What Will I Do In Death Valley? Pastor Phil Sessa

Ezekiel 37:1-3, “1 The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the LORD and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  I said, “O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.” 

Ezekiel came up to The Valley of Dry Bones. Death was all around. Even the bones were dried up, which is to say that the marrow inside the bones was deceased. The marrow gives strength to our bones which make up the skeletal system of our body. Our body is held up by our bones, our support structure. What happens when the very life of your support structure is eroded, and dried up? This is when all looks hopeless, all signs of life have ceased, and it seems as if there is nothing left to do because all resources are exhausted. Here Ezekiel was staring at an impossible situation. God asks him a very probing question, when He says, “Son of man, can these bones live?” Ezekiel in his wisdom knew that his knowledge was limited, and therefore replies “…O Sovereign LORD, you alone know.”

Does Obedience Make Us Special? Evans Olang

Luke 17:7-10, “7 And which of you, having a servant plowing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? 8 But will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink’? 9 Does he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I think not. 10 So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’”’

We all have a drive to be acknowledged, be thanked for things we do. We also love to be compensated for a job well done, we feel we deserve and are entitled to a number of things.

Blessings And Curses, Part 4of4, Pastor Phil Sessa

Mark 11:14, “Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again…”

Jesus spoke a destructive miracle into being! Of all the miracles that Jesus performed, none of them was of a destructive nature other than the cursing of the fig tree. Upon leaving Bethany Jesus was hungry, and saw a fig tree in the distance, and therefore went over to it to satisfy his hunger. However the tree He noticed only bore leaves, but NO fruit. Then Jesus spoke the words of cursing upon the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” This doesn’t quite make much sense in light of Mark stating, “He [Jesus] found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs.” Why is Jesus cursing a tree for having no figs, but every other fig tree had the same testimony, “because IT WAS NOT THE SEASON FOR FIGS.” Was it reasonable for Jesus to curse the fig tree for not bearing its fruit out of season?

God Has A Plan To Bless You, Pastor Boaz Olang

Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

God has a grand plan to bless your life in a very special way. How do you get to know what plans He has for you? What do you need to do to receive His blessings, both spiritual and material? Here are a few recommendations to meditate on today:

First, you need to have a relationship with Him. You must be made His child and remain his forever (John 1:12). Only God’s children have inheritance to the blessings of God. The righteous shall inherit the earth, the Bible says.

Attitude Check, Evans Olang

Colossians 3:23, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men”

Understanding the order of things should drive how we handle things. There is always a continuous battle on how we do things especially in the job set up. We need to understand that where we are number one it’s God who brought us there and not our education or ability.

And Forget Not All His Benefits, Evans Olang

Psalm 103:1-2, “1 Bless the LORD, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! 2 Bless the LORD, O my soul, And forget not all His benefits:”

To God be the glory great things He has done. He is worthy to be praised, He redeemed our lives from destruction. One woman who had been delivered by Jesus, at one point brought in an alabaster box full of precious oil. She broke the box and out of it came precious oil with fragrance filing the room. She took that which was precious to her to wash Jesus’ feet wiping His feet with her hair. I see a woman blessing the Lord, she is taking that which is precious and giving it back to God what belongs to Him. She is sacrificing and doing what is right and not everyone is happy about it especially Judas Iscariot.

We are blessed to know that we can offer back to God what He requires, worship. I know that we are used to being on the receiving end, but let’s begin to bless the Lord commanding every fiber of our being to acknowledge that He deserves our worship. Psalm 150:6, “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord” We choose to bless the Lord this day, Psalm 34:1, “I will bless the Lord at all times, His praise shall continually be in my mouth”.

Pouring Your Heart To The Lord, Evans Olang

1Samuel 1:8-18, “But Hannah answered and said, “No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor intoxicating drink, but have poured my soul before the Lord”

People do struggle to pray. You may have struggled numerous times to pray and still got nowhere. And if you prayed, your prayers felt so dry, not effective, and did not even enjoy it. I remember years back when I had the same kind of struggle and God had to teach me to pray effectively changing my whole perspective on prayers and how to approach the throne of grace. Yes I still struggle to pray, the will to is there, the strength and the effectiveness sometimes fail.

Seasons Change, God Remains The Same, Evans Olang

Judges 15:18-19, “18 Because he was very thirsty, he cried out to the LORD, “You have given your servant this great victory. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?” 19 Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi, and water came out of it. When Samson drank, his strength returned and he revived.”, (NIV).

The desire to be victorious in every area is a thirst majority craves for. A desire to let everything run smoothly in one’s life yet we find that there are times you are victorious in one area and a failure in other areas. We are like trees that go through different seasons, the winter, spring, summer and autumn. If you took time to look at trees in these different seasons, you will discover that there is change on how they look. During winter time, their leaves are gone. For someone who may not know may conclude the trees are dead but the truth of the matter is, they are alive and well adjusting to the season in which they find themselves in. Their existence is not dependant on the season, their existence is dependant on the roots that have gone deep underground in search of water and nutrients. So the days they may not look attractive, they still have a way of surviving one season while they wait for the next season.

Confidence In God, Evans Olang

Psalm 118:8, “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put your confidence in man”

Life is a long and bumpy road. We each carry our troubles, like heavy load. There are many hard turns and some dead ends. However whenever we are stuck, we must know whom look to. Think of the elections, majority put their confidence in the next president hoping he will turn things around.

The scripture verse above is right in the middle of the bible. I would call it the heartbeat of every man who understands what life is. When I look at a scripture, I tend to pick out a word or two to understand why the author chose to use those particular words. In this case, the author used the word “Confidence” instead of “Faith” and my first reaction was, is there any difference? Let’s start with “faith”, faith is trust, belief and confidence.