Tuesday 2/4/14 "I Promise!" 10

Dear Father in Heaven:  I love You, and I would really appreciate it if You would forgive me of my sins and sinful thinking.  Please, dear Lord, I want to thank You for watching over family and friends and I would really appreciate it if You keep doing the same.  Please be with our children and be with Matthew, wherever he might be.  Please help me this day with the message and then please help me to dispatch it.  Thank You, Jesus, and again, Jesus, I love You, I really do.  And I pray in Your name, Jesus.  Amen.

Hi, brothers and sisters.  I'm sorry I missed yesterday.  I spent the day in the truck plowing snow, and I had a lot of fun, but I got very tired.  I came out to do the message last evening and fell asleep, so I missed Monday.  Again, God has pointed me to writing about His many, many promises and as I start, okay, let me wait until I get started.  Lord, please be with Mike and Carol Backley as Mike's sister-in-law has passed from this earth.  Now onto the message.

Acts 2:38 - Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.  And You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, for all who the Lord our God will call.  (NIV)

Brothers and sisters, check this promise out and who it is for.  The promise is if we REPENT and be baptized, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of our sins, we will receive the GIFT OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.  Someone should say right now, Thank You, Jesus!!  So I will do that for all of us.  THANK YOU, JESUS.  Just think about this, when you get into bed tonight, and indeed if you have repented of your sins, when you get into bed, you will not get into that bed alone.  The Holy Spirit will be in that bed with you.  So tonight when I get into my bed, and yes, we have separate beds, I will share the bed with two or three dogs, my cat, and YES, THE HOLY SPIRIT.  God will never leave us and He gave us the Holy Spirit so we are never alone.  But look deeper into the scripture, it is a gift, and it is for us and our children and for ALL, even those who are Far Off.  They just need to repent and fall in love with Jesus.

So now let me ask you, have you ever had a love that grew deeper and deeper each and every day?  God is wonderful, and it sure is nice to have our Lord with us all the time.  If you really love the Lord, you never need to be alone, not just at night or when you climb into bed.  Let the love grow.

Ephesians 3:16 - So I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being.  17 So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.  And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.  (NIV)

I want to point out to all of you that He may strengthen you through His Spirit in your inner being.  Now here is the promise, that Christ will dwell in our hearts through our faith in Him.  Now I do want to show you this and call on your memory.  Do you see how most of these promises have some things attached?  On this promise it tells us He will (that is a promise) strengthen us through our faith, and that would be our faith in Him.  In the first scripture that I used today we are promised the gift of the Holy Spirit, if, and I say if, we REPENT and are baptized, meaning are "born again."  And if we repent and are "born again," we receive that promise of the Holy Spirit.  The scripture also talks about how wide and long and high and deep His love for us really is.  You are not going to measure it with a yardstick, but think about this.  How wide and long and high and deep is the Grand Canyon?  And that is like a grain of salt compared to His love for us.

Ephesians 3:10 - I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of His power.  (NIV)

Okay, we become a servant for God by working with the Gospel, and it is done through another promise, and that is the Gift of God's grace.  There is a promise that our treasures from God will be endless, if we just believe and if we indeed are servants.  When Jesus walked the earth He was a servant, He did not want to be waited on, He wanted to wait on others.  So I tell you this day, we need to fall in love with Jesus, we need to serve His people, serve all people, and help others and our treasures will be endless.  When will we see them?  In Heaven, of course!  What will those treasures be?  I am not sure, but we will have them, for it is recorded in our Bible.

I have not done this for awhile, brothers and sisters; however, I want to do this today.  I would like to hear from you who feel the same way.  I want to make this statement and you can quote me on this one.  Would you put your name in place of mine?  Here I go.

"Dear Lord:  I, Dan Lehman, love You very much.  I want You, Lord, and all others to know this.  I love my Bible, and I do believe it from the very beginning where it says and is recorded in Genesis 1:1 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth' to this as recorded in Revelation 22:21 'The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people.  Amen!'"

Yes, brothers and sisters, I believe in all of it, and I do not pick and choose, or say that it is not important.  I BELIEVE IT ALL and again I love Jesus very much.  I am "Born Again" and I am proud of it.  I want to try my best to walk with Jesus daily.  Yes, I mess up, but I really try hard not to.  So, brothers and sisters, what about you?  Do you love Jesus and do you believe the complete Bible and all that is within it?  Let me know.

Now go forth and share your blessings.  I love ya.  Please pass on that love.

Pastor Dan

And brothers and sisters, please pray for President Barack Obama.