God's Got It

 

 

Are you one who believes in fate or do you believe in coincidence? Do you view the world as a series of random events that chaotically intersect, sometimes producing positive outcomes and sometimes negative? Or do you believe that things happen for a reason; that events, even some that seem small, are part of a master plan? If you are believer and have witnessed God’s hand at work, I hope you believe that He is in control, that He has a plan, and that He is working that plan. He is working out everything for His purposes and He is using His ways to accomplish His will.

 

Psalm 115:3 says, “Our God is in heaven; He does all that He pleases.”

 

God is sovereign and God does what He wants to do. He is good, so what He does is always good. God’s sovereign will always glorifies Him, accomplishes His purposes, and benefits us.

 

Proverbs 16:4 says, “The Lord has made everything for its purpose, even the wicked for the day of trouble.”

 

God makes everything, people, and circumstances, for His purposes. God uses even things that are meant for evil for His purpose. The cross is an example.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about believing in the sovereignty of God and living our lives knowing He is in control.

 

Joel 2:28-29 says, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out My Spirit.”

 

God poured out His Spirit on His people to indwell us at Pentecost. God at times, out of His sovereign grace, gives us periods of special outpourings of the Holy Spirit.

 

Habakkuk 3:2 says, “O Lord, I have heard the report of You, and Your work, O Lord, do I fear. In the midst of the years make it known; in wrath remember mercy.”

 

Habakkuk is telling God that he knows Him and that he knows of His great work, what He has done in the past and he asks Him to do it again. He is asking God to revive and awaken His people.

 

We live in a nation and a world that is fallen and broken and evil. The church needs to be revived and our nation needs to have a spiritual awakening.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about seeing the world as fallen and broken and looking to Jesus as the only way for it to be saved and restored.

 

February is a month where we pray for colleges and universities. The National Collegiate Day of Prayer was on February 23 and was hosted by Asbury University. The Asbury University that on February 8 received an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Is this just lucky or good planning on the part of humans? No, it was the plan of a sovereign God who does what He wants to do, when He wants to do it, and how He wants to do it.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about knowing that circumstances don’t just happen but that Jesus is working His plan to accomplish His will.

 

Matthew 9:17 says, “Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.”

 

I see what God is doing right now and who He is pouring out His Spirit on, a young generation. It is not going to look like other outpourings of the Holy Spirit, because what God wants to do now is different than what He has done in the past. The needs of this young generation are different than previous generations.

 

New wine expands so the rigid old wineskins are going to burst. God is doing a new thing that some of our old rigid church structures will not hold. So, we need to be open to having new structures in God’s church to hold the new thing His is doing in a new generation. God is all about doing new things.

 

Isaiah 43:19 says “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about trusting God to do a new thing and letting Him to do a new thing in us.

 

I want to encourage you to pray that God would in His grace grow this outpouring of the Holy Spirit to spread throughout our nation and throughout the world.

 

Praying To God To Do a New Thing

and Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls.

Joe

Repentance and Revival

 

I am excited about what God is doing at Asbury University in Kentucky. I have been reading a lot about this revival and God brought my attention to a foundational truth in all movements of God, and that is repentance. We have made repentance something emotional and hard. God’s Word shows us that repentance is something that needs to be part of our relationship with God on a regular basis.

 

Repentance is a change of mind that leads to a change of action. The word in the New Testament means to do an about face. We are traveling in one direction, and we see it is the wrong direction, so we turn around and go in the exact opposite direction.

 

Repentance is brought by the work of the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the wrongness of the direction we are going and to give us the desire and power to change and go in the right direction.

 

Another thing that God had reminded to me again is the unity that is in His Word.

 

Zephaniah 2:3 says, “Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do His commands; seek righteousness; seek humility; perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord.”

 

God is using Zephaniah to call the nation of Judah to repent and seek the Lord.

 

Zephaniah mentions two components of repenting and seeking God.

 

We have to humble ourselves. If we don’t humble ourselves under God’s authority, we will be the authority of our lives. When I have been the authority of my life and tried to control life, it has been a disaster. Humbling ourselves is simply recognizing God is Lord and living with that as the reality of our lives.

