“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. “This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.” – John 9:3

 

In the Gospel of John, Jesus and His disciples come across a man who was blind since birth. Jesus spat on the ground, made some clay, and placed it on the blind man’s eyes. Jesus then told the man to go and wash the clay off in the nearby pool of Siloam. When the man did this, he immediately began to see.

 

That confused me when I was young. Jesus could have snapped His fingers or even just spoke a single word and the man would have gained his sight. So why did Christ go to the trouble of making mud and having the man go and wash himself off?

 

The reason is that even though the man did not cause his blindness, he needed to be a part of the solution. All of us have our sins and problems in this world. God does occasionally remove a problem from our path without our intervention, but just as any good Father, He wants us to be obedient children. If we continue to get something for nothing, we will begin to be too familiar with just having everything go well. We would become indignant if the slightest thing didn’t go perfectly the way we’d want it to.

 

There are many times in the Bible that God shows He wants our obedience before He blesses us. His blessings are coming our way; He’s promised health and favor to His people. That being said, He also wants us to appreciate what we get and we do that through fostering a relationship with God first, giving Him our “first fruits”.

 

“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Mathew 6:33.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God…” Romans 8:28

 

God has plentiful blessings waiting for His children, but we need to first show Him that we are ready for them.  If we show our love for God through obedience, He will in turn fill our cups abundantly.  We can’t earn God’s blessings, but we do show that we appreciate Him by trying to follow His lead. We won’t always get it right, but the point is to try.

 

Think of it as an investment. You won’t see a return unless you first invest something. The blind man followed Jesus’s instructions as a faith investment. It paid off for him when he gained his sight. Imagine how much your investment will pay off when you invest in your relationship with the Almighty.

 

So please, don’t just sit there hoping for change. Foster your relationship with our Savior and watch His mighty works be made visible through your life as well.

 

 

God’s blessings to you.

 

DH

 

 

 

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts.” – Psalm 139:23

 

 

I was talking with a guy the other day, trying to share the Gospel with him, and he made an interesting statement. He said, “What do I need to be saved from?  My life is going just fine.”  Unfortunately, that is a statement that I’ve not only heard a few times, but I’ve even said it in my earlier life.

 

 

Overall, people seems to have a short memory. When things are good, we think that they will always be good. We forget about the bad times and what God has done to bring us out of them.  It’s like we beg and plead to Him to save us from our problems, then when He does, we forget to give Him the praise for it. We say, “Help God, help!” then when the problem gets fixed we say, “Never mind God, I took care of it.”

 

 

You may look over your life right now and like what you see. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to like who you are. However, if you think you are perfect, then think again. There’s only one perfect person and His name is Jesus. All the rest of us sin, and some more than others. That becomes a real problem when you don’t even recognize that there’s sin in your life. You may think you have sin beat all by yourself, but you aren’t looking at the whole picture. You may have conquered your lusts, but are you still an angry person or prone to constantly greedy for money? Then you have sin in your life.

 

 

You may not even recognize that you have that sin within you. It’s too easy in this world to become desensitized to the wrongs that you commit. You may try to justify them or think to yourself that your sins aren’t that bad when compared to a murderer or a thief. Even loved ones may eventually turn their heads and fail to recognize your sinful ways. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard someone say, “My husband doesn’t believe in Christ, but he’s still a good man.” Being good doesn’t get you into Heaven, only accepting Jesus and His finished work on the cross will do it. You can’t be good enough. There is always some sin in you that you won’t be able to beat by yourself, but for God nothing is impossible.

 

No matter how our lives are going at the time, we all need to put Christ first place. If you hang out with hooligans, you will become a hooligan yourself. Conversely, the more time you spend with Jesus, the more you will recognize that you need Him in your life. I’ve tried running my own life and it has always led to disastrous results. I didn’t even realize that I was harboring such bad things inside of myself until they would come out, and usually at the worst possible time. It’s when I surrendered to Jesus, that’s when I truly started living. I am not perfected quite yet, but I’m on the way. God’s path is honestly better than anything I could have come up with.

 

 

God knows us through and through, whereas we only see just the surface sometimes. We all need to have God’s magnifying glass look over our lives. I want the best for my life and the lives of those I love, so please, search me, O God, and help me to become the better person you want me to be.

 

 

God’s blessings to you.

 

 

DH

 

 

 

“My sheep listen to My voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand.” – John 10:27-28

Many times in the scriptures we read about the Lord speaking to someone. The problem is that nowadays, we don’t much physically hear God speak to us. That’s concerning for some people. There are those people who say that until they physically hear God speaking to them, they won’t believe. Unfortunately, those type of people probably still wouldn’t believe even if God himself showed up in person and smacked them in the face. Then there are other people that wish they could physically hear their Lord’s voice, but don’t. They long for that tangible interaction with their Savior, but they may never find it until they meet Him in Heaven.

I personally have never physically heard my Lord out loud in this big, booming “Moses” burining bush voice. I do, however, talk with Him often and He answers me plainly.

Occasionally, I hear a still, quiet voice inside of myself and it leads me in a certain direction. Many times, I would not have entertained that particular direction in and of myself. That’s the beauty of the Lord. If you truly leave yourself open to Him and His ways, you could end up accomplishing things you’d never thought possible.

