Brother Gary Sunday Morning 1/31/16

Psa 139:14  I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

It is wonderful and a blessing that God ordained that we have a bible and understand it.  The bible is not just a book but is designed for our day and for every day.  It has what we need.

I will praise thee:  We have something to really praise God about.  We will not be able to cover it all this morning.  May God help you and me to realize how much we have to praise Him for.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made:  I am not a science teacher nor a doctor to tell you about all the marvelous ways that God made our body but it is a marvelous thing.  I have been told that our heart is the size of our fist.  A baby’s heart is the size of its fist. 

Every one of us has a beating heart.  It is designed in the natural to beat.  It is a marvelous thing the way that God designed the blood to come into the heart and then to be thrust through our body and then to come back again.  What a marvel the creation of our body is!

Not only do we have a body, we have a soul and a spirit.  We thank God for that.

Marvelous are thy works:  I pray for needs that I cannot comprehend, but God understands it all and knows the details of every situation. 

For all of you that know Landa Twete, I was praying for her yesterday.  It was real to me.  She has a condition in her brain that produces seizure type symptoms.  The Neurosurgeon told her that the growth in her brain is so deep that if they endeavored to operate there would be great dangers. 

I prayed, “God you know all about the brain.”  I cannot tell you much about the brain but that it has two sides and each side controls one side of our body. 

Landa is young.  She has this growth in her brain that is life threatening.  Anything the medical community tries to do has its possible failure.  The surgery could leave her blind or with other complications. 

A machine could work on it to form a scab and then radiation could kill it and hope that it doesn’t cause more problems.  They could leave it alone and hope it goes away.  God knows all about her brain and He knows all about your brain.

“Marvelous are thy works.  My soul knoweth right well:” David desired to praise God for creating him.  God created him a twofold being.  We are all created a twofold being.  We are an earthen vessel:  this is a bible term, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

We have a natural body.  It is a marvel to me how my hands and feet work.  It is a marvel to me that I can see and that I can hear.  God has given us an intellect.  I don’t like to have much of a fire on Sunday so that my precious grandchildren don’t get burned. 

We know what it is to be burnt.  If our grandchildren come we don’t want anything to happen to them.  There are toys downstairs by the stove and we don’t want them to be burned. 

We have intellect and are able to reason that when the temperature is such, we are very careful of black ice.  We all take precautions.  The deck will be slick, the steps, and the highway will be slick.  We have that intellect. 

There is a part of our intellect that needs to be very well quickened.  God created us an individual, an earthen vessel to be used to His honor and glory.

He created us with a soul.  David said, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  It is so interesting to me how the body works.  It has a way of healing, of moving, and of having balance.  We are created of God with certain abilities in this body.  Everyone here has the ability to hear.  God made us so we could hear.  You are very blest.

God made us to hear and in reality He is a God that hears.  God made us so that we could speak.  He did this because He is a God that speaks.  God gave us the ability to have eyes to see.  God sees.  He has the ability to smell as we have the ability to smell. 

You and I have a sense of touch.  We are awestruck that God is touched by the feeling of our infirmities.  Isn’t that marvelous?

Gen 2:7  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

You have a spirit, it is a breath of life.  Man is a living soul.  We are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

We are created a moral being knowing right from wrong.  I am not going to say when our daughters knew right from wrong and know the value of obedience, but you and I are blessed from God that He created us fearfully and wonderfully.  We are a moral being.  It is not bad; it is wonderful.

Every one of us can greatly appreciate God that in creating man and woman He made us a being that knows right from wrong.

In the early days of creation when Adam and Eve were in the image of God, they felt the presence of God and heard God walking in the cool of the day.  They enjoyed fellowship with God.  It is wonderful to understand fellowship with God and with one another. 

It is wonderful that God has created us in such a way that we can make the choice to love the unlovely.  There would be people that treat you unlovely and with disrespect.  They treat you substandard and with a condescending air and then you turn around and pray for them.  We don’t think to do them wrong.  We are a moral being.  We want to pray.

For those that make deposits in your life all the time, we have some grandchildren that are affectionate, they slap a kiss on my hand every once in a while.  They make deposits.  We have one that wants us to stay overnight, “Will you please stay overnight?”  He doesn’t understand what it means to stay away from home.  Sometimes we do, but not always.

We are a moral being knowing right from wrong.  When you and I are faced with a decision, we realize, “I don’t want to make this decision without considering it; in what balance should I make this decision?”  There is only one place that God ordained that the balance should be held and that is in God’s hand. 

If you make a decision by what you feel, it doesn’t mean it will be right.  If you make it how someone else feels it doesn’t mean that it will be right.  God holds the balance in His hand.  It is not controlled by our personality or someone else’s but by the Word of God. 

Perhaps you have made a decision and are thinking, “I made that decision too hastily.  God allows us to reconsider our decisions.  You might be there this morning.  “I need to rethink that decision.”  You are here considering a decision that you made in the past. 

There are us that are here that know that there are those fifty years ago that made the decision, “At a later day I will serve God.”  There is not one that doesn’t regret that decision.  When you make the decision, “I am going to serve God and do His will, you can sing that song: “I have no regrets.”

If you have made the decision to get saved later, think: “I need to reconsider.”  You are fearfully and wonderfully made: you have intellect, you can reason, you can pray, you can think, and you can talk. 

Every individual has a measure of faith.  If you and I are in the decision making process, you want to remember that when you choose God then you choose faith.  I was thinking of the song that I heard years ago, “He did not fail me then.”

