Who Is On The Lord's Side [40:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Exodus 32:25-35 [+/-]Exodus 32:25-35 [25]And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies), [26]then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, "Who is on the LORD's side? Come to me." And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. [27]And he said to them, "Thus says the LORD God of Israel, 'Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.'" [28]And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. [29]And Moses said, "Today you have been ordained for the service of the LORD, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day." [30]The next day Moses said to the people, "You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin." [31]So Moses returned to the LORD and said, "Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. [32]But now, if you will forgive their sin--but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written." [33]But the LORD said to Moses, "Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. [34]But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them." [35]Then the LORD sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. (ESV)

The character and course of what we call Christianity in our country will continue to spiral downwards and out of control until we in the church are captured by the great grandeur of the holiness of our God. I spent part of the fourth of July in prayer for this land that I love and what God was showing me during that prayer time is just how much the church needs to come before Him in repentance. We have created in our country an American Christian subculture whose version of God borrows just enough from the Bible to sound godly while being so foreign to Scripture that it is in fact idolatry. We have created a God who saves our souls and secures us for heaven while serving our needs while we live as we desire during our days here upon the earth. Go to almost any prayer group and it is focused on our needs. Attend almost any Bible Study and the discussion time revolves around what it says to me to help me live a more fulfilled life. Check out our lifestyles and they appear far more driven by the world than determined by the Word. And if you have any thoughts right now about what is wrong with that then you are in a very dangerous place.

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 Seeing and Knowing: The Truth we need to be Triumphant [43:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

James 1:22-27 [+/-]James 1:22-27 [22]But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. [23]For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. [24]For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. [25]But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. [26]If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless. [27]Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (ESV)

Well, it is the goal of our great God FOR HIS GLORY ALONE to give us all that we need to experience and express victory over temptation and right in the middle of our trials and tribulations. What we too soon forget in our kind of world must never be forgotten if we are going to receive what God wants to give us so that we can experience and express this victory. God did not design this world or your life for your comfort and convenience. He is not primarily interested in your pleasure or your pursuit of your purpose. His goal is not what you gain in this world; it is not even your good except as that good advances and enhances His glory. In order for God to perfect His purpose in us, He must send us into the fire and flames, He must deliver us into the dark night of the soul, He must accompany us down avenues that from our perspective are absolutely awful, but it is always in those places that we would not choose to go that He shows us what we must see and reveals to us what we must know if we are going to experience and express that overwhelming victory that is ours through Jesus Christ our Lord. I read again this week part of the story of Steve Saint whose father was one of five missionaries killed by the Waodani of Ecuador. Steve was later called to leave behind a very successful business career to serve among the Waodani; But there was a part of his story that I did not know; he and his wife had one daughter who one day came to him complaining of a headache. She asked him to pray for her and to hold her and while he was praying and holding her, she died in his arms of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Yet, Steve Saint would say that it is the losses that God has used to show him what mattered most in life so that leaving behind success and status and all those things by which we define the “good life” had no meaning to him when he had them so letting them go was no issue. God had used his trials to shape him and to show him where he wanted him to go and what He wanted him to do. He does the same for us.

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