Facebook is a god.

..In the lives of many true Christians, Facebook is a god. They spend more time on Facebook than they do studying the Word of God, more than they do communing with God in prayer. Before they go to sleep they say, "Good night FB", or when they wake up in the morning, "Good Morning FB", as if Facebook is a person (a god)..... as soon as they leave church (& in church) they are on Facebook... The enemy is very subtle. You must always guard yourself. As John said it explicitly, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (1 John 5:21)

Waiting... & Praying

...While my family and I were waiting almost an hour to be seating at a restaurant on Valentines day the Holy Spirit reminded me that if one desires to spend more time with Christ in prayer, we have the opportunity during these idol moments when our minds can wonder impatiently. Instead of texting, playing a game.... You can simply close your eyes, bow your head.. and talk to Christ during that time. We often complain about the fact that we have little time to study His Word & commune with Him in prayer. People may look at you funny or think you are sleeping... But the Father will enjoy that extra time spent with you. But honestly, this is an area in which we must discipline ourselves in.

The Father's Bargain (Awesome Read)

This is amazing! I heard it the first time through my favorite preacher of all time (Paul Washer). The way John imagines & articulates this conversation between the Son & Father is wonderful. I had to put it near my desk at work; I read it at least once a day. It just makes you want to worship Christ all the more for what He has done for us. I hope all who read it are blessed by it. I need to purchase this entire book.


Introduction: Here you may suppose the Father to say when driving his bargain with Christ for you.

Father: “My Son, here is a company of poor miserable souls, that have utterly undone themselves, and now lie open to my justice! Justice demands satisfaction for them, or will satisfy itself in the eternal ruin of them: What shall be done for these souls?

Son: “O Father, such is my love to, and pity for them, that rather than they shall perish eternally, I will be responsible for them as their guarantee; bring in all thy bills, that I may see what they owe thee; Lord, bring them all in, that there may be no after-reckonings with them. At my hand shall you require it. I will rather choose to suffer their wrath than they should suffer it: upon me, my Father, upon me be all their debt.”
Father: “But, my Son, if thou undertake for them, thou must reckon to pay the last mite, expect no abatement; if I spare them, I will not spare thee.”

Son: “Content Father, let it be so; charge it all upon me, I am able to discharge it: and though it prove a kind of undoing to me, though it impoverish all my riches, empty all my treasures, I am content to undertake it.

..We Found Another Way To Breathe

I watched a fish one time lay on its side immobilized, gasping for oxygen until after a couple minutes it stopped. From the moment that fish was born it lived totally submerged under water because it was created to do so. The anatomy of a fish is built to survive only under water. Outside of the presence of water it slowly dies.
Thought we have been created for Him, created to worship Christ, created to exalt Him with every ounce of our being, created to abide in His presence, We’ve developed an artificial respiratory system which allows us to breath and live outside of His presence.
A fish will know when it leaves it’s source of life; yet we can leave out the presence of God and not know it because it has no effect on our lives. Some can go days without talking with the Lord, hours without even thinking about Him. Reading His Word has become a chore; yet we loose ourselves in sitcoms, reality shows, and websites; time seems to just disappear when we are away from the Father doing what we enjoy; yet time seems to go so slow when we are in His presence. Like that fish, when I am away from Him (not talking to Him, not meditating on His Word) something shouldn’t feel right. If I go five minutes and not say so much as, “Lord, I love you!” I should start gasping for air because He is my source of life.
Jesus said many profound statements, but this one is very unique. He says to His Father, “I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was (John 17:4-5). He said glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. To Jesus the Father was His everything. He did only what the Father asked & desired. He obeyed His Father with perfect submission & excellence. He would often steal away from the crowd early in the morning just to sit with the Father and pray. He couldn’t survive without the Father. Have you ever done this? Have you ever had to just get away from everyone & everything and be with Him. Every moment He lived, He lived to glorify the Father. To be away from the Father was devastating, even for the purposes of redeeming humanity. At the exact moment He finished His work on earth He says to the Father I want everything to go back to the way it use to be, when it was just us (the Godhead). Remember when you first got saved and how zealous you were for God? Everything that came out of your mouth was,” God this, God that.. Christ this, Christ that.” Every service you sat on the front row, on time to prayer. You would spend hours in His Word and get lost in the pages of scripture. Everything else came second to your relationship with the Lord. But then something happened. The amazing thing about material things is that they get old fast, they become obsolete quickly, some thing else takes its place. Though God is awesome in every way, beyond our feble imaginations… in time, we treat Him as though He was a material possession that becomes obsolete, the trill is gone, the newness wears off…. We find another way to breathe; something else to look at.
While Jesus lived His sinless life on the earth He remained in the bosom of the Father, always in close proximity & communion. While on the cross Christ bore the sins of all humanity and for the first time in His life, God wasn’t there. He says at about the ninth hour, “E’li, E’li, La’-ma sa-bach’-tha-ni?” that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Something happened at the exact moment the sins of all humanity feel upon the Son. At that exact moment, for the first time in all of history, eternity.. God turned His face from the Son, and Jesus felt it. He knew at that moment He wasn’t close to the Father. He cries out for the Father and asks why have you forsaken me, yet He receives no answer. To be away from the Father, away from the only One most important.. He had no more strength, no more energy… It wasn’t the nails, the crown of thorns, the exhaustion or suffocation that causes him to breathe His last breath. He was no longer close to the Father. The weight of not feeling the presence of God. “Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielding up the ghost” (Matt 27:50).

