Hello. Another year is now upon us. Many people look to the beginning of a new year as a time of change and refreshment.

They leave the burdens and hurt of the previous year behind, and look to the next year with high expectations.

Having high hopes is both good, and having a positive outlook can impact the outcome exponentially.

A word of caution though with plans, a word from our Lord. “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring.” Proverbs 27:1

That being said, I am not trying to bring anyone down, as my family and I too have high hopes for 2023. We are making major life changes.

We will be moving into a motor home and starting full time ministry as traveling misionaries traversing the continental USA.

My desire rather, is that we each be humble in our expectations, and always saying Lord willing, for we of our own power can do no good, but it by the power of God.

The power wrought in Christ working to us-ward. God has plans for each of us, and if we allow our plans to fall in line with His plan and His will, then we need not be fearful, but we must maintain a humbleness in our plans.

May your plans be found in line with God’s, and may they be blessed this year.

We cannot love God without loving people.
We cannot love people without loving God.

This duality of love is perfectly displayed in the cross.

the cross is the very image of love.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

The cross is where he who knew no sin, became sin, that he might take away the sins of the world, redeeming us to proper sonship in the Father.

A cross is made of two poles, one vertical, one horizontal.

If you take away the vertical pole, you have a beam laying on the ground.

If you take away the horizontal, you only have a post.

If you love God, but not people, you only have self-righeouesness.
you will drive others away until you are a pillar of isolation. There will be noting to hold to when the tides of life crash in, and others will flee, searching for something they can grasp to save them from their drowning. This haughtiness is not love of God, but a love of the self and one’s own perceived self attained holiness.

If you love people, but not God, you will promote self-destrucive behavior that will result in brokenness and the end of which is destruction. You will encourage and promote acceptance and understanding, even when the path is destruction. this is a false love, a false teaching whose end is only death.

There can be no true love for God, unless you love people, and there can be no true love for people unless you love God.

There is a pervading message in the world right now. It has picked up in popularity over the last few years, it is a message of self gratification.

The message, follow your heart. Now it may seem new, but this ideology has been around since the days of Noah.

We read in Genesis 6:5 about the wicked state of man’s heart. These people did not only have evil in their heart, but acted upon it, often.

Jeremiah 7 and 16 again tells us that people were walking after the evil intentions of their hearts.

Many Christians use verses like this to talk about not being lead by the heart. As christians we need to be clear; and not christians only but everyone.

Ezekiel talks of God giving us a new heart, and in Hebrews 9:10 “I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts.”

To the believing repented soul, whose heart has been softened, made new and renewed, and is perfectly in line with God, then the actions they take will reflect that.

For a believer, our mind and heart will move in like with the will of God as we become less by the Spirit and not the flesh.

For one in whom their heart is still hard, for the internees mind who seeks to do their own will and not that of God, the message to follow their heart is dangerous, self pleasing, self satisfying and dangerous to the soul.

Again to drive this message home, psalm 37:4 “delight yourself in the Lord, and he shall give you the desires of the heart.”

For those who delight in the Lord, their desire moves in line with the will of God, and we become partakers in heavenly duty, our desire becomes the same as what God desires.

We begin to seek to please God, not self. There are two ends for a man, to follow the self pleasing heart whose end is death, or follow a renewed born again heart whose desire is to please God.

It is by grace, extended to us by the love and power of God, manifested in Christ, that we can come to love God, and by loving God we can come to a place of renewed and empowered love with a clean heart.

Prayer, praying, the ability to pray, to be one who prays often, but what exactly is prayer?

Prayer is the spiritual lifeblood of the Christian life, but what is prayer and how do we pray? We can find countless verses in the subject, but we seem to be just as unable to grasp it as the countless generations before us.

Too often in the church today we see prayer as some form of magical wish granting device, not unlike the mythical genie in a lamp, but this is not true prayer, this is the prayer of James 4:3.

We must flee from the prayer of James 4:3 and learn to pray like what we read in James 5:16b-18, or again to pray like what we read in the first epistle of John, chapter 5 verse 14-15.

