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| Today |  | July 12 - July 18 2026 |  |
Jul12
Forever Thinking
1 John 2:17 | |
| 17 | And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. NKJV To learn about the world, my university professor recommended that I read a New York based newspaper. I was married in my last year at University and I would go to pick up my wife in downtown Seattle in our little car when she finished work. I usually had to wait a bit as I would get there a bit early after my classes and was before I went to at the supermarket/warehouse stores that I worked at. I would have that newspaper spread out over my steering wheel reading about international issues, the condition of Wall Street and the market, obituaries, international and domestic politics, as well as the various other topics. I did this reading daily as my professors had told me how necessary it was for me to keep up with world events to prepare myself for the future. As I look back at it, I think it was a big waste of time. The world thinks that wisdom is something you learn. To some extent that is true. In contrast, if you want to get to the source of all wisdom and the source of all truth, you will not be able to get it from unbelievers, or even the written media. Where is that truth everyone is searching for? |
John 1:14 | |
| 14 | And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. NKJV King Jesus is FULL of grace, He is FULL of truth. He is the source of all truth. The news is so temporal that it has to be generated every day. It is constantly changing. To show you how things have changed, for example, in the 1950s foul language was not accepted on television in the United States. People who produced shows, film or other media with just one inappropriate word, were ostracized from their jobs and vastly barred from future productions. Now television is filled with sexual innuendos, foul language, and whatever they can do to push immorality on the population. The world is constantly changing. It is going from the order that God created into disorder. Someone might say, “Well pastor, that sounds so negative! Aren’t we here to be the light in the darkness?” Absolutely! But we have to face it, everything around us is going to eventually be gone. The Great Wall, the pyramids, the Eiffel tower, the Tokyo tower, the US capitol rotunda... it is all going to be gone. What they print today, will be different tomorrow. It doesn’t matter. Isaiah 40:8 says |
| 8 | The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever." NKJV Start being a forever thinker from today. Focus on the things that are forever and don’t be too concerned about the temporal. If you want wisdom, go to the source. Spend time every day feeding on His Word you will begin to see things from God’s eyes. |
Jul13
Was It Really An Angel?
2 Corinthians 11:13-14 | |
| 13 | For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ. 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. NKJV As a third grader in Aloha Oregon, I listened to the message of that Baptist preacher and responded to the call. At the end of the service, I went forward, repented and turned to Jesus. No one told me to go forward, no one pressured me at home or school, but I just knew I needed to go forward and I had seen the changes in others who had responded the week before. I knew it was right. My parents really gave me a heritage of faith. They did their part on making sure their children were in God’s house on Sunday. It wasn’t this, “My mother was Lutheran and father was Jewish, so in the spirit of tolerance, I was not taken to any church” excuse. That is lame and in fact deadly. Parents, your responsibility is to get your kids to a healthy, spirit-filled church every Sunday. Observe what they are doing there for kids. If you think you would be bored, then no doubt, your kids would be too. Your family should leave your church charged and encouraged for another week. If that is not the case, then you need to think about what you can do. If you offer to help lead your church, you’ll get even more out of it. I praise God for wonderful parents who did their part for me. When I got to high school, I sensed that God is real but I felt like I needed to prove that what I believed was not just one of many choices but the truth to myself. I wanted to better understand the religions of the world. After all, unbelievers refer to followers of King Jesus and The Way as ‘religious’ putting us in the same group with these people. What makes believers different from the religious? So I went to my school library and got the ‘holy’ book of one middle eastern religion. I also got the books of other groups that are considered cults because they say only they have the way to God. I had to understand what these people believed and why. Was it logical and solid or just made up? I began to study. I noticed that these other books frequently copied the themes of the Bible. Although sometimes with different names, they still had variations of the story of Abraham, Moses, and even considered some of the prophets as their prophets as well. I confirmed that all of these other books came historically after the Word of God, and as I read, I judged it as plagiarism of the Biblical original. (Every good lie must have an element of truth to be a bit believable). Moreover, some books wrote of people that never existed, of things that never happened, of cities that no one can prove existed as there is no archeological evidence (pottery, foundations, tools, money) around to verify. Next I began to look at some of the founders of these religions themselves. I found some common threads. One very interesting point was that the founders of two large groups said they had seen an angel that told them a similar thing. They were both off in a cave somewhere where they saw an angel. The angel told them, everyone else was in error and they were given the true way to God. When someone tells you everyone else is wrong, that is when a red flag should go up. According to 2 Cor 11:14, you can be assured that one someone tells you that they have the way to God and take your attention from King Jesus, it is error. We were warned there would be these people coming in Matthew 7:15 which says, |
