Good Morning everyone from Hawaii to the far reaches of the world. It is good to see you all back again, and if you are a visitor for the first time, or returning from the past, welcome to The Church Ministries. We send you all a warm Jesus greeting. Praise the Lord! Thank-you Father, for giving us the time and space, plus availability and health to let us gather as a whole in the Body of Christ.
Dear Heavenly Father, Sovereign Lord, please be with us, we praise Your name, we all love You, we adore You, and we want to thank-you for being our God. Please be with us this Sunday and in all days, please seal us together as one. We have Jesus in our hearts, and we ask for the Holy Spirit to come upon us, so we all can be justified and sanctified as one. We all need You Lord, we all want to be close to You and worship You with our hearts and in spirit. We want to escape our worldly attitudes and our carnal minds, and just have Jesus shinning through our bodies in all His righteousness, not ours, with His mind, His blood, and His love, that brightens our spirits on the inside and the outside of these short term earthly bodies. Show us Lord, guide us into what you want us to be, say, and act. Please be in our minds with new thoughts, with a new enlightenment towards how better we can serve You, and build a closer relationship with You and Your Son Jesus. Let us all be at one this day and forever more. In Jesus precious Name, Amen
Please turn your bibles to the book of Hebrews chapter 15, verse 5.
God has said,
"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you." NIV
At times most of us all have experienced the absence of God. Not feeling that He hears us, or we don’t feel that His grace is upon us. We feel sometimes He is far away from us when we pray or spend time in meditation. We know He will never leave us, but we also know that He may depart from us just for a while; it might just be that He is apart from us during trials and tribulations, or to make us grow and draw closer to Him. We all go through these times, it is a part of our development with the Lord, and along with these seemingly empty times we also develop a stronger faith. Don’t forget God will hear every word we say to Him, and we should all know that we may not feel His presence, but He is there. We have a relationship with our Lord that cannot be broken, a bond that has been sealed through the shedding blood of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. So we ask ourselves why our faith can’t be built even stronger knowing this.
Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. Matt. 22:37-38 NIV
The LORD favors those who fear Him,
Those who wait for His lovingkindness. Psalm 147:11 NASB
Relationships grow when the two are apart from each other. That is why during these periods that God seems far away, He is basically there but you don’t feel His presence. We all know God is omnipresence; He is always with us, so that is why we must dedicate our lives to Him, Jesus dedicated His life to us why wouldn’t we want to dedicate our lives to the one that created us, and the one that gave His life for us, to approach the originator and to find ourselves in Him. Pure love, pure hope, pure compassion and understanding are all within Him. I don’t understand why some of us take these gifts all for granted, why don’t we all seek the Lord constantly?
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. Rom. 5:1-5 NIV
We can ask Him all things, in everything we do, say, and think. He can always give us the proper direction, so we form this relationship and we will be in better communication with the awesome God. At times we all might be confused or going through some kind of suffering, and these are the times that we should be praising God. Most of us praise Him for all the good things and blessings that happen to us. Then we ask ourselves shouldn’t we be praising Him for all the ups and downs of our lives. When we praise Him for all the misfortunes, the troubles, the hard times, the sufferings, the trials and tribulations, it will bring us to a different level of worship. We should praise Him under all circumstances, attacks, and to have that component of pure trust in Him. God is always in control and we should be praising His great plan that all things will turn out for good in the end. We can’t do anything ourselves, we need Him to govern and direct all of our lives. That is why we need the line of communication always open, so He can better direct our lives and we can take the fears and worries of this world and give them all to the Lord, we can’t carry all the burdens of this world. He is in our bodies already; He is in the heart that is pumping.
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire. Heb. 12:28-29 NIV
Because Your lovingkindness is better than life,
My lips will praise You. Psalm 63:3 NASB
From the rising of the sun to its setting
The name of the LORD is to be praised. Psalm 113:3 NASB
So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God--all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God. Rom. 5:11 NLT
Friendship with the LORD is reserved for those who fear him.
