A Unified Church

 A Unified Church
Getting Back to the Basics

Video of Blog

This blog is basically going to mimic what I posted in my YouTube video on this subject.  Today I want to talk about "A Unified Church - Getting Back to the Basics."

Questions to ponder:

1.  Who is the Church?

2.  What makes the people the Church of Jesus Christ?

Answers:  

1.  The people are the church.  

2.  If you profess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are part of the body of Christ and by this you and others who have done the same make up the Church. 

Ephesians 2: 8-9

    For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is a gift of God.

Roman 10:9

    That if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

What makes a person a Christian and part of the body of Christ which makes up the Church is what he/she believes about Jesus Christ.

So when I say, A Unified Church - Getting Back to the Basics, what do I mean?

      

    Well before I answer the what, I need to answer the why.

        Why must we get back to the basics?

   1.  We are in dire times

• Things are happening in our lives that we have never seen or experienced before.  i.e. the pandemic, monkey pox
• Wars and rumor of wars, like the war in Ukraine

    2.  We live in a day and time of cancel culture

• We have to fear doing or saying something wrong or if not wrong, but just something that is disagreeable to someone else and videos began to appear on YouTube of others trying to cancel us.
• We are imperfect beings and will make mistakes from time to time.  We should not have to fear the mistakes we might make while walking in our calling.
• God used imperfect people like murderers, adulterers, tax collectors

    3.  The message of the gospel (Good News) has gotten lost                     in this cancel culture

• We care more about denominational and doctrinal differences than about spreading the good news of Jesus Christ.
• We fight amongst each other about who is more right than the other because of what group we belong to.
• We have lost sight of John 3:16
• For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that who ever believes in Him, shall not perish but have eternal life.

So when I say that we need to get back to the basics, John 3:16 just hits home for me.

I heard someone say recently that it is not about you being gay, an adulterer or fornicator or any of the other multitude of sins that the Bible speaks about.  What the Bible calls sin is always going to be a sin, regardless of the times we live in.

So if you are an unbeliever reading this blog or listening to the video version today, I am not here to tell you the many things that you should stop doing or not do, but I am here to tell you the one thing that you not only should do, but the one thing that you need to do.

It is not until you do this one thing that Jesus Christ can then help you to stop doing the many things that are far less impactful to your eternal life than this one thing.

I wish I could remember the pastor who put this thought in my mind of little "s" sin and big "S" sin.  It is all about the idea that God hates all sin, but the one sin that will forever separate you or I from God is the rejection of His Son, Jesus Christ.

--Now to the What --

For us to be unified as a church and to get back to the basics, we as the church need to lead the world in getting rid of this cancel culture.

• I am so grateful that God is not a cancel culture God.  He did go there for a minute in the days of Noah, but He stopped short of complete destruction of man by saving Noah and his family.

We have so many denominational and doctrinal differences that we find it almost impossible to stand united with other Christians of differing denominational and doctrinal backgrounds, even when we know that they are speaking a biblical truth.

What should draw us together is that we place our faith alone in Christ alone, regardless of our denominational or doctrinal differences.

The fear, not just in the culture, but in the Christian community, is that if I stand with you on a biblical truth and there is some sort of blemish or misunderstanding about your ministry or personal walk with Christ, I too am now connected to your blemish and not the Kingdom of God; all because I stood with you on a biblical truth.

• It is almost to the point where if I am imperfect (which we all are - Romans 3:23), God can no longer use me to be His messenger.
• Thank God that is not the case.  If it were, Paul, Peter, Mary Magdalene, Moses, just to name a few, would not have been able to be used by God. 
• When I read the Bible, one thing that has always attracted me to the word is that God used imperfect people to spread His message.

If I know that God uses imperfect people, and I am studying the word to show myself approved, I should be confident in the word about biblical truths as opposed to worrying about someone creating a YouTube post trying to cancel me or my ministry.

-Bottom line - 

The world needs to see a unified church more than ever, right now

As part of the body of Christ, please pray daily for a unified church.

Be Blessed

What’s In A Name - The Heart of True Repentance

2 Chronicles 7:14

And My people who are called by my name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

Acts 3:19

Therefore, repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

How do you know if your repentance is real?  For me, I ask myself this question:  Am I running from the sin, or am I running from the consequences of the sin?  Am I more worried about the punishment than I am about honoring my heavenly Father who has given so much to me and for me?  I have found that the fear of punishment might make me turn away from sin, but it won’t keep me turned away from it.   When the lights are out, and the cameras are off and we think we are all alone and in the clear from being caught or found out, the fear seems to disappear.  When the fear is gone, I seem to turn right back to the sin.  Running from the consequences alone is not real repentance for me.  For me it is fake repentance.

I will admit that when I was a child, the fear of my dad’s belt kept me from a lot of sin.  That fear was a good first step, but long term, that fear became part of the problem.  Fear would often whisper in my ear, wait … wait … wait … now!  Fear simply became an accessory to my sin.  It became my lookout.  As long as my dad was not around to catch me, there was no fear of the consequences.  Without the fear of the consequences, there was no turning away from the sin for me.  If there was no turning away of the sin, there was no real repentance.

