He wouldn't be God in the first place, we wouldn't have that reverential fear of Him like we need to have and He wouldn't be worthy of our worship of Him. How can we expect to have any "Awe" or "Reverential Fear" of Him if we always brought Him down to our limited thinking and understanding of Him? Another area I find many of us who have compromised God is His love and care for us. Many times in my past, I questioned God "Why God Why"? Just because I didn't understand why I had to go through what I had gone through. Now that I look back, I can now see what He was up to. We often "get-it" after we have gone through, but our God sees before-hand of what we need. Which is why we need to STOP COMPROMISING His Wisdom for our lives and STOP COMPROMISING Who He is and what His Word tells us. It wasn't until I started doing what the Word tells me to do before I started seeing real victory taking place in my life. I didn't have any victory before all because I now realize I failed to Use the Word like He tells us to. We also often compromise Him simply by following the traditions of our fore-fathers rather then being lead by His Spirit. This is why Jesus mentioned to His Disciples and warned them about forsaking God just by following the "traditions of Men" (Matt 15:6; Mark 7:8-13; Col 2:8). If it were never a problem, it wouldn't be mentioned in the Word. Anytime anything is in the Word, it's because man has a problem with it and God needs to reveal these things to us to help us. Regardless of what our fore-fathers did, we need to seek Gods Spirit to direct us. Maybe our fore-fathers did what was right and excellent, but God admonishes us to continue improving and striving to do more and do greater. He even tells us that we would do greater things than He did because He is going to the Father (John 14:12). I can't imagine how we can do greater things than what He did, but that's what He says. We just have to believe what He says regardless of what we think, which is what justifies us before Him. We are justified in Him simply because we believe Him (Gal 2:16). We cannot afford to doubt or have unbelief of His Word which is what happens when we compromise the instruction of His Word which is our "Life-Line". I would like to continue on with this again because alot can be said about compromising God and His Word for our very lives. In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Ministry Encourager Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/

DEALING WITH COVETOUSNESS - PART 2

Blessed Saints, In continuing dealing with covetousness, I want to emphasize that when we desire for God to help us meet our needs, that is what we should do to go before the Throne of Grace. We should never feel guilty of going to God and seeking Him to meet our needs or petition Him to help bless us further in order to bless others more. I want to say to many of you who don't live in the affluent countries that are in great need of items that you desire to have. I so appreciate your petitions for God to meet your needs and not your "greeds". When I visited Zambia back in 2006, I admire those who are without (like a mode of any transportation) whom walked mile after mile after mile to carry groceries home, carry buckets of water or even just to go to an afternoon Bible Study service out in the middle of the country miles away from the closest town. When I was a passenger with a dear Pastoral couple from Zambia while driving to a Wednesday afternoon service, many people would be walking over to that service that was still at least 8 miles away, walking on foot. God only knows how many miles they have trekked already at that point. They could have very well complained, but didn't. Ironically, I hear more people complain who have more then they need in their abundance then those who have very little and yet are thankful to what little they do have. When I talk about the term covetous, this is when it is a definite problem and needs to be dealt with when those of us who already have an abundance beyond our needs and we continue to remain dis-satisfied by coveting more and more. Dealing mostly with being covetous is failing to see the difference between our "wants" to our "needs". One of the things that often identify having a problem with covetousness is being unthankful for what we already have. Again, this is someone who sees the glass half empty and fails to see the same glass half full by thanking God for what we have. When we are thankless, we do the exact opposite of His Good and Perfect will for us. I always have said that to silence a complainer, they need to live under the conditions of many who live in poverty for awhile and really experience how they live. Just like the prodigal son had to find out the hard way and realize what he did have at home by having lost all. It often takes "going through" tough times to really appreciate what we do have. For many of those who have dealt with being covetous (like myself in the past), it takes circumstances of adversity to put our priorities into perspective. Going through adversity often helps us to make that pivotal decision to finally say "I give up Lord...You take over". That's often what the Lord wants to see is a surrendered heart to Him which is honestly the best place to be for the Lord to use His people. It took the prodigal Son to eat from the same pen as the pigs before he came to his senses to return to his fathers home (Luke 15:16,17). It took Nebuchadnezzar eating grass with the wild oxen and be outside his palace long enough for his nails to grow long before he came to his senses (Dan 4:33,34). I can't imagine how it took 7 years for this king to live under these harsh conditions before he came to his senses. Will it take that long for us to finally "get it"? It takes many of us to become frusterated with being so pre-occupied with our own agendas to realize that everything we work for or long for just to accumulate or gain "more toys", a bigger home, more furnishings (beyond what we really need) is futile and meaningless. It often takes a person to become "sick and tired" to make the necessary changes in life that finally pulls out the weeds that choke our relationship with Christ. Just as one of the parables of the seeds Christ talks to His Disciples about (Matt 13:7,22). Many people often remain frusterated because they keep fighting against their conscience of what God is trying to tell them rather then surrendering to His will for their lives. When the Israelites complained to God and Moses because they were tired of manna from Heaven and they wanted to eat meat. So God gave them what they wanted, but they got to the point that they were up to their nostrils in meat and finally made them sick (Num 11:20). Sometimes God needs to make us sick of things that will turn our hearts to seek His will and turn away from covetousness. The times when we are often frusterated or going through adversity is normally when a person evaluates the importance or purpose in his/her own life. These circumstances is what is necessary to cause a person to focus on the end result and question themselves: What it is we want to accomplish? What is the purpose to all of my labours and ambitions? If we are frusterated, are we focusing our ambitions and accomplishments in life more then having a rich relationship with God? As for myself from what I have learned through trials, I looked at the end result of what I want to accomplish in life, it made me question my priorities and my relationship with God. If circumstances remained at ease, I would not have the relationship with God today like I am blessed to have. When a person gets comfortable in their circumstances, God can't do much. It takes a hungry and surrendered heart for God to see His power working through you. Christ talks about a servant who was compared to someone who is covetous, yet this servant had more then enough to be content. This particular man had all he needed, but wasn't satisfied. He wanted more. He wanted to build bigger barns and just to be satisfied by eating and drinking to be merry, just so he could live a life of ease (Luke 12:16-21). When that is our goal, we need to ask further...then what? There was no mention about having any concern about the things of God. Then Christ tells His Disciples by saying about this man: "You fool, your soul is going to be required of you this night". This mans labour was all in vain and he lost everything simply because he was rich towards the ambitions of this world, but not rich in relationship with God. When we will take the time to evaluate our lives, our ambitions, we need to ask ourselves: Where am I placing my priority in life? What is the purpose in all of this? It took adversity and frusteration in my life to become sober about this and because of it, my decision to follow God was an easy decision because I realized the vanity of being ambitious when I failed to put God first in my life. Therefore, we need to stop fighting against adversities in our life because it may be just what we need to help us focus on what is really important. God may be calling some of you out of this bondage of covetousness to discover its worthlessness. If you haven't read Ecclessiates, I would highly recommend it and see where you may fit in all of this. It only comes when we put God first in our lives and make it our lifes priority to seek to serve Him and allow Him to govern our lives as our Lord and personal Saviour that rewards man with that joy unspeakable and inner peace that the world cannot ever satisfy. Coveting the things of this world will never satisfy ones soul. A person who labours for the things of this world will one day realize all was done in vanity which will end up having nothing but regret. On the other hand, God promises that those who labour for the Lord will never be in vain (1 Cor 15 58) and will never come with any regret. God only helps those who invite Him to do so. In the Matchless Name of Jesus Richard Ministry Encourager Answers2Prayer http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife http://www.answers2prayer.org/