Take A Little Honey With You!

Don’t start the New Year without it. I am not a major prophet or minor prophet but a practical prophet that prophecies that you are going to need some honey in the year just ahead of us.

My friend Dwain Jones not only carries a little honey with him but shares it everywhere he goes. In a conversation with him, He was asked him how he was doing. He had experienced some serious health problems that could have amounted to a swan song for his highly successful ministry, but he reached into his privately kept honey cone and pulled out some fresh honey. “Well,” he said, “I am doing so well that I have to sit on my hands or they would be clapping all the time.”

What lies ahead of us in 2009 is not nearly so important as what lies within us. The Greek biographer Plutarch observed, “For the wise man, every day is a festival.”

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in fasting and practice fasting but I also believe in feasting and feast of the Lord. I was driven to studying my position in light of Scripture, and this is what I discovered. The word fast is recorded 72 times in the Old and New Testament (KJV), and the word feast, feasts, and feasting 160 times from the same reference points. That means that the word feast or a derivative thereof can be found over 2 times as much as the word fast.

Feasting is a festive time, a time of rejoicing and a time of celebrating the blessings of God in the past and the anticipation of the favors of God in the future.

How long has it been since the church has declared a holy feast? I’m not talking about a fellowship dinner for a time to pig out. I’m speaking about a time of eating minimally and celebrating with shouting, dancing and singing.

Isaiah clearly encourages this practice in chapter 61 and verse 3. “Give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness…” I am amazed that the Scripture says, “Give it to them…” That means to make it available. Give them an opportunity to receive it. Make it possible. Encourage it and receive it yourself.

I believe that this is a way of putting honey into their lives for the year ahead, and we all need the honey. We need to take some honey for the times in 2009 when:

1. The Pop Corn Doesn’t Pop. (Trifle)

There will be times when trifles, little, unimportant things will be like big, earth shaking episodes. You can pop a barrel full of corn, butter it down and sprinkle salt all over it but be dismayed that 6 kernels refused to do what they were supposed to do. Blame the Pop Corn King. Take it out on the skillet, but in the end, the story is simple. All the pop corn will not pop. I don’t know why. I just know it doesn’t.

Life is like that. Not all of our ideas pop as we thought they would. Not all of our dreams come true. Not all of our plans work out. That’s why we need some honey to take the bitter taste out of our mouth. When all your pop corn doesn’t pop, dip into the honey jar of God’s grace.

2. The Elevator Gets Stuck Between Floors. (Tension)

I have never had it to happen to me, and I never want the pleasure; but elevators do get stuck between floors from time to time. What happens when the doors jam and the elevator comes to a screeching halt on the 89th floor? I imagine that one word would sum it up: “Tension.”

You will have those tense moments in 2009. I can’t predict where, when or how, but I can predict they will come. It may be a stock market plunge; a management decision to reduce the work force and you get caught in the middle; a rejection note from the college you wanted to attend or a child who gets caught in the clutches of peer pressure.

You are going to need some honey to help you through it, and you will get through it by the help of God. Expect the Helper and the honey. Neither ever fail.

3. The Skies Cloud Up And Rain On Your Parade. (Topsy-turvy)

We will all have moments when our world gets turned upside down, and the skies cloud up and rain on our parade and ruin it.

One fascinating line which is often quoted from Of Mice and Men is applicable to the fact that our world can be turned topsy-turvy even though we plan it otherwise. The line is: "The best-laid plans of mice and men/often go awry."

You need some honey when things don’t happen the way you planned for them to be. Honey will not sweeten the circumstance but will sweeten you and make the circumstance bearable and beatable.

4. Life Serves You A Curve. (Trials and tests)

Trials and test are predictable for 2009. They are neither just possible nor probable. They will come. Life will throw some curves your way. Jesus left no questions when He declared, “In the world you will have tribulation…” then he continued, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

He said, “Life will throw you some curves,” but He gave us some honey to take with us – “Be of good cheer.” We need to have some pep rallies in our churches and dispense with pouting rallies. Get some honey. Turn your smiley face on. Clap your hands. Shout for joy.

“Sing unto the Lord a new song…” I have been at the bedside of many people who had taken some honey along the way. They come to the close of their life and some disease has taken its toll on the natural body. On more than once occasion I could see lips moving but what they were saying was hardly audible. Finally, as I or a member of the family leaned across her bed and was able to hear what they were saying. Honey was filling their dying minutes with a song.

The song more than once went like this: “Amazing grace, how sweet the song, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first began.”

