What works?

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This is an incredibly stressful time for me personally. My current situation at school is not yet settling down, and last week was my birthday. I received so much love. Thank you church! Inspiring, grateful and thankful are just some of the words for how nice my birthday was from here at the church, through the blessings of my family and even at work the staff was so nice. Working at a wonderful elementary school on your birthday is great. The kindergarten teacher, Ms. Krough, gave me a crown, which was too small for this huge head but I added it to a hat I had so I could wear it. Students treated me like a rock star, and one of my students, if you don’t know I teach special education and all of my students struggle to speak, She came up to me, looked at me, my hat and said, “Bir… th..da… CAKE!”
It was wonderful.
Yet, maybe you experience this, while it was great, it was also very stressful. I have a class that needs a lot of work on what we call procedures like walking in line, staying in the proper place in class, I have a lot of stuff of people I need to contact to get the resources I need, I am working usually until 9 pm every night.
I know many of you are stressed as well. Ok, everyone except Karen who just retired! YAY KAREN!!
Some of you are going through incredible life change. Your in the middle of horrible relationship problems, financially your struggling, terrible health problems, each day keeps presenting another challenge, another challenge, another challenge.
Yesterday I was walking with my dog Golden and talking to the Lord, and telling God this isn’t sustainable, this is too much, and clear as clear can be a Bible verse came to mind. I want you to know friends that when a Bible verse comes to mind that is the Holy Spirit talking because we know that God’s word is the Sword of the Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is God. He is our comforter.
John 14:26 CSB
26 But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.
I was reminded of what God said about my situation
Philippians 4:13 CSB
13 I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.
I can hear some of you say, “easy to write down, really hard to do.” But I think it doesn’t matter how easy or hard it is to say or do, what matters for me and my relationship with God is do I act on the belief that what God said is true. Can I live out, with complete faith, true faith, that I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.
A comedian who is an atheist said he appreciates when people say they pray for him. He says he doesn’t believe it does anything but it is nice, people mean it to be nice so he’s not a jerk about people being nice. The comedian says it’s good for people to say they pray for someone with cancer and stuff, very nice. But when they say, “I am ending the chemo” and just praying. He is no, no, no, not nice, not nice. Don’t do that.
You see because to him, prayer is just nice thoughts, wishing upon a star, but what works is science.
I agree with the comedian that quitting chemo to prove you have faith is foolish, it is a unnecessary testing of God. God brought healing, housing, jobs, redemption to most of you through all kinds of incredible ways. These are answers to prayer and we should not determine how God will answer our prayers. Yet we do need to have faith that God will be a God who is good to His word.
When God reminds me that I can do all things through him who strengthens me, and I am not taking this verse out of context, or away from what the rest of the Bible around it is saying, that I can do what God has called me to do at my school job, here are New Day, and perhaps you need to hear that this is what real faith means, taking God at His word, and living on it like it is as real and helpful as the chair you are sitting on.
See for many of us when we think of the hardships that we face in life a thought comes into our heads what did I do to deserve this? Why is God punishing me? Why am I bothering to follow God if I can’t do anything right?
Some even teach, that the reason bad things happen to us is because we have sin in our lives, we are disobeying God and that’s why things are hard.
You know what? They are right and they are wrong.
If you cheat on your taxes and then they catch you and fine you big money, than you are being punished this is a consequence of life. The joy from our walk with God can be stolen from our lives, if we do not live by faith in God. If we have a half-way relationship with God, we do not have faith in Him and things get miserable.
It’s a reason we struggle in our romantic situations in our world today, many are halfway in on their romantic relationships, not trusting God with the principles of marriage, of covenant of a life union.
But we are also wrong. God is not a cop looking to punish us for breaking the law.
How do I know that? It is right in the Bible that God revealed over thousands of years and still applies to us today.
Galatians 3:1–4 The Message
1 You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a hex on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough. 2 Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? 3 Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? 4 Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!
I am using The Message Bible because it takes the Bible and it makes it really easy to understand.
The Galatians were a people who followed Jesus who lived in the city of Galatia. This letter was written to Christians there to tell them how they were supposed to live and in turn it tells us how we are supposed to live today. The main problem people were having in Galatia is they were being taught that not only did they have to believe that Jesus was God, He was born like us, God and Man, Lived a perfect life, then He gave himself as a sacrifice, punished by death on a cross as a punishment for all sin. Then he rose again. They were taught what God reveals in the Bible.
John 3:16–18 NLT
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. 18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son.
This is it, they were taught as we are taught we are saved through Belief that Jesus did it.
Yet other people came into the church and started telling people different stuff. They told them they had to follow all of the laws in the Old Testament, the beginning of the people and all of the rules that were added to those Old Testament laws so they could be followed. They were telling them that they had to become Jewish to be followers of Jesus. Hear this, Jesus was a Jew. A perfect Jew. The Jews are God’s chosen people but they were chosen for one to show that following rules and laws perfectly was impossible. There is absolutely no way for anyone of us to be good enough for God.

You can’t be good enough for God. God is good enough for all.

Let that sink in. Some will say, if I can’t be good enough than I don’t want to try at all. The answer to that is yes please, stop trying and instead start trusting that what God says is real and true. If you keep trying to be good enough than you can keep be taking back to the fact that you keep doing wrong, think ing wrong, and worse that any hardship you face in life is because of how wrong of a person you are.
If you don’t believe in the Jesus as God, you don’t follow him as Lord of your life, than you are wrong, because we are all wrong. We all stand condemned . It takes just a minute or two of asking questions to expose our selfishness, immorality, lack of obedience to God, moments when we decided to attack others maybe because we were hurt, maybe because we felt like, maybe because we were young, we can come up with a thousand excuses for every wrong action but none of them truly matter.
What matters is Jesus said, “You did it, but I take the punishment. Come follow me.”
Therefore we didn’t get right with God based on how good we are.
Galatians 3:1–4 NLT
1 Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. 2 Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your new lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? 4 Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?
On the playground I could see two kids fighting. The punishment for this is suspension but when the students come to me, and we start talking and it quickly is discovered that one started screaming at the other, the other took something, and they jumped at each other tearing into each other but I said to them, look your both wrong, you know that, they admit they are wrong. Then I remind them of the punishment, but say
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