We All Get Equal Pay!

That evening he told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first. When those hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a full day’s wage. When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage. When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, ‘Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’  “He answered one of them, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage? Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?’ “So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last “(Matthew 20:8-16 - NLT)

Here in Matthew 20, Jesus gave the parable of the vineyard workers. This parable illustrates the importance of faithfulness and of God’s fairness. There are no greater or lesser persons in God’s family. There are simply those that are faithful to do what the Father called them to do.

In the parable a vineyard owner needed workers for the day. He hired people at the beginning of the day, maybe around 6 AM, agreeing to pay them, let’s say $150.00 a day (a day’s wage). Seeing he needed more workers and noticing people standing around looking for work, he hired more workers at 9 AM and they agreed to work for a $150.00 a day.

 

The vineyard owner found workers again at noon and at 3 PM, and they too agreed to work for $150.00 for the day. Once more, the owner hired workers at 5 PM, one hour before the end of the workday. And they too were hired for $150.00 for the day’s work.

 

At the end of the day, the vineyard owner paid each of the workers the $150.00 that he agreed to pay them when he hired them. The workers that were hired at 6 am became indignant with the owner, because he seemed so unfair. The workers who were hired in the morning hours did the most work, enduring the grueling heat of the day, and were paid the same wage as the person who was hired at 5 PM. That seems so unfair!

Jesus’ point was that every person in the family of God is valuable. We don’t get rewarded for the amount of kingdom work we do, we get rewarded for our faithfulness to do what the Father has called us to do. That way, each person is just as valuable in the kingdom of God as any other.

Internationally known and acclaimed Billy Graham will get the same reward as the unknown lady who faithfully prays at home for his ministry every day. The janitor, the secretary, the volunteer in the children’s ministry, the worship leader,  the usher, the parking lot attendant, the sound tech, the intercessor, will all get the same reward as the pastor in the church as longs as each one does his job and is faithful to do what the Lord has called him to do.

For that reason, there is no “jockeying for position” in the family of God. Our faithfulness is rewarded, not our amount of work or our position. Each person is a valuable as the next.

Decide today to be a person that is faithful. Don’t envy another person’s position or call. You may not be seen or heard by men, but the Father sees your faithful heart and will reward you for doing what he called you to do!

We Are The Adopted Children Of God!

But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, "Abba, Father!" Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ (Galatians 4:4-7).For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26).

Paul was referring here to first century Roman adoption, which carried several benefits under Roman law. The relationship with the former family is completely severed. All debts and lawful obligations are immediately cancelled. All legal and materials ties are broken. The former family has no legal jurisdiction over the person who is adopted. ANd, everything owned by the new family becomes the immediate possession of the adoptee.

 

You are a son or daughter of Almighty God. You have been adopted into His family through the new birth. Now, everything He has is at your disposal. You have a rich inheritance.

 

Your relationship with your former family is completely severed by this adoption into the family of God. Your former spiritual parent, Satan, no longer has any legal jurisdiction over you. He has no relationship or property rights over you. You are now under the care of the One who upholds all things by the power of His Word!

All former debts and obligations from your former family relationship have been canceled. Any personal penalties you have incurred because of laws you have broken have been forgiven. This adoption has given Father God full custody rights over you, and has severed you from all past debts, obligations, and penalties.

You are now an heir of God, and an equal heir with Jesus Christ. All that the Father has belongs to you. You have the full rights of family relationship with the Father. In fact, you have the same status with the Father as His child that a child actually born into his household has! His all belongs to you. But my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus!

 

Take your place as a child of God and hold your head high today. You have a new genealogy. You are of God! He has assumed the obligations of your care. He has told you not to worry about where or how provision for the day will come. Just seek Him and His kingdom, and all will be provided!

 

Your adoption in Christ gives you victory in every circumstance, authority over Satan and his demonic minions, the peace of God, the love of God, the rest of God, healing for your body, prosperity, the promise of answered prayer, everything that pertains to life and godliness, every benefit provided by Jesus on the cross (called every spiritual blessing in heavenly places by Christ Jesus in Ephesians 1:3), and the faith to believe God for everything he has given you!

