Devotionals
Too Much to Carry
Most likely you’ve watched a movie where a large amount of treasure was found in some Egyptian tomb. As the group were escaping a disaster, one would fill his pockets with gold, diamonds, or some other treasure and would end up not making it out because he attempted to carry too much stuff.
That reveals much about life. Many people attempt to accumulate too much stuff and it weighs them down. The 1950’s led to a new type business venture known as the self-storage industry. Today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. 65% of those renting long term have a garage and 33% have a basement. There must not be enough room in these. There are more storage units in America than McDonalds and Starbucks combined.
Material stuff costs us money and can complicate our lives. We have to insure it, clean it, repair it and be accountable for it. We refuse to let go of the stuff. Stuff can hinder our lives physically and spiritually. There is even spiritual stuff we carry around that weigh us down. We carry around unforgiveness, hurt feelings, bad relationships. We even carry around our hobbies, sports, money, recreation, leisure, and many other things that rob us from a close relationship with the Lord.
Nurturing stuff of all kinds will never satisfy the intimacy that comes from obeying God’s direction for us. We are just passing through this world. Give some thoughts about the things you are self-storing in your life. Are they slowing you down? There is too much to miss out on by carrying too much around with us.
Bro. Larry
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A New Year, A New You
“Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Proverbs 29:18 KJV
Many of you are like me and have given the majority of your life to the church. There are both ups and downs but I wouldn’t want to trade my experiences for anything. The church is based on the reality that we are the body of Christ – living, breathing, and doing what His work is.
Take time to examine your life in Christ in direct correlation to your involvement in the body (church). In order for any church to be successfully moving the congregation through positive actions and attitude we need to be sure of a few things.
The Right View of God’s Church
No matter how messed up the church universal or even our local church, we have to believe in it. Here is the right view: the church is the hope of the world – when it’s working right. We are the hope for your children, grandchildren, etc. In Jesus’ words, we are “the light of the world.” In getting the view right, we need to understand that the church isn’t a building. The church is the people of God.
The Right View of Self
You and I are saved by grace through faith, and this is not of ourselves, it is of God. And every converted sinner is a saved sinner delivered from sin and wrath. Thus, since we are all members of God’s family, we are not perfect (there will be faults and sins) but we have a perfect God who has forgiven us by His marvelous grace. We are described as a new creation in Christ (2nd Corinthians 5:17).
The Right View of Worship
Worship is giving God His worth-ship (the honor and praise He rightly deserves). We primarily think of worship in a public setting through the local church. Do we give our all to Him in worth-ship in our daily living? Think about that.
Bro. Larry
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Revival
During a revival service in 2006, a Pentecostal church in Oklahoma saw a 58 year-old man suffer a heart attack and fall back into his pew. Since people around were experiencing God, they assumed him to have become overtaken by the service. At the end of an extremely long service at 11PM, when the service wound down, people noticed that the man had not moved for at least two hours. They also noticed he was blue. That’s when they knew something was wrong.
They called 911 while people prayed passionately for the man’s healing but he was “pretty cold by then,” says one observer. The ambulance arrived and took him to the county hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The pastor responded to the media with, “We want people to meet with God at our meetings, but not face to face.”
I’m sure that placed a new emphasis on the remainder of the revival services.
We can define revival as a period of unusual blessing and activity in the life of the church. Revival means awakening, stimulating the life, bringing it to the surface again. Revival is not intended to cause death but to bring life to individuals and to the church. It happens in the church amongst believing people, and affects those that are outside also. Now this is a most important point, because this definition helps us to differentiate, once and for all, between a revival and an evangelistic campaign. An evangelistic campaign is the Church deciding to do something with respect to those who are outside. A revival is not the Church deciding to do something and doing it. It is something that is done to the Church, something that happens to the Church.
Bro. Larry
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Work Life
“Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.” Exodus 20:9-10
Earlier this week on Monday we celebrated a holiday called “Labor Day.” We tend to celebrate it as the last big fling of summer with cook-outs, trips to the lake, etc. Labor Day was created in the early 1900s to allow workers a day off from their labors as an honor for their efforts. In 1940, the revised Fair Labor Standards Act established the 40-hour workweek. Any work above 40 hours was classified as overtime and required a higher rate of pay.
Yet some successful businessmen, organizations, and governments feel we need to be logging more of our 168 weekly hours at work. Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba (China’s version of Amazon), “is a big fan of extreme overwork” and recently praised the “996” schedule. Those numbers stand for 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. 6 days per week. Ma, the richest man in China, called the 12-hour workday a “blessing.” Even the state-run media railed against Ma’s blog about work and called the 996 “unfair and impractical.” Tesla’s Elon Musk claims “nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.”