Worship Interrupted

What is interrupting your worship?

Yesterday during Thursday night service something amazing happened. For almost the entire year I’ve been burdened by numerous things, nothing uncommon, the usual cares of life that everyone has been a victim of. Lately it has been the attempt to launch this clothing company that has plagued my mind and has caused me to loose sleep (amazing how I allow something so trivial to do this). Particularly it has been all the issues I’ve been having with the development if our official website. As the service began we all just began to worship; in the beginning it was a struggle because my thoughts were on this website (and not entirely on Christ). Prior to the service I was reviewing the site and I discovered some glitches with the online store. Initially it really upset me because I had plans to launch Prafetic this weekend. As the worship continued I had to fight through my thoughts; in the spirit it felt like I was trying to swim against the tide, or like I was trying to climb out of quick sand…. But after a while, after fighting for about fifteen minutes I broke through and I began to worship Christ; my mind was off everything else and solely on Him. Soon the presence of the Lord was so heavy in the place I had no choice but to fall to my knees in reverence and continue to worship my Savior…. and that is when the Lord began to speak to my heart. He began to simply talk with me about how my worship has been interrupted. Not necessarily during this service alone but in general, my life. One minute I find myself walking by faith with all focus & power; with an attitude that nothing can stop me in Christ, nothing can steal my joy and my peace… The next minute, literally two or three hours later I’m worrying about something; I’m asking God why is this happened? It is no coincidence that I asked my wife to pray that I would have consistency with my faith, with my trust in God to do everything that His Word says that He will do. So the Lord began to speak to me about how things were interrupting my worship towards Him. He began to say, “ If there is nothing to hard for Me, why are you worrying (Matt 18:14)? If nothing is impossible for me why are you worrying (Matt 19:26)? If the earth is Mine and everything in it, why do you worry (Psalm 24:1)? If I have promised to supply all of your needs why are you worrying (Phil 4:19)? If I have said you can move mountains, that you can have everything that you have spoken (Mark 11:23-24), that I will direct your path if you simply trust Me with all of your heart and lean not to your own understand (Prov 3:5-6)…. If I have promised that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for you (Prov 13:22), If I have promised my peace (John 14:27), my joy unspeakable (Psalm 16:11), my rest (Matt 11:28), why are you burdened?.... If I have said to you that righteous are never forsaken (Psalm 37:25), what is the problem? If I have said all things will work together for you good (Rom 8:28), why are you worrying about this website? Do you believe me? So much of my time has been spent (wasted) worrying and not believing.

