We have been focusing the last few blogs on some of Satan’s favorite lies that he enjoys using to mess with the heads of Christians.  Hopefully you have already accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior…if not I hope you choose to make that decision and accept Him by the time you finish reading this today.

The lie I want us to look at in this blog is simple…but it is one that so many people struggle with regardless of how many times they are told it isn’t true.

Lie: No One Loves You!

Love is a funny thing.  In this world we typically LOVE someone…BECAUSE…

In other words we love conditionally…that means that we love someone because they fulfill a need in our lives. 

I love you because…you are beautiful.

I love you because…you are nice to me.

I love you because…you take good care of me.

I love you because…you are fun to be with.

We love based on our emotions and our feelings.  The problem with that is our emotions and feelings can change from one minute to the next. 

A perfect example of the love we have here on earth is shown through the divorce rate.  The divorce rate is HUGE…mainly because husbands and wives “fall out of love” all the time!  In other words most people come to rough times in a relationship and instead of loving each other and working through it…they give up…because it is easier to do. 

Honestly…Stella (my daughter) is the first person in this world that I have LOVED without a reason…I just love her!  With Holly (my wife)…I had to fall in love with her…I had to find that attraction…I had to find those things that made us click…just like she had to do with me.  But even the love I have for Stella that just IS or the love that I choose to have for Holly doesn’t even compare to the UNCONDITIONAL LOVE that God has for me or you.

1 John 4:8b

This verse tells us that “God is love.”  It is easy to tell people that and read that…but it is a personal choice to BELIEVE that. 

John 3:16

This verse is the most popular Bible verse in the entire world…people use this to explain how much God loves us. 

That verse tells us a couple things.

1: We- humans…throughout time have rejected God.  We didn’t listen to His word…whether spoken…Adam and Eve…or through scripture…all of us.  We crucified His perfect Son on a cross…for no reason!

2: God loved us anyway!

There are no conditions in that verse other than believing!  God doesn’t give us reasons or things we must do before He will love us…it just says…He loves us!

God’s love doesn’t change!  Malachi 3:6a is a straight up statement from God.  “I the Lord do not change.”  God’s love isn’t based on feelings or emotions!

God proved His love at the cross…He sent Jesus to pay our penalty!  That penalty took care of ALL of our mistakes!

Proverbs 10:12           Hatred stirs up dissension, but love covers over all wrongs.

Just because God loves you doesn’t mean this world is going to be pleasant to you…or nice to you…or that life is going to be easy. 

John 15:18      If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.

This world is not your home!  If you are a Christian…you belong to a better place.  This world…and the things of this world…HATE that!

John 16:33      I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.

God loves us and God wants to use our lives for His glory.

Romans 8:35-39         Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?  As it is written:  For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I want to leave you with a prayer from the Bible…this prayer was the last prayer Jesus prayed before He was arrested to be crucified.

John 17:20-23             My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.  May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:  I in them and you in me.  May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus wanted the world to know that God the Father loved US just as much as He loved Him!!!  That is something special!!!

Our existence is made up of 3 parts, our body, soul and spirit.  Our body of course is the flesh and the bones.  The body is the part of us that ages and will someday be put into the ground.  Our soul is our mind, our emotions, our feelings, our thoughts.  This part makes up our will and decides how we feel, what we believe and how we live.  The final part is our spirit.  When each of us is born into this world we are born with a dead spirit.  The reason for this is because Adam and Eve sinned in the garden and separated us from God because God cannot look upon sin.  Therefore our communion with Him was destroyed!  If we live our lives with a dead spirit and do nothing to change that we will leave this world and spend eternity in hell.

God knew this!

Therefore God had a plan.  God sent His son Jesus to this earth to die on a cross and take our punishment for sin!  Our part in all of this is to accept the payment and ask for forgiveness.  Once this happens we are saved and are guaranteed an eternity in heaven.  John 6:40. 

The Holy Spirit then comes into our life and gives us a new spirit that wants to do what is good and uplifting to God!

The lie Satan wants us to believe is:  “You Can Sin All You Want, Once You Are Saved!”