Uber used to rally behind the slogan, “work smarter, harder, and longer,” and WeWork uses its co-working spaces to post the phrase, “don’t stop when you’re tired; stop when you’re done.”
There is sufficient research that shows that people who work more than 55 hours a week “perform worse than those who go home at a normal hour and rest.” Work was God’s gift to man before the Fall, but the curse of sin has altered work and our understanding of it ever since.
Bro. Larry
* Quotes referenced in Newsweek.
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Giving Up the Pacifier
“For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat.” Hebrews 5:12
If you are familiar with the comic strip “Peanuts” you probably know about Linus. Linus is always walking around carrying his security blanket and never gives it up to anyone for any reason. There are people in our churches who are like Linus carrying around their security blankets. They need to hold onto something because they think Jesus isn’t enough. They want Jesus plus something else. But, Jesus plus anything else is nothing.
These are people who may hold onto their good works to determine if they are good enough. They hold to their denominational ties, their family heritage, pride and personal preferences thinking that is what it takes – plus Jesus.
Giving up these security blankets is similar to a child giving up their pacifier. One father said he talked his daughter into giving up her pacifier when she was two and they threw it in the dumpster hoping to never see it again. A week later at the mall parking lot there was a dumpster by one of the entrances. She quickly cried thinking her pacifier was in there.
If we are going to be grow up spiritually, we will have to give up our security blankets and pacifiers. As we do, we need a stronger desire to move from milk to meat that we might grow in the Lord. If we ask many of our Christian friends if they are stronger in their walk for Christ than they were five or ten years ago, many would have to honestly say, “No.” They just might be holding on to their pacifiers.
Bro. Larry
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Fast Food
“I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the LORD.” Psalm 122:1
The convenience of purchasing fast food makes for an easy dinner decision at the end of a long and sometimes stressful day, especially during the summer months. It takes no planning, provides no stress, and seems to make everyone happy. There’s no need to plan a menu, spend time cooking, or spend time interacting with family and friends. We tend to do the same with our spiritual food.
In the mornings, we rush out the door on our way to work, school, or some other venture and having no thought of godly things. In the evenings, we’re tired and worn down. It’s easier to settle down with the television, the laptop, or some video game instead of a healthful diet of God’s Word, prayer, and meaningful conversations with the family. It’s more convenient, less stressful, doesn’t take much planning and requires minimal interaction with others which can sometimes provide minimal conflict. We just sit and let the media develop our minds or we dose off into a trance.
Think about weekends. It’s easier to spend late nights at the movies or in front of the television or some other technical gadget than to develop a spiritual menu of church attendance, Bible reading and study, Scripture memorization, prayer, and meditation. It’s no wonder many so-call good Christians miss Sunday services on a regular basis or come with blank looks, sleepy eyes, and cold hearts unprepared to worship.
Take time for God, His worship, His house, and your personal spiritual health during the lazy crazy days of summer.
Bro Larry
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Pastor Jesus Saves
“There is salvation in no one else! God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” Acts 4:11
I was on my way home from preaching a funeral one afternoon and passed a church with a sign that read:
Pastor: Jesus Saves
I was amused thinking what a great name for a pastor, “Rev. Jesus Saves.” The message is clear. Over the years, I’ve had a few fellow Christians give their personal testimony and they would include, “Remember how you saved me?” I know that what they really meant was that I was the one to point to (and lead them through) the plan of salvation. But only Jesus saves.
Some people rely upon other people believing that the pastor or their parents saved them. Others think that their good works saved them – by doing enough good things. Still others think that a lack of extreme sins will save them: “I didn’t do anything real bad so I’m sure that I must be saved.” This is the story of so many that church attendance, baptism, membership, etc., will save them.
When the world needed deliverance from sin (to be saved), Jesus comes along; the man who knew freedom from sin and took the penalty for our sin. That is what the cross is all about. On the cross Jesus took the punishment that sinners deserved and freed us from the consequences of sin. Because Jesus accepted the sentence of death that we deserved, in Christ we are free from the penalty of sin.
And we must call upon Him for our salvation. John 3:16 says it so clearly, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth upon Him should not perish but have ever-lasting life [be saved].”
