Friday: Back To The Basics 5

And God spoke all these words!

Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. It is Friday and the day we pray for all those who are working for our Lord Jesus, and once again I say that each and everyone of us needs to be on this prayer list. Pray for your pastors today, pray for them each day, pray for Carry The Light Ministries today and pray for us each day please. Pray for Pastors Larry, Kevin, Tony, Paul, Jamie, and pray for Dave, Duane, Neil, and also the Couriers (Tim and Larry) and the Jacobs Brothers, and for Pastor Phil Enloe and his new church. And please pray for your church and if you do not have one, it is time, folks, you need to be with a body of Christians and true believers. Be sure to check out the church you are going to, to be sure they teach the true and complete word of God.... (Someone say amen on that one.) So many churches are not teaching the complete truth and some are changing things.

Back To The Basics 5: Exodus 20:1 - And God spoke all these words: 2 "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery." 8 " Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." (NIV)

Now let me ask all of you a question on this one... Out of all the commandments, are you like me and find it is very, very hard to keep this one? Let me break it down for a minute and give you my thinking on this. First of all I think we need to keep each and every day Holy and work it for the Lord. God made all seven days and we for sure want to honor Him on each day and I know of no better way than to keep each day holy. I think we can all do work and still keep the day holy, and the best way to keep a day holy is by keeping ourselves holy. By honoring and pleasing God in the way we work, the way we play, the way we live, the way we act, the way we talk, the way we walk. In all things we should be doing it for Jesus if we indeed are true Christians. So what about the seventh day and keeping it holy and not working? We need to understand that in different Christian Religions the Sabbath day is different. Some on Saturday, and some on Sunday and if we go by our calendar the seventh day is Saturday. Also some folks have jobs that require working on the Sabbath day. Let's look at the health care workers. Hospitals do not close up on Saturday or Sunday and let all workers off, but that is ok, Jesus showed us that is ok because He healed on the Sabbath. Also farmers and all other people who have animals including those of us who have pets, we must take care of them. Now for the farmer, that is work, but it needs done, but that does not mean they need to use a team of horses to plow the fields on the Sabbath, and in fact those still using horses or mules do not work the fields on the Sabbath, but those same farmers still need to feed the animals and they indeed use them to get to worship service.

Years ago when I was the operator of an Exxon Service Station I was not open on Sundays. While when I first went into business there was a gas shortage and Exxon wanted us to close one day a week, when the gas supply picked up they DEMANDED us to open again. Well something happened to me in those years. I became born again and when ordered to open on Sunday I refused and since it was not in my lease there was nothing they could do about it. So what happened next was Exxon used the rent opener in the lease and doubled my rent. So I had a choice to make, open Sunday or go out of business... OR, purchase our own building which we did, and which our son Keith still has and uses daily for the auto repair business... and to this day it has not opened on Sunday.

But what about this... How many of we Christians like to go out for lunch after church? And how many of us go to a place to eat and expect to see workers there to wait on us? Guilty as charged on this one. So to say I can get a tad confused on this one, I like to work it like this and this is a review... We should treat each day Holy, and we should in my opinion try our very best to rest one day a week. Since we pastor on Sundays, and in November and December we go on through to Allenberry, we try our best to use Monday as a day of rest. We take care of animals daily, and we try hard to work for the Lord daily, and I am sure that if we are doing these things in faith, and we are wrong on them, through the blood of Jesus we will be forgiven...

Dear Father in Heaven, to me the hardest commandment to understand and really try and keep word for word is this one about the Sabbath, and Lord, I for one and I am sure other readers on this line want to get it right.. Lord, even those who go out in the fields of Harvest and work for You are working, but working for You, so today I ask that You bless all those working for You and pray that we all do it seven days per week and that if we are wrong on any part of this you will indeed forgive us... Lord, be with Anne and Erik in the loss of Anne's mother, and Lord, be with all who travel this weekend... In the name of Jesus, I pray, Amen.

Go forth now sharing your blessings and helping others and living for Jesus daily. Love ya.

PS. Yesterday we picked up part of our order at the food store, we had ordered canned food by the case. The dollar amount was about $750 and the store gave us all the store discounts plus a $100 dollar gift card to apply to the food. God bless the Giant food stores and all of you who have been sending in support. I must tell you that we do not get or even ask for anything from the Government.

Carry The Light Ministries
16 Dewalt Drive
Mechanicsburg, Pa. 17050
717 691 8200