 

We have to seek not our righteousness, but the righteousness of God. In 2 Corinthians 5:21 Paul tells us that the Father made Jesus to be sin even though He had never sinned so that we might become the righteousness of God. And in Romans 3:10-12 Paul reminds us that no of us by nature is righteous. So, if we are righteous, it is because by our receiving Jesus’ death to pay for our sins, we have also received His righteousness.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about humbling ourselves under God’s authority and receiving His righteousness as our own.

 

We also see that just as Hebrews 13:8 tells us that Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever, we see in the New Testament that same call to repent.

 

Acts 3:19-20 says, “Repent therefore, and turn back that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus.”

 

Peter tells us to repent, to turn back to God.

 

Peter says that three things will occur when we repent.

 

Our sins will be blotted out when we repent. The term blotted out is an accounting term and it means to completely erase, meaning that they do not exist anymore. When we confess our sins and turn away from them to Jesus, He removes them from existence.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about repenting and having our sins done away with.

 

Times of refreshing will come from the presence of the Lord when we repent.

 

We picture repentance many times as something that leaves us feeling worthless, but repentance brings refreshment and freedom from Jesus. Repentance frees us from the guilt of sin and puts us on the path that leads into the presence of Jesus.      

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about repenting and receiving joy and freedom through the presence of Jesus.

 

We will experience the presence of the person of Jesus in our lives. Sin that is not confessed and not repented of just stays in our lives and hinders the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. In John 14:26 Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will teach us and bring to remembrance all that Jesus has said to us. In John 16:14 Jesus says the Holy Spirit will glorify Jesus in us. Sin in our lives hinders the Spirit from doing these things. When we confess and repent, it allows the Spirit to work in full power so that we can experience the fullness of Jesus in our lives.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about repenting so we can experience the fullness of Jesus in our lives.

 

Pray that the work that God has begun at Asbury will spread all over our nation to bring revival to God’s church and spiritual awakening to our nation.

 

By Repentance Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                            Joe

Jesus Shows Us How

 

Jesus modeled for us how to live. Jesus is God, but He was also human. He is the only person who ever lived, and will ever live, who was without sin. So, everything He said and everything He did is a model for us on how to live in this world under the authority of God the Father. Everything Jesus did was empowered by the Holy Spirit, so He also shows us how to live with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

 

Jesus taught us how to:

Pray

Obey

Trust

Serve

 

Now serving God means serving other humans. In Mark 12:30-31 when Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, He mentions two. In mentioning two, He links them together. Jesus is saying that we cannot love God with all that we are without also loving our neighbor as we love ourselves.

 

Loving and serving other humans brings with it an added level of difficulty because all humans are flawed and all of us are difficult to love at times.

 

In Luke 6:31 Jesus says, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

 

This sums up what Jesus is teaching us about serving others. We are to treat others in the way we want others to treat us. And we want others to help us when we need help. So, we are to be willing to do the same.

 

In Matthew 5:42 Jesus says, “Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.”

 

Jesus is laying down a basic principle here: When someone has a need and you are aware of that need and are asked to help meet that need and have the resources to do it, do not ignore it. Now, in doing this we have to use godly wisdom and make sure we are truly helping the people and not just enabling them to live in an ungodly manner.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about truly helping people, not enabling them.

 

In Matthew 25 Jesus gives us some very practical ways that we as His disciples are to help people. Jesus also indicates that helping others is key in demonstrating what our relationship with Him is like. The reason it is key is because Jesus is saying that as we help others, we are serving Him.

 

In Matthew 25:35 Jesus says, “For I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed Me.”

 

We are to feed the hungry. Jesus fed the five thousand and the four thousand. So, we are to feed those who are hungry. Jesus says In John 6:35 and 48 that He is the Bread of Life. We help people by giving them the physical food they need, so that by meeting their physical need for food in the name of Jesus, they come to know Jesus as the Bread of Life.

 

We are to give drink to the thirsty. In Mark 9:41 Jesus tells us that if we give a person even a cup of water, we will not lose our reward. Jesus tells us that He is the Living Water and whoever drinks from Him will have living water flow from their life. We give physical water to quench people’s physical thirst so that they come to know Jesus as the Living Water so He can quench their spiritual thirst.

