The PB&J Formula to Keep Your Flame Burning

God Gold of the day

“Desire without knowledge is not good—how much more will hasty feet miss the way!”

-Proverbs 19:2

Two different aspects of our lives of followers of Christ:

Desire: the passion and enthusiasm one has to live their lives for God

Knowledge: the information or “truth” one gains through diligent study, focus, and seeking out to learn more about God and His truths

The main question I have for you today; which one of these areas do you find yourself living with more and leaning towards in your daily life? Is it more desire, a fire to get up and get after it, or is it knowledge, spending more time in study and learning? Both aspects are greatly needed for our Christian lives but one by itself always turns out to be no good without the other. These two qualities are a tag team, they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Hold on, let’s look at this verse from Proverbs a little deeper.

It says here; “desire without knowledge is no good.” Why would that be? So often we can find ourselves running through this life with the idea of “faster is better,” because if you have more “desire” you’ll be able to get more done, serve the Lord even greater right? Not so fast!!!

Desire is great but still it needs it’s tag team partner of “knowledge.” And it says exactly why here in Proverbs, “how much more will hasty feet miss the way!” The word “hasty” is meaning; “done or acting with excessive speed or urgency, hurried.” If we go go go and don’t take a second to slow down, we can find our flame of desire that has been burning at all time high’s experiencing something called, “burnout.” Have you ever heard a sermon or went to a camp, conference, those unbelievable moments of experiencing a spiritual high where you are on the mountain top and so fired up to go and serve the Lord with all you have? Yeah, I’ve experienced those moments too but how does long does that fire keep burning? Usually, not too long because there is no fuel to keep the fire going.

That’s where knowledge comes in, knowledge is the fuel to keep our desire fires burning at a high level. Knowledge is found when we step back to reflect, spend time with God in His Word and in prayer. In those moments when we seek God, His Word and presence brings knowledge to our lives, truth-filled knowledge about who He is, how He feels about us, truth that fills us up when we reach those burnout moments when our desire is getting weak.

Knowledge is like throwing kerosene on the fire that your desire has produced, when we find ourselves in moments where we want to give up, we’re too tired, we don’t see why the daily battle is worth it. SEEK KNOWLEDGE from the Lord. He provides for us truth that gives us all we need to battle against the weakness we face, it shows us that the purpose and calling God has given us is worth it. Knowledge is the fuel to keep your desire fire burning!

We can take off running the race God has set before us with all the desire in the world but without knowledge, God’s truth, we can find ourselves running in the wrong direction all too often. Knowledge of God directs us and keeps our eyes in the right direction to make an even bigger impact for His Kingdom than we could ever do without Him!!!! Seek the balance of desire and knowledge today, just like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it never gets old, only better and better!!!!

Here’s an example of how truth-filled knowledge of God’s Word can reignite the flame of desire that may be running low in your life.

‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. ‘ –-Galatians 6:9

DON’T GIVE UP!!! KEEP PUSHING FORWARD AND SEEKING GOD DAILY!!! YOU MAY NOT SEE IT NOW, BUT IF YOU DON’T GIVE UP AND KEEP DOING WHAT IS GOOD, THE HARVEST WILL COME!!!!

God Gold From Across the World (Kenny)

God Gold of the day

So today’s God Gold message has traveled farther than any God Gold ever before! I can’t begin to tell you how thankful and excited I am to share with you this message from my good friend, Kenny, all the way from Rwanda!!! I could go all day telling you how gifted and special Kenny is. After a couple of mission trips to Rwanda, Kenny spent the majority of those trips with us as our translator and really the “fixer.” No matter what our need was or what the problem was, Kenny was always on it and getting the job done to help out in whatever way possible! Kenny is the ultimate and best example of a servant that I have ever had the privilege of knowing! I would love to tell all the stories and examples but I best save that for another day because it would take awhile to get through them all! Just get ready to be extremely blessed today by one of the wisest and most humble individuals out there! After many phone calls back and forth with Kenny across the Great Divide, I always leave those calls so uplifted and encouraged in so many ways! I’m thankful for you to have that “Kenny Experience” today as I know you’ll be blessed by his thoughtful and inspiring words!

