It’s all my fault, is not a phrase that you expect to hear all the time. My three year old daughter will tell me this when she gets in trouble. Most of the time we hear people say it’s not my fault. They begin to blame everyone from parents, grandparents, teachers, preachers, even society in general. No body wants to accept the guilt for their own actions much less the actions of others. With society falling to pieces and the family falling right behind it, we need to start finding out who is really responsible for it. Well allow me to be the first to say I accept responsibility for what is going on in the United States. You might want to argue but allow me to continue before you turn me off. The world does exactly what it has been taught to do. They don’t know any better. We the church need to begin to take the responsibility that is ours to bare. You see we have the manual on how to live life amongst everyone. Nehemiah said it best when he was broken over the state of Jerusalem. We find these words is chapter one starting in verse six. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel which we have sinned against you. Even I and my fathers house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly again you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.(Nehemiah 1: 6-7 ESV) Did you see that. He said he sinned. Why because he didn’t do what was expected of him. We are expected to share Jesus with a lost and dying world. We should be going and making disciples. Will that fix everything that is wrong in our country? Probably not, but it sure would help. We have generations who have no clue who Jesus is. Why??? Because we the church, I as a pastor have sinned and not done what the Master has called me to do. You see it is my fault as well as yours.
Tag: Sin
Journeys are all different
I have been thinking about the journey we make to the saving knowledge of Christ. For some it is almost like they have always been saved. That is a nice thought, but not at all true. You see regardless of the amount of time you spent in the church house growing up doesn’t mean that you automatically got saved. It had to be a time in your life that you realized your lost condition and accept the payment Jesus paid for you. We don’t get saved by osmosis. Then for some of us we had a radical life changing experience. The difference in your life was noticeable to you as well as all the people around you. These transformations seem to get more glory as the story is told. We read about Paul and how he had the Damascus Road experience and it radically changed him. Those are awesome stories to hear. My point in this short post is to say that it doesn’t matter how your journey happened to Christ, the important thing is that it happened. For some it happens as a child, like for three of my boys, some not until adulthood sometime, like for myself, yet there are some that don’t make the completion of the journey until they are knocking on deaths door. However it happens doesn’t matter the important thing is that it happens. Don’t be like so many that think they have something because mom, dad, or grandma had it. Or because they walked the isle shook a preachers hand got dunked and then lived anyway the jolly well please. You see when you really get saved there is a change, you won’t want to do the same things that you have always done. You won’t want to live in a lifestyle of sin. So today before you get up from where you are make sure that Heaven is your home.
Fight Fight Fight
Our en
emy has decided to try and destroy the very framework of what God has established. We find parents and children at odds with each other. You now have the same sex marriages, and then you have the people who don’t even get married figuring it is less to have to deal with if things go bad. God created marriage to be between one man and one woman for life. People now days get to the point sometimes that they don’t even want to fight for once they believed they couldn’t live without. I am not saying that our children are not important. But your spouse has to be the second thing in your life. After all who is going to be around when the kids grown up. I can only imagine how hard it is to live in a blended family. You have people pushing and pulling from all sides. Please understand me when I say that if our enemy can destroy the marriage the home will also fall. You see kids tend to fall into the same cycle that their parents went through. Not all kids follow those steps but it does happen. People please hear my plea when I say that your marriage is worth fighting for. I have been down the road when I or my wife were prepared to walk and God put people around us that wouldn’t let that happen. If our marriages fail our houses will fall and then our society will crumble after that. It is time that we the people of God stand up and fight for our marriages and partner to fight for others.
Sin sent the Shooter
The world co
ntinues to have tragic things take place. I often hear why would your loving God allow things like this to happen. I would like to take a minute to talk about that in two different ways. First, God allows things to happen, He doesn’t cause them. Second, you and I are both free to make good choices just as we can make bad choices. Let’s tackle the first why would God allow tragic events to take place. This is going to be hard for all of us to stomach, but the Bible says that there is good to come out of everything Romans 8:28. You see God is sovereign and everything that takes place He knows about and will use to benefit those who love Him or draw people to his Son. I know that you are probably struggling with this right now. We have so called churches such as Westboro baptist saying that God sent the shooters to that nightclub in Orlando to kill those people. That is the furthest thing from the truth. You see why would a loving God want people to die in their sin and die and go to hell. Yes I said that. I can’t condemn people nor can I say what was in their heart toward Jesus. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. 1 John 3:9 God sent His only Son that no one would perish and go to hell. If God wanted something done He could do it much like Sodom. You see so to say that God would send shooters to kill people in the craziest thing that I have heard. Maybe those of you saying that should sue your brain for non support. So let’s talk about the free will that you and I posses. You see it is due to the first that you have free will. Because God is sovereign that you are not some mindless robot. You get to decide good or bad. Yes each choice carries with it consequences and rewards. What I want you to realize is that if you were a mindless robot God would have never sent Jesus to show His love for you and I. Don’t get caught up with the small picture. People are prone to evil. We are born with that tendency. It is easier to do that then the right thing. It doesn’t help when we are filled with other people feelings or attitudes. To briefly talk about the shooter and who sent him. This man was filled with hate from a religion that is all about hatred. He was taught and entrenched with false doctrines and false beliefs. He was sincere in his thoughts no doubt that he was doing god a favor and the public too. After all one of his cults main leaders said that you are doing them a favor by killing them. Now we have a so called baptist church spreading the same hate doctrine. I am not saying that God is ok with this lifestyle, what I am saying is that God would have wasted His time in sending Jesus if He was just going to send shooters to kill people who are lost in their sins. Sin sent the shooter.
