Hope For A Lost Loved One

 

I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

Joh 8:44 "You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

 

A word of hope today for those of you who have loved ones caught up in sin and rejection of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  How bad can they be? Can they be as bad as Jacob when He outright lied to his dying father as he sought to steal the family blessing from his brother Esau?

 

If you recall, Isaac had asked Esau to hunt some wild game and prepare it for him as a savory meal, but Jacob brought a savory meal to him instead in a successful attempt to fool his dad.

 

Isaac smelled a rat and asked Jacob how he managed to catch and cook this game so quickly and can you believe Jacob’s reply?  Ge 27:20b, “Because the LORD your God brought it to me."

He lied about God! He brought God into his diabolical fabrication! Apparently Jacob didn’t give a rip about breaking one of God’s commands!  You  know, the one that says, Ex 20:7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes His name in vain.

 

In spite of the seriousness of this sin, God did not give up on Jacob, and later on in his life, he got tangled up with an all night wrestling match with God

and everything changed! Jacob, in effect was born again and he no longer served the father of all lies, the devil

 

If God could save a diabolical liar like Jacob, if God could save me, if God could save you, He can save that lost loved one as well. Pray for that wrestling match to come to pass in their lives as God sends the hounds of heaven after your loved ones soul. Dear Jesus hear the bleat of that one lost sheep, leave the 99 and find them and save them.

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word

Dig A Little Deeper In the Well

 

I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

I was reading Genesis chapter 26 this morning and was struck by how often “wells” were mentioned. Abraham had dug them but the heathen kept filling them up with sand  cutting off the supply of water. Then Isaac comes along and the same problem arises. He dug them and the unbelievers filled them up.

 

It’s what unbelievers do, they seek to cut off the believers supply of “living water.”

 

All this talk about wells and water in the chapter and at the end of the chapter we see this information about Esau, (the son of Isaac) inserted: Ge 26:34 When Esau was forty years old, he took as wives Judith the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. 35 And they were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah.

 

Where did that come from? Why was Esau’s marriage to unbelievers brought up? Why were Isaac and Rebekah grieved? I believe it came from God’s consistent command to not marry an unbeliever. ‘ Do not be unequally yoked! (2 Cor 6:14)

 

The result of this unequal yoking often results in a ditching of the faith aa the supply of living water is cut off or polluted by the ungodly influence of the unbeliever.

 

This most important first step of finding a life’s partner is often overlooked and sadly under emphasized in the church today. In this matter I would urge the singles in the kingdom to not settle but to seek out a like minded believer for marriage,

 

Before tying the knot, give a listen to this oak Ridge Boys song and “Dig A Little Deeper In the Well”

 

Dig A Little Deeper In The Well (youtube.com)

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word

Press On

I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

Most everyone knows the shortest verse in the Bible right? “Jesus wept.” (Jn 11:35) But do you know the second shortest verse? It’s found in  Lu 17:32 "Remember Lot's wife.”

 

In context, Jesus was talking about escaping God’s impending judgment with Lot’s wife being the example of what not to do! The angels who were leading Lot and his family out of Sodom and Gomorrah had strictly told them to “not look back,” (Gen 19:17)

 

But look what happened to Lot’s wife! Ge 19:26 But his wife looked back behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

 

She looked back! We can only assume that she was longing for the old life, not willing to forsake it. This is a danger for all of us who have been pulled from the fire. When things get a little rough, we have the temptation to look back to our own personal “Egypt’s” and long for the “good old days” of living the way we pleased.

 

This was the constant problem of the Israelites as God led them to the promised land, they kept looking back to Egypt!

 

Jesus warns us in other places as well: Lu 14:33 "So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

And

Lu 9:62 "No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

 

And that’s why we “remember Lot’s wife.

 

That’s why the Apostle Paul reminds us: Php 3:13 Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, 14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

 

Follow Jesus! Don’t look back! All that stuff you are longing for is rubbish, destined to be like the ashes of Sodom and Gomorrah! So press on beloved….press on!

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word

Who Told Lot?

 

I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

 

Ge 13:10 And Lot lifted his eyes and saw all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere (before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah) like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt as you go toward Zoar.

 

 

Most of you are familiar with the backdrop here. Abraham and his nephew Lot had been materially blessed by the Lord. They both had a lot of livestock, but there wasn’t enough land to support them both, so they decided to split up.

 

Abraham yielded to Lot and gave him the choice of the land and Lot chose the land that was more lush.

So lush, that he compared it to the garden of Eden.

My question for you today is this, “who told Lot about the Garden of the Lord?”

 

The Lord had closed up that Garden about 2000 years before Lot was born! He didn’t have a Bible, how did he know that such a place once existed?

 

Obviously the fact of the existence of a Paradise was handed down from Adam all the way to Abraham and Lot.

Among other things, it survived the flood and the tower of Babel!

 

The question for you and I is; How is the existence of Paradise and God’s plan for restoring it doing in our families? Have we told our children and grandchildren about the Day when Jesus will return and restore all things, or has it been swallowed up in the flood of our worldly activities and corrupted by the competing babbling voices that seek to stir up doubt?

 

Have we told the next generation of the wrath to come and God’s plan of salvation through faith in Jesus? Have we told them that even now Jesus is preparing a place for them in the new heaven and the new earth.

 

Tell the story! Learn from the generation of Joshua where it was lost in just one generation!

Jg 2:10 When all that generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation arose after them who did not know the LORD nor the work which He had done for Israel.

 11 Then the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baals;

 12 and they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; and they followed other gods from among the gods of the people who were  all around them, and they bowed down to them; and they provoked the LORD to anger.

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word