Grain Truck

I got off a  work a little early today, so I asked my wife if she wanted to have lunch together. She said yes, so off I went. On my way, about a mile or so up the road a grain truck pulled out of a field heading the same direction as I. I thought to myself "great, that's going to slow me down." Not that I was in any hurry, just didn't want the inconvenience of having to slow down. Oh, the audacity of this driver to do this to me. LOL!

When I complained under my breath I heard God say to me, "Keven, why are you complaining about that truck?" "Don't you volunteer and support numerous food/feeding programs?"

"Yes Lord, I do."

"This truck pulling out of the field is loaded with grain. Grain that is used to make food for someone, someplace." "So you're going to complain about a truck loaded with grain slowing you down, knowing full well that grain will eventually turn into food. Food you could potentially be donating to someone in need?"

Thank You Lord for the reminder. I started praising Him. Praised Him for the crops in the field. The tractors the cultivate the crops, the trucks that haul the crop and the mud tracks on the road. Praised Him for the farmers that are working tirelessly to bring in the crops. The dust in the air from all of the corn being harvested.

He reminded me of this verse.

Philippians 2:14 Amplified Bible

14 Do everything without murmuring or questioning [the providence of God],

That's what I heard from God. Don't complain about something that He is providing for His people. He supplies the crops. From the seed that is planted to the finished product. He provides all the equipment to bring the crops in out of the fields. He provides! 

1 Thessalonians 5:18 Amplified Bible

18 in every situation [no matter what the circumstances] be thankful and continually give thanks to God; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.

I asked for His forgiveness about my complaining about the truck. Then I started praying for the farmers. Pray for an abundant crop. Safety of bringing in the crops. The drivers of the tractors and trucks. Everyone involved in farming.

So I encourage you today. When God puts something in your path to slow you down, it could be for a very good reason. Put your trust in Him. He knows what He is doing.

God bless.

Rev. Kev.

Praise Him. Anytime, Anywhere!

 Do you know that you can praise Jesus, anytime, anywhere. You don't have to wait till church on Sunday or Wednesday. Special function or conference. You can do it right where you are at. 

Do you think that Daniel waited when God shut the lions mouths when he was in their den? 

Did David wait when the stone he hurled at Goliath hit him in the exact right place to kill him? 

I hardly doubt it.

I'm sure that they gave thanks and praise immediately. 

Psalm 146:1-2 New Living Translation

1 Praise the Lord! Let all that I am praise the Lord. 2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praises to my God with my dying breath.

I praise God from the moment I wake up, until I go to bed. The good and the bad. I praise Him for waking me up another day. A warm house to live in (especially the last couple of days). Food to eat, car to drive and a job to go to. A beautiful wife and daughter. An amazing family to do life with.

I praise Him when things go wrong as well. Had a long difficult day at work. Nothing seemed to go right, but, it could have been worse. If not for Jesus. The car accident I was involved in earlier in the year. I praised Him that it wasn't worse. No one was hurt. Just the vehicles. When I lost my job a few years ago. I praised Him, for I knew that He had a better plan for me.

If you were given a promotion or a raise at work. Praise Him! Your on top of the world, praise Him!

You lost your job. Having money or relationship problems, praise Him! If you are in the valley, praise Him.

He is worthy of every and all praise.

Revelation 4:11 New Living Translation

11 “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created all things, and they exist because you created what you pleased.”

So I encourage you tonight. No matter what season or station of life you find yourself, praise Him. Anywhere, anytime! He is worthy!

God bless.

Rev. Kev.

Leaves!

It's that time of year again. Where you drive around and marvel at the tree leaves changing color. From green to red to orange to yellow. The colors are magnificent! I've been doing a lot of driving around our area the last couple of weeks. The trees are just beautiful.

Looking at the leaves changing got me to thinking about us (people). How when we accept Jesus, He begins to change us. At first we are like the trees in the winter, dull and dark. Then when we accept Jesus He starts to change us. We start to bud and produce some color. Then as He continues to work on us and through us, we change again. Into the beautiful fall colors. Full of splendor and life. We were one way and now we are another.

