A Cosmic Christmas- video

An interesting sermon on the birth of Jesus from the book of Revelation.

 Take a fascinating look into the spiritual warfare surrounding Christ's birth.

A Cosmic Christmas Sermon

http://calvary-services.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Surviving A Stampede Audio

We are facing a stampede of moral, civil, political, and spiritual threats. The very foundation of our society is under attack. Some are facing a stampede of attacks in their personal lives. The question is what do we do about? How do we survive a stampede? Listen to this message and find hope.

Putting More Christ In Christmas

How to have a Christ-centered Christmas.

Avoiding A Blue Christmas

Surviving a Stampede 11/18/18

We are facing a stampede of moral, civil, political, and spiritual threats.  The very foundation of our society is under attac.  Some are facing a stampede of attacks in their personal lives. The question is what do we do about?  How do we survive a stampede?  Listen to this message and find hope. http://calvary-services.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/New/1-MonoNorm/2018-11-18AM-Surviving_A_Stampede.wav

Another Night With The Frogs

The Invisible War - Audio

How To Intercede For Loved Ones (Part 1)

I know I am suppose to pray for my wife, children, grandchildren, church, and others.  I know God says that He looked for an intercession and found none.  God was surprised when nobody was praying.  I think most of us know this.  What we wonder is, “How do I pray?”  Sometimes if feels like we are walking on egg shells when we approach God because we don’t want to ask for anything outside His will.  I’ve told God He can veto my prayers if I ask anything outside His will.  Still I wondered how to pray.  I would look at a picture of my children and grandchildren and I seemed to be praying the same things over them every time.

If you will take the prayers in the Bible and use those Bible prayers as models and begin to ask for your loved ones what the apostle Paul asked for those that he loved, you can be pretty well certain that you're asking in the will of God. And when you ask that kind of a prayer, then you can pray with great faith and great confidence.  It opens up a whole new way of praying.

I want to mention five things that Paul prayed for the Ephesians. Each one will be a separate blog entry. It is taken from Ephesians 3:8-21.  They key verse is 14. “For this cause I bow my knees unto the father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Now here's what Paul prayed for these for these people.

First of all, he prayed he prayed for spiritual wealth for their needfulness.

He says beginning in verse 8, He "Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I may preach among the Gentiles," now here's the phrase, "the unsearchable riches of Christ and make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God who created all things by Jesus Christ to the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church, the manifold wisdom of God, according to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord in whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him. Therefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulations, for you, which is your glory, for this cause I bow my knees."

God, help these people in Ephesus know how rich they are. He is talking about spiritual riches. They think they have need. Help them to understand the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus, to know the eternal purpose of God.  What is that eternal purpose?  That you might understand the riches of God’s grace.

Pray for your children, say, “Oh, God, help them to understand, help them to know what they have in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Do you know why our kids get into worldliness? They don't know what they have in the Lord Jesus Christ and the reason that they want to be worldly is that they have never discovered the riches that they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter because he esteemed the riches of Christ a greater treasure than all the treasures of Egypt. Our kids are not gonna be sucked out into Egypt when they understand what they have in the Lord Jesus Christ. If I've just had a wonderful meal and then you offer me a plate full of stale crumbs, I'd say, “No thank you, I'm already satisfied.” If your dog is chewing on a bone, and you throw him a steak, even he knows enough to leave the bone and go for the steak.  The devil throws our children a bone but we need to show them the steak the Lord has prepared for them.

Pray, “Help them to see, Oh, God, help them to understand. Open their eyes to see just how rich they are. Help them to see true wealth.”

Commitment And Power

God honors our commitment, and at the point of our obedience He takes over to work His mighty work.

We need to commit ourselves to His purpose.

A human interest story from the 1984 New York Marathon illustrates God’s reward for commitment. Fourteen hundred people ran that marathon. The course took them twenty-six miles through the boroughs of New York City. Not everyone completed the course; in fact, far more always drop out than finish. The winning time is almost always somewhere between two and three hours.

