Last week I started a series on "Getting In Over Your Head".  When we are only ankle deep in the ocean it is easy to get in and out.  Ankle deep water only covers to the ankle so the rest of our flesh can be seen. Many people are about ankle deep in the things of God.  They could go in over their head but they want everyone to see them.  Church is about them.  Ministering to others is about them.  Tithing and giving is about them. They are in all the further they desire to be in, because if they get in any further they can't be seen.  When I read the Bible I see that Christ is supposed to be seen.  We are to be changed into the image of Christ.  We decrease as He increases.

Galatians 4:19 (NIV) "My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you,"

John 3:30 (NIV) "He must become greater; I must become less."

Galatians 2:20 (NIV) "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Many are in on Sunday and out on Monday. They look like Christians on Sunday morning but because they are only ankle deep Christians they were in the bars, the drug scene, fornication, adultery and other sins the very night before.  When you are out into the deep there are greater risks and it takes a lot more effort to wade out onto the shore.  Only small fish and crabs, ankle biters and nuisance live close to shore.  The devil doesn't much bother the ankle deep Christian.  However, when you get all in to things of God that is where you find the greater enemies of our lives. Why? Because when we are in over our heads we depend on Christ and it is Christ that gets the glory.  Our flesh no longer glories in the sight of men. God gets all the glory.  God protects us. God delivers us. God enables us. We are a sign and a wonder to the unbelievers of this world.  We are the hope that like Christ if we can do it they can too. If we can come through victoriously, they can too.

This week "Get in over your head"!  Let God be God! Live to glorify Him!. Let God be seen in the midst of the predators and threats of this world.​

While talking with some close friends last night the subject of bags, pocketbooks and wallets came up.  One friend had gotten this other friend a gift (seen above).  We were talking about how we all like the inside of the item to be as pretty as the outside.  When the words were spoken we all heard God on it.  He wants us to be as pretty and unique on the inside as we are on the outside.  God does not want us broken and bloody, dirty and ugly on the inside.  When someone looks inside of us God wants them to see Himself.  God wants us to be pure, clean and righteous on the inside.

​1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV) "But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

We can fool others with our pretty exterior but we can never fool God.  God cares more about what is on the inside of us than He does about what we look like on the outside.  We spend far more money and time on the outside at what people look at than on the inside where God cares about.  We may tithe our money but do we give a tithe of our time to making beautiful our inside?

Mathew 22:36 (NIV) "Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean."

If we as mere humans care so much about what things look like on the outside how much more does God care about what the inside of us looks like.

Let us aim to make God smile every time He looks inside of us.  When we read His word and live a life of obedience it purifies our inside.

1 Peter 1:22 (NIV) "Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart."

When you are in over your head then you can't be seen.  That is a statement I once heard God say to me.  I was complaining that I was all in.  I was in over my head.  There was and remains nothing that I am holding back from God.  You know what I mean.  You got one toe in and your just checking the temperature. You haven't really decided if your going to jump in all the way or maybe just sit on the beach.  We've all been there.  If we dare to go out into the deep there is a chance that something bigger than us is out there too.  The things that threaten our livelihood are waiting for us to make the commitment, to be all in.  When we are all in then God is all in.  The perfect image of all in is Jesus on the Cross.  He was so far in, it was going to take an act of God to bring Him through--and that is exactly what He got; more of God.

I have a CD series on this message and it is available in our bookstore.  http://mfcbookstore.bigcartel.com/product/get-in-over-your-head-by-pastor-rena-perozich

When are in over our heads the world doesn't look at us.  It becomes about who we serve not what we can do, but what God can do through us.  Our flesh can no longer get the glory. The glory belongs to the Lord and we can only do what we do through the power of Him that works in and through us.

Ephesians 1:19-20 (NKJV) "19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,"

When I was a child I did a Science Project.  My parents hated it when we had to do these projects.  Needless to say there were five of us and I am sure it was not only expensive but time consuming. One year I decided to do the stages of a chicken.  It only takes twenty one days for a chicken to develop and be born.  So with a light bulb and a box I was off to the WVU farm and learn all I could about hatching a chicken.  I went home egg in hand and began the adventure.  Fortunately I had a baby brother so baby food jars were easy enough to find.  Ever notice how many Science Projects require baby food jars? Guess that tells you what stage of life our parents are in?

