Prayer! Matthew 21:13

Some people think that prayer means asking for things, and if they fail to receive exactly what they ask for, then they think the whole thing is a fraud! Gerald Vann (1906-1963), British Catholic Theologian, Author of 24 Books. Comment: Prayer is really fellowship with God! Fellowship with the Father through His Son! You remember some of Jesus words! Father forgive them for they know not what they do! Father if possible let this cup pass from me nevertheless not my will but Thy will be done! We can pray for the stuff but it will perish one day! I can pray for the sick which is good but they will die one day! The fellowship with our Father through Jesus will last forever! We pray expecting but according to the will of God! All Jesus disciples were martyred except John who was boiled in oil and sentenced to a slave labor camp stone quarry on the island of Patmos where he wrote the Book of Revelation! Some in the church today might think they were out of the will of God because they did not die rich with a lot of stuff? Success is more than stuff! The Gold Standard for success with God is to love others and sacrifice yourself for their benefit! What are our prayers like? Lord I am a sinner forgive me as my Savior! Lord forgive them and forgive me! Do we continue to fellowship and worship God through prayer in Heaven? What is Jesus doing right now in Heaven? He is interceding for the Saints here on earth! Satan has no prayer life and is separated from God! The Old Testament Hebrew word for prayer means to intercede for someone else! Jesus is following this pattern in Heaven today! One of the Greek words for prayer in the New Testament means to ask for a specific benefit from God! Send your Holy Spirit and dwell in me! Whatever the benefit it is to benefit others! Pray more for souls and less for stuff! What will be our prayer in Heaven? Praying for those here on earth! Why not start today? An American Pastor Charity and Ruth Harris ministered to us in a church in Denver Colorado back in the 1970’s for two years. They have spent over 40 years on the Mission field in Africa! They build hundreds of Tabernacle churches in the remote villages of Africa! Charity is now old in a nursing home legally blind. What is he doing today there? Praying for others including my family and preparing himself through prayer for Heaven! No one on earth can bestow a greater honor on you than to lift your name up to the Son and to the Father! Jesus said my House shall be called a House of prayer and not a den of thieves! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Psychics in America! Isaiah 8:19

Annual Psychic Industry Business Revenues in United States: $2.1 Billion Dollars. Source; Statistics of the American Federation of Certified Psychics and Mediums on the Profession of Psychics, the Business of Divinity Arts, and their clients. 2015-2016. Comment: What got my attention to research this is the flood of psychic adds on major cable news channels lately! This takes millions of dollars to run these ads! The 1-800 adds are on your screen for us to call about our future! It is obvious Americans are not taking the advice of Isaiah the Old Testament Prophet? How many Christians are visiting psychics? I shutter in my boots when I hear a Christian tell me, “Ya, but that is the Old Testament and the New Testament has done away with the Old Testament!” Then why did Jesus quote the Old Testament so much? Did He quote something He did not believe? Let us in brief cover the words used in Isaiah 8:19. A familiar spirit or spirit of divination is the act of trying to conjure up spirits from the dead to predict future events! This is an occult practice and sometimes is referred as sorcery. Wizards are of the same spirit and this word actually means to howl. These acts involve chanting, howling to try to call up dead spirits! Sometimes while living in India I would walk past Hindu Temples and Mosques and would hear this chanting and howling while beating drums and tambourines as these Hindu Priests would try to mesmerize their victims! Remember the witch at Endor that King Saul inquired to about his future? Israel was ready to go into captivity and Isaiah tried to warn them! Isaiah asked the Jews a simple question! Why would you seek the dead instead of the living God? The same question needs to be asked to America today! Why would you worship death instead of life? As Halloween approaches there is not a more appropriate question to be asked! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Subterranean Retreat!

