So He said to them, “When you pray, say: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven.

When you pray.

A simple admonition.

We need to recommit ourselves to the simple principle of prayer.

Prayer is the easiest thing to miss.

Things we will not miss.

We will not miss a shower.

We will not miss our coffee.

What are some things in your daily rituals?

AW Tozer

“If the devil lets you alone a while and you’re not in much trouble and you’re reasonably happy and reasonably spiritual, you’re likely to develop a complex that says, well, things are all right, and you’ll neglect your prayer life and you don’t watch and pray.”

EM Bounds

“Of all the duties enjoined by Christianity none is more essential and yet more neglected than prayer.”

Matthew 6

⁸ “Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. ⁹ In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.
¹² And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
¹³ And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
^[d]For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

EM Bounds

“Prayer is the easiest and hardest of all things; the simplest and the sublimest; the weakest and the most powerful.”

1 John 5:14

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

Matthew 6:10
“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Colossians 1:9
“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding.”

James 4:15
“Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”

Psalm 143:10
“Teach me to do your will, for you are my God! Let your good Spirit lead me on level ground.”

“Lord, let Your will be done. Teach me what it is. Align my desires with Yours. Not my will, but Yours.”

Jubilee was God’s reset: every fifty years the land rested, sold property returned to its family, and Israelites bound by debt walked free. The point was never that we own the earth. The land is His. We are strangers and sojourners. The kinsman-redeemer—goel—stood in the gap when a brother fell, buying back what poverty had taken. Ruth and Boaz show that law with a human face. The same Word that ordered the release also warns of what happens when judgment is delayed, and hearts grow hard.

**What is Jubilee?**

Every 50 years, liberty was proclaimed throughout the land. Israelites who had sold themselves into service were set free. Land that had been sold due to poverty was returned to the original family.

Every Israelite returned to his family property and clan.

Land could not be sold permanently, “for the land is mine; you are strangers and sojourners with me.” Sales of land were therefore leases. The price was calculated by the number of harvest years remaining until the next Jubilee (more years meant a higher price).

A kinsman-redeemer (*goel*) could buy the land back at any time. The original owner could also redeem it if he later had the means to pay for the unused portion of the lease. If neither redeemed it, the land reverted automatically at Jubilee.

Those who had sold themselves into slavery were liberated at Jubilee.

The land was not planted that year. It rested.

Daniel understood that the captivity would last 70 years. Scripture ties those years to the 70 Jubilees. Jeremiah had spoken the 70 years; Chronicles says the land finally kept Sabbath until those years were complete.

**Kinsman Redeemer?**

The story of Boaz and Ruth hinges on the principles of a kinsman-redeemer, whose origins lie in the law of Jubilee.

What a wonderful thing it is to observe the weight of responsibility the Word of God gives.

In the law of Jubilee, that principle is established: we don’t own anything; everything belongs to the Lord. Selling land or a house was more like a lease, calculated by how many years remained until Jubilee. That was the intention, however, never observed in relation to the land.

A kinsman-redeemer could redeem what had been leased or sold at any time. If a person was not redeemed sooner, they were freed at Jubilee.

The Jubilee laws define how land and persons are redeemed and priced. The *goel* himself is a broader family-law figure: land redeemer, person redeemer, blood avenger, and, in Ruth, the one who also takes the widow to preserve the family name.

This is a cautionary tale to us all. It reminds me of this scripture:

“Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”
Ecclesiastes 8:11

This theme of hardness is echoed in Romans:

Romans 2:5 — “after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath.”

What does that have to do with me?

What have we treated as ours that belongs to the Lord? Whom have we left unredeemed when we had the means to act? And where has delayed consequence made us easy with sin? Jubilee says nothing is held forever. Ecclesiastes says a heart set on evil hardens when sentence does not come quickly. Search that out. Fear God while there is still time to return—to Him, and to one another.

What this Law of Jubilee says about the God we serve?

Jubilee shows a God who will not let His people be lost forever to debt, exile, or another man’s claim. He owns the land and still calls the poor His own. He builds mercy into the calendar: rest for the soil, a way home for the family, a kinsman who may step in before the fiftieth year even comes. That is wisdom—limits on greed, dignity for the weak, and a reminder that we are stewards, not owners. He is holy enough to require the rest, and kind enough to promise provision while the fields lie still. The same Lord who judges delayed repentance is the Redeemer who makes a way back.

What Jubilee foreshadows about Heaven.

On the Day of Atonement, the horn was to split the air from one end of the land to the other. “Then shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubile to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubile unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.” (Leviticus 25:9–10) That blast did not decorate a feast. It announced that God was taking back what His people had treated as theirs, and sending every man home.

Jubilee on earth was only a shadow: a timed release, a leased field coming home, a servant walking free.

The promise of heaven is the day the trumpet never stops, and the inheritance cannot be sold again. “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” (Revelation 21:4)

Some glad morning we shall see
Jesus in the air
Coming after you and me
Joy is ours to share
What rejoicing there will be
When the saints shall rise
Headed for that jubilee
Yonder in the skies

Oh, what singing, oh, what shouting
On that happy morning when we all shall rise
Oh, what glory, hallelujah
When we meet our blessed Savior in the skies

When with all that heavenly host
We begin to sing
Singing in the Holy Ghost
How the heavens will ring
Millions there will join the song
With them we shall be
Praising Christ through ages long
Heaven’s jubilee

Oh, what singing, oh, what shouting
On that happy morning when we all shall rise
Oh, what glory, hallelujah
When we meet our blessed Savior in the skies

Oh, what singing, oh, what shouting
On that happy morning when we all shall rise
Oh, what glory, hallelujah
When we meet our blessed Savior in the skies
When we meet our blessed Savior in the skies

We live in an era of AI-generated images, generated music, and an unrelenting torrent of information. I remember a number of months ago they discovered that AI has the ability to hallucinate, another way of lying and telling you things as if they are true when they are in fact not true. There have been some pretty notable cases.


One went all the way to the Supreme Court in Georgia. Case law was mentioned, and precedent was mentioned, and when it got to the Supreme Court, they began to quiz the lawyer; I believe it was the attorney general of the state. It was determined that no one checked what AI had produced. A hallucination is a nice way of saying it was just telling a bald-faced lie, and it is a challenge for the legal community today.

We live in a time where you cannot believe your lying eyes. Is that really a real person? Is that a real dog? Is that a real musician? There is a desire, a search for authenticity. This is not something new, but it is yet another echo of previous times in an unprecedented manner. We must be diligent to recognize there is real and there is not real. There is authentic, and there is artificial imitation.

There is a search for authenticity, and I suggest to you that humanity is not the originator of this desire, for it is first found in the sentiment of the Lord.

It is God who is in the Search for Authenticity

The setting is that Jesus went to Samaria specifically to meet this woman. He sent his disciples off, and it would seem that the world around her did not want to have anything to do with her, and she was too ashamed to do anything with them. She was an outcast, and Jesus made an appointment to talk to her.



In this discussion, she is very closed. She does not want to talk to Jesus. Jesus begins to talk to her and says, “Go get your husband,” and she says, “I have no husband.” Speaking of authenticity, Jesus said, “Yea, thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband.” She has this epiphany: “I perceive that thou art a prophet.”



There is this long discussion. I have made the point that this is a perfect outline for reaching people. The conversation Jesus had with this woman outlines how you can have a conversation if you want to. We get to this point. She makes the point to Jesus that the Jews say you need to worship in Jerusalem, and our fathers worshiped in this mountain.



Then Jesus said, “Woman, ye know not what ye worship.” Jesus loved this woman.

Jesus made an appointment with this woman, but that did not mean Jesus said to the woman what she wanted to hear. He still was honest with her and said she did not know what she was talking about. He was not shutting the door. He was just trying to say her answer is not the end of the conversation.



Here we are in verse 21.

*Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.*



True worship. The Search for Authenticity

The search for authenticity. Jesus arrives on the scene. He was born. In everyone’s eyes, who does not understand the situation, his mother is pregnant and unmarried. She is betrothed to Joseph, and he is not the father. This is unfortunate because they do not know the situation. Jesus was Unique, because His Father was God.


They were not there when the angel appeared to her. They were not there when the miracle, the Holy Spirit, overshadowed her, and she was with child of the Holy Ghost. They were not there when Elizabeth, her aunt, met her, and when they met Elizabeth, who was pregnant, the baby inside of her leaped. There is something that is uncanny. It is indescribable.


Jesus’s experience is that they are there in Bethlehem, and Herod finds out about this king that is born, and he sends out soldiers to murder all the babies. They flee into Egypt. His life is not like any other man’s life.


Jesus comes on the scene, and He is neither a Sadducee nor a Pharisee. Essentially like today, there were two extremes, political and religious extremes: the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were what we would consider the conservatives, and the Sadducees were the liberals.

The Pharisees believed that they would tithe on everything. They tithed even on the herbs that grew in their windows. They would pay a tithe of their mint, cumin, and dill. The Lord did not rebuke them for being so fastidious on their tithing, but they left out the weightier matters of the law of mercy and truth. They were very judgmental of everyone who was not like them.

You find Jesus is constantly under attack and criticism because He is not observing the law as they understood it in their oral tradition, the rabbinic tradition of the Pharisees. Like today, the Pharisees were conservative, but they believed more things that were not in the Bible. They had their tradition, and their tradition was very onerous. There were certain things you had to observe, not just with the law of the Bible, but you had all this other stuff that you had to do.

Jesus often would rebuke the Pharisees. He would call them hypocrites. He would say they wash the outside, but they are dirty on the inside. They paint the outside of tombs, but inside are dead men’s bones. He was incredibly critical of His critics, the Pharisees. They were very conservative.


Then you had the Sadducees. The thing about the Sadducees that I would agree with is that they rejected all Jewish rabbinic writings. They only believed in the first five books, the Torah. But then they did not believe in angels and demons. They did not believe in the resurrection. They were the doubters. They did not really believe what they said they believed in. That sounds familiar.

You have these two predominant groups of people that determined most of everyone’s life, and most everyone else was kind of just going with the flow. Jesus was not a Sadducee or a Pharisee. You could say He was a non-denominational preacher. He was not one of them.


If we were to place ourselves in that today, as we believe, I would not be a Pharisee or a Sadducee as well. I am very sympathetic to people who are weary with denominationalism. I have heard about people who grew up a certain way and walked away from the church they were raised in. I think if I were raised in that church, I probably would walk away as well. Have you seen what has happened in many denominational churches today? They do not believe fat meat is greasy.

The Search for Authenticity

What I would say to you is we all must have an honest desire for authenticity. We are not just saved by the brand we wear, the kind of car we drive, or the denomination we lay claim to. There is not going to be any segmentation in heaven where different denominations go. There will only be one great washed crowd of the redeemed. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.


We are not going to be saved based upon our branding. What God is going to judge us by is not by group. The saved will be saved individually. The wicked are going to be judged in mass. But individually, those who were saved will be saved by name.



The Bible says, *And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.* Salvation is personal. Damnation and judgment is in mass. If we are saved, we are not going to just be saved by His name.

We are going to be saved by our name because our name is written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Just because you have your name written down, do not sit back and take it easy, because Jesus threatened that if they did not repent, He would blot their name out. I want you to understand that it is natural for people to search for authenticity, and we should. But I think the most sobering thing we must consider is not from a critic standing on the outside, but from ourselves: that God is judging us individually.

He is not only our encourager. He is our critic. Have you ever heard, “Only God can judge me”? That should scare you to death. Because God will judge all men. What will He judge? The Bible says He will judge us for every deed, even every idle word. We will all be judged.


I have some good news in that, but we must understand that just as much as I do not like to eat off-brand Velveeta cheese, I do not want Kroger brand spaghetti sauce. I am very concerned when I see certain things from a generic brand. I like the Hershey’s, thank you very much, or the Godiva. That is fine. You can save twenty-five cents or maybe a dollar on generic. That is between you and your recipes. That is all good.

I would say to you that we must consider that there are specific ingredients the Lord expects us to use in our recipe. Because if we all have a particular call upon our life, we all have a particular call to please God, not to please ourselves, nor to please our culture. God has called us, and we have a moral responsibility to please the one that has made us. For He has made us, and not we ourselves.


He has given us incredible power. The Bible says He has given man dominion over all the works of His hands. He has given us incredible ability. I did not read in the Bible that told me I need to wear black socks, but there they are. I am getting to the age I could wear white crew socks, and I would not care. I think my tie matches. I can wear what I want to. I can comb my hair on whichever side I want, and I do not think God is going to judge me because He is not my fashion judge.

The Search for Authenticity

We will all stand before the Lord. In fact, I believe that the Lord sees me now. He sees me at home. He sees me driving down the road. To a greater degree, people look for authenticity in their images and in their music. You think that you are a critic, that you can spot AI. I tell you, the Lord knows when it is real from us and when it is not.

God has a search for authenticity. The Lord specifically points out He is looking for true worshipers that worship Him in spirit and in truth. What does that mean? Spirit speaks to our inner man. That part of us that will never grow old. That part of us that is our identity. We must worship Him with who we really are, and in truth. Our sincere, humble self, without pretense or put-on.

It is the whole us, and everything we do, everything we say, is not calculated by our ideas or our feelings. The Lord has given us His Word, and in it He does not just paint in impressionistic art. It is very definitive. The reality filter is on high.

