From the Kitchen Table

The Kitchen Table   Day 8

Text:  Jeremiah 1:4-10; Acts 8:4-13

Before I formed you in the womb, I knew You…  Jeremiah 1:5

The most important thing about today is that God chose you to be here today.  He not only chose you for today, but He appointed you for today.  You’re here because God wants you here.  That’s easy to forget when life gets busy, difficult and ungrateful.  He has plans for you and through you,  Don’t be afraid of small or sorry beginnings.  God chose Jeremiah from nowhere and Saul from everywhere.  God is the Lord-Almighty, El-Shaddai.  Remember, He can love the most unlovable, help the most helpless, change the most unchangeable.  He can and will work in and through the poor and the rich, weak or the strong, the most significant or insignificant.  All He needs is a heart.  He can fix and form the rest.  So He waits for our hearts, not our history.  He is able to do what we can’t.  Just give Him your heart and let Him have His way. 

The kitchen Table Day 7

Text:  Psalm 89; Gen 35:1-15; Acts 10:44-48

The Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.”  Acts 10:44

Understand this, God walks and works with those who hear His word.  He is not far from the worried, wounded and wanting but He walks with those who hear His word, who allow His word to live in their hearts.  He did that for Jacob at Bethel in Genesis 35 and David talks about it in Psalm 89.  He is El-Shaddai, God Almighty.  He can!  There is no one greater, stronger or more loving than He.  He is God-Almighty.  He can love the most unlovable, help the most helpless, heal the most hurt, save the most lost.  He walks and works with those who hear His word.  The Holy Spirit fell on  all who hear the word.  Be a believer today and walk with God.

The Kitchen Table

Topic:  The Voice of the Lord

Text:  Psalm 29; 1 Samuel 3; Acts 9:10-19

The voice of the Lord is powerful;

The voice of the Lord is full of majesty  Psalm 29:4

Learn to hear the voice of the Lord.  One of the first things and most important things a believer can learn is that God speaks and they can hear Him.  Those who hear the voice of God can and will live in the volition of God.  Those who can’t, won’t.  Without the voice of God we are left with the exemptions and excuses of man trying to be religious.  God does nothing without telling His servants.  Learn to hear Him.  We learn to hear Him as we get into His word, worship and with His people.  The word of the Lord is powerful and majestic.  The word of the Lord can and will call the most unqualified, qualified.  He called the boy Samuel and He called the murder, Saul who became Paul.  It’s His voice that clears the clutter and creates a way in the darkness.  Listen for it.  Actively listen by getting into His word in worship and with other believers.

The Kitchen Table  Day 8

By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.  Hebrews 11:27

Read:  Exodus 2:11-25, Hebrews 11:27-28

Learn to hear God!  Hearing God is one of the most important things a new believer can learn and an old believer can know.  God speaks to us.  He always has and always will.  That’s what makes this a relationship more than a religion.  His presence, power and purpose are found in His word and His word is real because it works and His word is right because His word is true.  Learn to hear the word of God and you’ll learn to hear the voice of God and it’s His voice that will give you courage, confidence and clarity in this life.  We are made strong by His voice and His words.  Learn to hear God just because you can.

The Kitchen Table

Day 7

By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood, so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.             Hebrews 11:27-29

There’s something about living this life with someone that makes a huge difference in our lives. That presence, that partnership, has a way of deflating our fears.  Moses was chased out of Egypt in fear but walked back in by faith and friendship with God.  The Bible says that he walked back in not being afraid.  By faith he lived with God and for God and the Bible says that the Destroyer could not touch them.  Let me tell you something, this life isn’t meant to be lived alone.  Relationships are God’s idea and we find the resources we have in this life in the relationship we make in this life.  Friendships fight fear, they just do.  So many think they can live this life on their own but that’s not God’s idea, that’s their idea.  Church is a God idea.  Marriage is a God idea.  Family is a God idea.  Want to defeat fear and foolishness in this life?  Develop your relationship with God and His people who will help you live by faith.  Get involved with God and His church and watch God change your fear to faith.