| 15 | "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. NKJV As you study, meditate, and pray the Word, you will become more confident. The enemy will never be able to trick you into to believing any lie. The better you know the truth, the stronger you will become. It is said, that the US agency that prints money for the government trains its team to detect counterfeit money. They focus on studying the original currency so that when a fake comes along, they can spot it immediately. It is the same for you and I, we need to know the original so well that when a fake comes along, it won’t hurt us. |
Jul14
From The Dark Ages To The Light
2 Cor 8:9 | |
| 9 | For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich. NKJV Between the marvelous works that we see believers doing by faith in the book of Acts and now, there is a lot of history. None of it will be recorded in the Word of God, but it certainly is being recorded in heaven. You see, nothing has changed the world like Jesus! When people repented and turned to God through Jesus, everything changed. But that was just the beginning. Then in the 2nd chapter of Acts those believers were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. They received the infilling of the Holy Spirit, which is a must for every believer. It is not something that normally comes via water baptism or necessarily the day you repent and turn to Jesus. The infilling of the Holy Spirit is a separate act. We can see that there were believers out there that were not filled with the power (Acts 19:2). When they received that infilling of the Holy Spirit in that upper room they were changed. They rose up with boldness and began to hunger more and more for Him and His presence and power in their lives. They started to turn their capital city of Jerusalem upside down. The religious people felt threatened and thought they would lose their power to The Way of King Jesus. They started to persecute believers. God turned this negative into a positive, and with this the power of Jesus started to spread North and South as spirit-filled believers began to spread around the world. No other man, no other message has effected the world so much as Jesus. The message spread north to Rome. Although early caesars (kings of Rome) persecuted believers ruthlessly blaming political and economic problems on them, a later Roman emperor repented and turned to Jesus (Constantinus Augustus). He was so excited about Jesus that he proclaimed his empire a Christian nation. This was bad for the Kingdom because it made people think that being a follower of God was something you were born into instead of the choice that each person must make. A Roman church was formed (and really is all that remains of the Roman empire to this day). Unbelievers in the church controlled people and in the 1400 and 1500s there was a real problem with corruption, graft, deception and manipulation of people. This was about the time Martin Luther (a German priest from the Roman church) nailed 95 issues he had with the Roman church on its church door (in 1517). Unbelievers in the church were teaching that to be ‘holy’ or ‘humble’ you could not be rich, and that you could not have money or things. ‘Poverty is next to godliness’ was the idea. But the people that were saying this in the Roman church were using that church to manipulate people. The congregants were encouraged not to learn to read the Word, to go to church services in a language they did not understand, and sometimes even encouraged to buy forgiveness of sin. Some even sold forgiveness for long deceased family members via the Roman church. They were encouraged to believe that suffering and poverty would somehow bring them closer to God. I call this poverty preaching. This was a dark time for people and truly was the Dark Ages. This poverty preaching still infects various groups around the world. Back in the 1980s, it even affected me. I thought suffering and lack was part of God’s way. I was so wrong but didn’t know it until I began to get to into the Word of God. I discovered for myself in 2 Corinthians 8:9 shows us that King Jesus, God the Son, came to earth in the form of man, to be sacrificed for you and I and came back from the dead so that we would be made right before God. Isaiah 53:3-5 shows that He took all our sins, pains, sicknesses and sorrows so we wouldn’t have to have them. In John 10:10, King Jesus says that He came to bring up abundant life so we could have it. Matthew 18:11 says, |
| 11 | For the Son of Man has come to save that which was lost. NKJV We are so lost without him. It’s all about life, it’s all about being blessed so you can bless others whether it be spiritually, financially, emotionally, and every way you can imagine so people can see God in you. Don’t believe the poverty preaching lie of the Dark Ages. Root it out of your life and find out what the Word says about you. God has so much more for you! |
Jul15
Can God Be Limited?
