Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Assurance Crisis: help my re-dedicater broke off and don’t work right now!




QUESTION:  I asked Jesus into my heart but recently have been living wrong. I have fallen back into my old sins.  I have rededicated my life several times at the altar call at the end of services.  How can I have ASSURANCE of salvation? (This is a composite question heard by fellow ministers and myself on a regular basis.)
Specifically, what does it really mean to have ASSURANCE of salvation through Jesus Christ?

As a homeless shelter pastor I am concerned about the word rededication. This is heard in almost all church environments I have been around.  As I heard a pastor say in frustration  once "You can re-dedicate until your re-dedicater falls off.”  Rededication often happens when we look to the wrong place for ASSURANCE – our hearts- not Jesus and His finished work.  Jeremiah 17:9 (NIV) The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
The person wanting to be “re-dedicated” often doubts their salvation despite

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Fathers Day - Celebrate Champion Fathers 2016


G.H. "Dick" Law, George Law, J.B. Johnson -Champions provide for their families



Father Fletcher Law, son Graham Law, Grandfather George Law got to celebrate a state championship together

We are approaching Father’s Day.
Mother’s Day is almost a sacred day in the church calendar.   People wax poetic for Mother’s Day.
People are quick to point out the sorry Fathers on Father’s Day.

This blog is about GOOD FATHERS.
George Law my champion
Other blogs will talk about the dreadful state of father’s.  I am sympathetic to that.  Today only about 30% of school kid’s live with both parents.  Many children we find are by necessity being raised by grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts uncles or friends.  These children might not have the  ideal family situation but they have people pulling and supporting them, thank the Lord, anyway. Many times kids children with poor home lives today do not even have a good model family with a father in the neighborhood to observe.

Once at a conference about youth I heard speaker say deridingly that a neighborhood of traditional intact families was a myth “There is no such thing as a ‘Leave It To Beaver’ family-never was. That is a myth. Nobody had that!”
My friend (Cason Farr) from childhood, church, school and high school football team whispered out loud “We did”.  And my friend was right.

We had great families and it was not by accident, luck, societal standing or ethnic group.
We had “Champions”.
What is a champion?  Isn't this a sports metaphor? No it’s biblical.
champions have a heart to compete
And as I said when I preached my Father’s funeral my family had one - a great champion - our father George Law.
What is a champion in biblical talk?
A champion represents, protects, provides and leads a people in the way they should go.  Yes there are good and bad champions.  
My adult son’s favorite childhood bed-time story was David and Goliath.
Goliath the giant Philistine was the champion for evil.
David the very young man (probably in his early teens)
was the champion for God’s people of Israel.
Worlds collided.  You know the story.
The giant Goliath was slain by a slingshot and beheaded by the small youth who had no chance.
No, the youth David was not helped by The Almighty because of the misguided notion that “God helps those who help themselves”.
The greater champion was David’s champion who delivered the victory for young David.
The champion David was a man “a man after the Lord’s own heart” as we read about the David and the Lord's relationship                   in Acts 13:22.
This boy man David was a champion because  he knew to serve the God of Israel.  Was David flawed? Sure he was.  But as the old time Methodist evangelist Sam P. Jones said “David was a great sinner, but he was a first-class repenter.”
David knew there there was a God in Israel and trusted and followed Him.
If you will read Psalm 51 David knew he had a Redeemer-Savior.
David’s champion was the Lord and a trust in a coming Messiah.

At a Fellowship of Christian Athlete’s meeting I once heard the University of Georgia football strength coach Dave Van Halanger talk about his young son’s anxiety in hearing the often repeated command "to follow Jesus".  The boy asked his father with a worried face and tears how could he follow a Jesus he could not see as that was taught in Sunday School. 
Dave told him from the Good Book in 1 Corinthians 11:1(NIV)
"Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ."
Dave then put it in other words to be understood by his troubled young son.
 “Son, you follow me, I’ll follow Jesus.”        

You have a champion no matter your gender, race, income or status.  We all have a champion who defeated death, hell and the grave for you.
His Name is Jesus Christ.
Lord send a revival now we plead.

Lift Jesus Up!


Fletcher

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Death: The Last Enemy of Jesus Christ



Death must be the subject least talked about in American society.  Death is conversely the most thought about unspoken subject on our minds.  The Orlando mass murders made the nation’s soul gasp. Days before a young female celebrity was shot and killed while in a receiving line to meet fans. On our streets a mother and her children were killed as they merely turned into traffic. Loved ones with a cancer die in agony in the hospital. Over 800,000 babies per year have died as the result of abortion. War fatalities now and in the recent past affect our American society. How do we really think about death? This June there is a movie “Me Before You” that ends with encouraged suicide.   “Death was a blessing” is said at thousands of funerals where we really have tremendous doubt and uncertainty about the person’s eternal destiny.

What does The Lord through Scripture say about                                    the value of human life?
Genesis 1:27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

What does Jesus Christ think and will do about death? His Word calls Death His  LAST ENEMY & HE WILL DESTROY DEATH
1 Corinthians 15: 25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. 26 The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

Why did death come into the world? Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned—

What did Christ do about death? He paid your penalty of sin with his death that atoned your sin on the cross.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

There is no redemption and eternal life in heaven with the human death of a person. There is salvation and heaven in the sin payment death of the God/man Jesus Christ.  


Why are we not sharing the Good News now!