4GIVEN

We’ve all heard it said, “Desperate (drastic) times calls for desperate (drastic) measures.” One translation to this phrase suggests that in adverse circumstances, actions that might have been rejected under normal circumstances may become the best choice.

For some of you, the best choice to rely on in normal circumstances is man, science, medicine, and technology. But what happens when these resources can’t deliver the solutions or remedies that you need?

Oswald Chambers said, “We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all. Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom not in sync with ours.”

Turning to God should always be our first choice and not our last resort. I’ve taught my children that if they ever find themselves in a situation and that can’t seem to manage to get themselves out of, the first conversation (prayer) they need to have is with God and then me or their mother!

Every believer in Jesus Christ is called to a life of faith (Galatians 2:20). Faith beckons us to rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in God our Savior (Hab. 3:18) in spite of our circumstances. When we love and are joyful through trials, it is the ultimate demonstration of true faith. The Christian faith doesn’t rest on what is seen and what is temporary—it relies on the all-sufficiency of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:18).

In many seasons of desperation, it’s often challenging to rejoice in faith. When we feel spiritually dry, empty, and cannot pray as we ought, we can always rely on God through the Holy Spirit. The Father sent us the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ name, One who delivers us in our weakness by interceding for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26). We can rely on him to convict, navigate, help, and comfort us in and out of trials (John 14:26; Isaiah 11:2; John 16:7:15). The Spirit of God gives us the freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17) and positions us to abound in the power of hope in Jesus Christ (Romans 15:13) regardless of the severity of our plight! Why would anyone choose to settle for a resource when you possess unrestricted access to THE SOURCE?!

As we get closer to the end of this age it’s imperative to remember that prayer and love are the two vehicles that will sustain, strengthen, protect, and shield us during this grievous transition.

We pray to God believing that He hears us and love is no different; we love because we are loved. In fact, we are commanded to love God’s people despite their flaws and imperfections knowing that He loves all people impartially (Matt 22:36-40)!

When I appraise Jesus’ life, I recognize that people were literally drawn to him and in most cases, He didn’t even have to speak a word. Jesus was an ordinary man that possessed an extraordinary heart and His love for people exuded from the inner core of His being. People embraced Him even before they got an opportunity to know Him.

Jesus understood that prayer and love was more than just mere words. He recognized that prayer and love are the keys that access the power of God.

I Peter 3-11 supports this estimation and The Message Bible paraphrase of these passages of text says, “Everything in the world is about to be wrapped up, so take nothing for granted. Stay wide-awake in prayer. Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. Be quick to give a meal to the hungry, a bed to the homeless—cheerfully. Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help. That way, God’s bright presence will be evident in everything through Jesus, and he’ll get all the credit as the One mighty in everything—encores to the end of time. Oh, yes!”

I could go on and on but in the spirit of keeping it simple and short, the clarion call today is love as equally hard as you pray and I guarantee that you will experience the power of God move in your life!

God is calling on us to step up and go out! He is calling us to reach the masses in ways that may feel awkward and uncomfortable. God is doing a new thing and as our world continues to dilate and experience labor pangs in great anticipation of Christ’s return, it’s now even more important for the word of God to reach even the remotest places on the globe. Our response to the virus and social pandemics are being watched by the world. We need to remember what we say and do in the wake of these tumultuous times will either move people to the cross or away from it! Every born again believer’s response need to resemble that of Isaiah’s response in Isaiah 6. Like him, we too have been cleansed (THANK YOU JESUS) and called to action! I love the brief conversation that took place in verse 8, “Then I heard the Lord asking, “Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?” Isaiah said, “Here I am. Send me!!” God is sending out His messengers that bring love and not hate, peace and not destruction, hope and not despair. If you are wandering what God is calling you to do all you have to do is ask Him! He would love to show you so, don’t think for a moment that you’re not spiritually gifted.

Here’s the reality, the only way for us to radically change our world is to be the radical change that changes it!

God could effortlessly accomplish this change without our help but, He has chosen to work through humanity to save humanity! It’s His choice and what can I say, “He is God!!”

