Latest / Your Daily Portion with L. David Harris / 11 01 2023 Our Excuses- Uncomfortable Confrontations

Transcript

11 01 2023 Our Excuses- Uncomfortable Confrontations · Your Daily Portion with L. David Harris

• 0:01
  Most of us eat every day, some of us too much because yesterday's food
• 0:06
  is not enough to supply energy for today's needs. Why then, do some
• 0:10
  of us expect yesterday's portion of heavenly manna, the word of God to keep
• 0:15
  us through today's challenges. On this program, we are going to change all
• 0:20
  of that. Let's experience God's words today and receive the power we need to
• 0:25
  live healthy, vibrant lives. Welcome to your Daily Portion with your host,
• 0:31
  author speaker, Elle David Harris. Good morning, good morning, good morning.
• 0:34
  It is Wednesday, November one, twenty twenty three. Hello, my
• 0:39
  name is El David Harris. I am your host, and this is your
• 0:42
  Daily Portion where we give you God's Word every single day, and today is
• 0:46
  no exception. We are continuing in our Lesson study series, God's Mission,
• 0:51
  my mission, and our caption for today. Still dealing with excuses, uncomfortable
• 0:57
  confrontations, comfort uncomfortable confrontations. We'll get into that in just a moment,
• 1:04
  but first I'd like to say welcome to you and ask you to go over
• 1:07
  to your Daily Portion dot com join our online community. That's where you can
• 1:11
  ask your questions or give your comments. You'll notice if you are joining recently
• 1:18
  that yeah, I don't have much to say unless you have something to say,
• 1:23
  because I speak to you every day on radio, television, podcast,
• 1:26
  internet and all kinds of stuff shortwave radio, and so what I am doing
• 1:32
  is positioning you to ask the questions and have the discussion, and then I
• 1:37
  can also join in with you, because you know, again I've made the
• 1:41
  first step. It's now time for you to engage in that way and we
• 1:45
  can build faith and fellowship again together at your daily portion dot com. Let's
• 1:49
  go ahead and pray, and then we will get underway. Father and Heaven,
• 1:53
  thank you for giving us this privilege to open up your word again and
• 1:57
  to examine our own hearts, examine ourselves and realize that we do make up
• 2:04
  stuff. We have excuses of all kinds for not doing your work. Please
• 2:08
  help us not to be cherishing our comfort and avoiding conflict when you throw us
• 2:17
  into the kind of mission that Jesus did in Jesus name, I pray,
• 2:24
  Amen and amen again. Uncomfortable confrontations. Let me just start with the best
• 2:30
  thing I can say here. Jesus. Jesus confronted sin and sinners. Yeah,
• 2:38
  there were Pharisees, sadducees. There were people who were bound to other
• 2:44
  kinds of sins. The women at the well, Nicodemus and I could go
• 2:49
  on, people who were not necessarily connected to God right, and Jesus demonstrated
• 2:54
  that when the confrontation was necessary, he went straight to it. So many
• 3:02
  things I could say, but let me just go into the story of Jonah
• 3:07
  again. Jesus demonstrated that when confrontation was necessary, he went right to it.
• 3:15
  He said, I didn't come to bring peace, but I came to
• 3:19
  bring a sword to set at variance people in your family, your friendship,
• 3:24
  core, your co workers. And that has to do with if someone is
• 3:30
  comfortable in sin and God is calling them out of sin, calling them out
• 3:36
  of sin, and you are living in holiness, there is going to be
• 3:40
  a conflict. There will be a confrontation. And the outcome, the desired
• 3:46
  outcome, really is for people to repent and to turn toward God, not
• 3:50
  for us to be peaceful. One on the other end unholy and the other
• 3:55
  holy. Now, God wants us to find common ground in holiness. That's
• 4:01
  the ultimate goal, Okay. And so what we're going to do, as
• 4:04
  we always do, is look at some action steps. Let's go first now
• 4:10
  to Jonah chapter four and verse one. Jonah chapter four and verse one,
• 4:15
  and the Bible reads, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
• 4:19
  Why was he displeased because God was merciful because God did not immediately destroy
• 4:27
  Ninevah. Because what he felt like that God's what God didn't do made his
• 4:33
  reputation look poor, like he was a false prophet. What was Jonah's real
• 4:39
  problem? Like he had an emotional response based on how he knew that or
• 4:46
  thought that God would behave, how he would act, how he would rule,
• 4:48