As I began to grow and mature, I realized that something had changed in me.  I had had a change of heart.  What I once didn’t do because of fear, I was now not doing because of honor.  You see, I am named after my father.  Over the years, my dad taught me to see the value in my name.  He would often remind me that the name that I was carrying was also his name.  If I did something to harm my name, I would also be harming his name.

My dad and I did not always see eye to eye, but I loved him dearly.  Because I loved him so much, and because of my gratitude for what he had given me, it didn’t matter if the lights were on or off.  It didn’t matter if the cameras were on or off.  I wanted to honor my father in my actions; so, I stayed away from those sins that had plagued me in my past.  I realized that true repentance was in my heart and not in my actions or my mouth.  My actions and words didn’t have real meaning or true change until my reasons for my actions changed.

As believers, God is our heavenly Father.  He has given us His name.  We should see value in That name.  We should realize that if we do something to harm our name, we are also harming His name.  We should honor His name in our actions, and our thoughts, and our deeds, because our hearts have changed, and we are now grateful instead of fearful.  We must learn to run from the sin, not because of the consequences, but because we love Him for what He has done for us.

Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Be blessed

Genesis 31:49, … May the Lord watch between you and me while we are absent one from the other.

The Attitude of our Obedience To God

What do you do when God speaks to your heart to complete a task?  Do you do it?  If so, what attitude do you exhibit while you do it?  Do you do it with a heart of gratitude?  Or do you do it because you fear what He might do to you or withhold from you if you don't do it?  The mind with which we use to do what God tells us to do is just as important as going through the motions and actually doing what God has told us to do.

(Romans 14:17-19) – For the Kingdom of God is not a matter of what we eat or drink, but of living a life of goodness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  If you serve Christ with this attitude, you will please God.  And other people will approve of you, too.  So then, let us aim for harmony in the Church and try to build each other up.

A couple of weeks ago I was talking to my children about their attitudes in our home.  I explained to them that even when they do what I or their mother has told them to do, but do it with a frown on their face or a complaint in their mouth they are still being disobedient.  When there is disobedience, consequences follow.

To better illustrate my point to my children, I told them the story about Jonah.  God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people to change their evil ways or He was going to destroy them.  Most of you probably know the story of how Jonah initially refused to go where God told him to go.  He demonstrated out right disobedience.  He tried to run from God.  He boarded a boat going in the opposite direction of where God told him to go.  Once on the boat, Jonah goes down into the bottom of the boat thinking God won't find him there. 

I stopped here and told my children, no matter where you go or how fast you try and get there, you cannot run from God. 

At this moment in time Jonah had no intentions on being obedient to God.  So what did God do?  God shook up his world.  He hurled a great wind that caused the boat to almost break up.  After everything was said and done, it was made known that Jonah's disobedience was the cause of the great wind and the distress they found themselves under.  To calm the winds, the other men aboard the boat reluctantly threw Jonah over board.  God appointed a large fish to swallow Jonah.  He spent three days and three nights in the belly of the fish.  This was Jonah's consequence for disobeying God.  During this time God gave Jonah time to think and reflect on his disobedience.  When the fish expelled Jonah on dry land, he was right back where he started.  This was his second chance to obey God.

Second case in point is that God will always give you another chance to be obedient to His will.   

The second time, Jonah did obey God.  He did exactly what God told him to do.  He went to Nineveh and proclaimed to the people that they had forty days in which to repent or they would be destroyed.  The people repented.  After seeing the people repent, you would have thought that Jonah would be excited about all those lives that were saved.  Instead, he was angry at God for saving them.  He said to himself "this is why I didn't want to do this in the first place.  I knew that if they repented, God would spare their lives."  His attitude in which he carried out God's plan was wrong.  He begrudgingly obeyed God.

Jonah was used by God to accomplish a great thing while at the same time exposing the scars that were imbedded on his heart.  God uses every moment in our lives to talk to us and teach us.  To open up Jonah's eyes God appointed a tree to grow up over Jonah and provide him shade as he sat to watch the people in Nineveh.  Jonah was very happy about the tree that provided him shade.  In the midst of Jonah's happiness, the Bible said that God appointed a worm to attack the tree and it withered.  Jonah then became angry because God allowed the tree to die.

God used the tree to contrast Jonah's attitude about his assignment to his attitude about the tree.   God told Jonah that he had more compassion for a tree that 1) he did not plant with his own hands and 2) that grew up overnight and withered just as quickly as it grew than he did for thousands of people who were on their way to hell but now are on their way to heaven.

God values life above death.  He requires obedience above disobedience.  So as believers we need to focus on our attitude in the midst of being obedient to God's word.  Obedience alone is not enough.  How would those of you who are parents respond to your child who does what you tell him/her to do, but does it while huffing and puffing or making sucking sounds through his/her teeth?  For me, I remind my children that there are consequences to disobedience.  Obedience coupled with the wrong attitude is disobedience.  God our Father also reminds us, His children, of that same message.  Some of us wonder why our struggles are so constant when we do what we feel God is requiring us to do.  I would like to subscribe to you that some of our struggles are due to our constant disobedience with our attitudes.  Like our children, we do God's will with a frown on our face and anger in our hearts.

