Latest / Your Daily Portion with L. David Harris / 10 30 2023 Our Excuses- False Views

Transcript

10 30 2023 Our Excuses- False Views · Your Daily Portion with L. David Harris

• 0:01
  Most of us eat every day, some of us too much, because yesterday's
• 0:05
  food is not enough to supply energy for today's needs. Why then, do
• 0:10
  some of us expect yesterday's portion of heavenly manna, the word of God to
• 0:15
  keep us through today's challenges. On this program, we are going to change
• 0:19
  all of that. Let's experience God's words today and receive the power we need
• 0:25
  to live healthy, vibrant lives. Welcome to your Daily Portion with your host,
• 0:31
  author speaker, Elle David Harris. Good morning, good morning, good
• 0:34
  morning. It is Monday, October thirty, twenty twenty three. Hello,
• 0:38
  my name is El David Harris. I am your host, and this is
• 0:41
  your Daily Portion where we give you God's word every single day, and today
• 0:46
  is no exception. We are continuing in our Lesson study series. God's mission,
• 0:51
  my mission, and our caption for today is our excuses. Here we
• 0:55
  go again, false views, our excuses, false views. We'll get into
• 1:03
  that in just a moment, but first I like to say welcome to you
• 1:04
  and ask you to go over to your Daily Portion dot com. If you've
• 1:07
  not done so already, join our online community, and please understand, if
• 1:12
  you go in there, you are free to ask questions, make comments concerning
• 1:18
  the lesson. This is not a reactive space for you. It's reactive for
• 1:22
  me because I come to you every single day and been doing so for thousands
• 1:26
  of consecutive days, and now it's your opportunity to speak back to me.
• 1:30
  I see the chat loading up while we are online. But this is a
• 1:34
  platform where we can have vibrant discussion and I won't necessarily come to you.
• 1:41
  There, you come to me, and there I will respond, and we
• 1:45
  can also have responses from people around the world. There are hundreds of people
• 1:49
  already linked in to that space at your daily portion dot com. I hope
• 1:53
  that makes sense to you. Yep. Let's go ahead and pray and then
• 1:57
  we will get underway. Father and Heaven, thank you for giving us this
• 2:01
  privilege to open your word again. Please teach us not to use our false
• 2:07
  views of the world, and you to limit us in our obedience. In
• 2:14
  Jesus' name, I pray, Amen and Amen again. Yeah. So there
• 2:19
  are so many false views. I don't need to point them out, but
• 2:23
  we need to be very clear when God speaks to us that he has given
• 2:28
  us the power to respond. He's given us enough information in order to move
• 2:34
  forward. Otherwise we couldn't be responsible for disobedience, right, So he gives
• 2:39
  us all that we need to move forward, not necessarily all that we want.
• 2:44
  That's a different study. And he has expectations of us. He wants
• 2:49
  us to move forward in faith full stop. It's as simple as that.
• 2:53
  And so we're going. As for those who have been watching and listening for
• 2:59
  many years, you see that I've made it an adjustment to how I address
• 3:04
  each of these lessons. There's always some action step. There are action steps
• 3:09
  each time because we have, I think, become so accustomed to listening and
• 3:15
  reading and philosophizing, if that's a word, and becoming super intelligent gluttons,
• 3:22
  that we don't know how to actually apply this stuff, right. And so
• 3:25
  that's why we move to action steps every single day. And so the first
• 3:30
  one, the first one, we will use Jonah chapter two and verse two
• 3:35
  as the backdrop. In my distress, I called to the Lord and he
• 3:42
  answered me. From the deep in the realm of the dead, I called
• 3:46
  for help, and you listened to my cry. We want to acknowledge God's
• 3:55
  universal sovereignty, and I want to add the universal because there are kings and
• 4:03
  queens around the world who have sovereignty in their human realms right their countries,
• 4:12
  their kingdoms. But what we're talking about is God having sovereignty everywhere bar none.
• 4:20
  And so even though Jonah was in the belly of a fish or a
• 4:26
  whale, you see it in the New and the Old Testaments, it was
• 4:29
  a creature in the sea. Yes, regardless of the geographical and situational contexts,
• 4:36
  we should recognize and affirm, not just identify, but a firm God's
• 4:43
