When God First Touched You

Perhaps it was a dream, slumber’s nectar of knowledge, when you first realized that God was real. You knew that experience had to be from Him and not from your then paltry spiritual pantry. For at that time, you were empty and vacant with little sustenance to call upon.

And then He touched your aching heart in His own way, a touch created just for you in your then present state. And you’ve longed for that special moment in time that it might return, when He floods your corners of doubt with the brilliant light of that original epiphany.

Yes, you want that back. You have been waiting. But it has been years now since that first contact. And you get to wondering: “I’ve been waiting for Him to contact me again.”

Perhaps the ball is in our court, and it is time for us to return His serve. We are to “come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise to Him with psalms.”

Maybe it is time for us to make contact and show Him our gratitude for Him reaching out to us in dreams, visions, revelations, and epiphanies.

What was your experience when God first touched you, when you knew He was real? Please share it in the comments. Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Simplifying Worship–Offering the “Calves of Our Lips”

How does God want us to worship Him?  The biblical answer is really very simple, but humans lean to their own understanding and make it extremely complicated.

They put worshipers in the bondage of certain conditions and offerings and meetings three times a week where you have to come to the ‘house of the Lord’ because no other place will do and money, money, money and pilgrimages and forced prayer times and hocus pocus rituals and incense and holy water and fastings and observances and physical sprinklings and beads and prayercloths and sundayschool and bar mitzvahs and idols and images that ooze and gotta-read the Bible everyday and giving our children to be brainwashed into another man made religion  and, and…

Is that what God wants us to do to worship Him?  To blindly follow what others have imagined that we should do? To throw every conceivable ritual against the wall and hope that something sticks?

God does not need us to give Him or His “ministry” money; He owns the whole earth and everything in it.  The only thing that He does not have is our grateful heart.  And that is all He wants.  He wants us to just sincerely thank Him and praise Him for all that He has done for us.

Why do we not thank Him?  It is because we do not believe that He has delivered us and saved us from a disastrous and futile existence.  He has already done this; all we must do is believe it.  He has delivered us from sin and from sinning.  All we need do is walk in His grace and mercy.  Those who do this will thank Him, for they know what a deep pit they have been lifted out of.  And they are thankful to Him for His love to them.

And so they continue to call upon Him in “the day of trouble,” and He delivers them, and they thank Him, and in so doing, together they create a circle of glorification of God.  God is glorified through us thanking Him (Psalm 50: 15).

We are admonished to “offer unto God thanksgiving” (v. 14) and to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually..the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13: 15).

The thanksgiving and praise we give to God are the sacrifices we give to Him now in this present age.  Our offerings should not be money but thanks and praise.  We now should offer “the calves of our lips” instead of the animal sacrifices under the old testament (Hosea 14: 2).

We simply thank Him now, sincerely from a “broken and contrite heart.”  And He hears us and has compassion on us and is near to us.  This is worshiping Him in Spirit and in truth.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

Simplifying the Worship of God–Offering the “Calves of Our Lips”

How does God want us to worship Him?  The biblical answer is really very simple, but humans lean to their own understanding and make it extremely complicated. 

They put worshippers in the bondage of certain conditions and offerings and meetings three times a week where you have to come to the ‘house of the Lord’ because no other place will do and money, money, money and pilgrimages and forced prayer times and hocus pocus rituals and incense and holy water and fastings and observances and physical sprinklings and beads and prayercloths and sundayschool and bar mitzvahs and idols and images that ooze and gotta-read the Bible everyday and giving our children to be brainwashed into another manmade religion  and, and…

Is that what God wants us to do to worship Him?  To blindly follow what others have imagined that we should do?

God does not need us to give Him or His “ministry” money; He owns the whole earth and everything in it.  The only thing that He does not have is our grateful heart.  And that is all He wants.  He wants us to just sincerely thank Him and praise Him for all that He has done for us.

Why do we not thank Him?  It is because we do not believe that He has delivered us and saved us from a disastrous and futile existence.  He has already done this; all we must do is believe it.  He has delivered us from sin and from sinning.  All we need do is walk in His grace and mercy.  Those who do this will thank Him, for they know what a deep pit they have been lifted out of.  And they are thankful to Him for His love to them.

And so they continue to call upon Him in “the day of trouble,” and He delivers them, and they thank Him, and in so doing, together they create a circle of glorification of God.  God is glorified through us thanking Him (Psalm 50: 15).

We are admonished to “offer unto God thanksgiving” (v. 14) and to “offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually..the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name” (Hebrews 13: 15).

The thanksgiving and praise we give to God are the sacrifices we give to Him now in this present age.  Our offerings should not be money but thanks and praise.  We now should offer “the calves of our lips” instead of the animal sacrifices under the old testament (Hosea 14: 2).

We simply thank Him now, sincerely from a broken and contrite heart.”  And He hears us and has compassion on us and is near to us.  This is worshipping Him in Spirit and in truth.  KWH

The Cure for Depression

I have found a surefire cure for depression.  It is simple, natural–well, it is really spiritual–and it is free.  No money, clinics, or doctors needed.  The only physician involved in this cure  is the Great Physician.

The cure?  Depression is cured when the sufferer just sits down and thanks God for his blessings.  For a state of depression and a grateful heart cannot co-exist.  There is no such thing as a depressed praiser of God.

As the Savior taught, at the bottom of most maladies we will find a spiritual cause.  Think about it.  When was the last time you saw someone depressed, sitting there on their couch and saying to you, “My friend.  Thank you for coming to visit.  I was just thinking about you.  You know, I thank God for the wonderful friends and family I have.”  That grateful heart cannot utter a depression-filled negative thought.  A depressed grateful person is an oxymoron.  Those two cannot go together.  Impossible.

Depression, sadness, and worry spring from self-centered  thinking.  A depressed person only thinks of themselves.  It all centers on self.  Woe is me! they will say.  Self-pity, fear of what others think, and selfish thoughts cannot exist in a mind and heart that is thankful to God.  It is impossible.

So what can the depressed do?  They simply must stop the negative thinking, just for a moment.  Then think about God and say, “Thank you, God, for _________________.”  Everyone can fill in the blank with one thing.  Sunshine, air, food, a son, a daughter, a wife that has stuck with them through thick and thin, a husband who works and brings home bread and milk.  Hey, fill in the blank with something, and in that very instant of thanksgiving, the depression begins to lift.

The darker the hour, the more need to thank Him.  “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus (Yahshua) concerning you” [1].  Everything.  The “good” and the “bad.” 

For we must realize that God has diliberately built in hardships and sufferings, so that our belief in Him may be purified [2], and that joy may abound within us.  But most people get down, blame others, or blame themselves, instead of seeing this truth: “Acknowledge Him in all our ways, and He shall direct our paths” [3].

We then, should realize that when negativity attacks our minds through self-centered thoughts bringing on depression,  we should simply thank God.  For depression is caused by a spiritual thought that cannot co-inhabit a grateful mind.      Kenneth Wayne Hancock

1. I Thess. 5: 18
2. I Peter 1: 6-7
3. Proverbs 3: 6