TAKE IT TO THE STREETS, IT'S HARVEST TIME!!!

Praise the Lord everybody! for He is worthy to be praised! I pray everyone is enjoying Gods blessing as I and my wife are. We thank Him for what He is doing in our lives. It is a beautiful thing to be used by God and to totally trust Him in every aspect of your life. Here we are in these very exciting times, waiting on Him in these last days.

We believers have a mandate, Go out into the highways and byways and make disciples, the great commission we talked about in my last blog,"we are ground zero!". Luke 14: 16- 20 states
¹⁶ Then said he unto him, A certain man made a great supper, and bade many:
¹⁷ And sent his servant at supper time to say to them that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.
¹⁸ And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The first said unto him, I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee have me excused.
¹⁹ And another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have me excused.
²⁰ And another said, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.

Jesus came at His fathers bidding to spread the good news of salvation and to be an example to us and after a three year ministry He turned things over to His disciples to go and fill His house for  his great supper, His coming back out party. Verse 18 says they all began to make excuses, all manner of excuses, refusing the invitation to the feast.

Today we as disciples face the same excuses. We offer the gift of salvation and we receive excuses like "Jesus is not God, He's just a man like me." or "Man wrote the bible, not God" or "I'm not ready to give up my sin yet and I don't want to be a hypocrite," Some can't forgive themselves and can't believe God is willing to forgive them of their sins either and some just don't believe there is a God. They question our faith and we must be constantly ready to defend and explain our reason for believing. often it is here that we fail.

Luke 14: 21- 23 states
²¹ So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.
²² And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room.
²³ And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.

To compel according to the dictionary means to: bring pressure to bear upon, to burden, coerce, employ force, pressure or put under obligation. The word compel is a verb and a verb is an action word. We must take action. Take the gospel to the streets, the highways and hedges. One of the things that make our message compelling is our testimonies, what God has done for us and how we carry ourselves in our day to day lives. we are instructed in Matthew 5: 16
¹⁶ Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
It's Harvest Time! Every where you look you see people burdened down in sin and
 the cares of this world and we have what they need, the good news of Jesus the Christ who 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.(Matthew 11)

We have to pray them in, talk them in, walk them in and live them in. We need to study so we can answer their questions intelligently while still maintaining our spirituality. We have to leave our comfort zones and meet them wherever they're at, just like God does. It's harvest time! Let's take it to the streets!!
                                  God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman

 
 

WE ARE GROUND ZERO!

Praise the Lord, everybody and everything that have breath praise the Lord! I pray everyone is enjoying Gods blessing. Ruth and I are seeking God even more fervently as we head to another level in our relationship with him. He has been showing us so much the last two weeks it's amazing.
God wants to do something big in these last days and He's just waiting for us to get ourselves (the body of Christ) together.


The largest organized military invasion was D-Day during world war II but the offensive God has planned for these last days far overshadows anything man could ever come up with and we are GROUND ZERO.

The world thinks of ground zero as the World Trade Center on 911. The dictionary says ground zero is: The center of rapid or intense development or change.
Two thousand years ago twelve men turned the world upside down, it was the beginning of a movement that would change the world. Today We are ground zero for the biggest harvest season ever faced by the body of Christ and just as Jesus said in Luke 10:2 
² Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.

We are those laborers, It is time for Gods people to leave their cozy comfort zones and carry out Gods command of the great commission in Mark 16:15-18 
¹⁵ And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
¹⁶ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned.
¹⁷ And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;
¹⁸ They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
We can no longer count on the church up the street to carry out the mission that God has called us all to do. Wherever God has planted us we must be ground zero for whatever He has planned for that area. The world in its search for love, peace, forgiveness, and salvation should be able to see through us that Christ is the answer, not welfare, Medicaid, the lotto or a hot streak in Las Vegas. It may sound cliched to some but Jesus is the answer for the world today and we are His instruments of change and god likes His instruments to be holy and set apart to Him, wholly dependent on God. How can the world trust God if His own people don't fully trust Him? How can we lead people to Christ when we are only halfheartedly following him. After all the miracles and signs and wonders Jesus said
¹² Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
 referring to His followers His disciples.(see John 14:12)

We are His disciples! We should be healing people with our shadows and be bringing back people from the dead, I don't believe that was only for the early church. It was for such a time as this! The enemy knows his time is short and he is trying to take as many souls to hell with him as possible and our job is to lead as many as we can to Christ and salvation. We are responsible for affecting change in our environments, through prayer, by the way, we live our lives and by active evangelism.