God's word contrasts the benefits to having a faith-filled attitude to the consequences of not having a faith-filled attitude.

(Proverbs 17:22) – A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength.

(Proverbs 14:30) – A relaxed attitude lengthens life; jealousy rots it away.

Paul said in (Philippians 4: 11-13) – For I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little.  I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything.  I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little.  For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the strength I need.

I believe our Attitude is the key to success. 

The Importance of Seeing God over People. - A Unified Church

I have noticed in our current Christian environment, that some of us as believer’s have gotten so caught up in how we see spiritual wrong in others that we misrepresent the presence of God in our actions.  The world calls this kind of behavior, “Cancel Culture.”  What we see, interpret, and think to be right or wrong has become the final authority as opposed to what the word of God really says about something.  Our seeing, interpreting, and thinking have become externally driven by the world and not internally driven by the Holy Spirit or the word of God.  We have become multiple groups within a group, where each group has pitted itself against the other.  I don’t know about you, but where I am from, I call this a gang mentality.  I have never seen anything positive come out of such a mentality; especially nothing that will build up the Kingdom of God.

In Mark 9:38, John, one of Jesus’ disciples, comes up to Jesus and tells Him that he and the others saw someone casting out demons in Jesus’ name and they tried to stop him because he was not one of them.  Jesus stops John dead in his tracks and says to him, “Do not hinder him, for there is no one who will perform a miracle in My name, and be able soon afterward to speak evil of Me.  For he who is not against us is for us.”

I see in this verse that Jesus did not focus on what He thought the man was doing wrong, but rather on what He knew the man did right.  The man may or may not have had the purest of motives, but he did have the right solution in Jesus Christ.  Even in Jesus’ response to John, He implied that even if the man had evil motives, he might come to believe just by seeing a miracle happen in the name of Jesus.

Let’s let the belief in the power of the name of Jesus be what unites us as the solution for the world, as opposed to the many man-made nuances that we have allowed to divide us for so long.  Like the world, the church will always have differences that we could debate.  However, the world needs to see a unified church, speaking of a unified truth about a unified solution found in Jesus Christ.

It would be an amazing thing if we could all accept the example of Jesus.  When we see someone attempting to cast out the ills of this world in the name of Jesus, let’s not hinder them simply because they don’t belong to our group.  Let’s rest in the fact that if they are not against us, they are for us because we know that Jesus is the solution for our hurting world.

Be blessed

Sovereign Intervention

Although this daily bread was for July 8, 2019, it fits perfectly for me today.  One of the amazing things about God’s word is that it is specific to each one of us.  God’s word is so specific and alive to the degree that we can be in the same room and hear the same sermon or read the same words from the Bible and each be given a  God inspired message that addresses our very own individual circumstances.  This kind of message that is specific to us is called a rhema word; a word that is specific only to you.

Lately for me, it just seems like one frustrating thing after another seems to occur.  I see progress in one area of my life and then out of nowhere another struggle appears.  I get to the point of being so frustrated that I actually forget to talk to God about my needs and circumstances.  I fall into the mode of self-pity.  I then turn to a person who cannot pull me out of my situation – myself.

What I was reminded of today in this particular devotion is that God wants to hear from us.  Even though He knows everything about us, he wants us to initiate the conversation with Him about our individual needs.  The Daily Bread references Exodus 2:25, and notes that when the children of Israel were in bondage, the word says that they cried out to God and God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

The truth of the matter is that God is always concerned about us.  He just needs us to know AND accept His Sovereignty.  As long as we continue to turn to ourselves to fix our own problems, we are being defiant in recognizing that God is sovereign over everything in the heavens and the earth.  Disregard for His sovereignty is the best way to put God in a holding pattern.  In this posture, He is not ignoring us.  He is just waiting on us.

A plane cannot land until it gets the okay from the airport control tower.  Once the okay is given, the plane immediately starts to descend upon its intended location.  God is waiting for the okay from us so that He can descend upon His intended location of our lives and show us how much He is concerned about us.

Be Blessed everyone.

But God

Bruises once covered your most inner parts

Scars once hardened your hopeless heart

But God,

He who can reach

Into the deepest parts of your soul

He who can soften

The hardest of hardened hearts

He sees you

He feels you

But most importantly

He heals you

He is God

                                                                                   Bert Reece

Go to Your Room!

Poem inspired by

Isaiah 26:20 - Come, my people, enter into your rooms And close your doors behind you;
Hide for a little while Until indignation runs its course.

And

Matthew 17:20 - And He said to them, “Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.

Go to Your Room!

A bully stood outside my door

Yelling at me to come out so he could settle a score

He said he had something big for me

And that I needed to come out now to see what it was

Why he chose to pick on me

 I didn’t know

And why he chose to think I was so weak

I really didn’t care to know

Cause in my pride I thought to myself

That whatever THAT SOMETHING was

I wasn’t going to be the recipient of it

Cause I had something of my own to give

And I wanted to make sure he got notice of it

So I gathered myself together and I headed for the door

Didn’t know someone else was listening

Someone I couldn’t ignore

As my hand reached for the door knob to go outside

A booming voice yelled at me from behind

STOP!!

