http://richmondassembly.org/blog en redeemed12920@yahoo.com Copyright 2010 2010-08-23T00:38:50+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/contentment/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/contentment/#When:23:38:50Z I was reading the other day in Philippians where Paul speaks about something we don't hear much about today...contentment. As we read his letters, he wrote to the churches about his everyday experiences and we understand that he never viewed himself as a victim of life's circumstances, but a victor over every and all of the circumstances of life...why?There were several reasons for that.  First, he understood the Providence of God as in Romans 8:28.  For example, he accepts all things in life, the good and the bad as normal. Wow, that’s Providence at work. And remember contentment is not complacency, it is not escaping the harshness of life but having a peace in the midst of life’s storms.  Paul’s contentment didn’t just fall from heaven…he had to learn it…the hard way.  The word content comes also from the word contain.  It speaks of a person whose resources are within him…internal…not external resources.  His resources are spiritual, they come from the Greater One within.  Paul’s contentment did not depend on external resources around him like friends, funds, or favor with men.  His contentment flows out from within and that flows out of his intimate relationships with his God.  He doesn’t need any external substitutes like happiness.  He is self-contained in Christ, who is his Strength.  Because Christ is our Strength, we also are more than adequate for all the demands of life.  Paul says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”.  Paul knew it was not Paul’s strength, but Christ’s power. He had all things necessary in life because he had Christ.  Paul understood that because of God’s Providence.  Life is not a series of accidents, but a series of appointments scheduled by the same God who said to the Psalmist “I will guide thee with mine eye” Psalm 32:8.  Trust God without hesitation or reservation and contentment will be ours also.  Praise Him for He is Worthy! 2010-08-22T23:38:50+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/lifes_burdens/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/lifes_burdens/#When:00:20:45Z Someone once said "Life's burdens must never be carried alone". Thank God for the body of Christ and friends, real friends, not fair-weather friends...but the ones who stand by us through thick and thin. As I drove in traffic the other day, I was surprised at how many people were driving and talking, friends talking to friends…many I’m sure.  And then you think things like “facebook”...wow, 500 million people communicating all the time.  How can we need to talk and express ourselves so much?  I think as life becomes more difficult, more burdensome, we need to talk to a friend more often…to share the load,,.lighten the load… by talking and listening.  As everyday life becomes more challenging in these troubling times, I’m sure we will be looking for a friend who cares enough to listen.  Oh, and don’t forget prayer!  The Lord invites us to “come unto Me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mat. 11:28).  Rest…what’s that…a new concept?  Ha…who has time to rest? Well, keep on keeping on, and keep talking too, and we will get through the tough times of today…with the Lord’s help! 2010-07-02T00:20:45+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/love/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/love/#When:17:15:49Z My message on Valentine's Day was about love. As I pondered the word, I asked myself the question, "What do we really understand about love?" It's hard to define the word. So then I turned to I Cor. 13 and I became more confused!The apostle writes, “Love suffers long”.  It does? Since when?  “Love is kind.”  Well, I hope so.  “Love doesn’t envy.”  “Love doesn’t seek it’s own, is not easily provoked.”  Wow!  “Love thinks no evil.”  Are we talking about the same love that we know? Well, let’s go on.  “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.”  Well, by now we must know that the apostle is speaking about the model of love not the reality of human love in this life.  We fall so short of this model in God’s Word.  “God help us to love unselfishly, unconditionally, and to seek the example you, Lord, have given us”. Love must be demonstrative; love must be verbalized.  How do we love someone in silence?  And last, but not least, love must be now, not tomorrow, not someday, somewhere, at sometime.  If you love someone…tell them soon, express it.  Don’t wait until it’s too late.  Make the time.  Don’t let love fail! 2010-02-17T17:15:49+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/today/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/today/#When:23:14:01Z I recently lost an old friend of almost 30 years. Someone once said "When we lose a friend in life, a bit of us dies". I don't know if that's true, but it sure seems like it is. What is it about this life that's so deceptive? Like my friend, Tom, you work hard all your life to build a business, to get ahead, to lay up that nest egg, to relax someday and enjoy some of what you’ve sacrificed to accomplish and then you die in your 50’s… or younger!  Didn’t Jesus say something about giving no thought to tomorrow?  Friends, all we have is today, and there are no guarantees about all of today.  When you lose a friend or loved one suddenly, it makes you think about your own check-out…it makes you want to call your friends and talk a while…or stop by and see them, never knowing when it might be our last visit!  God help us to stop assuming that we have tomorrow because tomorrow’s assumptions can become today’s thief.  Jesus was right about tomorrow…it consumes too much of our thought.  Who are we trying to fool?  We only have today.  