Bishop's Blog

Wisdom for Blended Families

A blended family involves children from different relationships that are now joined together under one household. Blended families are tough when there isn’t good planning and communication. Most couples get together thinking that all children will get along and many times that’s not the case. Kids comes from different backgrounds and are used to different rules and disciplinary systems among several other things. The age of the children also plays a big part in how easy a family can blend together. If the children are younger, then they may not know anything else, but if there are older, especially teenagers, you are dealing with a totally different situation.

Step-parents can’t come in with the “everything changes” mindset. It will make kids resent you. Instead, if a family is preparing to blend, the family should have a family meeting and discuss exactly what is getting ready to take place. Don’t assume that things will just work out because they won’t. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Don’t give the devil any place in your home. The way you do that is through communication. Talk about the specifics - who will clean what, how will discipline be handled, what are the new house rules, etc.

If you communicate, pray, and plan, then a blended family can be very effective. If you don’t it will be a nightmare.

How do you trust God?

Christians come up with some of the best cliches and positive sayings around. The truth is that if we don’t clearly understand what it is that we’re really saying, it can be difficult for us to act. You’ve heard things like “Turn it over to Jesus” or “Hold onto to God’s unchanging hand.” While things like that sound nice, what do they really mean? How do you hold onto God’s hand if you’ve never seen it? How do you just turn something over to Jesus if you don’t really understand what that means?

Trusting God isn’t a feeling and it isn’t warm fuzzies on your body when you pray. Trusting God is a decision that we back up with corresponding action. You decide to trust God so you don’t worry. We don’t praise God because we always feel like it, we praise Him because we decide to. We don’t tithe because we don’t have other things to do with our money. We make a decision that if that’s what God says, that’s what we’re going to do. No matter what’s going on in your life, decide to trust God and then just don’t stop there, put corresponding action into motion and watch God do just what He said.

Your “Already” Assignment

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed you in the womb I knew [and] approved of you [as My chosen instrument], and before you were born I separated and set you apart, consecrating you; [and] I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Before you ever arrived on earth, you were with God and you were divinely connected to His purpose for creating you. Each person has a unique assignment that God has given them to fulfill in the earth realm. When we were with God, He endowed us with gifts and talents that would be essential in fulfilling that assignment.

Some people were given good communication while others may have been given incredible minds. The purpose of those gifts and talents is universal and it is to reconcile the world back to God. God expects that we learn to harness our gifts and talents and make the best out of them. If you’ve been talented with music, you can’t just sit and do nothing, you must cultivate that gift, take lessons, and place yourself around people that can challenge your gift to come up higher.

God has ordained you to be a Kingdom person that knows what they’re assigned to do and then does it. The keys to walking in it are – prayer, being around the right environment for birthing it out, and your worship.

In the War or in the Way?

Ephesians 6:12.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places

Not only is America in a physical war, we are also in a spiritual war. Contrary to popular belief, spiritual warfare is not just fighting the devil. He has already been defeated and according to Colossians 2:5, he, along with principalities have been disarmed and is powerless except to speak (influence). What we wrestle against are principalities, which are the established form of order in regions and in peoples minds. Principalities were rulers over sovereign states. In other words, certain forms of thinking and certain customs and habits become the ruler of regions.

For example, there are certain areas of the country where certain sins are predominant and are widely practiced and generally accepted, while there are other parts where it is not. That’s what a principality really is. It’s the “unofficial” established form of government. Darkness is nothing more than the absence of light, or the absence of God’s truth. Wickedness in high places is referring to leadership that allows darkness to remain.

This spiritual war involves changing the way people think and the way we do that is through presenting an authentic Christ. People are not the problem, but people’s thinking is. That’s why the Scriptures teaches us to take every thought captive. If we are not using our lives to love people into the Kingdom, then we are in the way. More Christians hurt others more than they help them if their actions don’t match up with their confessions. It can be confusing to people. Use every opportunity to fight in this war and it starts with you and the way you think. If you change your thoughts then you’ll change what you speak. If you change what you speak, you’ll change what you have. If you change what you have, you can change your world.

Breaking Generational Curses

There are 3 kinds of wrong doing that are most prominent in Scripture. Sin, which means to miss the mark; transgression, which means to disobey willfully and knowingly; and lastly, iniquity which is generational sin. Iniquity is a generational curse. Generational curses are mentioned throughout the scriptures. Exodus 34:7 AMPLIFIED states that ⁷Keeping mercy and loving-kindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but Who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.

There are predispositions that an individual may have to certain kinds of sin because someone in their bloodline entered into it. People may struggle with things that someone they’ve never met engaged in. It is not that they can not control their own actions and choices, it is that they are predisposed with varying tendencies. The Scripture says that we were all born into sin and in our flesh there is nothing good. This is why someone who struggles with alcoholism might say “I was born this way,” or someone who doesn’t seem to be able to break a particular negative habit may continue their struggle. Again, we have the power to make choices and can not simply say “The devil made me do it.”

Christ is a perfect example of breaking any generational curses. His bloodline was filled with people full of sin, iniquity and transgression, yet He choose not to follow after their error. When we come into Christ we must understand that we have had a bloodline shift and we are reborn into a new family. Opposed to focusing on the curses, we ought to focus on the blessing that God has allowed us to be born into. The blessing outweighs the curse, but only according to our words. When we say things like “you’ll be just like your daddy” or “you’re acting like your no good mother,” we are affirming the curse rather than walking in the blessing.