Brothers and sisters, let us not live depending on others to carry our load. Let's each live our lives with a "We are ground zero" mindset, doing our best to affect as much positive change in our environments as possible.
                                        God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman

"STRANGE FIRE" :STOP BLURRING THE LINE!

Praise the Lord everybody! For He is worthy to be praised! I pray everyone is enjoying Gods blessing just as Ruth and I are. We were blessed to get out to chgurch twice last week. We enjoyed our Pastors anniversary service last Sunday and God blessed us with a special anointing as He used my wife to sing a solo written by our church founder C.P. Jones called "Making the darkness light". Pastor Green really seemed to be touched by the service.

Eveybody was in a festive mood as they talked aqbout up coming holiday programs at their various churches and ministries. As I contemplated these things today God openrd my eyes and ears and began to speak some things and show me somethings. On the outside everything appeared in order, praises were going up, The spirit appeared to be flowing and ministering and everybody was pleased, except God. Some people were offering up "Strange fire"before the Lord.

The Lord put this scripture on my heart the next day as I was meditating on the previous days service. Leviticus 10:1+2  

10 And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not. 

² And there went out fire from the Lord, and devoured them, and they died before the Lord.

I did not understand at first but God began to make it plain to me.  God has asked for us to serve Him, live for Him and worship him a certain way and some of us have decided that doesn't matter and just like Nadab and Abihu we are being disobedient and are following our own way and God is not happy. we have blurred the line between right and wrong. Unlike in Aaron's day we are all called to be a royal priesthood in 1st Peter 2:9 
⁹ But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;
The sacrifice God now requires is ourselves, a living sacrifice, clean and holy unto him,( see Romans 12:1) and He has given us instructions on how to present our selves as sacrifices yet some of us are sending up "strange fire". We have decided to present ourselves before God wichever way we are comfortable with, ignoring His teachings. Thru -out the body of Christ the sin of disobediance is running rampant, homosexuality, adultry, fornacation, gossip, back bitting, unforgiveness, molestation and abuse. Not in the world but in the Church, not just in the pews but in positions of authority and ministry. People have decided that "God will understand, He loves me." they say when they decide to give in to temptation and disobey God.

We've all done it, myself included. We come before the Lord on Sunday after willfully sinning all week and then we have the nerve to come boldly before Gods thrown of grace and act like nothing has happened, singing and dancing, praising and worshipping and hoping He doesn't notice. God notices! He spoke it after the incident with Aarons sons in Leviticus 10:8+10
⁸ And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, 
^10... And that ye may put difference between holy and unholy, and between unclean and clean;

God has ordained that there be a difference between holy and unholy, clean and unclean and He wants us to walk holy before Him. We must unblurr the lines between Holy and un-holy, clean and unclean. We must realize that God knows the condition of our hearts and He will not be mocked!
There is nothing wrong with humbling yourself before God in repentence, we need to stop hindering what God is trying to do through the Church. We need to stop being a stench in Gods nostril and be what His word says we are to be, Holy and acceptable unto Him. Not only on Sundays but every day. Let's stop blurring the lines!                                               God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman





 

HERE I STAND: MY MOUTH WIDE OPEN

P:raise the Lord everybody! because He is worthy to be praised! I pray every one is enjoying Gods blessing. I myself am enjoying what God is doing in my wife and I's life.

Sometimes God ask you to do something that you feel unqualified to do, something outside your so called "area of expertise" sort of like Moses must have felt when God asked him to lead his people. see Exodus 3:10 +11   
¹⁰ Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.
¹¹ And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

Whenever God asks us to do something not in our wheelhouse we start to question God, "why me?" we ask. "There must be somebody better suited for this job." we say. we doubt ourselves and we doubt God. Has He not chosen us for a reason, can God be wrong? Who are we to question our creator? Would He give us an assignment to fail? I don't think so, God wants us to trust Him, to stand up by faith believing that we can do all things through Christ.

I can remember my former Pastor used to take me on some of his plumbing contractor jobs so I could make a little money when I would have one of my relapses. He knew it was hard for me go from being a professional Registered Nurse one day to a ditch digger digging up old sewer lines the next. He would say to me "Son you ain't much of a shovel man but what I like about you is your willing" That's all God wants from us, to be willing, to stand up by faith and be willing to let Him use us to carry out whatever it is We were called to do. Moses after trying to use his speech impediment as an excuse, finally became willing and went on to lead Gods people out of bondage.

Isaiah 1:19 states 
¹⁹ If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:

Sometimes we are willing but we don't know what to do or say next. The answer to that is we need to show our willingness by just opening our mouths, by taking that first step, by making that first move, not knowing what we are going to say or where we are going. I can remember giving my testimony when I first got into ministry. I was always nervous but I was willing. I never memorized my testimony only my opening line right before I went up so I would not be so nervous and freeze up. After that God would take over and He used my testimony to reach many.

Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:18-19   
¹⁸ Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;
¹⁹ And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

Like Paul we need to be willing to allow God to give us what to say and what to do. Are we willing to just open our mouths and allow the spirit of the living God speak through us. I remember once I was called up to sing a solo at church and as I walked up the isle I was so nervous my legs were shaking. This was not unusual for me but what was unusual was that I heard a soft voice in my right ear say "relax and let me sing." All I remember after that is opening my mouth and closing my mouth when it was all over. I to this day do not remember singing that song but people still say "you never sang it better" That's because I didn't sing it the Holy Spirit did. I just opened my mouth.

Are you willing? Then just open your mouth! Psalm 24:6-8 
⁶ This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.
⁷ Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.
⁸ Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.

                God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman

GOD BLOGERS: THIS IS WHY I BLOG!; revisited

Praise the Lord everybody! Because He is worthy to be praised! I love the Lord! I love the Lord! and if loving Him is wrong, I don't want to be right! I feel so good in my spirit right now because God has truly been good to me. These past three weeks God has taken me to another level both spiritually and physically. The last two weeks I have gone out more then I have the last 3months. My pain has decreased and my mobility has increased. Praise God my legs are stronger! Now I need to take advantage of this and work on my weight, I must lose weight! God give me the grace I need.

I have been waiting on the Lord for a word but for some reason a new word has not come forth, but God has put in my spirit to share with you again "GOD BLOGERS: THIS IS WHY I BLOG!" This is a reminder to myself and everyone else of why I do this. I pray again that it blesses you as it again blessed me.

                          GOD BLOGERS: THIS IS WHY I BLOG


Praise the Lord! I pray everybody is being blessed by God real good. I am truly blessed by God. I spent the last week catching up with my wife after a long absence due to scheduling difficulties. It was a blessing, everything except the fact that we couldn't go to church Sunday because the elevators in my building were broken again. We decided to have our own little service at home and God was faithful as ever as He met us there and we know He abides in our praises. We were blessed and God even blessed us more the next day when our Pastor came and despite not having any elevator service walked up with his wife and administered communion to us. Hallelujah!

Lately I've been reading other christian blogs on different sites and it has caused me to wonder about my own blog. "Why do I blog?" I asked myself. The answer for me is multifaceted, number one: God blessed me with the ability to write. Two: I believe God has called me to be a Watchman and to preach His word. Three: because of my disability my pulpit is not in the sanctuary but on the Internet. If you have read any of my past posts you have seen that God has given me a strong word. I repeat God has given me a strong word, I did not give them to myself. It is so easy to lose sight of what you are doing and why you are doing it in ministry. Being human we like to get feed back when we do something, Just being obedient and carrying out God's will should be enough but a lot of times it's not. We constantly seek man's approval and we want to know if we are reaching the people and we want to be known for the people we are reaching. We check to see how many "Hits" our blogs get each day, We say God gave me the word yet we don't trust him to deliver His word to the people He wants to hear it. We come up with all kinds of schemes to boost our readership, even compromising the word God gave us. Isaiah 55:11+12 says
¹⁰For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater:
¹¹So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
God's word, if it truly is from Him, will accomplish His will whether your blog is "viral" or only has a handful of followers. Our job is to plant the seeds it is God who gives the increase.

Some of the blogs I have read did not use any scripture to back up anything they wrote. I don't care how much since what you are writing seems to make, if your doctrine can not be backed by scripture than you are playing a dangerous game with God's people and yourself. My fear is that in my own zeal to do God's will is that I would equate success with the number of readers of my blog. Success is not measured in large numbers but in how obedient we are in writing what He is telling us to write. We are not to write to taste like a cook cooks to taste. The blank page is my pulpit and it is my privilege to send out God's word from that pulpit. 2nd Timothy 4:2-4 states
²Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long suffering and doctrine.
³For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;
⁴And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

Just as not everyone is chosen to preach or teach from the pulpit of a church, not everyone is chosen to preach from this pulpit. Matthew 20:15+16 says
¹⁵Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?
¹⁶So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.


People have asked me "Aren't you afraid you will offend someone with some of the things you write?" and I say " If God is in it why should I fear? and besides God told me that he did not give me a spirit of fear." 2nd Timothy 1:7
⁷For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

You have to be fearless in whatever ministry you do for God because our enemy the Devil is like a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. I can not write to please man, I must write to please God.
I live at his pleasure and it is my pleasure to serve Him. This is why I blog.