He will not fail you now.  God will not fail you now.  Students, mothers, and fathers, and young people, God will not fail you now.  You might think, “Will He include me?  I am old and don’t consider myself worth much.”  You are very valuable to this congregation. 

I read of a man that was a preacher; he was praying and God made him with ears.  Preachers need to pray.  Everyone needs to pray.  God said, “Son I want to reveal to you something.  When you preach, one reason that you are anointed is because of the unseen man that cannot read or write that is sitting on the step of the pulpit praying for you.”

Let me tell you, everyone is valuable that knows God.  You are very valuable not only to the preacher, but you are very valuable when you pray.  You are valuable to the church and to the lost.  When you have a burden and you break into your very busy life and say, “I have to find someone to agree in prayer with me.”  It doesn’t have to be with someone that is in your presence.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made.  God created us to have a choice.  The devil cannot make you do something.  You have a choice.  God said in His Word over and again, “Choose you this day whom you will serve.”  We are creatures of choice.

God made us with a soul.  There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.

Isa 43:7  Even every one that is called by my name: for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.

God created us for His glory.  He didn’t create us to be disobedient.  He didn’t create us so that we could choose the wrong way as a creature of choice.  He created us with marvelous endowments.  Everyone has asked the questions, “What is man?  Where did I come from?  Where am I going to go when I die?” God gave us this Word that teaches us all the answers.

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

It is the design of God for you go give back to God what He has already given you.  We are to be a living sacrifice, holy…

Jesus came preaching repentance.  Repentance means to confess and then to forsake your sin.  I endeavored to preach on building on the sure foundation.  We need a good back wall; we must settle it, “I am never going back to sin.” 

I got saved as a single young man.  I had to build a good back wall.  I had my natural desires and goals; it was vital that I build a good back wall: “I will never go back to sin.”  When we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness all these things shall be added to us. 

It is important that we know what the kingdom of God is.  The world will tell you that the kingdom isn’t here yet that it is coming, but that is not what the Bible teaches.  “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink.”  It will not be a literal place where you grow food without weeds.  It is a spiritual kingdom that is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if tomorrow when I am praying God would reveal all the saints, many of them have gone onto to glory, all those that prayed for me?

Seek first the kingdom and all these things shall be added unto you.  Don’t underestimate what God will do.  Don’t let anyone plant the seed, “Your life will be warped if you follow God, you will miss out on this or that.” 

I serve a God that has a kingdom of joy.  I don’t need to tell anyone here to take a look at how sin treats people.  Sin leaves people with twisted minds, lives, and without direction in their life or ambition.

Jesus taught us first repentance.  Heaven is always waiting for a sinner to repent.  The church is always waiting for a sinner to repent.  After you get saved Jesus teaches, “Follow me.  I will make you fishers of men.”

Rom 12:1  I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

The first step is godly sorrow, repenting and confessing, knowing that you are born again, a new creature.  You don’t have to wait for the river to warm up to baptize around here.  The bible teaches to repent and be baptized. 

Baptism is an outward sign of an inward work.  The word baptize means immersed.  You say, “I am scared of water.”  If you are scared of water then you want to get saved and baptized because if you were to drown then you will go to heaven. 

Baptism by immersion means that individual is testifying, “I want to show the world that I have left my life of sin.”  I am not proud of my life of sin.  Whether you have tasted alcohol, drugs, or any form of sin, when you confess and repent then God forgives you of that sin.  The marvelous God made a plan that you can give a testimony quick when you get saved: you can get baptized. 

When you go all the way down and are fully covered with water it means that you are burying your life of sin.  Then you get up.  (I have never seen a preacher hold them down long.)  Then they come up out of the water to walk in newness of life.  No more going back to the ways and games of sin.  No going back to anything of sin.

My life has been full of good times since I got saved.  I have had heartaches, the difference between Johnny Cash and I is that I had someone to help me in my heartaches.

I have never had a prayer that He couldn’t answer.  My wife and I have knelt by our beds and prayed with our hearts breaking.  God has never failed us yet.

Acceptable to God:  Think how God feels when you come back and say, “I am giving myself back to you.” 

God has been so good to even these children this morning.  God has given them life.  God has given you health.  Children and young people give back to God what He has given you.

Be not conformed to this world.  When your heart begins to turn back to the world go to the back wall and put on another brick, “I don’t want to look, think, or be like the world.”

Joh 5:21  For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.

God’s quickening brings alive the desire for God.  You and I are blessed whenever we feel God quickening us.  When He quickens you to pray, when He quickens you to read your bible, when He quickens you to have an agreement of prayer, you are blessed.

God teaches an agreement of prayer.  He wants me to know how much I need you.  There are some burdens that are too heavy for us to bear alone.  “Where any two agree as touching any one thing it shall be done.”

You say, “I have a real challenge in my life.”  You pray first and then be humble enough to say, “I need an agreement of prayer.” 

In my own personality, I will never try to find out what you need an agreement in prayer about.  I can agree with anyone that has a heart right with God and feels a challenge.

Jesus said, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.  They will be filled.

It is fine to be thirsty, but it is vital to know that when you are thirsty to get to God, “It is you that I need and you that I want.  Thy word declares, thou shalt be filled.”

“I will praise thee, I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Every individual in this audience can thank your mom and dad that you are here, but it is God that made you.  What are you going to do with what He has given you? 

God reaches his hand and heart to us.  If you have felt that wonderful hand of God on your heart: that quickening, that regret for sins of the past, and desire to be right with God, then you are blessed.  He is calling you to come and be right with Him.