The God Card

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is something that I found that I wanted to share with you.

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When you say to anyone, “God told me”…. You just alienated everyone in your life. Nothing your spouse, your friends, your family, or your pastor says or thinks now means anything. Our sovereign God is the ultimate authority. Once you say God said it, a second opinion is no longer needed. 

It’s dangerous, yes dangerous, to listen to voices as guidance for your life! If God speaks, it will align with the Word of God. People in general, who don’t pray, don’t give, and aren’t faithful to church decide to drop the God card. And sometimes those who are faithful do the same. 

What proof do we have that God told you anything? The Word is our proof. If it aligns with His Word, it’s easy to affirm and support.

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People who don’t obey the Word are now all of a sudden all too willing to obey God’s voice that they say they heard? This is out of balance. 

If you can’t hear God impress you to give more, work more, pray more, support more, love more, and forgive more? It’s highly doubtful, and likely improbable and suspect that God told you to do anything else.

God respects order in the church and our lives. God doesn’t tell you to come against your parents, your spouse, or your church. The Bible says to be obedient even to the froward. Look that word up. God doesn’t tell people to move to another state, change jobs, or change churches… 

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Can a preacher even quote the verse, "obey them that have the rule over you?"  (Hebrews 13:17). People in general, if they don’t like their situation, all one has to do is drop the God card. In this woke generation obedience isn’t even an option. It’s entirely unknown. 

We all have the right to make all of those changes. Just don’t say God told you to. Make those moves because in prayer, pastoral counsel and even fasting, you feel it’s best for you and your family. Just don’t lay it in God’s lap. Don’t drop the God card. When you drop that, it’s over. 

When people really believe God told them to do X, Y, or Z, now there is no one else. God does not interrupt the chain of command. A husband or wife can’t even fast without permission from their spouse. Do we understand the respect God has even for the marriage covenant? Let alone the respect He has for the men he has called to Pastor. 

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Can God speak in an audible voice? He can. Does he? Highly doubtful He does so to many. In 60 years of life, I don’t need five fingers to denote examples of such in the thousands of hours of ministry I’ve heard. Sure God’s Spirit along with the Word of God can impress upon us. 

A word from God will never be in conflict with the Word of God. 

Why would the Scriptures be replete with seeking counsel if God bypasses all earthly authority and tells people directly what to do? Quite simply He doesn’t. People make up their own minds; and to suppress any other opinion from anyone- they drop the God card.

God speaks through His Word. God doesn’t speak to people who don’t pray and read His Word. If you know the Bible, then you know God doesn’t do such.

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He sent an angel to the house of Cornelius to send for Peter to tell him what to do. Why didn’t God tell Cornelius himself? He told Saul to go to Damascus and it would be told him what to do. God didn’t even tell him who it would be. Ananias came to Saul. Why didn’t God tell Saul himself?

God is telling you what to do? Bypassing all the people in your life? No He didn’t. God told Abraham to go, but He didn’t tell him where. The Bible says Abraham went, but he had no idea where. But God bypasses the order of the family and the church today and gives people explicit instructions in 2024? Or 2025? No. Don’t drop the God card. I’ve been made aware of many people over the years who said God told them to do thus and so. The results of those decisions speak for themselves.

We walk by faith not by sight! We look through a glass darkly! We will understand it better by and by. Job looked to the left, the right, the front, and back and could not find God. These statements and more tell me God didn’t tell you what you said He told you. 

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No one on earth would question anyone saying God told them to pray more, give more, consecrate more…. But God didn’t. You feel impressed to because the Word says to and the preacher told you to, and you’re becoming obedient to the Word. 

Was God the ultimate source? Sure, God affirms that, but the impetus for those things comes through the Word of God, the challenges from ministry to step up, and even the inspiration that comes from a spouse. 

God will not give any guidance or instruction that invalidates, violates, varies, or deviates from the Word of God. Any word from God will be anchored in the Word.

Why would God tell anyone to seek counsel when He could just be telling all of us every decision to make? Does every man or woman on earth have the ability to move, change cities, change states, change churches, or change spouses? Absolutely. 

Just don’t drop the God card.

William James Roop

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Brother Roop teaches the Bible

Without The Logos There Is No God.

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

Here is something that I found on the internet that I wanted to share with you.

Without the Logos (the Word), there is no God.

Psalms 138:2 ....For thou hast magnified thy word above all thy NAME. Why does God magnify his word above all his NAME?

I could rescue you from a burning house and never give you my NAME. I could give you a large sum of money (not) and never give you my NAME. Our NAME is secondary to who we are. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.  Before you ever knew who Jesus was or ever heard his NAME He died for you. While we were yet sinners Christ died for us. He was the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 

John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word was with God and God was the Word. (Logos) In the original translation it ends by saying God was the Word. What does this mean?

The Logos is literally:

the act of speaking, speech, reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating the faculty of speech, skill and practice in speaking

what is declared, a thought, declaration, aphorism, a weighty saying, a dictum, a maxim

Our body is Flesh. We are filled with Blood which gives us life. God’s body is Spirit. He is filled with the Word. His Word is His essence. His words are life. The Spirit of God moved and God said... Without Jesus was not anything made that was made.....

All things were made by Him by the Word of His mouth. Light was the first manifestation of God. In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth. Genesis 1:1

John 1:1 predates that verse as it tells us In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Logos was God. Then the Word, the very mind and thought of God spoke and created by the breath of His mouth Psalms 33:6

You CANNOT separate the Word of God from God. That would be akin to trying to separate our thoughts and words from ourselves. They are more than inextricably linked to us, rather they ARE us.