Jesus said, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.”

Genesis 4:3 *And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth.*



I want us to think about this for a minute. Cain and Abel, a story as old as time. Cain and Abel are both believers in God. Cain and Abel are both worshipers of God. But Cain’s offering was disrespected. God did not respect it. Abel’s offering was respected and accepted by God.

If you have ever had brothers and you show favoritism, it is not a happy time. These two brothers did the same thing, but one of them was favored, and the other one did not get that favor. So the one that did not get favor is mad. You can see it if you have been around little boys. These were men, but men are just little boys that grew up.

What is the saying? The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.

Cain is angry. He is frowning. His countenance is falling. Look at what the Lord says. “Cain, what is wrong? Why are you angry? Why are you frowning? Do you not know that if you do well, you will be accepted? In fact, Cain, I have a little secret for you. If you do well, you will be more blessed than your brother.”

We do not read that the Lord ever spoke to Abel. I am not saying He did not. But I think it is worth noting that at the very foundation of the world, the Lord shows this drama, and in the drama there are two people. All things being equal, if they both worshiped and God had favor on both offerings, Cain would be on the winning side of this equation. It shows God's love for Cain.

He warns Cain, “If you do right, you are going to be accepted. You are going to be blessed. You are going to be blessed more than Abel.” But rather than listening to the entreaty, the invitation, the warning from the Lord, he does not just do right. He goes out, he is angry, and he slays his brother. That is heavy, I know.

Beware of the Religious Spirit

Brother Sullivan Jones was a minister here in our church for a number of years at different times, and we at that time had been teaching a number of Bible studies to a number of different people, and we had witnessed a tendency, a trend, not just in the people we had been teaching Bible studies, but just to a lot of people we know. We were talking about how it seems that some people can be so close but yet so far away.


We were having this discussion. What is it that causes someone to just fully commit, where they just buy in, they sell out, they fully commit, and those that do not? We left the conversation. I could take you. We were sitting in the gravel part of the parking lot at that church, 1224 Springridge Road, and we left without an answer.


Later that day or later that week, I was praying, and the Lord reminded me of this verse in Jude 1:11. I love it when God talks to me. Do you love it when the Lord talks to you? I was seeking the Lord for an answer, and the Lord gave me this verse.

*Woe unto them! for they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core.* Jude 1:11

It is like I heard the Lord say, “Beware of the religious spirit.” These are three characteristics of a religious spirit that everybody, at different times, will deal with one or all of them. I do not really have time to deal with all three. I am going to deal with the way of Cain, but I am going to give you a summary of the two I am not going to cover.

Ran greedily after the error of Balaam. Balaam is an amazing story. He is not a Hebrew. He is just this seemingly random individual that is hired by an enemy king of the tribes of Israel, and they pay him money. Previously, he was a true prophet. He heard from God. If he said it would happen, it would happen, and the Lord talked to him. But because he was offered money, he was willing to prophesy whatever was put in his mouth. He took what was real and sold it out for fame, fortune, and recognition.

Beware of selling your God-given gifting and anointing for these things.

If you study it, Balaam was a prophet who died with the heathen, and it is called "ran greedily" after the error of Balaam. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a characteristic of a religious spirit, and you see it all over the world.


The next one is they perished in the gainsaying of Korah. What is that? Korah was a leader among the Jews. He was a Levite, and when Moses ran away from Egypt, he was a respected man, a leader, but because he rejected spiritual authority, he and his family were destroyed. He perished because he could not recognize that he himself had to submit to spiritual authority.

You see this today in spades. No one wants a pastor. Everybody wants a preacher. Everybody needs to have a submitted spirit. I am not saying you need to obey me, because at some point we all have to recognize that I need someone who I will let rebuke me, teach me, lead me, and help me. We all need that. I have that in my life. You need it in your life.

For just a few minutes, what is the characteristic of the way of Cain?

Cain brought something. Abel brought his best. Cain had faith in God, but Cain was unwilling to obey God. Cain was a worshiper of God, but Cain was unwilling to repent when the Lord told him what he was doing was wrong.


It is not enough to have faith.

We all have to recognize that what Abel did that Cain left off is this: Cain brought in the process of time some fruit from the ground and said, “Hey, here it is, God.” But Abel brought his firstlings and his fat. He brought priority and premium. He did not bring God hamburger meat. He brought God his filet mignon. He gave God his best.

All of us have responsibilities to deal with. We all have people that have expectations upon us, and rightfully so. But we must recognize that what God is looking for, what true worship is, is when we set in our mind a priority. I am going to give God my first, and I am going to give God my best. When I make exceptions and excuses, I will make the exceptions for God and the excuses for everything else.

You make exceptions for what you want to do, and you make excuses for what you do not want to do as much.

I think it is good to want something authentic, but we must recognize that the Lord is seeking for you to authentically worship God with your true self, your whole self, and nothing but your true whole self.


God loves you. God shed His precious blood for you. Though there are circumstances and situations that often are contrary to our desires, at the end of the day, it is God, it is His Word, it is His will, it is His kingdom, it is His mandate.

May we all pass the test when God looks at our worship.

May we all be like Abel when we worship, and God respects and favors us.

Woe unto all who go down the way of Cain.

When God looks at you, will he find your worship Authentic?

The Search for Authenticity

By Him, For Him, To Him!

Scott A. Phillips

Above is the Transcript after some minor changes and cleanup of the message I preached on Aug 30, 2026

3 John
*The elder unto the wellbeloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.*
*Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.*
*For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth.*
*I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.*

*Beloved, thou doest faithfully whatsoever thou doest to the brethren, and to strangers;*
*Which have borne witness of thy charity before the church: whom if thou bring forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well:*
*Because that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the Gentiles.*
*We therefore ought to receive such, that we might be fellowhelpers to the truth.*

*I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.*
*Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.*

*Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.*
*Demetrius hath good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record; and ye know that our record is true.*
*I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee:*
*But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face. Peace be to thee. Our friends salute thee. Greet the friends by name.*

The power of good.

Several words that are used in the Greek that translate to good are never translated into evil.

None of the words that speak to evil are ever translated into good.

Good is always good, and evil is always evil.

There is a difference between evil and sin. Both are not good.

Evil is evil, but sin is not always evil. Sin is missing the mark. Evil is much more than missing the mark. It is a sin that calculates itself to injure another.

Taking drugs is a sin. Selling them is evil.

Evil brings harm to others.

Sin is always sin, but sin is not always evil. Evil is always sin, and evil is always evil.

There was a Jewish man who testified at Adolf Eichmann's trial, the Nazi war criminal, and when he recounted the inhumanity that he witnessed, he fell on the ground and wept and groaned for the evil that they saw done by the Nazi’s.

34 times in the Bible you will find the words "good" and "evil" side by side. Doing good to someone means doing good deeds, actions of benevolence. But evil is the opposite. It is harming someone.

Evil is the worst kind of sin, and we are never justified in hurting others. Vengeance belongs to God. When you try to hurt someone, it's the worst kind of thing. God does not want us to conspire to hurt or harm others with our mouths or our actions.

In the Bible, Jesus was a friend to sinners, but when He met Herod, He would not speak to him because not all sinners are evil.

There is a distinction between sin and evil, and I think it's important for us to understand that.

Even the Apostle Paul, who had much to write about the love of God and the mercy of God, in a number of places he said, "Avoid these people. Have nothing to do with them. Don't eat with them." Because there is a difference between being one who sins and being one who does evil.

Evil is harming someone.

Jesus did die to save everyone, including someone like Saul. Saul did some evil things, because he was blinded by his understanding.

Even John the Beloved wrote in the scripture I read to you,

*I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.*

If you've been in church very long you have seen this personality trait manifested in people that should be good to others. I don't know if it's insecurity, afraid someone's going to sing better, preach better, talk better, teach better. And I've seen people act and look like the devil when they should be the people of God.

I'm thankful that I haven't seen that in this church.

**Discernment**

Discernment is one of the “Best Gifts we should pray for.

I remember on an occation as a young man working for a little blind woman who was prone to begin to prophesy when every she prayed and there were people around. Of course, she always wanted to pray. She was a holy woman given to much prayer.

One day I was working at her house and she had invited me in to drink some sweet tea and some cake she had made. In a short time we began to pray and she began to prophesy. I remember something she said, something like this.

When you pray for the best gifts, pray for discernment. My people must have discernment, because the day of great deception is coming, and if they don’t discern, they will suffer great disappointment and discouragement. Some will be deceived if they don’t have discernment.”

It's important for people to have discernment. I have seen strong churches, strong apostolic people led astray because of the lack of discernment. Because of offense hardness of heart settled in and the leaders begin to find their fellowship with others who share a grievance and offense. Rather than finding Unity in the Truth, they find unity in their offenses. Too often they become the enemies of truth and righteousness and lead people into a lesser call to dedication, and the end result is heartbreak and further disillusionment.

I've seen it over and over and over again. They talk a good game, but the end is not good. I can see certain situations, and it breaks my heart, and I'm like, same song, twelfth verse, a little bit louder and a little bit worse.

It said, *when I would do good, evil is present with me.*

Evil always shows up when people are doing good.

But over and over and over and over again the scripture says, *Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.* Because there is God power when you are committed to doing good, no matter what other people do.

The distinction between God and Good.

It is possible to do good without God. However, it is impossible to seek God sincerely and not desire to do good. Plenty of people have used “God” as an excuse while doing evil and not good.

**The Power of the Cross**

The wisdom and the power of the cross, there are many things we can talk about, but two significant things we see are that Jesus, while He was hanging on the cross because He was betrayed and denied and rejected, that precious blood that dripped on the ground was to save people, the people, and people just like those who caused Him to be in that situation.

He cried, *Father, forgive them.*

We must understand that there is power in good.

There is power in good.

You must understand that there is a supernatural flow of good and God when we commit ourselves to do what is right, no matter what the rest of the world is doing.

The Bible says, *Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord.* He's like a tree planted by the waters. There is a spiritual flow when you have committed, you've planted, you've placed yourself. I shall not be moved. Though war should rise against me. Though men come to destroy me, I will not change my commitment to the good.

It is one of the hardest prescriptions Jesus gave when He declared this principle.

^“Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:43-45

We don't do that simply because we're obligated; it's some kind of law or some kind of God's going to get us. When you understand there is power in good, and when you connect to doing good in the face of all the evil, you are connecting yourself to the economy and the warfare of God.

*Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.*

If I hold my peace and let the Lord fight my battles.

There's something about when we understand that we stay committed to the Lord, we're under the wings, under the shadow of His wings, and we don't want to get out from underneath the coverage of God's grace and outside of the ultimate Iron Dome.

I don't know if y'all saw that a number of months ago when the rockets were coming over from Iran and all the places, and it looked like a miracle that those Iron Dome missiles would fly up and just one after one, it looked like a miracle. And I would say to you that God is.

What is it?

*Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth.*

You want to wrap all that up. It is a commitment to clothe ourselves, arm ourselves with the armor of that which is good.

The greatest weapon against evil is good.

And the greatest weapon against more evil is more good.

And if it becomes more evil, be more good.

Because the Lord has given us the power through His grace, through His blood, through His name, and through His Word.

I'm not good only because of myself.

I can be good because God's been good to me. But I can tell you that there's a list of people in the Bible who were good without the Holy Ghost. Long before the New Testament.

They were righteous without the blood of Jesus Christ. Not only because of their faith in God alone, but because they did what pleased God in the face of all manner of iniquity and compromise they were surrounded by.

They were committed to something that was bigger and greater revelation than all of the other people could comprehend, because good will hold you.

Your commitment to doing the good, being the good, that will hold you in the evil days because it's supernatural. God connects you and blesses you when you are committed to doing what He says, no matter what they do.

The power of good.

1 Peter 3

*Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:*

Now, I don't think he means that you would be pitiful, but that you would have pity for. We've all been pitiful sometimes. He's not saying be pitiful so everybody feels sorry for you. He's saying you have pity for those that may be having challenges. Be courteous. Be courteous.

Wow, what a word. Be courteous.

I find many people very judgmental; they project their own troubles onto others. When they're suspicious of everybody being unfaithful, when they suspect everybody being a liar, people a lot of times project their own insecurity. Their own angst, their own trespass in their soul, and they just paint everyone with. They see the whole world as everybody's like them.

The Bible says be courteous. You can smile. It's all right to smile. I've heard it said it takes fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown.

*Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.*
*For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile:*
*Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it.*
*For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.*

If you want to love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil.

Shut your mouth. Hold your tongue.

Let him refrain his tongue from evil.

*And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?* It's almost like if God be for me, who can be against me? And who is it that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good?

*But and if ye suffer for righteousness' sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;*
*But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:*
*Having a good conscience; that, whereas they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ.*

That is Good!

The truth will come out in the end.

I know some have suffered incredible murder of their character, and they didn't do anything wrong. Now, I know sometimes people get talked about 'cause, well, they done something, right? Right? It's a cautionary tale.

Be sure your sin will find you out, and what's done in secret shall be shouted from the rooftops.

There is power in doing good.

Keep praying. Keep going to church.

Keep intentionally being a blessing.

You can be a blessing, and if you'll be a blessing, God's going to bless you back.

I believe in and I appreciate, I celebrate faithful giving of our church people, our church family. The air is on. The note's paid. Insurance is paid.

