Monday: Talking to God

And when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.

Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. What a beautiful weekend we had at the Southern Location of the North Pole. 70 plus and just beautiful, a sign of the coming of spring. .. a lot of our plants have shown their heads to catch that sunshine our dear Lord sends.

Monday and the day we pray for our leaders in Washington and in our State Houses and also our Military and all those who serve this great nation, and also our police and firefighters.

Talking to God. A man walks slowly to his telephone to place a call to God. He really is not all excited about it, for he just does not like to hear all the numbers, and to be put on hold time and time again. But that call goes like this ... 1-800 CALLGOD ... Ring, ring, ring, ring ... Hello, this is Heaven and we welcome your call, please for English push 1, for Greek push 2, for Hebrew push 3, for Spanish push 4, for more choices push 5 ... So the man pushes 1. Hi again, please select from the following ... To speak to Saint Peter at the front gate push 1, to speak to old Gabriel push 2, to speak to other angels push 3, to speak to Mother Mary push 4, to talk about your blessings push 5, to speak to someone in the Mansion push 6 and to talk to God the Father push 7. So the man pushes 7 without hearing the rest of the message. The recording comes on again, sorry, to talk to God the Father you need to go through God the Son, push 8 for Jesus ... so the man pushes 8.

Hi there, this is the office of Jesus, to speak to his staff person, please press 1, to speak to Jesus, please press 2. So the man presses 2. Hi, you have reached the voicemail of Jesus, right now I am too busy to answer the phone, please press 1 to return to the main menu or press 2 for my staff person, or you may hang up and try again later ... Man hangs up......

Wow, sure am glad that calling on Jesus is not like trying to get in touch with someone in your senators office. Dear brothers and sisters, the Bible talks a lot about talking to God, or praying. This week I want to address that, including taking a look at the Lord's prayer. For today I just want you to know when you really need to talk to God, just go someplace quiet and talk to Him. HIS LINE IS ALWAYS OPEN, AND HE WILL ALWAYS HEAR AND ALSO ANSWER YOUR PRAYER. Now let me give you this warning -- you must take time to listen to God for His answer, and you must also know that His answer comes in His time and not ours, and also that no is also an answer.

Talking to God: "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Matthew 6: 6 (NIV)

These are the words of Jesus, my dear brothers and sisters. Also when you talk to God, you do not need to babble going on and on, remember this, God already knows what you are going to say, so get to the point. Sometimes we pastors tend to pray a message. Years ago when I was Lay Leader at Hope United Methodist Church in Mechanicsburg, Pastor Dr. Richard Denison talked to me about not taking 10 minutes for a prayer. There are times, however, when pastors seem to be explaining to God all things. For example, Lord, here we are in sitting in church taking prayer requests from the flock, and several have needs. Pastors, as much as any, need to learn not to babble, and yes, God is once again pointing one of my messages right back at me ... gosh, He does that so often.

I also must confess that I do not talk to God as often as I should. While Dolores goes into her room each evening and talks with God, I so often do not, or not nearly enough. But again when we talk to God, get to the poin. I remember a few years back, our son Keith asked me to give the prayer before a big football dinner for the peewee football team. As I walked to the mike, Keith whispered to me, "Dad, remember, don't pray so long that the food gets cold." Point well taken. However, once in a while, when getting in front of a group of people that might not know God, we like to put a little more meat into that prayer.

Ok, enough for today, tomorrow more on "talking to God". Let's talk a bit now ... and let me see if I can keep it more to the point.

Dear Father in Heaven, thanks for all the blessings You have given us, thanks for taking care of our families and friends, and thanks for this line. I pray today for our leaders in Washington and in our State houses, and I pray for our troops and their families and all police and firefighters, asking you to watch over them and their missions, and please, Lord, keep their families safe while keeping them safe also. In the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen.

Go forth, talking to God, and sharing your blessings. love ya, dan.

Friday: Great Gifts 4

"Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." He is not here, He has risen!

Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. It is Friday, and spring is appearing this weekend here at the Southern location of the North Pole. Friday, the day we pray for those who work the fields of Harvest for our Lord Jesus. Also pray for Goldie Karnes who is in serious condition in the Holy Spirit Hospital. Goldie is a long-time volunteer for New Hope Ministries, a local food bank. Prayer also for David Fortney as he turns 50 this weekend. Happy Birthday Dave! Dave has been a long time friend, a true believer, and a helper many, many, times with Carry The Light Ministries. He along with his wife, Joanne, who sang with us, would help with the equipment after my many back surgeries. He also has driven our truck pulling our floats in parades. Dave has also been a great inspiration to our son Matthew.