After the service the Spirit of the Lord continued to talk with me about how my worship is being interrupted. He began to tell me how before the fall nothing interrupted Adams worship towards God; there was constant communication, immediate obedience. After the fall it was interrupted and his worship was never the same, never as consistent as it was ordained to be. Through out His thirty-three years on earth nothing interrupted Jesus’ worship towards His Father; He didn’t allow anything to get in the way. God began to say to me that there is enough in His Word to keep me motivated, to keep me trusting, to keep me from wavering, to keep me from becoming burdened, to keep me forever loving Him and remaining focused on Him. Passages like, ‘I have loved thee with an ever lasting love, with loving kindness have I drawn thee (Jer 31:3).” Passages like, “Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered..blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (Romans 4:7)”… Oh, passages like, “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:10)”… These passages and all the others are our sources, our endless wells of joy and happiness, ammunition we use to fight the demonic spirit of worry; but are we in His Word like we should be? And if we are in His Word like we should be do we believe His Word? I am learning that believing is more than saying, “I believe!” Actions, conduct, attitude, disposition accompany belief. If God said He has supplied all my needs I can be happy and joyful even though the bill is still outstanding and I have no money in my bank account simply because He said He would supply my needs. In my own life I can honestly say for the most part it has been the opposite. I say over and over again I believe but if you look at my face.. at my attitude, you wouldn’t believe I trust God. If I actually had the money in my hand you would see a different me. I say I believe God but I don’t act like I believe God. We don’t have to every worry again for the remainder of our life. Can you even wrap your mind around living a life where you never worry about anything, despite what happens? So many things interrupt our worship, but there is something about ‘worry’ that I believe hurts and offends God. It is so easy to worry and so hard to simply believe at times. People have worried themselves to the point of death. Jesus made a statement that I absolutely love and I believe He meant it to be a little humorous. He said, “Who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life (Matt 6:37)?” In other words, who by worrying can change anything. Worrying does not move God, faith moves God. He said without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). He said by faith all things are possible. And it’s a fight. Paul says, “Fight the good fight of faith (1 Tim 6:12)”. Jesus comforted Peter and said, “I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not (Luke 22:32)”.

When we get to heaven nothing is going to interrupt our worship and I believe even on earth Christ has the power to bring us to the place where nothing interrupts our worship; because when your worship is interrupted you are liable to offend and sin against your Savior. Faith is so valuable. God desires all of you… young person, adult, all of you… not just a part of you. He desires and deserves our full and undivided attention.

What is interrupting your worship?

Just thinking (In the Car, God's Mercy)

This morning as I was driving to work some thoughts came to mind about our relationship with God. We are in a relationship with a God who is omniscient. He is The God who knows everything about us. He knows our thoughts before you even think them. Before we were born He knew us. Every choice we make, every decision we make, God already knows before it happens. It is difficult for many to wrap their minds around the omniscience of God.

I began to imagine the relationship that I have with my daughter Makiyah. Although she is only two I can still use her in this illustration. Let’s say that similar to God I am omniscient in that I know everything about my daughter and everything she will ever do in her life in the same way that God knows everything about us. I know every decision she will make… So my daughter loves me.. She always says to me, “Daddy, I love you”… She is always thankful for all that I do for her, for providing for her, for giving her everything that she needs… She is always saying, “Daddy, I will obey what you say”… In everything that she says to me I simply respond back with, “I love you too hun”, “Yes, I will provide all of your needs hun,”….. Because I am omniscient I know that two weeks later, despite what my daughter says to me today at this moment, I know she will knowingly disobey me on Tuesday morning at 8:56am. I know that on Wednesday at 2:15 in the morning she is going to lie to me…. I know that on Friday, she is going to totally ignore me and focus on herself. But I don’t change. I don’t love her any less. And I don’t respond to her today based on what she will do in the future. I deal with her and correct her in the future.

I then began to think about our relationship with God in the same way… despite all of our worship… despite all we say on Sunday morning, despite how much we read, study, pray.. despite how many tears we shed.. despite how many times we repent…, despite all of our promises, God still loves us… knowing all the horrible things we will do the next day. We sometimes shout, cry, worship God zealously on Sunday morning… but on Monday we live as if we don’t even have a relationship with Him, or as if He can’t see all that we do. God doesn’t change; He still accepts our prayers, our worship, our thank you’s, out petitions.. He still blesses us, still protects us, knowing that we are not faithful… Knowing everything we will do, He doesn’t respond today based on tomorrow.

God’s mercy, His love is amazing. God can do this because He is God, and because He knows that we are in the process of perfection (sanctification). It will not be like this always. God Himself will see to it that we arrive to that place where we are consistently, habitually, doers of His Word…