So pick up that phone or drive out of your way a bit, to greet an old friend today.  You won’t be sorry you did. 2009-10-03T23:14:01+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/that_time_of_year_again/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/that_time_of_year_again/#When:16:10:00Z Well, here we go...it's finally summer! If you know me, you may wonder if I've flipped my lid or something. Summer isn't typically my favorite time of the year. Many people know I really love spring, fall, and winter much better. So what's that all about? Well, even I did not enjoy so much cool, wet weather this spring. I could not even get my vegetable garden in at the usual time. It seems like the seasons, like we used to know them, are now in the past. Spring used to be warm & fleeting, leading up to a fast approaching summer. Summer used to be filled with long, lazy days. Now it’s shorter with odd temperatures. Even fall and winter are sometimes more unusual and colder than in the past.  Could it be the “global warming” effect?  One thing I do know for sure, no matter what the seasons do, our Lord Jesus and His Word never change. We don’t have to worry that the Word of God will say one thing one day and then change the next. What God says in His Word stays the same and holds for eternity. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever (Hebrews 13:8). He will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5) if we have put our trust in Him, asked forgiveness for our sins and desire to live a holy, separated life. Why not make Jesus the Lord of your life, if you haven’t yet?  You won’t have to wonder and worry about Him changing every day like our weather. 2009-06-23T16:10:00+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/shameful/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/shameful/#When:22:50:00Z I recently attended a family funeral for my 90 year old aunt. She was my "closest" aunt and I hadn't seen her in several years! I was re-acquainted with many distant family members that I only see at funerals and weddings. After the funeral, I thought about how we let time and the busyness of life keep us apart. It's just shameful...It’s shameful that it takes a death in the family to bring us together for a visit. What is it about life that we don’t make time for family and friends…lunch, or coffee, or a phone call, something to stay in touch with each other.  And what about the Family of Christ, those we’re going to spend all of eternity with?  We’re no better.  We do the same thing with our Brothers and Sisters in Christ.  You meet many people when you’re in the same church for 23 years.  In time most people move on to another community or church.  But what’s shameful is, we don’t even call, or stop by and visit, or somehow keep in touch.  Oh, but we might find time to show up for one hour at their visitation night, to stand by their casket (or worse yet, a can of ashes) and say our good-byes.  What’s wrong with this world anyway?  God help us to wake up and see the value of family, friends, and the Body of Christ before it’s too late.  Jesus took time to tell His disciples, in John Chapter 14, that He was leaving to prepare a place for them, so they could be together again, and that He didn’t want them to let their hearts be troubled.  My prayer is that God might make our hearts troubled about neglecting those we ought to be staying in touch with! ...those we say we love, those we say we’re going to miss so much.  Oh God, help us to slow down enough in life to visit a friend, to call, drop by and say hello, before we stand at the casket and try to remember how long it’s been since we visited our loved one.  We’re all guilty, we’re too entrenched in “our own” circles of life.  God help us to break-out and wake-up while we still have time.  We’re not getting any younger! 2009-03-19T22:50:00+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/immanuel/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/immanuel/#When:19:17:01Z It's always been amazing to me that God chose the way He did to reveal His Son. Luke tells us, the Savior was first announced to shepherds...Wow..shepherds. Smelly, stinky, outcasts, who were shepherds. Why didn't He go to the rich, famous, or powerful first? But shepherds? And then there was the birthing suite…a manger.  Not a manger!  A place where animals sleep, eat, and smell like a barn?  Is this a place for Royalty to be born?  A place for the King of Kings?  Would we really expect to find Deity in this place?  But that’s our problem.  We’re always looking for Immanuel “God With Us” in the wrong places!  Wouldn’t we have expected Him to have held a public place of honor and power?  He didn’t.  Wouldn’t we have thought He would have attended a great university?  He did not.  And certainly He would have owned His own home somewhere.  Wrong again!  I guess we could say He was homeless.  And I would have thought He would at least have written one bestseller, wouldn’t you? And oh, the people He hung out with, (less than desirable) well, we knew what they were like!  Why can’t we see Immanuel more?  Are we looking where we expect Him to be?  Maybe that’s the problem.  Maybe that’s why the religious can’t find Him, or the affluent. We’re just looking where we think He “should” be.  God help us to see Jesus this Christmas, help us to look beyond where we think He should be, to where He really is.  “God, open our eyes, we want to see Jesus this Christmas”. 2008-12-19T19:17:01+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/time/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/time/#When:21:01:01Z Hey, what happened to summer and even Indian summer? Can it be November already? Wow, did it seem to fly by or what? Isn't that life, time racing on, kids seem to suddenly be adults, young adults seem all to soon to be older adults. Somebody slow it down, so we can catch our breath, please!I wonder if a person who lives to be 90 or 100 has a real sense of time or if it still seems like those years flew by fast?  