Great Gifts 3 Luke 23: 34 "Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." Luke 23: 43 "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise." Luke 23: 46 "Father into your hands I commit my spirit." Luke 24: 6 He is not here, He has risen! (NIV)

As I look at great gifts again today, I want to talk to you a bit about things we have that we don't thank God for. Let me just explain for a minute what I am trying to say. There are a lot of people that have some problems, most of us hurt in one way or another from day to day. Let's say we have a really bad back, we pray and we pray for healing to our back, but do we take time to say thank You Jesus for all the other parts of us that are working fine? Let me tell you about a wonderful man that lives at the Bridges. This man, a retired pastor, has had a stroke and has lost the use of his right side. We are praying daily that he will be healed and be able to preach again. In the meantime, we need to praise God that he has his speech, that he can eat, and all his plumbing works well. While it is hard to always stay upbeat, we must not lose our faith, for if we really want to have the healing hand of God, we must, I say again, we must keep our faith. So we need to look at the great gifts that God has given us, and when we lose one of them, or even a couple of them, we must have faith and look at the rest of the gifts. I was in a bad motorcycle accident and have had many surgeries on my back, but I need to look at that accident as a gift from God, for it was that accident that brought me into the ministry to work full-time for our Lord Jesus. And even with all of the problems that the accident has caused, God has carried me through each step of it and the pain I have today. So I must remember all the other gifts He has given me, and all of the years I was able to work, earn a living, save for retirement, and how He takes care of us in retirement. I still have a voice to sing, and He has given me talent to write each day. (Someday He might give me the talent to spell.) So let's look at all of the great gifts that God gives us daily.

Now let me review what I think the greatest of all gifts from God are ...
God gave us His Son Jesus.
Jesus died for us, so our sins could be forgiven if we ask in faith.
Jesus was risen from the dead so we also know we will be risen to be with Him in Heaven.
He gave us life and free will to choose what we what to do with it.
He supplies our needs.
He gave us family.
and the gifts go on and on ...
One of my greatest gifts is ALL OF YOU ... AMEN!

Dear Lord, thanks for all of our blessings and gifts. Please help us to share all of our blessings and gifts. Please help all who work for You, protecting them along the way. Please be with Goldie and heal her. And Lord, thanks for the blessings of Joanne and Dave in my life and in the life of Matthew and also in Carry The Light Ministries. In the name of Jesus, I pray, Amen.

Go forth now, knowing your great gifts from God and sharing them ... Love ya, dan.

Carry The Light will be singing at Manor Care in Camp Hill, Pa., Saturday at 2:00 PM. Sunday, we will be preaching at the Bridges at 10:00 AM and at Perry Village at 2:00 PM.

Be blessed, dan.

Thursday: Great Blessings 3

Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth."

Good Morning, my dear brothers and sisters. Spring is coming, my dear friends, it really is. A reminder to turn those clocks ahead this weekend ... Spring forward.

Today is Thursday, and that is family day on this line. So please folks, pray for families, first the family of God, then your family and the families of others.

Great Gifts 3 Genesis 9: 1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth." (NIV)

I have been so blessed when it comes to this gift. We have six kids, all grown, and we have a lot of grandkids, and God really takes care of them, and for this we are so thankful. I found out from you folks who responded to my request to name some of your best (earthly) gifts that, without question, the gifts had nothing to do with dollars, most were the neat things a spouse or one of your children or all of your children gave to you ... something made in school ... When I look at the things our kids made over the years and what they still do today they are great. Still to this day, the very best gifts our kids give us is that phone call and in most cases it is weekly ... Hi mom or hi dad ... just checking in, we are fine, how are you. I know that some parents never hear from their kids, or when they do it is only with bad news. Can you think about that for a minute? Your phone rings and the number on the phone is one of your kids calling and your heart starts pounding because the only time they call is when something goes wrong. Again, we are so blessed with the phone calls. And yes, they call when things go wrong, and that is good for we want to know so we can pray and help, but they also call when things are going well, or just to check on us. But without the great gift of children that comes from God, all these other things would not happen ... God is so good.

Great Gifts 3 2 Chronicles 7: 14 If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will HEAL THEIR LAND. (NIV)

In a time when our Nation seems to be going downhill ... ok, let me take out the seems and say: At a time when our Nation is going downhill, we need to be looking at the scripture I just listed. We need to get on our knees and humble ourselves to our Lord God. Do you think all that is going wrong today in this country would be going wrong if we all were living for God? This great nation was given to us by God. It was founded to have freedom of religion and not freedom from religion, and it was based on Christian Faith (those who worship through Jesus). We have drifted away from this great gift, a gift of a free nation, and it is slipping away, and if you have not noticed, it is slipping fast. I will write about this on another date. Today as I talk about great gifts, I just wanted to point out how great a gift this nation is. But we have messed up along the way. Today I ask all of you to pray again for this Nation, not for the stock market and for jobs, but to pray for the people to come back to Christ.

Dear Father in Heaven, thanks for our families, thanks for the gift of children and grandchildren, and thanks for taking care of them. And Lord, I pray that today people will humble and come to You before they pray and worry about the Nation. I pray today that you will forgive me for when I do not put You first in all things, and pray it never happens again. I pray that our President would start coming to You before he comes to the people. However, I pray that the Christians of this country, the Born Again people would start speaking out. Come back, Lord ... In Jesus name, Amen.

Be blessed and share those blessings with others ... love ya, dan.

PS. For those of you who called the house yesterday to check on us because I was late, from the bottom of my heart, thank you ... your love and concern is appreciated ... dan.