Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 1/27/16

Brother Gary Wednesday Evening 1/27/16

As we entered into the New Year one of the desires expressed as the church is to study and pray more.  Truth has a way of opening more and more. 

Mat 6:6  But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

It is vital that we pray and that we grasp what it means to pray.  Praying first means to worship God.  Telling God all your needs is really not prayer.  There is more to prayer than just telling God how much people need Him.  Worshipping God! 

It is there we supplicate.  Once we have entered into divine worship and shut the door, we behold His majesty.   He has an abundance to supply with, copious.  When we are worshipping, we see God so capable, so great, and so mighty.

God supplies that need and yet He still has just as much as He had before.  When you and I give something to someone unless God gives it back, we are human and it is gone.  It is not so with God.

When we enter the closet, the goal is to pray.  When the door is shut, you will know it.  No one here tonight wants to just be religious.  We want to know God.  We want to know how to pray.  We want to know that we have the door shut.

Pray to the Father that sees in secret:  it is marvelous that God sees in secret.  You can pray when it is not convenient to be where you like to pray.  Brother Maconahae taught that when you wake up in the morning, then roll out on your knees.  The emphasis was to get to prayer as soon as you could.

Get the door shut; turn off all the voices.  The voice of my mind! You can shut your phone off, but there is nothing so precious as getting into the closet.  There is nothing so precious as having God meet with us.  If we are going to accomplish the mission of the church this year, it will be because this pastor learns better how to shut the door, how to pray better, and we learn better how to agree in prayer.

To turn off the voices:  we have probably 24 months’ work to get done in the next 11.  We need to ask God to help us prioritize what to get done so that we can serve Him and serve our generation according to the will of God.

The closet door is shut when we come into the presence of God.

Psa 96:6  Honour and majesty are before him: strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.

When that door is shut I believe that the honor and majesty of God is right there with me. 

The grandeur of God!  Life has afforded me to be able to see some of the most beautiful sights that are in the world.  We have seen elk, deer and we have been to mountain lakes.  Nothing compares to the grandeur of God. 

This God that is holy, just, and all knowing.  Think with me of the grandeur!

Someone was telling me that the specialists cannot give them a diagnoses on what is the matter with them.  We are able to go into the presence of one that knows everything!

He knows all that you children are trying to learn in school.  God knows everything.  With all your knowledge it is just a tiny bit compared to the knowledge of God.

You have the ability for something a whole lot more than all of that.  Sister Sue is going to sing “No Regrets” Sunday morning.  We have something: seeing His honor, how great He is and then His majesty! The splendor of God, the majesty!

Think of God being in Far Rockaway New York and He is here.  The greatness of God!

His magnificence.  God taught my father how to repair a muffler when he didn’t have money to buy one.  The magnificence of God! 

Think of the songs that we have in these hymnals.  Our heart leapt when Sister Alice requested, “I am His Child.”  It was written by Sister Brooks about 100 years ago. 

Psa 65:4  Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple.

God is omnipotent.  The bible says, “And He made the stars.”  The thought of strength is His force.  Think of Godly sorrow that works conviction.  Think of the value a husband and wife have in agreement of prayer.  Think of the saints and the value you have in agreeing in prayer. 

The Kelly children can meet in the hall of the school and have an agreement of prayer.  God hears the heart.  Isn’t that wonderful?

We don’t have to naturally be together to have an agreement in prayer.  You can call and whomever you call can say, “I will agree in prayer right now.” 

Think of the force!  Do you want to see people delivered and religious spirits bound so people can be freed?  Find someone to agree in prayer. 

There is nowhere to end on the thought of beauty.  I have never left the closet after having met with God without beauty.  You always leave there with beauty. 

I had a phone call from someone that wanted to vent.  When someone is hurt and they trust you so much that they share that pain with you, what are you going to do?  Are you going to get an attitude toward the one that did them wrong?  Find a closet and get the door shut.  You can leave there without a bad attitude.

Mount Zion is beautiful for situation.  Think of Moses: He wrote the Psalm, “Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us.” 

Ecc 3:11  He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.

Right now we are in a season where God may have to use some very strong forces for people to humble under the mighty hand of God.  It is marvelous that if people will turn and repent then God will Himself repent and say, “I will make something beautiful of your life and not destroy you.”