It sounds like a termite colony? The word is describing a time share property that has a lot of rooms, accommodations and permanent guests! It is a place where people are in agreement with each other! No debates about good and evil! However there is a lot of buyers remorse there! It is also described as the place of the dead! It is the Hebrew word “Shehole” (hole) from where we get our English word ‘Hell.” There are 31 verses in the Old Testament and 22 verses in the New Testament on this word. Funny of the Hebrew description is a subterranean retreat! It is interesting in the Greek of the New Testament there are four different words used! Will discuss later. So why bring this up? Every Pastor that prepares any sermon must consider two things! What are we saved from and what are we saved for? Most of the early fire and brimstone sermons of early America are gone? Heaven is not talked about much so what is left? The here and now! However the here and now is temporal! Heaven does begin here on earth after we receive Jesus Christ as Savior! Jesus talked more about the Kingdom of God than any other topic! If the reality of Heaven and Hell are not taught from the pulpit thenĀ  people have a hard time understanding why they need to be saved? Saved from what and for what? James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

By Faith!

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not use intelligence, mathematics or maps! Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) Comment: If not for the fact that he preceded Plymouth Rock by over 100 years and 300 years prior to our first 4th of July celebration I would have assumed Christopher was born in Washington D.C,! There were no maps of the new world and he bumped into North America on his way to the Indies! If you read some of his journals of his voyages he was an evangelist and God had him on a journey to find a land and nation that would support and protect the Jews and promote the Gospel around the world! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

State Funded Schools!

Universal education is the most corroding and disintegrating poison that liberalism has ever invented for it’s own destruction! Adolf Hitler Comment: If anyone knew about destruction it should have been Adolf! Was he right? Let us look at the numbers! I have found in my research that trying to find the illiteracy rate for the United States is very challenging! The 2015 UNESCO report excluded the data for the United States, United Kingdom and Israel? I had to dig for a long time and the State Funded Education Department has it well hidden in a corner of their report? According to the 2016 report there are 32 million American’s who cannot read or write! This is probably a very conservative report! If you include the millions of illegals that have come over the past few years it is much higher! In the New England Colonies prior to public education the illiteracy rate was 2 percent! Then the children used the Bible as their text book for reading! If America is going to survive we must privatize our schools! The worst tragedy is that the State funded schools work overtime to remove their student’s Faith in God! For the first time in American history the succeeding generation is less educated than the previous generation! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Covenant! Genesis 17:8

We often separate the Old and New Covenant in our Theology! However the word Covenant is the same word used in both the Old and New Testament! There is only one word used in the Greek for Covenant in the New Testament! So the only thing that separates them is time! It is the passage of time that proves the Covenant! The passage of times confirms the Covenant to the Jews, Israel and to the Gentiles! Four thousand years later from Abraham we have the nation of Israel. The word Constitution is another word for Covenant! Our U.S. Constitution is a Biblical document! Remember a Covenant is conditional. Whosoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved! Whosoever believeth in me shall not perish but have everlasting life! Here are some words that describe Covenant: determination, stipulation, league, treaty, alliance, constitution and a sacrifice! It was sealed by passing between the divided parts of a sacrifice! It is a divisor will, to put apart! Jesus will one day separate the sheep from the goats! We see in Genesis 15:18 that God promised much more land to the Jews than Canaan. However the Covenant is conditional and the Jews broke the Covenant! Captivity was their lot when they did this! A Covenant is a contract accompanied by signs, a sacrifice and a solemn oath which sealed the relationship with promises of Blessings for obedience and cursing’s for disobedience! Jesus was obedient even to death on a Cross! The Jews rejected human sacrifice! That is what the Heathen did! Therefore their Messiah could not be human! This is the challenge Jesus met in 1st Century Palestine! They were puzzled? How could Jesus do miracles that only God could do yet He appeared human? They understood God created humans yet their sacrifice could not be human! Their concept of God was He would come down as a knight in shining armor riding a white horse and destroy the Roman government! What they were really envisioning was Jesus second coming! What Jesus was trying to tell them is that He was God! A human telling them He was God was blasphemous to them! The Jews could not put all this together in their minds? God created human beings who sinned against Him and then He sacrificed Himself for them? This defied their understanding so they Crucified Him! They executed the sacrifice! What was missing was Faith! By Faith Abraham believed God! Counted as righteousness! Without Faith it is impossible to please God! We know He loves us! We will never know everything about God because then we could control Him! Could you imagine what the Judas Iscariot’s of this world would do with that! A jet aircraft flies through the air at hundreds of miles per hour! It does not think about it’s designer but simply does what it is designed to do! We are designed to worship God! When we do that in Faith we are fulfilled and find purpose in Him! Happy Easter! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Are You a Minister? 1 Chronicles 16:4