Bro. Larry
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Precious Dad Moments 2
“Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.” (Eph 6:2)
Following the long graduation ceremony on the day of my graduation from college, my dad who was not a person to show his son open emotions, put his arm around me with a big hug. And I’m not sure but for the first time in my life, I think I saw a single tear in his eye. This from a dad that during my first year in college attempted to share comments that would encourage me to drop out. After all, no one else in my family graduated from college. Even dad made it well on a first grade education. But by the middle of my second year if I had quit to drop out, I’m not sure but I believe I would have gotten a tongue lashing to remember. That graduation day in the hot sun of the football stadium was definitely a “Dad Moment.”
Since almost 40% of kids grow up without dad at home and many are raised in abusive environments, not everyone has precious memories of their fathers. But many do. Honor your dads on Father’s Day and take time to reflect on a few “Dad Moments.” Here are a couple from the scrap book of life.
Precious Dad Moment # 1
One night a wife found her husband standing over their newborn baby’s crib. Silently she watched as he stood looking down on the sleeping infant. He stood back, shook his head and smiled from ear to ear.
Touched by his unusual display and the deep emotions it aroused, her eyes glistened as she slipped her arms around his and said, “A penny for your thoughts.”
“Isn’t it amazing!” he replied, “When you take the time and really look close, how can anyone make a crib like that for only $49.95.”
Precious Dad Moment # 2
A father was carrying his four months infant along with a ham sandwich he had made himself. He had the baby balanced between his left elbow and shoulder. He reached down for his ham sandwich when he noticed a streak of mustard on his fingers. He looked at his wife and said, “I love mustard.” Having no napkin, he licked it off.
It was NOT mustard. No man ever put a baby down faster. Reaching for a napkin, he attempted a shoe-shine across his tongue.
Bro Larry
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Biblical Abuse
“…whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” Philippians 3:19
There is a great amount of biblical illiteracy among church goers today. Christian books are plentiful in Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Amazon, and other internet book sites, yet many people know very little about the Bible – and the Bible itself is the number one best seller of all time. I have seen how much I lacked just by discussing the basics with members who grew up in church hearing and supposedly studying the Bible.
Modern-day thinking is that we can pick and choose from the Bible the parts we want and throw away the parts we don’t want. We live in an age where we want our ears tickled and our backs scratched. We want exhortation, self-help, and entertainment. Paul warned of those whose god is their appetites (desires) and their glory is in their shame (no ability to blush).
Lacking biblical knowledge leads to secular and humanistic thinking. In other words, so called Christians lack a biblical world view not knowing what the Bible says about life. Even most of our pulpits lack in biblical expository preaching (dissecting the biblical passage) and most people lack an in-depth biblical study.
Martin Luther said hundreds of years ago, “I study my Bible like I gather apples. First, I shake the whole tree that the ripest may fall. Then I shake each limb, and when I have shaken each limb, I shake each branch and every twig. Then I look under every leaf. I search the Bible as a whole like shaking the whole tree. Then I shake every limb–study book after book. Then I shake every branch, giving attention to the chapters. Then I shake every twig, or a careful study of the paragraphs and sentences and words and their meanings.”
Bro. Larry
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Marriage Is a TEAM Sport
Traditionally, May and June have been the most popular months for weddings. One of my daughters even had a May wedding. I recently read an article that the month of August is competing for the number one wedding month by gaining in the numbers of weddings performed.
Today, there is more to discuss than what month is the most popular for wedding ceremonies. Morality issues of same sex marriages, the popularity of divorce, and couples living together outside of marriage threaten the God-given covenant of marriage. During the past few years, immorality in relationships of couples has sank to a new low with the LGBT movement involving same sex marriages. The God-established marriage is at risk.
A gentleman in his forties, who had never been married, told me, “I don’t have anything against marriages. Marriage is a great institution. But, who wants to spend the rest of their life in an institution?” Marriages have been called institutions, family units, a partnership, a team sport, and even a war zone. One man said that his house was like a war zone and reminded him of the Battle of Armageddon. Marriages are too often like war zones and were never meant to be that way.
The most intriguing description of marriage was as “a team sport.” Teams come together to compete, learn, grow, and win, and that speaks somewhat about marriage. But thinking about marriage as a “T.E.A.M. sport” goes even further. T.E.A.M. stands for “Together Each Achieves More.” Two people of opposite sexes, personalities, backgrounds, etc. coming together as one to achieve more . . . more in life and more in honoring the Lord. Not only is marriage a TEAM Sport, it is the ultimate TEAM Sport. Join the team with your spouse pulling together for victory in your marriage.
The words of Jesus spoke of marriage as a oneness, “For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matthew 19:5-6).
Bro. Larry
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