January 28, 2019 · 8:36 am

Do Our Personal Sins Hurt Our Neighbors? (Part 4)

How would you like to come back from a short honeymoon and discover another couple has moved into your apartment while you were gone?

Tony and Janelle already lived with us in our apartment because of health issues, but Rick and Marta then showed up, needing a place to stay for a time. We were all friends, but this was not exactly a love boat situation for us.

Carol and I were learning how to live with each other while also learning how to live with other people at the same time. And guess what? Proximity adds pressure, pressure becomes stress, and if the conditions are right, stress erupts.

A few days after our return, Carol arrived home from work to see me in a bad mood.

“Larry, what is your problem?” she said with concern on her face.

“I want to kill the other two couples.”

“That doesn’t sound very godly.”

“Well, God killed more people in the Old Testament than anyone else did. Thus, maybe, I’ll be acting as an agent of God by hanging the four of them.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Listen up, Honey, if you don’t get on your knees and repent, we will never have our own place. Think about that, okay?”

I mumbled something as she left the bedroom, but eventually I bowed down by the bed, praying until peace filled my heart about our situation.

“Lord, I give up. If You want us to live with other people, I will love them and be their servant to the best of my ability.”

My attitude changed right away. Dirty dishes left in the sink − no problem. I washed them. Food left on the counter − no problem. I put it away. Messy living room − no problem. I vacuumed and straightened everything up. Need groceries − no problem. I went out and bought them. Wrong TV channel − no problem. I changed channels.

This revelation dawned on me that day: if I am unhappy about something, I needed to shut up, and fix the problem. This was the only way to live in community with other believers without creating a bunch of laws, which all would end up hating and rebelling against.

This attitude especially helped us in our first three years of marriage because Carol and I lived with other people a little more than two thirds of the time.

(An excerpt from my memoir – The Hunt for Larry Who by Larry Nevenhoven, ©2014, Amazon eBook)

(Continued in Part 5…but if you want to read all the parts to date, you can go here.

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January 27, 2019 · 12:51 pm

Will Being Pro-Choice or Having an Abortion Keep Believers Out of Heaven?

Yesterday, I wrote about King David’s sin of adultery with Bathsheba. In the article, I gave my belief that if  there had been a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Jerusalem, David would have most likely sent Bathsheba there to have an abortion.

My reasoning was that if King David was willing to murder Uriah, a man he knew and respected, to hide his sin, wouldn’t he have more easily murdered a baby that he did not know?

Let’s keep in mind that adultery was an abomination to God and its punishment according to the Law was death to both participants. Murder, whether the victim was an adult or a baby, was also an abomination with the punishment being death.

So David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” And Nathan said to David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” (2 Samuel 12:13)

Although King David was guilty of adultery and murder, God forgave him because he asked for forgiveness. This is good news, but what’s even more remarkable is what the Lord said about King David a thousand years later –

For after David had done the will of God in his own generation, he died and was buried with his ancestors (Acts 13:36 NLT)

How could God look at King David’s life, which was filled with mistakes, including murder and adultery, and then declare that David had done God’s will for his life?

God looks at each individual’s life through a lens of grace. If a person sincerely repents of his sin, asks for forgiveness and then does his best not to commit that sin again, God will blot that sin out of the record books. It will be as if that person had never sinned at all.

What an amazing editing process God has for our life’s story if we humble ourselves before Him!

Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor (hate, detest, shudder with horror) what is evil. Cling to what is good. (Romans 12:9)

There will be those Christians who believe it’s okay to call oneself pro-choice in regards to abortion, but I totally disagree with them. I believe we as Christians are called to abhor, hate, detest, shudder with horror at the sin of murdering babies. I see no neutral position, which would allow us to hide behind a politically correct label, just to save face with our friends.

Thus, if Christians are pro-choice, then they are really pro-abortion. Period.

Okay, what if believers have called themselves pro-choice or have had an abortion, what can they do? They can do the same thing King David did: sincerely repent, ask for forgiveness and do their best not to commit that sin again.

But what if believers refuse to repent of calling themselves pro-choice or having an abortion?

They will have a conversation with Jesus at the Judgment Seat of Christ and they will suffer loss, but will still hold onto their salvation.

