“So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God.” – Genesis 45:8

In the book of Genesis, we see a man named Joseph who’s brothers got so jealous of him that they sold him into slavery. You would think that was the end of the story, but God had something different in mind. Joseph was so blessed by God that he not only prospered, but he eventually became the second to Pharaoh and in charge of all Egypt.

This story goes to show that even your worst situations can be used for God’s best work. The Bible says that God works all things for the good of those who love Him. Joseph loved God and followed His word, and that helped him use a string of bad situations as a springboard to a life of great abundance. Was it the best of times, certainly not, but Joseph trusted God and he was generously rewarded for his perseverance.

How many times do we try to control our own lives and destiny, only to get stressed and upset when things don’t go our way? We think we have life figured out and we may even get a little cocky for it, and then all of a sudden life smacks us down a peg or two. The truth is that we will all experience some highs and some lows in this world, but rest assured the God loves His children and has our best interests in mind.

For instance, I remember the funeral for my brother David Lee. He was active in the church and a member of a successful touring gospel quartet. There’s not too many people I know who are any more in love with Jesus than my brother was. And yet, God decided to take my brother home to glory at a young age. It was an incredibly sad time for our family, but yet, in a sense, we were happy for him as well. We trusted God that his passing was for the greater good of things, and it was indeed. The day of his funeral, our brother-in-law Stan was touched by Jesus in a big way. Stan is a really good man, but just being good isn’t going to save you. He had jumped around in religion throughout his life, but never really got to know the real Jesus. That day, the day of my brother’s funeral, Stan was fully introduced to the love and fellowship of Christ thanks to David Lee’s gospel quartet buddies. Stan was moved by God’s love and demanded to be baptized on the spot.

What’s more than that, since my wife Monica had not been baptized but was close with the Lord, she felt it was the right time to express her love for Jesus and to be baptized after our brother-in-law Stan. I know without a doubt that if my brother knew he could help save a soul or two, especially the souls of our brother-in-law Stan and my wife Monica, he would have cheerfully agreed to passing away so it could happen on that day. It’s a good thing to save a life, but the true miracle comes in saving someone’s soul. God is a God of miracles.

It’s impossible for us to see things from God’s perspective, but if we could, we would agree to some of the bad things occurring because we would know that a greater good would come from them. All the proof I need is in the cross. The worst evil and yet, without Christ’s crucifixion, we would never find forgiveness of our sins. We would never know eternal life without our Heavenly Father who is ready to make those tough decisions for the good of His children.

Praise God each and every day for His blessings. Praise Him for the blessings we know as well as for the innumerable blessing that we don’t even recognize. Everything in your life, good or bad, has been expertly placed by the Master. It may look a little rough now and then, but I promise that when we get to Heaven, we will see the whole picture for what it is. We will know that each thread had to be in a specific place in order to weave the grand tapestry of life. It was all for the greater good and it all came together to make a beautiful life worth living.

God’s blessings to you.

DH

“He told them, The man they call Jesus made mud and spread it over my eyes and told me, ‘Go to the pool of Siloam and wash yourself.’ So I went and washed, and now I can see!” – John 9:11

A little while ago, a man asked me to pray for him. He said that he didn’t feel like he was close enough to Jesus and that he needed help becoming more humble. I promised him that I would pray for him. A couple of days ago, he came back to me saying that that I must not have prayed for him. I told him I kept my promise and prayed for him often. The man said that since he last saw me, his life was turned upside down. He was humiliated at work and that he felt like nothing went right for him at all. I asked him how he was handling it, to which he replied that he was praying all the time, because that was the only place left to which he could turn. I said, “Prayers answered then?” He thought a minute and said, “Well, yes I suppose, but I didn’t want it like this.”

We all face troubles in life, but how we react to those troubles makes all the difference. In the book of John, we find Jesus healing a blind man with some mud that Jesus made from dirt mixed with His spit. I’m sure that the blind man heard all of that happening. Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud, and wiped it on the man’s eyes. It’s almost adding insult to injury, in that not only is the man blind, but now some joker is putting some spit-mud on him. However, Jesus was more than just some other guy and the blind man knew it. The blind man trusted Jesus and that was what made the miracle happen. I’m certain that the blind man didn’t ask Jesus to spit and make mud to be healed with. Frankly, if it was one of us in that situation, we probably would have asked if there was a cleaner, less spit-filled way of healing us. The blind man wasn’t like that. He believed that he would be healed and that Jesus had his best interests in mind, even thought maybe it wasn’t the way the man would have chosen first. He didn’t question the methods, he just believed in the outcome.

