Making Disciples

So many times we don’t like to share with others what The Lord has done for us or in us.

Matthew 28:18-20 says And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

This was a commandment from our Lord Jesus and if we are following this command we are fulfilling His commission. There is no need to be afraid of what God has called you to do. Each of us have a measure and that measure is used in bringing people to Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:17-19 says Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

We make disciples rather reconcile men. As a disciple, as a reconciler we have people who follow us, especially our own children. I can recall a situation where my 9 year old daughter well she was 7 at the time when she told me she wanted to be like me. She said she wanted to preach just like me…that means I am making a disciple. That also means I have to live the very words I preach about.

We have people who want to be like us especially our spiritual children as well. We may be positive or a negative disciple maker– we can draw people to greater devotion to Jesus or we can drive them away.

The goal has always been to pass on what we know or what we have received to someone else. Our role is to faithfully and intentionally to give away what we have learned or experienced.

Would we not be disciples ourselves if someone had not influenced us first.
Our mission is to make disciples–to reconcile others–to help others follow Jesus. We have freely received now we must freely give.

Who has Jesus brought into your life that you can influence as a disciple?

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

True Righteousness

St. Mark 8:38
Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

If righteousness is going to be fulfilled in this life, it will be fulfilled by the sons of God. We can’t expect the world to come forth with righteousness. It is our job alone. In addition to proclaiming the truth of Christ and defending his righteousness, we must accept that we cannot choose parts of righteousness. A true servant of righteousness fulfills all aspects of the word and doesn’t abandon holiness when it’s inconvenient to fulfill God’s purpose.

Sometimes, fulfilling righteousness will cause enmity between ourselves and those we love.

We cannot forsake righteousness to keep the peace. If peace comes by way of a lie, there is no real peace. If we must decrease being a child of God for peace, that is not peace worth having.

God cannot trust us if we sacrifice His truth for any reason. He will never be able to use us when it really counts. Jesus paid the price for our lives but our lives are worth nothing if God isn’t able to place us on display for righteousness.

We were created for the praise of His glory so what good are we when we cease to give Him glory? When we embrace the fact that we no longer own our lives, we will accept that we must adhere to God’s will at all times. We can all attest that whenever we take possession of our own will, we move off course with God.

Don’t allow anything or anyone to cause you to forfeit the righteousness of God. Stand on the standards of God even when everything around you seems to be moving in the opposite direction.

Be Blessed

Pastor Jackie

Strong Delusion

The church today is in a spiritual disposition that is adverse to the will of God, because many in the church are operating in delusion. According to the scriptures, the word delusion means to believe a lie to be the truth (I Thessalonians 2:11). We need to think about this. When you do not agree with God, you will accept a lie as your god.

For years we have heard that if you tell a lie long enough you will then start to believe it as the truth. This is delusion. A continual rejection of truth will lead to strong delusion. The thing that makes it so detrimental and scary is that one can start out believing the truth, but if that truth opposes the desires of flesh, for whatever reasons, that truth must be dealt with. The mind is capable and will deal with any truth that opposes the desires of the flesh.

A delusion in which a created image is accepted as fact and not fiction. This image or delusion is created in the mind or in the imagination. Have you ever imagined something that was very nice that you would like to do? The difference in that and what we are talking about here is that in a normal mind when you create something inside of your imagination, you know that it is in the imagination. It may be something that you are hoping for, but you know that it is not real.

In a delusional state you actually believe that thing is real despite all the evidence proving it is not real. Many are in a state of delusion, they would rather believe that sin in the saint life will still somehow enter Heaven.

The church must open its eyes and look in the reality of the Word because as loving as our God is He is also a God of wrath and His wrath falls on all ungodliness.

Are you living in your imagination or in reality?

You can walk in truth.

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

The Comforter

God is a God of comfort. He has given us the Comforter. The scripture says that He will comfort us in all our tribulation and trials. God is able to give us peace in the midst of every trial,altercation, confrontation, every battle, in every area of our life that brings pain.

The same comfort that God gives us, we are charged to give it to others. God comforts us with His Word. It is easier to experience sufferings when we understand and when we have a Word that explains the purpose of the suffering.

We are able now to be comforted, knowing that we stand inside God’s purpose in sufferings. But, if we do not understand why we are going through something, it is hard for us to go through in with peace.

When we go through our trials and tribulations, He will comfort us through His Word and Spirit. He wants us to take the same comfort He gave us and comfort others.

