The Blessed Life – Pastor Jay
Matthew 6:24
The love of yourself is the root of all evil.
Money is a magnifier of whatever is in your heart – good and bad.
Matthew 6:19-20
If you give evil people more money they will do more evil
Manna versus Mammon
Dependence on God versus Dependence on myself
Tithing breaks the love of self (money)
Malachi 3:10 Bring your tithes to God’s house
Matthew 6:18 The church is the agent of God’s ministry
The church is Jesus’ legacy
Does Jesus care where I give?
Satan uses the media to discredit the church but most of the 350,000 churches are not scandalous
The issue with money must be resolved before God will have your heart
10th commandment
You shall not lust for things you don’t have
When given a compliment on something you own, there are three typical responses depending on what is in your heart at that moment: Pride, Poverty or Gratitude
Pride says, “I actually have more than that!”
Poverty says, “I actually have less than you think I do!”
Gratitude says, “Thanks”
Luke 12:18-21
“Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Don’t store up things for yourself if you you don’t also generously giving to God and others.
The only way to break lust for things is to ask God to help you to put others ahead of yourself giving generously to others out of heart of love
Own only as much stuff as you can manage well and use as a part of God’s purpose for your life
There are about 300,000 items in the average American household
The average person loses 198,000 items in a lifetime
We spend 198 days of our life looking for lost stuff
We are managers not owners
biblebread.blogspot.ru
Even if you aren’t looking for advice, having been in the same situation, I might be able to say a few things.First, I understand those feelings of utter rage, anger, and hate. It’s natural. There is on excuse to treat anyone the way he is treating you.
However, while the situation may be hard to ease, especially when it’s unlikely your father will try to change, and even though you are filled with your own resentment, the best thing you can do is pray.
For me, I had to pray that God would grant me grace to turn the other cheek despite the sometimes rather extreme emotional and verbal abuse and to not defile myself before the Lord or defile my own dignity by fighting back with fire. It was hard, but I had to trust that God would repay him for his ways. I needed to pray that God would enable me to let go of my anger, to heal my hurt, and to allow me to do the right thing as Jesus also did when wrongly hurt and accused.
Eventually things got better. Don’t get me wrong, I still live at home and still have to deal with my dad screaming at me over something stupid, calling me horrible names, and there are times where I am ready to hit him and am retaliating with all sorts of threats (but not so much when I am where I feel I should be in my faith where I am calmer in general because otherwise I am a stubborn person and am ready to defend myself and snap back). But the less I take it personally and more I just roll my eyes, ignore it, and think about more wholesome things, I maintain an inner calm and that calm energy doesn’t leave much room for his angry energy to feed on so confrontations don’t really amount to much.
The thing is, you have every right to walk away from your faith, but you can also know that what your father is doing is condemned in the Bible.
My father also used the ‘respect your parents’ cop out when I was younger despite not liking religion. People use things to their advantage because people are naturally controlled by their selfish, animal impulses, in my cynical view.
But if you do decide to surrender this crappy situation to God and trust that he will enable you to overcome by his might and if you keep asking for strength and perseverance, victory will come.
In fact, if it wasn’t for my faith, I most likely would have tried to kill myself in my teenage years as I planned to, a few times, because of the situation with my father, garnering no sympathy from him when I did inflict harm on myself in a brief moment of being overwhelmed to the point of temporal insanity. I have the ugly scars on my upper arm to prove it, something people devoid of sense and compassion, if they knew the truth that I did it, would ignorantly label me as emo, something I have to deal with for the rest of my life.
I’ll pray for you. Yeah, it doesn’t feel fair and it isn’t, but it will thus take a lot of inner strength to endure it while gaining satisfaction in your life as life is too short to let it be deprived of joy by sinful men who are controlled by their lower nature and not the higher nature in Christ.
I mean, yeah, you can walk away from God or you can curse up a storm at him about what you are going through, spilling the contents of your soul out to him, admitting how frustrating it is, and admitting that you can’t respect the man and don’t know what to do and need help. I have done that and was blessed for my honesty more than paying lip service despite steaming inwardly because I was so fed up that I was ready to become violent towards something or someone out of such deep despair.
But look at Galatians 5 and look at the works of the flesh. That man has got works of the flesh working in him. It’s the ugliness of sin. Actually, when I questioned the existence of God, it was my experience with my old man which made me realize that I believed in evil and not some morally neutral state of existence where morality was just a human construction. A Christ follower would be the antithesis of what your father is showing. But the reality of sin is that sin destroys, steals, kills. Sin is what we humans work with our hands and hence why God hates it so much and why Jesus would be abused by a bunch of sinners like your father and like us at one point or another so there would be a solution in surrendering the impossible to God who can make the impossible possible.
But don’t let your spirit, especially at your age, die because of some child in an adult’s body. But really, sin is the culprit because even God has compassion for those who are enslaved to it and because of it hurt others.
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by John (Sydney, Australia)
Heavenly Father please hear my pray, I’m a small business owner who has been operating this business with 1 other person.
There used to be 3 other people including myself working in this office.
I am having problems in employee the right people, and keeping my current clients and obtain new clients.
My stress levels have gone through the roof, I am having heart plan which is not good
Please Lord hear my pray, please help my bring back the glory that this office that I once had.
I know that sound selfish, but I did take it for grated where I could have help ours I didnt, now that I am help I want to help more I cannot afford it.
Please forgive me Lord for I pass mistake and sins,
Please help me to restore my clientele and grant me new clients for the business.
Lord please give me the ability to run my office and manage my employee
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