Days seemed to go by slowly as I eagerly awaited my little miracle.  I was going to have a chicken.  When the big day arrived it began to break forth—literally,  I wanted to help this little bird so bad.  However, I had done my homework and I knew this little girl had to break forth herself.  Finally she was successful.  I looked her and she looked at me and it was love at first sight.  As she grew she followed me everywhere and I mean everywhere.  As fast as her little legs would carry her she would follow me.  Then one day it was apparent she was a he.  I was so excited.  I had raised me a “Rooster”. 

I fed him. I watered him. Mostly I spent time with him.  Well actually he spent time with me.  No matter where I went he wanted to go too and usually found a way.  I wanted to reward my little chicken for everything so I fed him oats.  He loved oats. Then one day too much of a good thing killed him.  I allowed him too many oats and when he started drinking water it was over.  I killed my baby rooster.
I cried. Daddy cried with me. Actually I think Dad cried for me. It was my first experience with death.  I had the best Dad…

Lesson learned?  Too much of a good thing is NOT a good thing.

Philippians 4:5 (KJV) "Let your moderation be known unto all men."

Greetings to all of you.  You all know how much I enjoy Jon Gordon's weekly newsletter.  I have read several of his books and encourage you to read them all. He put the following out this week and I want to give it my platform time because I think it is that good.  I pray you will forward this to all your friends because truly we need more positive people in the world today.


The Benefits of Positivity and Cost of Negativity 

11 Benefits of Being Positive:
1. Positive people live longer. In a study of nuns, those that regularly expressed positive emotions lived an average of 10 years longer than those who didn’t (Snowdon, 2001).
2. Positive work environments outperform negative work environments (Goleman, 2011).
3. Positive, optimistic salespeople sell more than pessimistic salespeople (Seligman, 2006).
4. Positive leaders are able to make better decisions under pressure (Institute of HeartMath, 2012).
5. Marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative interactions, whereas when the ratio approaches 1-to-1, marriages are more likely to end in divorce (Gottman, 1999).
6. Positive people who regularly express positive emotions are more resilient when facing stress, challenges, and adversity.”
7. Positive people are able to maintain a broader perspective and see the big picture, which helps them identify solutions, whereas negative people maintain a narrower perspective and tend to focus on problems (Fredrickson, 2009).
8. Positive thoughts and emotions counter the negative effects of stress. For example, you can’t be thankful and stressed at the same time.
9. Positive emotions such as gratitude and appreciation help athletes perform at a higher level (Institute of HeartMath, 2012).
10. Positive people have more friends, which is a key factor of happiness and longevity (Putnam, 2000).
11. Positive and popular leaders are more likely to garner the support of others and receive pay raises and promotions and achieve greater success in the workplace.
The Cost of Negativity:
1. Ninety percent of doctor visits are stress related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
2. A study found that negative employees can scare off every customer they speak with—for good (Rath, 2004).
3. At work, too many negative interactions compared to positive interactions can decrease the productivity of a team, according to Barbara Fredrickson’s research at the University of Michigan.
4. Negativity affects the morale, performance, and productivity of our teams.
5. One negative person can create a miserable office environment for everyone else.
6. Robert Cross’s research at the University of Virginia demonstrates that 90 percent of anxiety at work is created by 5 percent of one’s network—the people who sap energy.
7. Negative emotions are associated with decreased life span and longevity.
8. Negative emotions increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.
9. Negativity is associated with greater stress, less energy, and more pain.
10. Negative people have fewer friends.
Excerpt From The Positive Dog
-Jon

Yesterday was Sunday so we were all in service. My youngest daughter seemed to need a break from my youngest grandson.  He is just a day shy of being four months old.  She handed the half full bottle and little guy to me and said, "Mom, yes see if you can get him to eat."  So off to the front row we went bottle and baby in hand.  When I tried to cuddle and feed him he would have nothing to do with it.  So I thought I will turn him around and let him face my husband (The Preacher) and let him eat and watch.  Well he thought that was just fine.  He ate great, burped, ate again and then just at the end of service fell to sleep.  

