As we start the New Year, you will hear people say, "This year I am going to read the entire Bible." How many of them really take the time to read God's Word?  How many of YOU will take the time to read God's Word daily?  We must study God's Word and Pray. It helps us grow in all areas of our lives.   Now please bear with me on a little history today, because I need to share some things, to make a final point about how words that people speak can touch people's lives.   I had to handle a situation this week.  I wanted to change my words at times, but I held fast, and only lost it one time. Well, when someone tells you that you are not smart enough to know what you are saying, you  kind of sit up in your seat. Well, really they were saying that all preachers, teachers, evangelists, and just people saved by the blood of Jesus, are dumb, believing in illusion.   You know that is when you want to say, "Lord, can I just lay hands on them one time? I promise I will pray for their healing afterwards." Now people remember to laugh.................................Ha Ha Ha Ha!   This week, I have had a conversation on the computer with someone who says the Bible was written by man for man's own use.  Also, there is a God, but Jesus was just a man who was on earth, did a good job while he was here, but that was the end of Him.   I will tell you that during these written words of conversation, I so wanted to lay my Bible aside for just a few minutes, but I stood fast and worked hard at sharing with the person what God was telling me to share.   It did not matter to them.  They would come back and say, well, who wrote the Bible? And who did this? And who said this? And we need to remember that evil is inside of us to do as we see fit.   I used scripture after scripture, but they would come back and say, 'Tell me the answers to my questions, without using scripture.'   Boy, oh boy, it got deeper and deeper until I realized that Satan was wasting my time.  See, Satan knows God's Word also, and he even used it in the wilderness when temping Jesus.  He took it out of context, and quoted it to suit his own needs, but Praise God, he lost the battle, and Jesus was victorious.   Quickly,  let me get something straight, and do not take me wrong when I said it was wasting my time. I pray that maybe I wrote something that will one day sink in, and the person will turn their life around. I will not give up on the person, I will continue to pray for them and I told them I would.  I told them that I pray they meet the Jesus I know, and then they would know without a doubt that the Word, (Bible) was with God, and the Word was God.   I explained how God, through the Holy Spirit, uses visions, and so many other ways to speak to man, (giving solid Scriptures again)  to write His Word for us. I even tried to explain that the only way over 40 men could write the Bible and there be no contradiction, and they all tell of Jesus, should be enough to know the Bible was and is the inspired Word of God.   I do read a lot of books, and I study many great theologians of all denominations. I have studied Charles Haddon Spurgeons (know as the Prince of Preachers) sermons, not all of them, I have a long way to go.   I have study the workings and history of Benjamin H. Irwin, of Lincoln, Nebraska, a former Baptist preacher, who organized the body into the national Fire-Baptized Holiness Church at Anderson, South Carolina in August of 1898.  By this time, Irwin's group had organized churches in eight U. S. states and two Canadian provinces.  Abner Blackmon Crumpler, a Methodist Holiness evangelist in North Carolina,  founded the Pentecostal Holiness denomination in1897,  as the inter-denominational North Carolina Holiness Association. The first congregation to carry the name Pentecostal Holiness Church was formed in Goldsboro, North Carolina, in 1898. Pentecostal was dropped from the name in 1901, but was restored in 1908.    Gaston B. Cashwell,  a minister of the Methodist Church, joined the Pentecostal Holiness Church in 1903. He became a leading figure in the church and the Pentecostal movement on the east coast. In 1906, he traveled to Los Angeles to visit the Pentecostal revival at the Azusa Street mission.  Upon returning to Dunn, North Carolina, in December of 1906,  Cashwell preached the Pentecost experience in the local Holiness church. And I have studied many more great theologians. But a statement that was made by Karl Barth caught my attention, and really touched my heart.   Karl Barth is considered by some the greatest Protestant theologian of the 20th century, and possibly the greatest since the Reformation. He went to a college to speak. When it came time for the question period, a student asked him,"Rev. Barth, what is the greatest thing the Bible ever taught you?" His answer was plain and simple, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."   People, that says it all.  That is what the Bible is all about. Yes, it tells us of history past, and of things to come, but most of all, it tells us that Jesus Loves Us, This I Know.  Amen and Amen   Please take time to read your Bible this year.   Blessings, Love and Prayers, Pastor Pat

Pat Aman

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