Waters to Swim In

Do you enjoy swimming? To me there is nothing as refreshing on a hot day as getting into the swimming pool and just letting the water totally cover you! It seems like every part of your body is refreshed and cooled.

I remember when we were kids we lived just a little ways from the river. In fact, you could see the Eel River from our back porch. We would spend as much time as possible at the river playing, hunting, and fishing. However, we were never allowed to swim unless we had an adult with us. For some reason my Mom is terrified of water. My Dad didn’t learn how to swim. He said his Dad threw him in the creek and told him to swim out! He sank to the bottom and walked out. He and his Dad repeated this a few times and finally his Dad gave up.

When we could talk Mom into taking us swimming, which would happen only one or two times a summer, she was very rigid in what we could do. We were never allowed to get in the water past our knees. Really! If we went out past our knees she would panic and make us come back.
Now the problem with this is simply it is hard to get wet and have a great time in knee deep water. You can’t swim! You can’t really float! All you can do is splash around a bit and maybe lay in the water, moving around with your hands on the bottom. It is not really fun, but it is better than nothing.

I will never forget the summer when I was able to go without Mom’s permission. A couple of friends and I went to a swimming hole and I learned to swim. One of my friends had some ski belts which we put on. We climbed up on this log and jumped into about 12 feet of water. It was so awesome! This is how I learned to swim. I loved it because I found out that water that is over your head enables you to do so much more and have so much more fun.

It reminds me of the passage where Ezekiel speaks of being taken out into the water. It started out shallow but eventually he was led into water that was waters to swim in. I remember my Dad preaching from this passage many times a message called “Wade out into the Deep!” He would preach about our relationship with God and how some people are happy to stay close to shore just kicking around in shallow water. We need to venture out into the deeper waters that we are able to swim in.

The same is true in our worship. Many times we are content to splash around in the shallow waters. I want to be very careful because I have no intention of making light of any sacrifice of praise that is made to the Lord, so please stay with me. Yet we go home and have never left sight of the shore. We have not gone far enough to get into the water to swim in; we have hung around the shore, that which is safe and familiar.

Let me give you an example that I have seen happen many times through the years. We come to Church really excited about the service. We are remembering past services and the touch of God we have received upon our lives. We begin to sing praises to Him. We sing of His mercy and grace. We sing of His name and heaven. At first it is just “our self” that is doing it but soon we begin to feel a little something! The more we praise Him the better we feel and others are feeling it too. Someone might begin to jump up and down a bit! Someone might break into a run or a dance! There are times when this might go on for a time period of great praise to the Lord.
How many times do we stop there? How many times do we stop and catch our breath and say, “We could go home now. We have already had Church?” Many times we do just that. My question is simply this, what would happen if we pressed on into deeper waters. What would happen if we would wade on out until we were in waters in which we were totally submerged in the Spirit? Let’s think about this for a moment.

The word “baptize” is used five times in the New Testament in three different scriptures. In three of those scriptures it is quoting John the Baptist prophesying that Jesus would come and baptize us with the Holy Ghost. We know that baptism only happens when you are totally submerged. We know that the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of God. I do not believe the baptism of the Holy Ghost to be only a one time event in our life. I do believe that God wants to baptize us repeatedly with His Spirit. We have to wade out into the swimming waters in order for this to happen.

Every day we deal with life. We deal with hurts and disappointments. We deal with anger, pain, bitterness, abuse, fear, deceit and all of the other things that life throws our way on a daily basis. Being emotional we feel these pains and our soul filters these emotions. After awhile the filter will become clogged with the debris of life. At that point we come to the place where we feel we can’t take any more. We become overwhelmed!

However, when we push past the familiar in our praise, we begin to allow God to do a work in us. Let me share this thought. There are seven words in the Old Testament for praise, I won’t take time to go into all of them, but I noticed many of them were words, powerful words, which just speak of a commitment of our relationship with God, whether or not we are feeling anything special. They speak of raising our hands, being thankful, shouting, playing music, to boast, and to celebrate. All of these are wonderful and I love them, they are so much a part of who we are. Yet I also noticed that in part they are a testimony to others, as well as God, of how we feel about God and His goodness. There is also one word that is a little different and it speaks of blessing the Lord from a prostrate position.

Now I am not bringing about a new doctrine, I am just sharing a thought that has been on my heart for a while. If you look this word up in the scripture you will find that it is the same word that is used when God blesses us. Let’s take a look at a couple of Psalms where it is used.

