Three steps to prepare you to be used by God

“Three steps to prepare you to be used by God.”

April 19, 2008

Written by: Samuel Crawford Jr

 

 

Have you ever asked the question; “How do I prepare myself to be used by God?”  I HAVE, many, many times in fact!  Even though, in my life I had been used by God, I had not discovered the key to be used anywhere and anytime.  I knew God would use whom He will, but I wanted God to use me! 

 

After years of study and reading the Bible I never saw a specific answer that would work for EVERYONE!  I learned from many characters in the Bible and have used their individual methods to help me.  I discovered some meditated day and night, some prayed three times a day, some went on forty day fasts, and so many other things that worked for them.  They worked for them but not always for ME!!!

 

One day while reading God showed me the answer to my question that would work for EVERYONE!!!  The answer I discover was not just for the question I asked, but it is a principle that can be used in many places.  The scripture says it will give you compassion with those that lead you away captive, in other words it gives you favor with man.  It will move God to extending His mercy and grace.  It will deliver you and even cause God to turn His fierce wrath away.  Only God knows the limits of this principle; but after examining it you may agree with me that there are no limits on where it can be applied.

 

Where is this three step principle found?  2 Chronicles 30:8.  It can be summed up in three words; Yield, Enter and Serve.  It is these three words that will help you to be ready to be used by God at anytime, anyplace!  After examining the three steps, it is my prayer that you are able to thoroughly employ them into your walk with God and be successful in all that you do for the Lord!

 

 

1. Yield yourself to God – The word yield according to Webster’s dictionary means 1. to give up possession of on claim or demand: as a: to give up (as one’s breath) and so die b: to surrender or relinquish to the physical control of another: hand over possession of c: to surrender or submit (oneself) to another d: to give (oneself) up to an inclination, temptation, or habit e: to relinquish one’s possession of (as a position of advantage or point of superiority)   2. To be fruitful or become productive. 
   1. Yielding is letting God have His way in your life.  You have surrendered yourself to God.  You make the confession; not MY will, but THY will be done. 
   2. It is becoming profitable to God.  God doesn’t profit from us when we are not available for His use.
   3. Consecration and sanctification are two words the bible uses in place of yielding.  You set yourself aside for the sole purpose of God’s use.
   4. You become available to God.  Your availability to Him depends on how much you give to Him.  Give Him little you will be used only a little.  Give Him much and He will use you much!

 

1. Enter into His sanctuary – There must be an entrance into a covenant, relationship with God.  To enter His Sanctuary does not mean going to a local assembling place we have come to call a church.  Entering the sanctuary is really entering your private place, the place where you meet God!  Your sanctuary is your heart, your mind; it is the place God dwells!  Each person is different when it comes to how they seek God and commune with Him. 

I most often will write my prayers, write the things God speaks to me; this process is called journaling.  For me it is a place I can enter anywhere I go, it is private and I always can go back to see what I prayed, what God spoke, and even write beside the prayers when He did it and how!  For me it is an effective way of communicating with God.  Daniel went to his open window three times a day.  He prayed before an open window and I have my prayers written in notebooks, yet both methods of communication are accepted by God, because we are in “Our sanctuary”!  So when you enter your sanctuary there will be certain things that you should expect:

