Living a Gated Life

Living a Gated Life

Proverbs 4: 23, 26&27

23 Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

26 Ponder the path of your feet, And let all your ways be established.

27 Do not turn to the right or the left; Remove your foot from evil.

   The term "gated community" is used in real estate ads to describe a secure living community, one that is actively guarded.  It usually means that a wall with a gate surrounds the property, and everyone who goes in and out is monitored.  There is usually a guard who stands at the gate as extra security.  Residents who live in gated communities feel more secure because they know the entrances to their home are protected. 

   I’ve learned that my life needs to have some security to guard me against unwanted intruders.  There are a lot of temptations that will come right up to the door of your heart and barge right in and try to make themselves at home.  False teaching will creep in if you’re not careful.  It slides into the corners of your heart and lies in wait to spread its poison into your life.  The only way to keep your heart secure is to guard the door.  Proverbs 4 tells us to "guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life."   We need to monitor what we allow into our lives and block access to what is harmful to us.  If a burglar came to your door and knocked, you would not step back and say, Come on in!  Welcome!  Feel free take my jewelry, my TV and my money.  Take it all!”  No, of course not.  You’d slam the door in their face, lock it, and call the cops.  Or if a person comes and walks into your house and announces he’s a rapist and he’s looking for a victim, you’d defend your family. 

   We need to treat our hearts with as much caution.  When a temptation comes, don’t invite it in.  You can’t sit next to a temptation and think you’ll be safe.  If it’s there it’s a danger to you.  You can’t listen to false teaching and say, “I’ll just hear what they have to say.”  Don’t!  Keep false teaching away from your heart. 

   Gated communities require a lot of diligence 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  So does your heart.  You never know in advance when a temptation will come to you, so you must have a plan in mind so you will know how to react when one comes to you.  You must not let it have access to you heart.  No one will guard your heart for you.  It is your duty to keep your eyes on the truth and your feet on the right path. 

   A guarded heart will benefit us in many ways.  If we guard what we see and what we listen to, it will affect our whole lives.  There is so much in life that will turn our eyes and catch our ears if we let it.  It is no sin to be tempted, but it is if we dwell on the temptation.  In a guarded life we choose the right paths and do not swerve.  Our lives must be directed by His Word.  We need to live by the principles written there for us.

   Pray regularly and read the Word regularly.  Only the truth will keep your heart safe.

  

Stephen Cram                                                   April 27, 2014                                                  

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. 

Visit my pastor’s blog at http://pastorjonrhinehart.blogspot.com/.

Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King James Version of the Bible.

The Woman In Need

The Woman In Need

Mark 14:3

A woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

     As I read through the Easter story, I usually rush by her in my reading.  She was very emotional and I'm not comfortable with public displays of emotions. She broke with tradition and I like to keep things orderly.  She made a public demonstration and that makes me uncomfortable.  I don’t like to be around people who are making a spectacle of themselves. 

     She's just a footnote in the Easter week story, and I usually pass her by except this time I had a question pop into my head.  As I read about her pouring out her box of perfume and how she began to sob and her tears fell on Jesus’ feet and she wiped them off with her hair, I had to ask myself, "Do I love Him enough to do something like that in public?”  I’ve never come to Him with such a broken heart as she had.  I’ve never barged onto center-stage and interrupted anyone to make an offering to Him.

   Everyone who reads this knows how much she must have been hurting.  She was so broken-hearted she was unselfconscious about what she did in public.  And God honors a person who comes to Him with a broken heart.

Psalm 51:17

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart— These, O God, You will not despise.

   Is my public expression of affection towards Jesus too restrained, too meager, and too routine?  She was criticized for her "wasteful" display of passion, but Jesus said that what she did would be remembered forever. I look at this unnamed woman and ask myself, "Even if I were hurting, would I dare do something like that for Jesus?"  I look at her and am filled with mixed emotions.  I don’t know if I envy her or am thankful not to be her. 