Don’t you go another step further

I didn’t have to turn around to see who it was

Because           I knew it was my Father

He said Go to your Room!

It’s for your own protection

Close the door behind you

And stay there until I come and get you

 I couldn’t understand why my Father would want me to look so weak

But I was more afraid of Him

Than what the bully could ever do to me

So I went to my room and closed the door behind me

Obedient in my actions

But disobedient in my mind

Angered by Father’s command to me

I looked out of my window

And watched the bully continue to taunt me

I paced back and forth trying to think

Cause I didn’t want others

To believe that I let him punk me

All of a sudden

I heard the same voice that spoke to me

Tell the bully

If you have something to give

Give it to Me

You see I am the strong tower

And in it my son is safe

And to be honest

You just don’t have that kind of power

I saw the bully immediately retreat

Looking more scared than I ever thought he could be

As he ran away I heard him say

I’m sorry for the pain I tried to cause today

I realize now that I chose the wrong one

Because I didn’t know that he was Your son

My Father then came to the room to get me

He told me He loved me

And that it was His job to protect me

And even though the enemy was as bold as he was

He knew he was no match

For the Father      of the son

My Father told me that I just needed to trust Him a little bit

And even though there was disobedience in my mind

He still applauded what my feet did

They moved in the direction

Of where His voice told me to go

And all because of THAT

The enemy is now gone

Sometimes it’s good

To go in your room and close the door

And be protected by the Father

While indignation runs its course

You see COVID 1 – 9

Tried to take my peace of mind

He stood at the door of my house

Taunting me to come outside

And in my pride

I could have died

Listening to my own fleshly voice inside

But just in time a Voice bigger than mine

Overrode the pride that I felt inside

It allowed the little faith

That I had stored away

Take front and center of my mind that day

It was a moment of clarity

Proof      that the mustard seed

Was more           than enough for me

Bert Reece

May 7, 2020

Pray God’s Glory Across the Earth

Habakkuk 2:14

Avoid Being Shipwrecked

This is a new day and dynamic for all of us.  We as a world are experiencing something that very few of us if any have ever experienced before.  However, in all this chaos and confusion, God is still present. Truth be told, He never went anywhere, we did.  As a country, over time, we have distanced ourselves from God. We did so by taking Him out of our schools and by removing Him from pre-game preparations.  We did so by taking Him out of our personal decision making and out of our consideration of others who may not necessarily look, or act, like us. Probably most importantly, we did so when we put Him in our box.

At work, we are in the time of year where we must go through items and files that we no longer need and discard them.  We have come to realize that after the items have been discarded, we have a lot of empty folders and other reusable supplies that need to be put back in their proper storage place.  My supervisor did most of the work of going through file cabinets and throwing stuff away. I was given the task to take all the boxes of reusable supplies and put them back in the supply room.  It was a very simple task … I thought. I began to try and fit each box of supplies on shelves that were already filled with other items, realizing that the boxes of supplies would not fit. What do I do?  I have a lot of supplies that can’t be left to block the walkways of the supply room.

A voice said to me, “just take the stuff out of the box.”  I said, “huh, it’s a lot of stuff.” The voice then said, “it won’t take you that long.  It’s just a small inconvenience and it will make your task a hold lot easier and simpler.  What did I do? I took the stuff out of the box. I then found that what was so difficult to put into place, started to fit very nicely with room left over to spare.

God is telling each of us in this most desperate time, that if we can learn to take Him out of our box, He can be so much more available to us in our lives.  He can fit things into our lives that He never could have before from inside our box. Our box can be so bulky and rigid that there is no room for the flexibility of God’s amazing grace and power to be made active in our lives.  We tell God that He can only bless us, if He blesses us a certain way. He can only heal us if He heals us a certain way. He can only grow us if He grows us a certain way.

Paul wrote to his son in the ministry, Timothy, in 1 Timothy 1:18-19.  He told Timothy, “This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith.”

This is a time where we as believers cannot afford to lose faith.  We must remember that God is bigger than any issue or pandemic that we could ever experience.  How the church responds, is how the world will respond. All eyes are on us. God has called each of us to be responsible, loving and caring towards one another.  He has called us to be faithful and not fearful. In Matthew 6:25-34, Jesus tells us not to worry and to trust that He will care for us. He tells us to pay close attention to the birds and the lilies.  He feeds one to fulfillment and clothes the other in beauty.

So, although it might be a little of an inconvenience to do so, take God out of your box.  Keep your faith in tact so that we are not like those who would suffer a shipwreck in regard to our faith.

Be blessed everyone and stay safe.  Genesis 31:49, … May the Lord watch between you and me while we are absent one from the other.

