tell HIM what you feel about HIM…

we happen to be in a series here on bill’s front porch looking at the way JESUS taught us to pray and we are spending some time looking at the prayer that JESUS gave HIS disciples and gave to us.   it is the LORD’s prayer.  and we are continuing looking at the phrase, hallowed be YOUr name. 

JESUS began the LORD’s prayer found in matthew 6.9 (niv) with, this then is how you should pray, “our FATHER in heaven, hallowed be YOUr name.”

please note: if you want peace then what does it really mean when we honor GOD’s name.  how does that bring peace into my life?

honoring GOD’s name means i acknowledge that GOD is greater than my biggest problem.

just think of the biggest problem that you’re facing in your life right now.  GOD is bigger.  HE is greater, much greater.

JESUS teaches us when we pray, HE says, “when you pray first of all start out and call GOD your FATHER.  realize that that’s the relationship that you have with HIM.”  then right after that you say, “GOD, i want YOUr name, who YOU are to be honored in my life and in this world.” 

that’s not how we usually pray.  often times when we go in we’ve got our list.  “here it is GOD.  i need this, this, this and this…  see you later, GOD.”  and i’m out of there. 

do you ever pray like that?

now understand, GOD listens to every one of our prayers but we’d have a lot more peace in our lives if we prayed the way JESUS encourages us to pray. 

sometimes in our prayers, we tend to focus only on our problems.  but JESUS here is reminding us, that “I want you to talk to ME about your problems but before you do that just take a minute to realize that GOD is your FATHER, that HE loves you no matter what problems you have in your life and HE’s never going to stop loving you.

and also realize that GOD is greater than any problem you’re going to talk to HIM about right now, if you take just those few seconds to do that, the stress level will dramatically decrease in your life.”  it’s a lot better relationally to talk to GOD that way, to begin by actually talking to HIM, telling HIM what you feel about HIM. 

just a thought from the front porch…  

what is a blessing?...

what is a blessing?  what does it mean to pass on a blessing?  if you go and read genesis 48 and 49 you’ll find out that a blessing is not just an encouragement.  a blessing is a statement of what you believe GOD can do in a person’s life.  passing on a blessing means you realize that the dream that GOD gives you, that GOD gives me, if it’s really a GOD-given dream it’s going to be bigger than your life.  GOD wants to give those kinds of dreams.  and once we’ve got them we’ve got to pass them on.  two questions:

to whom do you need to pass on GOD’s blessing in your work, your family, your ministry?  not just encouragement – blessing.  “i believe that GOD will use you in this way.”  this isn’t a lie, something you make up.  it’s something you believe.

and secondly, who do you need to honor?  joseph honored his father jacob. jacob asked to be buried back up in israel and so he was.  in fact, they took almost half the officials from egypt.  a huge procession goes just to bury his father.  even after he died he honored him.  one of the things that keep us from passing on a blessing is not honoring those that passed on the blessing to us.  who do you need to honor?  it may be someone who has died.  honor them in your heart for the blessing they passed on to you.  you’re not really a dreamer unless you pass it on. 

we all need a dream that outlasts our lives.

just a thought from the front porch…

a sense of honor and dignity…

work gives me self respect. it gives me self-respect. proverbs 22 verse 29 in the living bible, do you know a hard-working man? he shall be successful and stand before kings.

he says the value of good hard work is he shall be successful and stand before kings. what is he saying? he's saying that there is a sense of honor and dignity that results from legitimate work.

all honest work is dignified. now of course you can't be a hit man obviously. or a few other things. that may be a problem but the point is that legitimate, honest work has dignity, no matter what you do.

and the fact is that GOD has built in certain emotional rewards and work is the only way you can get them. there is a certain amount of self-respect that you can't get any other way except through working. it is that sense of accomplishment, that feeling of a job well done. that satisfaction inside that you gave it your best shot.

now you understand that i'm also talking about those of you ladies who have decided to stay at home. that is your job, that is your work and that there is worth and dignity attached to your work also. don't let anybody say otherwise.

there is dignity in all work.

back when i was in college, i worked as a custodian of a middle school. it was a great job for me in college. well, i looked at that as an awesome job to build something into my life.

many of the other preacher boys in college kind of thought they didn't' really need to do a very good job because this was not there calling and so they didn't give there best effort. well, i had been taught that i was to do my best and that there was worth in every job, that one job wasn't better than another so i became the best custodian that i could be. i had pride in my bathrooms. i made them sparkle. and that built respect, self-respect in me. williams you can do a good job.