Linda Down was the last person to complete the race. It took her eleven hours. She has cerebral palsy, and she runs with the help of crutches. When asked by an interviewer why she even tried, Linda replied, “We are living in negative times. Things feel impossible today. I thought that if I could try to do it, it might be an inspiration to others, and maybe they would try some big things, too.” Then she added, “But the last eleven miles were an act of God.”

“What do you mean, ‘an act of God’?”

“With eleven miles to go, I ran out of my own strength. I didn’t have any more. I finished the race on borrowed power.

All who trust God, and take that ultimate step in trust to commitment, can depend on borrowed power, the power of God Himself. And even the gates of hell cannot prevail against that power.

Isaiah 40:31, But those who wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
and they shall walk and not faint.

Repentance...Preparation For Baptism

Repentance "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; as it is written in the prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. John did baptize in the wilderness, and preach the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins." (Mark 1:1-4)
Soon after salvation should come water baptism. Once we understand the reason for baptism we should make preparation for it.
Now, in olden days, when a king and eastern monarch would get ready to go somewhere, they didn't want him to be inconvenienced at all. What they would do would be to prepare a road...a special road for him. They would fill in the low places. They would level off the high places. They would straighten out the crooked places, so this eastern monarch would just have an easy journey. John says, "We had better prepare like that for the coming of the Lord." He says that our Lord is going to come like that to the deserts and wilderness of our lives. What we need to do is make a road for royalty; we need to prepare the way of the Lord. We need to have a bulldozer that will straighten things out and make things ready for the coming of the Lord. That bulldozer is repentance.
Repentance—what does it do? It brings down mountains of pride. What does repentance do? It fills up valleys of failure. What does repentance do? It straightens out the crooked places of deceit. It makes a road and that road is the road through which the Lord comes into the wilderness and the parched desert of our lives to bring His reviving power. He comes on the royal road of repentance. John said that baptism is the outward sign that you have repented. If you haven't repented, then you've got no business being baptized. You see, the preparation for baptism is repentance. Repentance is not incidental; it is fundamental.
John preached repentance. What did Jesus preach? Jesus began His public ministry shortly after this. Verse 14: "Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God." (Mark 1:14) Well, you want to know what Jesus preached when He preached the good news of the Kingdom? "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel." (Mark 1:15) That's it, folks—repentance and faith. "Repent ye, and believe the gospel." Jesus said, in Luke 13:3: "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Repent or perish. What is repentance, anyway? The Greek word repentance is the word metanoia; it literally means, "to change your mind." It is a turning around; it is a change of mind.
Repentance involves:
1.  A conviction of sin
2.  A confession of sin
3.  A contrition (Godly sorrow) for sin
4.  A conversion from sin
When the Bible says faith, it infers repentance. And, when it says repentance, it infers faith. When you turn from sin, you turn to God. When you turn to God, you turn from sin. That's the reason that repentance and faith are heads and tails of the same coin. That is the preparation for baptism.

Don't Let Cold Keep You From God's House

When you’re tempted to stay in bed on rainy or cold Sunday mornings, remember the sacrifice of early generations. Februarys were exceedingly difficult, for example, in Puritan New England. Judge Samuel Sewall once noted in his diary after an unusually frigid Sunday that “the communion bread was frozen pretty hard and rattled sadly in the plates.”

Ministers were forced to preach while wrapped in layers of coats, heads covered with caps, and hands cased in heavy mittens. According to Sewall, one Puritan preacher in Kittery, Maine, used to send his servant to the meetinghouse to find out how many had braved the snow. If only six or seven had come, the servant would ask them to return with him to the parsonage and listen to the sermon there.

In harshest weather, women brought to the church little footstoves, filled with hot coals from home, around which children huddled by their mother’s feet beneath the pews. But after several churches burned down because of footstoves, their use grew controversial.