 Pastor Mike Bickle tells of the vision he had about standing before Jesus at the Judgment Seat of Christ. In it, the Lord looked at Bickle and said, “You are saved, but your life was wasted.”

Bickle said he broke down weeping and travailing in tears before the Lord who said nothing else to him. When Bickle finally awakened from the vision, his t-shirt was soaking wet from his tears.

Eventually, the Holy Spirit spoke to Bickle’s heart: “This is a conversation you never want to have with the Lord.”

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January 26, 2019 · 10:37 am

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 7)

Abortion

King David was restless that early spring night as he walked out onto the palace’s roof. He looked over the waist high wall at the roof’s edge, taking in the sights and sounds of Jerusalem. His eyes stopped scanning about when he glanced down into his neighbor’s courtyard.

There below him was a beautiful woman bathing herself. He noticed every luscious curve on her body. Even when she finished her bath and he returned to his bedroom, he couldn’t think about anything else but that woman.

The next morning, forty-seven year old King David asked one of his lieutenants, “Who’s the beautiful woman next door?”

“Oh, I think her name is Bathsheba,” the man replied. “She’s the daughter of one of your mightiest men of valor – Eliam, the granddaughter of your wisest chief counselor – Ahithophel and married to a captain in your army – Uriah.”

Each of these men were important to David, but he ignored them, thinking only of his sexual desire for Bathsheba. Sadly, he acted on the one thought crossing his mind at the time: Bathsheba was home alone because Uriah was away fighting against the Ammonites.

He sent messengers to her with a special dinner invitation at his palace.

Bathsheba showed up at the appointed hour. They ended up committing adultery and she returned to her house.

A few weeks later, Bathsheba sent a short note to King David, saying, “I am with child.”

King David was a student of the Torah. So, he knew the Law required the death penalty for the sin of adultery for both participants. Then King David set in place a scheme to hide their sin, but it didn’t work. Finally, he ended up having her husband, Uriah, murdered in a battle with the Ammonites.

But what if?

What if there had been a Planned Parenthood Clinic in Jerusalem at the time? Would this have been an option for King David?

There’s no doubt in my mind that King David would have quickly used abortion as an answer to his dilemma. After all, he ended up murdering a just man he knew to hide his sin. So, most certainly, he would have been willing to murder a baby he did not know instead.

Today, abortion is the answer to one of society’s oldest problems: unwanted pregnancies.

“Abortion teaches a woman to kill in order to handle her problem.” (Mother Teresa)

(Continued in Part 8…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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January 24, 2019 · 10:38 am

Prayers for Families (1/24/2019)

When Jesus returned to Nazareth with His disciples and taught in the local synagogue, His neighbors were astonished at His wisdom and understanding and said, “Isn’t He a carpenter? Isn’t He the son of Mary?”

Both of these statements were putdowns.

By saying Jesus was a carpenter, they inferred that He had no formal theological training under a rabbi. So, how could people pay attention to His words without a proper resume?

And son of Mary? By not referring to Him as the son of Joseph, the people alluded to the rumors that Jesus was an illegitimate son.

Jesus looked at the crowd and said, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” (Mark 6:4 NLT)

Shouldn’t Jesus’ family have honored Him? They had watched Him grow up into being a strong man of faith and saw His godly wisdom displayed over and over again. And He most likely supported His family by being a carpenter after Joseph’s death.

Plus, Joseph and Mary would have told their family about Jesus’ birth, the shepherds, the star, the three wisemen, the prophetic words by Simeon and Anna, Joseph’s visions and more.

Yet, with all of this, Jesus’ family did not honor Him during His earthly ministry.

My prayer today:

Lord, help us to love and honor our families on their good days, on their bad days, on the days when we haven’t a clue about why they’re doing something or whatever because You love families and consider Your children a heavenly family for You. (Based on Ephesians 3:15)

Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for our families.

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January 23, 2019 · 11:12 am

Do Our Personal Sins Hurt Our Neighbors? (Part 3)

God tests our hearts to reveal to us what is in them, but just so you know, it’s usually not a good report.

This was especially true about my heart during a 1995 experience. That particular day I had been sitting alone in my apartment, reading a biography about the faith and healing pioneer, John G. Lake. As I turned the pages and read how God continually provided for Lake’s needs, it dawned on me — my life really sucks right now. Where was the God who was supposed to be my provider?

