Stuck On A Dead End Street

Is It Possible To Know God and Be Far Away From Him?

We all are subject to drifting away due to sin.

You began to settle on the wrong things.

You stop living by faith and just exist.

Listen to this story, sound familiar?

Sometimes you just have to let the prodigal son go!!

11 And he said, "There was a man who had two sons.

12 And the younger of them said to his father, 'Father, give me the share of property that is coming to me.' And he divided his property between them.

13 Not many days later, the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his property in reckless living.

14 And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need.

15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs.

16 And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything.

17 "But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger!

18 I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.

19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants."'

20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.

21 And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.'

22 But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.

23 And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate.

24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' And they began to celebrate.

25 "Now his older son was in the field, and as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing.

26 And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant.

27 And he said to him, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fattened calf, because he has received him back safe and sound.'

28 But he was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him,

29 but he answered his father, 'Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends.

30 But when this son of yours came, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fattened calf for him!'

31 And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.

32 It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.'" - Luke 15:11-32

Five steps to the pigpen.

You can misstep one step and become far away from God!

Whenever you leave God, you will feel empty!

1. Selfish in your mindset

2. Act hastily in your decisions

3. Wasting everything

4. Separated, becoming isolated

5. Bad decisions

You might lie. Then another lie comes out to cover the first one. Sin leads to more sin!

Confess and repent!

Find your way back home!

Don't make deals with God!

Be ready for that sweet reunion!

Ways to return home to God!

1. You have an awakening of your soul, you come to your senses 

2. Repentance from your sin

3. Honesty, you admit your sin

4. Humility, admit that you are unworthy 

5. Resolution, get up, don't wait, take that step in faith

Moses at the Red Sea took that step of faith and the sea parted.

Joshua took that step of faith and the walls of Jericho fell.

In that fiery furnace, the three took steps of faith and came out unscathed.

Daniel in the lions den took that step of faith and he came out whole.

Peter came out of the boat and walked on water.

The thief on the cross took that step of faith in knowing Christ as his Lord and Jesus told him "today you will be with me in paradise."

What about Christ? 

He knew what was expected of Him, to die on the cross. 

He died for sinful man, satisfying the wrath due man.

But He also knew the God was going to raise Him up!

Your forgiveness is immediate when you confess and repent.

You are clothed in honor.

You are covered by the authority of God.

You are free in Christ.

You are joyfully welcomed home!

Thank you Pastor Mark!!

Make sense of your puzzle

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts. Psalm 139:23

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A little boy had a jigsaw puzzle. On one side it had a map of the world. On the other, a picture of a man. His mother asked him to try to work it. Before long the little fellow had put the puzzle together. The mother was surprised to find her little son knew so much about geography. “How on earth did you do that?” she asked. 

“Oh,” he said, “I worked the other side first. When I got the man right, the world was right.”

How true that is! Let me tell you something, friend—you will never understand this world, you will never understand the universe, until you get the man right, the man Christ Jesus. You must see who Jesus is—that Jesus is Lord. We will never fix this world until we get the man right, the man Jesus Christ.

ACTION POINT:

Are things in your world confusing you these days? Turn to Jesus and trust Him to make sense of what you don’t understand.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Different Tenses of Grace

We always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thessalonians 1:11–12)

Grace is not only God’s disposition to do good for us when we don’t deserve it — we call this “undeserved favor”; God’s grace is also a power from God that acts in our lives and makes good things happen in us and for us — which we also don’t deserve.

Paul said that we fulfill our resolves for good “by his power” (verse 11). And then he adds at the end of verse 12, “according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.” The power that actually works in our lives to make Christ-exalting obedience possible is an exertion of the grace of God.

You can see this also in 1 Corinthians 15:10:

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

So, grace is an active, present, transformative, obedience-enabling power.

Therefore, this grace, which moves in power from God to you at a point in time, is both past and future. It has already done something for you or in you and therefore is past. And it is about to do something in you and for you, and so it is future — both five seconds from now and five million years from now.

God’s grace is ever cascading over the waterfall of the present from the inexhaustible river of grace coming to us from the future into the ever-increasing reservoir of grace in the past. In the next five minutes, you will receive sustaining grace flowing to you from the future — in this you trust; and you will accumulate another five minutes’ worth of grace in the reservoir of the past — for this you give thanks.

John Piper 

What's better than a sleeping pill?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

After David had sinned and done the terrible thing that he had done by committing adultery, he said in Psalm 51:3, “For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.” Can you imagine what it would be like for your sin to “ever” be before you? The deed would reverberate through your consciousness unendingly. You see, the conscience is an inner judge that God puts in you that accuses or excuses you. It cannot make you do right, but it shows you what is right or what is wrong. And when your conscience is right, you have tremendous freedom. A good conscience will do something for you that a sleeping pill could never do.

ACTION POINT:

What is your conscience telling you this morning? Are you right with God?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Have Mercy on Me, O God

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. (Psalm 51:1)

Three times: “Have mercy,” “according to your steadfast love,” and “according to your abundant mercy.”

This is what God had promised in Exodus 34:6–7:

“The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty.”

David knew that there were guilty who would not be forgiven. And there were guilty who by some mysterious work of redemption would not be counted as guilty, but would be forgiven. Psalm 51 is his way of laying hold on that mystery of mercy.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” We know more of the mystery of this redemption than David did. We know Christ. But we lay hold of the mercy in the same way he did.

The decisive thing he does is turn, helpless, to the mercy and love of God. Today that means turning, helpless, to Christ, whose blood secures all the mercy we need.

John Piper 

Do you want to know how rich you are?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. 1 John 2:17

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Do you want to know how rich you are? Add up everything you own that money cannot buy, that neither death nor disaster can take away, and then you’ll know just how rich you are. What did you discover? Hopefully, you discovered that it’s time you started laying up true riches. Because all the rest will burn away. If you are putting all of your labor into this world, it’s like rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

ACTION POINT:

Read Matthew 6:19-21. Where is your heart? Where is your treasure?

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Price For Sin

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die-

8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. - Romans 5:6-8

Sin cost! 

Sin cost a life!

Sin cost Christ His life!

He was innocent, committed no sin, but out of obedience to His Father, He willingly took your sin and nailed it to the cross!

In this world, where we are so self absorbed, can we even grasp this?

What drove this precious God-Man to accept 

this predestined sorrow that brought the joy of salvation to many?

It was mercy!

4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,

5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-by grace you have been saved-

6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,

7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God,

9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. - Ephesians 2:4-9

Faith to believe

20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God,

21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.

22 That is why his faith was "counted to him as righteousness."

23 But the words "it was counted to him" were not written for his sake alone,

24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord,

25 who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. - Romans 4:20-25

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,

4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, - Galatians 1:3-4

1 Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 

2 For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. 

3 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned-every one-to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 

7 He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 

8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 

9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth. 

10 Yet it was the will of the LORD to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. 

11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. 

12 Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.  - Isaiah 53

See the debt you owe?

Jesus is worthy of your devotion!

Bow, ask for forgiveness, repent and be humbly thankful!!