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The Joash Offering is over $13,000! Hallelujah! You may give to this Mission’s Offering anything during the year. The chest will remain in the foyer through March! Thank you for your obedience!
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Daily Beats from your Pastor’s Heart:
Another one of my favorite hymns is SEARCH ME, OH GOD!
Begin your day by singing to the Lord.
Search me, O God, and know my heart today,
Try me, O Savior, know my thoughts, I pray;
See if there be some wicked way in me;
Cleanse me from every sin, and set me free.
I praise Thee, Lord, for cleansing me from sin;
Fulfill Thy word and make me pure within;
Fill me with fire, where once I burned with shame;
Grant my desire to magnify Thy name.
Lord, take my life, and make it wholly Thine;
Fill my poor heart with Thy great love divine;
Take all my will, my passion, self and pride;
I now surrender, Lord, in me abide.
O Holy Ghost, revival comes from Thee;
Send a revival, start the work in me;
Thy Word declares Thou wilt supply our need;
For blessings now, O Lord, I humbly plead.
Someone once asked, “Do you know God?”
But there’s a question that is far more important: Does God know you?
The issue on the great day of judgment will not be whether you know God but whether God knows you.
Many will claim to know God in the day of judgment.
They will say to Him, “Lord, Lord, I know You! I have prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name and done many wonders in Your name. I ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets. I swear I do know You!”
But to some of them He will reply, “I don’t know you, and I don’t know where you’re from. In fact, I never knew you. Depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!” (See Matt. 7:21-23 and Luke 13:25-27.)
No words could possibly be more terrifying to hear!
How horrifying to think you know God, only to discover that He doesn’t know you!
The issues at risk here are of eternal consequence.
There can be no more fundamentally important question than this: What must I do to be known by God?
The answer has everything to do with my secret life with God.
He wants me to enter the secret place, sit before Him, remove every façade and mask of pretense, and reveal to Him the innermost secrets of my heart.
He wants me to unveil my face before Him (2 Cor. 3:18) and let Him see the real me.
The good, the bad, the ugly—all of it.
He wants me to love Him without withholding any part of my being.
He wants a relationship with me that is based in total transparency and honesty.
I am changing more and more into the image of Christ, but during the process I allow Him to see the naked truth of my brokenness and carnality.
“But,” someone might counter, “I thought God knows everything about us anyways!”
True, He does.
But just because He sees certain dark rooms in our hearts doesn’t mean we’ve invited His light into those dark rooms.
The human tendency is to hide and cover up.
If we try to hide our true condition from Him, not only do we deceive ourselves, but we also hold ourselves back from being known by Him.
When He says He knows us, He means that we have invited Him into every part of our thoughts, motives, desires, and actions.
When we invite Him in, He releases His grace to empower us to overcome sinful patterns that had previously seemed unconquerable.
Judas Iscariot serves as a compelling example of a man who was incredibly close to Jesus but yet didn’t allow Jesus into the secrets of his heart.
He had a major problem with stealing, but He refused to confess it and bring it into the light.
Jesus gave him multiple opportunities over a three-year period to open up, but Judas repeatedly chose to hide, hide, hide.
Eventually Satan was able to reach into that stronghold in Judas’s life and yank him to his destruction.
Judas illustrates the terrifying truth that it’s possible to spend lots of time in the presence of Jesus and still not be known by Him.
Jesus can handle the confessions of our actual struggles; what He can’t handle is when we hide them and pretend they don’t exist.
The secret place is no place for secrets.
It’s the place for total honesty and full disclosure.
When we reveal our struggles, He releases the grace to help us change.
This is how we let Him know who we really are.
Now here’s the awesome part: When we confess our struggles to Him, He lavishes us with acceptance and ownership.
He says, “Since you’re willing to show Me your inner ugliness, I am willing to confess you before My Father and claim you as My own!”
Wow! I feared that He might reject me if He knew the real me; as it turns out, He accepts me when I let Him see the real me.
His grace truly is amazing!