At the time, I owed thousands of dollars to numerous creditors, most of my friends had dropped me like a hot potato, the woman who I thought would be my wife didn’t want to see me and my kitchen cupboard was bare. I was lonely, broke, hungry and angry.

I laid the book down and stood up. “God if You’re such a big God,” I said, “how come You can’t help me with my problems right now? Maybe Your arm is not as strong as it was a hundred years ago. Is that Your problem?”

I sat down, quite satisfied with the way I confronted God. I picked up the book to continue my reading.

Then, all of a sudden, the Holy Spirit burst into the room in His holiness and power. His Presence blanketed me. I dropped the book and fell on my knees. “O Lord, don’t kill me! Don’t kill me! Forgive me! Forgive me! Please don’t kill me!” I said over and over again.

In the midst of my  plea bargaining, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. “If I wanted to, I could deliver you from all of your problems in a blink of My eye.”

“O Lord,” I whispered, “I believe You and will never doubt You again.”

The Holy Spirit’s heavy presence lifted off me.

How many are my iniquities and sins? Make me know my transgression and my sin. (Job 13:23)

It was the love of God that showed up in my room that day to reveal my transgression (or rebellion) to me. I still treasure that experience.

(Continued in Part 4…but if you want to read all the parts to death, you can go here.

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January 22, 2019 · 1:30 pm

Prayers for California to Wake up (1/22/2019)

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to Timothy in 63 AD, encouraging him and the churches to pray, intercede and give thanks for all men, but especially for their government leaders so that the believers might lead quiet and peaceable lives.

The main government leader at the time was Emperor Nero, head of the Roman Empire.

What happened next?

A great fire broke out in Rome in 64 AD, destroying great portions of the city. Nero laid much of the blame on Christians and hunted them down. Horrific tortures were inflicted on Christians with thousands of believers being martyred. Paul, himself, was beheaded by Nero in 67 AD.

But guess what?

Christianity grew and became stronger during these four years of heavy persecution, which ended in 68 AD, at Nero’s death.

Just think for a moment: Paul and the believers prayed, interceded and gave thanks for Nero during this cruel time period, hoping for peace. Yet, it took four years for their prayers to produce peace in the Roman Empire. Four years until their breakthrough!

This should give California believers hope!

The newly installed California government is not a Christian-friendly one nor can we expect Bible-based laws to be enacted in the days ahead. But let’s follow Paul’s exhortation by giving thanks, intercessions, supplications and prayers for the following government leaders, believing that God will have His way in California:

Governor Gavin Newsom.

Lt. Governor Eleni Tsakopoulos Kounalakis

Attorney General Xavier Becerra

President Pro Tempore of California Senate Toni Atkins

Majority Leader of California Senate Robert Hertzberg

Minority Leader of California Senate Patricia Bates

Speaker of California Assembly Anthony Rendon

Speaker Pro Tempore of California Assembly Kevin Mullins

Majority Leader of California Assembly Ian Calderon

Republican Leader of California Assembly Marie Waldron

US Senator Kamala Harris

US Senator Dianne Feinstein

Speaker of US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi

US House Representative Maxine Walters

My prayer today:

Lord, raise up a hundred thousand believers who will make a commitment to pray according to 1 Timothy 2:1-2 for our government leaders on a regular basis, believing You will have Your way in our state.

Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for California and the West Coast.

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January 21, 2019 · 10:14 am

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 6)

Global Warming

Two years after his An Inconvenient Truth documentary hit the movie theaters in 2006, former Vice President Al Gore spoke at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta.  “Global warming is not a political issue,” Gore told a crowd of approximately 2,500 paying attendees. “It is a moral issue. It is an ethical issue. It is a spiritual issue.”

Gore repeated his views that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere was causing a global climate crisis. He used four Bible verses to justify his spiritual issue assertion:

Then He also said to the multitudes, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is.55 And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is.56 Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time? 57 “Yes, and why, even of yourselves, do you not judge what is right? (Luke 12:54-57)

“The evidence is there,” Gore said. “The signal is on the mountain. The trumpet has blown. The scientists are screaming from the rooftops. The ice is melting. The land is parched. The seas are rising. The storms are getting stronger. Why do we not judge what is right?”