1.  
   1. Prayer/Communication – You must pray.  Communication with God is very important because you must know what it is He wants to say to you, if you expect Him to use you to do.  As you listen to God and also as you speak to God you discover who you are and who He is to you.  His purpose for you will be revealed in these “Talks” with God.  You can expect Him to show you what to do, say, pray, where to go, what to read and etc. 
   2. Reading the Bible – God will speak, teach and confirm His will through the written Word of God.  This is another form of communication with God, but it is also a way of getting to know God and what He is able to do, what He has done and what He has declared He will do.  It is important to take time and just read God’s word, often times you will use it to minister to someone, yourself, or to speak a message to the Body of Christ.  Before Jesus can bring the Word to your remembrance you must plant the Word into your mind.
   3. Thanksgiving – Always we are to be thankful to God for everything.  Thank God for everything you learn, you see and what He does through or is going to do through you.  Thank Him for it in advance.
   4. Praise – Praising God is often the results of an inward emotion of joy or rejoicing.  Praise is most often a spontaneous action that is physical, mental, and more verbal than anything else.  You hear more about the vocalization of praise in the Bible than dances, instruments or any other method of praise.  It was a vocal praise that brought down the walls of Jericho. It was a vocal praise that glorifies God, the reason…the Greek word for praise actually is a story, and praise is a story.  Everything can praise God, it tells a story of something wonderful that God has done.  It gives Him glory for what He has done.  Israel constantly gave God praise for bringing them out of Egypt, through the Jordan and many other things God did. 
   5. Worship – Worship requires a personal experience with God!  You have to have been baptized (filled) with the Holy Ghost to be able to worship!  Jesus said they that Worship God MUST worship Him in Spirit and in truth.  We cannot worship God without having received something from Him that would cause us to ascribe, or give, Him value.  For something to become important to you there has to have been an event that changed the way you think about the thing.  That is how it is with God.  The greatest thing to me that causes me to worship Him is how great His love is.  The day I realized how much He loved me is the day He filled me with the Holy Ghost and gave me a reason to worship Him!  I had an experience that caused me to value God above everything else in my life.  One notable thing about worship is that it is not like praise in that praise is often the results of inward joy.  But rather worship is not based on how you feel, or how much God has done for you; worshiping God happens just because of WHO HE IS! 
   6. Praying in the Spirit – This is different from your communication time you have with God, this is where you allow the Spirit to pray or speak through you.  You may pray in tongues, you may pray intercessory prayers, you may prophecy into the air, and you may speak many things that you never would have thought to pray.  We do not always know what to pray for and sometimes we can’t pray, but the Spirit of God in us makes intercession and prays the things we couldn’t.  Sometime we don’t even understand what we prayed, but we do know that God has strengthened us through the prayer.  It is this type of prayer Jude tells us that will build up our most holy faith in God!

 

1. Serve the Lord your God – Serving God is an act of voluntary service or work to the Lord.  You serve God when you minister to Him in worship, showing Him homage, when you witness to others about Him, when you help others, and well the list can go on.  Your greatest service to the Lord is spreading the Gospel of the Love of Christ Jesus!  You may serve God in your local assembly, you may serve God in private locations, you may serve God in foreign countries, and you may serve Him anywhere.  Your service to God is also done by living and displaying certain things in your life.
   1. Holiness – you serve God by living a life of holiness.  Holiness is the power of God working in you allowing you to walk no longer in sin.  You have a supernatural power giving a corrupted flesh the power to be perfect as God is perfect.  Holiness causes a separation to manifest.  A Saint serving in holiness will become unique and distinguishable from those that don’t serve God.  There is a visible change in morals, purity, faith, actions, and life style that become noticeable by everyone.
   2. Ministry – You can serve God by working in the ministry.  All saints are called to be ministers, ministers of reconciliation!  We all have been commissioned to take the Gospel into the entire world and present them the Word that will bring them back to God.  You also serve God by joining different ministries within your local assembly.  You may serve as an usher, deacon, minister, pastor or any other ministry they have; that you are called to! 
   3. Witnessing – This is one of the greatest ways to serve God, because it is personal!  You don’t have to teach, preach or hand out tracks, none of those things.  Witnessing is often times telling someone about the things God has done in your life.  A witness is someone who has seen or heard something and can give an account of the act that took place.  This person is able to give their testimony on what they witnessed and persuade the people that heard it.  When you witness you are really giving a testimony to someone else about your witness to Jesus.  What He has done, what He has said, Who He is, what you know about Him; you are essentially sharing your personal thoughts of Jesus Christ!
   4. Loving – Loving is the GREATEST way of serving God!  The entire Gospel is about Love, some even go as far as calling the Bible God’s “Love letter” to us.  God loved us so much that He sent His own Son, to save all mankind from their sins.  Jesus tells us by this shall all men know that you are His disciples, that you love one another.  The love that we have is able to change every person we encounter.  There is something about Love that is transforming.  Love has the ability to comfort a person in every situation imaginable!  When you see someone that is hurting and you give them a hug, or words of comfort out of love; it transforms their hurt into comfort.  They feel they can make it if they just hold on.  Another thing about Love is that it has the ability to join multiple things together.  Two hearts are joined together in love, our hearts are joined together with God’s, and our heart is joined to those we chose to love.  That is why to serve God with our love will keep us joined together with Him and transform any situation we go through.  And we know that all things work together for the good of them that LOVE God.