   Lately I’ve seen a change begin in myself and I look at the world around me and see hurting people and compassion wells up inside me.  What if a hurting person needed to be ministered to?  Would I be willing to step up to a person who was drawing attention to themselves in public and pray for them?  Just speaking to people in public is difficult for me, what about if everyone was watching?  With so much pain and confusion in the world, I imagine I’ll get an opportunity to find out.

Stephen Cram                                                               April 20, 2014    

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. 

Visit my pastor’s blog at http://pastorjonrhinehart.blogspot.com/.

Join Pastor Jon Tuesday nights at 6:30 for Praise Chapel TV at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/praise-chapel-tv .

Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King James Version of the Bible.

Renewing My Mind

Renewing My Mind

Romans 12:2

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

   I always thought I needed to pray and wait on God to renew my mind.  I thought this was one of those “Divinely-given ” things God did to those who showed determination and spent time alone with Him meditating and focusing themselves to “get closer to God.”  I thought all I could do was pray and hope God would renew my mind.  I never realized renewing my mind was something that I could consciously do.  But when I read though this verse again, God through the pen of Paul tells me to be transformed by the renewing of my mind.  What a cruel god who would require me to do something and not give the way to do it?   The God I serve is not cruel nor is He unreasonable.  If He tells me to do something, He’s already given me what I need to do it. 

   As I study the four gospels and supplement them with the Book of Acts and the epistles, I become more and more renewed in my mind.  It is a natural consequence of studying His Word.  Another is that I see more and more how things written down all connect into one Gospel message and how Christ is the basis of all written there.  Hebrews 10:7 tells me that, “in the volume of the book, it is written of Me.”  When I first began studying the Word, I knew and accepted that this was true.  Over the past year and a few months of study, I can now tell you with certainty that this is so.  The Bible is written, in its entirety, about Christ.  

   This is one of those things that bring renewing of the mind and as you become renewed in mind you gain faith.  I used to pray, “God, give me faith.”  I know now that when I became born-again, the Holy Spirit came to live in me and I received faith.  I have faith, what I lacked was the confidence and the knowledge to stand in it.  

   So why am I learning all this at my age?  Why didn’t I see these truths years ago?  I’ve spent time studying God’s Word and I’ve sat under some pretty solid preaching and teaching.  What happened?  Well, I’m going to tell you.  It’s kind of a confession. 

   When the Sower came and sowed the seeds, the parable tells us that some fell among the weeds and the cares of this world choked them out.  In my life, there weren’t a whole jungle of weeds, but enough to distract me whenever I was close to growing too much.  This past year and a few months I’ve been in a very small, struggling church.  The Pastor has been preaching his heart to me week after week and I’ve struggled to assimilate what he’s been teaching.  I also dug into some teaching of some other men of God and, with encouragement from the pastor, I’ve begun reaching out and exercising my ministry to people I’ve met who were hurting. 

   Then the enemy came against me, and like the Bible says, he comes in like a flood.  I was hit with illness and discouragement and fear and other attacks to try to knock me down.  But what the enemy did in my life was violate one of the primary rules that outdoorsman learn.  When I was little, I lived at the foot of Mile Hill.  My backyard opened up to a woods area that covered a sizable amount of acreage on Mile Hill.  My three older brothers all knew the woods and wanted me to be safe.  One lesson they told me was if you spot something really dangerous, like a bear, DON’T attract its attention.  As one brother put it to me: if the bear is passing by, just let it go by.  I was passing through life thinking I was doing good for the Kingdom of God and really was passing through life peaceably and not really doing much.  When I stretched myself and growled at the enemy, it would have better if he’d let me just pass by and eventually I would have, knowing myself, gone off and slumbered again.  What happened was that he ran up to this bear and kicked me in the ribs. 