God took a terrible situation and turned it around when Brother Hall found a gospel trumpet and got saved.  He was convicted of murder and was in prison.  God freed him and he went back and told his testimony in the prisons.

The power of agreeing in prayer:

Mat 18:19  Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven.

Here we see two in agreement in prayer for one thing.  Everyone in this audience appreciates the Spirit of God that was here last Sunday.  Let’s specifically seek an agreement in prayer.  Agree in prayer for stronger conviction.  Agree in prayer for the bands of wickedness to be broken.  Agree in prayer for a quickening. 

The best of a Sunday school lesson will do nothing for the soul that is unquickened.  You might be really concerned about someone.  You don’t have to tell who you are agreeing in prayer with who you are praying for.  You can ask for them to agree with an unspoken prayer request for a quickening.

If souls begin to drift and they are not quickened then soon there becomes a callous.  When minds begin to turn God off and think more about what the flesh and the world has to offer, we can watch and see them drift, but there is something that we can do.

As a church let’s have an agreement of prayer.  I may have cancer; I probably will never be diagnosed if I do have cancer.  If I was so sick tonight, if this were my last message, I would call for an agreement of prayer. 

The Bible says, “Two.”

I want everyone that is saved to agree in prayer.  When I get to go see Jerry, I don’t want to go without an agreement of prayer.  I called on Sister Vi’s neighbor Amy.  I plan to go back next Saturday.  Please agree in prayer.  Think of how that tough life could change.  Think of the beauty and all of her past going. 

If we can see the magnificence of God!  The precious teachers!  I read an account of where a young man read Psalms 19, “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord” and conviction began to grip his soul. 

You say, “I am an independent man.”  I am too until I have something too heavy that I need to lift.  Most of us are not asking Sister Alice many questions, but we know that she has two or three sons in serious trouble.  Are we not going to ask someone to help us bear this burden? 

We are so blessed.  Where two or three are gathered in His name, “I will be there in the midst of them.”

Mat 18:20  For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

Isn’t that awesome?  We can talk until daylight tomorrow morning of how sad we are because of things that have happened here, there, or somewhere else.  We have something better to do.  We can pray.  We can seek God.  We can agree in prayer. 

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/24/16

Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/24/16

Luk 18:9  And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:

Luk 18:10  Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.

Luk 18:11  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.

Luk 18:12  I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Luk 18:13  And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.

Luk 18:14  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Jesus often used parables.  A parable is a natural story that has a spiritual meaning that we can comprehend.  This parable is of two men.  They both went to pray and the one told God how good he was and that he was even better than his neighbor.  The neighbor felt the tool of God’s conviction, of honesty, and of the presence of God.  He said, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.”

He smote his breast.  We have seen people so grieved with how they messed up their life that they feel, “Why did I do that?”  God has the tool to deal with every soul.

This man that recognized he was a sinner and went to his home justified.  “Everyone that exalts himself shall be abased.”  God knows how to humble every one of us. 

From my personal experience and from what the bible teaches, it is evident that if you will choose to humble yourself before God, He will break up your heart soil and your mind frame that those things that need to be removed can be removed.

God knows how to abase the proud in heart.  God knows how to give an individual a new life, and make him a new creature.

2Co 5:17  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

All of us were born with an inherited nature to sin.  We inherited it from Adam and Eve.  We were born with the desire to have our own way.  Jesus came that we could have an opportunity to obey God and be made a new creature in Christ Jesus.

God uses things that are easy to understand as tools.  Jesus is the chief Corner stone.  It is a stone designed to have two walls built from it.  A back wall and a wall that goes forward. 

God designed the plum line that comes down out of heaven.  The plum line is designed to show if the wall was built straight up and down.  It checks if it is leaning in or leaning out.  You can also measure from corner to corner to see if it is built square.

You might say, “My personality is not perfect so my building for God will not be perfect.”  God is looking for the perfect attitude, “God, I am going to build as carefully as I can for you.  I am going to build from the precious corner stone.”

The back wall is important.  It is built from the Word of God that says, “By the help and grace of God I will never go back and take pleasure in the things that brought such darkness and hardness to my soul.”

