God Is The One Who Will Help You! by Pastor Tim Burt

Luke 18:7-8 “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”

I was with a group of friends recently and we were telling and laughing at parenting stories. At one point we all discovered that we shared a common pet peeve. None of us as parents liked it when our children had false perceptions of us in various areas.

For example, I remember a time when I had been for a conference that I was the main speaker at. I had been working for over a month on a number of messages I would be sharing. The week before the event I spent almost the entire week putting all my notes together and continuing to pray about what I would minister. I teach and preach those things which seem to be most passionately burning in me that I believe God would have me touch on. I am working and praying up till the last minute to be sure that what I have to give is what the Lord wants me to minister.

On the way out of town, I stopped at my daughter’s to pick up something. She asked me how my preparation went and then jokingly commented about procrastinating and scrambling at the end to get my messaged done. It hit me like a hammer. “What? You think I’ve been procrastinating? Where did you get that idea?” The funny thing was, one of my messages was about praying and planning ahead in preparation for things we know we are go give ourselves to. I was shocked that she had this perception that some how I had been procrastinating and couldn’t figure out where she got it. But, kids do this. Maybe we all do this. Maybe we get a thought that a person is a certain way from some isolated incident and it’s a wrong perception; even a bothersome one.

I know people do this with God all the time. They have a wrong perception of Him. It’s because they don’t know Him through the knowledge of His Word. They might not know God except through what they “have figured out.” No offence but “figuring out God for yourself” is creating your own god. God reveals Himself to those that love and seek to know Him. Jer 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” That best happens through prayer, the study of the Word of God, and through sitting under sound teaching. God does not want to be figured out. God can’t be figured out with the human mind. That is what false religion and cults are born out of – figuring out with the mind who and what God is. How prideful and vain that is! God is only known to those to whom He reveals Himself to by His Spirit. 1 Cor 2:14 says, “But the man who has not received Christ and does not have God’s Holy Spirit within him, does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are taught to us by the Holy Spirit.”

When you haven’t come to know God’s love, His character, His mercy, and His grace, you form false ideas and perceptions of who He is. It may even pervert your faith to fear.

Some believe God is mad at them -that He wants to strike them down or punish them with judgment or destruction because of something they’ve done wrong. In stead of drawing close to God in faith because of knowing His mercy and love, they are deceived into thinking every little thing going wrong in their life is God’s doing because He is mad at them. They fear Him and pull back from Him. Some believe that God made them sick to teach them a lesson or as a judgment for their sin. They have taken Satan’s attacks and destruction and attributed it to God. Now that’s a false and wrong perception. It will affect their faith. If they think God wants them sick, then they surely won’t look to Him for help or to minister healing to them.

Is a wrong perception of God stealing your faith? When you are going through a hard time, do you begin to wonder or doubt if God even cares or loves you, and wants to help you?

Today’s Fresh Manna verse says, “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones who cry out to Him day and night? Will He keep putting them off? I tell you, He will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” God makes it clear. The problem is not with Him. It boils down to this. Do we really know Him? Have we taken the time to know and become intimate with Him so that we do know of His mercy and goodness? Does that intimacy propel our faith? Or, has a wrong perception because of a lack of seeking and getting to know Him for who He really is stolen our faith? Seek Him! He loves you! He is with you! He wants to help you! As Heb 13:6 says, “So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?”

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2008 Tim Burt, All rights reserved.

Pt 2 “Why Is This Happening To Me God?”

by Pastor Tim Burt

Luke 24:49 Jesus said, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay…until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

We would love to all experience being so overpoweringly blessed that we would sit back in awe and say, “why me God?” “Why is this happening to me?” There are people that experience such blessing in their lives and really do ask that question. But we might be more familiar with the other side of that – calamity, destruction, heart-break, disappointment, and hurt prompting those words, “why me God?”

Most of the destruction and hurt that happens in our lives happens for three reasons. The first being because of poor choices we too often make overriding the warning of our heart. I counseled with a man who told me he did that very thing. He gave over to flirting with a woman that he thought would be harmless. It wasn’t. It led to an affair. He said he ignored every warning he felt and consequently destroyed his marriage and family. He asked the question, “why me God?” It really wasn’t about God’s doing. It was about his own choices. Jer 32:33 says it like this, “They turned their backs to Me and not their faces; though I taught them again and again, they would not listen or respond to warnings.”

The second reason for destruction and hurt that happens in peoples lives is because they have a wrong perception of who God is. Because of that wrong perception, they ignore God and never learn of Him or of His ways from His Word – the Bible. Thus, they carve out their own way of doing things violating His ways and opening the door to destruction in their life. For example, many people think its okay for people to have sex outside of marriage. They may be ignorant of God’s ways but that won’t stop the fallout of unplanned children or sexually transmitted diseases such as Gonorrhea, Chlamydia, Syphilis, Herpes, or others. Anyone who has ignored God and consequently ignored His boundaries has opened themselves up to the afflicting diseases and end up crying out, “Why me God?”

People that ignore God, lose the benefit of His love, His direction and instruction, and His supernatural help and power. People that make their own path most often lead themselves into in heart wrenching trouble. Isa 53:6 says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way…”

A third reason for much of the destruction and hurt that happens in people’s lives is because of ignorance of the enemy of their soul. They do know or believe in Satan. They do not know of his demonic assignment of hatred and destructive toward God’s creation – mankind. As I said yesterday, God’s Word tells us that Satan is the “father of all lies – there is no truth in him.” Jesus told us that Satan “is the thief that has come to kill, steal, and destroy.” Satan likes us to think he is a storybook character – not real. Most people actually do think he is make-believe. Satan loves that because then he pins the destructive that plagues mankind on God. And so the question comes, “why me God.”