“Morning Jordan

Bless the Holy name of Jesus christ.
Thanks to the mighty father who allowed me and you to become his sons and daughters through Jesus.
Let’s talk about the days we are in, there is a lot going on in today’s world, the pandemic Covid19, people are dying because of hunger, endless wars in the middle east and Africa…
All this has got us destructed and taken away from the path we should be following as Christians. We have tried to find solutions to these problems and we’re defining them according to our environment where many try to blame everything on politics and many different things.

But we are forgetting one thing that the effects found on the body are symptoms and results of what is in the body…
We say we agree that there is a spiritual world that rules the physical world (Atleast to those who believes in so). But we instead ignore what that means.
The Bible has every word on all that is happening today, it’s sad though because we left the Bibles to be read by pastors and priests. We only grab them on Sunday to show off in church. We need to quit the ways of sin and become the Christians we claim to be as we read our Bibles to know the times and how we should behave.
Let us stop looking for solutions where they are not. Come on guys let’s wake up and start praying unceasingly and let’s learn how to grow close to God. The world shouldn’t determine how we live our lives but Christ in us should determine how we live in the world.
Read your Bible, Start practicing living the life of prayer, Pray that the Holy spirit guides your life.

Bless you“

“In God, whose word I praise—
in God I trust and am not afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?“

Psalm 56:4

Simple Will

God Gold of the Day

“1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

-Romans 12:1-2

Had the opportunity to sit down with a pastor today and received some extremely helpful and wise council. It’s crazy how God sets people in front of you to speak the words of encouragement and words that you are in great need of hearing. Today, these words I received were words that broke through a lot of my own weakness to see the awesomeness and freedom in this life with God.

I had mentioned to this pastor kind of a rundown of the last few months of my life. Facing bigger decisions than I’ve ever made before I can honestly say I struggled but in the struggle were great lessons to be learned. I kept trying so hard to seek God’s will, find out what God’s will was for me in these decisions and the next steps I needed to take. I looked so hard to see where God wanted me to go and what God wanted me to do that I overlooked the simplicity in God’s truth. In Romans 12:1-2. this pastor referred to these when speaking about God’s will today. Of course most Christians may have heard these verses, I mean I’ve heard them a bunch and even wrote God Gold messages about them but today I heard it explained in a little different way, a simple, and straight from God way.

If you haven’t learned yet, we as humans can be our own worst enemies at times. If you would have asked me what these verses meant or ask any other believer, you would probably get a wide range of answers because most would be based off of our experiences instead of GOD’s simple and literal truth. During my time seeking out God’s will with all of these big decisions, I have had so much of me in it that I made God’s will extremely hard to see. Pastor Mike today mentioned how we so often see God’s will as this big mystery where we have to uncover the truth out of it’s mysteriousness. We see it as a mystery because from my example, I couldn’t seem to figure it all out so I kept trying harder and harder to decipher this special code or formula that is God’s will but in my effort it only led me to be more blind from seeing the simple truth in front of me. We do things our way, we choose what we want, we try to make God’s will fit the desires we have and then trying to actually see what God’s will is, we’ve made it so hard wrapping it up in what it isn’t that we look right over the SIMPLE TRUTH. We over complicate it, we over analyze, we do this so much that in my case I spent months scared to commit or take a next step because I wasn’t completely sure what God’s will was. I guess I thought that this miracle or heaven opening experience would happen where God speaks out probably in a super low voice. Well that’s just how I imagined it but He would say, “Jordan go here, Jordan do this, Jordan this is my will.” Hate to say that never happened. I was far from impulsive but that caused me to live scared, live stuck in the mud, bogged down to make any step out of my comfort zone for God.

