When the World Says You Can't

Some people have a lot of strikes against them. They were raised in broken homes, abused sexually and mentally by people whom they trusted. Totally filled with pain over their circumstance and the lack of a way out! Never seeming to have anyone who cared about their plight. They grow into adulthood relying on drugs, illicit sex, alcohol and abusive relationships to try and fill the void they feel deep in their seemingly dead souls. The world says you can't get out but God says you can!!

Luke 4:

18 "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." 

How glorious is this? God has given us liberty, freedom from oppression and set us free through Christ!!

Acts 26:

to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.'

We judge people everyday even though God warns against it. We should pray for them and show them compassion. You and I don't know what they have lived through. God's word has healing power but how will they hear? You and I must share God's word as well as His love.

Romans 2:

1 Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.

2 We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things.

3 Do you suppose, O man-you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself-that you will escape the judgment of God?

James 4:12

There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?

Lord, let us shine as the brightest light, giving Your word as a life preserver to the ones who are perishing. Make us bold so we can share the gospel. Amen

Our church has a work training program it has started to help people who are trying to get back into the work force after coming out of prison. We were blessed by the testimony of a precious lady who had lived the horrors of the life I spoke of at the first of this blog post. Her life was completely changed by the compassion she found through God's word and God's people. The world said you can't but God showed her you can and she believed on Christ for the promise of a new life in Him! We praise Him for He alone is worthy! 

They’re Cheering for YOU!

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.” Hebrews 12:1

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A soft-spoken woman went to a high school football game. She’d been quiet the entire game until there was a fumble on the field. The substitute quarterback, a little scrawny kid, picked up the ball and started running past the other players toward the goal. 

And this little lady exploded! She jumped up and said, “Run, baby, run! Run, baby, run!” He was her son. 

That’s what the saints are saying, as they watch us on the playing field of life. They are cheering us on from the heavenly grandstand to “run with patience, the race that is set before us.”

ACTION POINT:

Do you need a lift today? Imagine a grandstand the size of heaven cheering you on to victory!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

Graced by His Prayers

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you ever feel you are all alone when a struggle hits your life? 

Tell yourself, “I am graced by His prayers.” 

Jesus is watching over you, and He is praying for you. The Savior. The Shepherd. The King. The Prince. He is praying for you! Do you feel encouraged? I do! 

Just to know that the One who died for me “ever liveth to make intercession” for me is enough. He lives to stand in the gap for you and for me. What a mighty God we serve! What mercy we don’t deserve! You are on Jesus’ prayer list! 

You. 

He knows you. And He is praying you through the eye of the storm. 

ACTION POINT:

Do you have a prayer list? Go through that list today and pray for someone you haven’t prayed for in awhile and trust God to answer, even today!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Holy through Hardship

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? ... hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise Him.” Psalm 42:5

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Here’s an anchor for your soul in the storms of life: “I am growing by His plan.” 

What is God’s plan for you? He wants to enlarge you, not indulge you. God is not so interested in making you happy and healthy as He is in making you holy. And so God will allow troubles to make you more like Christ. 

Think about the times when you have grown the most. It is when your friend “Trouble” came along. I have grown the most in my own life in times of deepest despair. 

ACTION POINT:

Can you look at the troubles in your life not as adversaries, but as friends? Take a second look and get a godly perspective of it. See how you can become holy through hardship.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

For All Of Us Who Struggle With Sin

Ps.103:

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name! 

2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, 

3 who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, 

4 who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, 

5 who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's. 

6 The LORD works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. 

7 He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel. 

8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 

9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 

10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 

12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. 

13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. 

14 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. 

15 As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; 

16 for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. 

17 But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, 

18 to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. 

19 The LORD has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all. 

20 Bless the LORD, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word! 

21 Bless the LORD, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will! 

22 Bless the LORD, all his works, in all places of his dominion. Bless the LORD, O my soul! 

Governed by His Providence

BIBLE MEDITATION:

“But He saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid.” John 6:20

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

When storms come into your life, I want you to remember this truth: “I am governed by His providence.” 

The storm did not take the wave walker, the Lord Jesus, by surprise. As a matter of fact, the Bible says He’s the one that “commandeth and raiseth stormy seas” (Psalm 107:25). 

Perhaps you’re in the eye of a storm right now. It looks like your boat is sinking. Maybe it’s so dark you cannot see your hand before your face. I want you to know there is nothing that comes to you that He does not cause or allow. Whether I can see it, whether I can understand it or not, it is a fact that God has not relinquished His rule upon His universe.