Let me give you a dictionary definition of enemy. Enemy: One who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another; a foe. A hostile power or force, such as a nation. A member or unit of such a force. A group of foes or hostile forces. ‘That is your definition of Satan, his demonic force and his ways toward you. Eph. 6:11-12 says, “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies and tricks of the Devil. For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against those mighty powers of darkness who rule this world, and against wicked spirits in the heavenly realms.”

God has an answer to all this. It’s this. Come to know the enemy of your soul and how he works against you. You cannot defeat an enemy you do know exist. (Have you ever heard of termites?) Secondly, know that God has given you two things to defeat the enemy of your soul – power and authority. In Luke 10:19 Jesus said, “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” He was talking about taking authority over the destroyer in your life – the devil Satan.

I’ll leave you with the same promise that Jesus left his disciples with when He was teaching them these things. Luke 24:49 Jesus said, “I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay…until you have been clothed with power from on high.” You have an enemy but you have power over that enemy! Begin to recognize whether the enemy is yourself or the devil. If it’s you, pray for God’s grace to change. If it’s the devil, begin now to resist him in the name of Jesus. You will see a difference.

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2008 Tim Burt, All rights reserved

Why Is This Happening to Me God? by Pastor Tim Burt

Psa 37:39-40 “The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge in Him.”

“Why me God?” Have you ever heard anyone express that sentiment when going through a difficult or challenging time of adversity? It is a question that you yourself might have lifted up but forgotten. Over the years, I have tried to share insight into this question because it is a question that will continue to be asked until we are one day with the Lord.

Satan, who is a very real force in the earth, loves this question. I would imagine that if any one statement gave him extreme pleasure, it would be this statement. Why? Because it is usually asked when someone is feeling isolated and beaten up or persecuted by circumstances – forces unknown to them. Satan loves it because he knows that most people will somehow blame God – the very result he would hope for.

First of all, understand that every human being was created with an inward desire to know and understand God. Consequently, every human being goes on some kind of a soul search in their lifetime. People abandon faith in God when they wrongly understand or conclude who He is and what He is like. Although our human intellect is a wonderful God-given gift to help us observe and comprehend all that God has created, it has great limitations in its ability to see or understand spiritual truths. Only those who have given their life to Jesus Christ have been given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is He who reveals the things of God to our spirit. Those that don’t have Jesus can’t understand spiritual truths. There human intellect will not be able to help them in this regard. Let me explain further.

God gives us a capacity to understand things that are beyond the human intellect through our human spirit. But, that can only happen when there is a joining of our human spirit with the Holy Spirit of God. That happens when we give our lives to Jesus Christ. He then gives us His Holy Spirit who is the teacher of our human spirit. John 16:13 says, “But when the Holy Spirit comes, He will guide you into all truth.” It is through our spirit that we have the ability and capacity to comprehend and grasp the revealed truths of God that the human intellect cannot. Let’s look to God’s Word to see this truth.

1 Cor 2:11-14 “… no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Holy Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by His Holy Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the help of God’s Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

When people try to figure out God through human intellect and reasoning, they in a sense, create their own god. I say that because they shape Him in their minds to what they think He should be. I did that before I gave my life to Jesus. I spent the first twenty-three years of my life trying to figure out God. Your human intellect is not capable of doing so. Consequently, you will either make the wrong decision that there is no God, or you will ultimately create a version of God to your own liking – something that has happened worldwide throughout history and that Jesus Himself warned us would happen. Only God Himself has the right to tell us who He is and what His desire for us and this life is!

The devil, not God, loves the confusion that comes from people creating their own version of God and how He operates. Satan is the author of confusion. 1 Cor 14:33 says, “For God is not the author of confusion but of peace…” Keeping people confused about God through lies and deceits is Satan’s greatest triumph – although quite temporary!

Satan’s very nature and undermining power of God is the lie. Jesus revealed this in John 8:44 saying, “… for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” He lied to Adam and Eve to steal what God had for them in the Garden. He has been deceiving man every since. His first goal through deception is misleading people about who God is. Satan works to deceive people into believing that he does not exists but is only a fictional caricature of Halloween and horror movies only. He then deceives people into thinking that the evil that has attacked their life has come upon them from the hand of god.

Too many people that are experiencing hardship never really discover there is enemy of their soul that works to destroy their life. They think every evil, hurt, and mishap happens at the hand of God. Thus, when bad things happen to people, they ask the question, “Why me God,” as though it were God’s doing. Satan loves that. He works evil and God gets the blame!

What they don’t know is that God that is not the source of their problems. He gave us Jesus to be the solution to every situation and every need! We see it in today’s Fresh Manna promise. “The salvation of the righteous comes from the LORD; He is their stronghold in time of trouble. The LORD helps them and delivers them; He delivers them from the wicked and saves them, because they take refuge (have faith and believe in) Him.” Jesus is your hope, your help and your answer – not your problem. Cry out to Him.

Psalm 34:6-7 (NLT) “I cried out to the Lord in my suffering, and He heard me. He set me free from all my fears. For the angel of the Lord guards all who fear Him, and He rescues them.”

In His Love,
Pastor Tim Burt
http://readfreshmanna.blogspot.com/

Published by Pastor Tim Burt
Copyright© 2008 Tim Burt, All rights reserved