The thing about praying is this, praying is coming to speak to God, and to commune with him. We bring our supplications and requests (Phil 4:6) yes, but it is more than this. It is us, entering into the holy of holies, grabbing the ear of God and grasping hold of His immeasurable power.

We grab hold of this power, not for ourselves and not of ourselves, but for the will of God, by the will of God.

From the beginning God’s desire has been for a relationship with His people, and part of a relationship is communicating with each other. God desires us to come and talk with Him, and also that we would listen to him.

Too quickly when we pray we come to him, with this long preformed list of wants wishes and desires, utter those say amen and leave, but prayer was meant to be and is much more than this.

Part of prayer is meditation upon His word, prayerfully reading His word, listening with our spiritual ears to wisdom from the Holy Spirit. it is about talking with God, and being in His presence.

Yes we bring requests to God, bu they must stem from His will and for the good of the kingdom, not just the things that we want for our own sakes. God knows what we have need of, our faith should be to trust Him to provide and meet our needs, but we must be obedient and our prayers must grow to become true praying.

To be the lifeblood of a Christian life prayer must not just be a list of wishes, but become true communication with a God, it must be about growing spiritually, advancing the kingdom and seeking God’s will that it might be done.

Recently, some so called leaders of the Christian faith have begun to call for looking at the Bible through cultural eyes. Whether or not they realize this, this a lie and deception send forth from the enemy. While this message may seem appealing and progressive, it is dangerously wrong.

The Bible has never been meant to be looked at through the eyes of the current culture, but has always been a tool with which we are to look at and analyze the modern culture. In a moment we will look at a Biblical story that perfectly narates this truth, and then we will look at Jesus and how he handled the same concept.

Before we get to that point however, I would like to ask, why are we trying to analyze the Bible (which is the inerrant, inspired word of God) through culture, if it isn’t but to appease a culture which is doing everything in it’s power to avoid meeting God right where He is and always has been? And if that is the purpose of why we would look at it that way, then how can we call ourselves Christians if we won’t lead others to the God with love and outstretched arms?

From the begining it has always been those who were willing to stand apart from the crowd and serve the one true God who have been called. Throughout the Bible there are countless figures who want to include God in their pantheon of gods, but when the time comes to deny all others but Him, they shy away, but it is on the shoulders of those who do not waver, that the kingdom has always been built and advanced.

Culture will almost always seek to minimize God, and ridicule Him, and this is becuase of human nature. Human nature, at any point in time and history is best explained in this, we are selfish, we are self righteous, and we are all sinners who seek to justify ourselves. I don’t mean to type this to sound codemning, but to point out a hard truth, one that if we will acknowledge, we can move beyond our cultural ties that bind us.

Now, if we can accept the truth of our sinful nature, and the fact we have all done something unjust, then we can move on to the next, and main portion of this messsage, that being the way we view God, the Bible, and Christianity.

Now the Biblical story I would like to focus on is one we are all very familiar with, the story of three Jewish men living in captivity in Babylon. This story is recorded in the book of Daniel chapter 3.

King Nebuchadnezzar made an idol, and decreed that all would kneel and worship the statue. Certain Chaldeans came and brought accusations against certain of the Jews, specifically three men Shadrach Meshach, and Abednego by name.

These three men sat in positions of authority, but they also held to the worship of the God of Israel, and this left room for no other gods. They were brought before the king who questioned them about their refusal to worship his gods. They lived in a time when the king’s word was law. They lived in a culture of polytheism, but they had to hold to the true value of God’s Word and His will.

They were not given a free pass just because of the culture around them. They, like Lot, May have lived amidst a culture of sin and wickedness, but they were still expected to stick to Godliness. They were still expected to follow God’s Word and decree even over the decree of the king.

When confronted by the king, their reply was that the God whom they serve could deliver them from the fire if he desired to, but even if he did not, they would not serve the false gods of Nebuchadnezzar. They were bound and thrown into a fiery furnace, where the Lord came and freed them.

