Psalm 4:4 - In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. 5 Offer right sacrifices and TRUST in the Lord. (NIV)
Proverbs 4:3 - Let love and faithfulness never leave your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. 5 TRUST in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. (NIV)
Luke 16:10 - "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?" (NIV)
Good Evening, my dear brothers and sisters. It has truly been a trying week on this computer! I think I now have it working again, but I will not know for sure until I press the send button today. As some of you know by now, some of my records were hijacked. I need to clear the air on just a few things. First, I am sorry this happened and I have no idea who did it but I guess it was someone who wanted to mess with it because of our email address. I need you to know this, I DO NOT do Facebook and do not have time to Twitter! In all my emails from now on, the subject line will have the day and date on it, UNLESS I am replying to something you sent to me or a question that you sent me. Also, I will no longer open things that have been forwarded all over the place. More than one forward on it, even if I know you, I am going to delete it.
My email carrier that I use to interface with Verizon so I can keep the same email address is MSN and they, when seeing what was going on, blocked my mail and shut down my account until I got it right with them. In other words, they did good! With that said, I am back in business and will move forward, and yes, I know there are people trying to shut us Christians up. Just today we did a Christmas in the summer at Allenberry and when I talked to the folks about calling July 4th by what it is, Independence Day, and mentioned we Christians would not like it if people said "Happy December 25th" -- when I said that, one person in the room, now with the group that was singing along with me, said, well, that is not the date for Christmas anyway, Jesus was born in the spring. He did leave the room after I told him the birthdate was not in the Bible so a date was picked so it could be celebrated. Like Independence Day, Christmas is about the event, the date is nice to know, but the event is what is really important. And the man left the room.
Let us get to the message, "Total Trust." As you know by now, we love animals, and have a few. Dolores and I have adopted a lot of senior, special needs dogs over the years. Right now we have eleven little ones, all but one under ten pounds. Most of them are going blind, one cannot see anything. Several just see shadows. We also have one that cannot hear. We have several that are crippled. As for these dogs, like most dogs, they put total trust in us. The blind ones are so neat to watch as they find their way around our home and even go to the door to go out into our "fenced" yard. The blind ones will walk to the edge of the fence and it is so neat as you go to the door and call them, they follow your voice back to the house. When you bend down to pick them up, you just talk to them and they put total trust in you. Morgan, one of our tiny Yorkshires, is blind and weighs maybe four pounds, and he puts total trust in Dolores and in me. If you have animals, you know they also put trust in you, as all dogs and other animals do to supply them with a nice warm bed, a lot of drinking water and food to eat. Our dogs also trust that we are going to get up by 5:00 AM and feed them the "good stuff" as they eat the dry stuff the rest of the day. It is neat having these little ones, and yes, my brothers and sisters, it is a lot of work.
The hard part about these dogs is they do not last as long as we do, and when you adopt the senior dogs as we do, you lose them to death more often. It is hard but it teaches me some of life's lessons. Coming this week are some lessons that God gave me while trusting us with animals.
Total Trust: God made Heaven and earth and all that is in it, including our animals and of course "us". God trusted us fully, giving us free will, and we did not honor the trust right from the start. You heard me talk of the account of the fall of man, when Adam and Eve did not fully trust God and did not listen to him. Of course God did not give up on us, just because of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, He still gave us free will, even today. So as I look at my dogs and the way they trust in Dolores and me as their masters, I also feel that is the way we need to look at our Lord Jesus who is our Master. And I might add, is yours also, and we need to fully trust in Him and listen to Him.
Let's look at the scriptures that God pointed me to today.
Psalm 4:4 - In your anger do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent. 5 Offer right sacrifices and TRUST in the Lord. (NIV)
In this scripture it is telling me that I should not let my anger get to me, and folks, it was near that the last two days as I was working with people trying to get the computer up and running, I could write a book about it. Anyway, this scripture tells me that when I climb into my bed, before I go to sleep, I should search out my heart and talk to God, and then be silent and listen for Him to get back to me. The scripture also tells me to TRUST in the Lord, and offer right sacrifices. Now we do not offer sacrifices like in the old, but folks, we do need to sacrifice if we truly are going to walk with the Lord and work for Him. Think about it, what would you sacrifice for the Lord? Some folks have trouble sacrificing ONE HOUR on Sunday just to go to church. How about a sacrifice of time for the Lord? How, well, you could help at Vacation Bible School someplace.
Proverbs 4:3 - Let love and faithfulness never leave your heart. 4 Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. 5 TRUST in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. (NIV)
In this scripture it tells me to never let go of love and faithfulness, and brothers and sisters, your love of God should be above all others. Remember this, folks, be faithful to God and remember that GOD IS LOVE, and you need to keep God in your heart always. And brothers and sisters, in all we do, we need to trust in God to get us through, not just trusting Him for certain things. Trust in Him always ... SOMEONE SAY AMEN!!
Luke 16:10 - "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?" (NIV)
Please take a big look at this scripture from Luke, these are the words of Jesus being quoted here. Think bout it, if people cannot trust you for something small, how do we expect Jesus to trust us to do right by Him? Please do not think about this trust being just worldly wealth as in dollars, but also think about it in TELLING THE TRUTH. I should send that to Washington and our State Houses.
Folks, if you are going to be honest and really want to be trusted, you first must, and listen to me here, you must first be HONEST with yourself. If you cannot be honest with yourself, how can you be honest with God and put your trust in Him?
In closing today, I want to tell all of you again, I believe in all that is in the Bible, all of it, from the beginning to the end, I do not pick and choose ... Let's pray.
Dear Father, thank You for trusting me with this line and thank You for getting the problems worked out for me. Yes, I know I should have talked to You about it before I called those earthly folks ... Again, thank You. Lord, be with those on the line and protect them from those who want to attack us because of our Love for You. You have warned us. Thanks again. I love You, Jesus, and pray in Your name. Amen.
Please, folks, remember our picnic, EVEN IF YOU HAVE NOT CALLED, come anyway ... Hear good music and eat good food and talk to your friends. It will not hot, we will be in the shade, along a running creek and we will bring a few fans ... Now go forth and share your blessings. More tomorrow on total trust ... Love ya, Pastor Dan.
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