Author Archives: andyfarwell

Why , as believers and followers of Christ, do we find it so difficult to share Jesus with others? I’m sure there’s many reasons. Maybe we don’t feel like we will say the right thing, or we don’t know the Bible well enough or we are too sinful so we feel like hypocrites. Any other good news we have in life we can’t wait to share but being saved from eternal death and forgiven from our sins and we clam up and keep it to ourselves. Lately I have been so convicted about this and I know that sharing Jesus is not just a suggestion but a command. The Bible doesn’t give qualifications that we have to meet to share Jesus. If we have believed we are to tell others. Romans 10:9-10 says if you declare with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that he was raised from the dead you will be saved. Notice believing wasn’t the only thing mentioned here. Declaring was there also. Peter was a big figure in the life of Christ. He was a pillar of the early church and one of Jesus’ closest disciples. Peter, though had a brother named Andrew. Andrew followed John the Baptist and when Andrew met Jesus the first thing he did was go tell his brother Peter and he took him to Jesus. (John 1:40-42)Not a lot is said about Andrew but his willingness to share the good news of the Messiah led Peter to believe and he ended up being one of the men Jesus used to begin the church. We have no way of knowing who will believe and who won’t. All we know is that we are to tell people. Matthew 10:33 says that if we disown Jesus to others he will disown us to the Father. We should never pass up a chance to share the salvation we have experienced from our Savior. We have no reason to be scared. 2Timothy 1:7 says God did not give us a spirit that makes us timid but of power, love and self discipline. I don’t want to be the guy who hides Jesus. In these volatile times people need Jesus more than ever. Who besides me needs help sharing Christ with others? Let’s pray for each other and start sharing!! Dear Lord, help us to love those around us enough to share the salvation we enjoy that comes from Jesus!! Help us realize we have a Spirit of power living in us!!

In Mark chapter 1 Jesus makes a statement to Peter and Andrew that has always seemed interesting. He said “come and I will make you fishers of men”. That has always seemed like a weird thing to say. I’m sure they thought so too. I was thinking about an old friend this morning that I used to go fishing with and a thought came to me that kind of makes Jesus’ statement clearer to me. To catch a fish you use bait. Now there’s a couple different ways to catch them. With hooks or in a trap. Dad and I used to catch them in traps to take them out of an overpopulated pond and move them to a new pond where they could grow and thrive, but catching them on a hook we intended to eat them. Now the bait is put on the hook so that the fish sees the yummy attractive bait but they can’t see the dangerous hook that will snare them and drag them to their death. It’s like that for us. There’s bait that lures us into danger like money, power, sex, drugs and many other things. It all looks good on the surface but when we take the bait we are dragged into certain death. It’s our primal desires that draw us to the bait. Now Jesus offers another kind of bait. Forgiveness, peace, love, joy and if we take that bait we will find no hooks. We will one day be taken to a better place where we will thrive and live!! By telling others about Jesus and his good bait maybe we can help lure some people into the basket instead of a hook!! Fishers of men!! His words to the fishermen seem wise when I think about it like that. I just love a good fishing story especially with a happy ending!! Dearest Lord, thank you for saving us from the hook of our own evil desires and teaching us a better way!! Wishing you all have a great day!!

If you have professed that your faith is in Jesus Christ, how committed are you? How much do you trust him? If your like me you want to say to the death! But I have yet to be put to the test. I often fail to trust him even for the little things. In the book of Daniel in chapter three the account of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego is given. They were young Jewish boys living in exile under king Nebuchadnezzer. He had put them in charge of some of his business because they were trustworthy. They put their trust in the one true and living God. The king set up a huge statue and sent word out throughout all the nations under his control that when they heard certain music they were to bow to this statue and worship the kings gods. The three young men didn’t bow. Some tattle tales told the king ,all too eager to see them executed ,about them refusing to obey such an order so the king was angry with them. He gave them one more chance to bow or they would be thrown into a furnace and be burned to death. They told the king that they would not bow to any other Gods but only the one true God and that he could and would save them. Now what they said next is truly amazing. Are you ready? They told the king, even if God doesn’t save us from the fire we still will not bow!! Can you imagine!! You see they knew that life was so much more than the here and now. If God did save them from the fire great but if he didn’t they would be saved from eternal fire in hell. So either way they were going to be okay!! That is true faith. That is belief tested and approved. They had no way of knowing if God would rescue them from the immediate danger. They only knew that he would from the eternal. Well the king had them bound up and the fire heated to 7 times it’s normal. He ordered the strongest soldiers to throw them in. It killed the soldiers but the boys were okay. The king sees them in the fire but there was a fourth person in there with them. The Lord was with them in the fire. They were walking around just fine. The king calls them out and do you know that they didn’t even smell like smoke!! Their hair wasn’t singed or clothes burned but the ropes they were bound with had burned off without harming them!! The king was amazed by their God, the one true God and his great power to save!! You and I may never be faced with such a thing and I hope we don’t but I often don’t even trust God like I should with the little things! Would you join me in praying for each other to have faith in Jesus like these boys did? Can you imagine if our faith was even in just the little things how much impact it could have on those around us like it had on King Nebuchadnezzer? Dear Lord, help us who have claimed to know you and trust in you to be able to live up to our claims. Help our lives to be proof of your saving power and evident to all those around us!!