Have you ever asked yourself why am I in a hurry…slow down…what’s the hurry anyway?  I ask myself that all the time and never come up with a logical answer!  I think it’s the culture we live in.  Everybody’s late, trying to catch up, but never really doing so.  We think to hurry is normal.  Have you ever read in the scriptures when Jesus said “Hurry, we will be late to feed the five thousand, or we will be late to catch that boat load of fish?  Do you know why we don’t read that word “hurry” coming from Jesus’ lips?  Because it never was spoken by him!  God isn’t ever in a hurry, his timing is always perfect, and if he is in control of our lives, why are we always hurrying somewhere?  Take some time soon, and force yourself to slow down and spend some time alone with God.  Ask him what he really wants from you, and then listen for his response to your heart.  God is not trying to make us hurry, he’s trying to make us holy, like his Son.  So slow down a bit, and relax for a while and see if life doesn’t get just a bit sweeter.  Amen!  2008-10-29T21:01:01+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/friend/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/friend/#When:16:53:01Z All my life I've tried to define the term "friend"...to understand what a friend really is. When I thought I had a grip on the word, I would find myself disillusioned again. When I was in my mid-teens, a man I worked for (30 yrs. my senior) told me that I wouldn't have many true friends in life. I'd have many acquaintances, but not many friends. That troubled me, and caused me to be determined to understand the difference between a friend and an acquaintance.  Many years later I am still trying, but the good news is, I now seem to understand better what a true friend is and what it is not. The Native Americans had a much deeper meaning to the word “friend” than we do.  For them it meant to carry sorrows or burdens of your brother on your back and thus lighten his load.  The writer of Proverbs says in 17:17 ” A friend loves at all times”...there are no exceptions among friends.  In Proverbs 18:24 the writer says ” A man that has friends must show himself friendly and there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother”.  Jesus also said in the book of John 15:13 “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”.  Wow, that’s a true friend. We hear much talk in our society about friends, but most of the time we’re talking about acquaintances, not friends.  I love the old hymn, “What a friend we have in Jesus”...how true it is, He is the truest friend we will ever have.  Real friends can’t be separated by time and space, or disagreements, or misunderstandings.  A real friend stands by you for life, no matter what circumstances come and go.  Those people that seem like friends, and they come and go…they’re not friends.  They’re just acquaintances.  Life is full of those.  Cherish the real friends you have in life.  They really are few and a gift from God.  They make life better, less burdensome, more joyful.  I guess my employer who I worked for as a teenager was right…“You don’t have many real friends in this life”.  And I wonder if this quote is also true…“When you lose a real friend in life, a little bit of you dies”.  I’m not sure about that, but it sure seems that way.  But what I am sure about is what the songwriter wrote is true…“What a friend we have in Jesus”.  Thank you Lord for never leaving or forsaking us in this world of tribulation!  2008-07-22T16:53:01+00:00 http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/be_careful/ http://richmondassembly.org/blog/more/be_careful/#When:15:10:00Z When I was a boy growing up, my father was always telling me to "be careful". Be careful with that baseball bat...be careful with that BB gun...be careful with those fish hooks...be careful with the cat's tail; she will scratch you. I guess he understood that the carelessness of a child can be dangerous and even fatal.  I never understood why he was always paranoid when I wanted to drive his car or any car. But when I became a father with teenagers driving…Wow, did I understand his paranoia then!!  God’s Word is constantly warning us, as the Father’s children, to “Be Careful”, but what is strange is we often don’t heed the warning. In Hebrews 10:23, we’re told to “Hold fast the profession of our faith without waivering”.  And in verse 24, we’re told to “Consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works” (who’s got time for that?).  Also, in verse 25 we are warned again to “Not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but to exhort one another, as so much the more as you see the Day approaching” (sounds like a warning to me!)  Day approaching?...not another warning to be careful!  Oh yeah, the scriptures are full of them. Sounds just like my Dad when I was a kid!  And it get worse in verse 26 & 27.  Why would our Heavenly Father speak to us so often, as he does through His Word?  Warnings, warnings, be careful, be careful!  Think about it. If you love someone and you see danger that they don’t see, shouldn’t we warn them? Why do we warn our children to be careful?  So their lives don’t end prematurely; so their careless nature isn’t fatal. Oh Beloved, be careful as you live life…not careless (spiritually speaking).  Be careful to heed God’s Word, His warnings of love and concern for his children, His Word leads us to Life, but our carelessness my lead us to death.  The Apostle Paul wrote in his Epistle that the world is passing away. Let us, as his children, be careful to live according to His Word and not be unprepared when the Trump of God sounds SOON.  As much of the church is asleep, let us be awake, ready, and praying for His sudden appearing.  Praise Him! 2008-05-30T15:10:00+00:00