More than one persons have had enough honey to carry all the way to heaven. Take some honey with you for 2009. It will come in handy.


Taking Honey Together,

Pastor Jimmy & Bob

God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece

Time capsules are not new. According to Guinness Book of World Records, the Crypt of Civilization is considered the first successful implementation of a time capsule, and it was sealed in 1940. It is located in the basement of Phoebe Hearst Hall at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. The Crypt is a room 20 feet long, 10 feet high and 10 feet wide and contains microfilms of over 800 books and reference material along with audio recording and movies. It is sealed with a great stainless steel door that was welded into place. Get this. It is not scheduled to be opened until the year of 8113. That far off generation will get a glimpse of the way things were, but will probably have little impact upon their future. God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece is a much bigger and better extravaganza and unfolds in living sound and color. Time had crept like a snail struggling up the side of Mt. Everest since God first mentioned His Time Capsule Masterpiece. The announcement was not made to a pew packing crowd at the local temple. It was made to the sleazy serpent that created a mess in the Garden of Eden and demanded the eviction of Adam and Eve from this beautiful paradise. Total chaos reigned. Panic paralyzed the sole occupants. Fear forged fetters that they must carry into the unknown future, but although they were facing an unknown future they were acquainted with a known God. Adam and Eve had a foreclosure notice nailed to their front door and were forced to move out, but God showed up to announce a Time Capsule that would be opened in the distant future. This inscription was to be inscribed: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) As is the case in most time capsules, it is not to be opened until a specified date and time. It’s almost like getting a present before Christmas and noticing a note attached which says: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS. That drives my wife crazy. She gets the heebie-jeebies waiting for Father Time to arrive and drives herself nuts trying to figure out what’s inside. But then Christmas arrives at 12:01 AM, she dives into the box with reckless abandon to see what’s inside. That is essentially what Paul is telling the Galatians in chapter 4 and verse 4. “But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father…” God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece was ripped open wide for the world to see. It was God’s timeless, tender, thoughtful, treasured gift of His only begotten Son. God took His mask off and came close enough for us to sit in His lap. Christmas brought God down here to where we live so that we can go up there where He lives and be with Him forever. One precious little daughter loved the story of “The Three Little Pigs” and demanded to listen to it every night before she went to sleep. Her father decided to read and record it on tape so that he could just play it to her every night rather than spend the time reading it over and over again. This worked for a couple of nights then Melinda pushed the storybook at her father when it came bedtime. “Now, honey,” he said, “you know how to turn on the recorder.” “Yes,” said Melinda, “but I can’t sit on its lap.” Yes, we have all heard the story about God and His love from time immemorial, but we need more than a story book relationship with God. We needed a God that was close enough to sit in His lap, and that’s what we discovered when God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece was opened. It was the litmus test of God’s love. Don’t run from the word litmus. Webster defines the word as: a test in which a single factor determines the finding. It is the first and foremost test of God’s love. It is extreme love demonstrated by extreme measures. It is love so amazing and so divine that it is incomparable and unsurpassable. “The Bible declares, “God sent His Son…” The Incarnation was God’s matchless love in action. I was born in a green hospital in Pampa, Texas, but Jesus was born in a barn. Vermin was running around under his bassinet made of straw. Animals strolled around chewing their cud and slobbering from their mouths. I wouldn’t have wanted my son or daughter to be born in such a quaint, un-sanitized delivery room, but it was the litmus test of God’s love….and He passed it with flying colors. It was the heritage of enduring hope. When man kind opened God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece, they opened the door to eternal hope. For centuries man had been reaching out its hand into the dark not knowing for sure who are what was out there, but now they clutched the hand of hope. I love the message that the angel delivered to the lonely shepherds. “I bring you good tidings of great joy….” (Luke 2:10) The Time Capsule had been opened. It was more than a birth of a baby. It was the BIRTH OF HOPE. Gas may go to $7 a gallon and the air we breath may stink from the halitosis of terrorist, but nothing can wreck my hope. I found it in God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece, and no one and nothing can take it away. It was the cure for a diabolical curse. Matthew records the startling conversation that an angel had with Joseph. At this moment, Joseph’s life was shattered. His fiancé had just told him that she was pregnant, and he suspected that she had engaged in illicit sex with someone else and betrayed him. His dream of marriage was turned into a night mare. It was to such a person that the angel spoke and announced that something good was going to come out of this bad situation. Mary’s pregnancy was actually the first step in completing God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece. “Behold a virgin shall be with child…”, so said the prophet, “and bring forth a son…and you shall call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:22, 23) Sin was the curse. Christ, God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece, was the cure. One father was desperately trying to explain God’s boundless goodness and matchless love and took his son to the top of a hill. From there they looked to the north, then to the east, south and west. Then sweeping his arm around the whole circling horizon, he said, “Johnny, my boy, God’s love is as big as all that.” “Why father,” the boy replied with sparkling eyes, “then we must be right in the middle of it.” When man kind opened God’s Time Capsule Masterpiece, we found ourselves standing in the middle of God’s matchless love. Merry Christmas! Pastor Jimmy & Bob

