Are You Giving Your Best to the King?

There is a legend about an ancient village in Spain. The villagers learned that the king would pay a visit! In a thousand years, a king had never come to that village. Excitement grew! "We must throw a big celebration," The villagers all agreed. But, it was a poor village, and there weren’t many resources. Someone came up with a classic idea. Since many of the villagers made their own wines, the idea was for everyone in the village bring a large cup of their choice wine to the town square, “We’ll pour it into a large vat and offer it to the king for his pleasure! When the king draws wine to drink, it will be the very best he’s ever tasted!”

The day before the king’s arrival, hundreds of people lined up to make their offering to the honored guest. They climbed a small stairway, and poured their gift through a small opening at the top. Finally, the vat was full! The King arrived, was escorted to the square, given a silver cup and was told to draw some wine, which represented the best the villagers had.

He placed the cup under the spigot, turned the handle, and then drank the wine, but it was nothing more than water. You see every villager reasoned, "I’ll withhold my best wine and substitute water, what with so many cups of wine in the vat, the king will never know the difference!" The problem was, everyone thought the same thing, and the king was greatly dishonored.

So the question today is this... are you giving your best to King Jesus. This is a week of rememberance for all that Jesus did for us. He gave us EVERYTHING! We should do the same.

I "hope" you read this post.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 "But since we belong to the day, let us be self-controlled, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet"

You have heard it said in many sermons and by many Sunday School teachers to put on the helmet of salvation. But what does that really mean? I think this verse gives us a lot of insight as to what it means because it refers to our helmet of salvation as the "hope" of salvation.

Now what does “hope” mean. I hope the Rays win the World Series, I hope I don’t go completely bald before I am thirty, I hope a lot of things, but that does not have any sort of power in my life. So at first thought, if the helmet of salvation is also the hope of salvation does that mean that you stand in the middle of the battle field and “hope” that no one kills you… absolutely not!

The word hope here is the word “elpis” which means expectation and confidence. There is a difference between right now, in Spring Training, hoping that the Rays will win the World Series, but if they are in it and they have the closer in trying to get the last out with a twelve run lead, all of a sudden I have an “eplis” hope that is that at that point I expect them to win.

The helmet of salvation enables us to take the long (Eternal) view of the warfare. If we do not have it on, Satan can cause us to give up, quit, despair, and become discouraged by whispering words to us like, “You’re having to wait too long! This fight is lasting too long! This isn't working, you may as well quit.”

The helmet of salvation enables us to maintain total confidence in victory, no matter how long the battle may seem to last here on earth. We have a salvation that is certain and eternal! We cannot be ultimately defeated! There is absolutely no room for discouragement in light of the helmet of salvation!

I "hope" you understand that.

Product Placement

Hello my friends, this is my 27th post I think. That is a lot.

Things have been great lately. My birthday came and went and I am now the big 2-6. I had a great birthday and actually got a lot of cool stuff. My father and brother-in-law got me Mario Kart, and I am pretty addicted. I connect on Nintendo WiFi and play people around the globe. I love beating people from Japan in their own game :) My wife got me Wii Fit, which is awesome. However the first thing it told me when I got on was that I was overweight and it made my character fatter. But it is cool to get a workout while playing video games.

Anyhow, I got other stuff from great people, but what I wanted to talk about was what my friend Mike Hall got me. He bought me Francis Chan's new book called Crazy Love. Check it out at http://www.crazylovebook.com/. If you have read any of my other posts you know that I have mentioned Chan before. He is a Pastor in California and seems to the most sought after speaker at every conference I go to anymore. But for good reason.

His book is challenging the norm of what we have become as the American church. He is asking some great questions. What does it look like to really love God? If we say we love God then shouldn't our actions reflect such an expression? If we truly loved God then wouldn't we thirst and hunger for every waking minute we can spend with Him? Does it ever seem like doing the things of God have become an obligation? And the big kicker... Are we truly in love with God or are we just in love with the benefits of God?

The book discusses the true meaning of what it means to be a lukewarm Christian and to be honest with you I don't think that many of us fall into any category but that one. Do we offer God our leftovers or do we give Him the first of everything we have? Do we worship God in our good times and our bad? If Heaven a was place with every thing we ever wanted... money, food, friends, stuff, happiness, fun, joy... but God was not there, would we still want to go?

If you can't tell, I highly recommend the book. But don't get it if you don't want your toes stepped on. Don't get it if you are satisfied with the status quo. Don't get it if you are happy with lukewarm.

Well, after my birthday dinner at Spaghetti Warehouse (love the place) we watched Prince Caspian, which was amazing. If you don't know anything about it, it is based on the book by CS Lewis and it is full of spiritual metaphors. The main theme of the movie is that you should never do anything without making sure that God is leading you to do it, and if you don't know where God is leading you... you must wait on Him.

So this post seems to have been one big commercial. So remember buy Wii Fit, Mario Kart, Crazy Love and eat at Spaghetti Warehouse and watch Prince Caspian. And don't forget mainly that you need to rely on God, and ask Him to give you a desire to fall in love with God all over again.