I used to view life from the here and now point of view and so as a country boy I couldn’t conceive ever having my guns taken away. Now I look at the eternal point of view. While I still want my guns and the freedom to have them, what I really can’t stand the thought of losing is my Bible! The difference is I can hide the word of God inside of me by learning it and studying it but where do I hide the guns? So I guess if it comes right down to it the most valued thing I have, the Bible, will always be with me unless I let it go on my own. They can’t take it. Everything else is in God’s hands and whatever is his will I must follow. Psalm 119:11 your word I have hidden in my heart that I might not sin against you!!

Who else besides me has had the desire to do something and said to yourself, I can do this if the Lord will go with me, and then you start it only to fall flat on your face in failure? Anyone? No? Just me then? Okay! Awesome!! What about when God urges you to do something and it just doesn’t seem like something you want to do but you know he will be with you? When God told Moses it was time to go into the promised land and take over the land he sent in twelve spies to see what the land was like. On their return ten of them said nope! Their are giants in there! Champions of war! Not going!! But two of them, one named Joshua, said hey man, this place is awesome and God is going with us so let’s do this!! It was Gods idea, his will, his purpose for them to go but they wouldn’t do it. So God said they could hang out in the desert for 40 years then Joshua could lead the way because he trusted in God to go with them. Joshua lived to do what Gods will was not his own. Yes he had to wait awhile before he could go but because he remained faithful God used him in a mighty way!! You see, if we live to serve God and not man or even our own desires, God then will use us to accomplish his purpose. And he will never ask us to do something that he doesn’t give us what we need to do it and he will be with us!! Sound good? So we need to ask ourselves, do we want to live in fear and miss out on the blessings or do we want to be like Joshua and go with God and be courageous warriors for him? Oh God, help us to seek to do your will and purpose and not our own!!
Be courageous for Christ today!!

Most of my life I worked with my Dad. From a little boy I went everywhere with him. We were a farm family but to make ends meet Dad took on roofing jobs and repair jobs on farm buildings. Whenever a job came along that had something that might be a bit dangerous to do he would always do it to keep me from doing it so that if anything happened it would be to him instead of me. I was 49 when he passed away but he had been working with me right up till the last few months of his life and he would still try to take the risky parts of the job if he was able to. I never stopped being his little boy. 1John3:1 says see what great love the Father has lavished on us that we could be called children of God!! Think about that for a moment. A child of God. Many people were not as blessed with having a great Dad as me. I wish they were. Losing him has been the hardest thing I've ever been through, but as good as he was he cannot compare to how great it is to be a child of God most high!! God, in his great love for us, while we were sinners against him(romans5:8) sent his one and only Son Jesus to die in our place( john3:16). I know that thinking of ourselves as sinners deserving eternal death is not a very warm and fuzzy thought but that is where we are without Christ. But, that is not where we have to be. God has already done the dangerous job so that we don't have to. He, the greatest Father of all fathers, did not want us to suffer even though we deserved it so he himself made a way for us not to. Trusting in the truth that Jesus came, died, and rose again for the forgiveness of your sins will bring you into the family of people that get to call God, the creator of all things, Father. This Father will always be with you!! To have that kind of undeserved love lavished on me is too awesome to explain!! Thank you Father for your great love!! If you haven't trusted in Christ as your savior ,today is a good day to do it!!! You won't regret it!!