  sovereignty, understanding that His power has reach with no boundaries, even in the
• 4:50
  depths of the sea, even in the instincts of a creature in the sea,
• 4:57
  even in the realm of the Nnovites and the the Assyrians, and wherever
• 5:00
  else in the world or universe, God has absolute sway. And so Jonah's
• 5:06
  experience was that there was a storm and there was a great fish. This
• 5:13
  illuminates God's dominance over all creation. Because God is the one that sent the
• 5:17
  storm, He is the one that sent the sea creature. God demonstrated his
• 5:23
  reach and power even to the depths of the sea where Jonah might have thought
• 5:28
  he could escape. Divine inter action number two. Number two balancing personal purity
• 5:38
  and missional engagement. Oh, this is a big one. Let me read
• 5:43
  from the Book of James, chapter one and verse twenty seven. The Bible
• 5:46
  reads religion that God, our Father accepts is pure and faultless. Is as
• 5:51
  pure and faultless. Is this to look after orphans and widows in their distress
• 5:58
  and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Now, let me
• 6:02
  just say that Jesus when he prayed the high priestly prayer in the Book of
• 6:09
  John is recorded in the Book of John. Oh, my goodness, my
• 6:13
  brain is frozen. Chapter seventeen. Oh boy, I can't believe I've forgotten
• 6:17
  that after all of these years. Chapter seventeen. I believe it is where
• 6:21
  he says, I'm not asking you to take my children out from this world,
• 6:27
  your children out from this world, God, I'm asking you to keep
• 6:30
  them unspotted. I want you to keep them holy. Okay. And so
• 6:35
  the fact that we are to be pure, the fact that we have the
• 6:41
  privilege of being saved, because the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation
• 6:46
  even to us, that should not cause us to feel like we need to
• 6:50
  put on gloves and masks and some kind of hazmat suit when we go into
• 6:55
  the world. Though God is not saying that we should avoid being with people
• 7:00
  who are lost our purpose. Our purpose is the same as Jesus was to
• 7:05
  seek and to save that which was lost. We will get our hands soiled,
• 7:11
  We will have experiences with people who are not connected to God. And
• 7:15
  our purpose is to become God's hands in his feet, to become his voice
• 7:20
  in the darkness of this world. He said that we are to shine as
• 7:25
  lights in this wicked and perverse generation. And so the fact that Jonah Jonah
• 7:30
  saw their wickedness, he figured he would be like isolated from them, and
• 7:38
  he felt like that that would negate God's directives to him. See, we
• 7:44
  are not supposed to become so prissy and clean that we can't connect with people.
• 7:49
  Our purpose is to be empowered by God through holiness and then go out
• 7:55
  and reach as many people as possible with the plan of self, so they
• 8:00
  too can be saved. And so the action step in that vein is strive
• 8:05
  for a balanced Christian life that maintains holiness, yes, while actively engaging on
• 8:11
  the mission that God has given us to extend His love and salvation to others
• 8:18
  and number three distinguishing between our role and God's role. There is a problem
• 8:24
  we have as humans. We sometimes try to take on God's work without God.
• 8:35
  Sometimes we attempt to replace or supplant God in his work, and that
• 8:41
  causes confusion. And so the Bible reads in First Corinthians, chapter three and
• 8:46
  verse seven, so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is
• 8:50
  anything, but only God who makes things grow. We have to recognize that
• 8:58
  it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to do of
• 9:01
  his good pleasure. It is his business, and therefore we are to engage
• 9:05
  in missions with a servant mentality, right focusing on obedience and faithful witnessing,
• 9:13
  and in trust the outcome to God, and trust the outcome to God.
• 9:18
  Now, Jonah was an instrument, not the converter of Nineveh. Similarly,
• 9:24
  we are tools in God's hands, not the saviors of the people. The
• 9:30
  salvation of souls is a divine act, not our role. We are to
• 9:37
  bear, witness, plant seeds, and leave the transformation to God. We
• 9:41
  have no excuse. Peace. Thanks for joining us listening. Friends. Always
• 9:46
  remember we cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from
• 9:50
  the mouth of God. This has been your daily portion with El David Harris.
• 9:56
  Make it a great day. Yeah,