  and he didn't really like what God's method was to be honest, like
• 4:54
  he felt like his method was the best way to just go opposite of what
• 4:58
  God told to do because of what he knew in his own mind God would
• 5:02
  do ultimately. And it's like pause, like, don't try to position yourself
• 5:09
  as a God. Let God be God and serve him. Okay. And
• 5:13
  so our action step really is assess our emotional responses to seeing God's grace extended
• 5:19
  to those that we see we deem with our broken eyes undeserving when God extends
• 5:28
  his mercy to that person who was just convicted for murder and the conviction was
• 5:33
  was true. When God shows mercy to him or her, then we should
• 5:39
  not be thinking, but why would God show mercy? Show mercy? Look
• 5:43
  at what they have done? Huh. When God does things that we don't
• 5:47
  expect or that we don't agree with, then we should examine and assess our
• 5:53
  emotional responses to that and say, God, why am I so unholy?
• 5:58
  Why am I having this visceral respect? Why am I not aligned with you?
• 6:02
  Why do I not agree with you? And then we want to ensure
• 6:08
  that our desires do indeed align with God's heart for all people. Yeah,
• 6:16
  okay, let's go to our second our second point here from the Book of
• 6:19
  Jonah, chapter four and verse ten, and the Bible reads, and the
• 6:24
  Lord said, you pity the plant for which you did not labor, nor
• 6:30
  did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished
• 6:35
  in a night. Of course, God used something in nature in order to
• 6:40
  get Jonah's attention about his priorities. His priorities right, And so the action
• 6:46
  step is for us to evaluate where we place our compassion. Are we more
• 6:50
  compassionate on filling the blank? Make sure that it is. It is directed
• 6:58
  towards people and their spiritual condition rather than our own comfort and conveniences. Oh
• 7:05
  my, I need some rest. Oh my, how many times do I
• 7:10
  need to speak to these people? They're not listening to me. Oh my,
• 7:15
  it's uncomfortable to me to confront these situations because they're not going to listen
• 7:19
  to me. They're tired of me. I get this negative consequence or outcome
• 7:25
  whenever I do what you say. I think Jeremiah had to contend with that,
• 7:30
  and he lived a life that was very interesting, and when he would
• 7:32
  speak the words of God as God commanded, there were times that it was
• 7:36
  inconvenient and the outcomes weren't what he wanted. And he said, I'm not
• 7:41
  going to do this anymore. I'm not speaking in his name anymore. And
• 7:45
  he said, when he tried to do that, ha, he tried to
• 7:47
  do that. The Bible says that it was like fire shut up in his
• 7:51
  bones. So God got to his man, and thankfully, thankfully, Jeremiah
• 7:57
  got back into the fight. Yep. And here's the third one, the
• 8:00
  third one from Jonah, chapter four and verse eleven, and the Bible reads,
• 8:05
  and should I not petite Nineveh, that great city in which there are
• 8:09
  more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand
• 8:15
  from their left. And so we have to actively work against our prejudices Ah
• 8:22
  by seeking to view people through God's vision, God's eyesight, the lenses that
• 8:30
  God has, aligning our compassion with his love. Seeing people as God sees
• 8:35
  them, that's a big deal. That's a big deal. We have so
• 8:41
  many reasons why we see in view people as we do. But God is
• 8:45
  saying, it's through the prism of love. Notice I said prism. Yes,
• 8:48
  a prism is seen clearly through light. The light of God's love should
• 8:54
  be the measure of our compassion, the measure of our commitment to leading people
• 9:01
  to life versus the death that they have chosen. Real quick, let's go
• 9:05
  with the last one from Jonah, chapter three and verse ten. When God
• 9:09
  saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented
• 9:15
  of the disaster that he had said he would do unto them, and he
• 9:18
  did it. Not. What we want to do is to promote and celebrate
• 9:24
  God's mercy, affirming that it is available to every kind of person, regardless
• 9:31
  of their past actions or what the society perceives about them. Yeah. Uncomfortable
• 9:37
  confrontations another terrible excuse for avoiding God's word. Have a wonderful day, peace.
• 9:45
  Thanks for joining us listening. Friends. Always remember we cannot live by
• 9:48
  bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
• 9:52
  This has been your daily portion with El David Harris. Make it a great
• 9:56
  day. Yeah,