The thing to see here is not only in that they were saved from the fire, but that they were willing to choose truth over the culture. They knew who their God was, and that was of greater value than anything that the culture of the government could bring against them. They were willing to lose position and even face death in order to stand fast in their faith.

Even Jesus Christ himself had to stand against the culture of his day. Jesus’ very nature was counter to the culture of the day, from his forgiving sinners to his stance on money and even how he regarded the sabbath. That being said, the particular story I want to look at is in the book of Matthew chapter 21.

Jesus had come to Jerusalem, fulfilled many prophecies and was welcomed by an adoring crowd. Upon entering the city, Jesus went to the temple. At the time, the temple’s purpose had become corrupt. What was to be the house of God had become a place of business. It was common practice in those days for there to be moneychangers, those that sold doves and animals needed for the sacrifice.

It was normal, even accepted as it was convenient. Rather than traveling from wherever they lived and bringing their animals needed, they could just come right to the temple and exchange their money, buy the doves and be done. It made sense in the day, and it makes sense logically and logistically, but again this was not what God intended for the temple.

Jesus began to flip tables and the seats of those that sold the doves. He kicked all those people out who were defiling the temple. He emptied it of those who hearts were not on God, and he challenged the culture, saying that the temple was to be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves (see Matthew 21:13).

Once the temple was empty, the blind and the lame came to him and were healed. Then the leaders of the day were upset when they saw what he did and when they heard children praising the Lord. When God clashes with the culture, God will win, and those whose hearts are not set on a God will always be sore displeased.

To those religious leaders of our day who say we need to use a cultural lens, I urge you to reread your bible and to pray for discernment. To those whose pastors are sharing such teachings, I encourage you to put God first, and trust in him with faith and don’t be afraid to question the direction your leadership is taking you, for our God is not in this culture, and is not subject to our culture.

God be with you all. Amen.

The United States of America was founded on many important principles, one in particular is being challenged in our times (though many are being challenged, I am focusing here on one specific principle). This principle is the seperation of church and state. the argument is being made that Christians should not be holding positions of high office, particularly if they use their fatih to help guide them in their decisions.

Now, ignoring the many years in which America has been led by those who were relying on their faith and Christian principles to guide our nation, I think that if we are to fight this blatant attack on our culture and our nation, we should understand some history, and see if perhaps they are reversing the meaning of this idea.

You see I see many people talk about how this idea was based on the catholic church, and how it had obtained control over Europe, and exercised control over Europe through its religious power, and while this is a fair argument, I am not fully convinced this is what our founding fathers had in mind. Recall, the founding fathers were protestants, many of them from England.

England, had already broken away from the catholic church, and created the church of England, for the benefit of king Henry, so he could divorce his wives at will when they would not give him a male heir. Now both the catholic church and the church of England misused their positions for political ends that benefitted themselves.

The catholic church became and behaved more as a state (which in fact it was, the papal states), and less like the church of God. The behavior of the papal states, which was highly motivated in control and politics, and less in advancing the true kingdom, certainly did lead to many negatives that should not be emulated.

With that being said, this does not mean the church should not express it’s views to impact the government and society, we can see countless times throughout the Bible the significance of the spiritual leaders being needed to keep a state on track with the direction of God.

Added to this, we can see the importance of and the history of how Christian values have always impacted the governance of America. Christian values and principles always impacted how America was going to operate, and without those principles America would not be the place it is today.

The seperation the founders were referring to, I truly believe, was the seperation preventing the state from influencing the church and its administration. This really is not too hard of a conclusion to come too. What is the first amendment? Freedom of religion and free speech. The very wording of the first amendment made it clear that the government was to have no control over the church.

The church has and should continue to have an impact on governance, but the government should not be able to direct or control the church nor its function. In Canada we can see what happens when the government begins to overstep, prohibitng specific messages, which results in less than the full truth of the scripture being taught.