Too often, we pray for everything to go well. We want nothing but peace in our lives with no struggles. I’m not saying that praying for good things is a bad thing, but just like a muscle, we can’t grow unless we are put under stress sometimes. You don’t become a runner without running. Just the same, you can’t have humility without being humbled. Thank God that there are some trying times, because they give us a chance to exercise those virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Like the story of the blind man, the disciples asked Jesus who sinned to make the man blind. Our Lord replied, “This happened so the power of God could be displayed in him.” It’s not the ideal situation and not something we would ask for, but if it meant being saved for all of eternity and helping other souls to become saved as well, then it was well worth it.

You might ask, “But isn’t there another way?”

God’s ways are so far above our ways, as the heavens are above the earth. I promise you that the plan that our Creator has is better than anything you or I could come up with. The Apostle Paul spoke of “a thorn in his side,” meaning Paul had some sort of medical condition or something that kept plaguing him. He asked God to take it way, to which God replied, “My grace is sufficient for you.” It is when we are weak that we are strong in Christ. If we think that we can change our own ways and live a blessed life, we are only fooling ourselves. Men and women will fail, but with God, all things are possible.

Jesus died on the cross to save our souls. God could have done it any way He saw fit, yet He still chose to save us through the pain and anguish of the cross. He took the punishment we couldn’t. God has a plan for our lives and it’s not for us to second guess His ways. If the blind man would have slapped Jesus’ hands away from his eyes, the blind man would still have been blind. God wants you blessed. He wants you to see the greatness of what He has in store for you. If you think, “But that’s not how I would have done it,” then get your so-called plan out of the way of God’s perfect plan and watch Him turn your life into something extraordinary. Trust in the Lord and He will take you higher than you could imagine.

God’s blessings to you.

DH

“Jesus looked at them and said, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”- Matthew 19:26

In the Bible, the book of Luke chapter 5 shows Jesus telling Peter to take his boat out and cast the nets into deep water.  Peter complains a bit, saying that they’ve tried all night and hadn’t caught a single fish, but agrees to it declaring, “I will do as you say.”  When Peter does what is asked of him, the fishing net caught such a large amount of fish that Peter called for some of his partners to come over.  They all had so many fish that they were able to fill both boats, almost overflowing them both.

There are a few points to be taken from this story.  The first one is that no matter what the circumstances look like, trust in what God says.  Peter and others had been fishing all day with no luck. Their chances for success that day looked dim, but that didn’t stop the goodness of Jesus Christ.  Your situation may look dark, you may think there is no way possible, and you may have tried as hard as you could with no result.  Realize that God is bigger than your problems.  He is the God of power and plenty.  This is the same God who empowered David to defeat a giant with a sling and a stone.  He’s the same God who led Joshua to tear down the walls of Jericho.  He’s the same God who even now offers us victory over death through the cross of Jesus Christ.  There is nothing our Heavenly Father can’t do and that also includes helping you with your problems.  Focus more on God rather than on your circumstances.

The second point is that when you follow the Word of God, you will be blessed in ways you don’t realize and in amounts you can’t yet comprehend.  Peter did what Jesus told him to do and he was blessed with more fish than he had ever caught before.  Peter could have given up and disregarded Jesus, but he followed Christ’s directions and got the catch of a lifetime.

Lastly, Peter did something that is worthy of a special note. The nets were overflowing with fish, so much so that the nets were breaking.  At that point, Peter could have let the excess fish loose and think that it was enough. Instead, Peter called his friends over to share in the blessing. Together, they worked hard on the nets and hauled in enough fish to almost sink both of their boats.  We need to actively pursue this principle in our own lives.  Whenever we experience God’s favor and blessings, we must not forget to include those around us.  Don’t just take the money and run, so to speak.  Invest those blessings in others as well.  It’s easier to give blessings such as money or even your time when you realize that those blessings are God’s to begin with. It all comes from Him. Through our blessings, we need to become a blessing to others.

If you follow Jesus, no matter what the situation may look like, God’s blessings and abundance will soon follow you in amazing ways.  Even when it looks like there no possible way, God will make a way. An empty net today could be the catch of a lifetime when Jesus is with you.

God’s blessings to you.