Now we can give all kinds of reasons that he did this.  Perhaps it was like watching TV.  Maybe it was the lights.  Maybe he knew it was his DeDa (Grandpa in Croatian).  I believe he wanted to hear the word.  His Spirit was more hungry than his belly and he was willing to sacrifice one for the other--until he realized Nonna (Italian for Grandma) was willing to allow him both.  He was content.  He ate physically and spiritually.

How about you? Is your spirit controlling your flesh or is your belly telling you what to do?  I've always believed babies are closer to the Heaven side than the earth side so perhaps he chose the better.  But you and I aren't babies anymore and we need to make adult decisions.  Decisions that determine where we will spend Eternity. So what are you doing with your choices today?

Galatians 5:7 (NIV) "For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want."

Romans 13:14 (NIV) “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”  

Romans 8:13 (NIV) "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

  If you know me very well and I hope over these last two years you do or are getting to, you know I am a healthy eater and do my best to exercise.  I have always been the athletic type and enjoyed food closest to nature.  In my Personal Trainer years that I taught aerobics I tried a great recipe. The recipe is for what I call Power Pancakes.  The ingredients are egg whites, oats, flax seed, protein powder and any flavorings you may enjoy thinned with a little almond milk or whatever you want to use.  I make a big batch and eat on them all week.  A friend was over and I was sharing the recipe and decided to show her how I make them.  So we made a couple of batches together.  She likes nuts so we threw some nuts in.  Time was running short so instead of adding just egg whites I added the entire egg.  This spelled disaster.  Instead of being a pancake consistency they were more like cake and didn't flip well.  I never gave it much thought until this morning. I grabbed a few out of the frig and remembered the scenario. Here is my thought, "Adding just one unnecessary or uncalled for ingredient can ruin the entire thing."

All of the sudden the scripture came to mind about yeast. How important it was that the house be swept clean of yeast. That the people of God eat unleavened bread.  That we obey God fully adding nothing to or taking nothing from His Word.

Whenever leaven is mentioned in the Bible (22 times in the Old Testament and 17 times in the New Testament), it always (or almost always) represents sin or evil. The first instance in which this word is used is found in (Ex 12:15). This was just before the Passover, in which God destroyed all of the firstborn of Egypt, but spared the firstborn of Israel in the last of the 10 plagues that He visited upon Egypt.

There are over 31 scriptures in the Bible that talk about leaven (yeast). Here are just a few from the NT.

Matthew 13:33 (KJV) "He spoke another parable to them, "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened."

Luke 13:20-21 (KJV) "And again He said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? "It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened."

1 Corinthians 5:6-8  (KJV) "Your boasting is not good Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Moral of the story?  When God asks us to do something we are to do just that. We are not to add to or take away from what the Lord would have us to do, say, pray, etc.  God has His reasons and His purposes.  We may not know the (WHY) God has said a certain thing but disobeying or changing the word of God can and has, ruined the entire batch for the entire world.  It's time to go strictly by the recipe (The Word of God).

 As I was planning for a Missions Trip several years ago I came upon an idea that many of you may know about or shared yourself, The Romans Road.  I had seen the little packets of beaded bracelets that one can use to tell the story of redemption.  The black bead is our sin, the red bead the blood of Jesus, the white bead our life once we have been cleansed of sin, the green bead symbolic that we will live forever and a yellow bead to remind us we will one day walk on streets of gold.  Those little bracelets can sum up the Gospel of Jesus Christ for even the youngest of converts.  

I believe the days are coming when we will need to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a quick and easy understandable way. I pray this will help you have the boldness you need in order to enlarge the kingdom.  I am posting this with credit given to this author.  If you repost please give the credit to him as well.  I have also given you a handout you can print and keep in your Bible or take a picture of this and put it on your phone for future use.

If you know how to get to destination Heaven won't you lead others?