I AM Thinking About Her

When men focus on mentoring younger men, one of the biggest complaints that I hear from women is "why are you just focusing on boys or young men?"  Girls and young ladies matter too.  My response to that question is, "Yes, you are 100% correct, girls and young ladies matter too."  However, that would not be the end of my answer.  As the father of three beautiful young ladies, I would finish my answer by saying, "Girls and young ladies are exactly why we should focus on boys and young men."

So many of our young men and boys are in turmoil.   They have no direction.  When you think about the large percentage of fatherless households, you have to at least think about the question, even if you don't ask it aloud - "Who is modeling biblical manhood to our boys and young men?"  For the sake of our young ladies, we must place emphasized attention on our young men.  Who will our daughters wed?  I will not willingly give my daughter away to someone who is lost, only for him to help her lose who God intended for her to be.

I want to lend a hand in showing young men how I want my daughters to be treated.  I want to talk about chivalry.  I want to talk about the ugly word of submission and how it is not just for her in marriage.  I want to model before young men, the image of biblical manhood for my daughters sake.  I want to show young men what real love is and how it is not connected to the lower extremities of their bodies, but rather to a loving, gracious God who the Bible says, is Love.  (1 John 4:8)

We say we want lower divorce rates and less domestic abuse of women.  I believe a strong remedy for both is to mentor and grow young men in the faith of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  How can we expect them to love our daughters if they don't know the Architect of Love.

What do you think?

The Road to Success

What does the road to success look like to most people?  Is it an automatic thing where you try and succeed on the very first try?  I would venture to say that most successful people only find success after they have experienced failure.  With that thought in mind, if you are someone who is afraid to fail, you may never find success.  I truly believe that even those things that we might appear to be horrible at doing, are things that are necessary for God to prepare us for what we are meant to be great at doing.  I tried this and failed.  I tried that and failed.  I tried again and again but yet I failed again and again.  How does this benefit me to keep trying? 

      1)  I gain perseverance because I have
            continued to try in the face of
            failure. 
      2) Although I may have failed, I have
           gained valuable experience along
           the way. 
      3) I have gained insight into to what
          works and what does not work.  So
          as I come to the thing that God   
          has purposed for me and I look back
          over my past failures, I am able to
          take a little from this experience and
          piece it together with a little from
          that experience and throw in a touch
          of this from another experience.  I
          then realize that my past failures
          where not failures at all.  They were
          just stepping stones that were
          preparing me for my success.

Romans 8:28
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Be encouraged.

Bigger is Not Always Better

As we enter into this new year of 2016, God spoke into my heart that bigger is not always His intent to make my life better.  He gave me a visible illustration so I could see what He really meant.  I like to write.  At times I will sit down to work on material that I have previously worked on and God will give me a lot more to say so that when I put the work away at the end of that sitting, it is more than when I sat down that day.  That is great, but it is not always like that.  Sometimes I will sit down and God does not give me more to say but He does give me better ways to say some things that I have already said.  So I will go through my previous writing and restate some things in smaller concise ways.  On these days when I get up from my writing, the finished product is usually smaller than when I started.  My finished work is not bigger but it has still changed for the better.

God always wants us to be changed for the better.  It is important that we adjust our perspective and look more for better and not so much bigger.  So many times we are looking and expecting God to do big things in our life and many times are disappointed when we don't get them.  Often if we would just change our perspective we would see that God did do something better.  We just missed it looking for something bigger.

In 2016, lets look for better and not bigger and see how much more God can influence our life from the inside out.

Believe and be blessed in 2016.

Where My Island People At?

I have often said that people who stay to themselves are consumed by themselves. This is just another way of saying that if you purposefully stay in your own little world and choose not to interact with anyone else, for whatever reason, your problems will seem to multiply exponentially. Little problems will always seem like big problems. Everything will be major. Anger and frustration will become your best friends. I call this kind of person an island person. Very rarely are visitors allowed on your island.

My Pastor often tells our congregation that you cannot fully grow spiritually the way God intended for you to grow in a non-corporate environment. You can grow up to a certain point, however at some particular point in time your growth will stop. We were created to be relational beings. We were never meant to live life completely alone. This is demonstrated in three very visual cinematic examples that most of us may be somewhat familiar with:

1) Scrooge. He was an old man who was financially wealthy but relationally poor. He, to a certain degree, hated people. In order for him to see the damage that his perspective on life had caused he had to be shown himself through the eyes of his past, present and future.
2) The Grinch. The Grinch had been mistreated as a child because he was different from the other Who’s in Whoville. As a result, he hated people and separated himself far away from everyone in Whoville. It was the love of a little girl that defrosted his frozen hardened heart and showed him how important people were to his life.
3) The movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks. This was a man, by no fault of his own, who was stranded on an island in a plane crash. The loneliness nearly drove him crazy. It got so bad that he ended up creating his very own friend so he could have someone to talk to. He painted a face on the soccer ball and named it Wilson. He just needed someone to talk to.

All three of these examples might be fictional characters, however they all point back to a very real issue of isolation and separation void of human relationships. Community is just that important to us all, especially believers. If we are to truly grow spiritually, we have to do it in the midst of community. Being an island person will not benefit your spiritual growth. It is a ploy of the enemy to convince you that you are better off on your own. He thrives in this kind of environment. We don’t.