I'd hate to think I was having to pay all that.

Together we do that, and God blesses your faithfulness in giving.

But we need to be sure our hearts are open to doing good, whether it's tipping a waiter fairly or generously. I think we need to realize that when we're outside the church doors, we are witnesses in everything we do.

**Keep Doing Good**

You know, what is noted of Stephen at his stoning is that there was a young man who stood by and had conspired to have him suffer and be murdered. And as he stood there holding the coats of the man that he conspired to kill, he heard the prayer of Stephen calling upon God and saying, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge."

What a testimony.

While Evil was being perpetrated on him, Stephen did that which was good.

One day, the man who had been engaged in harming others became the great Apostle Paul. If one compels you to go a mile, go two. If one slaps you on the cheek, turn the other cheek. Keep on doing good.

It could be that the grace and good in Stephen served as a testimony that one day would bring the Apostle Paul into a reality.

Good does overcome Evil. Evil men can be converted and made good and holy.

One thing I do want to revisit here, in closing, John says something, verse 4, *I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.*

This evening as I sat in the front row and listened to the singing and the music and the worship, Nate and his brother Noah have been helping in the church since they were itty-bitty boys. And I asked Nate the other day, "When did you start playing the guitar in church?" I think he said 16. And they have developed a gift in the house of the Lord, and I would never celebrate if that gift was used for the world.

There's a lot of gifted people that the world has given them everything, fame and fortune, and they're celebrated, but they took that which was holy, and though they may have some good characteristics and done good they took what was supposed to be used to worship God, and they used it to entertain the world.

Doing good does not save us. However doing good should absolutely be our agenda when we are saved.

I pray that all of us would never be deceived to think that the praises of men is ever more great than the praises of God, because the devil is out there.

If you're willing to sell your soul, the devil's always a buyer.

The power of good. We must commit ourselves to the power of good. And I'm preaching to the choir.

Even as John wrote, he said, *I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health.* And he goes on to say, *Beloved, thou doest faithfully.*

”Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word. Bless it, anoint it to our hearts, Lord God. Let it, oh God, produce righteous fruit, even the fruit of righteousness, Lord, the seeds of peace. God,

I pray that You, oh God, would lead us and guide us. Give us an opportunity to do good unto all men, and especially of those of the household of faith. “

In Him, By Him, Through Him,

Scott A. Phillips

I saw this and found it worth sharing.

“Eat a mouthful of grass, and you get nothing. It goes in green and comes out green.

Eat straw, and you get nothing. Your gut cannot touch cellulose.

Eat acorns, and you get tannins and a very bad afternoon.

Eat bracken, and you get a carcinogen.

Eat nettles, thistles, brambles, rushes and moorland heather and you get a mouthful of blood and no calories.

Eat the beet pulp, the oat husks and the spent brewer’s grain, and you get the waste the factory couldn’t sell.

Now feed the lot of it to a cow.

She turns every one of them into steak, butter, cream, milk and a hide, on land that will never grow a vegetable, using four stomachs and a fermentation vat you do not have.

The grass she eats grew on rain and sunlight, for free, on a hillside nobody can plow.

She is the only creature on earth that can take a field of inedible fibre and hand you back the most nutrient-dense food there is.

The cow is not competing with you for food. She eats the ninety percent you cannot.

Best plant-based diet ever invented.

It just has a cow in the middle doing the hard part.”

“Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.” 1 Corinthians 4:5

You and I will never know what we accomplished or its effect and impact until the “day” comes when everything is made known and revealed.

I ran across this story and thought it was worth sharing.

“Vincent van Gogh painted nearly a thousand canvases and more than two thousand works in all. He is known to have sold only one of them by name. He never lived to see that he would become one of the most famous artists ever.

In the last year of his life, his first and only named work sold.

The painting he sold is called *The Red Vineyard*, or more fully *The Red Vineyards near Arles*. He made it in Arles in November 1888. It shows workers gathering grapes in a vineyard at sunset. It sold for 400 francs—roughly two thousand dollars in today’s money—at the Les XX exhibition in Brussels in early 1890.

The buyer was a Belgian painter and collector named Anna Boch, the sister of Van Gogh’s friend Eugène Boch. Some believe she bought it partly out of solidarity, because his work had been mocked and dismissed, and she wanted him to have one small win. Van Gogh later told his brother Theo he was embarrassed she had paid the full sticker price instead of a friend’s price.

That sale happened only months before his death in July 1890. He was thirty-seven. The world that mattered to him had almost no use for the canvases that kept piling up.

He did learn of the Brussels sale. In February 1890, he wrote that Theo had told him a canvas had sold there for 400 francs. It was not enough to change the larger feeling. He died believing he had failed.

Within a few decades after his death, the man who sold a single canvas for 400 francs became one of the most beloved and valuable artists in history. His *Portrait of Dr. Gachet* later sold for $82.5 million. His *Irises* sold for nearly $54 million. *The Red Vineyard* itself now hangs in the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, and no price could buy it.

He once wrote something, in a letter to Theo from The Hague in July 1882, that still says a great deal about a life spent making things that would only be valued after his life.

“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person… All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.”

His work would go on to move the whole world. He is the one who never got to see it.”

Van Gogh is known to have been a troubled soul and to have experienced mental anguish. I wonder if his mental anguish was in some part due to his sense that nothing he did mattered.

A lot of people live with regret and disappointment that things seemed to have no benefit.

^“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:

That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:” 1 Peter 1:6-8

The importance of laboring in hope. If we need celebration or recognition for what we do, we will be miserable. However, in many things we endeavor to do, we must trust the Lord of the Harvest.

Jesus Christ died, being rejected by the very people he came to save.

He was denied by his most vocal supporter.

He was betrayed and sold out by the one he had entrusted with the money.

He was deserted by his disciples.

It would seem to all looking on, he died a failure.

However, things are rarely what they seem in the moment.

Be encouraged.

We are engaged in something more beautiful than Van Gogh's paintings.

It is more costly and of greater value than the millions or billions of dollars in this world.

What price could be given to finish this life and hear the one who commissioned us and whom we, with our lives, painted on the canvas of each and every time we followed his lead?

Even in this moment, I write in hope. Even if few will ever see, read or appreciate my goal or desire.

May we all do what we are called to do,

In Him, By Him, Through Him and FOR HIM!

Scott A. Phillips

What is Unity? Oneness, harmony, and togetherness in peace.

Years ago, I preached a message called *The One Thing God Will Not Build*.

Link -

Because of the nature of how God created us, in that we have the ability to choose what we will do, the Lord will not make us be unified. So the only way I can have unity with you, and you can have unity with me, is it requires both of us to decide.

We're together. We will be in Unity.

The scripture says that it is good and it is pleasant for brethren to dwell together in unity.

Unity is not Division.

What else is unity not? Separation.

Unity is not competition.

Unity is not jealousy.

So for us to have what the Bible says is good and pleasant, it means that we are together, choosing to be together.

Unity is not simply not telling you what I think.

It's not just simply holding my tongue.

Unity is not simply me choosing not to smack you in the face.

Unity is spiritual. It is a spiritual product, an outcome you and I decide to have together.

Psalm 133:1-2
*Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity! It is like the precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard: that went down to the skirts of his garments;*

David likens unity to the anointing oil that was put upon the head of the high priest Aaron. That's some pretty powerful imagery, in that the highest religious leader in his favor and selection from God—that's high. David is telling us that the unity among brothers is strong. It's high anointing. It's high privilege. It's really special.

We must understand that you and I need to have unity.

Unity is not just tolerating.

Unity is a spiritual thing that is produced when two people choose to share an affinity, a preference, a love for the other.

When we have this understanding, we might make it a higher priiority.

Because there's anointing in unity. When I am at one with you, I receive a shared anointing I can't receive by myself. My name's not Aaron. My father wasn't Aaron. My great-great-great-grandfather was not Aaron. So I would never have access to this ultimate anointing of priesthood except that I have unity with you. That's powerful.

Psalm 133:3

*As the dew of Hermon, and as the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion: for there the Lord commanded the blessing, even life for evermore.*


The psalmist is telling us that when we as believers have unity, when brethren dwell together in unity, in unity is great anointing. In unity is great blessing.

A blessing likened to the favor God had upon the loved city of Jerusalem.

So if we just consider this as a frame for some scriptures that are in the New Testament, which I have here.

Ephesians 4:3
Endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.


The definition of endeavoring?

It's not a simple effort. It's working towards. It's not something you just snap your fingers and accomplish. It requires some effort. It would be like endeavoring not to eat sugar.

If you are endeavoring not to eat sugar, it's a lot of trouble if you try to go to a restaurant. What do they have that doesn't have sugar? Maybe non-sweet tea and meat.

If you go to the grocery store, I remember when I was first diagnosed with type 2, and they basically said you can shop on the outer edges of the grocery store because everything in the middle is going to mess with your sugar. Everything is high processed flour and sugar, which is going to affect your blood sugar. So endeavoring is not speaking of some just-add-water, put-in-the-microwave-for-ten-seconds thing.

It's something that we pursue.

Ephesians 4:4-6

*There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.*

We've preached one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Father of all.

If you look at it, the context of this is that we should be one.

We should be unified together just as there is a oneness in the Godhead.

There's a oneness that we share. We've been baptized with the same Spirit. We've been baptized in the same name. We're all a part of the same body. We're all part of the same building. So we want to understand there is great spiritual benefit in you and me being at one together.

It's not always easy.

I have endeavored to build friendships throughout my life, and I have more close friends than the average person. But my longest friend is Kevin Shindal. If you know us very well, we are very different—almost opposites. If you remember the TV show *The Odd Couple*, we are very different.

Our temperament is different. Just totally different. I won't say that the fact that he's different from me doesn't get on my nerves sometimes. I am sure that is true for him. But we've been good friends. Having a mutually beneficial relationship does not require that you see eye to eye on everything. You do need to have everything in common.

There's some commonality.

In the church, we have to understand that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing, and that's not where we go eat after church. I don't have to eat Chinese food with you for us to be on the same page. You don't have to go eat fried chicken with me for us to be one. You can appreciate that you have certain preferences I don't.

That doesn't mean we're not in unity.

But on the things that really matter, we can love one another even though we have different preferences.

The point of this lesson today is that, when we are together, we share a blessing that is only attainable when we are together. You can't get it outside of the fellowship of the church.

1 John 1:7
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

There is something supernatural and spiritual that is directly dependent on us being in unity with the church. I would say that it is just as doctrinally sound to say if you want to be saved, you gotta be baptized, as to say that you need to be at unity with other believers, because unity is a relationship that we have with Jesus together.

The old song, "Me and Jesus got our own thing going," or that other song, "As long as I've got King Jesus... I don't need nobody else."

"I don't need nobody else," is not true.

I do need somebody else. For me to experience the blessings, the anointing, the promises of God that are to the church... I need to be in fellowship, relationship with “The Church.”

There is a doctrine out there that teaches that everyone was individually predestined by God to be saved or lost, based on a narrow reading of Scripture.

The challenge is that the Bible does talk about a called, chosen, and predestined group of people. This is not determined individually.

The church is predestined.

The Bible's very clear. God has promises for a particular people. But individually, how we respond to God's dealing with us individually brings us into the whole. The group.

God has predestined the church to be the bride of Christ. It's like a bus going to Chicago. You can't go to Chicago in this analogy except you get on the bus, because the bus is going to Chicago, but the only way that I'm gonna be on that bus to go to Chicago, I gotta go get on the bus. I must stay on the bus.

The church is predestined, but us individually... We only experience God's promises and desires for the church in fullness because of the unity, fellowship, and connection we have in the body of Christ.

Philippians 2:2-5
Fulfill ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:

Jesus is the ultimate example. Jesus came in the form of a servant, and all that He did, He did it in obedience to the will of God. As a man, He did that in obedience to God, and that obedience to God was to serve the good of others. Jesus was the Lord of Heaven. God manifested himself in flesh. The fact is God is Jesus. The Bible says the fullness of the Godhead was in him bodily. The essence, the personality, the will, the desires of the Spirit of God that cannot be contained, he came in the form of flesh.

The man Christ Jesus is the personification of God.

But God is more than just a man. Jesus was more than a man, but Jesus was the only begotten of the Father. Jesus as a man was born of a woman. Before that birth in Bethlehem, God was everywhere. That baby was born in Bethlehem. God was still everywhere, and God was in Jesus. So God came in the form of a servant that he might save someone.

When we understand that when we are in the body of Christ, no doubt we have responsibility to save ourselves, but we have a responsibility to try to do what we can to encourage the body.

We should have a feeling, a compassion, a patience, a long-suffering, a prayer for... I wanna see my fellow saint, my brother or my sister, I wanna see them blessed.

Well, I don't like their socks. I wish they'd do something with that hair. I wish they would wear deodorant. Sometimes we can get so distracted.

My point is we cannot allow minor distinctions, preferences, ideas, and opinions to cause us to withdraw from one another or be closed to one another; we need to celebrate the good and the God, and encourage the work of God being done in everyone.

1 Peter 3:8
Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:

We should consider ourselves as servants to the salvation of the fellowship of the brethren specifically. We have a responsibility to be a witness. We have a commission to go ye therefore into all nations, baptizing and teaching them. We have a great commission, and it is of vital importance.