The Word, which is the very mind, thoughts, voice, and mediation of God was innate in the very God of Heaven who is Spirit. God purchased the Church with his own blood Acts 20:28.  That Word and Spirit was tabernacled among us. the Ark of the covenant being a picture of God himself. The Gold representing Deity and the wood representing humanity.

Jesus is the ONLY begotten of the Father. He came forth from or emanated from Him. To wit that God was in Christ (Christ being the manifestation of God) Christ made God visible. Christ aside from God does not exist. The God of Heaven is who made Christ Christ.

Isaiah 43:11,  I even I am The Lord and beside me there is no savior.  Luke 2:11, For unto you is born this Day a Savior which is Christ The Lord.  Lastly but not finally. Without God there is no Christ. God is who makes Christ, Christ.  Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ. Acts 2:36 

Jesus is the Mighty God.  Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but NOW is made manifest to his saints: Colossians 1:26.  God made man a little lower than the Angels. Christ was made lower also.

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. Hebrews 2:9.  God made man, God came as man. That man, our intercessor was given all power in heaven and earth. He was filled with ALL the Spirit of God.

For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. John 3:34.  Without measure Jesus Christ was filled. God, all of God, not the second person in the trinity, was in Christ.

William James Roop

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Our Anchor

Hello everyone.  Praise the Lord!

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Anchor down (the storm is coming)
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Community, today it is good for all of us to pause, do a little foundation assessment … and ask ourselves, “when the flood comes, am I anchored down in my Christian faith to withstand an onslaught; do I have enough concrete in my life, so that when the worse of the worst, a flood comes will I be washed away?”

Ask ourselves now, while the sun is shining and there’s a calmness around us; ask now while the health is pretty good; ask now while the diagnosis is pretty good; ask ourselves if a storm comes “am I anchored?” or will I fall apart or come to pieces? If I lost everything I have, like Job (Job 1:13-22), would I be able to keep it together? If not, now is the time to dig deep and lay a solid foundation.

In the natural we all know that when there is a storm on the horizon we look to the meteorologists to keep us informed and to warn us when there is danger; and when they do we prepare ourselves; we get batteries for flashlights; we buy bottled water; we buy non-perishable items; we get plenty of gas for our cars; we get first-aid kits; those that have boats and ships they tie it down; some people and businesses board up their doors and windows; they do all that they can to secure their worldly possessions and then they anchor down so that when the gusty winds blow, the torrential rain falls, that they will have a solid foundation.

Wise is the person who takes the storm serious and make preparation; those who do not want to be caught in a storm with nowhere to go; those who because they are prepared don’t suffer loss or lose their lives; unwise is the person who does nothing; who don’t take the warning serious; their mindset is “nothing bad will happen to me, it will always happen to somebody else!” then when the worst happens they lose everything and sometimes they lose their lives; we hear all the time about casualties in the aftermath of a storm; friends, Jesus did not say the words that He said for nothing; think about it.

He himself, the Savior is telling us to prepare now for the worst; and He tells us how do it, because when, not if, floods come, only those who have anchored down will not be washed away; those who are playing church; those who have drifted away from the fellowship of Christ; those who are not taking their spiritual life serious; those who very seldom spend quality time in the word and seldom pray need to hear this.

This is not the time to relax or be at a distance from God; no time is a good time but certainly we don’t need to be out of fellowship with God!

I was talking with my niece last week, who is really going through a trying time with her husband who is battling cancer. When I talked with her, she said, “Unc, the thing that keeps me going in this most difficult time is staying close to the WORD!” She said, “I keep the word near me and I keep it in the ear of my husband who is in the hospital. I let him hear your sermons because he like to hear you preach.” She said, “I listen to different sermons from pastors that encourages me ”.… I encouraged her to stay close to the word.

Community, it is the WORD and the WORD only and doing what the word says that will anchor you in the time of a spiritual flood. Some folk anchor around their family; not good; family can die; some anchor around their money, their possessions, their houses, their social status; not good; you can lose it all in a moment’s time, and then lose your mind too! Nothing but the WORD and doing what it says can “anchor you.”

There’s a song that we sang in church sometimes that says, “There’s a storm out on the ocean, and it’s moving this a way; if your soul is not anchored in Jesus, you will surely drift away!”

I feel sorry for the unchurched, those who are living aimlessly as sheep without a shepherd; those who don’t seem to have a care in the world; those who are alienated from God by wicked works, who are spiritually blind (Col. 1:21); those who don’t have an anchor at all, and who live only for this world; my heart go out to those who when the floods come have nowhere that they can go.

Jesus talks about this very thing. Talking to his disciples he said, “Whosoever comes to me and hears my word, and do it…is like a man that digs deep and lays the foundation on a rock: and the flood waters came and beat forcefully against it, and could not shake it: for it was built upon a rock. But he that hears, and do not what the word says, is like a man without a foundation who built his house upon the sand; and when the flood waters beat forcefully against it, immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great (Luke 6:47-49).”

To “build on the rock” simply means to obey what God commands in His Word. To “build on the sand” means to give Christ lip service, but not obey His will. Community, let us take an assessment now, look at our foundation … what are we building on? Make sure your soul is anchored in the Lord.

The Rev. George Ellis is the pastor for Union Grove Missionary Baptist Church.

William James Roop, M.A.B.S.

Roop-Crappell Ministries

Hospice Care and Dying

The Trucking Tango

Apostolic Theological Seminary