Treasured Truth

When a marriage has a case of the “Toos,” one thing that happens is there are too many unmet expectations.  And often married people will focus on the “what ifs” of life instead of on the “what is.”  And when the “what ifs” takes precedent over the “what is,” then it often leads to disappointment and disillusionment.  We’ll begin to look at how to deal with expectations  in your marriage on today’s Treasured Truth.

Pastor Ford will remind us today that regardless of what we see going on now, whatever God has promised will happen is going to happen.  Regardless of what we feel now, it’s going to happen.  Regardless of who gets in our way, or whatever traps the Devil sets, we can always be confident that what God has promised is going to happen.

We can be confident that no matter what happens, God is going to do what He’s said He’s going to do.  And we can’t say anything or do anything to change that.  No circumstances or anything that the Devil does, should ever persuade us to believe anything other than what God has promised us.

When we are well in our spirit, we are holy. When we are well in our soul, we are happy. And when we are well in our body, we are healthy.  Our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.  God wants us to keep our bodies holy, happy and healthy, as we strive to honor Him in every part of our lives, and overcoming the sin of gluttony helps us do that.

For those of us who struggle with overeating, we’re not able to deal with it as the sin of gluttony, because we don’t look at it that way.  We call it a problem, but we’re very hesitant to call it sin.  And in our society today we really don’t call anything sin anymore, because it makes things like that more palatable to us, changing them from what God calls them.  Pastor Ford will help us re-evaluate our view of overeating and suggest some practical ways to overcome it.

Some people don’t eat to live, but they rather live to eat. So today, Pastor Ford will talk about what he calls “death by fork”—or in other words, overeating. And, there’s a Bible word for what we’ll be hearing about today. In scripture, it’s referred to as gluttony. Pastor Ford says that we should tell the truth and shame the Devil, facing facts and admitting that in the Bible overeating is actually the same as the sin called gluttony.

As we finish up our series on church discipline and restoration, Pastor Ford will highlight an important truth for us today. According to him, here’s the bottom line—if we are spiritually healthy then we will love our brothers and our sisters. And if we love our brothers and our sisters, we will not allow them to stay in the far country, back-slidden and away from God.

We’re looking further today at church discipline and considering those sins that can capture someone quickly.  They didn’t expect to do it.  They didn’t want to do it, necessarily.  But the temptation caught them by surprise and it overwhelmed them.  The Apostle Paul tells us it’s those who are spiritual within the church, who should come alongside the ones who have fallen into this kind of sin like and seek to help restore them.

As we consider how easily sin can ensnare all of us, we realize that we never know when we’re going to need somebody to pick us up. So since we don’t need to be picked up right now, what we need to do is to get into a habit of trying to pick up other people and lift others up who need us to do so now.

There’s an example of a person who was caught in sin, that we can read about in 1 Corinthians 5. Because the church delivered him unto Satan (according to the scriptures) for “the destruction of the flesh,” he repented. But guess what—then they wouldn’t forgive him and let him back into the fellowship of the church! So, today we’ll see how Paul rebuked that church for their unforgiveness.