If any be in Christ he is a new creature.  We had a good and an educational lesson in Sunday school on not allowing the hunger for God to be quenched.

There is a song that talks of, “When I first heard of Jesus, His love and His care… my heart was overwhelmed to think a king would take my place.  After I served God a while I found that saying I love Jesus is a challenge to put to work.”

Brother and Sister Wingate were nightclub entertainers.  It was not satisfying.  They were blessed with a little baby.  The sister was out sunbathing and after a while went to check on the baby.  The baby had drowned on its own spit-up.  She was heartbroken.  She asked her husband many times, “Why doesn’t anyone ask us to church?  We need God.  This entertaining for money is leaving me empty.  The baby that I longed for has gone to heaven.” 

In the process of time one of the brother’s friends had gotten saved and wanted to tell his friend about Jesus.  At just the right time he called, visited a bit, and probably Brother Allen Wingate told him, “Things are not going right in our life at all.  We lost a baby.  Business is good but our life is not.” 

The friend told them, “I know someone that can change your life.”  They got saved, in the process of time, and God changed them.  They didn’t go back to the nightclub again.  They had a new life.

When we come to Jesus, He has the tools.  He makes changes in your life. 

When I get up it is before daylight.  As I begin to worship and pray, I begin to think of God.  Every morning God covers the whole earth just like the sun.  As the sun arises and the line goes out over all the earth.  It hits New York City a little earlier than here.  As you worship and pray, God will meet you there.  He will come down with his line. 

The God that I know is the God that sent his son to be the savior of the world.  He is the God that His Son testified that it is not the will of the Father that any perish but that all men come to repentance. 

His son identified with mankind when He was still in eternity. 

Joh 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

The tool that we know of as conviction: there are people that respond to conviction very positive.  I love conviction.  Before I got saved, I remember conviction.  It told me that there was something not right between me and God and that He wanted me to get it right.  Deep in my heart I had a longing for Jesus.

There are those that respond with the thought, “God is angry with me.”  God is angry with sin.  We know that.  But He loves the sinner.  If any be in Christ He is a new creature.  Old things pass away.  It is wonderful to have a new start on life. 

It is wonderful that if you are in this audience and know that you have sinned and disobeyed God, He is ready to forgive.  I visited a man last night 87 years old.  God is ready to forgive.

If any is in Christ he is a new creature, old things pass away…

You say, “I wouldn’t want to be religious, I’ve seen people that are ugly, ornery, and crabby that are religious.”  They may be religious but they are not saved.

I am instructing you to forsake everything that you know is sinful.  Forgetting those things that are behind. 

Old things pass away and behold all things are new. 

Psa 62:5  My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.

Isn’t it wonderful to go to bed and know that God is going to meet you with good things in the morning?  If something happens: God specializes in meeting you when new things happen.

2Co 3:17  Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

Among the wonderful tools that God gives us is his Spirit.

I have never seen Jesus, God, or the Holy Spirit but I have felt them.  I have never seen an angel, but I firmly believe in Angels.  His angels are thousands upon thousands.  God can pick you up if you need it, but He may just send an angel. 

Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.  Children can serve God and God will be with them.  Remember Samuel with Eli?  A little child shall lead them.

Samuel was about four years old.  The lamp of God had almost gone out.  Samuel didn’t know the voice of God yet.  One night he heard a voice calling, “Samuel.”  God knows how to speak to children.

You precious children, God knows how to speak to children.  Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.  When you feel God and realize that he is calling you from sin, then answer the call. 

There is a lot of time for working at the altar.  I want to see my grandchildren this afternoon but don’t you ever feel rushed at an altar of prayer.  Don’t worry about me getting something to eat.  If God speaks to you then leave your watch on the pew.  Come and pray with all the time you need.  Your soul is worth more than all the world.  There will be no time in eternity; it is world without end.

There is time world here.  No one in this audience has an appointment this afternoon that is more important than the souls of men.

When God speaks to you, there is liberty to measure.  If you realize, “God wants me to get right with him and with people.”  Getting things right with God is the easiest thing you will ever do.  God is ready to forgive, to help, to take that burden of sin away, and to make you a new creature in Christ Jesus.