His acceptance is so incredible that it inspires me to open every single crevice of my heart to His loving eyes.
And that’s where the intimacy is!
The greatest intimacy is found in the mutual giving of ourselves radically to each other.
The cross demonstrates how radically He gives Himself to me, and my embracing of the cross is my giving myself back to Him with lavish abandonment.
Not only am I honest with Him; I search for ways to give even more of my heart to Him.
It’s the search for increasing self-disclosure that causes my relationship with Him to be deepened and enriched.
Someone once said, “Prayer demands a relationship in which you allow someone other than yourself to enter into the very center of your being, to see there what you would rather leave in darkness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched” (author unknown).
Isn’t it great to be truly known by Him?
As Bill Gaither penned the song, “The one who knows me best loves me most!”
He knows me, and He understands me.
One reason we find such delight in surrendering our lives to Christ’s leadership is because He never misunderstands us.
All of us have known the frustration of feeling or thinking one way about a certain issue, but having someone else totally misinterpret our thoughts or intentions and thus judge us wrongly.
That never happens with Jesus.
He always knows exactly what we’re thinking and what is motivating us.
This is one reason the twelve disciples found Jesus’ leadership so compelling—because He was able to address the issues of their hearts with total accuracy and complete understanding.
He knew them like an open book, and His ability to provide compassionate leadership in the power of that knowledge endeared them to Him forever.
They felt completely understood, even when they were wrong and being rebuked for it.
Jesus both knew them implicitly and loved them unconditionally.
Oh, the blessedness of being known by God!
How can we be known by God?
The answer is given to us most simply in 1 Corinthians 8:3, “But if any man love God, the same is known of him.”
When we open our hearts to Him in loving abandonment, He embraces us and knows us.
What a joyful privilege—to have a knowing relationship with God Almighty!
Thank you, Jesus, for the gift of the secret place where we can give each other this love.
Close your time with the Lord in the secret place by singing this hymn.
I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses,
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain:
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
He speaks, and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
I’d stay in the garden with Him,
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.
Until Tomorrow,
With A Shepherd’s Love
Pastor
TODAY’S ? LIST:
Brian’s Niece – back in hospital-?
Amy Garner’s Mother – better – ?
Andria Carter -Ashley’s Sister – ?
Barbara Shed’s Family – ?
Bill Lawhead – ?
Bill Moody -?
Brandy Dean – Ashley’s Sister – ?
Charlie Sessom -Waiting – ?
Cheri/Barry Hill -?
Colby/Connor – Allison’s G’sons-?
Debra Roberts – Please Please ?
Denise Stubbs – Kim Allison’s Mom ?
Don Slate – Angela Bryan’s Dad – hospice?
Doug Fritzel – ?
Hanna Hall ?
James Parsons – Mae’s Brother ?
Joyceann – James Garner’s Daughter ?
Kimberly- Dustin’s Sister- ?
Larry Barker ?
Lavona Davis -?
Linda Breedlove’s Sister – Sarah ?
Lisa Land’s Family – ?
Lynn -Nancy Brown’s Daughter – ?
Mary Sims – ?
Michael Stanley – ?
Ms Rose’s cousin – transplant- ?
Nancy Brown’s G’Daughter – ?
Nora Allison – Dustin’s Mom
Pastor Stucke- Nikki’s Dad?
Pat Hyman – ??
Paula Ferus’ Missionary friend ?
Ricky Stubbs – ?
Roseleigh Osborn – ?
Sarah Parker – ?
Scott Lanier – Lisa’s cousin -?
Sharon Blalock- ?
Shaelyn – Jill’s friend?
Shannon Golden – ?
Sheila Simmons Cousin – ?
Susan Bryan – Mike’s Mom – ?
Susie Grant & Family – ?
Su Rocker – Shingles – ?
Tim McCollum – ?
Todd Bailey – ?
Todd Roberts -?
Tom Witcher -?
Tommy/Gayle Harris- ?
Tracie Ballard -?
Wanda Galanti – ?
Zane Gilbert -?