Satan wants us to believe that salvation is a get out of hell free card that gives us the freedom to sin!  Too often Christians believe this lie because we have the flesh and the Holy Spirit fighting within us.  Galatians 5:17.  Our bodies didn’t change at salvation.  Our soul didn’t change at salvation.  We gained the Holy Spirit at salvation and everything else stayed the same.  I wish that when I was saved all the other junk in my life could have been taken away and my only focus could be Christ.  Unfortunately this won’t happen until God takes me to heaven!  As long as I am on this earth I will struggle with sin and I will slip and fall because I am only human. 

If my focus is on Christ…this won’t happen as often.  But if my focus is on my flesh and my desires then I will sin and will sin much more often.  Some people say that eternal security is an excuse that people use to just do what they want…but coming from someone that believes in eternal security…I think that is far from the truth.  Romans 6:1, 2, 14, 15 teaches me that to continue to sin after salvation and not care is making a mockery of the death of Christ. 

Even after you are saved sin will still hurt your relationship with God!  It won’t end your relationship with God…when you were saved you became a child of God…nothing can change that!  But the sin in your life will find you out and God won’t allow His children to continue in sin without getting their attention!

So if you believe you can sin all you want and still be saved…my advice to you is to go back to scripture and think again!

Glenn Dillon & the Leaders @ The Place

Have you ever noticed that if you tell a lie or hear a lie long enough you start to believe it?  The Place has embarked on a new series that focuses on some of Satan’s biggest lies!  The Bible tells us that Satan is a liar and the father of lies (John 8:44b).  In that same verse it says that lying is his native language!  Satan is the ruler of this world and has used many opportunities since his fall from heaven to deceive people into believing his lies.  For example he caused Adam and Eve to sin because he lied and told them that they could be like God!  Since that first lie people have been listening to his lying tongue ever since!

The first lie that we are going to focus on is “You Aren’t Good Enough For God!”  Satan is really good with this lie because this one keeps people from coming to Christ because they feel like they can never measure up!  Some Christians believe it after salvation and it keeps them from having a strong relationship with God and keeps them from reaching the potential that God has for them because they are constantly focused on how bad of a person they are. 

The truth of the matter with this first lie is this:  Satan is right!

You aren’t good enough for God!  Now don’t click off the page and stop reading yet…I haven’t went off the deep end…stay with me…please!!!

Satan likes to tell us that we are terrible people and full of sin.  The fact of the matter the Bible does that also.

Romans 3:10b-18

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understand; no one seeks for God.  All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”  “Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.”  “The venom of asps is under their lips.” “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”  “Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery; and the way of peace they have not known.”  “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

This world is FULL of SIN!  Each and every one of us are born into this world with a dead spirit that simply wants to sin!  There is no good in us (Romans 3:10).  Because of this we are all destined to hell!

But God wants us to know that He had another plan!

God knew that everyone born into this world needed something to replace that dead spirit and give them the choice between good and bad, life and death, eternal punishment and eternal life!  God sent His son Jesus to this earth to die for OUR sins!  Because of OUR sins we had no possibility of heaven.  But because Jesus CHOSE to put OUR sins on HIS back and take OUR punishment…there became a way!

Romans 10:13

“For EVERYONE who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

That is pretty simple I think…you ask…you receive!  The verse doesn’t continue and explain that you have to teach Sunday school every week, help 50 old ladies across the street, sing in the choir, give 15% in tithes, read the entire Bible 6 times, live a perfect life, compare yourself to others, live up to someone’s expectations, it simply says call upon Him and you will be saved!

The only thing that you had to do was ask…that is it.  You are saved because of what Jesus did…not because of what you can or have or could possibly do for God!

Ephesians 2:8-9

For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

It amazes me that I came into this world full of sin and I had nothing to offer God that He didn’t create.  But He allowed His Son to pay a penalty of death for my sin!  Not only did God allow that once I accept it and believe it and call out to Jesus to come into my life God brings me into His family and calls me His son!

Galatians 4:7

So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.

So once I am saved…God looks at me the same way He looks at Jesus!  He is happy with me…because of Jesus!  He accepts me…because of Jesus!  He loves me…because of Jesus! 

So technically…You Are Not Good Enough For God!  But if you have accepted Jesus into your heart…His payment for your sins…Makes You More Than Good Enough For God!

