God is Love

God is Love: teaching by Matt Trammell on January 1st, 2009

John 3:16-18 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in Him is not Condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only son.

Most people have heard John 3:16, but not everyone has heard the next two verses. The second part there is to affirm the fact that God loved us and that was why he sent Jesus to be our savior. The third part is to make sure we understand the only way we can know God is to know his Son. It says we are condemned if we do not believe in the name of His Son. Why does it say name and not just him. It says name because it is to be spoken and Jesus is the Greek form of Joshua which means the Lord saves. God made it abundantly clear what he sent His Son here for. He wa sent to be our Savior. So why is it that most people do not understand or are not blessed with the feeling of our God's Love? I believe it is because of all the preaching in the churches today have been sin focused and not love focused. Lets get deeper into love and you will understand how love can make the difference.

1st Corinthians 13:1,4-7 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or clanging cymbal. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always, protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we truly knew that we were loved, truly loved by just one person. Well, you can rest in the knowledge of John 3:16 the same God that said He loved the world, was the one who inspired the definition of the word. So if God loves us that means he keeps no record of wrongs and is not easily angered. So if you are wanting to come to Christ, but think you have to clean up your life or whatever is holding you back, understand that God Loves you and has forgiven you already for anything you have done in your past and anything you will ever do. So pray the sinner's prayer and come to him, come join us in the warmth of God's Love.

Romans 3:22-24 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all those who believe. There is no difference for all have sinned and fallen short of the Glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came through Christ Jesus.

So it does not matter what sins have been committed, God says it makes no difference because everyone has failed. But we have redemption through Jesus Christ. I want to talk to the people now who are Christians but have never enjoyed the fullness of God's love. God is Love. We have a New Testament for a reason, testament stands for covenant. So we have a new covenant with God that cannot be broken. To be righteous now we come through Christ, he is in us and he is full of love. Open your heart to the Love, this can change your entire life. What we think, feel and say all starts in our heart, if we feel love, love will consume our lives. When you feel God's love you will see yourself as God sees you, righteous. Thinking thoughts and speaking words of righteousness will bring out righteousness, just like any other thoughts and confessions. Words are powerful, they can bring harm and do evil, or can do wonderous and miraculous things. Guard your heart with God's love!

Romans 5:8 But God demonstrated his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the Gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Mark 8;36-38 What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul. If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels.

God wants to give us his love and eternal life but if we do not accept the gift of Jesus first, then we cannot partake in any other gifts. There is only one road to Heaven and you need Jesus as your intercessor and noone else. Do not get stuck in the trap of "All roads lead to Heaven". There is only one way in. All other roads lead to Hell. I want to leave you on a better note. God loves you! The bigger Question is whether or not you love God? I want you to truly ask yourself this question. Do you "love" the same way God loves. Do you see yourself the way God sees you. I want to leave you with one last verse.

1st John 4:8 For those who do not love, do not know God, because God is Love.

So, if you have felt judged by another christian or have been cast down by someone, know that is not of God. God did not approve of that, God loves you and sees you as perfect and righteous.

If you want to feel God's love pray this prayer with me. Father God, I know I am a sinner but I am righteous in your eyes and ask for the forgiveness you have already given me. I want your love to fill my heart so Jesus come into my heart and take control. I want to see myself as you see me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and salvation.Thank you Father for accepting me the way i am.

Cost of being a disciple

Teaching by Matt Trammell 1-4-09

25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters?yes, even his own life?he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'

31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.

If those verses do not grab your attention, then you need to read them again. It says we must hate our parents, families, and ourselves. Now, why would the Lord tell us we must hate, this will make more sense if you bear with me as we take it back to the greek translation, the original language the new testament was written. It originally uses the greek word miseo, which means to love less. So we must love everything less than the Lord. Then we can stay in greek and explain verse 33 it says to give up everything, but in the greek word apotessetai it means "to properly arrange" which we know as prioritizing. Now, as we look at this we must prioritize our lives and love in order to put Jesus first in our lives. We will now disect verse 27, it states we must carry our own cross, but the greek word stauros is used, which means a pole or cross a type of capital punishment and then can be implied as self-denial . So, we must be willing to carry self denial around. Why would God ask this of us? We must be willing to continually deny our fleshly impulses and do what is right for the will of God, which will be right for you. The Lord is omniscient, he knows what is best, so i will choose to take some advice from someone who already knows. Why should we continue struggling trying to figure out this life ourselves. This is another passage of scripture I want us to look at today.