Isn't that just like God? He never leaves us where we were. He keeps working on us. Shaping us, molding us to be more like Him.

Colossians 3:10 Living Bible

10 You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you.

We were dark and lifeless in the winter. Jesus comes into our lives. We start showing life. New things start to happen. New life. As we grow and blossom during that season, He keeps on working on us. Just like the tree keeps moving through it's seasons, so do we. Until we produce beautiful leaves.

Then when the leaves start to fall to the ground, it reminds me of how God chips away at us and has all the unnecessary baggage that we carry, fall to the ground. He wants to lighten our loads. Not to carry more than we can handle. He wants us to leave everything with Him.

Psalm 55:22 New Living Translation

22 Give your burdens to the Lord, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

So give everything to The Lord. Every worry & burden. He will take care of you. He wants you to shine just like the leaves in the fall. He wants our lives to be full and vibrant.

Let go and let God!

God bless.

Rev. Kev.

This Woman!!

This woman. My amazingly gorgeous, talented, awesome wife! I can not tell you how proud of her I am. She has been involved with our local community theater (Stage Coach Players) for the last seven years or so. She decided to audition for a role in a play and got it. She loved the experience and continued to audition for other roles. When she wasn't chosen for a certain role, or there wasn't a play that she was interested in auditioning for, she still wanted to be involved somehow. This lead her to learn how to do lighting. She would help out whenever she could and then eventually became a lighting designer herself. After her first designed lighted play, she was highly sought after. She loved doing that role, but she also wanted to be on the stage. So she had to make choices of which play she would audition for, or do the lighting for. She was being pulled in both directions. People wanted her in their play and directors wanted her to do their lights.

After a few years of this, she was asked to become a board member. She accepted and has been the recording secretary for the last two years. 

So after all of this comes the big deal. 

She is directing her first play at the  theater. 

She is directing  'The Night Witches'. That's a pic of her with her first promotional poster at the theater. Look at that smile!

She has been in rehearsal now for the last few weeks. They open in two weeks, (Oct. 19). I'm telling you this because she is doing all of this while working a full time job! She has been given more responsibilities at work and her work schedule is not easy, to say the least!

Proverbs 31:25-27 Living Bible

25 She is a woman of strength and dignity and has no fear of old age. 26 When she speaks, her words are wise, and kindness is the rule for everything she says. 27 She watches carefully all that goes on throughout her household and is never lazy.

This is my wife in a nutshell. Trying to make sure our family is taken care. Caring for others, working full time and trying to fit in something that she loves, community theater. I don't know how she does it, or where her energy comes from.

God could not have provided a better life partner for me, than her!

Proverbs 31:10-12 Living Bible

10 If you can find a truly good wife, she is worth more than precious gems! 11 Her husband can trust her, and she will richly satisfy his needs. 12 She will not hinder him but help him all her life.

May God bless all you gentleman with a wife as awesome as mine!

God Bless!

Rev. Kev.

King David.............Lost??

 Wait, what? King David lost? How in the world did he lose? Am I talking about the same King David? The man after God's own heart. (Acts 13:22) Isn't he the one that slayed 10,000? (1 Samuel 18:7) Wasn't he the young shepherd boy who came out of now where and killed the giant Goliath? (1 Samuel 17:48-51)

Yes all of these stories are true. This is the mighty warrior King David. He was a talented musician. A very handsome man. Strong and vigorous. All these accomplishments and he,

Still lost!

He lost his battle with lust of the flesh! He lost to Bathsheba! 

Instead of going to war like all the other kings, he stayed behind and thus began his moral failure. He took a walk up on roof top one evening and he spied a beautiful woman bathing. (2 Samuel 11:2) 

He liked who he saw, so he had someone go and bring her to him. He slept with her and she became pregnant. (2 Samuel 11:4)

To cover his sin, he tried to cover it up by calling Bathsheba's husband home from the battle field to sleep with her. It didn't work. Keep reading in 2 Samuel.

In the downward spiral of this sin, King David had Bathsheba's husband killed in battle. (2 Samuel 11:15)

The losing streak continues. 

After all of this, Bathsheba gave birth to a son. The Lord was very displeased with King David and punished him by causing his son to become ill and die after seven days.