God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman

  

"TO WHOM SHALL I GO? THE DEVIL IS A LIAR!

Praise the Lord everybody! because He is worthy to be praised! I pray you are all enjoying Gods blessing. truly the Lord is good. I can't thank Him enough for what He has done and is doing in my life. I have grown through every trial and tribulation, at times I was slow on the uptake but when I got it God blessed me and moved me on to the next lesson.

Recently My wife and I, especially my wife has suffered an increase in attacks on our bodies health and these attacks have gotten to the point where we will have to make some major changes in our life's plans because of there effect on our quality of life. I was sitting down meditating on those things when the enemy had the audacity to whisper in my ear "why don't you just give up? go back to the way things were, make things easy on yourself." I could hear him smiling as he said it and I got immediately angry and said "Oh hell no!" I'm sorry but I said it, "I'm not falling for that one, If I give up on God where am I going? to you?"

I thought about Peter and the other disciples and how they reacted after what Jesus said in John 6:53-56
⁵³ Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. 

⁵⁴ Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

⁵⁵ For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

 

After this many stopped following Jesus and He then turned to the twelve and asked them did they want to leave also and Peter answered in verse 68

⁶⁸ Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.

I was feeling how Peter must have felt, eat flesh, drink blood or be born again, what ever! I'm willing to do it because Jesus alone has the words of eternal life. Just the thought of dancing with the devil again made me sick. The enemy had me drug addicted, homeless, filthy, lying and stealing. I cared only for myself and had no concept of love, how to receive it and how to give it. Jesus has changed all of that, He has given me a new life filled with love but the devil is a liar and everything he says is twisted.

I want to be like Peter, passionate in my desire to serve and follow Christ, take John 13:8+9
⁸ Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.
⁹ Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

I want all the Jesus I can get just like Peter. I may not be the brightest bulb but I have enough light to see on what side my bread is buttered on. The blessings of the Lord are everywhere and He adds no sorrow to them. The devil lies to you and then laugths atyou when disaster strikes you.

Give up on God? Then what? To whom shall we go? There is life in Jesus and that life is more abundant.
                           God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman

 

 


 

BE SURE OF YOUR CALLING AND IT'S COST!

Praise the Lord everybody! For He is worthy to be praised! I pray everyone is enjoying Gods blessing. I count myself as blessed just to be alive and be married to a wonderful woman of God. Then on top of that despite my infirmities He gave me something to  do, God gave me this ministry which led to ministry on a national prayer line. Now here I am at another fork in the road, My wife and I have another big decision to make and we want to be in Gods perfect will for our lives. Where do we go from here? We're waiting on God for healing that can free us up to better serve God and each other.

Have you ever believed that you have heard from God and you do whatever it is that you believe He told you to do and after holding on for years waiting on his promises to start to manifest you start to think to yourself,"maybe I missed the call." I can imagine that this is how John the baptist must have felt after years of paving the way for the coming Christ and then winding up in prison alone.
          Matthew 11:1- 5  states

11 And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed thence to teach and to preach in their cities.

² Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples,
³ And said unto him, Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another? 
⁴ Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:
⁵ The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.
Many of us have spent many years preparing the way for God to bless us, bless us with healing bless us with finances and bless us with ministries. We stood like one crying in the wilderness shouting "my healing is coming!" "my blessing is coming!" or "my time is coming!" Then one day  it comes just like it did for John the day he recognized the Christ and said in John 1:29
²⁹ The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

He would later baptize Jesus, his job was finished, He was a forerunner to the start of Jesus ministry, the time had come that he had to decrease so that Jesus could increase, he said it himself. Now we just like John have reached that place of healing, blessing or ministry but things did not work out like you thought they would and like John you end up in some kind of "prison" not really sure of what happened.

Jesus said in Matthew 11: 4 ⁴ Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see:
Sometimes we have to take a second look at what God said and what He is doing in our lives to figure out that He has already visited us and our situation. Sometimes we have to look back and see that God has already moved on your situation, you've already fulfilled your ministry like John the baptist had. Jesus was increasing while John was decreasing, the lame and blind were being healed and the dead were raised up, John needed to be reminded of his purpose. As I go through the various trials and tribulations I go through I have to remember my calling and recount the cost of that ministry on my life. Jesus talks about counting the cost in Luke 14:26-28
²⁶ If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
²⁷ And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.
²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

God keep me focused on you and your calling on my life each and every day so I wont be confused by unexpected happenings in this world, in Jesus name Amen.
                                  
                                                     God bless you all, Brother Darrell, A Watchman