If you are not a Christian, I pray that you will read this with an open mind and evaluate your own beliefs and do your own research on Christianity and the Bible. Our faith is not a blind faith. There is plenty of evidence and validation and I encourage you to seek it.

First off, I want to make clear that I am not writing this with the intent of condemning anyone. I genuinely care about the issue of homosexuality and the people who live the gay lifestyle. If I didn’t care I would not be saying anything. Everything in me wants to stay silent about this. I want to fit in with the “Christian community”, and have avoided speaking out about homosexuality because I don’t want that stigma attached to me when people look at me or think of me. But I’ve realized I can’t do something so incredibly selfish. I’ve lived a gay lifestyle, and God poured out His grace on me to show me the truth, and I am obligated to share that truth with others. (Click to Read More…)

Strength to the weary and power to the weak. Man I could use some of that! Couldn’t you? We all struggle with the same issues, we all face the same fears. Yes some have it better, some have it worse, but they are all the same problems. We are not good enough, we don’t have the energy, we can’t find the energy to continue to fight, basically  we don’t have enough of what we need, and too much of what we don’t! So we feel like we are drowning, we feel like we are in over our heads, and out of control. You know what? That is OK. There is an old saying: if you think you are crazy, then you are not crazy, because if you were crazy you would think you were normal. Believe me that is a very true statement. I have seen it first hand. The same can be said about our spiritual struggles. When we are aware that we are struggling, when we are painfully aware that we feel like we are failing, then you can bet that you are not. You are simply being reminded that it is time to get back to the Lord. It is when those around you can see you spiraling out of control, and you think that life is just great, that you need to worry! It is during these time of struggle that we need to remember this scripture. You need strength? You need more power, not enough go-go juice to get through the day? Ask for it! Of course it takes a little more than that, it takes faith. Like I so often say, when you pray for rain, you better carry an umbrella. If you ask for the strength to make it through, you have to have the faith that He will deliver. You have to KNOW that God is there for you. So if you want the strength, expect the strength, and second, you have to give Him what you want to get rid of. If you want room for the blessing, you have to make room. You have to throw out some of the junk you are holding on to…..like that anger, that frustration, that impatience. Le tit go. And I do mean let it go. Give it to God, and turn it loose. You can’t ask Him to fix something, then keep your hands on it. You have to trust that HE will take your problems, and give you the strength to carry on. Take the blessing, leave the pain. Yes it is hard to do. It is hard to believe that something in your life can be fixed without you right in the middle of it, but it can. God has put things in place that are in the process of taking care of you. Will you get out of the way to let Him work? God is ready with a full fuel cell for your spirit, will you make the room for it in your heart?  HE has the strength and the power waiting in the wings, waiting for you to ask, and expect it. Take it, and leave the other.

God Bless,

Brian Thetford

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www.thenewcovenantchurch.com

www.theworkweekwithchrist.blogspot.com

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.

You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.

You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?

If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”

even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”

- Psalm 139:1-16

Scott Hescht
Psalm 22 Ministries
Psalm22.net
LifeSpringFamily.org

So here Jesus is desiring to be alone and the crowds had followed Him. Jesus had every right to ask for “a little me time”. The Bible says though, that He had compassion on them. That is amazing! Even with a death in the family, Jesus still took time to heal the sick. Later that evening, His disciples wanted to send the crowd away. Jesus said that there was no need. He decided that they were going to feed them as well; all 5,000 – 10,000 people! After Jesus met their needs, He went away to pray.

Oh how I want to be like Jesus! He ministered to others spiritually and physically, many times to His own detriment. We are Christ’s ambassadors, created for good works. We have the privilege to bring the Kingdom to the hearts of people through the gospel message and to give a glimpse of that kingdom through mercy and compassion. My hope is that we not allow anything to stand in the way of that; namely ourselves.

