Balancing Ministry N' Work

I don’t do this often, but this mornings message is a re-write of one some of you may remember. It is a reminder that we need and I believe it is an important part of the Things We Need… series. “Is anyone among you suffering? He should pray. Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.” – James 5:13 I want to focus on the second half of this verse, ‘Is anyone cheerful? He should sing praises.’ When we are excited about what God is doing in our lives, when we have received some good news, when we have overcome a big challenge, when we see God working in the lives of our loved ones… we want to celebrate, we want to sing praises, we want to share what God is doing in our lives. When things are going great, it is easy to get excited about the Things We Need… Praise! Then there are the times that five letter word ‘worry’ or that six letter word ‘stress’ role in. When we feel like we have been hit upside the head with a 2” x 4”, it can be hard to sing praises to our King. When we get...

Things We Need… Jesus is the absolute most important of the things we need and last week it was Excitement, with a focus on being Excited for the Word of God. This week I want to keep it simple. Under the Old Covenant that was put in place by God through Moses you will see a lot of rules that need to be followed. Most of the time we think about the Ten Commandments that God wrote on the stone tablets for the people to follow. The thing is that was just the beginning. If we took the time to tally the number of Commandments listed in the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we would come up with a whopping six-hundred-and-thirteen Commandments! Way more than the ten most people think about. It can be hard to remember and faithfully follow the ten all the time. Remembering and following all six-hundred-and-thirteen Commandments is impossible for us. There is nothing simple about it. As we flip through the Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy we will f...

How many remember the Excitement they had when you first accepted Jesus as your Savior? That Excitement that drove us to learn everything we could about who Jesus is and what He did for us. Some of us may wonder what happened to that person who had a hunger and thirst for God’s Word. Hunger and thirst for the Word of God is a wonderful thing, as it emphasizes the need we have for God’s Word. No matter how long we have been a believer or how many times we have read the Bible, we cannot know all there is to know about our God. As we hunger and thirst for food and water to survive, we should hunger and thirst for the Word of God. Hunger and thirst define needs… for example, I need to eat, and a turkey sandwich will satisfy that need and a glass of water will quench my thirst. To be honest though, neither of those will really get me excited. Make it a fresh hickory smoked prime-rib and a tall glass of sweet tea and my hunger and thirst turn to Excitement. It turns from what I need to k...