So it’s time for all of us to get moving and the good news is we don’t need bootstraps….all we need is our spirits, minds, and hearts to trigger our mouths to say, “YES LORD, USE ME TODAY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND TO BRING LIGHT INTO OUR HURTING AND AILING WORLD!”

All God needs is a ‘YES’ and He will do the rest! Are you ready or will you continue to forward God to ‘VM’ or leave him in ‘read’?

I think it behooves us all to remember to periodically clean our filters. Our spiritual filters will periodically get gummed up with everyday pollutants and much like the filters in our HVAC system, if we ignore or defer this periodic maintenance, the (our) system will eventually begin to fail because it will no longer be able to filter properly, allowing dust and ‘other’ contaminants to get into the ‘heart’ of the (our) system.

What we take in through our eyes and ears affects what we say, what we do and where we go. Ultimately, it touches the state of our hearts. Proverbs 4:23 (NIV) tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, everything you do flows from it.”

We are incessantly inundated and bombarded with positive and negative input from news media, social media, opinions, traditions, expectations, and culture, all vying for attention. What we choose to let in and/or keep out depends solely upon the cleanliness of our filters because a clean filter separates what you want to discard and what you want to use and the cleaner we keep our filters, the less dirt we’ll need to clean out of our hearts. At the end of the day, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. God has already provided a filter cleaning solution found in Psalm 51:10.

All we have to do is regularly ask God to ‘create in us a pure heart and renew in us a steadfast spirit’.

Now if you’ll please excuse me, I have some filters that need my attention!

In my last devotional we briefly journeyed through the ‘how-to’ discern God’s voice or His frequency. We discovered that God directly communicates to us and He will use different vehicles to commandeer our attention. With that said, the next step after we have heard God speak is to obey and as Charles Stanley says, “Leave the consequences to Him.” Now then, after Samuel obeyed Eli and he responded to God’s calling it also signified that he began to listen(I Samuel 3:10). The Hebrew word for “listening” is shama, which carries the meaning of “to obey”. Let’s be honest today and hold ourselves accountable; it’s not enough to just hear what God says. We have a greater response-ability than to just recognize God’s voice, we must also be willing to obey Him when He speaks. But, sometimes we hear and don’t do! Am I the only one that have occasionally (to put it mildly) missed the mark by hearing God and then not listening to what he has told me to do?? Jesus said, “Blessed . . . are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:28; emphasis added). And when we do, we are delighting our Father’s heart with our obedience (1 Samuel 15:22). On the flip side of this coin, in the book of James 1:22 we also learned that if we only ‘read’ God’s word and not ‘live’ God’s word we are only deceiving ourselves! Oftentimes, people get frustrated with God when He disconnects the spiritual modem and WiFi connections. But, in most cases, He typically does this because he is waiting for us to first obey Him on what He has already told us to do, before He tells us our path forward and establishes our next step. Look at it from this perspective; if we only hear God and not obey God when He speaks, why would He continue to speak to us if we fail to act on what He has already told us to do! I’ve heard it said, “Until God opens the door, praise Him in the hallway.” Well, this sounds good but before you start praising in the hallway, first inventory your obedience. If the door you just left is still open and not closed perhaps you may need to retrace your steps because you might not have done something you were supposed to do. Revelation 3:7-8 says, “God open doors no one can shut and shuts doors no one can open!” If I may, let me rephrase the above popular axiom: “Until God opens the next door, make sure the one you just walked out of is closed and then praise Him in hallway!”

