THE BLESSING POSITION!!

Praise the Lord everybody!! He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley, He is our Peace and the Author and the finisher of our Faith. He is our all and all and He is everything to me. I want to praise Him with my life, be a living testimony to His love, His grace, and His mercy. I wonder sometimes what God thinks of my efforts but even I must admit they are but "filthy rags" compared to what He has done for me. Still, I strive and press toward the "mark" that Paul talks about in Philippians 3:14, knowing I may never attain it but pressing just the same.

Over the years I along with many other Christian believers have come before our Father God asking for many things, some important, some not so much. Yet we always come expecting to get an answer in our favor, a blessing if you will and if we don't get the answer we want, the blessing we expected, we begin to question God. In 2nd Chronicles 7:12-14 God states     12 And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for a house of sacrifice.

13 If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people;

14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall 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.

God wants to not only hear our prayers but He also wants to do something about them but He has given us some guidelines we must follow in order for us to be in position to be heard. Most of us have the prayer part right. We can put some words together that are like honey for the ears but we fall short when it comes down to humbling ourselves before Him, repenting of our sins and diligently seeking God's face.

We can't keep running to God with our petitions like everything in our lives are alright, just great when in actuality there is sin in our camp. Go read about Achan in the 7th chapter of Joshua and see what happened to him when he had hidden sin in his camp. The Bible says the sin of disobedience is as the sin of witchcraft and this is the sin we most often overlook. God has given us an assignment and we for whatever reason do not carry it out, we don't even try sometimes and then we go before God to ask of Him without confessing or asking forgiveness for our disobedience.

We all know that God is more than worthy of all glory, honor, and praise, and the good news is He has already blessed us and He wants to continue to do so. So when you come before the Lord come correct and be in proper position to be blessed.

                     God Bless You All. Brother Darrell, Speaking Off The Wall

SOME TIMES WITH GOD: MORE IS LESS!

praise the Lord everybody! because He alone is worthy to be praised! I pray every one of you is enjoying God's blessing. He blesses me every time I open my eyes in the morning and gives me one more day in the land of the living, and for that alone, He is worthy to be praised. Even though the weather and other circumstances such as my wife's surgery have kept me from attending church these last few months I thank God my wife's surgery went well and there was no cancer or nerve damage found. God is preparing us for something and I can't wait to see what it is He's going to do in our lives and our ministries.

Sometimes when you are pressing hard to be the man or woman of God you believe God wants you to be, as I do, sometimes and you find yourself missing and falling short of the mark, do you find yourself trying to make it up to God by promising to do even more things for Him like going out and handing out tracts or volunteering more of your time at the church's soup kitchen, or adding on two more fast days to your week, for extra credit on top of what God has already given you to do. Like when you were in College  So on top of the work God has ordained for you to do now you're adding your own stuff, your own burden when all God wants is for us to be obedient and do the job He has called us to do.

I find myself doing this all the time, trying to make amends for my own shortcomings, figuring if I add the burden of more good works God will overlook my shortcomings concerning the works He ordained for me to do. Now not only do I find myself carrying the load I was called to carry but now I have added a load I'm not even supposed to have. secondly, I have lied to myself saying I'm doing this to appease God when I'm really doing it to make myself feel better and more deserving of God's forgiveness, and all the time God is saying "I ain't mad at ya!" He knows your heart and He knows who is worshiping in spirit and in truth.

While all this is going on God is standing there shaking His head. In Matthew 11: 28-30 He says   28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

He has called all who are burdened down by sin not to add to their burdens but to get to know him and take up His yoke because it is easy to follow and His burden is light, the "light" of the world which we are all ordained to carry everywhere we go, even unto the ends of the earth. When we fall short we must not punish ourselves by adding burdens out of guilt but we must get up confess our sin and continue in the race. God will chastise whom He will chastise and He chastises those that He loves. Even His chastisement is perfect leading to His will for us being fulfilled. We make shipwreck of our faith when we try to choose what we think our discipline should be when God can see our beginning and our end and only He knows what is best for us.

So I've decided to focus on what God wants me to be focused on and stop trying to get extra credit. You can't brown nose God.

                God Bless You All, Brother Darrell, Speaking Off The Wall

LET THIS MIND BE IN YOU!!

Praise be to God! The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the author and finisher of our faith! I pray every one of you are enjoying God's blessing. I thank Him for His grace and His tender mercies which are new every morning. I thank God for my wife's recent surgery going without a hitch last week. I thank God for the help He sent us with those errands and chores that have become to difficult for my wife and I to do. I'm just sorry we could not make it to the revival last week due to the weather and my wife's recovery. we may not have been there in body but we were there in spirit and a revival has begun in our hearts and minds.

In the war for our souls our minds are the "Hamburger Hill" of the battlefield. Whoever controls that hill is well on their way to winning the war. The enemy is constantly trying to take the Hill and sometimes he succeeds only to lose  it back as our faith regroups. Then the enemy takes it back again as soon as our feelings change and our faith is tested again and back and fourth we go. The word of God gives us instructions on how not to keep letting the enemy regain control of our minds.
Philippians 2: 3-8 states
             3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.

4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:

7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:

8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

First of all the word says "let this mind..." meaning God is not looking for robots. We as believers have to make a conscious effort to allow our thoughts to become His thoughts. the Bible talks about us taking our every thought captive and making them obedient to Christ(2nd Corinthians 10:5)
and once we have attained this we will be able to humble our selves and become obedient just as Christ became obedient for us. Jesus was able to shrug off what most of us find almost impossible to do. He shrugged off His power, His authority and His place in line to the throne to become a man and die a horrible death and be buried in borrowed grave forsaken by the one He loved the most, His father. to put it in perspective how many of us would step down from being the billionaire CEO of Microsoft, leave EVERYTHING behind and move to the inner city to teach "bad" kids at a public school knowing that you will then be murdered by unhappy parents.                                                     
Apostle Paul talked about the renewing of the mind in Romans 12: 1-3      I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

The word of God states that "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new."(2nd Corinthians 5:17) This is true but our minds must be renewed and filled with His word to the point that the enemy has no place to gain a foothold.

So brothers and sisters let us allow God's word to scrub our minds clean and fill every nook and cranny so that we wont have to let this mind be in us that was also in Christ Jesus because it will be already there.
                          God Bless you All, Brother Darrell, Speaking Off The Wall