You might say, “I want to get saved, but I don’t want to tell my mom and dad.  When I go to tell my friends that I won’t be saying bad words any more or doing things that God is displeased with, I’m afraid I won’t be able.”  Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.

2Co 3:18  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Enter into the closet and pray.  Before you can pray, you must shut the door.  God wants to meet you in the closet.  He says, “We all with open face beholding…”  I have been saved a while and praying a while.  I wish I would have been saved longer and prayed more.

I have learned something more about prayer lately.  The best teacher I have on prayer is God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit of God.  When you enter the closet: it is not a literal place, it is wherever we meet with God.  Usually it is by yourself but it could be in this audience today. 

You shut the door:  I am leaving all my thoughts outside. 

We all with open face beholding…  We have been taught to tell God everything when we pray.  When you enter that closet, God will be there.  He wants you to behold His glory and His honor.  His presence is His glory.  I feel His presence when I am there. 

We all have feeling; I am not preaching salvation by feeling.  You hit black ice and you will have feeling.  If you will hike with Karen into Hidden Lake, when you get to that overlook and look down to see that lake you will say, “I don’t think that I can take it all in.” 

We are creatures that need to behold when we enter the secret closet of prayer.  His presence and His honor are there.  You are really blessed.  Hold your hands up and look at them; can you thank God for your hands? 

Beholding His presence and then honoring Him.  To give Him that honor!  “Thanks for meeting me here.  Thanks for this place where God, His son, and the Holy Spirit will meet with me.”  All He asks is that I be saved and close the door to what is wrong.

Out before God is strength and beauty.  Life leaves you needing encouragement.  Get into the closet, get the door shut.  Don’t rush in thinking of it as a Subway where you can get your sandwich quick.  Behold His glory, behold and Honor Him. 

After you feel your heart says, “I have given Him honor.”  The beauty of His presence will come and you will be as the psalmist, “I have given Him strength and honor.”  Everyone needs strength and beauty.

Beholding as in a glass:  you know how to know when God is speaking to you because He always speaks according to the Word of God.  You can know if a thought is from God by if it agrees with the Word of God. 

“Shut in with God in the secret place, there in His beauty beholding His face; gaining more power to run in the race, How I love to be shut in with God”

We are changed into the same image:  when you pray, and you enter in and shut the door.  You acknowledge, “God is in this place.  I left out all my bad attitude and whining.  I came in with needs and perplexities.  You are here, I honor you, my heavenly father.”

As you are there worshipping and enjoying the presence of God, you see His beauty and His strength.

I read 1 Corinthians 13 many times a week.  It teaches me what real love is.  It is the Love of God.  We are changed into the same image.  We are changed to be as God is, as the Son is, as the Holy Spirit is.  Distinctive in personality but one in the Spirit.

We are changed into the glory of the Lord.  We are in His presence and enjoy it so much. We conclude the time in the closet and then go out to do our work.  We go out to do what we need to do.  Then we feel our need of coming back and going into the secret closet of prayer again. 

This is how life is.  Karen and I have been married a while.  I still get lonesome for her.  I get lonesome for my mom and dad.  I lost my mother when she was way too young.  Brother and Sister Maconahae stepped in.  I never tried to be their son, I stepped in and enjoyed them. 

I get so lonesome to know how people are.  This is how it is with me and Jesus.  I love to cut wood.  There is nothing like going to the woods and getting a load of wood.  I get lonesome for the woods, but there is something that only the closet can satisfy.  It changes us.

What tools does God use to change us?  The desire of the soul.  Everyone in this audience has a seed of faith, a measure of faith:  “I’d like to be right with God.” 

It was a precious Native American boy that asked, “Who is God?”  That is not a bad question.  There is something within you that will never be filled except with God.  You can reject Him and instead try opera or anything else in the world and it will not satisfy the soul. 

You say, “I will fill my heart with gold, with wealth, and with success.”  That will not satisfy the desire for God.  The desire for God increases as you serve Him. 

The visitation of God every day God covers the whole earth.  Psalms 19 says He speaks.  When you say “I am not going to listen to God.”  You are making a bad choice.  It is a wonderful thing when God visits sinners.

