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WELCOME TO GOD FOCUS THIS MORNING

The title of today’s episode: SPEAK LIFE, SPEAK LOVE, SPEAK JESUS

Many in our world today are blind to the truth. They follow their own way. They follow false religions created to worship evil spirits. Then there are those who have chosen to follow satan. I recently saw an unbaptism ceremony on social media. These people who were once baptized decided to follow satan. They were denouncing their ties to the one true God and all that baptism means. It saddened my heart.

Being baptized, as a follower of Christ, is to take on the family name. It is sort of our adoption papers. It shows that we have been buried with Christ and raised to a new life. To denounce that baptism is to say, I do not want the life that Christ died to give me. I want back my old life or a life of spiritual death.

As children of God, we cannot even imagine what happened to these people to get them to make such extreme moves. Did they suffer from church hurt? Because being treated badly by other believers is the leading cause of people leaving the church. It is not just being drawn away through sin as most believe. Many are hurt by someone they trust in the church.

I have come to realize that church hurt is hard to recover from, however we have to keep going for Jesus no matter what happens. We cannot allow others to stand in the way of us being who God created us to be.

I am guilty of spending a long period of time away from church, because of church hurt. I know now that allowing that hurt to keep me from worship was wrong on my part. But I lost all faith in people that called themselves Christians. In the early 90’s my husband and I attended a large church. Several small things happened that I didn’t agree with, but I just prayed about it and pressed on.

There was a woman who attended services. She tried to commit suicide and was in the hospital for a week or two. When she returned to services, everyone should have rallied around her and been supportive. They should have said things like “I am sorry, I didn’t know that things were that bad.” Things like “I am here in the future if you need someone to talk to or pray with.” But none of the supportive things happened. Five people in the congregation talked to her that day. The rest avoided her like a plague. Their reasons for avoiding her were all different, I am sure. But sometimes we have to push through the difficult situations to be what God needs us to be. It is easy to get caught up in our own issues and not see what is going on with other people. We need to pray for God to open our eyes to the hurt of others.

As the body, we should all feel that pain. We should all know what it feels like to be in such dark despair. The word says if one hurts, we all hurt. Today is the day to start fresh and press outside of our comfort zone.

Many people are hurting, this world is a dark and cruel place sometimes. They are needing the love of Christ. Compassion is their desire. But instead at a lot of congregations they receive judgment and no compassion for their pain.

If we are going to gather the large harvest of souls in a short time. We who are in the body are going to have to spend time praying for restoration of those who have been hurt.

Some of those people were not ready to follow Jesus, they didn’t want to give up some form of sin. They were lukewarm and used church hurt as an excuse. But still these people need Jesus.

Prov 18:19-21 A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. 20 A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. 21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

It is not impossible to restore those who are offended. But it is difficult. It will take much love, compassion and prayer. We do not realize the power of our words sometimes.

I saw a science experiment with water that I found to be amazing. In one room, people spoke negatively and hate to water. In another room people spoke positive words of love to water from the same source as the other water. The only difference was the words spoken over that water. Then after a period of time the water was frozen. The water that had positive words of love froze into beautiful snowflake-like patterns. While the other water that had all the hate and negativity spewed in its direction froze in strange blob patterns.

If our words have that kind of effect on water, then how much more do we affect others and ourselves with the words of our mouth? Speak life. Speak healing. Speak love to those you meet, you never know how close they are to the edge of the darkness. We can reach this world, one kind word or deed at a time. The kindest thing we can do is to speak Jesus.

Until next time,

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

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