The Kitchen Table

Day 6

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.   Ephesians 3:14-21

This morning I want you to know that you don’t have to live this life on your own, if you don’t want to.  The love of God provides for us His Holy Spirit to help us.  Don’t neglect Him.  He will give us the muscle, mindset and morality we need to live from heaven.  The Holy Spirit will give us the power, the ability, and the convictions we need to live with God.  He has all we need.  We can’t even imagine all that God can and will do for us, with us, in us, and through us.  Just imagine God living with us 24/7.  You’ll find God where you find faith and He can do far more than you and I can even imagine.  Let that light up your day!

The Kitchen Table

Day 4

Genesis 28:10-22; Hebrews 11:13-22

“For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”  God (Genesis 28:15)

The story today finds us in a field with Jacob.  He’s running from his past and toward his future and in the middle of the night God has appeared to him in a dream at the top of a ladder that reaches to heaven with a promise.  One again, God’s plans are in His promises.  I’m going to bring you back and bless you, just know that.  Jacob, still in his rebellion, bargains with God.  If You do this, then I’ll do that.  That doesn’t stop God even though it will hurt Jacob.  When it’s all said and done, Jacob will have a heart-broken wife, unloved and unloving children and a heart pierced with pain.  But there will be God’s promise.  It will take faith to possess that promise and we know from Hebrews 11 that Jacob died in faith.  When God wants to change our fate, He addresses our faith., not necessarily our flesh.  The best way to break out of the old is to believe in the new.  We say, “show me and I’ll believe.”  God says, “Believe and I will show you.”  God never takes His promises away, but only those who live by faith come away with His promises.

Kitchen Table      2020

Day 2

Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom              Psalm 90:12

The best way to start this day is to begin this day with the Maker of this day.  This day was planned and created with us in mind.  When we recognize who made this day we can realize how to use this day.  God gave us this day for our pleasure and His purpose.  Wisdom understands that the One who made this day can give us what we need for this day.  The psalmist goes on to pray, teach us, satisfy us, make us glad, let us see your hand in this day and let us live in your favor this day, establishing your will and work in our lives this day.  God has planned and given us so many days to live this life and His help to make the most of it if we want Him to do so.

Kitchen Table

6^th day of Christmas

“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”          John 8:12

One of the gifts of Jesus is wisdom or light for life.  In 1 Kings 3, Solomon asks for wisdom.  In John 8, Jesus offers wisdom to anyone who would believe Him.  Standing in the treasury between the hanging lamps with people who would rather arrest Him than possess life, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”  No one can arrest or abuse Him, He is standing in the light of God and standing in the light of God, He is living in the time of God.  The question becomes, do I want to live in the light of God, or do I want to climb the ladder of man?  Do I want to live in the pleasures of God or in the pleasures of man?  One choice puts our feet in heaven and the other keeps our feet here.  One allows us to see and understand life and the other keeps us from seeing and understanding, stubbing our toes and losing our way.  We see and understand life when we believe Jesus and look at and live out life the way He does.  That’s called following Jesus.  Want liberty?  Live in the light of Jesus, He will keep us from the wrongs, the wounds, and the wrecks people discover in the dark.

The Kitchen Table

Day 5 of Christmas

​ In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah:  “We have a strong city; he sets up salvation as walls and bulwarks.  Open the gates,
that the righteous nation that keeps faith may enter in.  You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you.
Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.  For he has humbled the inhabitants of the height, the lofty city.  He lays it low, lays it low to the ground, casts it to the dust.  The foot tramples it, the feet of the poor, the steps of the needy.”   Isaiah 26:1-6

You keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You because he trusts You.  Isaiah 26:3

The mind is a terrible thing to waste and a beautiful thing to work.  Through the mind the body experiences what the spirit knows to be true.  The mind stayed on God lives in peace while the mind swayed by this world lives in peril.  There are not enough medications, legal or otherwise, to pacify the mind encumbered by pain, perversion, problems and paranoia.  It’s hard to imagine or accept that the spirit can be forgiven and free, while the mind can remain bound and burdened, but it happens.  That is what happens when the mind is not stayed on God.  The next step to saved life is a changed mind.  Surrendering our minds to God allows Him to save our minds for Him and His promises.  Let God’s word always be valuable to you and viable for you.  His promise is His peace!