Frequency is measured in cycles per second, one hertz equals one cycle per second. The voiced speech of a typical adult male will have a fundamental frequency from 85 to 180 Hz, and that of a typical adult female from 165 to 255 Hz. Thus, the fundamental frequency of most speech falls below the bottom of the voice frequency band. One of the first things we need to do in order to properly distinguish or decipher God’s voice or frequency is to immerse ourselves in God’s Word. As verbal and non-verbal messages transfer through the various gates of the human psyche, distinguishing the voice of God can become more and more difficult. In most cases, God’s voice is not going to sound like Barry White’s baritone silky voice. On the contrary, God speaks in a “gentle still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12). The young prophet Samuel failed to discern God’s voice in 1 Samuel 3 because it was so ordinary-sounding that he thought it was his teacher Eli calling him. After God called him 4x in I Samuel 3:9 we learn that Eli had to tell Samuel to respond the Lord’s call. I’ve learned the best way to discern God’s voice is to mute my own voice and all other voices grappling for my attention. No ma’am and no sir, God is not silent, life’s ordinary distractions is the main reason we have a tendency to drown out God’s voice. One thing is certain, God’s voice will always line up with God’s word! The reason Samuel didn’t realize it was God calling him because the word of God had not yet been revealed to him (I Samuel 3:7). This passage of text confirms that knowing God’s Word is crucial to knowing God Himself. The Bible says, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). The Bible is God’s revelation of Himself to us in writing, His primary means of showing Himself and His ways to us. So, if we want to understand and know Him well (Jeremiah 9:24, ESV), we have to understand and know Scripture well. God’s voice will never contradict God’s character. Now please don’t limit the vehicles God uses to communicate to us. For example, God will also speak to us through the voices of people around us (Acts 21:11); in dreams (Genesis 40); through nature (Romans 1:20); in visions (Acts 9:10-18); in prophecies (Acts 11:27-28); through circumstances (Acts 16:6-7); and through miraculous events. Jesus reminds us that His sheep know His voice” (John 10:14) and in order to truly know and follow the Shepherd we must unequivocally know what His voice sounds like. And to know Jesus, the Word of God (Revelation 19:13), we need to know God’s word.

Hate and words that describe hate such as detest, abhor, abominate, and loathe are strong words that we shouldn’t permit to roll out of our mouths nor allow to ever mortgage our hearts. Now, here’s where things can get a little slippery. Proverbs 8:13 says, “All who fear the LORD will hate evil. Therefore, I hate pride and arrogance, corruption and perverse speech.” I’ve heard people (including myself) use the phrase, ‘I love what God loves and hate what He hates’ to justify fostering an ill disposition against someone that have hurt them. But, what I and many others forget to consider is that God was referring to sin in the above passage not people. Miséō (mis-eh’-o) is the transliterated Hebrew word for hate and it’s definition is acutely identically to the terms listed above however, on a comparative basis it also means to love someone or something less than someone (something) else. With that said, do you really think God is inciting that we should hate to people or miséō (hate) the evil things people do?! When hurt turns to hate we must remember the first and greatest commandment is to, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:28-34). We are also instructed in Matthew 5:43-48 to, “Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, that we may be children of our Father in heaven.” In the wake of all this craziness, we must be resolved to walk in love by faith and ask the Holy Spirit to help us to dissolve any form of anger or resentment we might have knowingly and unknowingly fostered towards others. We mustn’t dwell on the awful atrocities we’ve seen demonstrated across our nation because it only makes matters worse. We must choose the latter and not the former through forgiveness and reconciliation.
Holding a grudge and negativity is basically holding hatred in your heart and God makes it clear, if you won’t forgive others, He won’t forgive you. As I mentioned before Dr. Martin Luther King said, ‘Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” We do have a choice in matter but, the person who chooses to store hate in their heart has also chosen to walk in darkness. 1 John 4:19-20 says, “We love because God first loved us. Whoever says, “I love God,” but hates his brother is a liar. The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love the God whom he has not seen.”

