Ok, so, I am driving down the road to bring my daughter to dinner for her birthday and see this billboard sign and it catches my attention. Understand that most signs don’t because they are terrible, but this one is a white sign and on one side says LUST and the other side says LOVE in red letters with the words “I am second” in white on a black patch in the center with the website www.iamsecond.com in the corner. I struck me because I really didn’t know what it was about and yet it was drawing me. I did not know then, but I know now that it was my spirit was that was drawing me to this sign.

It is a day later and I am at my computer and I remember this sign and go to the website. It is also plain, but it has a person on the right and a statement “I am second,” that you can click which takes you to a video of them speaking. Well, I was not prepared to hear the amazing testimonies of how God has changed these peoples lives and then to have them declare that they are second or say at the end “I am second” to God. I sat there and listened to several of them. The one I liked the most is the one from Stephen Baldwin where his cleaning lady told his wife she was not there to just clean the house but because they would become Christians and have a ministry. This is an amazing website. You have to check it out.

And it got me to thinking about how I am second. God is in control of my life and Jesus is Lord of my life and I am happily second to them. I can remember a time before them when I was living for me and how lust and pornography got me into trouble with the law on multiple occasions and was leading me down a very bad path. But God got a hold of me and shook me up because he has a plan and a ministry for me down the road. He has had many people like that maid tell me that God has things in store and for a while like Stephen I ran. But I am not running away from God anymore. On July 12, 1992, in a little church in upstate New York I made Jesus lord of my life. And then several years later, while having Jesus as lord, but still trying to be the one in control, I gave everything over to him and told him that I made a mess of things and that if he could do anything with this life it was his. Since then, he has moved me to Texas and given me a great job. He continues to inspire me in writing and also is developing some interesting contacts. I know that God has great things in store and I am excited. But the coolest thing is that I don’t have to worry about one thing. I just get to enjoy the ride because God is in control and “I am second.”

Sometimes you really think you understand something then you learn a new concept about it that kind of blows you away. Take a look at what I recently learn about what part of what being a prophet is about.

Most people when they think of a prophet think of the person who sees the future or sees into a person with divine inspiration and speaks about what they see for the building up and edification of the person or the body of Christ. However, not all that the prophet sees is for the body and this is what I recently learned.

Not long ago, I saw a vision that I knew was from God. This vision had the picture of many people in danger that I knew were traveling. I began to pray and I could not shake the feeling that the danger was not going away. I got my wife and we prayed together and eventually the feeling went away. Later, I discovered that at the time we were praying together, the van, which was pulling a trailer, had jack-knifed on icy roads and was about to plummet off of a bridge and into a frozen river. The people in the van and the van following them said that the hand of God reached down and picked them up and placed them back on the road because nothing they did saved them. I realized that it was not my prayer that did it, but it was God and that God sent me the vision not for me but so that I would pray so that he could move to save them.

When we pray, angels move in the spirit realm. A prophet will often times see into the spirit realm and see the ebbs and tides of things happening and needs to know that is his or her cue to pray and not there cue to run to the nearest mountaintop and proclaim how great they are that they heard from God. I have made that mistake many times in the past and hope that I have learned and grown from it so that in the future, I can pray effectively and accomplish much.

The more that I am praying and thinking about Love the more God is showing me about His love and the more I am being amazed. Let me share with you how he has amazed me today as I was praying in the spirit.

The Bible tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8) and that the greatest of all things is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). Today, I was thinking about how God’s love works through us. Since God is love, that means that all things work through the love of God or stated another way everything that God does he does through love. In 1 Corinthians chapter 13, we see many things that love does like being patient or being kind or enduring all things. As I thought about this, I began to see the last verse in a new light.

Now, I could be wrong, but I began to see the first part of this verse as applications of what we do with the last part of this verse which is the greatest thing which is God or God’s love. Let me put it this way, as stated everything that God does he does through love and when we apply our hope or faith or love in him he moves through his love to perform a great work or miracle. It is our working in our hope, faith and love that makes God’s love, again the greatest of all things, move into action to work many things in our lives which include the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

And many more acts of God. This thought process just amazed me that through the moving of our hope, our faith and our love in God, God moves through himself or more precise his love to act on our behalf to see things done and mountains moved. In my mind, this connects the following Scriptures together with what I have stated above.

WOW!! This excites me. I hope it brings a little of God’s love and excitement to you today as well.

No matter how many times I have read the easter story, there is always something new there. Last night during our family Bible study, I was struck by the last words that Jesus gave as instruction to the apostles before leaving to go to the garden where he would pray and be arrested.

At the end of the supper, Jesus tells his disciples that he will only be with them a very short while and where he is going they can not follow. It is here that Peter says he will go wherever Jesus goes even to death and Jesus tells him that he will deny him three times before the rooster crows signaling the morning. He also give them this message.