ACTION POINT:

Read Matthew 8:23-27. Does Jesus see the storm in your life? Bow before the One, the only One, who can calm your storm. Trust His ways. He’s in control.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers

GOOD NEWS FOR THE POOR

The Fiftieth Year

The Year Of The Jubilee
Leviticus 25:8-55

8 "You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years.

9 Then you shall sound the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the Day of Atonement you shall sound the trumpet throughout all your land.

10 And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.

11 That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.

12 For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You may eat the produce of the field.

13 "In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property.

14 And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another.

15 You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee, and he shall sell to you according to the number of years for crops.

16 If the years are many, you shall increase the price, and if the years are few, you shall reduce the price, for it is the number of the crops that he is selling to you.

17 You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the LORD your God.

18 "Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely.

19 The land will yield its fruit, and you will eat your fill and dwell in it securely.

20 And if you say, 'What shall we eat in the seventh year, if we may not sow or gather in our crop?'

21 I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, so that it will produce a crop sufficient for three years.

22 When you sow in the eighth year, you will be eating some of the old crop; you shall eat the old until the ninth year, when its crop arrives.

23 "The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is mine. For you are strangers and sojourners with me.

24 And in all the country you possess, you shall allow a redemption of the land.

25 "If your brother becomes poor and sells part of his property, then his nearest redeemer shall come and redeem what his brother has sold.

26 If a man has no one to redeem it and then himself becomes prosperous and finds sufficient means to redeem it,

27 let him calculate the years since he sold it and pay back the balance to the man to whom he sold it, and then return to his property.

28 But if he does not have sufficient means to recover it, then what he sold shall remain in the hand of the buyer until the year of jubilee. In the jubilee it shall be released, and he shall return to his property.

29 "If a man sells a dwelling house in a walled city, he may redeem it within a year of its sale. For a full year he shall have the right of redemption.

30 If it is not redeemed within a full year, then the house in the walled city shall belong in perpetuity to the buyer, throughout his generations; it shall not be released in the jubilee.

31 But the houses of the villages that have no wall around them shall be classified with the fields of the land. They may be redeemed, and they shall be released in the jubilee.

32 As for the cities of the Levites, the Levites may redeem at any time the houses in the cities they possess.

33 And if one of the Levites exercises his right of redemption, then the house that was sold in a city they possess shall be released in the jubilee. For the houses in the cities of the Levites are their possession among the people of Israel.

34 But the fields of pastureland belonging to their cities may not be sold, for that is their possession forever.

35 "If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.

36 Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you.

37 You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.

38 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.

39 "If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave:

40 he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee.

41 Then he shall go out from you, he and his children with him, and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers.

42 For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves.

43 You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but shall fear your God.

44 As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you.

45 You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.

46 You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.

47 "If a stranger or sojourner with you becomes rich, and your brother beside him becomes poor and sells himself to the stranger or sojourner with you or to a member of the stranger's clan,

48 then after he is sold he may be redeemed. One of his brothers may redeem him,

49 or his uncle or his cousin may redeem him, or a close relative from his clan may redeem him. Or if he grows rich he may redeem himself.

50 He shall calculate with his buyer from the year when he sold himself to him until the year of jubilee, and the price of his sale shall vary with the number of years. The time he was with his owner shall be rated as the time of a hired worker.

51 If there are still many years left, he shall pay proportionately for his redemption some of his sale price.

52 If there remain but a few years until the year of jubilee, he shall calculate and pay for his redemption in proportion to his years of service.

53 He shall treat him as a worker hired year by year. He shall not rule ruthlessly over him in your sight.

54 And if he is not redeemed by these means, then he and his children with him shall be released in the year of jubilee.

55 For it is to me that the people of Israel are servants. They are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

What is the Year of Jubilee?

It involved...

The return of everyone’s land.

The restoration of everyone’s freedom.

It was...

Good news for the poor.

Sobering news for the wealthy.

What Was Its Purpose?

To acknowledge the holiness of God. 

To support healthy families.

To prevent hopeless poverty.

To promote holistic worship.

To foreshadow hope in Christ.

How Does This Apply To Our Lives?

God is the owner of all things. 

We are His stewards.

God is the Savior of His people. 

We are His servants.

God gives second chances to us.

We are recipients of extravagant grace.

God gives clear commands to us.

We now reflect His extravagant grace.

We work to give the poor a chance to succeed. 

We live to share the gospel with those in need.

Thanks Pastor David!