Scott Hescht
Psalm 22 Ministries
Psalm22.net
LifeSpringFamily.org

There is a reason why God used Paul. It was for people like me, perhaps like yourself. You see Paul was not always Paul, he was at one time Saul. While Paul was a great man who gave his entire life to spreading the Word of God, Saul……well he gave his entire life to killing the Word of God, and anyone who would profess the be a follower of Christ. What Saul was, Paul was not. As a matter of fact they were the polar opposite of each other. I need that, maybe you do to. I need to see that Christ can impact your life on such a deep level that you can make the change that you thought was impossible……better yet, you can make the change that others thought was impossible. That my friends is the power of Jesus Christ, that is the power of the truth…..it is the power of our souls. I was not the best person in the world before Christ entered my life. No I was not out hunting down Christians, but I was sure not making great choices, I was not a great father, a great husband….really I was not even that good of a friend. A lot of bad choices, and a lot of encouraging others to come along for the ride. I would be the first to say that I was too far gone, and God really does not need, or want a guy like me…..He sure could not forgive me. How could he? I could not forgive myself. Oh but just like Paul….or should I say Saul, Christ showed up, and He made it quite clear that not only did he forgive me, but He needed me. Not someone else, but ME. He needed me not because I was perfect, but specifically because I was not. There are people out there that need to see the change is not just a possibility, it is an assured fact. They needed to see that a weak willed, misguided, off the path guy, while incapable of change on his own, can transform with the love of Christ. SO God needed, Saul, He needs me, and He needs you. Not because of your perfection, but your lack of it. He uses the weak to conquer the strong, and the foolish to baffle the wise. You might think you can’t change, but Christ knows you can. You might think you can’t be forgiven, but Christ knows your faults, and transgressions, and has more than enough forgiveness for you. You might think you are just a simple human, but the Lord KNOWS you are so much more.  We all can change, and with the Lord, it is a sure thing.

God Bless,

Brian Thetford

<((((><

www.thenewcovenantchurch.com

Nobody is perfect right, but think about that for a moment. We’ve got issues that shouldn’t be downplayed. A lot of people don’t want to focus on it because it lowers our self esteem. We don’t like to focus on the negative.

However, may I suggest that we be a little negative in order to understand a huge positive? That positive is Jesus Christ. Did you know that without the negative, there would be no need for what He accomplished 2,000 years ago? It would be absolutely pointless if mankind wasn’t messed up and in need of salvation.

So it is of the utmost importance to ponder the negative in order to receive the positive. Without understanding our state or just simply denying or ignoring our state we run into a huge dilemma. The work of Jesus becomes vague. He may be still be God in our minds, but He just becomes one who comes along beside us in life to help out occasionally when we need it. We don’t receive the fact that Jesus died to save us from a truly corrupted state.

The truth of the Bible, that is glazed over way too often, is that mankind is messed up. Observe the world around you. Be honest with yourself. It isn’t only in our actions, it’s in our thoughts and intentions. That’s sin. That has separated us from God. God hates sin. We sin. That’s the truth. Without Jesus Christ, God is angry with us. That is the truth. He isn’t smiling upon us. He loves us, but that does not change the fact that He will judge us with righteous judgement. You see God cannot associate with sin. He is holy and pure. You must focus on this negative for a moment, because if you ignore this reality then the good news of Jesus Christ will not hit you like a ton of bricks the way it should.

As the song “Amazing Grace” goes, “I once was blind, but now I see.” This has spiritual connotations. Blindness is darkness. Without Christ, we are in a state of darkness, which the Bible associates with sin. Jesus died for sinners! He didn’t come for those who want to ignore their depraved state and just claim that nobody is perfect! It is true that nobody is perfect and that is a huge problem when it comes to a perfect God. Compared to God’s standard it isn’t one in a thousand that are good. The Bible says none are truly good.

That is what makes the love and grace (undeserved favor) of God so amazing! You see, that the one who realizes his or her sinful state will cling to the cross of Jesus Christ with all the faith they can muster because they realize just what they have been saved from. The point of what Jesus accomplished in dying for our sins and defeating death through His resurrection was to bring us back into a relationship with God through faith in Him. That is the whole point! He appeased God’s anger because He took our punishment upon Himself. Simply amazing, but only understood in light of the negative fact that we are messed up. Thanks Ricky for at least acknowledging this one obvious truth. Now you must receive it through repentant faith in Jesus.

I thank God that He is making all things new through His Son Jesus Christ! His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Begin trusting Him today!

Here’s how Graham told this old, old story during his1985 South Florida crusade.

One day, the evangelist boarded an airplane at the same time as a fat, boisterous drunk who cursed up a storm and even pinched a stewardess. The crew finally wrestled the man to his seat — right in front of Graham. Another passenger leaned over and said he ought to behave. Didn’t he know who was behind him?

“You don’t say,” the man said. Then he turned and loudly said, “Are you Billy Graham? … Put her there! Your sermons have sure helped me!”

After the laughter, Graham warmly introduced Cash, who added another punch line.

“I wonder,” said Cash, “why he thought about introducing me right after he talked about the rowdy drunk on the airplane.”

Yes, Cash knew his role as a missionary to the backsliders.

The man in black was a country kid who embraced his mother’s faith, then flung it away, the hell raiser who got saved, and saved and then saved some more. Cash sang about the hope of heaven and the siren songs of hell. Time magazine put it this way: “Here was a man who knew the Commandments because he had broken so many of them.”

