Singleness a Gift?

What should we do? Should we be married or single? Is singleness a dilemma or a gift?
Let us take a look at Paul's chapter on Marriage and Singleness in 1 Corinthians 7. This chapter is very crucial as it truly helped me in my moments of crisis.

Here are some verses that stand out to me:

1 Cor 7:7 ESV

7I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. 

So marriage is a gift from God. So is singleness. Everyone has their own gift from God! We are all gifted! If you read the context of this above verse, you'll see that Paul is referring to the topic of marriage and singleness.

1 Cor. 7:26-28

26I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.
27Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.
28But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.

So given the conditions Paul was seeing in his day, such as persecution, he was saying that people should abide in their current condition, whether married or single. Some had been "freed" (Greek word meaning "loosed, divorced") from their spouse. Some were married. Some were single. Paul made the point that the main thing is to serve God in His calling on your life. Regardless of your status in this world, serve God, as you were called by Christ! But if those who were freed or single did eventually marry, they have not sinned. Paul was, with literary finese and Holy Ghost power, expounding the fact that neither is a sin, marriage or singleness. 

For Paul,

Being a single serving God is great!

Being married so that sexual passion is under control is good! Serving God is possible still, but can present more challenges. 

But regardless of marital status, serving God is the best and main thing, and it is easier to serve God as a single! I know both worlds. And serving God is definitely easier now that I am single again! 

I have embraced this long season of singleness I have been in!

To me, here is the main point of 1 Corinthians 7 and Paul's discourse: 

1 Cor.7:17

17Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.

The main theme and point of this chapter as I have studied it, to me, is the CALLING OF CHRIST. 

This is reflected several times as the calling is repeated over and over in the following verses: 18-24 . The word "Called" or "Calling" is mentioned a total of 8 times from verses 17-24. This is Paul's point... In whatever one does, let nothing distract you from the Call of Christ. For one is not fully putting God first in life if one does not heed and obey Christ's geographic and ministerial call! We are all ministers of different kinds! 

Blessings! 

Bread In Winter

Psalm 107:9
1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
9 For he satisfied the thirsty soul, and filled the hungry soul with goodness.

John 6:47-48 (GNV)
47 Verily, verily I say unto you, he that believeth in me, hath everlasting life.
48 I am that bread of life.

Have you ever felt hungry and thirsty? I am certain you have.
In the natural, it is a necessary function of life, eating food and drinking water that your body can continue to operate in health. But what about in the Spirit?

Have you allowed your hunger for Jesus to overtake your hunger for the things of the the world or the flesh? This is not always easy. But I challenge you to ask Jesus to satisfy your inner spiritual hunger. This is where your true self lies. It is not in regular meat and drink, but in spiritual meat and drink.

 Truly surrender your wants and desires to Jesus and offer them up on the altar. I know for me, when I did that, He sent His word, like snow, to cover and freeze the ground. It preserved the seed He had already deposited in me. It cooled and subdued my longings in the flesh. And, most importantly, it allowed me to experience to an even greater extent, the Living Bread and Living Water. Jesus is both. 

Yes leave it to God. He is able to send bread in the winter! Jesus feeds us what we really need. He satisfies us with eternal life and fellowship and redemption and salvation! 
So that is my challenge to you: Ask God to have full control over those earthly appetites - whatever they may be- and to fill you with the Living Bread! Be desperate for Jesus. Be hateful to the fleshly desire. Long for His bread. Don't shy away from the winter season. 

He is faithful and will satisfy anyone who is actually hungry for Jesus.
~Pastor Curtis

Hot Or Cold

I happen to enjoy every season, and winter is no exception. I love my winter walks. It was on a walk in the snow recently when God started to reveal His purpose for the cold to me. 
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Revelation 3:15
1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)
15 I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou werest cold or hot.
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Job 38:22
22 Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,
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Isaiah 55:10-11
10 Surely as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither but watereth the earth, and maketh it to bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread unto him that eateth,
11 So shall my word be, that goeth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I will, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.
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What does Jesus mean when He says He would rather us be Hot or Cold? He was speaking to His church in Revelation 3:15. Well when we examine Scripture, we see that God not only created the snow, He uses it to illustrate His Word. Scripturally and spiritually speaking, snow shows us God's WORD and God's TREASURE. And we know that mankind was formed of the dust of the earth. He was made a living soul and spirit dwelling in a body of formed dust. It is found in Genesis 2.
Sometimes the Word must come and cover our earthly lives like snow, and send or natural and fleshly tendencies into a freeze. Yes, we want to be on fire and hot in our spiritual desire for the Lord Jesus. 