Points to ponder:

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (ESV) – Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Galatians 6:2 (ESV) – Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

I almost forgot. The most important example of community in the Bible is the relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. God is all about community.

Casualties of War

Being Veterans Day and thinking about my father who passed away on May 19th of this year has really made me think about the phrase “casualties of war.” Most of us consider casualties of war as those who are unable to walk away from the battlefield on their own or not able to walk away at all. In reality there are so many more that walk away “seemingly” unscathed but forever scarred.

My father, Hubert L. Reece, Sr. walked away from the Vietnam “Conflict” with no apparent scars. As the years progressed he would experience fainting spells, high blood pressure, diabetes which led to his leg being amputated, intestinal cancer, stroke and congestive heart failure. Many of these ailments were attributed to what he was exposed to while in Vietnam. He was a soldier to the very end. On May 19, 2014 at approximately 7:15am, while surround by family his heart took its last beat. It is a moment that I will never forget. The unseen scars of the Vietnam War made my dad a casualty of war.

There are so many more just like my dad. Soldiers who have come home thinking they are ok when they are really not. Today I pray for all of these soldiers. I pray that they find the medical attention that they need. I pray that God will cover their families as they walk this long hard journey of discovering what it means to be a casualty of war; be certain that it is a journey.

To all of our veterans, thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifice. It means the world to me. Freedom is not free. Thank you for paying the price that I was so unwilling to pay.

Accountability - The New Ugly Word

Hello all,

I have been away for a very long time. Please forgive me. This has been a hard year for me. I have lost a lot of loved ones who are very dear to me this year including my father. As I am trying to get back on track, I thought it would be good to address the topic of men being accountable to one another. Accountability is kind of like getting your prostate checked. We as men need it but we don’t like it.  Life without accountability could mean self-destruction of ones self.

We as men not only need to hold one another up, but we need to hold one another accountable. It is the only way our society will truly change. We are living in a time where everything is a conflict. It is husband against wife, father against son or daughter, friend against friend. Everything is a conflict and we have not been taught or have not yet figured out how to resolve the conflict. This is why it is important that as men we not only hold each other up, but that we also hold each other accountable to how we choose to resolve conflict. We have to police ourselves so that we paint the picture that others see of us and not allow the media to paint their version of how they see us.

So my question to you: What kind of man are you?

                                          The Man I Am

                       If I see my brother in trouble and do not act
                            What does that really say about me?
                                          Am I a selfish man?
                                       Am I a cowardly man?
                      Am I just a useless man with a senseless creed?
                                     For if God can’t use me
                          I leave room for the world to abuse me
                                 And if God can’t reign in me
                    Then I leave room for the enemy to influence me
                           So the real question that I must ask
                           Is what does God think about me?
                               And when I ask myself this
                              It causes me to reflect on Him
                  I don’t want God to think He’s wasted His time on me
                                The life He gave on Calvary
                               To free this sinful man in me
                          How could I be so selfish to think
                   That I was the only one to deserve His grace
                             Oh but even if I did not say it
                      I surely acted it out in the way that I lived
           My brother was drowning and I did nothing to rescue him
                   Not even a hand out for fear that I might fall in
                  Wow, is this the man that God wanted me to be?
               Are my actions a reflection of His love inside of me?
                  I dare not even contemplate where I would be
        If He hadn’t given His life on a hill for the whole world to see
                              So if I must lose a part of me
                    Let it be the selfish man of my fleshly deeds
                   Let it be the foolish act of standing by silently
                     For if I truly love the God that I say I serve
                  Then let His love and His light overwhelm me
                         So that as I see my brother in danger
                       I won’t hesitate give him what he needs
                                             A hand out
                                           A strong word
                                  Holding him accountable
                                     In truth and in deed
                              And being held accountable
                       Because that man is no different from me
                                  This is The Man I Am
                               Yeah, that is The Man I Am
                                                                         by Bert Reece

The Crack In My Armor

I am looking at myself in the mirror

Looking for some scars

That might cause me to be alarmed

Can I truly see myself any clearer?

Thinking I have all my basis covered

Looking myself up and down

Feeling good about what I’ve discovered

I am a man after God’s own heart

I see a few scars

And a few flaws

But nothing I can’t handle with a little help from God

But wait

What’s that I see staring back at me?

All of a sudden I don’t recognize what I see

Could that really be me?

My body armor is not as pristine and clean as I once thought it to be

God where did that crack come from?

Is it really me?

I didn’t see that coming

I didn’t see that in me

Why would you let this be?

God’s reply to me

You lost sight of who I wanted you to be

I had to show you the crack in your armor

So you could really be useful to Me

God I don’t like what I see

Help me to be who I am supposed to be

Thank You for loving me unconditionally

For opening my eyes

And truly caring for me

Thank You for showing me
The Crack in My Armor

                                                  by Bert Reece

Anchor Yourself Down

How many times have you felt so frustrated by your situation that you had to flee from it as fast as you could only to find yourself in the same situation again? Through various events and circumstances in my own life, God has been speaking into my heart the message of anchoring down in the situation instead of fleeing from it. I am a first time author and have often told my story of me not wanting to write what God told me to write. Each time I chose to step away from the writing process, God would cause certain events in my life to occur that would always lead me back to the writing process again. I felt that the weight of the message He was speaking through me was too heavy for me to handle. After everything was said and done, I realized that God was in control and He did not want me to flee my situation, but rather to anchor down in it. He was not trying to push me out of the situation. He was trying to push me through the situation.