Jesus, being the son of God, knew two things. First it would be by showing love that people would see that we are true disciples of Christ and second that people don’t need more “gods” or rulers or commanders or people yelling at them or bullies or anything else they need more love. And God has love us with a perfect love that can so fill us and make us whole and accepted and full and righteous and needed. This is what Jesus knew we needed and why it is so important that we never forget this when we are in the world sharing with a hurting world that has plenty of rulers, gods, bullies and the like but is severely lacking people who genuinely are sharing love, that love that can only come from God.

God is so good. God has been speaking to me through my daily devotions. It is a book that was written years ago and the devotions for today were the ones I just happen to be doing for today, but of course God is in control and knows what he is doing and is speaking to me through them. Let me share about what God showed me last night.

Even though I know exactly where my errors where and where the errors of others were in what happened to cause me to wind up where I am, I still have had the feeling like I have falling out of grace and back to square one somehow. Like somehow while I am on the track for God and the calling on my life, I managed to have to go all the way back to the beginning to start all over again which is honestly depressing. Well, last night, the Scripture for the devotion was from 1 Peter chapter 5.

Verse 10 really hit home for me. God really spoke to me because all I did while I was at that church was to serve God to the best of my ability and tried to humble myself and be submissive. And yet, no matter what I did, I was met with scorn and I suffered and suffered. So, when I read this and got to verse 10, the words just jumped off of the page especially concerning the fact that God himself will perfect me, confirm me, strengthen me and establish me. After all, my calling is not of my doing anyway and therefore it is of no surprise that it is God who will do the confirming and establishing. Furthermore, none of this is a surprise to him and none of this has effected his plan for my life. Again, I broke down to tears, but thanked the Lord for his word and his hand over my life and just prayed in the spirit confident that God is perfecting me, confirming me, strengthening me, and establishing me.

INTRODUCTION

This week God has totally blown me away and I am even more amazed at him then I have been in the past. A good friend of mine totally reflected the love, grace, mercy and image of Christ to me that I am bursting at the seams to share what he did with you. However, before I can explain what happened and how God moved in my life, allow me to back up and explain the situation that happened. Beginning with a very relevant vision that God gave me a couple of weeks ago.

TRUST HIM

I was standing on a Spanish galleon (ship like the ones used in Pirates of the Caribbean) with my wife there and Jesus. We were in the middle of a terrible storm and I was asking Jesus to calm the storm. He then told me that I needed to climb up to the Crow’s Nest (a platform usually near the top of the main mast for seeing greater distance). I told him that I would be glad to AFTER he calmed the storm because the ship was being tossed back and forth with water coming over the bow and intensely hard rain and wind. Jesus told me that I needed to go to the Crow’s Nest. I looked up and saw the very wet rope ladder that existed between me and the Crow’s Nest and thought to myself that there was no way I could make it. Jesus speaking as if he had read my mind told me to trust him and that I could make it. I looked back at my wife and then began to climb the rope ladder. A couple of times I lost my footing or one of my hands slipped, but eventually I made it to the top. As I stood there, Jesus joined me. Here smiled and pointed off towards what I assumed to be west and could see a rapidly approaching clearing that overtook us having us sail on calm seas. The storm was gone as if it had never happened. Jesus then told me that I was going through the storm and the trial in preparation. He would not say what the preparation was for. And then the vision ended.

AND?

I am sure you are wondering how this relates to what happened. Over the past several months, my family has been waging a war in our finances. I will spare you the full details; however, I can testify to the fact that on many occasions the enemy stole money from us. How did he do this you might ask, the answer is very simple. He caused things to happen that were outside of the normal and expected which caused us loss. For example, my wife and I both separately looked at the bank online and verified that everything had cleared the bank and a positive balance was left. We then, knowing that my deposit went in soon, made some arrangements to have items paid using the balance from the checkbook coupled with my paycheck. Well, two things went wrong here. First, the arrangements went through the bank before my deposit, which is really not supposed to happen. Second, and more critical, the online statement that both my wife and I checked and double checked had an adding error in it that when it was corrected, we didn’t have the money we thought we would. If you then add strategic banking (the concept where the bank will put through all the big stuff first and then the little stuff so that if something is to go into the overdraft, it will have several little items and garner greater fees), we lost a bunch of money. If things like that were not bad enough, the enemy then throws in electric bills that are almost double (mostly due to rate hikes, which we are looking into switching about) and car troubles (and of course this would happen to be something out of warranty) and you begin to get the picture of the war we have waged. However, in each and every case, we praised God to the best of our ability knowing that he would see us through.

TITHES AND OFFERINGS

Many people have informed us in both nice and not so nice terms that our belief on this subject is wrong. However, my belief on tithing and offering seems to be what the Bible supports and that is what is important. Each time I am to get a paycheck, I immediately get a money order for the tithe and set that aside until Sunday when I can put it in the offering. Then I pray to God asking him what he would like me to give as an offering. A couple of times it has not been anything and several times it has been a large amount. Whatever God tells me to offer, I give that Sunday in the offering designating it as the Lord leads. My belief has its root in Malachi chapter 3.