When you come into Christ, you are a brand new creation in Christ and old things have passed away and all things have become new. Speak the blessing everyday. He became every curse for us according to Galatians 3:13 so that we wouldn’t have to walk in that. Break the curse by choosing to walk in the blessing.

Purchase your copy of the “Sins of the Fathers”CD Teaching Series today in our Online Store at www.harvestcc.me

Relationship Revolution starts Sunday, January 15 at 9 AM & 11 AM @harvest_cc Aurora Campus

Let’s Talk About Sex

Here’s a relationship question that came in that I wanted to address -

I was listening to your show the other day about advice from men to single ladies waiting to be found…I have experienced just recently, alot of men coming at me telling me they love me or I’m the one for them, etc. Now I just got out of a relationship that he told me the same things and I believed him though it was all lies. After talking to these individuals a little while they start trying to talk about sex. Now my question is….Would sex be a topic for conversation when getting to know someone? I ask because it seems to be a topic that comes up with every man that has approached [me]. Would a serious man of God bring that up in a conversation or is it he probably has an alternative motive?

GREAT QUESTION!!! Generally, for Christians, sex shouldn’t be a discussion that’s had too early in the early stages of getting to know someone, ESPECIALLY in the first 90 days when you’re still in the “ecstasy” stage of a relationship, which means your mind is not able to distinguish things properly because you are still in the stage of thinking everything smells and is good. If someone brings sex up early in discussions, it’s revealing a motive to you. Unfortunately, many times in the Body of Christ we don’t talk about dating and relationships and answer questions like this and so people are unprepared to handle issues like this…

The key in dating and relationships is to pray and ask the Lord for discernment AND that when God shows you something you PAY ATTENTION. There are many times the Lord will show you something, but you may not be willing to pay attention to it. If the Lord allows you to keep being confronted with the same thing, it could mean that somehow there’s some lesson that still needs to be learned so you don’t have to keep repeating the same test.

Here’s a golden key - when dating, LET THE OTHER PERSON TALK!!! Don’t be so quick to do all of the talking, let them reveal what’s really inside of them and they will!

Spoils from the War

Numbers 31:12 And they brought the captives, and the prey, and the spoil, unto Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and unto the congregation of the children of Israel, unto the camp at the plains of Moab, which are by Jordan near Jericho.

There are battles that we will have to fight in life where God goes before us and He is our strength. The battle we fight is with our mind and with keeping the faith during times that look tough. When we wage war against negative circumstances we can sometimes find ourselves questioning if we’re called and if God is really going to make a way for us. He can, He will, and He has. However, the Lord will not fight every battle for us. The Children of Israel had many battles that God fought for them, but there were others that they had to go out and fight themselves with God’s divine instruction.

A short cut to having your battles end quickly is through your praise and worship of God according to 2nd Chronicles 20:20. At the end on the battles we get to collect the spoils of war, which was everything that the enemy that you just defeated had. If you just fought a financial battle that means increased financial provision is your spoil. If you just fought a family battle that means a harmonious family is your spoil.

Standing on God’s Word

Isaiah 43:26
²⁶Put Me in remembrance [remind Me of your merits]; let us plead and argue together. Set forth your case, that you may be justified (proved right).

When you pray for something once, God hears you and He answers you. You must then stand on His word by putting Him in remembrance of what it is that He’s promised you and what it is that you’ve prayed for. It’s not that God forgets, but it’s that you must be diligent and consistent. You don’t have to ask for the same thing over and over again.

Once you pray, you then thank God for what it is that you’ve prayed for by reminding Him of His Word to you. That’s what Jesus means when He says to knock and keep on knocking. To pray from the same thing more than once is unbelief. Do you believe He heard you the first time or not? What does standing on God’s Word mean? It means that you send a reminder to the Heavens and to your circumstances that God will come through and if He said it, you must believe it and that’s got to settle it.

Get Rid of Heaviness

Psalm 103: 1-5 AMP

[A Psalm] of David. ¹BLESS (AFFECTIONATELY, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul; and all that is [deepest] within me, bless His holy name! ²Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul, and forget not [one of] all His benefits— ³Who forgives [every one of] all your iniquities, Who heals [each one of] all your diseases, ⁴Who redeems your life from the pit and corruption, Who beautifies, dignifies, and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy; ⁵Who satisfies your mouth [your necessity and desire at your personal age and situation] with good so that your youth, renewed, is like the eagle’s [strong, overcoming, soaring]!

Praise is a commandment and not an option. God has commanded that we praise Him for what He’s done and that we worship Him for who He is. When David is writing is Psalm 103, he is commanding that his soul should bless the Lord. Our soul is comprised of our minds, thoughts, our will, and our emotions and from that, praise is initiated. Sometimes we have to command our souls to bless the Lord because sometimes we must put on the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Heaviness tries to steal our worship for God. Have you ever been somewhere and felt so heavy that you couldn’t praise the Lord? That’s called heaviness and we must learn that sometimes we must praise in spite of heaviness. Only praise can release heaviness. So if we don’t praise God because we’re heavy hearted, we stay that way until we do.

God has not just given you happiness, but He has given you joy and the joy of the Lord is your strength. God’s joy increases when He thinks about you. God knows the thoughts and the plans He has for you and they are good and not for evil. Praise is a key way to see those plans realized in our lives. Today, when news comes your way that tries to make you heavy, don’t let it do it. Bless God with your soul and everything that is within you.