 

 

Yield, Enter and Serve!!!  These three steps can bring you into favor with God and man in almost every aspect of your life.  Whether it is for ministry, your walk with God, you being a better Saint, understanding your calling, your purpose or what ever it may be you are seeking from God.  As you continue walking with God, remember those three words and you can be sure, that you have prepared yourself to be used by God!  Yield, Enter and Serve!!!

Sounds of silence

 

6 April 2008

By Samuel The Worshiper with a Word

 

 

The sounds of silence can be very isolating for a saint.  The saint begins to examine their hearts to see if they are right with God.  This could be one of the reasons that God is silent…to allow us to examine ourselves.

 

In the night time it gets super quiet.  Noises you normally do not hear are now heard.  Such as a dripping faucet, creaking in the house from the shifting of the building or the settling of the house, trains off in a distance, the sound of crickets, and so many other sounds.  That is how it is when God works too, we hear everything and everyone but God.  God is silent when He works, He doesn’t want to make a noise and distract us.  Because He wants us to get all of what He has for us. If we heard Him and saw where He was working in our life we would end up there before He was finished working it out for us and most likely mess it up. 

 

So God is silent until everything has been prepared for us.  But at that moment when God speaks and says ok do this, pray for this, go see, go do and so on and so forth, we get to see the thing God has worked out for us begin to come to pass.  God brings the morning when it is time, no sooner no later, right on time. 

 

We cannot change when the sun comes up or when it goes down, so why worry about it?  We know that at some point in time, when the timing is just right the sun will peak out across the earth and the morning will have come.  I should point out that the time each morning that the sun rises is never the same day after day after day.  Some days its up earlier 6:15 AM and other days it is up later 6:25AM, but it still comes sometime in the morning. 

 

So it is also with our deliverances and blessings, they will come at the precise time God has planned for it to take place.  The only way man can control the time of the morning is by changing the time to fit his own schedule and yet it still does not change the fact that morning came as it always has and the sun went down as it always has. 

 

The morning and night are the same to God and it is as a ball, the ball on one side has a black side the other has a blue side, just because I see the black does not mean I have a black ball, it is still black and blue.  The ball is the same, but my outlook is altered.  If I turn it a little I may still see black, a little more still black and right at the exact moment the blue begins to appear I am able to see what I really have, a black and blue ball

 

You have some balls with four, five and six different colors on each little part of the ball, for me to see them all I have to let the ball turn 365` to know what all is on my ball or in my ball.  It is the same with what God does or gives us in our life, to see it all we must go through the day and the night, the good times and the evil and then only will we really see what is going on in our life.  Even then we don’t know everything that God is planning on doing next. 

 

In the night seasons of your life you will be able to see God and hear God better than any other time because you have put on hold those every day things you usually do and have sat still with the intent to hear a word from Jesus.  That is why it is so important to separate yourself from people, places and things for a time; and seek God!  You may discover that there are some things you are holding on to that is keeping you from seeing the whole picture. 

 

It is time for you to pick up your ball and begin to rotate it.  Examine it closely, see what you really have and discover what God has really designed for you!  Because during these sounds of silence, is when you truly discover who you are and what God has for you.  Silence lets you hear the things you don’t hear with the noise of life! 

 

Ssssshhhhhhhh………..do you hear that???

 

Listen again!!!!  God is speaking to you right now!  Take this time to separate yourself from everything else just for a few moments and listen.  Lift your hands and tell the Lord, Speak Lord for I am listening!!!

