Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
Here is an article about putting your spiritual health front and center.
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PUT FIRST THINGS FIRST.
The first Psalm is so beautiful and further confirms that God wants His people to prosper.
PSALM 1:1-3:
1 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
2 But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not 'wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall PROSPER.
So you see, God wants us to prosper. However, our need is to evaluate things as they should be evaluated — to esteem earthly things lightly and to put first things first.
Everyone thinks the preacher ought to be that way.
For example, if a pastor happened to take the pastorate of a church where he makes more money, many people would think, He just took that church so he'd be better paid. Yet they themselves would think nothing in the world about taking a better job! They would probably even think nothing about moving off to another location where there wasn't a good church — only one in which they'd all backslide!
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Years ago back in the Depression days, I was in a particular town on business, and ran into a certain fellow on the street. He had a good job making good money, but he'd been offered a job in another town making $50 more a month. That was a lot of money back then. I knew many men with families who didn't even make $50 a month. But this gentleman was already making a good salary and had the chance to make an even better one.
He told me, "Did you know I was moving?"
He was a member of a Full Gospel church, and I happened to know that there wasn't a Full Gospel church in the town where he was moving. I said to him, "What kind of church is there in that town?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Is there a Full Gospel church there?" I asked him.
He answered, "I don't know; I never thought about it."
I said, "No, you were only interested in the extra
fifty dollars a month."
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But wait a minute.
"I knew you before you came into Pentecost. I happen to know that you'd spent all of your money on medical bills for your wife. Doctors thought she had cancer of the stomach. "But when she received the baptism of the Holy
Ghost, without anybody even praying for her,she was healed.
"I also happen to know that you had spent thousands of dollars on one of your sons who had a physical ailment. But since you began attending a church where divine healing is taught, your boy has been in good health."
"Yes," the man said.
"Well," I said, "I also happen to know that there's not a Full Gospel church in that town." (It would have been different if he had been to going to that town to start a Full Gospel church, but he wasn't. He wasn't capable of starting a church.) The man said, "You know, I never thought about that."
I said, "You'd be taking your family out of a good Full Gospel church, where the Gospel is being preached and where you've been blessed immeasurably, all for fifty dollars more a month. I won't tell you not to do it, but I will tell you to pray about it."
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The next time I saw this fellow, he said to me, "I'm not going; I don't believe it's worth it."
Another man and his wife came to a meeting I was holding in Dallas. The woman's mother, who had gone to be with the Lord, was a member of a church I'd pastored years before. She had been a wonderful Christian and a great blessing to my wife and me.
I knew that this wife hadn't always been a Christian. Years before when she would visit her mother, her mother told me she wasn't saved. But she had later gotten saved, received the Holy Spirit, and attended a fine Full Gospel church.
But when I saw this woman with her husband at my meeting and asked, "Where do you attend church now?" the woman said, "Oh, we don't go anywhere."
"What do you mean? I thought you were a member at such-and-such church."
"Oh, there's not even a church there anymore," she answered. "It was closed down for a while until another pastor came and took over it. Then the pastor backslid and quit preaching. We just go here and there to church every so often. While you're in town, we're coming to your meetings."
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I asked: "Well, where do you pay your tithes?"
"We don't pay our tithes," she answered. "We used to pay them, but we quit. We used to pay our tithes to the pastor, but he backslid."
"Well," I said, "you don't have to backslide just because he did."
I didn't know whether they appreciated me telling them that or not, but I continued: "You need to get in a church somewhere and work for God and worship the Lord. You need to get hooked up instead of going from church to church." A rolling stone never gathers any moss.
"Besides that, we need each other. We need the fellowship of one another."
Someone said, "I can stay home and be as good a Christian as anybody."
You can't do it. The Bible says, "Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching" (Heb. 10:25).
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We see that day approaching — the coming of the Lord. We need one another. No, we don't go to church because we're in love with the pastor or the pastor's wife or the Sunday school teacher. We should go to church because we love God and want to worship Him.
Some people lose their children to the devil because the parents don't put first things first. The children grow up physically, and get away from God because the wrong example was set for them. But you can't just tell children what to do. The Bible says, "TRAIN up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6). You have to set the right example. You have to be a person of faith yourself. Tb do that, you have to put first things first.
F. F. Bosworth said, "Some people wonder why they can't have faith for healing. They feed their body three hot meals a day, and their spirit one cold snack a week." Folks could have faith for healing or for anything the Word of God promises — prosperity, a healthy, happy family, long life — if they would just put first things first.
Determine in your heart to put spiritual things first and to esteem earthly things lightly. Put God first, even before your own self. You'll be blessed spiritually, physically, and in every way — you and your family as well.
ISAIAH 1:19
"If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the
good of the land."