When God Came Close Enough to Sit on His Lap!

Christmas is not about glitter, garland and gifts. It’s about a Hero who stepped out of the pages of Bible into a cow shed and off the balconies of magnificence into a vermin filled barn. It’s about God.

• It’s about God the Mighty One becoming a mortal man.
• It’s about the Son of God becoming the Son of man so that we who are the sons of men might become the sons of God.

All and all, it is a Divine blend of the greatest of all mysteries and the crowning miracle of all ages. Paul’s words in I Timothy 3:16 are a marvelous representation of this fact. He said, “Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh…” When she cradled Jesus to her breast she was holding the God of the Universe in her arms.

It’s the story of a Savior who stepped out of the written Word to become the living Word of God.

Let the angels sing and the Shepherd’s rejoice. The birth of Christ was nothing less than God coming to town, coming so close that in time children could sit in His lap; lepers could experience His healing touch; a new bride and groom could stand amazed as He turned water into wine;

• Speaking as never man spoke,
• Seeking as never man sought
• Teaching as never man taught
• Fighting as never man fought
• And loving as no man ever loved before or since!
  

Christmas IS God with us…close enough to sit in His lap! May the heralds and carols of Christmas take on new meaning, and may we sing with fresh awe the songs of the season.

To realize that God did come close enough to sit in His lap adds new dimension to the glorious story of Christmas.

Number 1: It means that God knew we needed Him and could not get to Him so He came to us.

Cow sheds and hay lofts are accessible to down and outers as well as the socially elite. God came to the no names as well as the big names. The cow pokes (shepherds) on the back 40 got the first birth announcement in sound and living color. He got close enough to sit on our lap before we could sit on His.

I think it was Michelangelo that gave us that moving painting which depicted God and Adam reaching for each other, but their finger tips never touched. The birth of Christ closed the distance between the two. In Him, the Super (Jesus) met the natural (Adam), and the Supernatural was now in reach of man. Christmas is our access to the supernatural!

Number 2: It also conveys a clear message that God needed man.

God needed a super nanny and Mary met the requirements. The Bible says, “A virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son…” (Matthew 1:23) That simple phrase is an undisputable proof that God needed human kind in the process of redemption. Babies are dependent upon someone else for survival. God entrusted His Son to Mary as His guardian and caregiver when He was too tiny to care for Himself. We shrug it off, but Jesus had baby and adolescent needs just like your children and mine. Now what chores must Mary have tackled?

• Provided God a womb for a work in progress
• Changing soggy and soiled diapers
• Wiping a snotty nose
• Planning and preparing breakfast, dinner and supper and demanding that he eat everything on His plate before he was permitted to leave the table.
• Washing and ironing His dirty, sweaty clothes
• Medicating His upset stomach
• Nursing His scratches and bruises from falling off a tree limb or a scuffle with the local ruffian.
• She may also have done home schooling. Can you imagine telling the Son of God to go to His room and do His home work or telling Him He must bring His grades up before the next report cards are issued or He must stay in after school as a form of punishment?
  

Ask any mom or dad, and they can add to the list. Being close enough to sit on His lap, teaches us that He also needed a lap to sit on, and Mary gave Him one.

Number 3: It sheds new light on our value system. The real issue is not what kind of house do you live in this Christmas, but what do you bring or have in the house?

The historical account for the first Christmas reads like this. “And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph and the babe lying in a manger…” (Luke 2:16) That’s the unsophisticated story in a nut shell. The family was there. Jesus was there, and not much is said about anything else.