The purpose of the Lord not taking us out of here after we've been saved is that he wants to convert us from simply being saved to being witnesses to others so they might be saved.

We have a great commission.

We have a call to be a witness. But I can't save anybody. However, we need to understand that just as important as our commission to have a heart for the lost is, we in no less terms need to have a heart for our church family.

I remember one of the jobs I had. It's probably my first potentially good job I had. It was at a computer copier company down the road. I will never forget; it was my first exposure to the actual enmity between Ole Miss and Mississippi State fans. About half the place was Ole Miss fans, and half the place was State fans.

It was every day, especially football season. It was always just something. I remember one time in particular; I don't remember the guy's name, but he was a big guy. He was a State fan. And there was this kinda smaller guy, and he knew how to push his buttons. I remember one time, this big old- I mean, he probably was an offensive lineman kinda guy- and this other guy, he could've been a water boy. But he could stir that State fan up. And I remember him getting so mad, his face turned red, and instead of hitting the guy, he walked out, slammed the door.

I remember just thinking, "That is so strange." I think that is maybe an exaggeration.

It's possible to have teams we like, sports we like, hobbies we like, politics we like or don't like, and we can allow it to be divisive when we should not allow anything that really matters, anything that doesn't matter, to divide our hearts, our minds, our affection one toward another.

Why?

Because the Bible says, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

I saw something about the Tower of Babel the other day, and they suggested how tall it was. What caught my attention is that one of them was saying that it was taller than the tallest building in the world today.

I think that may be a stretch.

I did try to find out how big the base of it was, and if you know it, because there's still some archaeological remains from where the Ziggurat of Babylon, which I believe is in modern-day Iraq, and which is where Babylon was, modern-day Iraq.

But you think about how tall it was. It was tall enough to catch God's attention. The Bible says the Lord looked down and He said, "All of them are as at one. Nothing shall be kept from them."

And what did the Lord do to confuse and bring... God brought purposeful division to keep people who were unified together from pursuing an evil end.

Because what they were pursuing was an evil end.

And the Lord went and confused their language so that they would not be at one.

They couldn't understand each other. And the result of God confusing the language is what we have as races today.

Races.

Because what are races?

People have racial differences because they lived in different parts of the woods and the desert. And today there are over 7,000 living languages, and if you go to certain places in Europe or certain places in Asia, go to certain places in Africa, you'll have these little enclaves of people, and they speak a language that no one else knows but the people that live in that spot.

There are these hidden tribes that they try to avoid contact with. And when those people keep marrying cousins, they begin to have racially distinct features, along with language, culture, and food. And all the wars up until not long ago were about these, essentially the product of God rejecting humanity's desire to be at one with another for an evil end. But look what the Lord did when they came together in one.

Acts 2:1-4
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.*

So on one end, the Lord confuses the language, and it brings division. In the church, God gives us all a shared language, and people of every culture, creed, and race can be united because of what He gives us when He fills us with the Holy Ghost.

Lord, help me to have a heart that seeks unity with my brothers and sisters in the Lord, that I could have unity, Lord God, with those of like precious faith. That have been filled with the same spirit, baptized in the same name, washed in the same blood, and have the same hope. Lord God, let us never be divided or be a broken fellowship for anything, Lord, that doesn't matter in time and eternity. God, let me be a peacemaker, Lord God. Help me, God, to be one that brings and creates an atmosphere where there can be unity.

Surrounded by people who worshipped many different Gods. David was a worshipper of Jehovah God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

David recognizes Jehovah God’s total knowledge, presence, and creative sovereignty.

David is the most famous king in the history of Israel, up until Jesus.

Christ is King!

David was chosen and anointed by God because he had a heart after God.

This does not mean his heart was like God, but that his heart desired God.

He wrote things like, “As the deer panteth after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”

He, like many other exceptional individuals in Scripture, was known as a shepherd.

Abel, Job, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Amos,

7 individuals God used to frame and found the faith were Shephards.

Psalms 23 is one of the most famous of Psalms, and it was penned by David.

1. God’s Thorough Searching and Knowledge of our whole being.

“O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.”

Complete awareness of every action and thought.
David pairs of opposites: sitting/rising, path/lying down) Hebrew poetry to express totality.

The verb “searched” (ḥāqar) evokes examining land or a city, here applied to the inner life—prompting honest introspection of motives that only God fully sees.

Words and ways known before they form.
Even unspoken words are known “altogether.”

Nothing can be hidden or rationalized away.

Overwhelming, surrounding knowledge that humbles.

“Beset… behind and before” and the hand laid upon the psalmist picture protective yet inescapable enclosure.

Mind-boggling. The admission “too wonderful… I cannot attain” demands repentance: recognition that human self-knowledge is incomplete and must yield to divine scrutiny for a clean conscience.

2. The Inescapable Presence and Creative Care of God

“Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them!
If I should count them, they are more in number than the sand: when I awake, I am still with thee.”

No Escape

Heaven above / Hell Below (the grave/underworld) below, and “wings of the morning” (east, sunrise speed) to the “uttermost parts of the sea” (west, Mediterranean horizon) form spatial merisms reflecting the ancient three-tiered cosmos. Geographical imagery draws on Israel’s land-locked perspective, where the sea represented danger and distance. Parallel language appears in Amarna letters, but here God’s presence is personal and guiding, not merely surveillance—driving the soul to stop fleeing and confess dependence.

Divine Formation and Knowledge

Darkness cannot hide; the “lowest parts of the earth” is poetic for the dark, secret womb

You Can’t Hide in a Cave

God “possessed my reins” (kidneys/inner self) and “curiously wrought” (embroidered) the embryo.

Jewish tradition reads verse 15–16 as Adam’s seed stretched across the world, with all future generations written in God’s book—emphasizing that life itself is under divine authorship and leaving no room for self-justification.

Precious, innumerable thoughts that sustain continual presence.

God’s thoughts outnumber sand; upon waking, the psalmist remains “still with thee.” This moves from potential flight to grateful wonder. In the cultural context of royal and personal devotion, introspection is compelled: if God has known and formed me from the beginning, then any “wicked way” must be exposed and abandoned so that the conscience may be clean.

3. Separation from the Wicked and the Prayer for Heart-Searching

vv. 19–24)Text:
“Surely thou wilt slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, ye bloody men.
For they speak against thee wickedly, and thine enemies take thy name in vain.
Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate thee? and am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee?
I hate them with perfect hatred: I count them mine enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:
And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Recognition and Revulsion of Evil Deeds, Thoughts, Ways

The “bloody men” and those who take God’s name in vain reflect covenant

Jewish tradition hears Adam’s voice rejecting evil descendants. Culturally, this is not personal vengeance but alignment with God’s justice—necessary confession that one cannot cling to sin or sinful associations while seeking a pure heart.

Perfect hatred of evil as loyalty to God.

“Hate them with perfect hatred” expresses grief over rebellion against Jehovah God.

In the psalm’s flow, it clears the ground for self-examination: true repentance involves both turning from external wickedness and inviting scrutiny of internal motives.

Open invitation for God to search, try, and lead.

The climactic prayer echoes the opening “searched me” but now as a voluntary plea.

“Try me” evokes refining metal; “wicked way”

(literally “way of pain/idolatry”) asks exposure of any offense; “way everlasting” seeks lasting guidance.

Idolatry - Wickedness - Self - Being Honest that the wickedness of human nature is the seeds that bring us into a way that destroys?

“Behold, within the chest of common remedies for the travails of this mortal life, WD-40 and the duct tape do stand as the chosen pair for wondrous works mechanical: the one doth free that which will not budge nor yield, the other doth bind fast that which will not stay nor hold.

The Holy Scriptures complete this sacred three, bestowing the selfsame dual might upon the spirit of man. Loosing the burdens that press heavy upon the soul, and fastening it securely unto hope, unto purpose, and unto grace everlasting.”

The Scriptures bring a quiet ease to the mind, soul, and spirit of man.

In its pages, anxious thoughts find rest, heavy hearts are lightened, and restless spirits discover a calm that no circumstance can easily disturb. Reading or recalling their truths feels like setting down a long-carried load. Simple, natural, and deeply refreshing. At the same time, the Scriptures offer steadfastness that anchors the whole inner life. The Word of God and its ability to steady the mind against confusion, strengthen the soul through every season of change, and hold the spirit firm when everything else shifts.

The Bible and the divine virtue it imparts do not waver; it remains a steadfast foundation that keeps a person grounded, resilient, and quietly confident, no matter what comes.

She is a walking bundle of sunshine and laughter, and a never-ending list of things she wants to do.

I looked and found a single box of cake mix. With her expert assistance, we cracked some eggs, melted some butter, poured some milk, mixed the batter, buttered the pan, and poured the batter into it.

In about 25 Minutes, we had fixed the situation.

We then had cake.

No pictures of this were taken. I can prove it because there are still a few pieces left in the pan.

The moral of the story.

Just because you don’t have cake now doesn’t mean you can’t have cake in a short time.

In most cases, there won't be an Angel delivering cakes. However, necessity is said to be the mother of invention.

I thought of the verse when Jesus asked, “If you have a child who asks for bread, you don’t give them a stone…. if you being evil will give good things to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to anyone that asks.”

Often, like that cake, the things of God are all around for God to help us “Bake a cake.”

He will guide us; he will have the supplies on hand. He often will let us crack the eggs and stir the mix, all the while watching and mostly making sure it’s just right.

“Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Savior Jesus Christ:

Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,”

^“ According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature,” 2 Peter 1:1-4

You Can Call Me Obadiah

Obadiah 1:1 The vision of Obadiah.

I have never preached from the Book of Obadiah that I recall in my life. I started preaching when I was about twenty, and I am fifty-six, maybe fifty-seven soon.

This morning, as is often my experience, I was trying to find what the Lord would have me say today. The Lord directed me to the very first few words in the book of Obadiah.

Obadiah 1:1 The vision of Obadiah.

You Can Call Me Obadiah

Obadiah is an individual we know very little about. We know his name, and we know he had a word from the Lord. His name means a worshiper or servant of Jehovah.

If your name is Obadiah, that is just another way of saying, “I am a worshiper and servant of the Lord.”

When you hear the name Obadiah, you are hearing, “I am a worshiper and servant of the Lord. You can call me Obadiah.”

Serving Notice to the Enemy

In his vision that is recorded here, it is essentially a letter serving notice to the enemy: “Your kingdom is coming down.” There is very little good news in the Book of Obadiah, and it is all bad news for the enemy.

Much of it is the coming judgment of God upon those who have sought the downfall and the discredit of God’s people. As far as we know, Obadiah had one word, and his one word was essentially, “Satan, your kingdom is coming down, and the saints—Jesus is coming to bring salvation to your world.”

I would say to you that if you would summarize essentially what we all have, the Bible says,

*But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light;*

That is a nutshell of what it means to serve God. Our God has delivered us from the power of darkness and delivered us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. It is a repetitive theme you find throughout the Scripture.

A Defining Revelation

There is something you are going to have to cement in your life. As a worshiper and servant of the Lord, I have a word from the Lord. I have a revelation that defines my life.

*Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me.*

It all boils down to a very simple truth of light and darkness, good and evil.

The Example of Job

The oldest book in your Bible, it has been said, is not the Book of Genesis, but the Book of Job. Job was written before the Book of Genesis. Job is of a rare character in that in his book the Lord says of Job—Job does not say of Job—“He is a perfect man.”

I do not believe that means he was like Jesus in that he never sinned, but there is a particular character that God is pleased with. The prescription for the favor of God is defined as fearing the Lord and having nothing to do with evil.

Magnets - Attraction and Repulsion

It is like a magnet. How many of you have had a magnet or two? In a magnet it has the side that attracts metal, and it has the other side that repels.

You could get two magnets, and if it is the attractive side, it bounces real fast and you have to really work hard. But if you flip them, there is like an invisible force field. You cannot hardly push them together, and if you push them together, it pops off.

That is a picture of what God has built inside of us. We all have the ability. We are going to be attracted and we are going to attract one thing, and we are going to repel and push against another thing.

So much of our life, we have to be sure our magnet is turned in the right direction.

Submitting to God

An example of that, the Scripture says,

*Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time:*

*Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.*

The only way that you have the ability to repel the enemy, to resist the devil, to eschew evil, is you have got to submit yourself to God.

The challenge is that our human nature is so often to resist God. We are born almost with that tendency.

I have heard it said that, essentially, magnetized metal has its ions or electrons with all the arrows pointing in the same direction, which makes them magnetized. A lot of times, we ourselves are not magnetized. We have arrows pointing everywhere.

When a piece of metal becomes magnetized, the tiny magnetic regions inside it (called magnetic domains) line up so that most of them point in the same direction.

A process in which a strong magnetic field is applied to the metal aligns these magnetic regions.

We have to recognize that the reason why sometimes we find ourselves helpless to resist the devil is that we are using our resistance against God.

The Lord says, “Do not do that.” Well, I do not really care what you say, Lord.

The Lord says, “I need you to pray.” Ah, I have something else to do.

We spend so much of our time resisting the Lord that we do not have any resistance left.

To the degree that we will surrender and submit and obey the Lord in our life, the strength of that ability to resist the devil grows because the resistance is God in me. It is the God in me that is bigger than the enemy.

*Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts...*

If you want to understand how to have personal victory over small things, you have to learn to surrender and submit to them.

We need to get in and stay in the presence of the Lord and let him realign everything inside of us that we are pointing toward HIM.

Call me Obadiah.

The servant and worshiper of the Lord.

**The Shortest Book**

Of all things, we know little about this man. This Obadiah is the shortest book in your Bible. It is one chapter and twenty-one verses, and most of the book is basically an in-your-face message to the devil: “You are not going to win.”

I do not advocate chasing after devils. I do not believe you need to talk about the devil all the time.

The Bible says,

*Neither give place to the devil.*

Sometimes when we think we are giving ourselves an allowance, we make provision for the flesh. We may be providing shade for the enemy to hang out in our life.

The Bible says, “Give no place to the devil.”

Obadiah was not just not giving place. He was serving notice: “Hey, I have a message from the Lord. You Lose.

Embracing the Name

Just when I began to think about it—I had not thought about it very long because the Lord just gave it to me not long before I came out here today—as you read the Scripture, there is a very simplistic theme.

There is good and God and holiness and righteousness, the believers and the saints, and there is all that other stuff.

Somewhere, I am not sure where it happened for Obadiah, but he embraced the name he was given. He was given the name Obadiah by his parents.

It is not enough to just be given an inheritance from your parents. At some point, you have got to embrace what God has given you and take it on like a coat or a cloak and embrace it and say, “My daddy called me Obadiah, a servant and a worshiper of the Lord.

I am Obadiah. I am a servant and worshiper of the Lord. It is not just something somebody calls me. It is who I am. It is what I am, and it is what I hope to be.

I want to be a servant of the Lord. I want to be a worshiper of the Lord, not just because it is my name, but it is who I am.”

Call me Obadiah.

The message focuses on the resistance that has been part of Israel's history. You see this. There is always someone to resist the work of God and the people of God.

There is an example in which it is not Obadiah writing a letter about the enemy, but the enemy writing a letter about the people of God.

There is a man by the name of Sanballat who sent a letter to Nehemiah, and Nehemiah was there to do a work for the Lord. He was there to build and restore the walls around Jerusalem.

The enemy always wants to take you off task. He wants to distract you from the work at hand.

Sanballat and Tobiah sent a letter to Nehemiah and said, “Nehemiah, come down off the wall, and I want you to meet me in the valley.”

The first time I read that, I said, “Hold on.” Do not let the devil call you down in the valley of regret.

Tell the devil, “I am not coming.” I am not going to go meet with the devil in the valley of regret.”

I am going to stay on the wall. I am going to work on the wall. I do not have time to have a conversation with those that do not want to see me succeed, but I intend to keep my hand on the plow, the sword in my hand, and I want to do a work for the Lord.

You can call me Obadiah.

I am a servant. I am a worshiper. I am a warrior for the Lord.

**Looking for Relief**

There is something inherently in the righteous soul of the saint of God that just breathes out a hope and a prayer. There is something inside us that is looking for the Lord to act.

I am in a mess. In fact, a perfect example: somebody had a bright idea to do an outreach event at four o’clock the other day. You know what I was praying for? “Lord, send a cloud.”

But that illustrates what is in the heart of the believer. We are looking for relief from the Lord. My help is in the Lord.

When it seems to be foolish, and it seems to be out of nowhere, the Lord did not send a cloud, but the Lord sent a wind.

Sometimes the Lord may not answer your prayer the way you want Him to, but God answers prayer.

If you will pray, if you will believe.

I believe God. I just believe He likes to say, “Did you see that? Watch this.”

I think the Lord takes joy in bringing joy to His people by showing, “Hey, your name is Obadiah, because I see you. You worship Me, you serve Me.

Your daddy may have called you Obadiah, and your mama may have called you Obadiah, and you may call yourself Obadiah, but when the Lord looks down and says, ‘You are rightly named,’ I am going to call you Obadiah.”

**Embracing Our Identity**

I feel the spirit of faith.

I do not know who this is for.

It may be for everyone.

I believe we sometimes need to embrace who we are in the Lord.

Part of our identity is understanding who we are, who the devil is, who God is, whose side we are on, which side will win, and what eternity looks like.

There is something foundational and fundamental in just embracing the identity God has called us to be.

**Keeping Our Eyes on Him**

No one could ever look at this paper and get anything out of it. It is almost like writing in tongues. You have got to have the gift of interpretation to read the writing.

I truly am thankful. In a lot of our lives, and in a lot of seasons, it is hard to make sense of things. We may have pain, and we are not sure what we did to make it.

Sometimes we have pain, and we know what we did. I should not have picked that up. I should not have done that. We have questions. We have frustrations. We have sorrow.

No matter what you find yourself in, if we are not careful, we can become so focused on the broken things, the painful things. We can become so fixated on deficits and debt.

We can become so focused on the bad news and the dark things that those things can become almost what we identify ourselves with.

It is like the magnet again. The Scripture says,

*Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.*

**A Conversation with a Pastor**

I was talking to a pastor. I called him. In short order, he was just frustrated. He said, “Brother Phillips, it is like I am preaching to concrete statues set in concrete.

It does not matter what I preach; they do not move, they do not respond, they do not change.

I am not talking about myself. This literally happened. I love you and appreciate our church. However, If the shoe fits, well, do not blame me.

Hold on, there is a connection to what I am preaching about.

He said, “Pastor, I am just so frustrated. It is like it does not matter how hard I preach, it does not matter what I do, no one really wants to do anything. They do not really want to make the step. They are ambivalent.”

I said to him, “Brother, you are expressing the frustration that everybody feels at some point in their life.” That is true if you are a pastor or a manager.

We look at where people do not readily change.

And if we are being honest, we look in the mirror, and you do not want to change.

It is natural for us to be ambivalent, to just look at people unconcerned.

I said to him, “Here is the thing. If you keep your eyes on them and base how you feel and how successful you are on their response, you are going to be frustrated.

Ministry to them is not about them. Ministry to them is about Him.”

Everything that you and I might do to try to help our family and be a blessing to other people—whether you are preaching, teaching, singing, giving, or attendance. We can allow our focus sometimes be on them.
What we are doing, no doubt that we love everybody, but we have got to keep our eyes on Him because whatever we do in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord.

There are no perfect preachers, no perfect saints, no perfect singers, no perfect musicians.

Sadly, many people have walked away from the Lord because they had their eyes on a man; they had their eyes on some individual, some teacher or elder. Because they did wrong, they did not do right; they offended them, they will leave the Lord because of something else did.

We are the sheep. We need to keep our eyes on the great Shepherd.

I will not cease to praise Him. You will not allow someone else’s attitude or what someone else said to you, to move you.

We are in it because He shed His blood for us.

We have got to turn our eyes on Him. The only way I can be a servant and a worshiper of the Lord is because I belong to the Lord. I am dedicated to the Lord. I am a worshiper of the Lord. I am a servant of the Lord.

You can call me Obadiah.

What I am telling you is that you have no less of a God-given vision than Obadiah did. What is his vision? Revelation. What is his revelation?

As long as I am a servant and worshiper of the Lord, I am on the winning side.

It does not matter who the enemy is. It does not matter what the obstacle is. It does not matter what the adversary says.

As long as you are a worshiper and servant of the Lord, it is going to be all right.

You can declare that God has given you a promise.

I will have victory.

I will be delivered.

I am healed.

There are two predominant worldviews in the modern world.

One is a product of Darwinism. The other is Creationism.

The Darwinian worldview centers on Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection: all living organisms share common ancestry. I saw in one museum that claimed all manner of organisms were an ancient ancestor of humans.

This graphic illustrates the “wisdom” of this worldview. Though there is no evidence of this conclusion, it is declared as science. Most of the academic world is rooted in this conclusion.

The simple fact these beliefs are beliefs and not science because it is impossible to know these things based on the scientific method.

A quote from Fred Hoyle, an Astronomer,

“The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable to the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.”

John Sanford of Cornell, plant geneticist, said,

“If mutation/selection cannot preserve the information already within the genome, it is difficult to imagine how it could have created all that information in the first place! We cannot rationally speak of genome-building when there is a net loss of information every generation!”

The more science learns from the expanse of the Universe to the complexity they see in the microscopic world, the complexity they see reveals that the simple conclusions Darwin and the worldview he constructed are not possible or logical from the things science has discovered and knows.

Francis Collins, director of the public Human Genome Project, is the primary figure from that effort who has publicly linked the genome to a Creator. Below are a few of his quotes.

“It is humbling for me, and awe-inspiring, to realize that we have caught the first glimpse of our own instruction book, previously known only to God.” (White House announcement of the draft human genome sequence, June 26, 2000)

“As a believer, I see DNA, the information molecule of all living things, as God’s language, and the elegance and complexity of our own bodies and the rest of nature as a reflection of God’s plan.” (From The Language of God)

“The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome.”

A. E. Wilder-Smith (Arthur Ernest Wilder-Smith, 1915–1995), the organic chemist

“To deny planning when studying such a system is to strain credulity more than to ask one to believe in an intelligent nipple designer, who incidentally must have understood hydraulics rather well.”

Just a few facts from the Book, “Atheism is Dead” by Eric Metaxas

Earth’s size is precisely calibrated. If it were slightly smaller, its magnetic field would be too weak, allowing the solar wind to strip away most of the atmosphere (leaving it like barren Mars). If it were slightly larger, gravity would be stronger, trapping a thick, unbreathable atmosphere of water vapor, methane, and carbon dioxide.

Its distance from the Sun places it in the narrow habitable (“Goldilocks”) zone where liquid water can exist. Even small shifts would make the planet too hot or too cold for life.

A striking geometric coincidence: the Moon’s diameter is almost exactly 1/400th that of the Sun, and its average distance from Earth is almost exactly 1/400th the Earth–Sun distance. As a result, the Moon and Sun appear nearly the same size in Earth’s sky, enabling total solar eclipses.

The simplest living cell functions like a sophisticated automated factory with digital information storage, error correction, and molecular machines. The information content in DNA is compared to an instruction manual of immense length and precision—something that, in every other known case, requires intelligence.

Metaxis, in the introduction of his book, says,

“Atheism is no longer an option for those wishing to be regarded as intellectually honest.”

“The belief that there is no God has—at least in recent decades—become untenable.”

He concludes with this,

“Agnosticism can be perfectly logical. We can have questions. We can wonder at much of what the Bible says, not understanding or agreeing with it. But to leap from this to the idea that we can know that there is no God and can say that belief in God and in the Bible is irrational is itself irrational.”

“There is enough evidence to leap toward the God who created the universe and who created us.”

I wish that our education system did not exclude the logical and rational case for a creator.

Our world has been infected with the foolish conclusion that there is no God.

The results are in; it is catastrophic to the health of the soul and the death of morals.

The Church of Darwin does not understand the Creation worldview.

God created the world and everything in it in a finished, functional form.

Not as incomplete proto-versions that slowly assembled themselves over vast ages.

Think of a computer. No serious person claims that a MacBook evolved, step by tiny step, from a random silicon molecule through millions of years of unguided mutations and natural selection. We all recognize that as absurd.

Computers are designed.

They are assembled from carefully engineered parts according to a pre-existing plan.

When we see two computers that share similar processors, operating systems, ports, or design language, we do not conclude that one is the distant ancestor of the other.

We immediately recognize the common link: the same designer and manufacturer.

Walk into an Apple Store. The iPhone and the Apple Watch share countless features, the same ecosystem, similar chips, the same design philosophy, the same software DNA. Yet no one claims the iPhone is the ancient evolutionary ancestor of the Apple Watch, or that one slowly transformed into the other over eons.

The similarities exist because both were deliberately designed by the same company, using the same underlying principles and components.

In the same way, the striking similarities we observe across living organisms- shared genetic code, homologous structures, common biochemical pathways— do not require us to believe that one species slowly morphed into another through undirected processes.

Those commonalities are exactly what we would expect if a single intelligent Creator designed all of them, reusing brilliant solutions and the same foundational “code” across His creation. The evolutionary explanation treats the similarities as proof of common ancestry.

The design explanation sees them as evidence of a common Designer.

The Chimp is not my great-grandfather. The Chimp was made by the same creator that made me.

I guess someone could say we are cousins.

Thankful for Our Father Which Art in Heaven,

In Him, By Him, Through Him,

Scott A. Phillips

The modern Christian in too many sectors has no concept of modesty or virtue.

It’s not taught, not modeled, and not required.

I read a statement made by a man who said he had never heard anyone teach on it in his life of going to church.

Not to mention deeper concepts of holiness and separation from the world.

This was not the case in previous generations. Today, people will not ... well, listen to this verse and look around and see its fulfillment.

“For the time is coming when men will not tolerate wholesome teaching. They will want something to tickle their own fancies, and they will collect teachers who will pander to their own desires. They will no longer listen to the truth, but will wander off after man-made fictions”. 2 Timothy 4:3-5

It happens slowly, and then fast.

Where you draw the line is where the battle begins.

When there are no longer any lines drawn, the conclusion is that there are no lines.

Before long, things that were hard and fast become long forgotten.

Beware. It has happened over and over and over again. It’s happening now.

It’s all fun and games until you look around and all you have is fun and games.

Heaven and Hell,

Eternity, forever.

