I’ve been watching Joyce Meyer’s program the last couple mornings and she’s been preaching on, of all things, “The Mouth”, and how what we say can affect our lives. After all, the Lord did preach, in Matthew 12:34, the last part of the verse, it says, in the Amplified Version, “For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Whatever is on the inside of us comes out of our mouths. If we have Jesus and the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us, they’ll be coming out of our mouths or should be coming out of our mouth, but if we’re living for the world or for ourselves, that’s what comes out of our mouths. That’s what Joyce has been preaching on the past couple of days and boy, does she hit hard, or the Lord hits hard because He’s the One Who told her to preach it. She says at the beginning of the programs that the Lord has been laying these hard-hitting sermons on her heart to preach and they’ll be a lot of people who don’t want to hear them because they’re not the ear-tickling sermons, they’re the kind that get to the heart of the matter where we get uncomfortable and want to leave or in my case, turn off the TV or my iPad, because I’m watching her on Facebook every morning. But, I’m not turning it off, because I need these hard-hitting sermons that dig deep into my soul, that make me sit up and take notice, because I know I say things I shouldn’t say at times. She made a very true statement today, “For it to come out of us, it has to be in us. Nothing reveals more about the real us than our words. We can learn so much about ourselves by listening to ourselves.” Since I have closed captioning on my iPad when I watch programming, I sometimes take down word for word what she says on her program so I get everything she says verbatim because the Lord really has a word in season when she preaches. She hits hard and like she says, if you don’t want to listen, there’s an off button on the TV or iPad. That’s true, there is, but I’m not shutting it off, I’m going to listen until it’s drilled into my soul and spirit.

It’s a beautiful day out today here in Missouri.

This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24

Truly it is the day the Lord has made. We have every reason to rejoice because He has given us another day to live and worship Him and love Him because He left Heaven to come to this earth to die for our sins on that cruel Cross, take those stripes on His back for our sickness and disease, and rose again from the dead to give us Eternal Life, ascended into Heaven to sit at the Right Hand of God the Father to be our Intercessor with the Father, and He’s preparing a place for us that where He is, there we’ll be also, as He said in John 14. We have so many things to thank Him for, just getting us in the morning, knowing He has given us another day to live is a reason to be thankful. Living in a country where we can worship Him anytime we want to, where we can read the Word without fear, where we can pray anytime, go to church, we have much to thank the Lord for that I can’t name them all. He gives us so many reasons to love Him and no reasons not to.

I know there is a lot of wickedness out there in the world, but the Lord did not cause the wickedness, sin caused the wickedness, people’s choices caused the wickedness. We can’t even blame the devil for our own choices. People need to own up to their own responsibility to what they’ve done, no “blame game”. But we still have a lot to be thankful for today and every day.

Taking classes

I’m taking classes online at Global University right now to be a certified minister with the Assemblies of God. Right now, my first class is the Christ in the Synoptic Gospels. In the book, the first Books of the New Testament are the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Book of John is not considered a Synoptic Gospel. Synoptic Gospel means the three Books are written in a similar way through different viewpoints by different men through the Power of the Holy Spirit. It has been a wonderful class to go through. Not only has it been about the Gospels themselves, it also has been about the period in the Book of Daniel, when King Nebuchadnezzar had his dream of the statue that he saw of the 4 kingdoms, the head of gold which was his kingdom, the Babylonians, the chest and arms of silver, which were the Medes and Persians, the skirt of bronze, which was the Greeks, the two legs of iron, which were the Romans, and last but not least, which were the feet, which were made of iron and clay, which are today’s time, the world. Iron and clay never exactly mix together, which is true of today’s world. Then the class talks about the period between the Old and New Testaments, which was called the Intertestamental Period, when there were no actual Books of the Bible written, but where we have the books called the Maccabees written, of which there are 5 books written of history. They have been very interesting to read to read. Most people only read 2 books of the Maccabees, because in the Apocrypha, there are only 2 of them in there. Also, in this class, I learned about the history of the Herods that ruled in Israel, and how cruel they were, but I knew they had been, especially Herod, the Great, the Herod who murdered the baby boys 2 years old and under when he was looking for Jesus and couldn’t find Him when the Wise Men had told King Herod they were looking for the King of the Jews because they found the Star that lead them there. Then there was King Herod Antipas that was responsible for crucifying Jesus 31 years later, so the Herods are not the men I’d want to be around. Later in the class, I learned about the Israel religious leaders, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, the Essenes, and all the other groups that cropped up in Israel. The Pharisees came out of the Hasmoneans during the Intertestamental Period and they were very strict law keepers. The Sadducees didn’t believe in the Resurrection. The Scribes were the lawyers of the Israelites. The Essenes lived out in the wilderness.  Even though John was not considered a Synoptic Gospel, I read his Gospel, because I had to read on the miracles that were mentioned only in his Gospel that weren’t mentioned in the other 3 Gospels. But that was alright with me because I just love reading the Book of John. John is one of my favorite Bible writers. After all, he wrote the Book of Revelation and the 3 Books of 1, 2, and 3 John. All in all, this class has been very good and I’ve learned a lot. I’ll be taking the end test for it soon. I pray I do well on it.