1 Samuel 3:1 through 1 Samuel 3:10 (NLT) ¹Meanwhile, the boy Samuel was serving the LORD by assisting Eli. Now in those days messages from the LORD were very rare, and visions were quite uncommon.  ²One night Eli, who was almost blind by now, had just gone to bed. ³The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was sleeping in the Tabernacle^£ near the Ark of God. ⁴Suddenly, the LORD called out, “Samuel! Samuel!” “Yes?” Samuel replied. “What is it?” ⁵He jumped up and ran to Eli. “Here I am. What do you need?” “I didn’t call you,” Eli replied. “Go on back to bed.” So he did. ⁶Then the LORD called out again, “Samuel!”  Again Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “What do you need?”  “I didn’t call you, my son,” Eli said. “Go on back to bed.”  ⁷Samuel did not yet know the LORD because he had never had a message from the LORD before. ⁸So now the LORD called a third time, and once more Samuel jumped up and ran to Eli. “Here I am,” he said. “What do you need?”  Then Eli realized it was the LORD who was calling the boy. ⁹So he said to Samuel, “Go and lie down again, and if someone calls again, say, ‘Yes, LORD, your servant is listening.’” So Samuel went back to bed.  ¹⁰And the LORD came and called as before, “Samuel! Samuel!”  And Samuel replied, “Yes, your servant is listening.”

 

The mark of the beast!!! didju get it??????

the mark of the beast!!! didju get it??????

What is the mark?  Have you taken on the mark???  31 march 08 By Samuel Crawford Jr. John 6:66   What an amazing thing that God has allowed to show in this verse.  The number 666 is the mark of the beast, and yet it is shown here as a verse, but the thing that is amazing about it is the reading of the verse…66From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.   To walk with God no more is to fall from grace.  You no longer believe or trust in God.  It is blasphemy!  This verse shows us what the number 666 means when applied to people.  When you take the mark you deny God, you deny your faith in Him, you deny Jesus Christ died on the cross, and you deny the Holy Ghost.  There is a mark that will be received in the book of revelation by those that deny Christ and worship the beast.  What is the mark?  Is the mark visible in the flesh or seen only in the spirit?  Who really knows, could it be the unbelief of an individual?    The verses prior to the walking no more referred to unbelief!  Jesus knew who would betray Him and who BELIEVED NOT!  When you read “and walked no more”; remember that there will be a great deception, a great falling away from the church.  There is an offense to come for the Words and name of Jesus Christ that will cause many to take the mark of the beast.   There is a choice that is made by all to choose the mark or reject it.  There is a better choice to make and a better question to ask then; “Will you take the mark of the beast?”    The question I want to present to you this day is the same question Jesus asked the 12 disciples…Will you also go away?!  Will you choose life or death?  Christ or the world?  Will you make the choice to follow Christ in every situation or when things get rough turn and walk away?  Will you Choose to live for Christ, since He died for you???  What is your choice?   Almost every prophet in the Bible asked at least once who are you going to serve or told the Israelites to choose who you are going to serve.  The problem has not been a lack of faithfulness in serving.  The problem has been a lack of faith IN GOD!!!  The book of Hebrews tells us (11:6) without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.  So to say you believe in Jesus and not have faith in Jesus and His power to do what He said He will do is not the saving faith that you need!  You need the faith that says no matter what my situations look like God is still in control.  God is the savior of the world; He has the words of everlasting life; Jesus is the Christ and He is Lord over my life!!!    Your faith in God should be the same as it was with the Disciples, to whom shall we go?  Who else could we go to that has done what Jesus has done?  What other god is out there that has worked salvation for all man kind?  Who has spoken words into us like Jesus?  I believe in You Jesus and no one else!  You are the only One and it is You I will follow after!  And it is that faith, which Jesus rewards!!!    Today make the choice to reject the mark of the beast, reject disbelief!!!  Reject every thought, word, or deed that will try to make you lose your faith in God.  Let no demon deceive you into believing Jesus doesn’t love you!  Let your faith be rewarded by God fulfilling His word in your life!  Let God reward you with life!  Let God reward you in this age and the age to come!!!  And in doing this you can be sure to NOT receive the mark of the beast!!!   John 6:60 through John 6:71 (KJV) 60Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it? 61When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you? 62What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before? 63It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. 64But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. 65And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. 66From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. 67Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? 68Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. 69And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God.

 Samuel…The Worshiper with a Word
It doesn’t matter how much you pay in life; as long as you give more than what is required, you WILL GET CHANGE!!!!