Am I living in Sunshine with the Lord?
Stand and lift up your bible and repeat after me.
This is my Bible.
I am what it says I am.
I can do what it says I can do.
I am going to learn how to be what it says I can be.
Today I will learn more of the word of God.
The indestructible, never ending, living word Of God.
I will never be the same.
I will never be the same.
In Jesus Name.
Good morning.
Let me ask you a question.
Are you living in the sunshine?
When I moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, I noticed something right away. I was driving down interstate 4 in Orlando and it was raining on one side of the road but not mine. A little different for me. I also noticed the sun a little more and noticed that it was brighter.
.
This is not a new thing. It is the way it has always been but I had never noticed.
The thing which I kept noticing was the sunshine. With me making a big change in my life by following the Lord’s direction after having a horrific couple of years go by, the sun looked different.
I remember visiting the east coast of the state the first week after I had moved there. The reason I went was to be on the beach before the sun rose. It was beautiful. The colors of the sky changed slowly as the sun slowly arose. It reminded me of a long time ago when I had awakened two days after having had a brain tumor removed. But this time it actually seemed brighter that it did then.
Why was that happening again?
A time of renewal for me?
God reminded me why. He was showing me a plan.
Please turn to Jeremiah chapter 29 and say, “Amen” when you are there.
Who was man this Jeremiah?
Jeremiah was a prophet. He also went through a lot of things in his life. He was imprisoned, threatened with death, and was persecuted for his faith but he kept going.
Jeremiah was a plain man who like many others in the Bible got called by God to serve Him.
Let us read this together.
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Whatever we are going through in our lives, He has a plan. He gives us free will to walk along in life however, He does know the outcome of our lives.
God directed Jeremiah to follow Him and develop a true relationship with Him.
Jeremiah 29:12 “Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.”
That goes for you and me.
We continually develop our relationship with the Lord. Just as Jeremiah was doing.
Jeremiah listened to God and did what He wanted. I don’t believe Jeremiah ended up in the exact direction he had hoped for in his life. He got to a point of realizing that God’s plan would always be better.
Here is a story for you that I read on God’s work email website.
APPLES
A few years ago, a group of salesmen went to a regional sales convention in Chicago. They had assured their wives that they would be home in plenty of time for Friday night's dinner.
In their rush, with tickets and brief-cases, one of these salesmen inadvertently kicked over a table which held a display of baskets of apples. Apples flew everywhere. Without stopping or looking back, they all managed to reach the plane in time for their nearly missed boarding. All but one. He paused, took a deep breath, got in touch with his feelings, and experienced a twinge of compassion for the girl whose apple stand had been overturned.
He told his buddies to go on without him, waved goodbye, told one of them to call his wife when they arrived at their home destination and explain his taking a later flight. Then he returned to the terminal where the apples were all over the terminal floor.
He was glad he did.
The young woman who had the stand was totally blind! She was softly crying, tears running down her cheeks in frustration, and at the same time helplessly groping for her spilled produce as the crowd swirled about her, no one stopping, and no one to care for her plight.
The salesman knelt on the floor with her, gathered up the apples, put them into the baskets, and helped set the display up once more. As he did this, he noticed that many of them had become battered and bruised; these he set aside in another basket.
When he had finished, he pulled out his wallet and said to the girl, "Here, please take this $20 for the damage we did. Are you okay?"
She nodded through her tears. He continued on with, "I hope we didn't spoil your day too badly."
As the salesman started to walk away, the bewildered blind girl called out to him, "Mister..." He paused and turned to look back into those blind eyes.
She continued, "Are you Jesus?"
He stopped in mid-stride, and he wondered. Then slowly he made his way to catch the later flight with that question burning and bouncing about in his soul: "Are you Jesus?"
Do people mistake you for Jesus?
That's our destiny, is it not? To be so much like Jesus that people cannot tell the difference as we live and interact with a world that is blind to His love, life and grace.
If we claim to know Him, we should live, walk and act as He would. Knowing Him is more than simply quoting Scripture and going to church.
It's actually living the Word as life unfolds day to day.
You are the apple of His eye even though we, too, have been bruised by a fall. He stopped what He was doing and picked you and me up on a hill called Calvary and paid in full for our damaged fruit.
Let us live like we are worth the price He paid.
Jeremiah 29:13 “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”
When I moved to Florida it was not just a new start for me but new beginning in my life. I am not young in body but I am young in heart.
Are you?
Would you like to be?
Let’s get started.
Turn with me again back to Jeremiah 29.
Are you there?
Say, “Amen”
Jeremiah 29:14 “I will be found by you, says the LORD, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the LORD, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive. “
You can be a captive of the Lord. You can be encouraged in every moment of life by putting Him as the priority.
The Lord of all will change your outlook on life. The sunshine will be brighter that you may have noticed before.
The sky will be clear and blue and the clouds will have shapes that mean something.
The colors of all that God has created will forever look differently even during the hard times.
Jeremiah was given a purpose in his life by putting the Lord first.
So are you and I. Go to Jeremiah 1:5 and say, “amen” when you are there.
This is what I want to end with. “I chose you before I formed you in the womb; I set you apart before you were born........”
Let us go to the Lord our God in prayer. Please stand with me.