 

Expect the Father to provide His best for you His child today. Talk to Him about everything. Take every difficulty the day brings and lay it before Him in faith. You are His child. He is your Father. He will take care of you! You are adopted!

The Father Knows You

O Lord, You have searched me and known me (Psalm 139:1).

The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you (Jeremiah 31:3).

The Father loves you with an everlasting love. He knows everything about you. He is aware of every cell of your body. Not only does he know the number of hairs on your head, but he understands the complex DNA structure that lives in each cell of your body. He is aware of every aspect of your health and knows what is necessary for you to thrive. He wants that information to be yours.

The Father knows every thought in your mind. He is aware of what occupies every memory cell in your brain. He has watched you since you were in your mother’s womb, and knows every single event in your life in minute detail.

The Father is aware of your emotional life. He knows every up and down, and understands the factors that contribute to your personality and motivations. He knows why you do everything you do. He feels the grief and pain that burdens you.

The Father hears every word that falls from your lips. He is aware of the un-verbalized comments that remain buried. He understands the tremendous power your words hold over you. He wants you to watch them carefully.

He sees every unfulfilled desire. He knows your hopes and dreams. He sees the unfulfilled expectations of life that bring you anguish. He knows ahead of time the decisions you make and why you make them.

With this all knowledge the Father wants to come and make a home with you. He wants to help you figure out the everyday choices ahead of you. He desires to impart peace to your entire being, and longs to calm every fear and bring you to a state of rest.

This all starts with Jesus’ Lordship confessed with your own lips. Then the Word must be meditated upon until it becomes a part of your inward life. Slowly your perceptions of Him will become stronger and stronger until you will gain an inward knowing of his purpose in the even the minor details of your life.

One day you will meet Jesus personally. He will be the sum total of your every desire. He will be the satisfaction of every thought. He will be the fulfillment of every emotion. He will be the embodiment of your entire future. He will be the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, the fulfillment of each of your five senses, the sum total of everything that is pleasant. All fullness dwells in Him.

 

When you meet Him, it will be as though you have always known Him. He will know everything about you that there is to be known, yet you will feel complete and at rest with Him. With Him you will experience the fullness of joy, complete acceptance, and the total fulfillment of every thought, emotion, desire, and sense. You will be totally free to be yourself. Let’s start the journey today!

We Can Rest When We Receive God's Grace Through Our Faith

There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His (Hebrews 4:9-10)

From childhood, I have used accomplishment as a tool to receive affirmation. I so wanted to hear- “wow, what a great job Mitch” that I would go to the extreme to hear it. At age four and five, I was already shining the chrome fixtures in the bathroom just to receive praise. I would make the porcelain gleam just waiting for my mother to notice.

 

As I aged, this became a way of life for me. This produced in me a drive to succeed. So my life was filled with doing things to be accepted. That’s hard. I could never really rest. I never thought that I’d done enough.

 

When I gave my life to Jesus, this motivation still dominated me. Now I was doing things to receive acceptance from the Father. And I noticed that deep within me, I didn’t think He was quite pleased with me. So restlessness ruled me.

In the mid 1980’s, I was part of the pastoral staff in a large church in Tulsa. I was in my office one morning, feeling that I wasn’t quite doing enough to be pleasing to the Father. And I came across a definition of Grace that changed my life.

Grace is God’s ability working in you to enable you to do what you can’t do yourself. Faith changes things and circumstances. Grace changes people. And somehow a dynamic changed inside of me.

I had been trying to measure up to some standard all my life. Then as a believer, I tried to measure up to some grandiose standard that I created in my own head so that the Father would be pleased with me. For the first time, I saw that Jesus pleased the Father for me! And all this grunting and straining to attain some super spiritual level was righteousness by works and not by grace through faith. I had a grace heart and a works mentality.

But now I saw that the Father just simply loved me. I broke down and began to cry. I didn’t have to measure up to some high standard for the Father to love me. His love is not based on accomplishment, but on His own benevolent nature. He loved me for who I was, not for what did.

