Posted in Uncategorized at 9:34 am by jeff@dlaog.com
On Sunday mornings, I’ve been concentrating for a while on the Kingdom of God, how it looks, the way that it shows up in the church and in the believer’s personal life, as they become a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ alone that has the power to save, and has the power to transform us into His image.
I found a really funny video based off of the Free Credit Report.com commercials that brings out this point in a unique way by Christian commedian Tim Hawkins.
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:03 pm by jeff@dlaog.com
God promised to take care of His children. In the Bible, this is often described in terms of “fat” and “fatness”. Now, in the video, there were a few chuckles as I declared, “Fat is good.” But it really is! Look at what God declared about His provision in the time of famine. Gen. 48:18 NKJV says:Bring your father and your households and come to me; I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you will eat the fat of the land.So as we look at some rather frighting times financially possibly coming upon our land, we need to remember that He is a provider in the midst of the famine, a safety in the midst of the storm, a refuge in the time of war and distress.Blessings,
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:27 am by jeff@dlaog.com
Rom. 6:13 (NKJV) says “And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. “ In a message I gave on the subject, I compared my broken Les Paul guitar to my thankfully still in great shape Taylor 814ce.
Both are fantastic guitars. Both are amazing in both their craftsmanship and playability. Both are valuable. Both can do amazing things and sound out of this world. But there is a problem with one of them. I broke my Les Paul. Well, I didn’t really break it, I just dropped it. The impact of landing is what broke it. It fell, it broke.
When we fall into sin, we also fall, and the landing breaks us as well. The Les Paul is now an unplayable guitar until I can afford to get it fixed. Eventually, I will be able to save enough money to pay to get my dream electric guitar fixed. Until then, I play my old reliable Jackson. I am so glad that I can keep making music on another guitar. Unfortunately, that is not the case when it comes to us. When we fall and break, we can’t fix ourselves, nor can we ever afford to pay for someone else to fix us. The price of sin is just to high to cover on our own. Sin leads to brokenness, and without Christ’s blood, we remain broken.
The Les Paul is still a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, and and even though it is broken, it remains designed to make beautiful music. The fall didn’t destroy the purpose, just made it impossible to accomplish the purpose. So are we without Christ. The guitar was made for the purpose of playing beautiful music, and so are we. We just can’t be played in our broken state.
Only Christ can put us back together again. Only He can repair our brokenness. Only He can restore us to the same condition that we were before our fall. Here is a clip from that message that illustrates what we are supposed to be, using my Taylor 814ce acoustic guitar:
May we always be an instrument of beauty and praise unto our God.
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:11 am by jeff@dlaog.com
As I said in my last post, we in America are just not used to the concepts of a King and His Kingdom. We’re more accustomed to the Frank Sinatra syle of living, doing it “My Way”. One of the ways that the King has declared that His Kingdom will show up is righteousness, or holiness. Now this seems to go directly against the current trend in American Christianity, which seems to allow for a lot of compromise and sees a lot of “grey areas” that are found nowhere in scripture. As I said in a message on the subject:
Should we continue to sin? By no means. Should we continue to partake of the compromise? NO!
I want to challenge us to simply and honestly examine our lives, and see where we are allowing
the little foxes to come and destroy the vineyards of our lives.
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:44 am by jeff@dlaog.com
Over the past several weeks, I’ve been speaking on the way that the Kingdom of God, the reign, rule and authority of God, shows up in the lives of believers. This is becoming a bigger and bigger issue to me in my own life and faith journey.
It seems that the longer we Pentecostal/Charismatic types go, we just don’t seem to learn from the past. We keep emphasizing the extreme and the demonstrative (and I am by no means opposed to either in their proper context) above the internal workings of the the Spirit of God in our lives. What I mean is that we seem to elevate manifestations above character development. We go to meetings and chase down revivals, hoping for a “touch from God”, all the while manifesting a variety of very carnal character traits.
The recent fall of another “revival” leader is a classic example of this. We place way to high a value on giftings and charisma and simply not enough emphasis on character development. I think it is time this changed. We must allow God to develop Godly character in our personal lives.
The first manifestation of the Kingdom of God I spoke on was joy. Rom. 14:17 tells us that the Kingdom of God shows up in the form of “…righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Here is a clip from that message:
We in America are just not used to the concepts of Kingship and Lordship. It is foreign to our way of thinking and our life experience, living in a democracy. In a kingdom, the king’s word is law. In a democracy, the people have a major say in the matter, whether they have the right idea or not.
God has already declared the way He wants His Kingdom to show up. Are we willing to let it show up in our lives the way He would have it?