The church is answerable to God, and the church leaders are going to be held to account to Him, but the world leaders believe they are answerable to man or in many cases, to no one. Government, by its nature, desires only to have more control, and if the state is allowed to impact the church, it will only mean men with agendas will seek to gain control of God’s system. This is not the path America has ever been on, it is not the path the founders sought, and it is not the path we should now or ever take.

God be with you. Amen.

Mankind, from the start, has been called to one great service… to give ourselves over to prayer. The church as a whole, must pray, but each individual man and woman must also learn not only to pray themselves, but to pray well. Praying well, true Biblical praying has been left out by many in the church as a whole, and it is something we must strive to return to. While all are to pray, there is also what I call the call to prayer.

The call to prayer, or the call to be a prayer is something that God places on a soul when the kingdom needs it. All should prayer, this is an unrefutable truth placed on the entire church, but some individuals will feel a certain pull on themselves to pray and wrestle like Jacob with the angel of God. Some will feel a pull to dedicate hours in the prayer closet, a three to four hour prayer session becomes too short, for they will feel the tug on their heart so strongly that it becomes too hard not to pray.

This is the call to prayer. Nehemiah felt it, Abraham felt it, Moses and Jesus felt it, and look at what it had wrought. Jesus toiled the night away in prayer, while those closest to him slept. Not all feel the call, and not all will feel it at the same time or to the same intensity, but when it comes upon us, the miracles of heaven it will unleash can change kingdoms. Borders change, lines are easily crossed, and the kingdom is advanced.

I must urge all who stumble upon this simple reflection to pray daily, for our daily prayers and time spent in intimate closeness with our heavenly Father are to be counted among the greatest of treasures we can hope to obtain in our fleshly lives. To those who feel the call to prayer, I encourage you to make time, to find a way to preservere in prayer. This is not always the easiest, I myself have struggeld with finding the hours to labor in prayer amidst the business of work, family life, and the other myriad of hinderances that attempt to draw us away from this great calling.

We must fight against the will of the flesh when this comes. The best way to fight agaisnt the flesh, is to pray. As we pray, we will find our spirits desiring to pray more and more. It is the natural desire of our spirit to pray, for it is that connection with God that our spirit was made for, and it is the natural place for it, to abide in the shadow of the Most High. Much like it is natural for a wolf to seek a pack, or for a bird to build a nest, our spirit cannot but help to seek God once it has a taste of Him, and this is a truth for all, for it is how we are made.

Even for those who do not feel the pull to pray for hours on end, who do not feel the call to prayer, to them the more they pray, the more their spirit will desire God. I must urge all to seek God in prayer, to dedicate time each morning and night, and throughout the day, to find time to give to God and commune with Him, for it is His desire, and it is why we are made, to build an intimate relationship with God.

God be with you all. Amen.

We can either advance the kingdom or let it be taken. 

Matthew 11:12 (KJV)  And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. 

War is a violent thing. War is not pretty, not a glorious venture. With that being said, each and every Christian is apart of a war, we all enlisted the moment we took Jesus as our Savior..  

We are soldiers in His army, and we are all called to advance and build His kingdom. Our job, our primary duty, when not in worship, is to advance the kingdom.  

The kingdom, much like our personal relationship with God, only has two options, either we are moving forward and gaining ground, or we are giving ground.  

If we are not doing our part to move and spread the kingdom, then we are only allowing the enemy to claim ground, whether intentional or not, this is the reality of it.  

There is violence against the kingdom, and we can either be violent in return (not in flesh, but in Spirit)  or we can just give up and allow evil and wickedness to reign.  

We each must make a decision every day on what we will do that day, are we going to commit to advancing and building, or are we going to allow the enemy to take it? 

Will we stand in the way against evil, or will we continue to give way? The choice is up to each individual.  

Like Joshua I declare this  

“ Joshua 24:15 (KJV)  And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” 

There is a verse from a song we sang in church a few Sundays back, it says “I believe in You
You’re the God of miracles.”