When people think God can’t fix our broken world and decide to take matters into their own hands, the first thought that comes to my mind is do they really understand the power of God! Have they forgotten what took place some 2,000 years?! The God we serve has a flawless tract record and He can make the impossible-possible. Let me remind you, the same God that turned water into wine at the wedding in Cana, healed an Official’s son at Capernaum in Galilee, drove out an evil spirit from a man in Capernaum, healed Peter’s mother-in-law sick with fever, healed many sick and oppressed people, reeled in a miraculous catch of fish on the Lake of Gennesaret, cleansed a man with leprosy, healed a Centurion’s paralyzed servant in Capernaum, healed a paralytic who was let down from a roof, healed a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath, raised a widow’s son from the dead in Nain, calms a storm on the sea, cast a legion of demons into a herd of pigs, healed a woman in the crowd with an 12 year issue of blood, raised Jairus’ daughter back to life, healed two blind men, healed a man who was unable to speak, healed an invalid at Bethesda, fed over 5,000 people, walked on water, healed many sick in Gennesaret as they touch His garment, healed a gentile woman’s demon-possessed daughter, healed a deaf and dumb Man, fed over 4,000 plus women and children, healed a blind man at Bethsaida, healed a man born blind, healed a boy with an unclean spirit, put a shekel in a fish mouth to pay the Temple Tax, healed a blind-mute demoniac, healed a woman who had been crippled for 18 years, healed a man with dropsy on the Sabbath, cleansed ten lepers on the way to Jerusalem, resurrected Lazarus from the dead in Bethany, restored sight to Bartimaeus in Jericho, withered the fig tree on the road from Bethany, healed a Servant’s severed ear while He was being arrested, didn’t murmur a word during his trial, was beaten beyond recognition, crucified on a cross, He was buried in a borrowed tomb, and in 3 days was resurrected from the dead, and GLORY TO GOD, He now lives in you and I! The only thing God can’t do is fail and the other thing He will never do is lie! If God said it, you can bank it!! God said in Isaiah 55:10-11, “The rain and snow come down from the heavens and stay on the ground to water the earth. They cause the grain to grow, producing seed for the farmer and bread for the hungry. It is the same with My word. I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.” So today speak God’s word in the wake of a dying world and let Him do the healing and delivering our world so desperately need!

There is a wide difference between protesting and rioting. Everything from civil rights to women suffrage has been catalyzed by protesting the status quo. We engage in civil protest when we fight for what is right when wrong has set the precedent!

Now the latter, rioting. Rioting is fueled by hate and lack of information not to mention unbridled energy that typically hurts other people and property. All have to do with passion and purpose.

– Passion without purpose is the equivalent of rioting.

– Purpose without passion is the equivalent of quieting.

In either case, to do nothing is silencing and that makes one just as conspicuous.

One of my Texas Southern University Profs, Dr. Eugene Barrington, always told we, graduate students (back-n-da-day), you are conspicuous by your silence.

If at the end of the day, you did something to close the gap…then at least you contributed something, anything less would be uncivilized.

Most would agree that we are certainly in a season of tests and trials. Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…” Time feels like an enemy whenever we are traveling through the valley of hardship and affliction. However, once we come to terms with our plight the second thing we want to know is how long will we have to endure. Unfortunately, God does not have a watch and He certainly doesn’t discern time the same way we do! 2 Peter 3:8 says, “A day is a thousand years and a thousands years a day.” Try figuring that math and hit me up if you have legitimate quantifiable answer! You see, God exist outside of time therefore, He can never ‘lose’ the past or anticipate the future. God doesn’t need to know the future, because to a timeless God, there would be no future. Everything would be ever-present in one timeless moment. With that being said, in spite time, we must also equally remember that during fiery tests and trials God is always present with us. He is with us just like He was with the three Hebrew boys in that fiery furnace (Daniel 3:8-25). I don’t know about you but I can certainly appreciate Shadrach Meshach, and Abednego’s testimony. I want to encourage you that God knows, and in due season, all will be revealed. So while we are waiting for time to manifest destiny don’t give up, don’t lose heart, or get tired of doing good. Galatians 6:9 says, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time [season] we will reap a harvest if we do not give up,” In seasons like this, it’s essential to fix our thoughts on heavenly things, not on temporary things of this earth. Fix our eyes on Jesus. He is the God who understands every temptation; He understands suffering and pain; and He understands our weaknesses. 2 Corinthians 4:17-19 reminds us that, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” If you like most of us today need comfort, let God comfort you. If you need strength beyond yourself, let Him strengthen you. If you need wisdom, ask and the Bible promises that it will be given to you (James 1:5). As hard as the tests and trials may be, allow God to be God. Allow Him to do the supernatural work that only He can do. Allow Him to strengthen and increase your faith in the valley of hardship or affliction.