I do not want to be under a curse and I certainly do not want to rob God, but God clearly says that in verse 8 that in answer to how can we rob him was in both the tithes and offerings. I know many people have different interpretations on this, but I simply went to God and got the following revelation. Giving your tithe out of all your income (and this is on what you get paid not what you take home) is a command and this just gives you membership into God’s Reward Zone. However, to really activate the rewards, we have to make deposits into the Reward Zone account and these are the offerings above and beyond the tithe. Please do not get me wrong, I am not advocating that we give to get a reward. We should give for the sole reason that we love God and want to follow his command. That said, God does say that when we give he opens the floodgates of heaven. Giving offerings is not a command and one can easily ignore it, but I really believe that to get the full potential of the blessings of God we need to be offering above the tithe as well. I believe this concept is revealed in the book of Mark.

If the poor widow was giving out of her poverty and it was all she had to live on, then she was offering above and beyond the tithe and yet Jesus himself made a point of singling her out. This was not to admonish her, but to point out that from God’s point of view it was more important to him that she gave so much.

A CALL FOR PRAYER

Being in this position and realizing that it was as much a spiritual attack as it was anything else, I did what any Christian would do. I followed the scriptures.

I put out and email for prayer explaining my situation to my close friends. I also put out an email to many I know just asking for prayer. I got some interesting responses, but there was one that really reflected the image of Jesus Christ that I just have to share what he did.

REFLECTING JESUS CHRIST

I have a good friend named Kevin (a mighty man and brother in Christ) who lives about a four-hour drive from me. Because he is my closest friend, I sent him a detail email asking him for prayer. Specifically, I asked him to pray on my behalf and ask God if there was anything that I might be missing. His response email honestly shocked me so much that I just stared at it praising and thanking God for what must have been a good ten or more minutes. Allow me to share an excerpt from his email.

After my shock wore off, I emailed him back and then we got on the phone together and determined the best way to get the money to me was in cash so that I would not lose it immediately to some fees at my bank (my account is negative). What we had come up with was to meet half way between here (Dallas-Fort Worth Texas) and his home in near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Since gas was a concern, Kevin’s wife, Kim (a mighty woman in Christ), suggested meeting in Gainesville, TX. My wife and I sold some of our DVDs to get the gas money and were off to meet my friend. I was excited for two reasons, first God had answered our prayers and second I was going to get to see my friend for a while.

We met at the Gainesville Factory Outlet Shopping center for all of you who may know where that is. My family and I arrived first and my three year old immediately saw the little playground they had there. As my friend arrived, I could just feel the love of God emanating from his presence and it made me praise God all the more. This man is a great friend, but he is not overflowing in wealth (yet). He has a wife and son and yet took the time to drive two and a half hours one way to bring us some much needed money following what God told him to do. I tell you the truth when I say that Kevin is truly a man after the heart of God because many of us would like to think we would do that, but when the moment comes and God says to go, we back down and don’t. I praise God for Kevin and Kim in our lives.

Well, if I was amazed at my friend’s unwavering faith and submission to God to get us the money, I was blown away by the fact that he also bought my family dinner at Applebee’s and filled my car with gas. He told me that these were non-negotiable parts of the deal and to be honest I just kept praising God for all that he was doing. At one point, I almost burst into tears, but I held my manly composure. Not that I needed too, but it is a guy thing.

Kevin handed me enough cash to make it until my next payday and carry my family through this rough patch. Of course, we are not completely out of the woods yet, but when God shows himself so strong like this it is a lot easier to face what is left to come. When all was said and done, Kevin spent close to three hours with us helping us in more ways then he might be aware of and I praise God for him and call down blessings a hundred fold on him and his family.

SCRIPTURE

There were several scriptures already mentioned, but I wanted to highlight one in particular.

Kevin did not just read this word, but he wrote it on his heart and more importantly followed God in putting this verse into action. God gives us money to live on and to share with others. That sharing could be helping a fellow brother or sister in Christ or it could be buying a homeless man a meal and sharing Jesus with him. However it is used, it is to be used for the glory of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Kevin reflected the heart and desire of Christ by following what God told him both in the scriptures and in prayer. I thank and praise God for men like him.

CONCLUSION

Walking the Christian walk is not always easy, but it truly is the best and we walk it with God at our side. God tells us that he works all of his plans for our good. I encourage you to reflect Jesus today just like Kevin did by following whatever God is laying on your heart to do. He will never forsake you and the rewards are literally eternal.

Until Next Time,

I want to thank the great guys over at My Life Ministries (http://mylifeministries.org/) for encouraging me and hosting this blog. If you haven’t done so yet, hop over to http://mylifeministries.org/ and take a look around. Join the forums and become part of the family.

Also, if you have a testimony, email it to me at testify {at} fireknights {dot} net. I would love to hear it and I may just post it here on the blog.