Treasured Truth

Who do you look to when you have a situation, when you have a problem?  Do you look to your intellect? Do you look to your Pastor or your church? Do you look to your bank account?  Do you look to your friends or your family?  Or do you look to Jesus?  Pastor Ford will share with us why there’s no reason for us to look to anyone or anything else, but Jesus.

Pastor Ford will explain today that the best ministry comes out of our pain, comes out of our lack, and comes out of our brokenness. Sometimes we have to be bruised in order to be used.  Ministry is not easy, but it’s worth it!  Because when we go through what we have to in order to minister, we end up bringing more glory to God through our pain, lack and brokenness.

As we begin to look at the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, we’ll see how Jesus is going to teach His disciples how to minister by providing them an example of what they should do.  Every time Jesus gave a message, He always gave the model.  In other words, Pastor Ford says, He would talk it, then He would always walk it.

Pastor Ford reminds us today that if Jesus conquered death, then what is our sickness to Him?  He can handle our employer.  He can handle our haters.  If He can conquer death, He can handle all of our insufficiencies.  Our insufficiency, becomes sufficiency, because of Christ’s all-sufficiency.  Jesus can handle all the issues that we have.

Just has so many people were waiting to be healed at the Pool of Bathesda, too many of us are hanging out at the pools of life where there are no answers!  We’re hanging out at the pool of materialism, the pool of sour careers and our jobs, the pool of our family.  We’re hanging out looking for answers in something that will never satisfy, instead of looking to Jesus for our answers and healing.

As we begin to look at the passage in John 5, where Jesus healed the man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, we’ll see how everyone waiting to be healed at the pool of Bethesda, was placing their hope in the power of the water in the pool.  Instead, they should have been placing their faith in the Power at the Pool—Jesus.

As we continue to look at what it means to launch out into the deep, we’ll see that Peter didn’t understand the capacity of the blessings that Jesus wanted to bestow on Him.  That’s because he was too small in his thinking.  And because of that, he missed out on some of the blessings.

Pastor Ford says that faith is believing it is so, even when it’s not so, until it becomes so, because God said so.  So, when we launch out into the deep, what are we doing?  We’re stepping out in faith, believing what God has said and trusting He will go with us into the unknown.

Some churches today reject new ideas.  They refuse to break tradition and resist change, because they are repulsed by the unfamiliar.  But Pastor Ford says we have to learn to launch out into the deep!  We have to trust the Lord to begin to do some things on our behalf.  And we need Christians who are willing to sail into some uncharted waters.

The message of Christ’s birth brings us joy in spite of any sorrow we may be experiencing.  In the midst of whatever we’re going through, we can have joy, because Jesus came to earth to give us joy.