“O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the LORD our maker.” Ps 95:6

This is more of a positional type of worship, whether physically or spiritually and emotionally, we bow before Him. It also speaks of adoration. So the reason we bow before Him is because we adore Him. Let’s go a bit further.

“Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” Ps 100:4

This speaks to me of going further than praise and thanksgiving, which seem to be the starting point. This speaks to me of entering into a worshipful attitude that is deeper. With this thought in mind, check this out…

“Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:” Ps 103:1-2

The rest of the Psalms list the reasons to adore Him, all of reasons we should adore Him. This is, to me, speaking of wading into those waters where you totally become submerged in the Spirit of God, waters to swim in. You are worshipping Him with all that is within you! Every part of your being adores Him.

Consider this! Jesus takes a little side trip to Samaria. There He meets a lady and begins to talk to her of Spiritual things. She spoke to Him of His being a Prophet and of places to worship. Jesus said there would come a time when worship would not be required to happen in a certain place. He went on to say that it was time when those who worshipped God openly would do so in spirit and in truth.

He then makes this statement which I will quote because of the power of it:

“…for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” John 4:23-24

The words used here speak of worship meant to adore. It also means to kiss like a dog licking his master’s hand. It means to prostrate your self before Him in adoration. It goes on to use the words spirit and truth. Spirit speaks of God’s Spirit, entering into a realm beyond our spirit to where the Spirit of God is one with ours. Truth speaks of verity or something real, true, genuine. Men will worship Him in unity with His Spirit in a real and genuine manner. The most powerful part of everything Jesus says to the woman is this, “God is looking for us to worship Him in this manner.”

This is worship that cannot take place in the shallow water; this is when you get out in the waters to swim in. This is when you have lowered yourself and exalted Him in your adoration. This is when you magnify the Lord and exalt His name. You adore Him!

Let’s go back to the filter we spoke of earlier. Jesus stood on the last day of the Feast and said if any man is thirsty he can come to me and drink. If He believes on me scripturally out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water. Then the writer makes sure we understand that Jesus was talking of the Holy Ghost. When we begin to worship God as a true believer, one who adores Him, the Holy Ghost is going to flow through our heart. All of the debris that has been caught in our filter is going to be flushed out by the power of the Holy Ghost. There will be a flowing of the Spirit. Our emotions will be cleaned as our spirit communes with the Spirit of God.

Paul tells us to be filled with the Spirit of God. He is telling us to come under the influence of God’s Spirit. He tells us to allow the Spirit to control us. Could I go as far as to say, to wade out from our comfort zone into the swimming waters!

Just a thought! God Bless.

Oops! I am Lost!

Have you ever realized that you are lost? Maybe you are driving down the road and it suddenly dawns on you that you have no idea where you are or how to get to where you want to be. By being lost I am talking about not knowing how to get where you want to go and not being able to get back to where you came from. I am talking about being totally lost. It is a strange feeling that I describe as feeling helpless.

I have been blessed with a great sense of direction. Somehow I am able to picture in my mind where I want to go and I am able to get there. If I have been somewhere one time, most of the time I am able to go there again, even if it is many years later. When I was six years old we moved to Fresno, California. We were only there a couple of weeks when Mom took us somewhere, just us kids and her, and on the way home she got lost. She has often laughed about it because I told her how to get home. I can honestly say I have only been lost one time in my life.

I lived for thirty five years on the north coast of California. Much of that time we lived in a city which was about two hundred and fifty miles north of San Francisco. Although it was the “big city” and a get away destination for many people I was only in the San Francisco about seven or eight times in my life. On most of those visits I was passing through on the highway and had only actually visited the city three times. It was in San Francisco that I had my “lost” experience.
My wife and I had been to Bakersfield for a meeting and were returning home. Any trip out of our area to the “Valley” was a long trip. Driving to Bakersfield was a hard nine hour drive. Through the years we had explored the quickest routes and had found a route that would take us through the East Bay area and junction I-5 that saved a lot of time. However, I had never taken that route back and was unfamiliar with it. On this particular trip we were going along when out of the corner of my eye I saw a sign and quickly took the exit. The moment I had committed to the exit and there was no turning back I knew I had made a mistake. It was the wrong exit and before we knew it we were dropped into the middle of San Francisco!