Mark 8:34-36 34Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35For whoever wants to save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

In these verses it is pretty clear what it means. The only thing that needs to be understood is that jesus did not meant we need to actually carry a physical cross around, but he did mean the shame and persecution that took him to the cross. Jesus needs us to understand the seriousness of cost behind being his disciple. We may not realize it in this country, but we have it easy here in America. We do not have to worry about being tortured or killed just because we are worshiping Christ. This is what he meant through carrying our cross, we must be able to do that, give the ultimate sacrifice if that is what is necessary in order to glorify God and bring people to Christ.If you are not willing to carry around that cross then you can not be a disciple. I have had my times of wondering whether I would be willing to sacrifice my life for Christ and for a long time I did not know. It was when my daughter was born that I realized that if God can sacrifice his only son for uss then what is it to sacrifice ourselves in order to bring others to Christ. I realized this because I would easily sacrifice myself for my daughter, so for God to be willing to watch His Son die on the cross for us is a huge deal. This is not meant to be a morbid message, the intent of this lesson was to get you to understand the call on your life and how serious it is when you do decide to make this commitment to Christ. Not everyone or even a majority of christians are ever called to fulfill the ultimate sacrifice, but we must all be willing if the call does come. We are in the Army of God, and I want to be a good soldier and conquer and overcome this world. Our weapon is the.Word of God! It has the power to do all things. If you want to become a soldier in God's army and if you want to feel God's love pray this prayer with me. Father God, I know I am a sinner but I am righteous in your eyes and ask for the forgiveness you have already given me. I want your love to fill my heart so Jesus come into my heart and take control. I want to see myself as you see me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and salvation.Thank you Father for accepting me the way i am.

Faith

Faith, what is faith? Faith is a trust or belief in something not based in the natural. To have faith in something means that there is a feeling that something is true but it can not be proven through our natural senses. In order to do the works of God, we must have faith that God will do what he says.

We are going to do something new this time. I will tell you where I pulled the scriptures, but you need to look them up in your bible or you can do it online, but I feel there is something lost if you do not get in the Word yourself and find your own meaning from God in His words. Okay, so In Acts chapter three; Peter and John healed a lame man. It describes the people marveling at the healing and standing in awe, but read what peter says, he asks them why do they marvel at this? He goes on to tell them to not look at them like it was by their own power this man was healed, but by the power of the one named Jesus that they denied and had crucified. They healed this man through FAITH in His name. Peter was just giving the glory to God and to show that He was still with us in the world through the children of God, the believers. So Faith is how we do God's work in this world. We must believe in the power of God and the ability he gave us as the medium for it to be implemented.

Healing of the Centurion's servant Matt 8:5-13

A Centurion, which was a Roman army commander of 100 men, came to Jesus asking him to heal his servant which was paralyzed. Jesus said he would go to his home and heal him, but the centurion replied that he was not worthy to have Jesus in his home. He continued to say that if people listened to him when he gave a command, then surely Jesus could just speak and his servant would be healed. Jesus marveled at this man's faith. He told all that were with him that he had not seen this type of faith in all of Israel. Jesus told him since he believed then it would be done. If we believe, or have faith it will be done, does that mean anything we believe will be done, no. This means that if we have faith in the things of God then it will. In Matthew 17:20 Jesus says that If we have faith the size of a mustard seed then we can tell mountains to move, how cool is that. It goes on to say that nothing will be impossible to us. When faith is used in the Bible it originally comes from the Greek word pistis, which means the truthfulness of God. So, what I get from this is that if we have the truthfulness of God then nothing is impossible, so belief has to be with faith in order for it to be done. We can not just believe for a million dollars, it must come from the truthfulness of God in order for it being worthy of coming to pass. We must be faithful in this life to do what we are called to do, we are to be a light in the darkness in this world. Faithful can be translated from the Greek, pistos which can mean giving credit to another, or God. God is the power source for any works or miracles we do in this life, so we must give credit where credit is due. We must speak with the authority that God gives us. He gave us the power to move mountains. Surely, we can get through the ups and downs of emotional rollercoasters given to us through the works of the Devil. God is the Ultimate. Our power comes from Him and his power is above all that of the Devil. Faith is what gets us through and empowers us in this life.

If you do not have that faith or power then say this prayer with me:

Father God, I know I am a sinner but I am righteous in your eyes and ask for the forgiveness you have already given me. I want your love to fill my heart so Jesus come into my heart and take control. I want to see myself as you see me. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin and salvation.Thank you Father for accepting me the way i am.

Family First

Before anything on this earth but after God we are to take care of our family. Family is the Most important thing in this world and will be a large part of future discussions in this world. There are kids growing up in this world without fathers at an astronomical rate. I want to include in that number the fathers that send their kids to boarding schools, work so much their children do not recognize them, and the ones who abuse them (physically, mentally, or verbally). That leaves us with a minority of children and a generation raised by their biological parents in a good situation. I do not know where or how I got started on this topic, but it has been burning on my heart for quite some time now. I was raised in a variety of situations. My father divorced my mother when I was two months old and have seen him one time since. I lived with my mother who was going in and out of relationships with the passing of each season until third grade. I was then in the custody of my nineteen year old sister. We lived together until 7th grade. My mother was now out of prison and supposedly getting her life on track with a guy I had grown to know as a father figure. That was a decent situation until midway through eigth grade and then we moved to a wonderful place called Living Water Ranch. It is a Christian Camp and Conference Center run by my Aunt and Uncle. I lived there all through High School and most of College. So, for the most part I understand what it was like to not be raised by the people that God had originally set in place to raise me. I know that God uses everything for good, and I am glad he got ahold of me before I could have seriously slipped off in the deep end with the types of situations my mother would get me into. I feel a burning to get fathers more involved in their children's lives. I want to know any organizations or just people helping to do this or have information about it to please post comments here or shoot me an e-mail.