DH

“No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,” – Philippians 3:13

 

 

 

Have you ever messed up before? I know I have. I personally have made my fair share of mistakes in the past, and a lot of those mistakes I can blame on foolish pride or anger. That being said, I figured when I really buckled down as a Christian, those mistakes would go away. That didn’t happen. Then I thought to myself that when I follow my calling of becoming an ordained minister, I’ll be free from those sins once and for all. Nope. It turns out that I still sin, I just become more aware of my failings. However, over the years I’ve learned that it’s OK to fall now and then, we all do, just as long as you keep getting back up.

 

 

 

Whether you are a preacher, a politician, or a PH.D., you are going to screw up. Just because you have accepted Christ doesn’t mean you are immune to the sins of this world. You will have your momentary failings, but the trick is to keep looking forward. The more you set your sights on what is good, the more you become acutely aware of your own shortcomings. That’s ok though, because the first step to solving any problem is acknowledging there is one. The second step is not getting hung up on the first step.

 

 

 

To use a football analogy, there’s a thing called forward motion. The point is to keep the ball going downfield toward the goal. You don’t take the ball out of the fight though, it’s still right in there, but it’s on the way to the goal. Same goes for us. We aren’t free from evil, but we are on the way. As long as you breathe, you will have battles to fight. The key is to maintain that forward motion with yourself. Don’t get bogged down on what happened yesterday or ten years ago. Keep moving forward. You won’t always get it right, but you can always learn from the mistake and try not to make it again.

 

 

 

Don’t waste your time with worrying about things that happened in your past. Think about what lies ahead of you. If you get hung up on bad news or bad people from yesterday, you’ll never see what God has in store for your tomorrow. Imagine that you only have so much space in your head. You can either fill it with bad thoughts and memories or you can fill it with hope and the knowledge that you are loved by the Creator. Once you look more to God and His love, it becomes easier to overcome setbacks when they happen. The things that plagued you before, such as anger, envy, or pride become minor players in a much larger theater. You aren’t worried about lust, because you focus on pure things. You don’t get sidetracked by laziness, because you have God and other people to serve.

 

 

 

Make a promise today to focus less on your circumstances and focus more on Jesus. Don’t see a problem as a stop sign, see it as a yield sign. Yield to God, be humble about your failings, then press forward towards the goal of Heaven.

 

 

 

God’s blessings to you.

 

DH

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

Do your good deeds outweigh your bad? Are you one of the few blissfully ignorant people that barely remembers ever doing a bad thing?Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to like who you are, but if you think you have earned a place in Heaven, think again. Only perfection gets into paradise and there’s only one perfect person; 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 for instance, but are you still an angry or proud person? 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. Lord, search me and remind me that it is not my good deeds that will outweigh by bad ones, but the complete good works of Jesus that will make all the difference.

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

“If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” – Romans 8:31

I have my fair share of problems, but don’t we all? There isn’t a person among us that hasn’t tasted pain or heartache. But instead of talking about how big my problems are, I want to tell you about how big my God is.

For Moses and the Israelites, my God brought plagues against their foes and parted the Red Sea so they could escape and be led into their promised land. For the profit Gideon, God blessed him so he could command a small group of 300 fighters to defeat an army of over 130,000. For Daniel, God sent an angel to close the mouths of the lions and also protect Daniel’s friends through a fiery furnace.

Notice in all of those situations, God didn’t just take away the problems. Instead, God protected and strengthened his people so they could come through their problems and glorify God in the process. God doesn’t create the problems, but as the Bible says, God will use all things for the good of those who love Him.

Jesus Himself said during a prayer that He doesn’t want us taken out of the world, but instead asks the Father to strengthen us during our trials. Each of those trials is a life lesson, and not just for us, but for everyone around us. When hard times come, we can either shrink into our own little corner and die or we can stand up, fight, and show this world what a mighty and awesome Father we have in Heaven.

Jesus prayed for our strength. Do you think Jesus ever prayed a prayer that wasn’t answered?

There is more to life than just what we see. We can either focus on the temporary or we can set our sights on the eternal. God is more than just a God of the right now, He is God of the forever. This problem you are facing, no mater how big it seems, is no match for how big our God is. That same God who is Father over all of creation is your Father as well and He loves you. Trust in the Father’s love and let Him take you farther than you could possibly imagine.

God’s blessings to you.

DH

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16

With the upcoming year upon us, I wanted this sermon to be the gospel in a nutshell. I wanted to make this sermon brief, but bold, in order to keep Christ at the front of your mind this next year.