We cannot allow ourselves to move outside the Word of God, which will take away the comfort of the Spirit. The comfort of the Word will take the hurt out of offenses.

Right thinking will destroy the hurt. If we change our thoughts, love will flow again. We have to bring our thoughts back to purpose and see the things that offend us as something God is allowing.

Allow yourself to be a vessel that comforts others.

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

Suffering Grace

It was at the cross that Jesus dealt with all our sins, griefs, and sorrows. He calls us to give up all rights to ourselves, take up our cross, and follow. This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself, so painful is the very place in which God is giving you the opportunity to look only to Him, to travail in prayer, and to learn long suffering, gentleness, meekness, to learn the depths of love Christ himself has poured out on all of us….this form of suffering is your opportunity to learn to leave with God what only God can do.

Oswald Chambers, in My Upmost for His Highest, says that ” No normal, healthy saints ever chooses suffering; he simply chooses God’s will, just as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.”

When you and I pray that God’s will be done in our lives, we must mean it, no matter what it costs us–for truly He will take us at our word.

2 Cor. 1:3-5 says Paise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

This passage let us know there is purpose in our sufferings because we learn to depend on Christ and then others can depend on us. There is no value in suffering when we look from the perspective it hurts so badly but there is great value in how we respond to it in light of the scripture.

Suffering can produce great depths of character, mature understanding, warm compassions, and rich spirituality…it makes us more like Jesus.

When I was learning my grace lessons on suffering I had to allow the process of suffering to transform me into the image of Christ then only when I was willing to let go of who I thought I ought to be and the. I became who God wanted me to be.

Don’t wait until lessons are fully learned, seek to know Him and serve Him in the middle of the pain. God definitely uses our sufferings to conform us in His likeness.

I Peter 5:10!says it best And the God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory in Christ after you have suffered a while will himself restore you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast…

I am truly amazed by Grace!!

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

Grace to Serve

This verse in my bible is well underlined, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not us” (2 Cor. 4:7). This is a promise I have held on to every time I set out to serve God in any way. On my own it would be merely “works”. But as I claim God’s power through His Holy Spirit, I was truly anointed to serve. And it wasn’t hard at all giving God the glory! Somehow He chose to work through me, not because I was worthy, but because I was willing.

I have said yes to God scores of time, knowing full well I was not equipped for the task at hand. Still, I believe that the one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.

Every hero or heroine of the Bible does more than he would have thought it possible to do…In a very real sense, not one of us is qualified, but it seems God continually chooses the most unqualified to do His work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident of lack of qualification, then there is no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own or God’s glory with our own.

To serve is to allow ourselves to be channels of Jesus love and grace–content to be the vessel. Allowing Him to use your vessel gives you great joy.
We truly cannot serve very long or effectively in our strength and that is why God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us, to enable us to be Christ’s hands to the world.

The other important lesson I learned about serving is to do it from my weakness, not my strength. For those of us who have recognized this grace in our lives, it seems only natural to offer it back to God, asking how He will use it to touch others. Why are we often surprise at the methods He chooses? Because God’s economy is not the same as the world’s economy. God says when you are weak then am I am strong, my grace is suffient.

My most recent grace lesson in servant hood (though I am sure not my last) has to do with the realization that God wants us to be willing more than He wants us to be able. With age and wisdom I have learned that a vital part of serving is discernment to know what I can’t do and then depend or allow on God to do the rest…just being able to allow Him is enough.

Ephesians 3:7 says I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.

I am truly amazed by Grace!

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

Adopted Grace

Being a parent has given me an understanding glimpse into one of the most significant truths of God’s Word: “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith…But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba Father.! So you are no longer a slave but a child and if a child then a heir through God.” Gal.3:26,4:4-7, NRSV

Even though I don’t possess great material wealth, all I have is available to my children. Because of my great love for them, I willingly give of my resources, my strength, my wisdom, my encouragement, and my possessions each day. Once they were not my children but now they are. How sad would I be if they acted though I’d never come along! How useless I would feel if they never came to me for all the blessings I so desire to give them. But if I feel this way, how much more so must my Heavenly Father feel when I ran around acting like an orphan and not as an adopted child of God.

All of us who have chosen to live for Christ are sons and daughters of the King. We are his heirs and thus we have access to all He is and all He has to bestow upon us. My day started going so differently when I began each morning looking into the mirror and proclaiming ” Jackie, you are a daughter of a King! Now live in the freedom of heirship.