Glenn Dillon & The Leaders @ The Place

During the month of February @ The Place, we have been focusing on Fork-N-The Road situations.  We are looking at humans in the historic context of the Bible and situation where they came to a fork in the road.  Idiomeaning.com defines “fork in the road” as: A time when you have to make a difficult decision about something.  Every person that ever lives has those moments.  Too often we look at people in the Bible as superhuman, uber religious people.  The fact of the matter is these people were…well people!  God took some of the most messed up people in the history of the world and used them to tell His story!  Many of these people had that Fork-N-The Road moment in life that made them memorable.

The disciples faced a Fork-N-The Road moment when Jesus said to each of them “follow me.”  Peter and Judas Iscariot both had Fork-N-The Road moments during the arrest and trial of Jesus.  Peter messed up but gave himself the chance for redemption.  Judas on the other hand messed up and then gave up.  Time and time again people in scripture come to those moments where they must choose which path to take.

One of my favorite Fork-N-The Road moments in the Bible is the story in Daniel chapter three where three teenagers stood staring down each path at the Fork-N-The Road.  Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego stood looking at a massive statue of 90 feet tall and 9 feet wide.  They knew why it was there and they knew at the sound of the trumpets what they were expected to do.  They were either going to bow down and worship this idol or be engulfed in flames.  To most people there wasn’t an option…technically.  When the music filled the air…EVERYONE “fell down and worshiped the golden image,” EVERYONE but these three guys!  I can just picture these guys looking at each other and thinking about the decision they had just made.  They were either going to follow suite and do what everyone around them was doing…or they were going to take a stand.

And stand they did.  They stood when others bowed to false gods…they stood up to a king with very bold words…they stood with faith…they stood in the midst of a fiery furnace with the Son of God…they emerged from the flames unharmed and stood in front of everyone as proof of the one true God’s amazing faithfulness!  These guys made a Fork-N-The Road decision knowing that it could cost them their lives…but they put their trust and faith and lives in the hands of God.  It turned out that God used that moment to open up the eyes of the King and everyone else around.

Everyone will at some time in our lives come to a Fork-N-The Road moment.  That moment can be the moment you decide to follow or not follow Christ.  That moment can be what seems like a small decision in your mind.  Or that moment could be a fiery furnace moment where you know that things could get bad or maybe even life threatening!  These young men had faith that God was going to use this moment to bring the focus back to Him!  That was what they wanted and they went down that narrow road and God led them through.

You may be facing a Fork-N-The Road moment at this current time.  The decision you make may not be an easy one to make.  The “right” road isn’t always the smoothest road…but it never fails to get us to our destination.  Christ took the “right” road and it cost Him His life.  Many others have taken the “right” road and been persecuted the entire journey.  The “other road may seem smooth and even easy at the time but if it does not lead to the Lord it leads to destruction!  Matthew 7:13-14

If you are facing a Fork-N-The Road situation we would love to pray with you that God guides your way.  You can reach us with your prayer requests anytime @ theplacefbc@yahoo.com

Psalm 119:105 “

Glenn Dillon & The Leaders @ The Place

Being a “child of God” became more real to me just a few days ago.  When my daughter was born on January 12, 2012 I got a little taste of what it is like when God looks at us.  Holding her in my arms for the first time was one of the greatest things that I have ever experienced.  Words can never explain the emotions and thoughts that were pouring through me in those first few hours.  Zephaniah 3:17b really stood clear in my mind that day.  “He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”  From 6:35pm on that day my life changed completely.  I understood a new love.  Don’t get me wrong I love my wife with a passion very deep.  But now I understand that because of that love we now have something that is a part of each of us and represents our love.

God had a love for us that was special and unique.  Look around you.  Everything that exists was created for us to enjoy!  The difference with God’s love is that not only did He have a child that He adored and thought was pretty special…He sent that Son to a terrible place and put Him on a cruel cross!  For people that hated Him!  It is pretty safe to say that there isn’t a person on this earth that I would sacrifice my daughter for!  I have a connection with her that has been created in just a couple weeks…God had a connection with His Son that had existed for all of eternity.  Then one day…because of all of our sin…God had to turn His back on His Son. 

I would do anything for my little girl.  I get it now even more than I did before.  God LOVES me!  God LOVES you!  He is a Father that adores you and loves you…accept it!!!

Glenn Dillon

& The Leaders @ The Place