   One Bible teacher, whose recorded messages I’ve been listening to, said that a Christian will never be able to minister effectively until he gets fed up with losing to the enemy.  The last attack I went through combined with a Sunday morning attack on my pastor really got to me.  Figuratively speaking, my ribs hurt from that last couple of kicks.  But the difference is that I know just how his attacks are now, and I know he really doesn’t have the power to stand up against the power of Jesus’ name.  To quote this teacher, “God knows the devil is defeated, the devil knows he’s defeated, only you have to be convinced the devil is defeated.  What has happened in my life is that I’ve lost my fear of being attacked and I’m just getting mad.  I’m mad about losing so many fights and I’m mad about fumbling so many opportunities and I’m mad about all the wasted years in my life.  I’m mad about the weeds in my life and the teaching I’ve heard has given me a super charge of spiritual Round-Up®.  I’m going after those weeds and clearing the ground so the Word will grow bigger in my life and I will produce more fruit. 

Stephen Cram                                                              April 13, 2014     

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. 

Visit my pastor’s blog at http://pastorjonrhinehart.blogspot.com/.

Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King James Version of the Bible.

How To Build The Church

How To Build The Church

Ephesians 4:11 Amplified Bible

And His gifts were [varied; He Himself appointed and gave men to us] some to be apostles (special messengers), some prophets (inspired preachers and expounders), some evangelists (preachers of the Gospel, traveling missionaries), some pastors (shepherds of His flock) and teachers.

   We learn from Paul’s writings that the Holy Spirit gave a task to the Apostles; they were to preach the gospel and lay the foundation of the Church.  But as I study the lives of three Apostles, Peter, Paul and John, I see that each had a specific function in laying this foundation.  Peter’s ministry was not like Paul’s ministry, and neither was like John’s.  In a book by Watchman Nee, he suggested that we can learn how these three Apostles’ ministries differed by the tasks that each of these men was performing when God called them.

   Peter was a fisherman and was in the act of fishing when he was called.  Jesus saw him putting a net into the sea and told Peter to follow Him and be a fisher of men.  Peter’s ministry was very much like being a fisherman.  He was the one who initiated a lot of things.  He was first to jump into things and introduced things to the Church.  Paul was a tentmaker by trade.  He made tents and structures from canvas and wood.  He built things and we see his ministry being one of building.  He built new churches.  He went where there were no churches and built one there.  A tentmaker used native materials – things that were handy to where he was working - to build things and Paul used native populations  - people who were living there - to build churches. John was different from both.  He was also a fisherman by trade, but when Jesus called him he was mending his nets.  John was known as the Apostle of love and one characteristic of his ministry was mending people.  His writings show this.  He wrote later than the other New Testament writers, after the Church had been around for a few decades.  When he wrote, it was during a time when apostasy was beginning to creep into the Church.  There was a need for mending the people in the Church and bringing them back to Jesus and back to His love and back to the true Gospel.   When a church begins to drift away from Jesus and from the Gospel there is a need for a mender to come and repair the damage in the church and untangle things and make them right again.

   So Peter’s task was to lay foundations and introduce new ideas to the Church.  He was the one chosen by the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel the first time in Jerusalem and he was chosen to first introduce Gentiles into what had been an all-Jew Church.  Paul took Peter’s foundations and built new churches.  He built churches on the foundation and called people to Christ and trained new ministers.  John showed God’s love to all he met.  He brought love to broken churches and truth to Christians who were tangled in the web of deceit and led them back to Jesus.

   What is your heart like?  How do you see yourself in a ministry?  There is a need for all three of these types in our churches today.  We need those who start things going and push people to get out of the pew and get involved.  We need the builder; the one who rolls up their sleeves and gets into the nuts-and-bolts of ministry.  And we need the mender; the one who calms the storm and untangles the errors that come into the church from time to time.  In many years in church I’ve often heard, “I don’t have any talents.  I can’t do anything.”  Not true.  We all have talents and we all have a part to play in the ministry of the church.  Rather than make excuses, pitch in and help!  There’s a lost world out there that needs to hear the Gospel. 

Stephen Cram                                                            April 6, 2014                           

Colossians 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, following the tradition of men according to the rudiments of the world, and not in accordance with Christ. 

Visit my pastor’s blog at http://pastorjonrhinehart.blogspot.com/.

Join Pastor Jon Tuesday nights at 6:30 for Praise Chapel TV at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/praise-chapel-tv .

Unless otherwise noted all Scripture is from the New King James Version of the Bible.