 

We are to welcome strangers in and accept them. In Matthew 15 when a Canaanite woman came seeking mercy from Jesus to heal her daughter, His disciples asked Jesus to send her away. Jesus didn’t and He healed her daughter. We are to welcome strangers in so they can come to know Jesus as Savior and Lord and become part of His family.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about meeting the physical needs of hunger and thirst and community so that people will come to place their faith in Jesus and receive salvation.

 

In Matthew 25:36 Jesus says, “I was naked and you clothed Me, I was sick and you visited Me, I was in prison and you came to Me.”

 

We are to clothe those who need clothing. We are to help those who need clothing so that, as Paul says in Galatians 3:27, “For as many as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” We by providing physical clothing to people can help them to come to Jesus and put Him on in their lives.

 

We are to visit the sick. In Mark 1 a leper comes to Jesus and asks Jesus to make him clean, heal him, and Jesus reaches out and touches the leper and heals him. Jesus, as we know, healed in many different ways. He did not have to touch the leper to heal him. But Jesus entered into the leprosy with the man to not just heal him but connect with him at a very intimate level. We visit the sick and provide for them so that they can come to know the Healer, Jesus.

 

We go to those in prison. Paul was in prison many times. Paul wrote many of his letters while he was in prison because he experienced the presence of Jesus in his prison cell. Paul and Silas even led a whole family to faith in Jesus because they stayed in a prison cell in Philippi. We visit those in prison to take the person of Jesus to the prisoner.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about taking Jesus to those with physical, emotional, and spiritual needs by serving them in the name of Jesus.

 

Jesus puts it very directly in Matthew 5:16. He says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

 

We serve others in the name of Jesus and with the love of Jesus so they can come to know the person, Jesus.

 

Serving God by Serving Others

by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe

What God Says It Is

 

Good and evil, just like truth, have become relative terms in our culture.

 

Paul warns us of this in 2 Timothy 4:3-4. He writes, “For a time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their passions and will turn and wander away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.”

 

There will be a time when people will not listen to the truth and will thus not recognize the truth and will live a life that is not based in reality.

 

Isaiah warns us of the consequences of this kind of life.

 

Isaiah 5:20-21 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight.”

 

Isaiah warns us that God is not pleased when we reject truth for a lie. Isaiah uses three illustrations to help us understand how we reject truth.

 

We call evil good and good evil.

 

3 John 1:11 says, “Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.”

 

Jesus tells us in Matthew 19:17 that God is good. James tells us in James 1:13 that God cannot tempt us with evil because He is not evil.

 

Good is what God says is good and evil is what God says is evil and because, according to Hebrews 13:8, Jesus does not change, what He says is good will always be good and what He says is evil will always be evil. The measure is not what a culture says is good or evil, but what God says.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is living the truth of what God says is good and what He says is evil.

 

We call darkness light and light darkness.

 

1 John 1:5-7

This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

 

God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all, and if we walk in His light, we will have fellowship and cleansing from all our sin.

 

Darkness is simply the absence of light, and when light comes into darkness, it makes darkness disappear. We have to chose if we will live in darkness or live in light.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about walking in God’s light & letting it dispel the darkness.

 

We call bitter sweet and sweet bitter.

 

Psalm 119:103

How sweet are Your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

 

God’s words are sweet to us because they are truth, and they bring comfort, encouragement, and peace.

 

Hebrews 12:15

See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.

 

Bitterness causes us troubles and defiles us.

 

God’s words are sweet because, by obedience to them, we experience righteousness, but by letting bitterness consume us we are defiled.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about letting God’s word produce in us a harvest of righteousness.

 

In verse 21 of Isaiah 5 we are told who calls good evil and evil good, who calls light darkness and darkness light, and who calls sweet bitter and bitter sweet. It those who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight.

It was the religious leaders of Jesus day who, no matter the amount of evidence that they saw that Jesus was the Messiah, they chose to reject that truth because they did not want Him to be the Messiah.

 

Jesus says in John 14:6 that He is the Way and the Truth and the Life and that no comes to the Father except through Him.

 

When we accept Jesus as the Way and the Truth and the Life and as the only path to God then we will be walking in truth & reality.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is about knowing the truth and living daily based in that truth.

 

In the Truth Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

Joe