The gritty details filled 1,500 songs and a lifetime of work in television, movies, books and nights on the road. For years, Cash prowled the stage on amphetamines and wept as he sang “The Old Rugged Cross” — often in the same show.

Things got better after he married June Carter in 1968, a meeting of souls made in heaven, but worked out in the flesh under the parental gaze of Ezra and Maybelle Carter. These country-music pioneers not only prayed at Cash’s bedside while he kicked drugs, but hung on through years of front-porch Bible study as he walked the line toward redemption.

Cash was in a spiritual war and he knew it. Thus, he constantly quoted Romans 8:13 as his favorite verse: “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live….”

The superstar also knew that millions of people were watching and waiting for him to fall. He lived in that hot spotlight until the day he died.

“I have been a professional entertainer,” said Cash, at a 1989 Graham crusade in his home state of Arkansas. “My personal life and problems have been widely publicized. There have been things said about me that made people ask, ‘Is Johnny Cash really a Christian?’

“Well, I take great comfort in the words of the apostle Paul who said, ‘What I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do.’ And he said, ‘It is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. But who,’ he asks, ‘will deliver me from this body of death?’ And he answers for himself and for me, ‘Through Jesus Christ the Lord.’ ”

This language he used in his Graham crusade testimonies was loftier than his style on stage. But the words hit home because Cash knew that his listeners knew he was there flaws and all. So he talked about his struggles with drugs — past, present and future. He talked about the flaws in his family life. Cash named his idols and his demons and urged others to do the same.

The man in black was on the same Gospel road throughout his life, even when he detoured into the gutter, said Steve Beard, author of the Cash profile in the book “Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced 12 Musical Icons.”

“This was the real Johnny Cash. I mean, he was trying to do gospel albums, even during the bad times,” said Beard. “He told people that the worst thing the drugs did to him was dull his soul and his senses to where he couldn’t hear God and experience God the way he could when he was young.

“That’s what he really wanted. That’s what he kept searching for.”

Unfortunately, I cannot say that has been the case since my childhood when I first made a profession of faith. I grew up in a Christian home. My mother loved the Lord with all her heart and tried to instill that in her children as well. I don’t recall at what age I professed to be a Christian, however I do recall walking down the aisle on several occasions when the preacher would give an invitation to come to the Lord. One in particular that I remember was at a revival at Lakewood church in the 80s. I can’t remember the sermon, but I do recall standing up and walking to the stage for prayer along with hundreds of others. I also recall being baptized as a child in the church we were attending. I had taken all of the steps that I understood to become a Christian.

Church often terrified me though. I grew up in very charismatic congregations. I never completely understood my surroundings and often felt out of place. That wasn’t the only thing that scared me. I didn’t want to go to hell and didn’t believe that my salvation was secure in Jesus Christ. This caused much fear and anxiety sitting in church. I just knew the preacher was going to single me out of the audience and tell me I was going to hell. I didn’t want to be there, but I was afraid that if I wasn’t there then I’d surely go to hell. On Sunday mornings my mother would come to my room to get me for church. With much guilt I would try to pretend that I was asleep. This rarely worked, if ever. We would go to church and I would sit and sweat out another Sunday service while yearning to just get out and go to Furr’s cafeteria for lunch.

I believed in the Lord. I really did. In fact, I told him so every night in the same old ritualistic prayer I had created. It was a prayer that covered all of the bases in order that I wouldn’t go to hell. My prayers were not a conversation with God, but rather a repetitive rant that basically consisted of me trying to convince Him that I believed (Matthew 6:7). So I knew God was real (James 2:19) I knew He was so real that I feared His judgment. I fear God today as well, but there is a difference in the awe of reverence that is in my heart for my Holy God now and the constant fear of separation that was in my heart at the time.

As I left high school for college, I began to think that though my mother had meant well, she was over religious and I didn’t have to be that way to be a good Christian. I thought that I didn’t need to go to church to be a good Christian. I began to think that I could cuss, party, live immorally and even smoke pot and still be a good Christian. This all was completely rationalized in my head. After all I though to myself, God knows my heart. These ideas were easily conceived in my head because I wasn’t reading God’s Word. In fact, I had never actually read the Bible… nothing more than a few chapters here and there anyway. By the way, this is called making God into your own image. It is one of the things that God speaks out against most in the Bible. But what did I know. Ignorance was bliss.

