If It Feels Good Do It

Do Your Own Thing

If it feels good do it! That is exactly what we do when there is no authority other than ourselves in our life.  The Canadian Rock Band Sloan titled one of their songs "If It Feels Good Do It" on their 2001 Album "Pretty Together".  This philosophy has been around since the beginning and continues to wreck and ruin lives, families and cultures.  Listen to the concluding verse of Judges.

Judges 21:25 AMP

In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

Either the King of Kings is ruling your life or you are. 

Comfort Anyone?

He Will Wrap You Up!

We discovered in Sundays message from Matthew 5 about spiritual comfort that comes when we sorrow over sin.  There are also times when we need comfort because of the "stuff" of life.  I love who God is...the God of all comfort.  But added to His supernatural ability to comfort is the fact that He allows us to endure hardships so that we can in turn comfort others.  Only when we have endured can we fully empathize and sympathize with others who are hurting.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 AMP

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of sympathy (pity and mercy) and the God [Who is the Source] of every comfort (consolation and encouragement), Who comforts (consoles and encourages) us in every trouble (calamity and affliction), so that we may also be able to comfort (console and encourage) those who are in any kind of trouble or distress, with the comfort (consolation and encouragement) with which we ourselves are comforted (consoled and encouraged) by God.

BLINDSIDED

"Blindsided"

Samson allowed his fleshly desires to be his downfall.  Gods purposes for our lives can be so subtly subdued and our strength easily compromised.  "Samson did not know the Lord had departed from him" and be died a blind man.

Judges 16:20-21 AMP

She said, The Philistines are upon you, Samson! And he awoke out of his sleep and said, I will go out as I have time after time and shake myself free. For Samson did not know that the Lord had departed from him. But the Philistines laid hold of him, bored out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza and bound him with [two] bronze fetters; and he ground at the mill in the prison.

Fight the Fight

Fight the Fight

Spent an hour or more with Sam Jones yesterday in Glouster, Ohio.  Not only is he a great boxer and coach, he is also a great historian.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZY_i7_3dh8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

I couldn't help but think of the following passage of Scripture after stepping into the ring with the former boxer, kick boxer and coach/mentor of some of boxings greats.  Buster Douglas was trained by Sam.  At 73 he can still punch and kick!  I held the bag and when he punched lightly  and gave a light roundhouse kick it nearly knocked me over! 

Will you be able to say what Paul said?

2 Timothy 4:7-8 AMP
I have fought the good (worthy, honorable, and noble) fight, I have finished the race, I have kept (firmly held) the faith. [As to what remains] henceforth there is laid up for me the [victor’s] crown of righteousness [for being right with God and doing right], which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me and recompense me on that [great] day--and not to me only, but also to all those who have loved and yearned for and welcomed His appearing (His return).

HOOKES ON PHONICS

Hooked On Phonics

There are times that you read events in Scripture and they are humorous and yet terrifying.  One of those events is in Judges 12.  If you want the "rest of the story" read Judges 11.  Well I am sure the Ephriamites wish they had hooked on phonics because 42,000 died in a slaughter because they could not pronounce the word Shibboleth.  Wow!  Be careful the next time somebody asks you how to pronounce a word. 
Judges 12:5-6 AMP

And the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan before the Ephraimites; and when any of those Ephraimites who had escaped said, Let me go over, the men of Gilead said to him, Are you an Ephraimite? If he said, No, They said to him, Then say Shibboleth; and he said, Sibboleth, for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and slew him at the fords of the Jordan. And there fell at that time 42,000 of the Ephraimites.