The End.

When people no longer consider their ways and solemnly believe the Bible,

Just look at the state of so much of modern Christianity.

In closing I will leave you with this.

2 Peter 2

J.B. Phillips New Testament

2 ^1-3a But even in those days there were false prophets, just as there will be false teachers among you today. They will be men who will subtly introduce dangerous heresies. They will thereby deny the Lord who redeemed them, and it will not be long before they bring on themselves their own downfall. Many will follow their pernicious teaching and thereby bring discredit on the way of truth. In their lust to make converts these men will try to exploit you too with their bogus arguments.

^3b-9 But judgment has been for some time hard on their heels and their downfall is inevitable. For if God did not spare angels who sinned against him, but banished them to the dark imprisonment of hell till judgment day: if he did not spare the ancient world but only saved Noah (the solitary voice that cried out for righteousness) and his seven companions when he brought the flood upon the world in its wickedness; and if God reduced the entire cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes (when he sentenced them to destruction as a fearful example to those who wanted to live in defiance of his laws), and yet saved Lot the righteous man, in acute mental distress at the filthy lives of the godless—Lot, remember, was a good man suffering spiritual agonies day after day at what he saw and heard of their lawlessness—then you may be absolutely certain that the Lord knows how to rescue a good man surrounded by temptation, and how to reserve his punishment for the wicked until his day comes.

Let me show you what these men are really like

^10-11 His judgment is chiefly reserved for those who have indulged all the foulness of their lower natures, and have nothing but contempt for authority. These men are arrogant and presumptuous—they think nothing of scoffing at the glories of the unseen world. Yet even angels, who are their superiors in strength and power, do not bring insulting criticisms of such things before the Lord.

^12-13a But these men, with no more sense than the unreasoning brute beasts which are born to be caught and killed, scoff at things outside their own experience, and will most certainly be destroyed in their own corruption. Their wickedness has earned them an evil end and they will be paid in full.

^13b-16 These are the men who delight in daylight self-indulgence; they are foul spots and blots, playing their tricks at your very dinner-table. Their eyes cannot look at a woman without lust, they captivate the unstable ones, and their techniques of getting what they want is, through long practice, highly developed. They are born under a curse, for they have abandoned the right road and wandered off to follow the old trail of Balaam, son of Peor, the man who had no objection to wickedness as long as he was paid for it. But he, you remember, was sharply reprimanded for his wickedness—by a donkey, of all things, speaking with a human voice to check the prophet’s wicked infatuation!

¹⁷ These men are like wells without a drop of water in them, like the changing shapes of whirling storm-clouds, and their fate will be the black night of utter darkness.

^18-19 With their high-sounding nonsense they use the sensual pull of the lower passions to attract those who were just on the point of cutting loose from their companions in misconduct. They promise them liberty. Liberty!—when they themselves are bound hand and foot to utter depravity. For a man is the slave of whatever masters him.

^20-22 If men have escaped from the world’s contaminations through knowing our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ, and then become entangled and defeated all over again, their last position is far worse than their first. It would be better for them not to have known the way of goodness at all, rather than after knowing it to turn their backs on the sacred commandments given to them. Alas, for them, the old proverbs have come true about ‘a dog returns to his own vomit’, and “the sow that had been washed going back to wallow in the muck”.

“A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly: and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” Proverbs 18:24

Loneliness is the product of a choice. To have relationships, one must do the homework and preparation for life. To him that would have friends, he must show himself friendly.

Insular, secluded, and isolated seems to be the default position. It’s not unlike a person complaining that they have no flowers in their flowerbed.

At my wife’s request, I sowed about an estimated 200 square feet total in zinnias.

After some soil prep, I sowed several packages of seeds. On many occasions, I have watered this area and pulled weeds. And lo and behold, guess what? I have flowers.

One further step is required. On multiple occasions throughout the week, one of us will step outside, clip stems of flowers, bring them inside, and put them in a vase with water. Most of the summer we have had one and sometimes two vases with these flowers sitting on our kitchen table.

Though the seeds are planted and the flowers are blooming, to have them close at hand we must take the final step and purposely make the effort to bring them close and in view.

If you want to leave the land of loneliness, you must begin the preparation long in advance.

Winter will come and a season of loneliness will come, but that does not have to be our perpetual state.

I have noticed through my life that most people out there have very few close relationships, if any.

I think every parent and leader should model and teach their children the basic dynamics of building friendships.

It’s never been easier.

In the Bible, you see the church went from house to house.
The Apostles wrote letters.
Jesus Christ modeled this by making Himself available to multitudes and having a circle of individuals who were closer.

It’s a lot of trouble sometimes.

You have to be willing to forgive and give grace to a friend, because everyone is going to disappoint. If you require agreement, affirmation, and cooperation with everything YOU want to do, you will be lonely.

“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” Proverbs 27:17

If you don’t consistently translate thoughts and intentions into contact and communication of care, you will be lonely.

Maybe one of the greatest opportunities for friendship is to involve yourself in a church, Bible study, or some similar opportunities; otherwise, you will be lonely.

“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.” Hebrews 10:24-25

Leaders often find themselves challenged. We learn how to teach and proclaim to others what they should do, but friendship requires taking off the professor glasses and the lecturing mode and being casual and vulnerable with someone you can trust.

In my personal experience, I have found that a large percentage of people just can’t or will not be your friend. If you stop the effort in general when you meet this common closedness, you will be lonely.

My general statistical experience is that if you want to create one new friend, you will engage with twenty or thirty people—for one new friend. For that friendship to flourish, you will need to continue this over time.

You don’t have to be lonely.

However, if you expect someone to do the work for you, you will be lonely.


As believers, I believe it is our calling to demonstrate care, concern, and support to our family and beyond, to those we meet in the community.

The underlying truth is that when we withhold or neglect this calling, we are the losers. It is a fine example that the giver of grace and kindness is the one who reaps the greater benefit.

I am blessed with a number of very good friends. I give them the credit for being such amazing fellows. Absolutely. However, each of them would agree that our friendship is a product of my acceptance of their kindness.

I do call them and call them back.

It’s not a one-way street.

I do have many friends that I love no less; however, the only reason we have a measure of closeness is my purposeful engagement. I don’t begrudge that, because I am the one who benefits from keeping them in my circle and connection.

I have a friend from Bible College. About ten years after graduation, I called him. In the opening of the conversation, he began to complain, “No one has ever called me. You’re the first one. I don’t understand why no one has ever reached out.”

After a few minutes of listening to him, I asked him the question.

“Let me ask you a question: Who have you called?”

The line on the other side was silent.

I said to him, “How can you complain no one ever called if you never called anyone?

I am calling you right now, and you never called me. I never complained about you not calling me. I should have called you sooner, and I apologize. However, you can’t complain others never call if you never call others.”

I have gladly maintained this line of communication. And to this day, I don’t know if he has ever called me. I only mention this as an example for my point.

How many reading this find yourselves in this exact situation?

I called someone recently who said, “I was just thinking about you the other day.”

I said, “You should have called me; I would have loved to hear from you.”

He said, “I know, I know, I need to do better.”

I said, “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.”

“What if I really needed to hear from someone? It’s a good thing I was not about to shoot myself.”

Hey, people. We all need to do better. I include myself in this. I have not done as good a job at this in the past few years.

I told this friend, “I have a challenge for you.

Every month you don’t reach out and call someone, you owe a $100 ticket. In twelve months, you will owe me $1,200.” He laughed.

I followed up, “I am going to pray God will bless you abundantly financially.”

He laughed and said, “Why is that?”

I responded, “Because I know you will owe me $1,200, and I want you to be able to afford it.”

There are a lot of people who need to hear from you. Don’t get overwhelmed by all of them; call one today. Call someone every week with the intent of sowing grace, kindness, and interest. We all have a long list of existing connections that need some water. Not to mention all of the ones who need you to show some kindness.

In the end, you will be blessed the most in the effort.

Sowing Seeds for a future blessing.

In Him, By Him, Through Him,

Scott A. Phillips

“In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.” Ecclesiastes 11:6

^“Praying always

with all prayer

and supplication in the Spirit,

and watching thereunto with all perseverance

and supplication for all saints;” Ephesians 6:18

The Whole Armor of God.

In the final passages of this inventory, that prayer is the ballistic missiles that take the war beyond our current position. What God has given to us that reaches beyond our person

I had prayer on my mind and went and found this that I wrote about prayer on January 10, 2012.

Prayer: There is no app for that.
You cannot download it from the App Store.
You can’t buy it from Amazon.
UPS does not deliver it.

Personal effort is still required.

There is no automation, recording, multitasking, copying, or pasting.

Prayer is today what prayer was in days gone by. Before email.

Before pagers.
Before cellphones.
Before telegrams.

Before the pony express.

The very same process that was prayer six thousand years ago is what it is today.

Adam did it.

Enoch did it.

Noah did it.

Abraham did it.

Moses did it.

Prayer is more than information sharing.

Prayer is communication from the soul of humanity into the throneroom of God.

The only interface, the only connection that transmits the hurts, dreams, and supplications of men and women to the Holy Spirit, is simple.

Prayer is communing with God.

There is no set position.

There are no prescribed words or rituals.

Prayer is as much an attitude as it is a posture.

Prayer is talking, sharing, pouring, crying, giving, and surrendering our lives to God.

Prayer requires intent. It does not happen by accident.
Prayer requires focus. It does not happen naturally.
Prayer requires effort.

It does not happen automatically.

Prayer is not simply one way communication, but we must not forget to listen to what the Lord would say back to us.

Spend some time listening.

Watch and pray.

Read your Bible and Pray.

If you were to analyze the lives of the righteous souls in Scripture, you could boil prayer down to a few basic things required to be successful:

Humble. Honest. Repentant. Willing. Obedient.

And… One last thing about prayer:

Writing about it doesn’t equal it. Talking about it is not the same as it. Preaching about prayer does not equal it.

The one thing you must do with prayer is pray.

Pray in the morning.
Pray at noonday.
Pray always.

Getting up, sitting down, eating, driving, in meetings, in relationships…

Pray.

When having done all to pray.

Pray.

Thinking about prayer makes me realize I need to go pray.

Praying

In Him, By Him, Through Him,
Scott A. Phillips

I truly believe that God is real. I am not like an actor on a stage quoting a script I memorized in the night, but today, as a witness, a testimony, that God, His Word, His presence is as real—more real—than anything else in this world. And I am so glad today that God has given us all an opportunity. He not only can touch us, but we can touch Him.

At the beginning of the week, I began to listen for the voice of the Lord and seek direction on what He would have me preach today. The Lord gave me a word. One Word.

Hands.

Over the next few days, He gave me a more thorough understanding, and that is what I will share today.

Mark 16 in verse 15:

*And Jesus said unto them, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be damned. These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name they shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues. They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them. They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. And they went forth, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.”*


The hands of God.

Our experience with the Lord is that the Lord blesses us incrementally. Knowing God and being blessed by God is not like a lottery ticket where one lucky day, boom, you are a billionaire. God blesses us day by day. It is an accumulation. In every part of our experience with God, it is day by day. It is verse by verse, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. There is an accumulation of our knowledge, of our experience, of our view of God.

I remember a number of years ago I was praying to the Lord, witnessing the way God worked in different people’s lives and how some people would progress so fast and then stall or go back. The Lord spoke to me. As the Lord spoke to me, it was not an audible voice, just an impression upon my mind.

It is a voice, if you will.

Oftentimes I can distinguish the voice of the Lord and my own voice, because my own voice will reason with the voice of the Lord. Oftentimes, if my response is to resist or question, I know it is the voice of the Lord. The Lord prompted in my mind and my spirit, and He said,

“There are three dimensions of truth.”

I said, “Hmm, okay. Speak on, Lord.”

He said to me, "The first dimension of truth is a dimension of experience."

It is the dimension where you pray, and the Lord answers your prayer. You are in a worship service, and you feel the presence of the Lord. You repent, and you feel that weight that comes when we repent. You get baptized in Jesus’ name and you feel washed clean. You get filled with the Holy Ghost. When these things happen to you, you do not have a deep theological understanding of what happened. You just know it happened to me. You are probably incapable of having a debate with anyone. You may not have one scripture memorized, but you could say, “I was there that night, and something got a hold of me.” God talked to my heart. I had a dream. Something happened that is unexplainable, uncanny. I cannot figure it out on the calculator. It does not make rhyme or reason. You cannot tell me that is not God.

The first dimension of truth is this dimension of experience.

God makes Himself known to you. You see it in the story of Jonah and the whale. You see it in the story of Saul on the road to Damascus. You see it in the ten lepers. There was no requirement of a theology degree or to pass some course or read their Bible all the way through. There was this crossing of our path with God’s path, and something undeniable happened to us. It happens to children. You read about it in the Bible when young Samuel, the voice of the Lord spoke to young Samuel, and after Eli told him what to do, the Lord said, “Samuel.” Samuel said, “Here am I. Speak, Lord.” Samuel did not know what Eli knew, but the Lord spoke to Samuel for whatever reason. The Lord has something specific for all of us. There are things that the Lord can use you to do. He might not find someone that fits that space just like you do. It is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Only one piece will go in that one place, and if you whittle it to try to put something that does not fit and make it fit with a pair of scissors, you may get it to fit, but it is not going to look right. Every one of us, God has a certain special call on your life. I think intuitively, innately, we all know the Lord has need of us.