The lady that wrote, “Just As I Am,” was charlotte Elliot.  She was a professional entertainer.  She exhausted all her physical resources and was unable to sing anymore.  She became a recluse.  One day a Swiss evangelist came by and someone asked if he had heard of Charlotte Elliot. 

He stepped into her room and told her that God could make her a new creature.  She asked, “How would I come?”  She knew her sin and where she was.  She knew how far from God she was.  The evangelist said, “You come just as you are.” 

Seven years from her conversion she wrote, “Just As I Am.”

We have known heartache.  I have never met God after the heartache and then left His presence discouraged.  We have had losses; it is ok.  We have never left Him discouraged.  Jesus never fails. 

God’s tools are always effective.  He has brought his tools to this country church this morning.  They wouldn’t be only for the saved, they would not be only for the sinners.  Everyone needs God’s tools. 

Sister Timberly Sunday School 1/24/16

Sister Timberly Sunday School 1/24/16

Wait not for men to laud,
Heed not their slight;
Winning the smile of God
Brings its delight!
Aiding the good and true,
Ne’er goes unblest. 
All that we think or do,
Be it the best.

When we want to see the church go forward, sometimes we must take a risk, put our self on the line, and sacrifice our self. 

Watching my girls play basketball teaches me how life is.  Sometimes you must assert yourself a bit to show and state your position. 

God is the God of unique situations; God is moving when your situation is unique. 

A guy that has inspired me, you can watch him on YouTube: Billions in Change, invented five hour energy drink.  This man made billions of dollars in just a few years, he is spending his money to try to help the poor of the world.  It is inspiring to see how he has been unselfish.

One quotation from him that I paraphrase is, “An expert is good at what was.” 

We should stop trying to be experts.  We are just people, the answers are simple: it is getting back to prayer, seeking after God, and studying the bible.

1Th 5:19  Quench not the Spirit.

1Th 5:20  Despise not prophesyings.

1Th 5:21  Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

If the church is going to go forward, we need to seek what God has for the church. 

We want to seek for the leading of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and private victories; the public victories come from these. 

We don’t want to be Laodicean in the thought “The church is perfect.”  If we are then we will be spewed out of God’s mouth.

Joh 14:15  If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Joh 14:16  And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

If you are loving God actively then He will come to you as a comforter and He will teach you.  Keep my commandments if we don’t then there will be condemnation and there will be no comfort.

If you are not doing things out of love then it is easy to get legalistic.  “I have my hair right and I showed up to church so things are ok.” 

Joh 14:17  Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

When we start out with salvation, He is with us and when we get the second work of grace, He is in us.  I am so thankful to have the Spirit of God in me.  It is such a blessing.

Joh 14:18  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Joh 14:19  Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.

Joh 14:20  At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

We are at that day.  It is neat to know.  We have obeyed the plan of salvation.  We have salvation applied to our heart.  He is in the Father, we are in Him.  We are one with God.  We can trust God to lead us and to use us.  We can step into the shadows, not hold back and not quench the spirit.

We have a work to do.  We are not always on the defensive but can be on the offensive.  We need the leading of the Holy Spirit of God and to know what to do today.  We need to be willing to lay aside our plans for the day and change at a moment’s notice. 

Joh 14:18  I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Joh 14:19  Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.

Joh 14:20  At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

If you obey and keep His commandments you show God that you love Him and you show the World that you love God.  It is returned back to you and you will be loved of the Father.

God will show His way to us.  He will show us our job and show us how to be the church in this exact day.

Joh 14:23  Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

Joh 14:24  He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

Joh 14:25  These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

Joh 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

Joh 14:27  Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

Joh 14:28  Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.

When God gives us a job to do we just do our best, do it and trust God with the results. 

He brings things to our remembrance.  This takes the fear out of it.  He carries us and helps us to know what we need to know.  He will bring to our remembrance what He has taught us.

When you have so much on your plate and can give it to God, it is wonderful.  It is wonderful to have peace.

He has gone to heaven to prepare a place for us.

The theme of this scripture is less of me and more of Christ.  More love for Christ and more love for souls. 

Quench – to extinguish, literally or figuratively.  You snuff it out: “I don’t want you,” to quench a fire or things that are on fire. 

You could quench either the fire or someone else that is on fire.  Someone could do something different than you or in a different way than you but it could be from God.  You sure don’t want to quench their fire.