Have you ever went a few days without a shower? Sometimes when we go camping I don’t shower. I know I’m gross. I don’t really mind that much but after we get home and I’ve had a chance to bathe and get cleaned up I realize how much better I feel when I’m clean. I even feel more energized. In Hebrews 12:1&2 it says to take off anything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles us and run with endurance the race set before us keeping our eyes on Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith. When I think about this verse I think about how heavy my clothes get during the work day or a long camping trip. At days end it feels good to get them off and get clean. Sin is like those dirty clothes. It’s heavy to carry around and we can’t live to our fullest potential with that filth hanging on us! To run the race of life we need to shed some weight and get clean. Jesus paved the way for us to do just that. He endured the cross so that we could be forgiven. Cleaned up from our sin. He was able to deal with great opposition because he didn’t have sin to entangle him or slow him down. We can’t be perfect like Jesus but we can be forgiven which takes the weight of sin off of us so that we too can endure much!! Living in obedience to Christ instead of living the life of sin is to live life free of the weight and filth that keeps us from our full potential!! True freedom is to be forgiven. Paul who spend much time in prison for preaching the good news of Jesus and sometimes he was even in chains, considered himself a free man. He had once lived in true bondage. The bondage of sin but after he met Jesus and was forgiven, even in chains he was free!! I have never been in physical chains but I have experienced the bondage of sin and I have felt it’s weight!! I also have experienced that weight being lifted!! Thank you dear God for sending Jesus to take away ours sins that are much too heavy to carry!!

Our Pastor today urged us to more than ever this year to be in God’s word. Not just read it. But study it. Memorize it. Meditate on it. And then apply it to our lives. I don’t know about you but I can find all kinds of excuses why I don’t have time for that. I have time to go for coffee in the morning. I have time to hunt. I have time to watch tv. I could go on and on but none of those things are vital to the health of my soul. How can we know God, ourselves, or even the world without going to the one who does know. God. He gave us his word for a reason. He gave us promises that we can have now if we meditate and apply his word to our lives. Philippians 4:9 says whatever you have learned, received or heard and seen in me put it into practice and the God of peace will be with you. Psalm119:11 says I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. These words give us help in a tough world. How can we live our lives in obedience to God if we don’t know what that looks like? If we meditate on his word day and night we will be better equipped to deal with life’s troubles. The sin in our own life. Sharing the good news to those we love around us. We will better understand the love of God and how much we have been forgiven. Psalm119:105 says God’s word is a lamp to my feet and a light on my path. We live in a dark world and let’s be honest. Who of us couldn’t use a little light in our lives to help along life’s path? I know I could!! Imagine the impact it would have on our lives and the lives of those we meet if we were living out God’s word in our lives to our fullest potential? If all believers all over the world were to do this all at the same time the whole world couldn’t help but be changed!! Let’s make 2021 the year we started getting in God’s word so God’s word could get in us!! Dear Lord and Savior, your word is the greatest treasure on earth! Help us to search the depths of your wisdom and understanding from it every single day and put it into practice! Help our lives be a reflection of your great love to the dark world around us!!

We all search for contentment, or happiness, whatever term you want to use. It’s a quieting of our inner being that we long for. There’s an emptiness in there and the search to fill it to quiet our souls is an intense treasure hunt. We seem to look for it in all the wrong places. We tend to think” if only I had more money, or the right person in office, or fame, or if only I could get this job or that or lose weight or on and on and on”. Jim Carrey once said” I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they’ve dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer.” How many celebrities can you think of that have taken their own life or died of drugs overdoses? The grass is always greener right? Nope. I can testify myself that jumping the fence to greener pastures doesn’t work. We were created by God to be his people. To worship him. He loves us and without him the emptiness and the noise will follow us for eternity!! We were not designed to be without him. Yet many will go to the grave under the spell of the grandest illusion that there is happiness to be found outside of God. It’s a dead end. Literally. Eternal death. Bad thought isn’t it? Jesus came here from heaven to give us the way, the only way, to fill the emptiness and quiet the soul. To find the treasure you only need to trust and believe in Jesus and turn away from the grand illusion that happiness is found anywhere else than from Jesus and his complete forgiveness that he paid for on the cross. And his resurrection is our hope of eternal life which is promised to those who believe!! (Romans 10:9) Are you still looking? The clock is ticking! Don’t wait!! Let’s pray together for a peaceful day today! Dear God, we know you hold the true treasure of peace and joy. I do pray for our nation today. I pray that there won’t be anyone hurt!! I also pray for those searching to fill that emptiness inside and that they will find you in their looking!! Have a joy filled day!!