” How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God! And that is who we are. (IJohn 3:1)
To know whether you are a child of God, do not ask whether your life is sinless, but whether your heart is so like. When your spirit cries out in love for your Heavenly Father then it testifies of the Spirit of God in you that marks you as a child of God.

When your heart cries Abba Father the Heavenly Father experiences joy and the child’s heart knows peace.

How utterly grateful I am that agonies my Father. Much of the time I’m all too content with being a daughter to carry on with health, gifts, and resources He has so graciously chosen to give me.

We have been adopted into this royal family and all the Father expects of us is to call on Him, long for hIm as a child does her Father. I learned that in my grace lessons that if I lean on Him and depend on Him as my Father I would experience the love of a Father which would always pull me out of situations that were not feasible for me…

Thank God I learned my grace lessons..

Approved in Christ

I would start this blog off quoting a scripture I read in the Message bible:

Galatians 2:17-21 says I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not mine but is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I am not going back on that’s. It is not clear to you that to go back to that d rule keeping, peer pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God.

I had to learn that the good news is that God approves of me. I had to learn to break a lifelong habit of thinking I must someone how do something to win that approval. As long as we walk in the spirit God approves of our lives.

Most people would love to rest in God’s approval and love. And we can and it is accessible but Because many have spent their entire lives striving instead of embracing the grace that gives rest to our souls we find it difficult to believe.

Years ago I stop worrying about how I appear in the eyes of others whether they would approve of me. Instead I began to seek His face daily, being faithful to his calling what he called me to do.

God’s love doesn’t depend on our performance. It depends on Jesus Christ. The reason Jesus stretched out his arms on the cross was so He could reach them around people like you and me…so we could now allow Him to reach others through us…

If you experience God’s love at your lowest moment you know it had nothing to do with your condition and everything to do with His amazing grace.

Are you amazed by Grace?

Be Blessed

Pastor Jackie

Affliction in the Spirit

The term afflicted means experiencing pain and distress. I can remember when I was learning what I call my grace lesson I was feeling much pain and distress so much so it was literally zapping the life out of me.

2 Corinthians 12:9 says My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…

When you are at your point of
weakness it is the grace of God that strengthens you back to the road of recovery. It is our trusting receptivity if the gift if His righteousness, in spite of all the sins and failures we see in ourselves which saves us from despair and depression.

I have learned that we hide because we are hurt and we hurt because we don’t understand how to heal. Part of our healing comes when we are able to allow the pain in our lives to make us more sensitive to the hurting ones around. I often say there is purpose in pain. It teaches you a most valuable lesson.

When I was going through what felt like great affliction I came across a poem by Christina Rossetti:

A Better Resurrection
I have no wit, no word, no tears
My heart within me like stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears
Look right look left I dwell alone;
I lift my eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see
My life is in the falling leaf
O Jesus quicken me

My life is a broken bowl
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold
Cast in fire the perished thing
Melt and remold it. Till it be
A royal cup for Him my king
O Jesus drink of me…,

This poem was the beat of my heart and as God infused my life I began to see my life with hope and healing…I became aware if those hurting around me…
Grace is simply amazing..Grace encourages you to never give up, never stop loving…the power is of God…

Are you in a place you feel no one else has ever been? Believe me someone has.

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie

Damaged Emotions

Emotions are strong feelings such as love, hate,fear, and anger. They are feelings gendered by either the receiving of or lack of affection.
Affections are those natural desires of the flesh such as love, touch, kindness, and consideration.
When there is a supply of these natural desires of the flesh, the emotions are usually affected in a positive way. However, where there is abuse or the absence of love, touch, kindness, usually there is a negative effect. This negative effect is called a damaged emotion.
A damaged emotion is created by the converting of one’s belief system. That which was once accepted to be truth is exchanged for something that the mind determines equal in value as it pertains to the flesh.
Many in our society especially young girls have been sexually abused during their childhood by their fathers.
The Fathers were loving and affectionate towards them; however he crosses the line by molesting her. Because his affection became perverted her mind began to rebel against the present belief system pertaining to men. All men are now seen through the eyes of the abuse inflicted upon her by her father and are judged no good.
The emotions become damaged or defiled with resentment, shame, guilt, worthlessness, and unforgiveness.
This operation is not just bound to sexual abuse but mental and physical abuse as well. The goal of Satan is to stop the flow of true love, to pervert your emotions.
But there is hope, God can restore your emotions. You do not have to be bound or in despair. You can be free to love again. You must learn to trust the hand of a God. The power of His love can heal you.

Walk in your freedom!

Be Blessed,

Pastor Jackie