just a thought from the front porch…

honored and respected, or discounted and disrespected?...

an invisible sign you’ll see hanging around the neck of every person you’ll ever encounter is the sign, no u-turn. here’s what it means: keep your promises.

you tell people you’re going to do such and such, and they really want to believe you. she said this, so that’s the direction she’s going. but before you know it you have turned the wheel and squealed the tire and you’re going in an opposite direction from the commitment that you made to those people around you.

if you look at this encounter between JESUS and the woman in luke 7.36-50 you will find a remarkable promise being made. in verse 48 (nlt) JESUS says to the woman, your sins are forgiven, and JESUS keeps all HIS promises.

have you ever had someone break a promise to you? they told you they were going to do something that was very important, and they didn’t do it. did that make you feel honored and respected, or did it make you feel discounted and disrespected?

i heard a story of an 18 year old ministry student, who’s a really sharp guy. very aggressive. wants to be a pastor. one of his goals is to interview the leading pastors in america, but some of these guys are quite popular and their schedules are full and it’s tough to get an appointment with them. but this young guy is trying. he called a guy out of state. this guy didn’t know him. he’s 18 years old, a college student, but this pastor in the mid west at a large church not only gave him an appointment but it was a lunch appointment. this kid was thrilled.

it just so happened that this appointment was set the week after the 9/11 attack happened. on the morning of the appointment, he got up way before 6 a.m. to make the long drive across a couple of states to get to the church in time for lunch. after he’d already gotten on the road, the pastor’s assistant called to his home. the young man’s father answered. the assistant said, “the pastor was wondering if there was any way he could reschedule with your son.” the father said, “my son is already on the road, and he’ll be there in a few hours. he’ll understand if you just explain it to him when he gets there.” about 15 minutes later, the pastor himself called. he said, “i understand that your son’s already on the road. i just want you to know that i’ve canceled all my other commitments. i gave my word to your son. i’m going to be meeting him for lunch.”

that 18-year-old did meet the pastor. they had a two-hour lunch interview. afterward, the young man drove the pastor back to his church and dropped him off. a staff person was standing by. he walked over to the young guy and said, “i don’t know who you are, but i just wanted you to know that our pastor today had been asked to be on a nationally broadcast radio program that was going to go to every state. he was asked to talk for two hours about the crisis and the spiritual dilemma in our nation right now. but he canceled that because he made a promise to you.”

the young guy said, “i learned more about leadership and integrity in that moment than i did from all the things we talked about at lunch.”

just a thought from the front porch…

loves shows value and honor...

we’re in this series “what is love,” and we’re looking at different aspects of love as found in 1 corinthians 13. now one aspect of love found here is that it is respectful, it shows respect to others. in verse 5 (niv), we find these words, love is not rude. it is not self seeking.

you sum that up, and it basically means you treat other people respectfully. the idea of respect is talked about a lot in the bible. in deuteronomy 28 and leviticus 19, it tells us to show respect to those who are elderly. in 1 samuel 2, a preacher’s sons were called scoundrels because they showed no respect for the LORD. in ephesians 5 and 6, husbands and wives were taught to respect each other, and slaves and masters were told to have mutual respect as well.

here is a verse that i hope you’ll get into your mind and you’ll think about it through this week and actually through your life. 1 peter 2.17 (nlt) says, show respect for everyone and love your CHRISTian brothers and sisters.

respect is one of those topics we talk about and it’s a word we use a lot, but have you ever given much thought to what the word “respect” really means? i can remember as a little boy my mom saying, “that was disrespectful.” or “you need to show respect in this situation.” but i never had anybody to define that for me.

here’s how i’d like to define respect for our own purposes: respect is showing value and honor to others by our actions. when we dishonor or devalue a person, we could say we disrespected them. we disregarded them. the common vernacular is “we dissed them.” but to respect someone is to show value and honor.

every person that you’ve ever met has around his or her neck an invisible sign. if you look carefully enough, you can almost see it. it’s a sign that says, “do i matter to you?” it’s a sign that says, “do i have any worth at all in your estimation? do you in any way honor or esteem who i am?” and if you look at that sign crying out, “would somebody please show me by their actions that i matter?”

do people feel better or worse after they’ve been with you? this is one way to know whether you’re a respectful person. do they feel inspired, valued, respected? or do they feel worse, diminished, unappreciated? i find there’s some people i feel replenished by and other people i feel very diminished by. there are situations where i find myself renewed and other situations that just wear me out.

just a thought from the front porch…