I took all this doing things to be pleasing motivation to Him. And I asked for His grace, His ability to do in me what I can’t do myself, to change this works motivation that pushed me so hard.

Now, all these years later, I can rest. His grace, His ability to do in me what I can’t do myself, has helped me settle down into the peace of God. I’m no longer driven with this deep need to perform to be accepted. I am accepted in the beloved! Now I do what I do out of a motivation to bless and help others, and out of a motivation to obey my Father and give Him Glory.

 

The rest of grace through faith is where the Father wants us all to live. I encourage you to allow the Father’s unconditional love into your life, and to let go of the need to perform to be accepted. The Father wants you to cease from your own works and rest in the acceptance that Jesus’ blood purchased for you freely!

We Are Changed From the Inside Out!

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

In the above verse, the word conformed is from the Greek word summorphoo which means to bring to the same form with. Or to make it practical, this word means to take something on the inside and let it be seen on the outside!

God is in the process of changing us from the inside out. An example of this is in Matthew 17 when Jesus was transfigured and began to glow with a white light. And He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light (Matthew 17:2). What was inside of Him burst forth!

We live from the inside out.  Our outward behavior is but a reflection of what we are inside. Prior to the New Birth, our unrenewed, sin-nature dominated soul (our mind, emotions, and will) ruled us. Self-centered living characterized how we did life. We lived to please ourselves first.

When we become new creatures in Christ, the Father desires that we learn to live from our spirit nature. This is  the part of us that is radically changed. It’s the part that has passed from death into life. It’s the part of us that is God centered and not self-centered. Our spirit nature is the part of us where the Love of God is deposited (Romans 5:5). We really do have the ability to do life differently, from the inside out.

Paul travailed for the believers in Galatia until Christ was formed in them.  My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you (Galatians 4:19). This word formed here means to change the outward to reveal the inward. Travailing prayer helps bring this change about.

Since praying in other tongues is praying from your spirit, it can also be a catalyst to move this new nature in your spirit to the forefront in your life. Notice Romans 8:26-28: Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. (27) Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.  (28) And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. We often take verse 28 out of its setting by quoting it alone. Notice that verse 28 starts with the conjunction and, which joins it to the preceding verses.  All things work together for good because the believer is praying the will of God into manifestation!

In Romans 12 we’re encouraged not to allow the world to squeeze us into its mould. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity (Romans 12:2 - JB Phillips Translation). We are not to allow outward things to shape us. It’s the renewing of the mind with the Word and learning to live from the spirit and not the soul that causes a metamorphosis, a change from with, to take place in our lives.

Allow the seed that the Father has placed in you to germinate today. Take time to feed on God’s Word. Let the Word find a home in you! Let it dwell in you richly. This new Divine nature develops and grows when the Word comes alive in you. As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (2 Peter 1:3-4). Water that  Word seed by spending time waiting on the Lord in prayer.

Focus your thoughts on the God’s Word today. Set your mind on things above. As you do, the incorruptible seed will germinate and change you, from the inside out!

People Need To Hear The Truth About Sin!

We know that the law is good when used correctly. For the law was not intended for people who do what is right. It is for people who are lawless and rebellious, who are ungodly and sinful, who consider nothing sacred and defile what is holy, who kill their father or mother or commit other murders. The law is for people who are sexually immoral, or who practice homosexuality, or are slave traders, liars, promise breakers, or who do anything else that contradicts the wholesome teaching that comes from the glorious Good News entrusted to me by our blessed God. (1 Timothy 1:8-11 - NLT)

When I was a young child I have distinct memories of being taught about the depravity of man and of our sinfulness. Now, we seem to have flipped to the other extreme. In many churches it’s seldom that you hear a great deal about sin and its effects. And in the general public through our educational institutions, the populace of our nation hears from the humanistic psychological perspective that we all are really good people. We just need some education and that ember of wonderfulness within us will just spring to life!

Well, that just doesn’t play out in real life. Human beings are capable of horribly wicked deeds. We are a depraved race. Adam’s sinned knocked the goodness right out of us. Just listen to Paul: …being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them (Romans 1:29-32).