Isaiah 59:1-2 | |
| 1 | Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, That it cannot save; Nor His ear heavy, That it cannot hear. |
| 2 | But your iniquities have separated you from your God; And your sins have hidden His face from you, So that He will not hear. NKJV Isaiah was a man who knew how to hear God’s voice. The Messiah Jesus tells us in John 3 that those who worship God don’t do it through suffering, cutting themselves, depriving themselves of things that are natural (food, water, health). He taught that those who worship Him worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Being a believer is a spiritual thing not just a physical thing. Unbelievers are only living in the physical. Isaiah was spiritual and knew how to hear God’s voice very well. God spoke through Him to His people. These types of people that hear God’s voice and can relate that message to others are sometimes called prophets, if what they say is proven. They see the spiritual reality behind the physical realm we live in. It is so powerful! In Isaiah 59:1, Isaiah reminds us that we cannot limit God. He has done everything to save us from eternal separation from Him. He is sovereign and can do whatever He wants, whenever He wants, but as He is perfect He had to make a way for us. In general, since the fall of Adam and Eve, He has left the earth to His people for a time. We are His hands and His feet on the earth. But it will not always be that way. Judgment is coming soon. King Jesus is coming back for His people. Hallelujah! I look forward to that day. However, God for a time has put a limit on Himself. One day I was listening to a cassette tape message from a US preacher. The question was, “Can God do anything? I remember responding in my mind, “Of course, nothing is impossible with God. There are no limits to God!” But then I remember hearing that preacher from Arkansas continue on saying, “Can God lie?” Well, that preacher had me there. Of course, God can’t lie. He is perfect. He never lies. Nor does He cheat, steal, or do anything else dark. For this time we have on this earth, we choose whether we do right or wrong. He has limited Himself with regards to whether people choose Him or not. If we don’t have freedom to choose, it is not love. We will be judged based on our decision at physical death. So what is Isaiah’s point here? We can’t limit or control God overall, but we CAN limit God in our lives. We can do it through rejecting His work on the cross and unforgiveness. We commonly block ourselves from the Kingdom of God by sin or wrong that we have in our lives. Sin separates, love unites. Nothing can stop God’s love but you. Isaiah 52:2 shows that clearly. When you have unconfessed sin in your life, it separates you from the Father. You don’t have the work of the Messiah Jesus covering your ugly wrongs before God and therefore there is no way you can come into God’s presence. Isaiah gives us such a positive Word. God desires to save us from the destruction destination we have as unbelievers, however we must choose Him and get under the cover of His blood. Isaiah makes it clear, only we can separate ourselves from God. Proverbs 28:13 summarizes well; |
| 13 | He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy. NKJV Ask God for His forgiveness now by the power and blood of Jesus the Messiah. |
Jul16
More Than A Great Man
Mark 12:1 | |
| 1 | Then He began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a place for the wine vat and built a tower. And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country...” NKJV When you start telling people about the Messiah Jesus and what He is doing in your life, you will find all sorts of people. My favorite people to meet are those who have been seeking and looking for God in their lives and you can see that God has arranged a divine appointment between them and I for that time. That is marvelous. However, when someone starts to tell me “Jesus was a great teacher”, “Jesus was a great man”, or even “Jesus was a prophet”, I start to suspect that I have just met a religious person. Of course, the Messiah Jesus is a great man, rabbi, and even prophet, but He is more than that. He is God. Some people will try to explain away the good news of the Word of God for you if you let them. Don’t let them. Get into the Word for yourself and make sure your pastor, your small group, and other church leaders are sticking to the Word of God. At the end of my three year term serving at a denominational church in Japan, the leadership under the guidance of the pastor had divided up the church into small groups. The groups were told they could only talk to members from their group within the church. That were not allowed to talk to other members of the church in other groups. How cultish! “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” not unnatural