So the first dimension of truth is experience, and after the experience.

The Second Dimension of Truth

The Lord will bring us into understanding through the scripture, whether through our reading and study or the preaching and the teaching, our own personal quest to know the Word of God. When you read something in the scripture, and it causes you to understand, oh, that is what that is, oh, that is the spirit of truth, oh, that is the spirit of adoption, oh, that we were saved and sanctified, justified.

There is available to us a second dimension of truth and relationship with God. If we, like newborn babes, will drink of the Word of God and continue to mature and grow, we will reach a point where it is not just the simple things, but the Lord will show us in His Word deeper things.

The second dimension is when we begin to understand from the Word of God what the experience is. Oh, that is exactly what happened to Peter. That is exactly what happened to Saul. And so much of our preaching and teaching, we take a story from the Bible, and we make and see the application to our personal lives.

The third dimension of Truth is the dimension of fellowship.

The dimension where a lot of people miss the boat because it is that place where we fellowship with people who have the same experience and the same doctrine. It is in that point, and this is what church is. Church is an opportunity to be in the third dimension of truth where we have a shared experience and a shared doctrine, and we grow together and go together into whatever the Lord has next for us. There are some places I will never go unless somebody goes with me, somebody praying for me, somebody encouraging me, somebody challenging me, someone provoking me. And we grow in God.

You can’t go deeper in God if your fellowship does not have the same experience and doctrine.

Jesus gives us these instructions in Mark 16, “These signs shall follow them that believe.”

I am a Believer. You are a Believer. Would you like to be a believer too?

How many of you believe? I believe everybody here believes. It does not mean you never have doubts or struggle with understanding. All of us have that, but you believe.

From the top of my head to the soles of my feet, I am a believer in Jesus.

Jesus said, “These signs shall follow them that believe.”

These signs shall follow them that believe.

They shall cast out devils.

I have often wondered why that is the first thing. Because new levels, new devils. That is more than just a nifty saying. Anytime you try to grow in God, try to pray a little more, read your Bible a little more, do something for God more, trust me, the devil does not want you to do more, so he is going to discourage you by causing opposition to come up, and it may come up in all different kinds of ways.

It is like when they broke the sound barrier. Before you break the barrier, there is all kinds of resistance, but once you break the barrier, there is smooth sailing.

These signs shall follow them that believe. They shall cast out devils. And there are devils. I learned as a young man: do not chase them. You do not need to build your ministry chasing devils.

There is a guy in town who has bumper stickers all over his truck: devil chaser.

Demon busters. Well, I am telling you that is not the way.

When you find yourself confronted with spiritual opposition, we have a promise that through Jesus we have authority to say, “In the name of Jesus, I bind you, I rebuke you, I take dominion over you, and in the name of Jesus Christ, go.”

It is not by might, it is not by power, but by the Spirit of God. You do not have to wrestle with the devil. You do not argue with the devil. You do not debate with the devil.

You just tell the devil, “Get out.”

I have experienced those seasons of opposition, and the devil did not leave me alone as fast as I wanted him to. But I just had a made-up mind. Everybody sitting here, at some point, you gutted it out. You toughed it out. You just persevered, and in time. I remember there was a season in my life I dealt with a spiritual attack.

I prayed about it, and there was no relief. I went to the church, and I would leave and see he was still there.

One day I woke up, and I guess he got tired. I wore out the devil instead of the devil wearing me out.

I am not going to stop this person.

I believe there is nothing stronger against the enemy of your soul than when the devil realizes he has a made-up mind. I cannot make him quit. I cannot trick him this way. He will probably find another trick, but at some point you can make a believer out of the devil.

These signs shall follow them that believe.

They shall cast out devils. They shall speak with new tongues. How many of you have experienced it?

They shall speak with new tongues.

It is an experience. It is wonderful. It is glorious. I encourage you individually to find time, especially in those hard times, and pray until you pray through. Pray until you get peace. Pray until you pray in the Spirit, and when you have reached that point where you are praying in the Spirit, keep on praying in the Spirit.

I believe one of the greatest giftings you can exercise in your life is to pray that the Lord would give you fluency and access easily, that the Spirit of God can pray through you because it is in that where Romans 8 says sometimes we do not know how to pray as we ought, but *the Spirit maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered*. And we know that all things work together for the good.

A lot of people do not realize that for the good to happen, you have to do the homework. You have to allow the Spirit of God to pray through you for you to experience the very best that God can do.

Some things only come by prayer and fasting.

There are some things that will only happen when you pray about it, when somebody prays about it. Prayer is a mechanism in the language where we talk to God, and we pray, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus taught us how to pray, and the mechanism of prayer is the transfer of God’s will into our world.

These signs shall follow them that believe.

They shall cast out devils.

They shall speak with new tongues.

You noticed I paused on this other part, “They shall take up serpents.” What does that mean? The Bible gives us a description. Paul gathering sticks. In the Book of Acts, he picked up a stick, and it was not a stick; it was a snake. When he threw the snake he thought was a stick in the fire, the snake woke up and bit him, and he did not die. I do not think you find any example in the Bible where people were purposely picking up snakes.

When I first came to Clinton, and we began the endeavor to connect with people in the community and tell them about what we are trying to do, it was during that season that every cable channel—Discovery, Nature, History, biographies, 60 Minutes—every week it seemed somebody was going into snake-handling churches and telling stories about preachers dying.

So here shows up a Pentecostal, and my wife can attest, almost every person we met would say, “Do y’all handle snakes?”

My answer was, “Yes, absolutely, with shotguns.”

So the promise that they shall take up serpents and if they drink any deadly thing is not purposeful. The Bible says, *“Don’t tempt the Lord your God.”* That was the temptation of Satan to Jesus, to cast himself down from the pinnacle that the angels could bear him up. It was that temptation. But if in your pursuit of trying to do the work of God you get bitten by a snake, I would go to the doctor and get antivenom, and I would say,

“In the name of Jesus, Lord, I did not mean to pick it up, but Lord, I do not want to die.”

They shall take up serpents; if they drink any deadly thing. In the next verse, all that I have preached up to this point getting you warmed up, softened up:

They shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

That was the word the Lord gave me on Tuesday.

I had to pick up my phone while I was at the red light and type it so I would not forget it: hands.

Hands.

I thought, “Well, that is really deep, Lord.” I was asking for something to preach Sunday, and You gave me the word hands. Thanks, God.

The next few nights I was writing about one thing, and the Lord reminded me of a story.

Early in my marriage, I worked in the shoe department at Dilliards in MetroCenter Mall in South Jackson. It was the slowest department in the slowest department store in the slowest mall in town. It was slow.

I had an adage: “Saving Soles while Saving Souls.” In fact, I developed what I called the shoe gospel, with a whole litany of corny sayings, assisted by my good friend, Kevin Shindoll, who worked at Striderite in Northpark Mall on the other side of town.

Those that have known me any length of time know I can find a sermon in anything. Ha. Those that have been reading my musings I have been writing for over thirty years can attest to this.

One slow night in the slowest department in the slowest store in the slowest mall,

I was standing in my area, the shoe department.

I remember I was standing near the walkway. One of the security guys was an off-duty cop, Charles.

He was a pretty quiet, reserved fella. He had a very thick grey mustache.

He was grimacing with every step as he approached me.

I asked him, “Charles, are you alright?” Charles said, no, I am in serious pain; my ankle is killing me.”

I asked him, “Charles, do you mind if I pray for you?” He looked at me and said, “Ok.” We walked into the department near the cash register.

I told him, “Charles, the Bible says that believers can pray for someone in Jesus’ name, and Jesus can heal them.” I am going to pray and believe this for you.

I reached out my hand and said something along the lines, “Father, I thank you for Charles. I thank you for all you have done for him. I am asking you to touch him and the place he is in pain right now. Touch him, heal him. In Jesus Name.”

I can see it clearly.

He walked away, still limping. I saw him in about ten minutes walking toward me and he had this shocked look on his face. I asked him, “You look better.”

He said, “I can’t explain it, but the pain is gone.”

I answered, “Charles, thank God, God still answers prayers.”

I actually sent the story to Brother Jeff Jones. I said, “Do you remember this guy?” He said, “Yeah, you know Charles.”

My wife and I actually taught Charles a Bible study, and his wife, and he wept and cried, and we saw the Lord do some great things in Charles Taylor’s life.

My point is that promise is not just for apostles. If you are a believer in Jesus, there is miracle power waiting to be released in your hands. It is not your power; it is God’s power. But like every other instance in the Bible, God has chosen to bind Himself to find a vessel, a servant, a man or a woman that is willing to let their hands be God’s hands.

That you are willing to be bold, to be humble, to be whatever is needed, that you would make yourself available. And when the Lord prompts you, remember the promise: I am going to have signs following me because I believe.

I can pray a prayer of peace over someone that is being troubled by drugs and demons and addictions and depressions, because these signs shall follow me, because I believe.

The hands of God are not something in some heavenly, ethereal, invisible place, but the hands of God are in the church. The hands of God are in the body of the believers, and all of us do not have the same gifts. Not everyone has the gifts of healing, but everyone has the promise.

Spiritual gifts

There are nine spiritual gifts: the gift of prophecy, the gift of tongues, the gift of interpretation of tongues, the gift of faith, the gifts of healing, the word of knowledge, the word of wisdom, discerning of spirits, and the working of miracles.

We know that not everyone has every spiritual gift, but I am of the opinion that when you get the baptism of the Holy Ghost, everybody has at least one.

I have met a lot of people I wish the Lord would give the gift of wisdom.

Everyone has the quality and virtue of the nine gifts.

We all have faith, though we may not have the gift of faith.

The gifts of the Spirit, in the realm of the believer’s toolbox, are like you have a toolbox with your standard manual tools.

You have got a hammer, screwdriver, a wrench. But the gifts of the Spirit are like Holy Spirit-powered tools. We all have a screwdriver, but the gifts of the Spirit are like a powered screwdriver.

Everyone has faith even though they do not have the gift of faith.

Everyone speaks in tongues, but not everyone has the gift of tongues. Paul said, “I speak in tongues more than you all.”

Everyone has wisdom, but not everyone has the word of wisdom. Sometimes we have been relegated to looking for someone who has the gifts of healing when we may miss the opportunity that, just in a normal service, you could be sitting over here, Sister Tammy, and the Lord could say, “You should go pray for Sister Julie.” And our response would be, “Well, I am going to pray that Brother Phillips go pray for Sister Julie.”

What I am saying to you is God has put all of these things in the body, and you do not have to be a reverend or a preacher or some high-powered, souped-up evangelist for God to use you. Does God use those folks? Absolutely. All God needs is someone who will follow the gentle leading of the Lord.

The Lord can use any one of you at any given time to bring about a blessing, edification, and encouragement. No one may know you did it, but God can do that.

The hands of God are in your body, and I believe that one of the greatest testaments to the church is what happens outside of the church. I have talked about what happens in the church, but I believe that how the Lord can lead us in our everyday life does not have to be a production. You do not have to have a song or take up an offering. It can be very low-key, and the Lord can open up a conversation. The Lord can put you in a situation, and all you have to do is exercise a little bit of faith to say, “Can I pray for you?”

Some of the greatest soul winners that I have ever known were people that would meet people in the marketplace and ask that question, “Can I pray for you?” And the person says, “Yes.” And they take a little notepad and say, “Okay, what’s your name? What’s your phone number? And I am going to be praying for you.” Then they call them back two weeks later and say, “Hey, how you doing? I’ve been praying for you. I sure would like you to go to church with me.”

That is a good soul-winning tool right there.

The hands of God.

They are not far from any of us, and sometimes our hands are weak within ourselves. Sometimes our hands are hurting. But God does not need perfection for Him to do His work through us. He just needs someone who will, first of all, say, “Lord, are you talking to me?”

How many days have gone by and I have not stopped to say, “What have You got to say today, Jesus?” Because we are busy. We have got to drink our coffee, comb our hair, get gas, run to work. Something has happened in the Middle East. Listen to this new song. Our brains are busy, and probably busier than ever before. Sometimes we just have to stop, get quiet, and say, “Lord, talk to me.” And it may be something like hands.

Just follow the leading of the Lord.

This morning I was sitting in my office, and I had someone’s name come to me. I have probably called him twice. His name came to me this morning, and I called him, got to talking to him, and he is going through a hard time.

The Lord prompted me as our conversation went on. I know the Lord was using me to encourage him. I felt the Lord. One of the greatest blessings we receive when we reach out to help other people is that we end up getting blessed more than the people we are trying to bless.

There is a feedback loop.

When you make yourself available to be a blessing to help others, you walk away feeling like you got more blessed than they did. I got off the phone with him; he wrote me back. He said, “Your words today to me were words of life.” I was like, “I preached about that last Sunday.”

I truly believe that God speaks to you.

I would say everyone here today is here because somewhere God spoke to you.

Turn here, go there, stop that, start this.

If you will embrace the truth that God speaks, that God leads, if you would open your heart and make yourself available, and be willing to be a vessel from which the presence of the Lord would proceed

Hold your hands out. Look at your hands.

You are looking at the hands of God. If you will give God your hands, he will use them for His Glory and Kingdom!

