I walked by the field of a lazy person, the vineyard of one with no common sense.  I saw that it was overgrown with weeds.  It was covered with weeds, and its walls were broken down.  Then, as I looked and thought about it, I learned this lesson: A little extra sleep, a little more slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest—then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit; scarcity will attack you like an armed robber. -Proverbs 24:30-34, NLT

This passage of truth illustrates the fruits of laziness from a natural standpoint, but what about from a spiritual standpoint?

Tags: Christianity, defeat, God, Jesus, Proverbs 24:30-34, satan, spiritual laziness, Victory, weeds

For so long, we’ve seen churches filled with women.  Sunday morning comes and the women and children file off to church while the men are at home, working on cars or watching football or sleeping in.  Now, obviously, I have nothing against women — I am one.  And of course there are exceptions to this rule.  But I would say, as a whole, there are far more women in churches than men.

Why is that?

Tags: church, emasculated, femininity, Jesus, masculinity, men, money changers, women

Something is shifting.  Something has shifted.

For me, this is hard.  I’m honestly not ready for Jesus to come back.  I mean, from a spiritual standpoint, yes, I’m ready.  But I have so much in my heart that I’m longing to see and do.  Living to be 100 years old wouldn’t even be long enough.  I’m not one of these people that is white-knuckling it, hoping that Jesus will hurry up and come back so that all my problems will be solved.  I don’t have problems. I live the Word of God and I defeat satan on a daily basis.  I don’t wish and hope and pray for victory.  I have victory.  If satan creeps in with depression or sickness or poverty, I cut him to pieces with the Sword of the Spirit of the Word of God.  Through Christ, I always triumph.

Tags: Christians, End Times, get ready, God, God's Word, Jesus, Revelation, the end, the end is near, The Sword, truth

When I came home from Cambodia, I wouldn’t have thought for one second that I was a Pharisee.  If anything, I was the one that had it together.  I’d been away for five months and not once during that time did I butt heads with someone.  I got along with people.  I liked people.  And they seemed to like me.  So if anyone was in the wrong, it had be my parents.  And I couldn’t wait for them to see it.  I couldn’t wait for them to start treating me like I deserved to be treated.

Tags: family, hard love, Jesus, loving when it hurts, Pharisees, real love, tough love, worthwhile

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. -Jesus’ words to the Pharisees, Matthew 23:27

Because the name “Pharisee” sounds so old and out-dated and old-fashioned, I never thought much about the prospect of such people being alive today.  Weren’t those the kind of people who wore long robes and tried to fulfill long lists of religious rules and regulations?  I didn’t personally know anyone like that.  Maybe those people existed in dusty old Catholic cathedrals, but I was charismatic.  I had to be the furthest thing from a Pharisee.  There was no tradition in my church.  No list of rules to fulfill.  We just loved Jesus and wanted to be like Him.  What was Pharisaical about that?

Tags: God, hyprocrite, Jesus, love, Matthew 23:27, Pharisee, real love, whitewashed tombs full of dead men's bones

How long do we fight?

Until we see the victory.

Not a moment sooner.

There’s no such thing as: “Well maybe it’s just not God’s will for me to have victory in this area.”  Get that lie out of your mind.  If it’s not it in God’s Word, you have no business believing it.

But what we do once we’ve seen the victory?

Keep standing.

Don’t sit down and take your comfy seat in the crowd.  Keep standing.

Tags: Ephesians 6:13, fight, God, Jesus, stand, Victory, what now

Do you believe God’s Word is the final authority?  Then why do you give your own doubts and fears the last say?

Do you believe God’s Word when it says: The joy of the LORD is your strength?  Then why do you walk around sad and weak, depressed and despondent?

Do you believe satan was totally conquered 2,000 years ago on the Cross?  Then why do you let him knock you around, kick you in teeth, and take your lunch money?

Tags: defeat, God, God's Word, Jesus, prove it, satan, Victory

For years, I straddled the fence between victory and defeat.  For years, I let the enemy push me to the ground and then drive me knee-deep through mud with a whip to my back.  I wanted so badly to see the victory of God’s Word manifested in my life.  I heard testimony after testimony but had no story of my own.  I read it all, heard it all, saw it all and believed it all.  But something was missing.  I wasn’t living it.  It’s not that I didn’t want to — I desperately wanted to, I tried to, I failed to and I even got back up to try again.  I celebrated momentary victories — even if they were later washed over by an onslaught attack from the enemy.   I felt like a 14-year-old splashing around in the baby pool while everyone else my age was jumping off the high-dive in the deep end of the big pool.

Tags: blind bartimaeus, Easter, Free, go on your way, God, God's Word, healed, healing, Jesus, Resurrection, Victory

Before Daniel even met King Nebuchadnezzar, he underwent three years of training.  The Bible doesn’t tell us much about what on during that time.  The Bible seems to have a habit of sparing us those details.  When Esther was brought to the palace, before she even met the king, she went through 6 months of training.  How about Joseph?  He waited in prison for years before he was brought to the palace.  Or think about David, who was anointed to be king but spent the next several years being chased through the wilderness by the reigning king who wanted him dead.  And then there’s Jesus Christ, our LORD and Savior, who spent 30 years on this earth during which time we know next to nothing of what went on.

Tags: Daniel, David, Esther, Jesus, Joseph, waiting, worth the wait

As I mentioned before, it was T.L. Osborn’s book Healing the Sick (chapter 33) that really brought me into new revelation concerning Communion.  And when I read this excerpt nearly two weeks ago, concerning what happens (in a physical sense) as we ingest Jesus’ body (the bread) and Jesus’ blood (the wine), I about flew out of my chair:

God has installed in the human body a processing plant which we call a stomach.  The food we eat is digested there and sent out into our blood-stream.  Its chemical essence becomes flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, skin of our skin, body of our body.  It becomes part of us (page 179, Healing the Sick).

Tags: blood of Jesus, body of Jesus, Bread, Communion, God, healing, Healing the Sick, Jesus, Juice, testimony, Wine