What if or Why not?
Ever been posed with the question, What if this Jesus stuff isn’t real? Or maybe you have thought about that yourself. For me this is a question that plagued me for many years. What if? I would pretend to be a follower of Jesus with my Sunday mornings or even some of my money. But as soon as I got out of there it was back to life as normal. I would ask myself the question what if it isn’t real? Why would I want to devote myself to something that may or may not be real? I had seen the power of God in other people’s lives, but never in my own. After all why would God allow my grandpa and dad to die within a year? Why would He allow my mom to get messed up and lose her children into foster care? Why would we be bounced around from here to there without the slightest show of affection? If God were real why would all of this happen to me? I have to say that based upon my past, my future didn’t look too bright. I had to make it on my own, because nobody was going to hand me anything. I kept pushing on, even after what seemed like mistake after mistake. All the while believing that I was doing it on my own. After all in my mind why would I devote myself to a God who didn’t care about me? Well then it happened! The answer to my question was given to me. I was able to discover that this Jesus thing was real. I understood why people devoted their lives to Him. You might be saying right now, how? Well, in christianese I got saved. In plain man’s talk, I began a one on one relationship with Jesus the Son of God. I finally realized that everything that had happened in my life and been carefully planned out by the very Creator of the Universe. You see as a 6-year-old kid when life falls apart you don’t understand anything. God spoke to me through His Word and explained that everything that had happened in my life had to happen to make me who He wanted me to be. So have I ever asked the question What If? Yes. Now I know that the answer is yes Jesus is real and I want to devote my entire life to Him, because He gave His life for me. You know He will do it for you also. All you have to do is Admit that you are a sinner (that means you have broken the ten commandments), Believe Jesus really paid the price for your sins (Hung on a cross and died not because He deserved to but for you), and Confess that you want to be saved (start a one on one relationship with Jesus). See it really is that easy. So why ask what if? Why not ask Why not?
I have a cure for cancer, you want to know????
Have you ever gone to a movie that was just awesome? Didn’t you want to tell someone? What about a restaurant that had really good food and service? Didn’t you share that information with someone? Have you gotten a nice haircut? When someone asks about it don’t you tell him or her? What if you were diagnosed with a terminal cancer and you went to the one doctor who had a cure? But what if the cure cost a million dollars and he told you not to worry about it that he would pay for it. What if he told you everyone that you send to him, he will do the same thing for him or her. I bet that you would want to tell everyone that you could. Well let me take the next view moments of your time and tell you that I have met a man who can cure cancer. Want to know who it is? His name is Jesus Christ and He has the cure for the cancer called sin. This cancer is so bad that it has infected every person who has ever been born into this world. There is no one that is immune to the disease or the impact it has upon your life. Sin will kill you sure enough. But I know a Great Physician that has a cure for it and has paid the price for you to have the cure. The Bible says that if you will call upon the name of the Lord that you will be saved. What that means is that if you will call out to Jesus, that He will heal you of your sin cancer. It is only Jesus that holds the cure. Have you made the call? I would challenge all to make this call. There is not one person that will be able to beat this cancer without Jesus.
Judge Me Not or Help Me Yes
Here is a phrase that I am sure everyone has heard and probably even said once or twice. Judge not unless you want to be judged. Sound familiar? It is something that we say when we are doing something we shouldn’t be doing or you confront someone else. You might also hear people in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks. Sometimes we get so caught up in these phrases that we are afraid to even say anything to someone who is headed down the wrong road. After all don’t we all have problems of our own? Why should we worry ourselves with someone else’s problems? Besides they are just going to pop off with one of the above comments. Well let’s take a moment and explain the first phrase. Judge not is talking about casting an eternal judgment on someone. We don’t have the ability to understand our own hearts much less someone else’s heart. We are called by Jesus to be fruit inspectors. If you were a corn farmer and you began to have cotton grow in your fields wouldn’t you want to know why? We should never try to tell someone what is in their heart when they do something. Our job is to look at the fruit and help them produce the right fruit for the right fields. I know that people will take offense sometimes when you call them out on something. Don’t you? It is all in how you say things. If you don’t have a relationship with the person it will never be received well. I heard someone once say Rules before a Relationship always breeds Rebellion. That is true in every sense of the word. So what about you? Are you just trying to Judge Me or do you want to Help Me?
Thoughts from Pastor Toney 