This is a fact, one that the church must come back in to. God is still a God of miracles. He still heals, He still cares for us and still works supernatural wonders.

Recently there was a word from the Lord, if you dont beleive God still loves you enough to show you signs of His love, then you need a deeper understanding of God’s love toward you.

This message was not designed to ridiculue anybody, but to draw our attention to one simple fact, God still loves us.

If God loves us enough to send His Son to die for us on the cross, and save us while we were yet sinners, will he not show us much more now when we have been redeemed out of sin and put off the old man and seek God first?

God still hears us, He still anwers our prayers, and can still perform miraculous and wonderous healing and signs for each and every one of us.

I have seen the goodness and glory of God bring forth healing, and know for a fact that God seeks to heal those who call on His name.

God didn’t stop performing miracles after Noah, after Moses, after Elijah, after Jesus, after the apostles, or after we were born. God is still true to His nature, He is still a supernatural God, with a fierce passion and love for us all, and if we will seek Him, we will find that He is, the God of the miraculous.

Sometimes the only way to answer an extreme, is with an extreme answer.

This simple sentence seems lost on so many. A common response might be to choose not to engage in extremes, this is a poor response. I see where this mindset originated from, but it is a cowardly response lacking conviction.

There is a pervading thought that by engaging in extremes we cause an increase in tension, and that if people do not respond to an extreme then the original extremist’s fire will dwindle out.

This is just not the case. The reality is, when someone engages in an extreme, when they put their energy so heartedly into something, if they are not met or challenged, then they are going to eventually get their way right or wrong. If their is only one voice speaking, then only that thought process will be heard and accepted.

Let’s look at the two main topics that we see we are told not to argue or talk about, faith and politics. Why, you might ask? These are the two topics that are most likely to elicit an extreme response. Discussions can, but do not always have to, become heated and we are told to believe that nothing good will come of these.

The problem is, faith and political ideas are always being talked about, whether we realize it or not. Everyone of us has their formed ideas, and these are reflected in the way we respond to certain situations. Moreover, from my own experience, the ones who say not to discuss these topics, and to avoid going to extremes, usually do so in defense of someone who has shared just their own belief, generally that of a liberal mindset.

When this happens, what is really being said is not “don’t talk politics” but rather “we agree with the previous point and don’t want to hear your side.” This is the opposite of healthy discourse.

Healthy people can discuss differing viewpoints without getting into a fight, however this argument is meant to quell Christian faith from being shared, and from conservatives from sharing their own stances on political issues.

Now, while this so far as not talked about extremism, but rather how the left has attempted to silence opposition through the false appearance of taking a moral high ground, I do want to get to the topic of extremism.

I myself have both been able to have healthy friendly discussions of differing opinion on both faith and politics, and have also been told I was not allowed to share my stance while being subjected to the views of others. Again, when only one side is allowed to share their views, this is not only unhealthy but also dangerous.

This leads to narration control, manipulation, forced ideaology, and isolation. Moreover, it creates its own very dangerous form of extremism that can lead to aggression of any differing views.

We saw this over the last couple of years with the riots across America in which a number of people were murdered by the rioters simply for being in the way, and if they did voice a differing opinion they were met with dangerous deadly force.

During the lockdowns and subsequent vaccination campaign, those who had questions or took a different stance were heavily silenced, and and many ways persecuted.

When one side is this extreme in their behavior, there are only two options, lay down and give them their way, or become extreme in your response.

We would not give into a child mid tantrum, but rather as parents we stand our ground, for the well being of our child. so too, in this day and age of extremism, we must not allow only one side to have an extreme view. Now when I speak of an extreme response, I am not saying to answer violence with violence or hate with hate.

Rather, we must continue to speak our views, refusing to be bullied down. We must stand fast and strong, sticking to our values and becoming all the louder, coming together when able to spear our shared values and beliefs.

Our extremism must be both equally extreme, but also peaceful and full of love and compassion. We are to not backdown, but digging our heels in the mud and say this far and no farther.

Be blessed and stand strong.