On the other end, people are so impulsive that we don’t care to know what God’s will is, we just act in whatever seems best or whatever is more enticing in the moment, never praying about or seeking guidance from God’s Word just doing. Both can be harmful and leave some nasty scars between a person’s view of “God’s will.”

What Mike told me today was that God’s will is not a mystery and in these verses, God’s will is shown so simply and true to us. Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, don’t live for self but live for God in every way. That means to find out what is pleasing, perfect and good, you have to get yourself out of the way. Don’t over complicate it or not care enough but seek what is good, pleasing and perfect to God. You find that all over God’s Word and when dug into, you seek what God wants, what God says is good, what God wants you to do, how God wants you to live. You see I said God, not Jordan right?

And instead of over analyzing this “mystery” just stay grounded in scripture, constant in prayer and watch how God works in your life on the daily. Pay attention to all that God is doing in  your life, it’s not a heaven opening momemt but it’s literally just God placing you in situations He wants you to be with opportunities that move you farther into His will for your life. Attack what God has placed in front of you. I saw this so true the last couple of months as I made such a mess of things. I made the big decisions and I know without a shadow of a doubt it was in God’s will because I didn’t think too much I just stayed more constant in prayer, more active in His Word and God placed things in front of me. I just did it, I attacked them and honestly had no idea I was until after the fact sitting there with such a peace about me. I became so fearful to mess up during this time but learned that God’s will isn’t meant to confuse us or scare us, it’s every day making decisions that honor God and moving in what God places in your path. Before you know it God has moved you so much farther down the road than you would have ever been by doing it your way.

So simple but we make it so complicated. Don’t be conformed to this world is simply telling us not to listen or declare that anything is truth unless it’s from God in His Word. We can easily be swayed to think we’re supposed to be a certain type of person, do a certain thing or told different opinions on what God’s will is but don’t buy in. Buy in to what tells you throughout the pages of His Word, through moments of prayer growing deeper with Him, through what He has placed right in front of you in your life. You can easily go a million different directions but God gives us the tools and the power of His Spirit within us to decide what is He saying and doing compared to outside and personal influence tells us. A million different options, but only ONE option is good, perfect and pleasing to God, only ONE option truly brings us to freedom of fear, freedom of doubt or worry, only ONE option leads us to LIFE and truly LIVING, that ONE option is God’s will and He’s told us so simply what His will is. Walk in it, live it, and love it! God just made our rocket science into a kindergartners homework. Have fun today in God’s will!

 

 

Sit at His Feet

God Gold of the Day

Jesus Visits Martha and Mary

“38 As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 

39 Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught.

40 But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.”

41 But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 

42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.”

-Luke 10:38-42

It’s honestly kind of funny how I ran across this story. I’ve been in a pretty busy season of life lately with a lot of different things going on and coming up all in the same time range. It’s been a lot to be done and to be honest it’s been overwhelming at times. I caught myself last night looking over my long to-do list and thinking about all the things to be done along with the little amount of time I had to do it, I began getting worried a little bit.

We live busy lives in a world that is always trying to pull us in different directions at all times. Especially with all the resources we have at our fingertips, it’s extremely hard to focus in on what’s important and stay away from being distracted by what’s not. I was in the middle of this busy strain in my life and started becoming worried. How can I get all this done in a short amount of time? What’s most important that should be done first or next? With all these different things battling for my attention, what direction should I give my attention to? Where should I go? What should I do? How should I do it? How can I do it in a way that pleases the Lord? Or how can I please the Lord the most?

These are questions that we will all face at one point or another in life but the good thing is that we have found all the answers we need in God’s Word. I had a lot on my plate and had intentions of digging into my Bible, but like so many times before, good intentions can sound good but they can only be good if put to action. So instead of only having the intention to read my Bible, I actually opened it up and what’d ya know? I fell right into this story about Jesus visiting Martha and Mary.