Now understand I am just a country boy. The biggest city that I have lived in during my adult life is the one that I live in now which has a population of fifty-three thousand. However, I was raised and lived in a city of three thousand people. It had no stop lights, no banks, and no car dealerships. It had a couple of grocery stores, bars, one gas station and was about a mile and a half from one end to the other. The tallest building in town was probably the two story house that I lived in, simply because it sat on the side of a steep hill and was actually three stories on that side.

So here I am in San Francisco and I have no idea where I am in comparison to where I have been before. I look up to get direction from the sun and all I can see is skyscrapers. Everything is totally foreign to me. I tell my wife not to worry we will find US 101 and that will get us out of there. I just needed to find out what direction to head in. I look to my left and sitting next to me is a man on a motorcycle so I ask him to tell me how to find US 101.
The nice gentleman says it is simple. Just make a turn and follow the road a bit, make another turn and another and follow the road. It would take us where we wanted to go. That sounded simple enough, so we set off to follow those easy directions. We followed them exactly as he said and came to a stop light. I looked around to see where we were and was astonished to find we were sitting at the stop light we had been at when the nice man gave us directions. We had spent the last twenty minutes going in a large circle; it is hard to know you are doing that in San Francisco with their winding streets. I imagine he is still laughing, I know I am.

After searching for another half hour or so we finally found a gas station and were able to purchase a map. With the map we soon found our way out of the “big city” and headed back to the sanctity of the small town.

I remember another time, when I was very young. We were again returning from a trip to the “Valley” this time through Sacramento. Mom was driving and was not real familiar with the road. I was a sleep in the back and remember waking up to hear Mom and Dad talking about the route to take. Dad settled back to sleep and Mom kept the pedal to the metal.
An hour or more latter Mom asked Dad a question and suddenly he was wide awake. In fact, we were all wide awake. The question she asked had to do with Grass Valley, California. Grass Valley is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which were in the exact opposite direction from where we were should have been headed. We were headed up I-80 toward Reno, Nevada!

Somewhere along the way Mom had taken the wrong highway and headed in the wrong direction. Dad got out the map and we began to work our way back to where we needed to go. Until his dying day, over thirty years later, Dad would laugh about the night Mom tried to take him to Reno to get a divorce.
You know, it doesn’t take much to get started in the wrong direction. It doesn’t take a lot of effort or planning to get lost. It can happen to the best of us and it can happen quickly. Just a wrong turn is all it takes. Just a moment when we are not paying attention or maybe it was just a bad decision.
We pastored in the Ozarks for seven years. Not long after moving there we had a “Singin‘” one Sunday afternoon. One of the men in the Church invited a Christian Blue Grass band to come and sing. After the “Singin’” was over I was talking with them, just making friends. They told me there was a Christian Blue Grass pickin’’ and grinning that took place once a month and invited me to come and be a part of it. I told them I wasn’t a bluegrass player but would enjoy coming out and asked where it was. They said it was in the Friendship Community building. Well, being new to the area I had to ask where that was.

I will never forget this as long as I live. One of the men slowly leaned back in the pew. He stroked his chin with his right hand, his left arm crossed under the right elbow. He tilted his head back and got a far away look in his eyes as he looked toward the ceiling. The silence lingered as his companions sat and watch in reverend silence. Finally after two or three moments of pondering he looked at me and said, “Huh, I guess you just can’t get there from here!” He never did tell me how to get there and it was just a little ways from where we were.

In life it is so easy to get turned around and lost. It is so easy to find yourself headed in the wrong direction. It happens so quickly as you suddenly find you have made a mistake somewhere back down the road and are now in a situation where you have no idea where you are. Suddenly you are a washed with a feeling of helplessness, even hopelessness. Despair sets as you realize you haven’t any idea where you are or where you are going.

What do we do in this situation? Is there a remedy? Is there any hope? Can we get there from here? Oops, we are lost!

I have to wonder if David was feeling this way when he wrote:

“Show me the path where I should walk, O LORD; point out the right road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you.” Ps 25:4-5

When we don’t know where we are or how to get to where we need to go, it is past time to pull out the map and get direction. Our map in life is the Word of God. We can depend on God to show us, teach us and to guide us in the road that will take us safely through life. We can trust in Him for direction in the course our live should take and how to stay on that course. We need to let him show us, teach us and guide us. This will keep us from being lost.

Just a thought! God Bless!