King David appointed these ministers to serve before the Ark of God! They were to record and give thanks to the God of Israel. They were to write down their experiences and record them! That is how we got our Bible! Notice they were appointed by a higher authority! They were not self-appointed! You can never be in authority unless you are under authority! The word minister used here in the Hebrew means to serve a higher rank! Much like in the military. An example would be Joseph managing all the affairs of Potiphers house. Not his wife’s affairs! So who is the General or highest rank? God Himself! If you examine God in the scriptures we find that He is also a servant! Who is the lowest rank? Satan yet because of sin he runs most of the world! You should not serve him because all of creation out ranks him including the snake! Jesus exposed the good nature of a servant when he said he who is greatest in the Kingdom of God is servant of all. You will discover in the New Testament that the word minister and servant come from the same Greek word, “diakonos.” This definition can range from a waiter of tables to running errands to a teacher or a Pastor! Satan is not a servant! In fact he enslaves people so they do his bidding! God gives but Satan takes! God has given us life but Satan has taken life through death! So we have givers and takers! Our Bible says give and it will be given to you pressed down and overflowing! It also says the wages of sin is death! Remember we minister to the highest rank when we serve others! God will enable us to do this if we will humble ourselves! Pride will cause us to want to be served! Two different attitudes with two different outcomes! As Easter is approaching let us remember God sacrificed Himself for us! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Offering and Worship! Genesis Chapter 22

Are they the same? God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac up for a burnt offering on Mount Moriah! Moriah means God will provide! The word offering here means to rise up or lift up! The word is usually associated with morning! Those who love me seek me early! It is used in a sense of going up. However the word is not used in the sense of intimacy! So what is a burnt offering? It is not your wife’s cooking! It means to ascend up like smoke! Remember an offering is something we do! Your tithes and offerings is something you do and God requires it of us! So what is worship? I am glad you asked! The word worship used in the Old Testament was first used in Genesis 22:2. The word means to bow down! Just the opposite of offering! It means to prostrate oneself! It means to fall upon your knees and touch your head to the ground! However after the Cross the New Testament concept of worship is different! We still bow down in prayer in submission! The Greek word used has a new dimension! Worship used here means to dwell together in union and completion! Now God takes possession of you! You are no longer your own! People are either God possessed or demon possessed! No middle ground here! Half and half is a milk product! Worship means to lean towards Him and be partial towards Him! No one will ever be able to talk you out of or persecute you out of partiality towards Him! This is the New Testament concept of worship! In the Old Testament it was always worship from afar! After the Cross now God has His dwelling place in us! The Holy smoke is inside of us! Since His son Jesus made the sacrifice for our sin the walls of partition are broken down! Worship is now an inside job! Greater is He who is in me than He who is in the world! He works His righteousness in you by dwelling in you! This is what born again is all about! Let us think about this as Easter approaches! Jesus early in the morning bowed down in the garden of Gethsemane and worshiped! Then He was lifted up on high on a Cross on Mount Calvary! Jesus died once so that you would only die once and escape the second death! Your Salvation includes many things! Freedom from guilt, death, hell and the resurrection to judgment! The resurrection to everlasting life and His power residing in you cannot be compared with anything this world has to offer! The promises the world makes to you will perish with the world! My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness! If you submit and let Jesus take control of your life nothing that preceded this new reality will ever compare! Happy Easter! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Good Success? Joshua 1:8

To start off the new year we need to know what good success is? The word means to be prudent! To act in wisdom, insight and devotion! When you add circumspect with intelligence you find good success! T.D. Jakes once said if you have good success then it is possible to have bad success! What would be bad success? Living your life out of the purpose and will of God! Remember good success is conditional! The scriptures must not depart out of your mouth! You must meditate on the scriptures day and night! Follow the scriptures by living them out in your life! Trust Jesus and not the world! Also remember that God is still giving you the success! Happy New Year! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com