With them he shares the secrets of his covenant. Psalm 25:14 NLT
Soon our minds will not rely on ourselves, as we move closer to the intimate relationship, and then as we change, we will end up totally with full reliance on God for everything. As the relationship builds between us, slowly our character of self will slowly disappear, and our acts of praise will glorify our Lord and put a smile on His face, this is what our God wants, to be the Shepard of us all. This is when we fall into complete surrender beyond all the temptations of this world, we let go, and let God. So as we surrender ourselves and put our Lord in complete control, our love and the relationship becomes a complete togetherness, living as one.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect. Rom 12:2 NASB
All relationships require times of being together and times separated. So if you are going through a trial or some type of suffering we have to look at the big picture overall, we may be going through it to spend more time with our Lord, when we are in pain we all spend more time with God. When things are going well, and things are all alright we tend to loose that yearning to cry out to the Lord. So maybe the situation you may be going through at one particular time, it may be hurting, but it will be bringing you closer with added time with our Lord. That is why sometimes we go through the things we go through; don’t forget the Lord works all things out for good. All we have to do is trust Him, let Him drive, we have to take our hands completely off the wheel, and let Him take us to where we are supposed to go. Life is always going to have some cloudy days in it. Everyday we can’t always have sunshine in it, except when we are home in heaven. Plus the fact when we have a series of cloudy days and then the sun comes out we find more joy in that particular day. So our worship should not change, we should be praising and worshiping the Lord as soon as we rise in the morning, till the end of each day as we lay down and rest in the evening to give our God the elements of our inner soul, and share our hearts with Him. Anything we do can be formed into an act of worship and praise, when our love is pure, and which the end result will bring glory to God, making Him number one in all things.
Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." John 4:23-24 NIV
And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice--the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? Rom. 12:1 NLT
Some of us only spend time with the Lord when we are going through a particular trial or tribulation, or going through some hard time, some confusion or some other suffering. We should make it our goal and main purpose to worship our Lord. It brings joy to our God, I think we all owe a few things to our Lord, I think all of us could all spend more time in worship and praise. It is an honorable thing to worship our God, it is a privilege just to be able to come upon the thrown of grace. Many of us don’t use the blessing that the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit have laid out and prepared for us all.
Follow God's example in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him. Eph. 5:1-2 NLT
For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the afflicted ones with salvation. Psalm 149:4 NASB
God is spirit and He made us in His image, so we just don’t have a body we have a spirit which would enable us to worship spirit to spirit with the aid and help of the Holy Spirit. God made us this way so we could have direct contact at anytime or any place. We do not need buildings to worship, we can worship God anywhere and it all relies on our attitude and hearts not a particular place. So we are all growing in God not for just what we take in, but also what we give out in spirit.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. Rom. 8:26 NIV
"But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. John 14:26 NASB
Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. James 4:7-8 NIV
For since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life. Rom 5:10 NLT
Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. Rom. 6:13 NIV
So what has happened to all our relationships with God? We should be full of joy to build a better bond and relationship it should be number one in all our lives. Establishing a spiritual relationship with truth should be the first thing on our minds, or our number one way of life. Some of us don’t consider spending time and building a bond of affection with our Lord. Some of us all still are wrapped up in the world. Some of us have a passion to be close to God. Some of us had this passion, and it left us. Others give only there spare time, when we should all be giving quality time. If some of us lost this passion to build that intimate relationship, we should ask of God to return us the drive and passion to love, share, and worship Him, and He will help us. We should all want that more than anything else, that intimate bond. And once we have established our true goal in life, that gentle peace with God, then everything else will fall into place.
For the devious are an abomination to the LORD; But He is intimate with the upright. Prov. 3:32 NASB
The LORD looks down from heaven
on the entire human race;
he looks to see if there is even one with real understanding,
one who seeks for God. Psalm 14:2 NLT
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: "Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. John 17:1-5 NIV
Dear Holy Father, as we come to another day of closing, we realize that we all need you, and that we ourselves can do nothing without you. Some of your children out there think they can, and don’t realize the most meaningful part of our lives is to call upon your name, for all our needs. We need to thank-you, praise You, and worship You for all the planning and configurations, and the love and care You have given us already. We all need to be close to you, more than close, we need to be at one with You from deep within hearts. The only way we can do this is to have You guide us in the proper Holy directions, and we must build our relationships with You in order to know your perfect loving communication. Without the proper bond of friendship with added compassion, how could we possibly be able to hear Your messages. If we aren’t in spiritual tune with pure trust and harmony we would be using our own minds of the flesh, and we will end up living in the dark shadows. We need to live by Your great light. You are our great lighthouse standing tall on a large rock jutting out into the sea, guiding the little boats that are being tossed around on troubled waters, being thrown to and fro from the elements of the deep dark world. You are our strength and our light to guide us through the gushing winds and the rain with a victory over the world. We need all of You Lord, we all humble ourselves before You and ask your forgiveness and we ask for Your help for a deeper part of togetherness, to mold us into a better image of the likeness of You, Father. Then we will know that all things will come together for our lives through eternity, satisfying all our desires, hopes, and dreams through pure faith given from You. Thank-you Lord for all the things you have done and all the gifts that we will be blessed with, the rest of our eternal souls. In the Name above all names, our beloved Jesus, Amen and Amen.
