Pastor Michael

Deal with it quickly.
Ephesians
4:26-27 says, “Be angry, and yet do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not
give the devil an opportunity.” Satan wants you to dwell on your feelings and let them grow. But God
asks you to deal with anger.

In some instances of extreme pain and suffering—for instance, a drunk driver kills your son or daughter—you won’t be able to get rid of your anger before the sun sets.

But you should acknowledge your feelings and decide that you will deal with them. You shouldn’t
just accept rage as a natural response and allow it to become part of your life.

May your anger be less today. Michael

Noah needed strong faith to build an ark, despite the ridicule of his neighbors. But he trusted God when
He said there would be a flood. Although Paul was persecuted, stoned, imprisoned, beaten, and eventually martyred, he didn’t compromise his convictions.

When the authorities told Peter and John to stop preaching about Jesus, they replied, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19-20).

The Lord wants us to live by conviction. Unfortunately, most people live by preference. They ask
themselves, What do I desire?What is the easiest or best for my life?What will bring the most satisfaction
or acceptance? For a believer, our decisions should be based on personal convictions—strong beliefs we
hold based on the truth of God’s Word—rather than our preferences.

What do you want to do today?  What does God want you to do today?  I hope they match.  Michael

As Dr. Chalmers well says, "Sin is that scandal which must be rooted out from the great spiritual household over which the Divinity rejoices . . . Strange administration, indeed, for sin to be so hateful to God as to lay all who had incurred it under death, and yet when readmitted into life that sin should be permitted; and that what was before the object of destroying vengeance, should now become the object of an upheld and protected toleration. Now that the penalty is taken off, think you that it is possible the unchangeable God has so given up His antipathy to sin, as that man, ruined and redeemed man, may now perseveringly indulge under the new arrangement in that which under the old destroyed him?

Does not the God who loved righteousness and hated iniquity six thousand years ago, bear the same love to righteousness and hatred to iniquity still? . . . I now breathe the air of loving-kindness from Heaven, and can walk before God in peace and graciousness; shall I again attempt the incompatible alliance of two principles so adverse as that of an approving God and a persevering sinner? How shall we, recovered from so awful a catastrophe, continue that which first involved us in it? The cross of Christ, by the same mighty and decisive stroke wherewith it moved the curse of sin away from us, also surely moves away the power and the love of it from over us."

Sin kills.  Give it no ground in your life. Michael.

Our part is the trusting, it is His to accomplish the results. And when we do our part, He never fails to do His, for no one ever trusted in the Lord and was confounded. Do not be afraid, then, that if you trust, or tell others to trust, the matter will end there.

Trust is only the beginning and the continual foundation; when we trust, the Lord works, and His work is the important part of the whole matter. And this explains that apparent paradox which puzzles so many. They say, "In one breath you tell us to do nothing but trust, and in the next you tell us to do impossible things. How can you reconcile such contradictory statements?"

They are to be reconciled just as we reconcile the statements concerning a saw in a carpenter's shop, when we say at one moment that the saw has sawn asunder a log, and the next moment declare that the carpenter has done it. The saw is the instrument used, the power that uses it is the carpenter's. And so we, yielding ourselves unto God, and our members as instruments of righteousness unto Him, find that He works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure; and we can say with Paul, "I labored; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." For we are to be His workmanship, not our own. (Eph. 2:10.)

And in fact, when we come to look at it, only God, who created us at first, can re-create us, for He alone understands the "work of His own hands." All efforts after self-creating, result in the marring of the vessel, and no soul can ever reach its highest fulfillment except through the working of Him who "works all things after the counsel of His own will." 

What will He do through you today?  Michael

In 2006, Charles Moore lost his job as a roofer in Toledo, Ohio, and decided to return to his hometown of Detroit to look for work. He couldn’t find a job, however, and soon found himself homeless. In July, while looking through a trash bin for bottles, Moore found thirty-one U.S. Savings Bonds. With the help of the Neighborhood Service Organization, a local nonprofit group, Moore tracked down the owner of the bonds, Ernest Lehto, who had bought the bonds during the 1980s at a face value of $8,900. By the time Moore found them, the bonds were worth $20,738. Ernest Lehto died in 2004, but Moore returned the bonds to his son, Neil Lehto. For his honesty and effort, Moore was given $100. He was thankful for the money.

When local media picked up the story, however, Neil Lehto began receiving phone calls and emails from angry people calling him cheap and ungrateful. Lehto, a lawyer, blamed his eighty-two-year-old mother, saying that she was the sole beneficiary and had determined the reward amount. “That generation of people would consider $100 to be an adequate reward,” he said.

Now aware of Moore’s need, the community began to support the homeless man. One man sent him eight trash bags filled with bottle returns and a bowl of coins. Jesse Nyikon, a local billiards owner, offered Moore a night on the town, complete with food, drinks, and unlimited pool. As the story began to grow, so did the number of people expressing gratitude for Moore’s integrity. Dick Wolski and Ken Zorn — two businessmen from Troy, Michigan — pulled together a gift of $1,200. They also paid for $250 worth of clothing at Men’s Wearhouse. Best of all, they lined him up with a job interview at a local cleaning company.

“Here’s a man who by all rights should be worried and thinking about himself but who takes the time to think about others,” Wolski said. “What a lesson! Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing?”

Amen.  Michael