Holy, Anointed, Miracle Hands!

In Him, By Him, Through Him!

Scott A. Phillips

Saving soles…

Fancy soles

Shabby soles

Rich soles

Poor soles

Hole-y Soles

Not so hole-y soles

Re-soled! (Redeemed)

Saving soles…

Fancy soles

Shabby soles

Rich soles

Poor soles

Hole-y Soles

Not so hole-y soles

Re-soled!

Tongues… they don’t come separately…. They come with the Shoes.

Those that have known me any length of time know I can find a sermon in anything. Ha. Those that have been reading my musings I have been writing for over thirty years can attest to this.



One slow night in the slowest department in the slowest store in the slowest mall,

I was standing in my area, the shoe department.

I remember I was standing near the walkway. One of the security guys was an off-duty cop, Charles.

He was a pretty quiet, reserved fella. He had a very thick grey mustache.

He was grimacing with every step as he approached me.

I asked him, "Charles, are you alright?" Charles said, no, I am in serious pain; my ankle is killing me."

I asked him, "Charles, do you mind if I pray for you?" He looked at me and said, "Ok." We walked into the department near the cash register.

I told him, "Charles, the Bible says that believers can pray for someone in Jesus' name, and Jesus can heal them." I am going to pray and believe this for you.

I reached out my hand and said something along the lines, "Father, I thank you for Charles. I thank you for all you have done for him. I am asking you to touch him and the place he is in pain right now. Touch him, heal him. In Jesus Name."

I can see it clearly.

He walked away, still limping. I saw him in about ten minutes walking toward me and he had this shocked look on his face. I asked him, "You look better."

He said, "I can't explain it, but the pain is gone."

I answered, "Charles, thank God, God still answers prayers."

^{Mark 16}

¹⁵ And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

¹⁶ He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

¹⁷ And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

¹⁸ They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

¹⁹ So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

²⁰ And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

Luke 4:40: “Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them.”

Mark 6:5: “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.”

Luke 13:13: Jesus heals a woman bent over for 18 years: “And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.”

Acts 28:8: “And it came to pass, that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux: to whom Paul entered in, and prayed, and laid his hands on him, and healed him.”

Acts 9:12, 17: Ananias is sent to Saul (Paul); he lays hands on him so that he receives his sight and is filled with the Holy Spirit.

Mark 6:¹² And they went out, and preached that men should repent.

¹³ And they cast out many devils, and anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed them.

James 5:14-15

¹⁴ Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:

¹⁵ And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

John 14:12

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.

“Your eyes opened, Turned From the Power of Darkness, receiving the Forgiveness of Sin and to gain the inheritance of the Saints who are sanctified by Faith in Jesus”

This is a wonderful summary of what Paul declared before King Agrippa.

^“ And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.” Acts 26:15-18

These words were given to Paul by Jesus.

Paul was a devout Jew in every way. However, God's call made him an Apostle to every culture. This was his testimony. He was hated by many of his previous family, friends, and previous allies.

He was stoned and left for dead by Jews. Why? Because he chose Jesus over everything else.

You and I have the exact same obligation today.

You and I have the same promise.

Acts 26:18 records the risen Lord’s commission to Paul:

“To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.”

This statement sits inside Paul’s defense before King Agrippa. Earlier in the same chapter, Paul declares that he stands on trial “for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers.”

The twelve tribes hoped for that promise; the commission in verse 18 shows how the promise is fulfilled—through the gospel that opens eyes, transfers dominion, grants forgiveness, and bestows inheritance. The language echoes Isaiah. The Servant is sent as a light to the Gentiles to open blind eyes and liberate captives. Paul applies that prophetic pattern to his own apostolic mission to both Jews and Gentiles.

1. Eyes Opened
In the Jewish Scriptures, spiritual ignorance is repeatedly pictured as closed or blinded eyes (Isaiah 6:9–10; 42:7; 29:18). Greek culture also spoke of the “eye of the mind” or understanding that needed illumination. Paul prays “that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened” Ephesians 1:18 and when he describes how “the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” 2 Corinthians 4:4.

The opening of the eyes is the Spirit’s work of illumination. It is not intellectual information; it is the sudden ability to see one’s own lostness, the holiness of God, the power of Christ’s cross, and the glory of the gospel.

In 2 Corinthians 4:6 Paul links it directly to the creative word of Genesis: “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Until that light breaks in, men remain “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” Ephesians 4:18.

The first step of the gospel’s power is therefore this divine unveiling.

2. Turned from Darkness to Light, and from the Power of Satan unto God
The double movement is deliberate. Darkness is both moral/spiritual condition and the realm of Satan’s authority. Darkness symbolizes chaos, ignorance, and death; light symbolizes order, knowledge, and life. Paul consistently employs the same dualism:

“Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord” (Ephesians 5:8).
“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son” (Colossians 1:13).

“Power of Satan” speaks of legitimate dominion. Unbelievers live under the “prince of the power of the air” and are “taken captive by him at his will”

The turning is repentance in its fullest sense—an about-face of the person from Satan’s kingdom into God’s. It is not self-generated; the vision to see makes the turn possible, and the Spirit enables it.

Paul later summarises the same transfer: “God… hath shined in our hearts” so that we are no longer under the dominion of darkness but walk as “children of light” 1 Thessalonians 5:5.

The cultural background includes both Jewish apocalyptic dualism (light/darkness, God/Satan) and the Greco-Roman sense of competing powers and patrons; the gospel announces a decisive change of lordship.

3. Receiving the Forgiveness of Sins
Once eyes are opened and the turn is made, the immediate gift , the release or sending-away of sins.

In the Jewish sacrificial system, forgiveness required blood and was provisional; in the Greco-Roman world, debts and offenses could be remitted by a sovereign. Paul proclaims a once-for-all, complete remission grounded in the blood of Christ:

- “In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7).
- “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:14).
- “Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus… to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins” (Romans 3:24–25).

Forgiveness is not earned by the turn itself; the turn positions the sinner to receive what Jesus has secured. It removes both guilt and the barrier that kept the sinner from God. Paul insists throughout the epistles that this forgiveness is received by faith and is the fundamental foundation for every subsequent blessing.

4. Inheritance among Them Which Are Sanctified by Faith That Is in Me
The final clause moves from negative (removal of sin) to positive (reception of an inheritance).

The Greek *klēros* means a lot or allotted portion—the division of the Promised Land among the tribes listed in Joshua. In the New Testament the inheritance is no longer geographic but the full possession of God’s people: God Himself, Christ, the Spirit as earnest, and the coming glory.

Paul develops this throughout his Letters

“In whom also we have obtained an inheritance… which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession” Ephesians 1:11-14.

“Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light” (Colossians 1:12).

“And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).

This inheritance is embraced and empowered among them who are sanctified.

This Sanctification (*hagiazō*) here is both positional (set apart as holy at conversion) and is intended to continue forward.

It is accomplished “by faith that is in me”—faith whose object is Jesus Christ Alone.

Justification, sanctification, and inheritance; they are all received through faith.

Faith that is alive and living, daily engaged and following after Jesus.

The saints are those already sanctified, and the new believer is placed among.

The complete gospel in simplicity.

The promise of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is received when the gospel opens blinded eyes, transfers people from Satan’s dark dominion into God’s light, grants full forgiveness through Christ’s blood, and seats them as sanctified heirs among the people of God—all by faith in Jesus.

This is the heart of the apostolic message.

Those who desired this were given a basic initiation invitation as summarized by Peter and this same progression was followed throughout the church established by the Apostles.

Acts 2

³⁷ Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?

This is the question all sincere believers ask. What do I do now that I believe?

³⁸ Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.

³⁹ For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

⁴⁰ And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation.

⁴¹ Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.

What a wonderful promise we have been given.

I can testify of my own Gospel journey and can attest that these things have become true in my life and I have seen it happen to countless others.

Standing on, in, surrounded, grounded, and planted,

In Him, By Him, Through Him,

Scott A. Phillips

The Agency of Flesh


I had this thought come to me this afternoon. I looked up what AGENCY means,

**AGENCY:** 1. The faculty of acting or of exerting power; the state of being in action; action; instrumentality. The superintendence and agency of Providence in the natural world. --Woodward. 2. The office of an agent, or factor; the relation between a principal and his agent; business of one entrusted with the concerns of another. 3. The place of business of an agent. Syn: Action; operation; efficiency; management.

What are you representing in your agency of flesh?

The choices we make in our actions determine what kind of agents we are putting at work in our life. The fact that we are but flesh chains us with a frailty and weakness that many times keeps us from being what we should be.

I propose to you that God chose, of all His creation, man to be a vehicle to accomplish what His will was. God placed Adam in the center of perfection.

God created the whole world, and who did He put in charge? A man of flesh called Adam. Adam ate a bad apple, and things changed. Adam tended the garden and had dominion or rule over all things. God used the flesh of man to take care of and rule the entire creation. This is demonstrated by what happened to creation because of his mismanagement and failure to properly execute the directions given him.

Notice in all the stories of God’s provision, salvation, and miracles, God used FLESH as a vehicle to carry out His purpose. He did not choose an angel to rule over the earth, but He chose man. Not one story of deliverance or provision is found without the ingredient of flesh. We see this illustrated to its highest form when God took upon Himself a body of flesh.

“And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled. In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight:” Colossians 1:21-22

We see that in His flesh He gave us a perfect example of how we should allow our flesh to do the work of the Spirit. He gave Himself to fasting at the appointed time. He was a man of prayer. A man of compassion. A man who loved and protected the hungry, hurting, and the desperate. A man that was not only FLESH, but His flesh housed the glory and power of God.

Look at His life. He gave Himself to His Father’s business. He gave Himself to the business of seeking and saving that which was lost.

Through this example we see that through the POWER and GRACE of God we also can give our flesh to the work of God. We can and should give ourselves to prayer, fasting, compassion, and doing our part in bringing the GOSPEL to the lost.

“And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.” 2 Corinthians 5:18-6:1

The reason God has given us this great grace of salvation is not to just enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling of His grace, but to use His grace to be walking examples of the example that He showed us. Goose bumps are not enough. Don’t get me wrong, I like goosebumps. But living for God is so much more than just feeling good. We must move beyond feeling good to being good as He was good.

Not just to feel good, but by the things, words, and actions that we do, we cause others to come in contact with this great promise and blessing.

How?

“Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” 2 Corinthians 6:3-10

The above is a listing of how we will do what we will do to verify that the grace of God is not vain or empty, but the grace of God is FULL in us.

Actions we do PROVE and validate the grace that is in our lives.

**THE Greek for APPROVING** 4921 sunistao or (strengthened) sunistano or sunistemi-

a) by way of presenting or introducing him
b) to comprehend
3) to put together by way of composition or combination, to teach by combining and comparing;
to show, to prove, to establish, to exhibit
4) to put together, to unite parts into one whole;
to be composed of, to consist

We must examine ourselves and honestly ask this question,

Who are you introducing, exhibiting, and becoming unified in actions with?

It does not tell us how long Adam did his job, but what we see is that at some point his flesh ceased to be the agent of God and became the agent of Satan.

Did Adam do devil worship? Did Adam do something really that bad?

It was just a piece of fruit…..

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh: for as ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity; even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness.” Romans 6:16-19

Yielding to God,

Scott Phillips

1 Peter 4:10
10 As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.
(KJV)

Hebrews 12:12-15
12 Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees;
13 And make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.
14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
(KJV)

2 Corinthians 9:8-15
8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work:
9 (As it is written, He hath dispersed abroad; he hath given to the poor: his righteousness remaineth for ever.
10 Now he that ministereth seed to the sower both minister bread for your food, and multiply your seed sown, and increase the fruits of your righteousness;)
11 Being enriched in every thing to all bountifulness, which causeth through us thanksgiving to God.
12 For the administration of this service not only supplieth the want of the saints, but is abundant also by many thanksgivings unto God;
13 Whiles by the experiment of this ministration they glorify God for your professed subjection unto the gospel of Christ, and for your liberal distribution unto them, and unto all men;
14 And by their prayer for you, which long after you for the exceeding grace of God in you.
15 Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.
(KJV)

1 Corinthians 15:10
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
(KJV)

1 Corinthians 1:4-5
4 I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ;
5 That in every thing ye are enriched by him, in all utterance, and in all knowledge;
(KJV)

Titus 2:11-15
11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,
12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;
13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;
14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
15 These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

Behold A Tooth.

My Tooth.

This tooth has been with me for over 50 years. Every meal I have eaten.

I never thought about this tooth till it started hurting.

It is a back molar. It was my top left back molar.

Without question or argument, it performed. It participated in all of the food I have consumed.

Steak, chicken, fish, and beef.

Cake, cookies, chocolate, and cheese.

About 100,000 lbs of food over 50 years. Wow. Estimated cost of about $5,000 a year. $250K dollars.

Back to the story.

After going to the root canal doc, I found out it had a crack, and so it had to be pulled.

After some pressure, this tooth is no longer in my mouth, but in a small green container shaped like a tooth.

I was amazed at how big it is.

I was happy to bring it home with me.

I guess I will find out if the tooth fairy will come and leave me a suitcase of money under my pillow tonight.

I am thankful for this singular tooth.

I guess this is where some people would leave

a Venmo so you can help me pay for what it’s going to cost to fill the gap. Ha.