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Showing posts from July, 2011

Irrevocable Call Wednesday Words of Wisdom

Every Wednesday you will recieve a short, encouraging words of wisdom. To receive Irrevocable Call Words of Wisdom email me at: e.limon07@ymail.com No cost. No gimmicks! Just a short word to get your day going! Here is an example: Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. - Thomas Edison I know our culture has a tendency to "talk things out". Believe me there are times to "talk things out", but there are times that require a "fight". I personally believe that this attitude of "talk things out" has created a generation with no backbone who want to be told what to do. C.S. Lewis put it this way, "The rule of the universe is that others can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, and one can paddle every canoe except one's own." I am talking about the "fight" that goes through fear. Doubt....

Summer Series: Daniel – Characters of a Marketplace Leader

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Now Daniel so distinguished himself among the administrators and the satraps by his exceptional qualities that the king planned to set him over the whole kingdom. - Daniel 6:3 In preparation for this series I have come to love the passage, Daniel 6:3. It sets the tone for all of us who step out into the marketplace to find our ministry. Let’s take a quick recap of the major points on our lesson on Daniel, before we indulge into this passage. The leadership role of Daniel can be defined through a process. One: A leader stands up for what he believes in. Two: God’s favor falls on a leader. Three: A leader will receive opportunities to use their gift. Four: A leader is ready at all times to use his/her gift! Daniel’s marketplace ministry opened doors for God to show himself to a lost and pagan nation, thus asking ourselves the following questions, One: Do those around you know who you serve? Two: Is God the center of every part of your business/job? A marketplace ministry...

Summer Series: Daniel – A Marketplace Ministry Made Easy as 1, 2, 3!

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Before teaching I was a youth pastor of a pretty good size church. I was living out my call. All was good! After three years of serving the church a new senior pastor came in and decided there needed to be some changes, which included me. Leaving as if I had failed, I was devastated. It was hard to get over. I had prepared for ministry for years and now there was going to be a change. My idea of ministry at the time was one needed a pulpit to make a difference. I was never told that my job/business is my ministry! Fifteen years ago when I first started teaching I would run into some church friends from my old stomping ground. After some small talk, they would ask what I was doing? When I told them I was teaching I would get the “Oh that’s nice, what happened to ministry” look! I even received the look from pastors as if I was a washed up preacher who gave up on “church ministry”. The very first class I taught was a 5th/6th grade combo class, which only fueled my doubt as to what I was ...

Summer Series: Daniel – A Marketplace Leader

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Introduction The Book of Daniel is divided into three sections. You have the first section of the book (Ch. 1) giving us an inside look into the life of Daniel. The second section shows his service to the courts of Babylon, where the third gives a prophetic word to Israel. Daniel’s ministry covers the entire seventy year period of the Babylonian captivity where he served as a government official for the kings. Through Daniel, God used him to impact the government he served. At any time Daniel could have been killed for his boldness, courage and lack of compromise. Daniel served four kings throughout his ministry, yet in every situation he was granted favor in their eyes as one who spoke on behalf of the living God. He was an educated man, a noble (Dan. 1:3). Scripture even gives as a look into the characteristics of Daniel as described in verse 4. He was young (teenager 15-17yrs), when taken into captivity. There was no “physical defect” found on him. He was “handsome” and “showed an ...

Happy 4th of July! A Challenge from George Washington

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President George Washington's First Inaugural Address of 1789 Fellow Citizens of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Among the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourteenth day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my Country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years: a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my Country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of h...