So much can be taken away from this story but what hit me the deepest was that two types of people were shown, Mary’s and Martha’s. Yesterday I acted way more like a Martha than a Mary. What I mean by that is Martha has Jesus coming into her home, she’s freaking out, “the Messiah is in our house, I have to get everything perfect, cook the perfect dinner, set up the best dinner party ever, the house must be spotless,” the list goes on and on. Martha is led to deep worry over doing all these things for Jesus and making everything perfect but she is a mess in the meantime. She is wondering why Mary is being so lazy. not helping out with dinner and just sitting around talking. You see how easily you can get distracted to do all these things for Jesus and keep doing them because you tell yourself it’s for Jesus so it’s not wrong. Yes it may be work that’s good but let’s look at Mary’s example where Jesus says, that’s good but I’m here to give you not just good but BEST!

Mary gets it! From our point of view it may not look like she’s doing anything but she’s receiving EVERYTHING! Mary is sitting at Jesus’ feet listening to His Words filled with the utmost wisdom, perfection and power of God. Mary doesn’t worry so much about all that needs to be done because she sees what’s most important. All that stuff in the kitchen is nothing compared to being filled with the Bread of Life.

I was such a Martha and struggle not to be a lot of the time. I get distracted by all the details and caught up in trying to do it all for Jesus when there is only ONE THING that’s really important, there’s only one thing I NEED to do and that’s sitting at Jesus’ feet, listening and taking in His powerful, life-changing Word. We say that all the work we are doing is still “good” if it’s for Jesus but what a powerful picture of the Gospel here. There’s nothing we can do to bring us any closer to Jesus or make Jesus be any more pleased with us or love us more than He already does. Jesus has already done it all by dying on the cross for our sins and raising from the grave. Upon Jesus raising on that third day, He raised not with a list of to-do’s, not with the keys to a “good” life but the keys to new life, the BEST possible life. It’s not about what we do but what Jesus has DONE!

Jesus did all He did for us so we could have one on one communion with the Father in Heaven. He did all He did because He wanted the BEST for us and to find out what is truly BEST for our lives, to separate “good” from BEST, the only way to receive that, see it and understand it better is sitting at Jesus’ feet, digging into His Word and through what Christ has for us, we are equipped to discern what we need to-do, we grow in wisdom and increase in His love to learn what truly needs to be done, how to do it, when to do it or if we even need to do it all. With all the questions that may come up in our crazy lives, there’s no need to be a “Martha”, run around in “to-do mode” trying to get it all done in a worried and stressful panic. The answer to all our questions come in following the example of Mary, sitting at Jesus feet and deeply taking in His powerful Word. Out of all that seems “important” there’s only ONE THING that’s really of importance to us and that’s simply spending time with Jesus!!!

It blows my mind how quickly everything in life, all the worries and busyness seems to fall into place, we have such a powerfully calm and peaceful presence about us, AFTER we first spend time with Jesus! Spend some time with Him and receive His vertical power and peace over all these horizontal problems.

Wisdom Giving GOD

God Gold of the Day

“If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.”

‭‭James‬ ‭1:5‬

This may be one of the shorter and simpler God Gold messages you’ve received in awhile only because there’s no words or explanations to tell you that’s not already given to us by God in this piece of His Word.

I faced a situation that I couldn’t handle. I didn’t know how or what to do. I’ve failed many times before trusting in myself and things of this world. So I took it to God. I asked for wisdom on what to do and how to overcome my current problem…..Guess what??!?

God answered every piece of my prayer! God gave me His wisdom, God showed me what to do and how to do it in His way, the best way.

What’s funny is it took me all day of living in His wisdom and answered prayer before I even realized the work He had done. I fell jaw dropped at how loving, faithful, and capable God is!!!

If you need wisdom, go to God, ask for it, He will always supply and show you how to live wisely through the good times and bad. It’s that simple. God is more powerful and in control of our lives than we could ever know, only thing is if we don’t go to Him, how will we ever know just how great He is???