My mom taught me the real meaning of Christmas. Times were tough economically and the Christmas tree was going to be pretty bare. I was too young to realize it, but this was driving my mom nuts. She wanted to do more but couldn’t. So she did what he thought best under the circumstance. She invited me outside for a talk. Now normally that wasn’t a good sign, but in this case it was an epic. Short story. She told me that I should not expect a lot of presents because I would only be disappointed, but then she said something that was totally off the wall to me. “But”, she said, “This will be one of the greatest of all Christmas days because we will all be together. We are all healthy, and we will have extra oranges, apples and Butterfinger bars.” She left me an unforgettable lesson. The best things about Christmas are the things which money can not buy.

Remembering The Real Reason For Christmas!

Pastor Jimmy & Bob

A Genuine Faith Lift

When we do what we can, God will do what we can’t. We should also not that the difference between “can’t” and “can” is the magical power of faith.

This may surprise you, but faith is more than a funny face that we wear to church on Sunday morning. It’s a durable, dynamic, displacement for doubts and dread and despair! The Bible infuses the word faith with an unforgettable definition that leaves little to the imagination. Read it in I John 5:4 (The Message) “Every God-begotten person conquers the world’s ways. The conquering power that brings the world to its knees is our faith.”

Know this. Satan will sabotage your faith or your faith will sabotage Satan. One will win, and the other will lose. There is no middle ground or compromise, and there are no ribbons for second place. Faith, and faith alone, is the way to victorious living!

Many years ago an army was fighting gallantly to win a fierce battle that had begun to take its toll. Knowing the sinking morale and need for motivation, the general issued a rousing battle cry: “Onward to victory!” Half an hour later, an urgent message was returned to him: “Need more instructions. Victory is not on our maps.”

If victorious living is not on your map, you need a genuine faith lift. It’s benefits are voluminous.

#1. A faith lift will sanitize your mind.

Pollution is everywhere. It’s in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. Gossip is called “ear pollution.” Pornography is “eye pollution.” Hatred is nothing short of “mind and heart pollution.” Likewise, faith is being diluted and polluted to the point of becoming critical in many of our lives.

If faith is the victory, then faith must be down sized, minimized and compromised or we will exorcise the forces of evil and win a decisive victory.

Henry Edward Cardinal Manning once served as Archbishop of Westminster. It was during this period of his life that he suffered from the pollution of mental depression and darkening of his faith. In an attempt to sanitize his mind from this terrible experience, he went to a book store to purchase a book that he had written which was titled “Faith in God.”

When the book could not be found on the shelves, a clerk was sent to a storage area to see if he could locate it. In a few minutes, Manning heard a booming voice coming from the storage area saying, “Manning’s Faith in God is all gone.”

Strangely enough, that was the turning point in his faith walk. His mind was immediately sanitized by a strong, new burst of faith. He had a faith lift.

I love the words of James 1:3. It says, “The trying of your faith worketh patience. But let faith have her perfect work…”The perfect work of faith is to filter out pollution. It is the daring to go farther than you can see and assures us that when we do what we can God will do what we can’t.

#2. A faith lift will alleviate anxiety.

Anxiety is like a piece of second hand bubble gum sticking to the bottom of your shoe. It can slow you down but not keep you from where you are going.

Anxiety is the child of uncertainty and dread. It feeds off of a regular diet of fear and is schooled in the classroom of pessimism.

On the other hand, the Bible says, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…” Hope lights us our skies. Faith brings hope, and hope is the realistic expectation that things are going to get better not take a turn for the worse.

Alexander the Great knew something about hope. After setting out to conquer Asia, he realized that his army had family back home and may need resources for survival. He then distributed crown estates and revenues among them until practically all of his royal resources were disposed. One of his generals then asked what he had reserved for himself. “Hope,” answered the king. “In that case,” the inquirer replied, “we who share in your labors will also take part of your hopes.”

That’s what a genuine faith lift will do for you. It will bring all the hope of heaven into your night of despair.

#3. A faith lift will jump start the restoration of joy in your life.

It is predictable. When faith begins to fade, joy takes and unexcused absence from our lives. That’s another reason why we need a faith lift. It fuels the flame of joy, and as long as you have faith, you can have joy regardless of the circumstances.

Paul possessed this faith based joy and in II Corinthians 7:4 described it dramatically like this. “I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.” Verse 5 further describes their situation as being troubled on every side and being surrounded by fighting and surviving in an atmosphere of fear, but faith in God not only made it possible for them to be joyful but exceedingly joyful.

A faith lift will restore joy that doubt and uncertainties have destroyed. Faith allows you to think about yesterday without regret and tomorrow without fear and from that bed rock of faith flows an artesian of joy that circumstances can not dry up. Go to the Father and get your faith lift now.

Renewing Our Faith

Pastor Jimmy & Bob