Why I'm thankful this Thanksgiving?

I been a little down emotionally this holiday season. Its Thanksgiving as you know and this was my dad's holiday. He would smoke a turkey, cook his famous rice dressing, greens, cabbage, potatoes & serve frozen fruit punch. All the boys & our families would gather around the table talking about old times & watching football. That was tradition in our family on Thanksgiving until two years ago. This year I thought rather than grieving the lost of one tradition I would start a new one. So I've asked my family to make and share a list of the top ten things they are thankful for that year. As a great way to remind us of what is truly important in life.

This is my list.

1. My salvation and relationship with Christ!

2. My wife.

3. My children & grandchildren.

4. My mother & brothers.

5. The faithful members of Greater Bethel Church

6. The awesome staff of volunteers

7. The pulpit God has allowed me to occupy for 20 years .

8. My friends & extended family

9. My health.

10. Opportunities to live, learn, laugh and love.

Happy Thanksgiving! What are you thankful for this year?

Day 23 of 40days of Faith Jesus Prays For Us

Today's reading is John 17: One of the most encouraging experiences as a Christian is to be prayed for by someone else – and not only prayed for but prayed with. When someone prays for you in your presence, something special happens in your heart: you feel warmed and encouraged. There’s a sense of intimacy, both between you and the other person and between you and God. It’s like you’re knocking on heaven’s doors together. It is one of the best ways to build relationships between Christians and one of the surest ways of ensuring unity in the church. It’s pretty hard for division to exist and take hold when people are praying together. Have you had that experience? While we do have to pray for one another, I believe firmly that we ought to pray with one another more.

It is one thing for us to pray for and with one another – to bring our brothers and sisters in Christ before the Lord in prayer – but it is quite another to realize that in Jesus we have someone interceding on our behalf. Do you know that Jesus prays for you? Do you know that he goes to the Father on your behalf and on our behalf? Listen to these words from Hebrews 7: 25: “Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” Romans 8: 34 says something very similar: “It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

Robert McCheyne once said this: “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies. Yet distance makes no difference. He is praying for me.” If you have had the experience of someone praying with you – of having someone right next to you, sitting beside you, bringing your concerns and needs before God, I invite you now to imagine Jesus doing exactly that. I want you to close your eyes and to picture yourself sitting with Jesus. I want to you picture him praying for you. As you picture Jesus praying for you, eyes closed, I’m going to read our Scripture passage. Listen to Jesus, as he prays these words. Read John 17.

In this passage, which is Jesus’ final moments with his disciples before being arrested, Jesus prays for his disciples. Knowing that he will be leaving them, praying for them is the best way to prepare them. Jesus prays for three things on our behalf:

1. Jesus’ Prayer for Protection

2. Jesus’ Prayer for Sanctification

3. Jesus’ Prayer for Unification

Tim Tebow's Secret Weapon

Tim Tebow Wins! It’s amazing how we easily count people out. It almost seems as if we want to see people fail, fall & fumble. WE live in a world we love watching train wrecks. But Tim Tebow has defiled all odds. Winning the Heisman trophy, National Championships, being drafted to the NFL, making a team & now winning the starting QB job for the Denver Broncos people are “still hatin.” The winning but not they are calling his winning ugly.

The hatters say ,“Tim Tebow doesn't win pretty. Correction: Tim Tebow wins really, really ugly. He can't make the deep out throw and he doesn’t throw a tight spiral. He doesn't have a proper throwing motion and he doesn't orchestrate the perfect 13-play, 82-yard drive. And, he definitely doesn't have the gaudy numbers we all love from our modern day quarterbacking gems.

But, one thing Tim Tebow does do (and the hate to say it)... is win.

Tebow’s secret weapons…

1 John 4:4 Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Romans 8:37 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Isaiah 54:1717 No weapon formed against you shall prosper, And every tongue which rises against you in judgment 
 You shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, 
 And their righteousness is from Me,” 
 Says the LORD

2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made prefect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

Philippians 4:13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.

Day 13 of 40Days of Faith

Today is day 13 of 40Days of Faith (read Ezra 3) What an amazing story that STILL speaks loudly to the present day church. They had finally after much difficulty erected the foundation. They had persevered, kept on, and went through. However, even though they had accomplished what many, no doubt said, could not be done, and their moment of satisfaction had come, still not everyone was as thrilled as they ought to have been.

The older folks that had seen the first temple, Solomon's Temple, and who remember all of the Size, and Splendor that it had, were saddened because this one wasn't like this one. Instead of praising Him for what he had allowed them to do, they were saddened because it didn't resemble Solomon's Temple.

How characteristic of our churches today! Let me quickly say, there's nothing wrong with remembering how it used to be, however, God is a God of RIGHT NOW! One writer has so aptly put, "God is not a Duplicator, He's an Originator!!" God is doing a new thing & wants to do something brand new in your life starting today.