  

Outside of the new birth and grace of God changing our natures, we’re heathen! Barbaric! Treacherous! Listen to the prophet Jeremiah: The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? (Jeremiah 17:9 - NLT). Even Jesus said: For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, all sexual immorality, theft, lying, and slander (Matthew 15:19 - NLT).

Our culture is out of control because of the depraved human heart. The atrocious things we hear about every single day: the killings, the thefts, the abuses, and every single evil , are a result of the wicked human heart. We need the new birth. Being born again as Jesus mentioned in John 3 changes the human heart from sin to pureness.

We need to spread the good new of the gospel that God so loved us that He made redemption from sin available to us. And that mercy, grace and forgiveness are available through Christ. And that God has made a way available so that our sins are already forgiven if we’ll only accept His plan of salvation through Jesus.

But before that will make a difference in a human life, a person must realize that he is a sinner in need of a savior. And that he or she is not just a nice sinner, but that he or she is morally and spiritually bankrupt and depraved.

Jonathan Edward preached his famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and people shook with deep conviction of sin.  Revival fire spread through America as revivalists preached of a  holy God who is a consuming fire. We need this in our age too.

Don’t get me wrong, we need to know that Jesus became our righteousness, and that God thinks we’re special. We need to know that God loves us and that He has blessed us and destined us for blessing and favor. But these truths are for the saints who have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. Sinners need to know that the Father loves them. But we need the Billy Grahams of our day telling people that the wages of sin is death.

When a person has a good understanding of their utter sinfulness, they will reach for the life raft of salvation with zeal. It takes prayer and Spirit unctioned preaching for people to come out of the darkness of sin and receive Jesus as their Savior from sin. It’s time for us believers to awake to righteousness, and take the two edged sword of truth in our mouths motivated by the burning love of God in our hearts.

Before God’s best can be granted, a sinner must squirm with Holy Spirit conviction under the weight of his sin and understand sin’s wages. Only then can he really appreciate hearing that the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Is Repentance A Necessary Ingredient For A Fresh Move Of God In A Nation Or Individual?

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord (Acts 3:19).

Repentance plays an important role in a fresh move of the Holy Spirit in individual lives, in a church, and in a nation. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus to begin His ministry: In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near (Matthew 3:1-2).

Israel had turned away from the Lord. They had worshipped false gods in the place of Jehovah. Judgment was coming. After calling for repentance, Joel prophesied a great move of the Spirit (Joel 2:28-32). Listen to the call to repentance that preceded the word of a coming revival:

Now, therefore, says the Lord, Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm. Who knows if He will turn and relent, and leave a blessing behind Him — A grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes; let the bridegroom go out from his chamber, and the bride from her dressing room. Let the priests, who minister to the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar; let them say, Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not give Your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, Where is their God? (Joel 2:12-17).

I believe the Lord is calling us to repentance today so that He can move in a fresh way by the Holy Spirit in our personal lives, in our churches, and in our nation. Remember 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NLT): Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.

Repentance has three ingredients. When I repent I must renounce, repent, and obey. First I must renounce any area of disobedience, spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. When light comes into my life, I am responsible to walk in it or darkness will invade and blind me. Repentance is a mental and willful “about-face;” a 180 degree turn in the opposite direction. I change the course of an area of life. It is a decision of heart that produces a lifestyle change in me.

To repent I must also submit. That is, I must allow the Word of God to saturate my mind and heart, and then I must willfully choose to submit and obey it. But don't just listen to God's word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves (James 1:22 - NLT).

Lastly, to repent I must obey. I must decide moment by moment to obey my conscience and the tender tug of the Holy Spirit as I walk through each day with its demanded choices. Renounce, submit, and obey must become my lifestyle.

The Father wants me to live a lifestyle of repentance. When I do, I can expect times of refreshing from the Father’s awesome presence in my personal life. Then, as we act in corporate repentance, we can expect times of refreshing in our churches and in our nation. Walk with me today into repentance: renounce, submit, and obey!