So many times I see people going through the same old trials over and over again. Each time they flee the situation. Because God allows them to leave the situation without much effort and other opportunities show themselves present, they feel that God gave them permission to leave. My spin on it is this; God allows you to leave the situation, but He did not necessarily present the opportunity to you or if He did it was not for the sake of you leaving your current situation. Sometimes God will test us. He will see if we want His presence more than we want to be comfortable. I am a firm believer that if God is going to do something special through you, it won’t be in your comfort zone. I have found that within my comfort zone, is only mediocrity. God wants more out of us than just mediocrity. He wants greatness.

So instead of running from an impossible situation, consider anchoring down in it. Tell God He has your complete confidence that He will do great things through you in whatever situation you find yourself.

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Let God be your strength in your impossible situation so He can get the glory when others see you succeed.

Step Away from the Vanity Mirror

So many of us are consumed with how we look; that would be men as well as women.  We spend so much time in front of the mirror trying to look good to and for others.  We use the mirror as a way to see our faults so that we can then cover them up.  When we walk away from the mirror, our goal is to “look” better than when we first sat down or stood up in front of it; however when we leave the mirror we are still the same flawed person that stood before the mirror.  We walk away feeling like a different person when really are not.

The vanity mirror for most people today, including Christians, is the world.  We want to look like the world and sound like the world.  We want the world to think that we look good and sound good.  We want the world to influence others in how they view us.  We are constantly staring into the vanity mirror hoping that the image reflected back to us is one that is acceptable to the majority.

The problem with using the world as our mirror is that we are not getting a true image of what is wrong with us.  This mirror says something is good when God says it is bad.  This mirror says to just cover it up and everything will be OK.  We walk away from this mirror with a temporary sense of confidence that gradually fades throughout the day.  We began to hope and pray that the flaws we have covered up will remain under cover. 

The true mirror for Christians is the word of God.  It was not created so we could cover up our faults.  It was created to expose our faults so that we can appropriately deal with them.  When you think about the Ten Commandments, they were not simply meant to be a set of rules to keep.  They were meant to be a body of work that God used to show us how we can’t keep them in its entirety.  God wants us to see how much we need Him.  He shows us daily that if we look into His mirror in an earnest manner, we will walk away humbled and submitted to His will because we will truly see that it is only His will that means anything in this world.

God asks us daily Mark 8:36 – What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?

Let the Word be your mirror and not the world.

The Fear of The Lord

Psalm 111:10

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. A good understanding have all those who do His commandments; His praise endures forever.

I was talking to my daughters on the way home from church the other day about what they had talked about in class that day. One of them mentioned fear. I then mentioned the first line of the Psalm 111:10. My two younger daughters fell in an uproar. They could not understand why we should fear God. They felt that the only one they should fear, spiritually, was Satan. I explained to them that Satan, like us, was created by God. Satan has to get God’s permission before he can do anything. I wanted them to understand that God was bigger and stronger than Satan could ever be. I don’t think I won them completely over to the idea of fearing God to gain wisdom but I do think I started them to thinking about it.

Like my daughters, we mature Christians struggle to understand the many dualities of God that make Him God. We get frustrated very quickly. To make ourselves feel more at ease about God, we minimize Him. We place Him in our spiritual box. It is important that we really start to think about who God really is. Remember that He is The Creator and everyone else, including Satan, is the creation. All Satan can do is to persuade us in one way or the other. He has no real power other than what we ascribe to him. God can completely destroy us. That is the true wisdom in fearing God; understanding who is King. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. Do you fear Him?

God Bless You.

Pressure Cooker

Pressure cookers are usually used to cook things slow and steady. When used properly, you can create some of the best tasting food. I love a good stew made in a pressure cooker. It is the slow and steady process that makes the food so tender and good. When looking at our spiritual lives, God likes to put us in our very own spiritual pressure cookers when He is trying to take us to a new level in our spiritual growth. The problem is that we can’t stand the slow and steady process that we must go through.

We are in a microwave age where everything has to be fast and convenient. This fast and convenient environment is not good for Christian growth. If the truth be told, the slow and steady process is what strengthens our endurance on this Christian journey. I had a conversation with someone the other day where they had just confirmed a new job position starting in the next few months. This person has always had a dream of working in this field. They were led to finally get the necessary training and certifications by the frustration and stress they felt in their current job. This person is someone who has moved around quite a bit in their profession. They would get frustrated at one place and because they were gifted and talented would have no problem getting hired on someplace else. They would go through this process over and over and over again. In my spiritual perspective, they never really allowed the slow and steady process to have its intended spiritual result. They would remove themselves from the pressure cooker too soon, thus removing them from the heat only half done.

