Brother Gary Sunday Evening 2/9/14

Brother Gary Sunday Evening 2/9/14

2Pe 1:1  Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

2Pe 1:2  Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

There is a way to have grace and peace increased and that is through the knowledge of God.

2Pe 1:3  According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

God has a perfect plan for every life. 

2Pe 1:4  Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

It is wonderful that whatever your challenge, there are many promises in the Word of God.  You only need one but there are many for every challenge, emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical.  They are for our family, our spiritual family and our own individual needs thank God for these exceeding precious promises.

We all received from Adam a nature that was unholy but thank God we can be cleansed of this nature and be filled with the divine nature.

All the desires of the world still leave men and women so empty.  It is wonderful that we can escape the corruption.  Corruption always brings more corruption and never leaves a soul satisfied.  Thank God there is a way to escape it in 2014.

2Pe 1:5  And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

All of us have things that we have to really work at.  We must have a strategy when it is this cold out ane we have a wood fire to be at home in time to have adequate wood on the fire so that our home is warm.  We must give a certain amount of diligence to do this.  We must give all diligence. 

All of us needs to understand where we are on the age circle on our work load and in daily life we want to meet with God where we can grasp what we are studying and praying about.

Every one of us in our lifetime add to our faith virtue or valor.  Add courage.  Age is not going to cause life to be easier.  It doesn’t work that way. 

I remember many years ago when Sister Davis and Sister Edith were a part of the congregation.  She would ask for prayer that she was going through a season of accusation, hardship and difficulty.  It always struck my heart; a dear lady, probably in her 80’s, you would think that the devil would leave her alone. 

You and I need to have courage.  We are not interested in what the devil has to say, we have counted the cost and paid the price.  The enemy will come with ridiculous temptations but we can have it settled, “No use even tempting me, I am not even considering anything that the world has to offer.” 

I don’t see the world as attractive at all.  Yet I want to have an understanding because we want to help souls that see it as attractive.  The world passes away but the Word is eternal.

Add to courage knowledge.  All of these truths from Genesis through Revelations that apply to us we want to know and have an understanding of.  There are spiritual enemies out there against God and against truth.  Some may think because we are stuck here in the mountains, we don’t need to know about this or that.  Everything that we need to know that will help us to be true and faithful, we need to know.

Everything that is simple and basic, the ABC’s of the Christian life, we want to hear over and over again.

God is looking for the fruit of temperance in our life.  It is something that every one of us has to add to us by faith and measuring.  This is a good description of temperance: a proper balance for all earthly enjoyment. 

We live in a world that God has made for us to enjoy.  Just earthly enjoyment though will leave the soul barren.  Temperance means a proper balance for all things that we have an appetite for.  Whatever we have an appetite for that is not sinful in the world, may God help us to have a balance.

Some people have the thought, “You shouldn’t have all those antiques but it is ok for me to have all these shoes.”  Their thinking is messed up. 

We need to be easily entreated.  Some people don’t hear anything but what they say.  God doesn’t want us to be that way.  We want to know that too much of anything is not temperance.  Grandma had mincemeat from the fifties.  She died in the seventies.  It was too old.

God wants us to have temperance in our work, in our play, in all things.  We don’t want to have pears that are 100 years old down in our cellar.  We want to eat them or give them away and God may help us to have a bumper crop next year.

It is not wrong to say, “I cannot do that.”  It doesn’t mean that you think it is sinful but you have something God has laid upon your heart that you want to do.

Patience:  there will be a season of waiting on God.  There are prayers before the throne that we say, “God we feel that we need a quick answer but I am going to be patient.  Sometimes your time frame is different than ours.”

Add.  “God I am willing to grow one step at a time.”  There is a message that I don’t have put together on the stepping stone, the sure foundation, and the stumbling block.  The cornerstone and sure foundation becomes a stumbling block to some. 

Have patience, “God I want to grow one step at a time.”  We understand wanting to get through a battle right away so that we can have victory. 

If you meet me at the door and say, “Brother I have a toothache” then you will have someone that will really sympathize with you.  I know what it is like to wake up with a headache from a sinus infection.  If you meet me at the door and say, “I am praying hard to have a right attitude toward one that trespassed me.”  We have been through those long nights when it seemed, “Will the light ever break through?”

We say, “I’d like to have the victory right now.”  God says, “Hold on child, be patient, and one day you will find yourself standing on that sure foundation where you say, ‘I have the victory.’”

Godliness:  It is wonderful when we are challenged to be more like God.

It is wonderful to feel that brotherly kindness.  That brother or sister saying, “Let me help you with that.”

When you are praying and you recognize that that sister has a heavy burden for a challenge in their family and you say, “God let me carry that burden for that one today and give them a break from that.”

Kindness when you see a brother or sister passing through losses.  Knowing how to lose is a part of life but isn’t it wonderful that there can be brotherly kindness of another stepping up and saying, “There will be losses but no man having forsaken houses and lands… for the kingdom of God sake but they shall receive a hundredfold.”

Oh the love of God and the kindness of the love of God in our heart for one another.

I’d like to leave a word picture of Jesus when he was going from Bethany to Jerusalem and He looked upon a fig tree that looked like it should have figs and had nothing but leaves.

There was another tree that had lacks but the husbandman said, “Let me dig around a while.”  You may be here and say, “Brother I am challenged with temperance, with this or that.”  Let’s let the gentle rains come and the tenderness of someone that loves that tree, that plant and loves you.  Let them dig around and then Jesus comes by and sees the figs growing. 

There must be the fruit of repentance and then the fig; that is an excellent food.  There is nothing like a beautiful spiritual tree.  Jesus isn’t coming to look at the leaves; he sees plenty of leaves already.  He comes looking for fruit.