Still, other times there are answers to my prayers and petitions that come in the form of solutions to circumstances that were out of human control or comprehension. The perfect example of this is our own twin daughters having an inescapable pre-natal problem that was resolved miraculously. I did not truly know what fervent prayer was until those weeks of angush and suffering. Our hope rested in Jesus and Him alone, because we didn’t have anything else to go off of. I am overjoyed to say that Christ showed His stuff and we have beautiful children to stand as living embodiments of His grace and love. You may call it luck or coincidence, but I know when I heard my God plain as day.

The point I’m trying to make is that the more time you spend with our Lord, the closer you will be to Him. and the better you will distingush His answers to your questions. When you love someone, you try to know all you can about that person. You don’t just hear them, you listen to them. That’s a big measure of a Christian. You may not physically hear God’s voice, but you don’t have to. The more you spend time in His word and the more you pray, the easier it is to see and hear what He has to say. You will know when God is pulling you in a certain direction.

I hear people say, “How do I know that’s what God wants for my life?” You will know when God is answering your prayers or telling you to move in a certain direction with your life because of two things:

1. The direction will never go against God’s commandments.

2. The direction will be for the benefit of God’s people and not only yourself.

If you are confused about your life or not sure if God is speaking to you or not, spend time getting to know Him better. If you can’t find it in yourself to pray, then ask God to help you pray. It sounds simple, but it’s true. Next thing is to spend time connecting to God through His word. If you start your day with a “holy hour” with even 15-20 minutes set aside for Jesus with no distractions, you will be better equipped to answer His voice when He calls. And trust me, His plan for your life is better than anything you or I could come up with.

You can’t give a response to the Lord’s voice if you don’t know He’s talking to you.
 
God’s blessings to you 

DH

“Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralyzed man, “My child, your sins are forgiven.” – Mark 2:5

 

 

In Mark chapter two, we see Jesus preaching in a house with a huge crowd gathered around Him. Then came a paralyzed man carried by his friends. The crowd that had gathered was now so large that the friends could not get the paralyzed man to Jesus to be healed. They tried doors and windows and found them all to be blocked by the crowd. However, the friends cared so much that they tore a hole in the roof, then lowered the paralyzed man down through the hole to where Jesus was standing. Jesus saw their faith and healed the man of his paralysis.

 

There are a few things to keep in mind when reading this. First, the paralyzed man was so loved by his friends that they didn’t stop when they met some resistance. They carried the paralyzed man, which was hard enough, but then they went further. They kept trying normal ways to get him through the crowd to Jesus, but then they realized they still had more to do to get their friend saved. You don’t just decide to destroy the roof of a house, it had to come after quite a bit of pushing and shoving through the crowd to no avail. Those friends were willing to do whatever it took to save this man. They could have tried and stopped after a little while, still showing some love towards the paralyzed man, but that wasn’t enough. The friends didn’t quit. They showed the man the fullness of love; the kind of love that is straight from God Himself.

 

The second thing to think about here is that not only did they love their friend, but these people had such faith in Christ that they knew this was the right thing to do to help the paralyzed man. They knew only one could save their friend and Jesus was The One. The Scripture says because of their faith the man was healed. It didn’t say anything about the paralyzed man’s faith, it talked about the faith of his friends. Jesus forgave the man of his sins, then told him to arise and walk. It took the faith of his friends to bring the man there, but the man’s own faith was cultivated enough to listen and obey the Savior. That faith was first demonstrated by the friends, then acted out by the paralyzed man. They set the example for him to follow.

 

This story holds deep meaning for every one of us who has a friend, colleague, or family member that has been overtaken by sin in their life. Sin can absolutely paralyze people and that is exactly what the devil wants. Satan doesn’t want you to do good works for the Kingdom of God, he wants you to fall into the same sins that you normally fall into. It’s honestly tough to break free of habits by yourself; you just can’t do it alone. You need to surround yourself with good people that will pray for you and help lift you up when the going gets tough. You need friends and family to love you enough to pray and keep praying for you, no matter what. I stand here today as a perfect example of that. I went down some wrong paths in my life, but by the God’s grace I’m alive and able to now help others. I didn’t pull myself out, I had some good people lifting me up in prayer. Without them, who knows where I would be right now.

 

You, too, have some people on your side. Even if you don’t have a friend in the world, you have people praying for you. If you are hearing this sermon or reading it right now, I’m personally praying for your salvation and prosperity. You have people in generations that have long since passed that have prayed for you and others in your same circumstance that you don’t even know about. It’s hard to believe, but it’s true. The best thing of all is that the Lord and Savior has been praying for you. The Bible says He had you in mind before the creation of the world and that He wants you to be with Him in glory. Read John 17:20-27.  The Savior prayed for you! Now it is your turn to also pray for those who find it hard to pray.  It’s your turn to lift up people who can’t or won’t lift themselves up to Jesus. We see our Lord as the example, then it is our time to be the example for others.

 

There’s a Beatles song that says we get by with a little help from our friends. There is no bigger or better friend than Jesus. Please know that you are not alone in your struggles and that you don’t have to be paralyzed by sin any longer. Look to the cross of Jesus, then arise and walk. Your sins have been forgiven.  You are healed.  You are loved.

 

God’s blessings to you.

 

 

DH