In the beginning, God created the heavens, the earth, and everything in between. I know that because I’m here too. You and I are not here because of some one-in-a-zillion random chance. You and I live because God wants to be loved. And because of that need for love, He gave us the freedom to choose Him or reject Him. Love is a gift, and a gift that is forced is no gift at all.

As ignorant humans, we often pull away from God’s desires for our lives. We do bad things, called sins. Those sins can’t just disappear, or else what have we learned from them? The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. Plain and simple, if you commit evil, you can’t get into Heaven. That’s why there is Jesus.

Jesus is God in human form. God lowered Himself from His heavenly throne and was born of the Virgin Mary. She needed to be an untouched virgin to let there be no doubt that it wasn’t of human means, but God’s. Jesus was born to not only experience what God’s children experience, but to show us a better way to live the life He’s blessed us with. However, remember earlier when I said that the wages of sin is death. We deserve punishment because of our bad choices, but Jesus took that punishment for you and I on the cross. Then, just to show that God has power even over death, Jesus rose from the grave. Life, death, and eternity; nothing is too far out of God’s reach because it’s all His.

When we accept Jesus and His finished work on the cross, we are telling Him yes, please take our sins away. He can have them all. All of the sins we’ve done and all we will ever do, He has washed them away by His blood. In dying, Jesus destroyed our death. In rising, Jesus restored our life.

This upcoming year, keep Christ first in your life. Let Him go before you in all that you do so that you may prosper in every area. His promise to you is that He will work all things for the good for those who love Him. Accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, because if you do, you will be forgiven of your sins and experience a love so complete and wonderful that it will take all of eternity to show you just how much God truly loves His children.

God’s blessings to you.

DH

“Where no oxen are, the crib is clean; but much increase is by the strength of the ox.” – Proverbs 14:4

There are times where people can be harsh or overly critical of your actions, your ideas, or even you as a person. I have experienced this at different jobs or stages of my life and it always got me down, until a good friend and mentor of mine said, “If they aren’t talking about you, you aren’t doing anything.”

People, for the most part, fear change. They like the status quo and they don’t like to make waves. One thing I hear in business is, “That’s how we’ve been doing it for twenty years.” To which I reply, “Well, you may have been doing it wrong for twenty years.” Just because somebody did something along time ago doesn’t mean that it was the best way of doing it.

My point is that you have to challenge the status quo now and then. Question the answers. Go for what matters to you with gusto and drive. Some people won’t like that, but that’s ok. In short, you have to want better and believe it with everything you’ve got. For instance, I preach about Jesus whenever I can. Some people come to me afterwards with questions and some even with distain or spite, but if you can make me not believe in my Lord and Savior just by asking a few questions, then the Holy Spirit isn’t really what is driving me. Whatever matters to you, get fired up about it and like the Nike commercial says, “Just do it.”

It was once unprecedented for a runner to break the 4 minute mile, but everything is unprecedented until somebody does it. The impossible can be achieved, but it takes hard work and dedication to something bigger than yourself. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that everything is possible for God. He created it all and has it all within His power. God will definitely help you fight the good fight, but you can’t just sit idle hoping that something is going to change. You can’t let people’s talk stop you from achieving the greatness God has planned for your life. If you want better, you need the courage to do something about it. You can’t just think your way to a better life, you need to put forth some effort and break through some barriers. You need to do what, in legal terms, is called an “act in furtherance.” You have to show and prove that you really mean what you say.

Don’t just talk about it, BE about it or you’ll live without it.

It’s true that you could avoid many mistakes by never trying anything new and that you could make fewer waves with people if you just follow the status quo. You won’t get your hands dirty if you go with the flow, but remember, dead bodies always float downstream. You are not dead; you are alive and reading this right now, which means you have opportunity to change something for the better. God placed you in this exact moment at this exact time. The Bible says that you are wonderfully made, you have a purpose, and that God is always with you. You can achieve anything that God is pushing you towards, because He will always give you the strength and resources to accomplish His divine will.

Failing hurts and gossip hurts, but I promise it will hurt worse to never accomplish your dreams and look back wondering, “What if…” Don’t worry about what people will say or think, worry about what God will think. When this life is over and you stand before Christ, don’t be sorry about a life spent letting opportunities and blessings pass you by.  Instead, be joyful when he says to you, “You have been wise in using what I gave you. Well done my good and faithful servant. Now at last, enter into the joy of your Master’s house.”

God’s blessings to you.

DH