My comment to this person was that I felt they would have gotten to their point of purpose much sooner had they not moved around so much. God had instructed this person over a decade ago to prepare for this field that they were just now going into. It is the true area of their giftedness. This person disagreed with my statement and noted that God removed them from each job because He knew they could no longer deal with the stress and frustration where they were. My response was that God allowed them to move, but did not necessarily facilitate the move Himself. Because God gives us choices, we can choose to stay and endure or we can choose to remove ourselves from the process too soon. The reason I said what I said to this person was because I truly felt that when God removes you from the heat (or the process), we are completely done with the process and we don’t keep going through the same process over and over again. Whereas when we remove ourselves it is almost guaranteed we will repeat the same process over and over and over until we learn the lesson that God wants us to learn. God always gives retest. He only accepts a passing grade. He never allows you to take an incomplete or failing grade. I noted to this person that the frustration and stress they were feeling was God’s way of pushing them towards their destiny. Each time they moved from one job to the next, they were removing God’s hand from pushing them towards their destiny. What they perceived to be frustration and stress was really the hand of God increasing the pressure in the pressure cooker to push them toward their destiny.

Just think if this person had allowed the process to be completed the first time. We often hate the process. It is usually uncomfortable, inconvenient and can hurt very bad at times as we are being stretched and pulled to increase our spiritual capacity. We just want the pain to go away; while God just wants us to grow spiritually. In our physical growth we often experience growing pains. Likewise in our spiritual growth we will also experience growing pains.

What if Joseph had worked his way out of the bondage that he was wrongly placed in by his brothers? What if David had given himself up to King Saul and allowed Saul to kill him? Because Joseph endured the process, he ended up being the number two person in Egypt behind Pharaoh. David held out long enough for God to fight his battle. God took care of Saul for David and made David a path straight to the throne he had been anointed to sit upon.

The next time you feel you are in an unbearable situation, take a moment to align yourself with God to make sure you are not running from a necessary process in your efforts to remove yourself from something that hurts. It could be you are feeling a necessary growing pain that God is using to make you more of the person He wants you to be.

God bless you.

A Citizen of Zion

(Psalm 15)

Psalm 15:5c
He who does those things will never be shaken.

This verse is the very last sentence of Psalm 15. If you were to only see this sentence and not know what came before it, you would probably ask the following three questions:

1) Who is the “he” referred to in this verse?

2) What things must “he” do?

3) Why won’t “he” be shaken?

Who is the “he” referred to in this verse?
The “he” referred to in this verse is a true citizen of Zion. He is someone who God has allowed in His presence; someone that God has allowed to hang out with him. He is someone who lives a life of consistency. He is someone with integrity and speaks the truth in his heart. He is a true friend who realizes the power in his tongue to speak life or to speak death and he always chooses life. He sees sin as God sees sin. He is a model of fairness.

What things must “he” do?
He must begin each day with a praise in his heart and a desire to spend time with God. He must realize that in his own strength, he is weak; but with God’s strength, he can do all things. He must see through God’s eyes and not his own. It is through God’s perspective that he discerns good from evil.

Why won’t "he" be shaken?
He won’t allow life to change his perspective. Even in storms he will see God’s strength as a tree planted by the waters, strong and unmovable. God may not keep him out of the fire, but He will go in the fire with him. The fire won’t have the same effect on him that it has on others. His clothes will not be singed. The fire will not destroy him because the Lord Jesus is with him.

He is a true citizen of Zion.

If you were to do a self-evaluation, what about yourself must you change to become a citizen of Zion?

I think if we are all honest with ourselves, there are flaws in everyone’s character that must be changed to truly say that we are a citizen of Zion.

Are you willing to change?

God Bless you.

In My Father's House

Part II

In Part I of “In My Father’s House,” we talked about Kings who ruled their kingdoms well but allowed their homes to fall completely apart.  In this segment I want to talk about fathers who understand the importance of God being the center focal point of their home and the decisions that are made within the home.  Today I want to talk about Joshua.  As head of his home, he made a decision that affected his entire household; from strangers to blood relatives.  If you stayed in Joshua’s house his decision affected you.   He went public that he and his household would serve the Lord.

Joshua 24:15

If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

The public nature of his decision not only affected his household but also his entire community.  Sometimes it just takes one person to stand up for righteousness and others will follow.  This was not the first time Joshua stood strong in his belief of God.  He, along with Caleb, in Numbers 14 believed that God would take them into the promise land, whereas the others who spied out the land with them were full of fear because of the giants who were already living there.  Joshua was a true Kingdom man.  He had wisdom to know that his real strength was not in his arms but rather in his God, or should I say his Lord.  To say that God is Lord is to say that He is ruler of your life.

Every home needs a Kingdom man mentality leading it.  Can you imagine a world full of strong men who look to God for their true strength to lead their families?  If we allow God to be Lord in our lives, it is possible.  How can we as heads of our homes expect our wives to submit to us if we won’t submit to the Lord?  Join me in the fight to secure our homes with strong men who follow the Lord.

God Bless You.