4GIVEN

Out of all the trees in the Garden of Eden, why was one isolated from all the others (Gen 3:3)? Well, if you think about it the answer is relatively obvious. God loves us and He created us to have fellowship with Him and choose to follow His commands. There is no true love in a relationship unless we are free to reject that love. God gave us free will to decide if we love Him enough to trust Him, and trust Him enough to obey Him. To love God is to obey Him (John 14:15). Some folks foster the wrong mentality when they hear the word obey. They believe obedience represents legalism and rules. Quite the contrary; obedience is the definition of strength and its power comes with a powerful promise (Exodus 22:23). Simply put, when we are walking in God’s will through obedience, He fights for us! Look at it this way, God’s love is so amazing that even though we all choose to disobey Him more often than we’d like to admit, He still gives us a way to be forgiven, changed, and empowered to love Him through Jesus Christ. God doesn’t want puppets or robots, He ardors for His people to pick up their blood stained cross and walk in faithful obedience!

We regularly listen and hear about how much God love us and how He demonstrated His love through Jesus Christ. But, how do we respond to God’s incomprehensible love? Romans 5:8 says, “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” As recipients, one way to reciprocate His love is to incessantly feed our faith with God’s love through studying and meditating on what God’s Word teaches about His love. Take whatever He says personally. Study God’s Word, make sure it’s for yourself with the intention of applying the Word to your life. A second way to respond to God’s love is to live within His love. To “live” in this context means “remain, stay, dwell, continue”, amongst others. In the words of Jesus He told His then disciples, as well as His present day disciples (us), to “… continue in my love” [John 15:9]. We must resiliently commit ourselves to cultivating an attitude that will keep us consistently conscious of God’s love because our wicked world wants us to be consciously in ‘lust’ with it!

Needless to say, there are numerous ways to respond to God’s love so choose one or two that reflects your personally relationship and remember God’s love is the only place where you’re untouchable, unstoppable, incorruptible, and indestructible. It’s the safest place to be on earth. It’s a place where your struggles to make things happen come to an end. It’s a place where it doesn’t matter how people treat you or what they say about you; but you just keep getting blessed in everything you do, and say, and everywhere you go! It’s really a no ‘brainer’—we should effortlessly respond to God’s love because we’re deeply loved, highly favored, and greatly blessed!

Grace by biblical understanding is when God’s dispenses favor in our lives in lieu of wrath and judgement. In describing the power of grace Christian Gospel Artist Larnelle Harris penned these powerful words, “Were it not for grace I can tell you where I’d be. Wandering down some pointless road to nowhere, with my salvation up to me. I know how that would go and the battles I would face. Forever running but losing the race, were it not for grace.” What a beautiful and thought provoking song! Grace is the one thing the world cannot duplicate, and the one thing it craves above all else for only grace can bring hope and transformation to a jaded world. You might be saying, “What’s so amazing about grace?” Well, for starters the word amazing means… Excellent, Incredible, Tremendous, Wonderful. Let me put it this way, if you’ve experienced a time when you know you deserved to take the “L” but God chose to give you victory, then you my friend are a recipient of God’s amazing grace. Paul defined God’s grace in Ephesians 1:7, “He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of His Son and forgave our sins.” We should all remember that day when God poured out His favor on us. He reminded us on that day, He loved us and that we are extremely special to Him. He expressed to us through His actions His goodness, kindness, and love. We did not earn nor deserve that gift. But He freely gave because of His love for us in Christ Jesus (John 3:16, Rom 8:38).

Bitter people will always have something negative to say. Over the years, I’ve learned that haters operate from a root of bitterness and unless they surrender it to God negativity will always contaminate their perspective and encumber their judgment. As Christians, we are called to live in ways the world simply don’t understand. Jesus warned us that we would be hated. But he tells us to stand firm and do nothing in terms of getting even. Luke 21:19 even goes as far as saying that we will win life. Some of y’all reading this message is saying, “That’s not wining” and “I can’t do this!” I will say, standing firm is not for the faint at heart! Steko is the Greek word for ‘standing firm’ and it means to persevere and persist. Notice Jesus didn’t instruct us to retaliate, He instructed us to pray and bless our haters ( 1 Peter 3:9). Again, some may be thinking that’s easier said than done!! I understand fostering this disposition can be unpopular and extremely challenging because it’s instantly gratifying to fight back, clap back, or say the perfect comeback when someone viscously and arbitrarily attacks you. Simply put, nothing good comes from getting even or paybacks; “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”. In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches us that we are to love even our enemies. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” So the real question is,”Do you want to be sons and daughters of God?” At the end of the day, it’s not our job to change people but it’s our duty to love people in spite of their unwarranted, unnecessary, and unruly behavior. Hate will always produce more hate but when hate engages with love—love always win!!

A burden is best defined as a heavy load or weight and because we live in an evil and wicked world no one is exempt from various kinds of tragic circumstance, hardships loss, pain, suffering and temptation. The deadliest lie ever told is a half-truth and the deadliest half-truth ever spoken was to Adam and Eve (Gen 3:5) and the runner up is when good hearted people say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” I get it, there’s nothing wrong with encouraging someone going through a tough time. But when God allows burdens for our backs, He shapes our backs for those burdens.” Yes it’s true, “God is faithful and will not let us be tested beyond our strength” (1 Cor 10:13). However, the lie is never found in scripture but in our misguided interpretations . The Corinthians was dealing with sexual immorality, gluttony, and drunkenness. Therefore, this passage is not about God declining to give them more burdens rather, it was about God helping them overcoming their temptation(s). Tweet this, “It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you’ve been given.” In Luke 11:9, Jesus says, “Ask and it will be given to you, everyone who asks shall receive!” This passage is preceded by a story about a man who needs something late at night and he goes to his neighbor’s house and bangs on the door. The neighbor doesn’t want to help him at this late hour, but ultimately can’t refuse such a need. Jesus says that if even that neighbor can grudgingly help, imagine how ready God is to help you, a God who loves you. Thankfully, God uses our burdens and turns them into our blessings and ministry so that we are equipped to be a blessing to others!