My sin eventually came back to haunt me as I dove deeper into it. Sin that I knew was wrong and that I could not rationalize in my head, I was doing. My selfish lust was getting the best of me. I would end up hurting those that I loved the most but ultimately I was hurting God. I was a huge hypocrite. However, I didn’t know if I could stop. I was enslaved to my sin (John 8:34, Romans 6:16). I hated sin but at the same time I still loved my sin. I wasn’t ready to let go and it made me miserable. If you have ever read the book the Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, I felt just like that pilgrim. I had the huge burden that I was carrying around on my back and the weight of my sin was beginning to crush me. I found myself crying out on the inside, and when I was alone crying on the outside. I hated who I was.

After my fiancé finished grad school, we moved back to our home town and got married. Another couple had been trying to convince us to attend a small church (Freedom Fellowship) that they had been getting involved with. As wedding gifts, they had also given us the book “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren. On our honeymoon, we decided that when we got back, we would visit the church and begin reading the book together. After all, we had planned to get back into church anyway.

The first Sunday I had a lot of questions, but I liked the atmosphere of young, twenty-something aged people that were in the congregation. The following week, most of my questions were answered and we decided that this was the church for us. I even volunteered my graphic design skills to the tech team. I learned more in that first few weeks at the new church than I had in my whole life prior. It was ridiculous how much I had missed and as a result it gave me a hunger for the truth. Things seemed to be going well.

Remember the burden on my back? Well, it hadn’t gone away. I had just thrown a blanket over it hoping it would disappear. I had a lot of guilt built up from my past– and I should have because I hadn’t dealt with it. I was hoping to eventually forget and take those deep dark secrets with me to the grave. However, that also scared me. How would God deal with me then? Could I truly be saved if I won’t give it all to Him? I had been lying to my wife, myself and worst of all, God! I tried to make myself alright. I stopped all of my sinful actions. I knew I wasn’t alright though. Once earlier we had visited a church and while asking for prayer a minister asked me if there was anything that needed to be confessed. It was almost prophetic! My mind screamed out YES! My lips simply said, “No.”

After several months at Freedom Fellowship, things were going really good. We had this exciting evangelist come and preach. His name was Tony Nolan. One night, he preached a gripping message and God straight up gripped my heart. Tony gave an invitation to come forward for salvation. All of a sudden I felt this tug on my heart. For anybody who has ever been saved or even if you have fought off God’s calling, you know what I am talking about. It was a familiar feeling, but the problem was that I hadn’t felt it since I was a boy. By this time I believed in the Biblical truth that once a person is saved, that God does not let them go. What was going on?!? I thought, “God what are you doing?” Immediately He flashed in my mind all those unrepented of sins that had caused me to feel so burdened. It was like God saying, “Scott. It ends here. Either you are going to follow me or not. I’m not taking you further until you deal with this.”
I was still fighting. Then the Baptist minister said this, “I don’t usually do this. But I feel strongly that God is saying that there are two more that need to come. My eyes were still closed and now my heart was pumping… ‘oh no oh no oh no’. I was still fighting God. Then I opened my eyes and everybody who was standing at the front of the church was people that I knew/thought were saved. It was enough. I left my seat and joined a group up front that included my wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law. I think our pastor was just as surprised as I was. He seemed a little confused. I was confused. In fact I was confused enough that I asked to be re-baptized because I wasn’t sure if I was saved as a boy or just then. It wasn’t over.

God was not going to let me sleep that night until I confessed some things to my wife. I had no choice and I knew it the moment I had went forward. It would be a long night.

That night the impossible happened—something I longed for. I was forgiven. God had forgiven me! My wife forgave me! And I forgave myself! Honestly I don’t think I have ever bawled like a little baby so hard since I was in diapers! That night when I wept, I literally felt a HUGE release. It….was…..gone. The burden had left. God not only took it away but He destroyed it. My sin was no more and I knew that there were no longer counted against me.

I have never been so grateful in my life! For the first time I truly understood what God’s grace was all about (John 3:16, Romans 8:1). I grasped the cross and I grasped the resurrection. The next morning I felt so alive. I was! Jesus died for my sins and rose again so that I could live in Him (2 Corinthians 5:17). I wanted to know Him more. I yearned for it. Out of that grew a passion for His Word, the call to ministry and the desire to see others experience eternal life in Jesus Christ.

I still have not stopped loving Him. I owe my life to God and it is my joy to serve Him until I meet Him face to Face. What a day that will be! Until then I look forward to seeing where He directs my next steps. He has been there for me through the good, the bad and the ugly and I plan to trust Him through the good, the bad and the ugly. I look forward to and hope for the day that He says, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You may enter the joy of your master.” What a day that will be!