Monday 6/9/14 Spanked by God!

Dear Father in Heaven:  Thanks for a really blessed day.  I love You, Lord.  Please forgive me of my sins.  Please, Lord, help me with the daily message, and then, Lord, help me to dispatch it.  Lord, please place Your healing hand on Bob Coburn and clear him of cancer.  Please, Lord, watch over Dorry and keep her from falling.  Lord, be with the Saylor family and also with the Emigs.  Lord, be with Barbara and heal her from accident injuries.  Lord, touch my dear wife and take care of her.  Lord, thanks for watching over families, and Lord, we pray our Matthew will come back to You.  Lord, thanks  for a great get-together on Saturday.  Lord, please be with our veterans, our current military, and Lord, watch over our president and protect him from all harm.  I pray he comes to you.  Be with firefighters and police officers.  Now, Lord, please help me with the message.  Oh, and Lord, please heal Morgan.  In Jesus' Name, I pray.  Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, a few new folks have been added to the line today.  Again, if you like what I write, you are welcome to use it any way to help others come to God.  If you want to read past days, go to carrythelight4jesus.blogspot.com.  There you will find them posted (and my spelling corrected).  Okay, getting ready for Fathers' Day next Sunday we will be talking about "Fathers".  Let's go.  By the way, Morgan is our 22 year-old Yorkshire and he is sick.  He is the dearest little guy.  We have had him a long time.  He came to us from a rescue and he is blind.  We have two Yorkshires over 20 years old.  And for your new folks online, we pray for animals.

Monday:  June 9, 2014, Spanked by God (Day One)

2 Samuel 7:14 - I will be his Father, and he will be My son.  When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.  15 But My love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.  (NIV)

Well, let me say something to start this message and I want you to remember this.  Being punished is different from being beaten!  There is a big difference between "tanning" one's backside and beating them!  With that said, let me move forward.

As most of you know, I am getting up in years, and I am from the days when if you got a spanking in school and your parents found out, you would get it gain at home, no questions asked.  So when my little backside got a tap or two in school, I did not talk about it at home.

Growing up we did not have much money, and w hen I asked for a toy, I did not get it all the time, but I did have toys, some we got at the "city dump" where my daddy would take us on a nice Sunday afternoon and in the summer you might find us there as the dump trucks unloaded.  We would gather cardboard and take it to be recycled.  Anyway, one of the toys that I was crazy about was those paddle shaped tings with a rubber ball attached with a long rubber band.  I just loved those things, and my mamma would see that I had one.  Well, dumb me, after the rubber band would break, mamma had a paddle, and yes, my backside would get a tan from time to time.

But my subject this week is "Spanked by God" so I want to ask you this.  Have you ever been spanked by God?  now before you say no, you better plan on reading all week.  I want to tell you right now, I have been spanked by God.

Let me take a look at the scripture for today from 2 Samuel.  Let me bring it down for you.

2 Samuel 7:14 - I will be his Father, and he will be My son.  When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men.  15 But My love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you.  (NIV)

Here we find the words Father and son being used.  This is a special bond between God our Father in heaven and the descendants of David.  Here we see God saying I will punish  him with the "rod of men" and the punishment will be "inflicted by men."  Oh, Pastor Dan, you say, this is not God "spanking" someone, this is man!  And yes, that is what you might think.  Before the end of the week, I am going to tie this all together for you.  Can you figure this out?

I want you to notice that God does say that His love will never be taken away from him.  Do you think that it hurts God when He spanks us?  When I was a child, my mamma would say "this is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."  One time I got an extra swat because when she made that statement my smart mouth said, "why not spare yourself the pain?"  As I grew older I began to understand that love and bond.  My dear late mamma and daddy loved me enough to, well, tan my backside and they did not beat me.  Okay, enough for today.

Now go forth and share your blessings.  Love ya, and please pass on my love to others.

Pastor Dan