restrictions. Jesus was not some guy that just happened to be a great speaker and teacher. He came for a specific reason to the earth and He knew it. These people that limit the Messiah Jesus to being a man are missing out because He is God whether or not they deny or accept His redemptive power. He knew He was here to accomplish the death and resurrection on our behalf. When you read Mark 12, He tells a parable explaining exactly that. Our Messiah Jesus explains why He came through a parable about a vineyard. Here the vineyard is the world. The people that were sent before the son of the owner were the prophets. The owner is our Father God. The son who was beaten and killed was Jesus prophesying his own crucifixion death on the cross. Notice what the religious people did in verse 12. They got mad because this was one parable they understood. They were so filled with pride and evil, they wanted to murder the Son of God there. If we put this parable in simpler terms, basically the earth has been given to us for a time. God has been reaching out to unbelievers through His people. Some have attacked, mistreated, and even killed the people that God sent to make the people right before Him. Then in Mark 12:9 we get the question and answer, |
| 9 | "Therefore what will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and destroy the vinedressers, and give the vineyard to others. NKJV Judgment is coming to who who chose to turn on the Messiah. Judgment is coming to those who believe as well. But for believers, King Jesus is standing in the gap on our behalf so we can enter in to the Kingdom. Jesus the Messiah was more than a great man, He is the Son of God. He is God. Do you know Him? |
Jul17
What Simeon Had
Luke 2:25 | |
| 25 | And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting for the Consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. NKJV For me, the most important thing to me is to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. Even before Acts 2 when the believers were filled in mass by the Holy Spirit and His power, there were people who were led by the Spirit of God. There are many examples of this in the Old and New Testaments of the Word of God. A beautiful fulfillment of a promise God made to an individual who was led by the Spirit is in Luke 2 about a man named Simeon. Simeon was led by the Spirit. Simeon was old, and he knew the Messiah was coming. Seeing the hopeless world around him, I think he must have asked God to see the Messiah before his spirit left his body, and God fulfilled the promise which we can see in Luke 2. The Holy Spirit led Simeon and he listened to his spirit in tune with the Holy Spirit. He knew when to go to church (the temple), he knew which baby was the Messiah, as well as knowing when the Anointed child was there. I am sure there were other couples there in Jerusalem taking their sons to be circumcised. The birth mother of Jesus and the step-father of Jesus must have looked like any other Israeli parents of the time. You can see that the Spirit led Simeon there. We are spiritual beings and God will lead you by your spirit which is in tune with His Spirit. When does this start? How do I get this Holy Spirit guidance? How am I infilled with God’s Spirit and presence? When you have a question the best thing to do is start in the Word and look at yourself. When was I filled with the power of the Holy Spirit? Was it when I went forward to repent and turn to Jesus in that church in that town of Aloha, Oregon? No, it wasn’t. As a matter of fact, for every Spirit-filled believer I know, turning to God and becoming a believer is a separate act from the infilling of the Holy Spirit. King Jesus must have thought the same thing as He too was a believer before He was filled. He went to the river and was baptized in water by John. Then what happened? Luke 3:22 says, |
| 22 | And the Holy Spirit descended in bodily form like a dove upon Him NKJV When you are baptized in water, is this when you receive the Holy Spirit? Not necessarily. It is when Spirit-filled people pray over you. Understand the Holy Spirit was something Jesus needed as well. If the Son of God needed to be led by the Holy Spirit when He was on the earth as a man, you know He was showing us by example that we need the Holy Spirit as well. Read on in Luke 4:1, |