Quench – To suppress or stifle of divine influence.  It doesn’t feel good to be quenched.  You don’t have to let it work.  You don’t have to be quenched. 

Brother Gary - I have been desirous of honoring the day my father was converted, March 19, 1949.  A year prior to him seeking after God, he let the Spirit of God be quenched that was trying to help him realize that he needed a changed life. 

We think of quench as action, quenching a fire or the inspiration.  But there can be a quenching by just not obeying and allowing it to decrease instead of increase.  Like with a fire, not adding anything to it, it goes out just neglect.

I studied what the Spirit of God is:

A current of air, a breath, a breeze.  It is a tender thing, easily quenched.  We want to take care of it.  It could be the human spirit, the rational soul, a vital principal, a mental disposition, superhuman: in the case God and His spirit.

He is the third person of the triune God.  He is co-equal with God and is co-eternal.  When we have His spirit in us then we are never alone.  He is the personality of God. 

He emphasizes the work and power of God.  He is never a depersonalized force.  He is not separate from God.  It is Him working. 

The spirit in man is the principal that gives you life.

Things that can quench the Spirit, will quench the Spirit, or has quenched the Spirit in the past: 

1. Being in a rush will kill the Spirit in my life.  If I am too busy to pray as Brother Gary taught, worship before supplication then it will quench the Spirit in my life.

We need to take time to really get our soul filled in our devotions.  If we lack direction from God daily then we will quench the Spirit.  We must let God control the Church of God.  A lack of prayer can quench the Spirit.  We want to carry a burden for ourselves, for souls, and for our neighbors.

Our neighbor is in trouble, he has had a troubled life.  I have asked God if he is not going to get saved if He will move him out.  He has been there for three years, maybe he is going to get saved.  We need to bear down in faith when these things happen.

We want to pray in the Spirit.  Let God talk to us and move through things in our life.

2. Carnality and pride will quench the Spirit. 

Rom 12:3  For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

We want to have a humble opinion of our self.  Have you ever had someone continually putting a stumbling block in your way?  Have you experienced power struggles?  Have you experienced opposition?  We have all had it done to us; are we doing it to anyone else?  We want to examine ourselves.

Jas 4:1  From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?

Jas 4:2  Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.

Jas 4:3  Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

If this is the case, then you are looking for something for yourself out of it.  When you bring a lesson if you are looking for something for yourself you are consuming it on your own lusts.  Why are you doing What you are doing? 

Whatever your love language is, is where you are the most vulnerable.  Acts of service is my personal love language.  I like to do things for people.  Maybe the area where you are the most sensitive is your love language.  Make sure you don’t put a road block in someone’s love language area.  If someone likes a thank you, give it.  Don’t withhold it. 

The St Regis children are starved for attention.  Why not give them what they are looking for?  We need to express love to each other the way that they understand it. 

3.  Imaginations: watching for a reaction, looking for their look.  Imaginations are self-centered.  If you are texting people then don’t read into it.  You didn’t hear their tone of voice.  You can ruin anything by overthinking it. 

Rom 1:21  Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.

Imaginations here means discussion, internal consideration that leads to internal debate.  Arguing with someone in your mind is imaginations.  It is self-centered.  Over thinking anything can ruin it. 

4.  Being busy, we are all busy, is no excuse.  We need to try to find each other’s love language.  We are the most important thing to each other here on earth.  We are God’s church here on earth. 

We will be unbalanced sometimes; we need to let God get us back into the center. 

If you are busy then don’t let it be a crutch or excuse. 

2Sa 23:15  And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate!

2Sa 23:16  And the three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and took it, and brought it to David: nevertheless he would not drink thereof, but poured it out unto the LORD.

2Sa 23:17  And he said, Be it far from me, O LORD, that I should do this: is not this the blood of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives? therefore he would not drink it. These things did these three mighty men.

Anything good that comes from your labor is like that glass of water.  You don’t want to touch it or reach for it.  We want to just pour it out to the Lord.  We will taint it if we touch it. 

Any negative thing that happens, treat the same way.  Pour it out before the Lord. 

If you did what was on your heart to do, you did your work.  Leave the results to God, both the positive and the negative, you cannot touch it.