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In Numbers chapter 11 we find Moses complaining to God because the people have been complaining to him about not having anything except manna to eat. Instead of being grateful for God freeing them from slavery, parting the Red Sea for them to walk across, and providing daily manna – the people took God for granted and started complaining to Moses. Moses complains to God and God responds to Moses with the response that He will provide meat (Quail) for the people to eat.
In Number 11:18a we find a very interesting verse. God is speaking to Moses when He says, “Tell the people: ‘Consecrate yourselves in preparation for tomorrow, when you will eat meat….” God is saying to the people for them to prepare themselves, cleanse themselves, sanctify themselves in order for them to be able to receive the meat that He will send them. He is saying to them that with that selfish, complaining spirit they are not ready to receive the blessing in the form of meat that He wants to give them. They must prepare themselves in order to fully receive and appreciate it. When I think about this, I think of the verse in I Corinthians 3:2-3 where Paul tells the church at Corinth: I have had to feed you with milk and not with solid food (meat) because you couldn’t digest anything stronger. And even now you still have to be fed on milk. 3 For you are still only baby Christians, controlled by your own desires, not God’s. When you are jealous of one another and divide up into quarreling groups, doesn’t that prove you are still babies, wanting your own way? In fact, you are acting like people who don’t belong to the Lord at all” I believe that on any given Sunday in any church there are people who come to church services who need to sanctify, prepare, consecrate themselves in order to receive the meat of the Word when they come. Many people come into a worship service distracted, disgruntled, even depressed with their mind and spirit anywhere else in the world except coming into the presence of God. They didn’t consecrate themselves before they came in and thus, they will only be able to get the milk of the Word if even that. These same people will leave the worship service and say that they, “Didn’t get anything out of being at church that day” Of course they didn’t get anything from it and are leaving spiritually hungry because they couldn’t stomach the meat of the Word. They made no preparation to receive the blessing that God had for them. They are, according to these scriptures, acting like baby Christians. You only get out of it what you put into it. This Saturday, start preparing yourself for worship services on Sunday. Remove any distractions. Come hungry to feed upon the meat of the Word. Come expecting to meet with God through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Remember that the worship of God is all about HIM – not you. So do everything that you can to prepare your heart, mind, and spirit to meet with God. You will leave different than you came. – In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs
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Don’t Give The Devil Too Much Credit
I always use PowerPoint when I preach my messages. Usually, it involves a fill in the blank that allows the audience to be more plugged into the message. One Sunday I took my USB stick over to the audio/ visual person for her to put the slides in the computer so that it would be ready for the sermon. Only problem was that it would not read on the church computer that we use every week. We tried 4 or 5 different USB sticks, and I even emailed it to her. Still, it would not open on the church computer. I finally had to give up and just preach without PowerPoint. When I got up to preach, I said, “The devil didn’t want this sermon to flow right so he made sure that the power point would not work”. When I asked my wonderful wife later that day to look at the PowerPoint, she discovered right off the bat that I had somehow put the presentation in the wrong format. Seems that I was to blame for the error – not the Devil. Unless you want to think that the Devil distracted me when I was preparing the presentation, so I put it in the wrong format. I think that sometimes we give the Devil too much credit when things go wrong. Sometimes, like in this case it was just human error. When we give the Devil too much credit it increases our fear of him. The Bible tells us to fear not and that if we resist the Devil, he has to flee from us. In other words, we have the power of the resurrected Jesus living inside of us if we are Christians. When Jesus came out of the tomb he overcame death, Hell, and the grave forever. He also broke the power of evil that tries to ensnare us in sin. We have the authority from Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us to command the Devil to flee, and he HAS to obey and leave us alone. The Devil is not and never will be more powerful than God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit. When we invite Jesus to be the Lord of our life and the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us the Devil is a defeated foe. It is only when we forget that we are Children of the most high God and don’t follow His perfect will for our lives that we give the Devil an opening to enter our minds and hearts. He only needs a small crack to jump in and try to take over. That is why we need to put on the Full Armor of God each day because our enemy the Devil never stops trying to attack us. The Good News is that if we stay faithful and true to God, HE has already won the war over the Devil and HE fights for us each day. Keep your eyes on God and don’t give the Devil an opening to attack you. If he does get in, then immediately plead the Blood of Jesus and take up your Spiritual authority and command that rascal to leave you alone. He cannot control you in any way if you are covered by the Blood of Jesus and have an up to date – fresh relationship with the One who died on the cross to pay the price for your sins. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs (This is a repeat from a few years back but is still one of my favorite Father's Day devotionals.)
My dad recently passed away. At the viewing at the funeral home there were over an estimated 250 people who came through the line to pay their respects. There was an overflow crowd the next day at the funeral. Of these two groups of people I had at least 150 people tell me that I look exactly like my daddy (father). We had a video going that was showing pictures of daddy from the time that he was a little boy until right before he had his stroke and got sick. People kept saying over and over how much I looked like him. One lady even said, “You look just like Hulon Mimbs spit you out of his mouth.” Another person said that I spoke like him and ever acted like him. As I thought about this I was honored to look like my daddy. He was a handsome man so I took this as a compliment. Another thing was that it meant that there was no doubt that I was his son and not adopted or some other man was my birth father. In considering this I began to hope that someday someone would say that I looked like my Heavenly Father. I pray that my speech and actions will reflect my Heavenly Father and not those of myself or the world. I pray that as people see me and my life they “see” God’s love and character shining through me. I truly want to be a reflection of Him and His loving nature for the whole world to see. I can’t help looking and acting like my earthly father because I was born into his family and inherited his looks, features, and nature. I had to be “born again” to get into the family of God. I was born with a sinful nature and had to be adopted into the family of God. But as I put my old sinful nature and selfish person to death I can become a new creation that looks and acts like my Heavenly Father. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs While attending the recent GA District Nazarene Assembly something unusual happened. As we gathered on that Wednesday night to worship and hear our new District Superintendent’s first report, the electricity went out. It wasn’t just the church building that we were in but entire city blocks were without power. We sat there in the darkness for a little while then some spontaneous praise singing broke out. Pretty soon we were having a great worship experience even though there was no power, no lights, and no air conditioning.
As this was occurring, I used my flashlight on my phone to look around to a man who was blind that was sitting a little bit behind me. He was singing and praising the Lord with everyone else. The thought occurred to me that the power outage with the lights being off wasn’t a problem for him because he was always in the dark. For a period of time, we were all in what his world is like every day. The idea that struck me was that every day, all over the world there are people who are spiritually blind without the light of God’s love for them. For them every day is another day of darkness. Physically they see the light of the sun or electric lights but in their heart and soul they are in the darkness of sin. These people think that the darkness is normal so they stumble around in it without ever knowing the true joy of the light of Jesus and His Word. Jesus talked a lot about walking in the darkness versus walking in the light. He said that He was the light of the world. And that whoever follows Him will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. I John 1:6-7 tells us – “If we say we have fellowship with God while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as God is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin” It is a bad thing to be blind and not be in the light. It is even worse to say that you are in the light that God provides yet still be in the darkness of sin. We lie to ourselves and everyone else around us. But we don’t fool God who is the perfect light. It is bad enough to be in the dark but to choose to stay in the dark after the light has been revealed to you has to be one of the worst things imaginable. So my prayer is that a lost person will realize that they are in darkness and then choose the true light of the world – Jesus. In love with Jesus – Gary Mimbs |
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