| 1 | Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, NKJV Filled and led. Must I say more? You can’t be led if you’re not filled. Messiah Jesus was led by the Spirit to go somewhere. It is the same for us. He will lead you, He will connect you, He will give you the words to say if you ask, and He wants to be a part of your life! We’ve got to be led by the Spirit. The day before I preach every week, I get into God’s presence. There is more behind that. I have spent the week reading His Word, listening to inspired Holy Spirit preaching, quieting myself before Him in the mornings and preparing myself. But I find my spirit to be a bit like a radio. It seems to be that when I leave church on Sunday, I am totally charged and ready for the week. I am in tune. As the week progresses, that Word, that powerful worship, the fellowship with other believers from Sunday tends to get out of tune with time. You must make time to get in tune with the Holy Spirit each day. I have noticed there is a direct connection between the Word and the Spirit. Mary was chosen to birth the Messiah because she was filled with the Word. It came out from her in Luke 1:47-55 when Elizabeth greeted Mary in her songs of praise. You could see that Simeon was the same, filled with the Word in Luke 2:29-32. They weren’t the only Spirit-filled believers in the temple that day. There was another named Anna. Although there was no explanation of what was happening in that place with Simeon going to this baby and rejoicing, she walked in and knew exactly what was going on. The better you know the Word of God, the better you know the God of the Word. Be led everyday by that Holy Spirit Simeon had. |
Jul18
Dealing With Fear & Deception
1 Tim 4:1 | |
| 1 | Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, NKJV Summers are always so fun as you can enjoy the beauty of God’s creation outside. As a kid, my parents took me to a friend’s house for dinner one Saturday night with my brother and adopted sisters. I will never forget that night. After dinner, when the parents were off talking in the living room of this friend’s house, the older sister in that family was in the front yard on that summer night with us kids. For some reason she started telling us kids ghost stories and other stories about dead people. I got scared and I still vaguely remember the stories of that day. NEVER scare children. Never put fear into kids, because it is not right, and although this young girl probably meant no harm it is something that can give kids unnecessary fear that they don’t need to have. God is greater than every fear. Of course, I have forgiven that girl, but her actions were wrong and I hope she didn’t do that to her children when she became a mom. When we are children we are young and very impressionable. We don’t want to put fear in kids. Fear doesn’t stop there. There is fear of heights, fear of animals, fear of closed places, and all sorts of fear. Our God can help you overcome them. I have seen with the older generation with this fear of not ‘having enough’. In America, they talk about ‘comfort food’. This talks about people eating sweets and such when they feel down and don’t need food. They end up getting obese from this. In Japan, the people didn’t have enough to eat during and after the War so the children that grew up during those times have a strong fear of waste and encourage their children not to waste. Leaving a few grains of rice in the rice bowl is considered bad. The new generations don’t seem to care as much. These are personal and cultural realities, but a fear many have is of the spiritual. People don’t mind hearing about angels but they don’t want to hear about demons. In many of the world’s societies demons try to blend in. In less developed nations, their activity is more blatant through witch doctors and other activities. As a believer, we have nothing to fear of these imps. They have no power of us, and must obey us at the powerful Name of Jesus because we know Him and His Word. I have seen them run first hand and learned to detect them even in the so-called ‘more developed’ nations. You can do the same. You’ve got to remember these spirits hitch-hike on humans and follow people (whom they have footholds on) into church. You’ve got to be able to deal with them. In 1 Timothy 4 we see that these spirits try to work through people to deceive believers. They make up doctrines and try to derail committed believers from God’s way. We must be aware because they try to work through people. In the church, they try to get in and deceive people, especially leaders. We have known from the beginning that they would try to do this. Acts 20:30 says, |
| 30 | Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves. NKJV And it is clearly a problem in the church if we are not diligent. If you give these demonically directed people way in your church it will destroy that fellowship. 2 Peter 2:1 says, |
| 1 | But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction. NKJV Be a contributor to your church and realize that you may have to deal with people who may want to intentionally or unintentionally go in another direction. Know the Word, know the leading of the Holy Spirit, and know Him more than any other thing. If the enemy starts to deceive someone, you will not be shaken. |
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