So this mighty warrior, the one who defeated Goliath, killed his tens of thousands, became King of Israel, was a man after God's own heart, lost to a woman. He couldn't control his urges and sinned greatly. He was disciplined greatly as well. 

King David repented and asked for forgiveness. God forgave him and restored him. (Psalm 51:12)

So I encourage you tonight. Whatever sin you may have committed, you are not to far for God to forgive & restore you. Repent and ask for His forgiveness. 

If God can forgive and restore a man like King David, He most certainly can forgive and restore you.

God bless!
RK.

Warfare!!

 What do you think of when you think of war? Planes & bombers? Helicopters? Rifles, machine guns, hand guns, bazooka's? Humvees and armored cars? Generals, Lieutenants, Medics, etc. etc.

Bombed out cities, bloody bodies and body parts scattered all around? Shell casings, cannons, fox holes. The list could go on forever. This what it is like when nation fights nation. Warfare goes all the way back to Biblical times. It's not anything new! It seems like people and countries have always been fighting against one another! And still are to this day!

Do you know that nation doesn't have to fight another nation to have warfare?

You can have warfare in your home! Warfare between husband and wife. Between parents and children, brothers and sisters, between neighbors.

You can even have warfare at your job, between boss and employee, or other employees.

See, it doesn't have to be a world war to have warfare, it can happen in your own little area of the world. Just on a smaller scale.

So how do we begin to settle on a peaceful end? It's easy to just say that we need Jesus, but that is the absolute truth. He is the only long term solution. Only He can get rid of greed, hatred & jealously in our hearts. He wants us to be content. Show compassion and forgiveness to others.

Psalm 51:10 Living Bible

10 Create in me a new, clean heart, O God, filled with clean thoughts and right desires.

Only God can tame our anger and the violence that stems from that anger, with His peace and love.

Hebrews 12:14 New Living Translation

14 Work at living in peace with everyone, and work at living a holy life, for those who are not holy will not see the Lord.

No matter where you are in life, chances are that you will encounter some kind of warfare. I challenge you to seek peace. A peaceful resolution is far better than an angry & violent action. Remember that Christ lives in us! He gives us the peace that we need in every situation.

2 Thessalonians 3:16 Amplified Bible

16 Now may the Lord of peace Himself grant you His peace at all times and in every way [that peace and spiritual well-being that comes to those who walk with Him, regardless of life’s circumstances]. The Lord be with you all.

God bless and Peace be with you!

PK.

Would You??

 What would you do if God asked you to do something that our little finite human minds would consider absurd or whacky? Would you go through with it? Or would you question the validity of the request? Did God really, really ask me to do that? Really?

Would you tie yourself up and lay on your left side for 390 days and then your right for 40 days, like God required of Ezekiel? (Ezekiel 4:5-6)

Would you prepare, cook and eat food cooked over human dung (poop)? Again, like Ezekiel had been instructed to do? (Ezekiel 4:12)

Would you walk around your community naked (very doubtful) and barefoot for 3 years, like Isaiah did? (Isaiah 20:3)

Would you go out and marry a prostitute? Probably not. That is exactly what God told Hosea to do. (Hosea 1:2)

Would you take any of your children into the wilderness to sacrifice them? That is exactly what God told Abraham to do. God stopped him from doing it, but he was about to follow through. (Genesis 22:2, 22:12)

Would you go up to high ranking government official and demand that they let your people go? God required that of Moses. To go to the Pharaoh and demand that he let all of Moses people go. (Exodus 8:1)

So God asked all of these people in the Bible to do all of these to us absurd things. They aren't normal by today's standards. I don't want to live by today's standards, I want to live by Gods standard! I want to do what God wants of me. 

1 Samuel 3:10 New Living Translation

10 And the Lord came and called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!” And Samuel replied, “Speak, your servant is listening.”

I want to listen to God speaking to me. I want to hear His voice. Leading me, guiding me and directing me!

So my question to you is this. If God asked you to any of the above, would you? Or would you say that is to far fetched to be from God.

My hope is that if God asked, your answer would be yes & amen!

God bless.

Rev Kev.