TEAM Ministry Starts 2009 on the Road!

What a great way to bring in the New Year! Melinda and I were blessed to have the opportunity to bring in the New Year with a wonderful group of people in Fredericktown, Missouri. We were blessed with a great service and a great move of God during the service.

Brother Tim and Sister Deb Stafford and the saints of Fresh Anointing Tabernacle treated us so kindly. We enjoyed the worship service and the opportunity to minister the Word of the Lord. Then after the service we also enjoyed a time of food and fellowship.

Fresh Anointing shared some times of ministering. Brother Steve, who is deaf, preached to us through an interpreter asking, “Why are you afraid?” This was an incredible experience for us as this was the first time we had been preached to by a deaf preacher.

Brother Trent Stafford, the Youth Pastor, talked about getting ignited and intoxicated on Jesus. This is grape juice, by the way!

On Sunday we traveled back to Missouri, this time to Kennett. Jared was able to accompany us on this trip. What a great time we had visiting with some dear old friends (old as in years we have known them, not age since we are all still "youngin's") Brother David and Sister Royce Ann Henderson and also Brother Todd Henderson, their son. We first became acquainted with Brother David Henderson in 1969 and have a lot of great memories. Actually, we have decided not to share many of those memories unless we are well paid!

Sunday morning Jared ministered in the service. He preached on “Refreshing” and God really blessed his ministry. Sunday night I ministered so it was something new for us to team together like that. Again, Sunday night God was so kind to bless us.

One of the outstanding highlights of this weekend was being in services with Sister Shirley McCoy. Sister Shirley is Brother David Henderson’s sister and was a part of one of the churches we pastored in California. She is a dear friend and to be able to visit with her and worship in service once again was very precious to the Doran family. She was actually Jared’s school teacher for a number of years so he was really excited that they could be together, also.

What a wonderful way to start the year 2009! God blessed us with the chance to make new friends and meet up again with old friends. I don’t know if anyone else was blessed, but I sure was.

Back from the Road! God Bless

Not Derailed, Just Sidetracked!

Do train noises bother you? I remember when I was a kid we lived between the railroad tracks. Some people worry about living on the wrong side of the tracks. Well, we lived between two sets of track, each set having two sets of tracks. One was in front of our house and the other was behind our house and needless to say there was a lot of noise.

We were living in a small town called Scotia, California. Scotia was a company owned town. You had to work at the lumber mill or one of the businesses in town to live in a house in the town. We lived on Williams Street, which was the last street in town. To get to our street, you came into town and turned at the gas station. You would then come to a set of railroad tracks. When you crossed those tracks, you immediately crossed an old wooden bridge which spanned the log pond. As soon as you were across the bridge you would pass over another set of tracks. You would then go down a hill and around a curve. If you came off the bridge and down the hill fast enough on you bike you could coast the three quarters of a mile to our house. Behind our house, out the gate and about thirty feet lay another two sets of tracks.

Both sets of tracks in front of our house belonged to the lumber mill. They were used by the log trains and every day they would bring in loads of logs from the woods. Usually the trains would come in about 6:00 in the morning and then would run sometime during the day.

The tracks behind our house belonged to Southern Pacific Railroad. Trains ran on those tracks at anytime day or night. These were the trains that were so loud. It seemed like they were always stopping, starting, going forward and backing up. I never have been able to figure it out. Why did they have to do all of that maneuvering? Why did it always take them forever to do it?

The other thing I noticed, and I noticed this because we would play on them, was they would leave railroad cars setting in back of our house for days at a time. The train would pass by the house and then it would stop. It would back up onto a second track and the locomotive would just leave it setting there for days. This was a perfect opportunity for my brother and me to play on it, so of course we did. The whole time that train was setting there it didn’t accomplish one thing. It wasn’t good for anything but a playground for a bunch of boys. In fact, I noticed that to make a train totally ineffective all you had to do was to sidetrack it.

I have found out since that there is a little lever that can be moved and it will switch the track so that when the train comes it will go onto another track or a side track. Many times you can change the direction of that train without even the engineer realizing it because it can be done so gradually. You can make that train totally useless without ever destroying the train. You don’t have to derail it, just side track it!

I have had this happen so many times in my life. I am chugging along through life headed in the right direction. I am so excited about what I am doing for God and what God is doing in my life. Then, somewhere along the way, I find that I have been going in the wrong direction without ever realizing it. Something back down the road had gotten me off on a side track and I didn’t even realize it. I had become totally ineffective. I hadn’t backslidden, or even really sinned. I wasn’t derailed, just sidetracked!