But it is necessary, as I am discovering by experience, to also be cold FOR Him. Notice I did not say "toward" Him. But rather, we are cold for the Lord so that our fleshly and earthly ways lay dormant. His Word, His Glory, like those amazingly intricate snow flakes that are falling all over Newmarket right now, is covering the land, helping it to refresh, restore, and stay still. Others will see that you are cold in the flesh-nature, but they may mistake that as lack of love. In reality you are still very much on fire for the Lord, and love your brothers and sisters in Christ dearly. No change in behaviour happens toward our relationships in the church. The change happens in our relationship to God. We grow closer to Him, more dependent. We are much less distracted by what used to enrapture us in the natural.

As the flesh is put on ice, and caused to freeze in its wants, our spirit man is able to gain the upper hand and pursue Jesus like never before. It is a time of refreshing and for freezing those things which must be frozen in our lives. Much of it dies during this season. Some just lies dormant. And it is often a long season.

The season of snow eventually melts. Much further down the line, new life will bud from that snow as it transforms into water. But while you are in this winter season, enjoy your amazing freedom to pursue just Jesus without the "dust" interfering so often! 
~ Pastor Curtis

What is Success?

Q: How do you measure your success? Does success equal happiness?

A: What is success? The Bible tells us, not the world.

The Word says:

"13The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." (Eccl. 12:13)

And Jesus in the Word spells this success out very clearly:

"37And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

38This is the great and first commandment.

39And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

40On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” "

(Matt. 22:37-40)

Christians can live in success every single day of their lives. Yet in addition to this, there is a GOAL we as Christians should SUCCEED at reaching: individual and corporate maturity in Christ. This is when each individual believer and every local assembly grows and matures by the Spirit into the image of Christ in mind and in word and in maturity.

"11And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,

12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ,

13until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,"

(Eph. 4:11-13)

So success is loving God, loving each other, and growing up into the image and maturity of Christ! 

As for happiness, we must choose to rejoice in Jesus. No one can make you happy, you must choose it.

Vision: "Hands"

At the church tonight we prayed as we always do and seek the Lord for salvation of souls in Newmarket and for guidance as a church. I was seeking the Lord's perspective and will in my life. I was in His presence and praying in the Spirit and The Lord suddenly showed me a vision:
~
I saw a forest from a high view, looking down. In the forest was a man, and the man was me. I was seeing myself from a high angle.
The forest started to catch fire and burn. Trees were going up in flames, and some were toppling sideways under the heat. I could see myself trapped in the blaze. I had nowhere to run.

Suddenly in the vision, these giant hands came down from above and started blocking trees from falling on me and shielding me from the heat. The hands were powerful and fast. They moved every which way, and could not be beaten. The fire was intense and the branches were falling all over, but these hands kept protecting me in the blaze, and knocking entire trees away as they fell toward me. It was incredible to see it from above. The ground shook when each hand slammed the ground around me. These hands cupped me, covered me, and swatted giant objects away from me. All I was doing in this fire was standing.

After the blaze died all I saw was grey and dead trunks.

(c) Peter Adams/plainpicture - Trees burnt by lightning in Australian Rainforest. Found this image on Bing.ca this morning Aug 17, 2014 and had to add it to my blog post. It shows perfectly the patch of grey I saw in my vision.

 I saw undefined figures who would try and approach and one or the other hand would gently block that person from reaching me. I do not know how many times the hands did this kind of block, but these hands kept me standing still without forcing me.

The last thing I remember was seeing dark fertile soil and in the ground of that burnt forest, and within that soil, a tiny green sapling.
Then the Lord's voice came to me. He said, "Curtis, I have been fighting for you these last 5 years. I am your fighter. I always have been." I remember thanking Him and praising Him tonight as I saw this. It helped me put my last few years into perspective. Jesus alone is the strong Hand and Arm of God and He alone made it possible for me to stand in my circumstances these past five years. He is so faithful!

