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Discipline Is To Bring Us Back To God…

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 God will often use people to offer a verbal rebuke through prophecy or admonishment before disciplining us. Instead of letting our pride get offended, we should be willing to accept and give such rebukes within the body of Christ so that we can avoid sterner discipline of the rod. The Lord uses discipline as a last resort. If all God needed to justify mankind to himself was a bigger cattle-prod, then Christ died for nothing!

 No, God’s plan for the earth is love first, discipline last. To get us to listen and repent, he will use deep conviction, the rebuke of friends, coincident sermons, the quickening of Scripture, and every other means before disciplining us. But if we resist God’s Spirit of light and mercy, we are promised the rod of correction. When God disciplines, the punishment fits the crime. Time and again, we realize that we cannot get away with unrepentant sin. God is sculpting us into holy vessels, and the process can be painful.

 Hebrews 12: “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.” Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father?If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons.

 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.”

 May God bless you this morning and renew your strength with His purpose and not your own. For there great joy when we learn from our past to improve something in the future. Here is an awesome song and 9/11 Tribute sung by Casting Crowns that I pray touches you as it will always touch me And Now My Life Song Sings (9/11 Tribute) 

James A. Harrison

http://balancedlifeministry.org

http://specialdeliverybook.com

Right Your Wrongs…

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   Have you ever faced a decision or a situation when you knew what the right thing to do was but you chose to do different? Can you recall the weight of conviction after your wrong actions? Those who have been born again are seized by deep conviction when they sin. If they do not repent they are always “spanked” by God for it. Is this true in your life? Have you ever been spanked? Are you under conviction now? Do you pass the family test?

 Way too many times we allow our pride to miss the blessings of the Lord due to simply not taking responsibility for our wrong actions. As any loving parent speaking to their child it starts as a gentle voice then elevates from there as the child continues to disobey. The object is to recognize the Voice of Truth in our spirit without allowing the conviction to become so heavy that we become blind to what God is trying to teach us. This is where Satan loves to get us spiritually because the deeper we fall the harder it is to pick ourselves back up.

  It is my sincere prayer that if you are living under conviction for unrepentant sin that you will step up to the plate to bring what is right out of your wrongs. What matters most, how you look before man or how you look before God? Maybe you are simply under conviction for not attending fellowship or not obeying God’s Word. If so, I pray that you will step up to the plate and learn to face the truth in order to allow the love of Jesus to set you free…Amen
 
Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin…James 4:17

 Please enjoy this song Voice Of Truth to start your life on the right path..

James A. Harrison

What Is The Apple Of Your Eye?

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 God knows our strengths and weaknesses and His commands are always for our good. When we ignore God’s commands negative consequences are inevitable whether in our generation or in the next. It is not enough to know God’s Word or even believe it, for we must follow it and learn to apply His Word to our daily activities and decisions.

 Spiritually Satan works hard to attract our eye in order to cause us to lose our perspective but when we are anchored in the Lord then He will guide our coarse. Soloman tells us in Proverbs 7,”My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee. Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye. Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.”

 If we are not keeping God’s Word as the apple of our eye then we are setting ourselves up to act in our human emotions. As Cain, we must learn how to apply God’s instruction before our disobedience leads us into destruction….

James A. Harrison

http://balancedlifeministry.org

http://specialdeliverybook.com

Poor Leadership Curses The People

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 It is evident in today’s time of the curses that take place due to leadership that does not follow God’s instruction. One of the most vital parts of a true leader is one that seeks God’s instruction and learns to apply it while being alert to the gifts of the next generation. When we fail to recognize the talents of others and neglect our responsibility as a leader to help someone else develop the gifts that God has given is when we are destined for stagnant growth and deterioration.

 Throughout the Word of God He gives us the instruction of how to not only maintain our homes, our jobs, our churches, our communities, and our nation He also gives us the instruction to live with a purpose in life. We often lose sight of this purpose due to judgement, pressures or temptations from the world and this poor leadership leads to discipline back upon the people.

 Why should we expect our children to have security if we are not following God’s instruction and adhering to His Word? How can we honestly expect the next generation to find direction if we are not teaching them who shows us the Way? Another sad part is how stagnant we have become in creativity due to our drift away from the Creator. The further we drift away from God the further we will fall and the harder it will be on the next generation. 

 This has been proven throughout history and until we learn how to recognize this truth then we are only neglecting the evidence that is right before us. The question that we should be asking is this,”Are we listening for God or are we listening to man?” Too many times we allow positions of leadership to be filled with individuals that are out of position due to seeking the desires of man instead of the ones with the heart for the position in properly serving the people.

 Learning how to let go and simply trust in God can be an excruciating process but is very rewarding as we begin to see the hand of God at work. If we are not teaching our children how to trust in the Lord through our words and actions then how can we honestly expect them to do the same? In trusting the Lord it is vital that we teach our children how to recognize the God given gifts of others to help edify the Kingdom of God and maintain the liberty that we have been given. It is my prayer that we learn to put aside our differences and begin to recognize the gifts within God’s children to help carry us forward.

 For when something is of God there is no weight, no burden nor struggle. The work is not looked upon as work with dread but with a zeal in working unto the Lord instead of man. For their is a joy that only comes from God that uplifts our relationships as we begin to have unity within the body to serve His purpose instead of our own…

 Psalm 146:3 ‘Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help’.

James A. Harrison

http://balancedlifeministry.org

http://specialdeliverybook.com

The Art Of War…

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 The art of war is not always about winning the battle but learning to win the war. See Jesus taught us this in His walk of life and He won the war by teaching us the art of selfless sacrifice. Jesus did not fall into the spiritual snares and traps of Satan either through the darts that were thrown at Him through the people’s words and actions nor through evil temptations. It is through the love of God that we discover the only antidote to the snake bites of this world. 

 This is why the Lord teaches us to put on the Full Armor of God to protect us from the snakes that try to hold us back. As God taught us with Moses in the wilderness a message that paralells the same message of Christ we are to focus upon the Lord and directly face the snakes that bite us. Until we learn to stand in belief and face the snakes without waver in the Truth through God’s love then our lives will be negatively affected. 

 The art of war is being as wise as a serpent but gentle as a dove while learning to walk in the enemy camp without allowing the enemy to change who we are. We can not recognize the enemy unless we know the enemy and this is a vital part of warfare.  Be wise in the Word of God to recognize that this is not our battle. For this war is not against flesh and blood but against spiritual principalities and powers that are way higher than us. For vengeance is the Lords…amen

 For if we are not willing to go into battle how will you ever learn how to hear the snakes rattle?

James A. Harrison

http://balancedlifeministry.org

http://specialdeliverybook.com

Spiritual Revelations

Don’t be like Eli in 1st Samuel and miss something that has been given by God. If you recall with Eli he did not listen because the Word of God was rare in those days and he did not recognize what was taking place until he saw the persistence of Samuel…

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