I remember in one church we were pastoring an incident that took place that side tracked us. We had been working, praying, and fasting trying to have a move of God. We had taught some Bible Studies. We had worked with different people and had in fact just baptized our first converts. About this time one of the couples in the church met a couple from town. This couple introduced them to this “wonderful idea.” The couple from the church in turn introduced this “wonderful idea” to everyone in the church. Three of four months later I came to realize that we had all began to focus on this “wonderful idea” to the point we weren’t teaching Bible Studies, praying like we had been or fasting. All of our extra energy was spent on developing this “wonderful idea.” Not derailed, just sidetracked!

I have seen the enemy attack the family. He comes in causing problems and division until the total focus of the family is on the problems. They no longer pray together. They no longer read their Bibles together. They barely go to church together if they even go at all. Have they went out and committed sin? No! But they have become totally ineffective in the kingdom of God. Not derailed, just sidetracked.

Someone says or does something that hurts us. We take offense to it! We begin to think about how bad it is and how bad we have been treated. Pretty soon we have traveled way down a track that is taking us away from God. We aren’t derailed! We are still moving! However we are moving in the wrong direction. There is a cancer eating away at our spirit! We haven’t been derailed, just sidetracked!

God call Abraham out of Ur to a land that He would direct him to. He made him promises that boggled the natural mind. Oh the wonder of it all! Yet, right after arriving in this promised land a famine sets in and Abraham decides theer is no way they can survive. He packs up his family and off they go to Egypt. He is not derailed, just sidetracked!

While in Egypt he almost loses his wife, Sarah. She is the woman the promise is coming thru. While they were in Egypt, Sarah found a handmaid named Hagar. Later she decides Hagar should be the one to bear the promised child. Not derailed, just sidetracked!

On his way home from Egypt he has a falling out with his nephew Lot. He gives Lot a choice of where to go. Lot looks toward Sodom and it reminds him of Egypt. He chooses Sodom and his family is destroyed. Not derailed, just sidetracked!

Whether you are a Pastor or a Saint we all have a purpose and calling in our life. God has given each of us a promise and a blessing. If we continue to respond to that call and that purpose, God will fulfill His promise. The enemy desires to kill, steal and destroy each of us. He has found it to be so effective to destroy us by getting us sidetracked. He steals our purpose. He destroys our effectiveness. Eventually he kills us spiritually because we have gotten so far from where we are supposed to be. Not derailed, just sidetracked!

“Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” 2 Tim 1:9

Am I losing my effectiveness? Am I losing my power and authority with God? Have I allowed the enemy to overwhelm me and load me down with my past to the point I can no longer do what God has directed me to do? Have I become calloused to the needs of others to the point I am not longer moved emotionally by the cries of the lost and hurting? Am I just going through the motions of life because this is what I have always done and this is what I think is expected of me? Have I been sidetracked?

When was the last time I really prayed though to the Holy Ghost? When was the last time that I talked in tongues uncontrollably? When was the last time the Holy Ghost flowed through me like a river of Living Water? When was the last time I allowed the Holy Ghost to flush out of my soul the pride, the anger, and the bottled up emotions which have been caused by the failures and disappointments in life? I am talking about being sidetracked! Not derailed!

There will be more people lost who consider themselves good Christians because they have gone through the motions of what they considered pleasing to God. Yet, they have not walked in the Spirit! Their lives are spotless if examined for sin. Yet they have failed to know Jesus in the power of His resurrection. They have failed to walk in His Spirit, fulfilling the purpose God has placed in their lives. They have not been derailed, just sidetracked!

Jesus said there would be those who would come to him with a wonderful resume. Look at what we have accomplished! Look at the healings! Look at all the buildings and programs and accomplishments! Jesus response was, yet you and I don’t know each other. You were so busy going through the motions that you never realized that even though you were moving you were going in the wrong direction. Not derailed, just sidetracked.

I want to keep my eyes on Him! I am going to put Jesus Christ back in the seat of the Engineer of my life. I refuse to become sidetracked! I refuse to allow the enemy to blind me to my purpose in Christ Jesus. I will stay on track! If you go far enough on the wrong track your life could end up a train wreck!

Just a thought! God Bless.