Thank you Lord! As per Habakkuk 2:2, I am writing the vision!

Blessings,

Pastor Curtis

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Will You Put Your Promise on the Altar of Obedience?

Genesis 22:12

1599 Geneva Bible (GNV)

¹² Then he said, Lay not thine hand upon the child, neither do anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing for my sake thou hast not spared thine only son.

 

This passage has struck me in the past week. God has given me promises that, like Abraham, have yet to come to pass. Eventually Abraham's promise from God was accomplished, and his son Isaac was born. Yet the most confusing thing happened next: God wanted Abraham to give Isaac back to God.

 

Abraham now had his one and only direct heir, a promise from God fulfilled, and now the Lord wanted the promise to be returned?

 

Wow. Abraham, the man of faith, simply obeyed God. And what heartache he must have had as he prepared to sacrifice his only son to the One who gave him to him. I know that some of us today have been given a promise.

 

Some of us have come so close to obtaining what God had said He would give. I know what God said to me, and affirmed to me through many prophetic confirmations. He promised me a new wife. And yet, such a promise is so close, and so far. I have gone through some pains and heart aches through the past while and in the midst of it, God has recently asked me: "Would you put what I promised you on the altar for me?" And because I was already in the process of doing so, I said "yes Lord." With pain and difficulty, I have been choosing to obey God over obtaining the promise. That is what this Genesis account boils down to. It is the principal of making sure God is still first in our hearts.

 

This verse from Genesis 22 shows me, and all of us, that God was actually just testing to see what was number one in Abraham's heart. Was it the promise God gave? Or was it God Himself (with or without the promise given)? In the end, God stopped Abraham from sacrificing his son because Abraham had proven himself to be completely obedient, willing to hold nothing back from God. This is where the Lord Jesus is taking me. It is my journey so far, and there has been much positive growth.

 

I am prepared to keep choosing Jesus over my desire to obtain His promise. It is His full intent to give it. When, I will not know- perhaps for a long time yet. But we must be prepared not to love the promise more than the promise maker. He is faithful to fulfill His word, just trust and obey Him. Abraham's historic event as seen here was a foreshadowing of the greatest event of history: God the Father did not spare His Perfect Son Jesus. He laid Him on the altar for all of us - you and me - that we may be free and cleansed from sin. How faithful and wonderful He is to us! God is willing to do the very thing He asked Abraham to do! Jesus was obedient to the death. Now He is raised from the dead, and alive forevermore. Awesome.

 

Blessings

~Pastor Curtis

 

Eyes on The Lord

Eyes on the Lord

Psalm 25:15-18
15 Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall pluck my feet out of the net.
16 Turn thee unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am desolate and afflicted.
17 The troubles of my heart are enlarged: O bring thou me out of my distresses.
18 Look upon mine affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins.

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David had learned what to do when he was "desolate and afflicted". In the original Hebrew it literally means David was "lonely and depressed".
David had sometimes sinned because of his depression, and knew he needed forgiveness. His lonliness would cause him to make poor choices, and we can all relate to that.
And yet, David was determined to fix his eyes on the Lord, the only One who was able to untangle David's feet and steps.

So it is for us: Put your eyes on the LORD, who is JESUS. Fortunately for us, we can CHOOSE to look at Jesus even when our emotions are in the tank. That's because we don't live by feelings but by faith (Hab. 2:4).

Keep your eyes there. He is the only One who will protect your feet and untangle your steps. David's heart was true toward God, and whole. Yet... at times he carried an awkward and mixed bag of emotion. Sometimes all he could do was pour it all out in "ugly prayer" like the Psalm above. For him, it would have seemed ugly. But the Lord cherished David and his prayers of brokeness and trust, and God received such a heart. God loves the heart that chooses to focus on the Lord in the midst of these strange and inconvenient emotions and feelings. If you feel you have this mixed bag, just empty it before the Lord with a whole heart. Your prayer won't sound amazing to you. It'll sound like a hodge-podge and a mess. But God will hear the heart that comes with the outpouring. He will rescue you. No need to feel shame in coming to Him.

You will be loved and cherished, as David was.

God bless,
~Pastor Curtis