Robert Parham, the executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics referred to Gore as a Baptist prophet and added, “Prophets are unacceptable because their truth is inconvenient.”

Jesus said that we should judge prophets by their fruit. So let’s do that, okay?

First, if Al Gore is a true prophet, the truths he proclaimed in his ground-breaking documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, should be accurate. Are they?

Not really. Almost all of his predictions have failed so far. A judge in England went so far as to demand that nine untruths in the documentary be changed or a syllabus provided for the teachers, in order for the documentary to be shown in the nation’s school classrooms. Gore and his group caved in and provided a syllabus. Others have suggested even more errors than just nine.

Second, money, and lots of it.

Gore earns between $100,000 and $150,000 per speech. His wealth is estimated at almost $300 million dollars. Although his royalty earnings from his books and film projects are pledged to his nonprofit, Climate Reality Project, he has successfully leveraged himself as a climate activist and received invitations to be involved in numerous lucrative deals over the years.

Third, scriptural justification.

Gore’s use of Luke 12:54-57 to justify his spiritual issue assertion has nothing to do with his theories on global warming. He could just as well have used, “Balaam rose up in the morning and saddled his ass” because it’s just as meaningless to his cause as the verses in Luke. 

Fourth, hypocrisy.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha and other prophets of God, not only preached what Israel needed to do to avoid calamitous judgments, they also lived in the righteous ways they expected others to follow.

But a critic of Gore said, “Al’s a limousine liberal, a tiresome pedant and climate alarmist who lives a jet-setting, carbon-profligate lifestyle while preaching asceticism for everyone else.” He lives in an oceanfront six-bedroom, $8.9-million villa — the exact place where he predicted the water would rise twenty feet when the ice in Antartica melts.

Okay, is Al Gore a prophet?

Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. (Matthew 24:11)

I believe Gore’s fruit shows that he is a false prophet on global warming. And if he is the point man who is at the forefront of the global warming movement throughout the world, what can we say about the others who are following him? At the least, I believe they are deceived and at the worst they are also false prophets and maybe even greedy hucksters.

It’s my opinion that God is still in control of the weather and that the global warming movement is an anti-God money scam.

You, of course, need to make up your own mind.

(Continued in Part 6…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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January 19, 2019 · 9:29 am

Do Our Personal Sins Hurt Our Neighbors? (Part 2)

 

As I wrote in Part 1: the word sin means “missing the mark,” as an archer’s arrow misses its target. One of our most common sins is fear.

The following is a true story from my life:

“If you can’t pay the truck payments up to date by Monday afternoon, bring us the truck. No more stalling because it has to be one or the other,” said the Ford Motor Credit official.

I hung up the phone, wondering if the Lord had another financial miracle in His basket to deliver me out of this predicament.

The new Ford F-150 pickup became a part of my life just five days before that dreadful morning on July 8, 1994. A special offer to businessmen lured me into the Ford dealership in Ames and the zero down payment financing sealed the deal. The dealership even filled the dual tanks with gas before I drove off the sales lot. What a blessing, I thought at the time.

Then, my financial nightmare hit.

The $300 monthly truck payment and insurance expenses added millstone weights to my downward death spiral. On the one hand, I needed the truck to remain a painting contractor so I could earn enough money to pay off my bad checks and painting debts. Yet, on the other hand, there never seemed to be enough money left over from my painting jobs for truck payments.

I eventually trusted the Lord to work out all of my other financial problems, and even had peace about each of them, but the Ford F-150 was a different story. I could not remove the nagging fear of losing it. It haunted me day and night.

The truck payments were ninety days late four times in the year after July 8, 1994. My problem was not an imaginary fear, but rather, a real one. I awoke each morning and looked out the window, checking if the truck still remained outside in the parking lot or had been repossessed during the night.

A friend grabbed my shoulder one morning during a prayer meeting, turning me around to face her.

“The Lord spoke to me about you, and said the cares of the world are pulling Larry under,” she said, staring into my eyes.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s the truck. I can’t quit worrying about it. Pray for me.”

She prayed, but I still had no peace about the situation.