​The Four Spiritual Laws by Matt Slick
If you've gone through a discussion with someone and you want to present the gospel message in a simple and systematic way, the well-known "Four Spiritual Laws" can be of help.  They are simple, to the point, and use Scripture to convict, convince, and convert.  They are:

1. God loves you:
   1. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life," (John 3:16).
2. Man is sinful and separated from God.
   1. "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," (Rom. 3:23); "For the wages of sin is death," (Rom. 6:23); "But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God," (Isaiah 59:2).
3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin.
   1. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me" (John 14:6); "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," (Rom. 5:8).
4. We must individually receive Jesus as Savior and Lord.
   1. "But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name," (John 1:12); "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved," (Rom. 10:9); "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God," (Eph. 2:8).

The Roman Road is another list of verses usable in the same way as the Four Spiritual Laws.  The advantage to these seven verses is that they are all in the book of Romans.  Sometimes this is an advantage when you don't want to flip through a lot of pages.

1. Rom. 3:10, "As it is written, 'There is none righteous, not even one...'"
2. Rom. 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
3. Rom. 5:12, "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned."
4. Rom. 6:23, "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
5. Rom. 5:8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."
6. Rom. 10:9-10, "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved; for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."
7. Rom. 10:13, "For whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved."

I recommend you put the Roman Road in your Bible.  Go to Romans 3:10 underline it and write Romans 3:23 next to it.  Then go to Romans 3:28, underline it and write Romans 5:12 next to it, and so on.  That way all you need to do is memorize where you start: Romans 3:10.

I have been reading the account of Noah's Ark.  I am reminded of how vile the world was and how far their thoughts were from God.  Everyone was busy doing their own thing and no one was paying any attention to God except for Noah.  How hard it must have been for him to continue the work of God while everyone around him was ridiculing him and the laughing at the God whom he served. I believe there are more of us in the world now that serve God but do you think anyone would build an ark today under the same circumstances?  It had never rained. No one had ever seen a boat of such magnitude. How were the animals to get on the boat? The questions are endless. Yet God did as he had told Noah he would.

Matthew 24:37 (NI V) "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man."

Jesus is coming again and the Bible tells us it will be the same in the world today.  I want to encourage the Noah's of today.  Keep building what God has told you to build.  Keep your witness in front of others.  One day the door will be closed.  People will either change or they will be left outside in the rain.

As for those on the boat I am sure they will be complaining. I am sure it did not smell very good.  I am sure that the food wasn't all that great after several weeks. Can you even image what it would be like if it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and then the water stayed on the ground for another 150 days. That much rain would depress most people. Some of us may lose it just because there was no silence.

It takes a dying to self to survive the things God ask us to go through.  We will never be able to do the big things if we don't start by doing the little things.  

​Today do what HE asks! That is a great place to start.

Watching my tomato plants grow taught me a very valuable lesson. There was this one plant that had a partially ripe tomato for a long time.  I kept my eye on it and today I decided it was time to pick. I was so disappointed when I cut in to it.  It was mushy.  To the eye it was beautiful.  To the taste it was terrible.  It was deceptive.  I was fooled.  It made me wonder about all the things in my life that I thought I wanted.  I thought I needed.  I went by the outward appearance and was deceived.  How many times have you been deceived by what something looked like?  

​1 John 4:1 (KJV) "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world."

Revelation 12:9 (KJV) "And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him."

Matthew 24:4 (KJV) "And Jesus answered and said to them, "See to it that no one misleads you."

I have read that the second largest industry in Nigeria is that of the con artists who email gullible Americans, promising to send them millions of dollars if they will send them their bank account numbers. I received several of those offers this week.

Con artists abound in this evil world, not just in the financial realm, but also in the spiritual realm. Satan is the master deceiver, “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). His false prophets disguise themselves as angels of light (2 Cor. 11:13-15). They promise people answers to their deepest problems, but they actually lure them to spiritual destruction.
​
Believers going through trials are especially vulnerable to spiritual con artists. Satan’s ministers of deception will say, “So, your God is good and powerful, huh? Then why did He allow you to go through this terrible tragedy? Either He is not very good, or He is not able to stop such trials.” Usually, along with that line of thinking, they direct your attention to people in the world, who do not follow God, but whose lives are going very well. If you take the bait, you will not persevere in your trials.

Be aware that natural things mirror spiritual things.  Just like that tomato fooled me other things can fool me too.  I need the Holy Spirit to show me truth and bear witness with my spirit.  

Today I pray that you be filled with the Spirit of God and have discernment in all areas of your life.