When we place our hope in anyone or anything other than Jesus, we will end up hurt, disappointed, frustrated, and unfulfilled in this life. This includes work, political party, government, friends, and family! Case and point, we are human and humans often lie and fail. Whereas, God is God and the only two things He can’t do is lie or fail. Tweet this: “Whoever has your hope has you heart.” In other words, we will pursue whatever brings us hope. Biblical hope is more than just fostering optimism, it’s possessing unequivocal confidence about the future or the successful outcome of challenge or obstacle (Hebrews 11:1). Biblical hope isn’t just seeing the silver linings or seeing the glass half-full rather, it’s more about seeing the Hand that delivered you out of that certain trial, hardship, and/or circumstance! The Word of God remind us that He is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask for or think (Ephesians 3:20), He is the one who creates light and dark, peace and calamity (Isaiah 45:7),His mere voice can strip a forest bare (Psalm 29:9), and lastly, our hope stands firm on the promises of God’s faithfulness and goodness (2 Cor 1:20). We can bring all of our requests to him knowing that He will answer for our good and his glory. At the end of our life when we finally see our Lord face-to-face, the only thing He will deny us will be all the pain, agony, and strife we experienced in our lives here on this wicked planet. Then, our hope will be fully realized in the eternal glory of our precious Lord and Savior!

Try this: Pray then let it go. Don’t try to manipulate or force the outcome. Trust God to open the right door at the right time. When we shift our confidence off of our own abilities and onto God, then we will find the strength we need to get through the storms and trials that life often brings our way. I am convinced that if we could fulfill our divine purpose without trials then God would never let a single one of us hurt—not even for a moment. Adversity was never in his original plan and the only reason he exposes us to any is so that we (and others) can know his strength. Let us look at few folks in the Bible and then let’s ‘remove’ their challenges. How important would Abraham be if he had Isaac early in his life? What would most of the Psalms read like if David’s life had been easy? Ruth would not be so much of an inspiration if she had never known hardship. How much consolation would the book of Job give if he never suffered? What about Paul, how much encouragement would his Epistles offer us if he did not experience anything that you and I go through? And where would we be without the cross that Jesus endured? Adversity can be a good thing because God cause all good things to come from it (Romans 8:28). So just remember, although God may not be behind everything that is upsetting you, he is working it out for your good. What appears hard will benefit you if you trust him (John 13:7) God is good, God is powerful, and God knows what he is doing and he is always on time!

Many people believe the “SOS” distress signal is an abbreviation for “save our souls” or “save our ship.” But in reality, these are considered backronyms, and the “SOS” letters are just a continuous Morse code string of three dots, three dashes, and three dots all run together with no spaces or full stops (…—…). Since three dots form the letter “S” and three dashes form an “O” according to Int’l Morse code, the signal came to be called an “SOS”. Let me lift this up! Song writers, Jason Ingram, Paul Mabury, & Lauren Daigle lyrically penned a powerful song entitled Rescue. In referring to God’s ability to hear our silent “SOS” distress calls they wrote the following verse, “I hear you whisper underneath your breath. I hear your SOS, your SOS. I will send out an army to find you in the middle of the darkest night. [Yes], it’s true, I will rescue you. I will never stop marching to reach you in the middle of the hardest fight. [Yes], it’s true, I will rescue you.” All I can say is, “WOW”!! Psalm 54:7 confirms, “For you have rescued me from my troubles and helped me to triumph over my enemies” and 2 Corinthians 1:10 affirms, “And he did rescue us from mortal danger, and he will rescue us again. We have placed our confidence in him, and he will continue to rescue us.” Isn’t it amazing that God would send out an army in the middle our darkest night to rescue and deliver us from all forms of hurt, harm, and danger?! Amazingly, God takes our “SOS” and turns them into a “PTL”!

I declare that God is getting ready to restore everything the devil has stolen and everything this world has taken away from you in 2019! BTW, you don’t have to wait to start shouting…you have my permission to start PRAISING Him RIGHT NOW for what He has done, what He is doing right now, and what He is getting ready to do in and through your life! In JESUS name, AMEN!!

I have given God a million plus one reason not to love me and none of them has ever changed His mind. The Bible is clear: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight” (Hebrews 4:13). Even if I am decent and good as I can possibly be, I am still guilty before God. I John 1:8 confirms that, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” I have learn that Psalm 139:23-24 is a guiding post to remind myself to ask God to, “Search me, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”Now have I taken the everlasting way, every time? No, but why would a righteous and flawless God continue to choose to love a flawed and unrighteous person like me? That’s because God is love (1 John 4:8). Love is the very essence of who God is and through Christ we see God’s demonstrative, incomprehensible, and incorruptible love through His birth, death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 5:8). You see, the gap between who I am and who I should be is large, gaping, unmissable and unmistakable. But God’s love for me and us is far greater than our imperfections, mistakes, failures, and flaws! I humbly submit to you that, I am an imperfect person loved by a perfect God because He sees me perfected in Christ!