I fasted and prayed against every possible demon. I read Psalm 37 and countless other scriptures to bolster my faith, but still, the fear of losing the truck sucked every bit of joy out of my life.

The Lord finally spoke to me in a vision while I slept one night: “The truck is Mine −not yours. It is My responsibility to watch over it. If I choose to give it back to Ford Motor Company, that’s up to Me, and not you. So, quit worrying about it.”

My fears evaporated that morning. Why worry about someone else’s problems, right?

Ford Motor Company repossessed the truck six months later. I washed, waxed, and cleaned it before returning it to the dealership. It was the Lord’s truck and I wanted Him to know how much I appreciated driving it.

(An excerpt from my memoir – The Hunt for Larry Who by Larry Nevenhoven, ©2014, Amazon eBook)

(Continued in Part 3…but if you want to read all the parts to death, you can go here.

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January 17, 2019 · 11:28 am

Prayers for Families (1/17/2019)

At Thanksgiving, we love to see those advertisements with a happy family sitting around a big table enjoying their turkey feast and fellowshipping with each other. This is a part of our American tradition where families love to get together, especially during the holidays.

But what about dysfunctional families?

A friend recalls his childhood family experiences with horror. His mom adored his older brother, but from his earliest years onward, he can only remember his mom’s contempt for him. She would punish him for the smallest infractions by spanking him always hard enough to make him cry. Then she would continue spanking him until he would quit crying. A no-win situation for a four or five year old child.

“You will never amount to anything in your life!” his mom proclaimed to him over and over again.

And guess what?

His brother grew up to be a wealthy businessman, but my friend was always in trouble. First, in elementary school and then later on as a juvenile delinquent. At 18 years of age, my friend forged a check for ten dollars. The judge sentenced him to ten years in prison for his crime.

His mom never once wrote him a letter or visited him while he was in prison.

When I first met my friend, he was thirty-five years old and had spent half his life in prison. He had become a Christian, had joined a church once, had been on fire for the Lord, but the church had treated him poorly. So, as you can imagine, my friend had trust issues.

I prayed over him once and had a quick vision. In it, I saw him sitting on a cot in a prison cell. He was weeping buckets of tears as he faced a brick wall. The vision panned outward, revealing that the prison door was wide open. All he had to do was stand up, turn around and walk out the door to his freedom.

To this day, my friend is still sitting in bondage to his childhood past.

This is an extreme example, but there are thousands of others that are much, much worse.

My prayer today:

Lord, send Your Spirit to bring Good News to families and their members, to proclaim liberty to any captives, to open blind eyes and free those who might be suffering from ill treatment by their families. (Based on Luke 4:18)

Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for our families.

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January 16, 2019 · 10:32 am

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 5)

 

Global Warming

As a reminder: let’s look once again at what God said to the prophet Isaiah –

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Isaiah 46:10 NKJV)

These words were so important that He repeated them here and here.

Thus, if God was able to look into the future when He set the foundations of the earth, do you really think He would have given humans enough power – good or bad – to destroy the earth? Is the One who fixed the stars, sun and moon in the heavens and also created the earth and all of its organisms so naive to overlook any important point like this?

Of course not!

From the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, only Joshua, Elijah and Jesus have affected climate conditions so far.

Joshua asked God to have the sun and moon stand still so he could finish his nation’s battle with the Amorites.

And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the LORD heeded the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel. (Joshua 10:14)

Elijah walked into King Ahab’s court and said, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, there shall be no rain or dew in Israel for the next few years unless I give it the word.”

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain…And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit. (James 5:17-18)

Jesus and His disciples sailed in a fishing boat across the Sea of Galilee to the opposite side. Jesus fell asleep. A massive tempest arose, causing large waves to wash over the boat. The disciples feared for their lives and awakened Him. Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and waves. The storm immediately ceased and the sea was calm.

Jesus looked at them and said, “Where is your faith?”

And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!” (Mark 4:41)

Now, in the end-times, the two witnesses who will prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days just before Jesus returns will be able to control some climate conditions.

The two witnesses have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy… (Revelation

Yes, mankind’s sins have caused droughts and climate problems over a single nation, but it has not been a global phenomenon since the great flood nor will it be again until God cleanses the earth with fire.

So, what’s the real problem with global warming?

(Continued in Part 5…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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