In one of his journal entries, Judge Sewall tells of a winter’s Sunday when his friend, Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, preached from the verse in Psalm 147 that says, “Who can stand the cold?” By the next Sunday, the entire congregation was so afflicted with illness that services were canceled for three weeks. On February 20, 1698 services resumed and Wigglesworth prayed and preached from the words, “At his command the ice melts.” The very next day, a thaw set in. It was regarded as a direct answer to his prayer.

"He sends forth His commandment on the earth;
His word goes out swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
He scatters the frost like ashes;
He casts forth His ice like morsels;
who can stand before His cold?
He sends out His word and melts them;
He causes His wind to blow and the waters flow. (Psalm 147:15-18).

Day After Valentine's Day Love Story

Here is a love story that had something very significant happen the day after Valentine's Day. It was a wonderful surprise and the culmination of a couple's love.

Adoniram Judson, who wanted to become America’s first foreign missionary, fell in love with the most beautiful girl in Bradford, Massachusetts. Ann Hasseltine was the daughter of a Congregational deacon, and Judson’s letter asking for her hand is among the most emboldened in church history: "I have now to ask whether you can consent to part with your daughter, whether you can consent to her departure to a heathen land, and her subjection to the hardships and suffering of a missionary life? Whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India, to every kind of want and distress, to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death."

(Was he trying to gain this prospective father-in-law's approval or talk him out of letting him marry his daughter? Not the way to ask a father for his daughter's hand in marriage if you ask me).

John Hasseltine did consent, and the couple was married in the Hasseltine home on February 5, 1812. The next day they were commissioned as missionaries and soon left American shores.

When war broke out between Burma and England, Adoniram was accused of being a spy and placed in a death prison. His dark, dank cell was filled with vermin, and Adoniram was shackled at the ankles. Every evening he was hanged upside down with only his head and shoulders resting on the ground. Ann, pregnant, visited one government official after another, urging her husband’s release. On February 15, 1825, eight months after Adoniram’s arrest, she showed up at his prison carrying a small bundle, their newborn daughter Maria. No artist can capture the poignancy of that brief union with its intense emotions of sorrow and joy, fear and faith. Torturous months followed. Adoniram was finally released.

Valentine's Day

Legends have occasionally crept into Christian history. Stories of some of the early martyrs, for example, handed down orally, have sometimes become embellished and romanticized. Such is the story of St. Valentine. Two Valentines are actually described in the early church, but they likely refer to the same man —a priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II. According to tradition, Valentine, having been imprisoned and beaten, was beheaded on February 14, about 270, along the Flaminian Way.

Sound romantic to you? How then did his martyrdom become a day for lovers and flowers, candy and little poems reading Roses are red… ? According to legends handed down, Valentine undercut an edict of Emperor Claudius. Wanting to more easily recruit soldiers for his army, Claudius had tried to weaken family ties by forbidding marriage. Valentine, ignoring the order, secretly married young couples in the underground church. These activities, when uncovered, led to his arrest.

Furthermore, Valentine had a romantic interest of his own. While in prison he became friends with the jailer’s daughter, and being deprived of books he amused himself by cutting shapes in paper and writing notes to her. His last note arrived on the morning of his death and ended with the words “Your Valentine.”

In 496 February 14 was named in his honor. By this time Christianity had long been legalized in the empire, and many pagan celebrations were being “christianized.” One of them, a Roman festival named Lupercalia, was a celebration of love and fertility in which young men put names of girls in a box, drew them out, and celebrated lovemaking. This holiday was replaced by St. Valentine’s Day with its more innocent customs of sending notes and sharing expressions of affection.

Does any real truth lie behind the stories of St. Valentine? Probably. He likely conducted underground weddings and sent notes to the jailer’s daughter. He might have even signed them “Your Valentine.” And he probably died for his faith in Christ. But he almost certainly never wrote, “Roses are red, violets are blue.… ”