Treasured Truth

As we prepare for victory, we have to put some skin in the game.  Why?  Because, too many people want the benefits of adoption, without the sacrifice of relationship.  Pastor Ford says that often we want full time benefits from Jesus, while treating Him like He’s our part time job.

As we look at how God prepares us for victory, Pastor Ford explains that sometimes God takes us the long way to our destination, because it has the shortest problems.  If He took us the shortest way, we would turn back.  But by taking us the long way, He can build us up gradually, until we’re ready to possess what He wants us to possess.

Today on Treasured Truth, Pastor Ford points out that God has provided everything we need to take away any excuses that keep us from stepping into and fulfilling the destiny that He has designed for us.

What you’re going through right now, what you’re worried about right now, and what you’re stressing about right now—that’s the now, it’s not the later!  And God wants us to understand that today is not the end of all that He has planned for us later. So don’t let failure now, rob you of your hope for the later.

We need to understand that failure isn’t final.  Sure, we fail.  But we get back up and brush ourselves off.  It’s not final!  How do we know?  Because we’re still alive! And if we’re still alive, that means that God still wants to use us.

As we look at the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6, we discover several reasons why we ought to praise God.  And if we are going to respond to those reasons, we need to consider making praise a priority in our lives.

God gets all the glory, but He works through us.  We’re laborers together with Him.  And so, why do we do what we do? It’s for His glory. If we’re not doing something for the glory of God, we should stop whatever it is—now!  Because everything we do should be done completely for His glory.

At the time of Jesus’ birth, the Jews were expecting a King to be born, who was promised to them in the Old Testament.  But they missed their king because He was not born in the pomp and circumstance they were expecting, but in poverty.  He was not born to a princess, but to a peasant.  He was not born in a palace.  He was born in a barn instead.

This time of year, we often sing the wonderful Christmas carol, “O little town of Bethlehem.” But how often do we sing those lyrics without reflecting on the theology behind them? Pastor Ford will challenge us to consider how, because Christ was born, that “the hopes and fears of all the years” were met in that little town on that first Christmas night.

Pastor Ford wants to remind us this Christmas, that we can believe the promises of God, because the baby in the manger is Deity in a diaper.  God came in the flesh, fulfilled the promises in the Old Testament and He kept His word!