How Can You Plan Tomorrow?

New Year is here; a new time to start again; but will you really? Or have you got it all figured out; all planned? My question to you is doing it your way last year; “How did that work for you?” Are you really happy with where you ended up after 2010 came to an end? 
If you didn’t end up where you wanted to be, perhaps you need to go another direction.

My challenge to you is to use this time to ask Jesus Christ to come and be your Savior and be your Lord; to be the One who lets you know what to do with new adventure.

Which Way the Wind Blows by Annie Herring and Nellie Ward

Feel a Feeling

Say a Saying

But you'll still be lonely
If you think life is only for this moment

Do a Doing
Mourn a mourning
Still won't get you off your sorrow
So go ahead and cry, but you can't pry a look at tomorrow

You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow
You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?

Run a Running
Hide a Hiding
Whenever you hear the truth
And when you ask for the proof, you won't listen. Listen

Praise a praising

Build a building

Trying to get peace in your life
And you don't even know wrong from right
Where is your wisdom?

You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?
You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?

Die a dying
Resurrecting
By believing and receiving
Forgiveness from Jesus who took the sin from sinning

You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?

Jesus knows which way the wind blows

So how can you plan tomorrow?

Believe Him and receive

You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?
You don't know which way the wind blows
So how can you plan tomorrow?

Do you know this Jesus? Call 1-888-NEED HIM. Someone is waiting to talk with you right now. Or go to: http://www.billygraham.org/specialsections/steps-to-peace/steps-to-peace.asp 

The Man and the Birds

"The Man and the Birds" By PAUL HARVEY, ABC RADIO
Unable to trace its proper parentage, I have designated this as my Christmas Story of the Man and the Birds. You know, THE Christmas Story, the God born a man in a manger and all that escapes some moderns, mostly, I think, because they seek complex answers to their questions and this one is so utterly simple. So for the cynics and the skeptics and the unconvinced I submit a modern parable. 

Now the man to whom I'm going to introduce you was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man. Generous to his family, upright in his dealings with other men. But he just didn't believe all that incarnation stuff which the churches proclaim at Christmas Time. It just didn't make sense and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just couldn't swallow the Jesus Story, about God coming to Earth as a man. "I'm truly sorry to distress you," he told his wife, "but I'm not going with you to church this Christmas Eve." He said he'd feel like a hypocrite. That he'd much rather just stay at home, but that he would wait up for them. And so he stayed and they went to the midnight service.

Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier and then went back to his fireside chair and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another, and then another. Sort of a thump or a thud. At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. But when he went to the front door to investigate he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They'd been caught in the storm and, in a desperate search for shelter, had tried to fly through his large landscape window.

Well, he couldn't let the poor creatures lie there and freeze, so he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter, if he could direct the birds to it. Quickly he put on a coat, galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn. He opened the doors wide and turned on a light, but the birds did not come in. He figured food would entice them in. So he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow, making a trail to the yellow-lighted wide open doorway of the stable. But to his dismay, the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow. He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms. Instead, they scattered in every direction, except into the warm, lighted barn.

And then, he realized, that they were afraid of him. To them, he reasoned, I am a strange and terrifying creature. If only I could think of some way to let them know that they can trust me. That I am not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Because any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him. "If only I could be a bird," he thought to himself, "and mingle with them and speak their language. Then I could tell them not to be afraid. Then I could show them the way to safe, warm ...to the safe warm barn. But I would have to be one of them so they could see, and hear and understand."

At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sounds of the wind. And he stood there listening to the bells - Adeste Fidelis - listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas. And he sank to his knees in the snow."  

MERRY CHRISTMAS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddai8rkXWRs

What Else Do You Want?

Even after the last present was opened, as a kid I was always searching diligently under the family tree, longing to find one more present with my name on it. It’s probably why we could all sympathize with Ralphie (from “The Christmas Story”) when he longed for a bb gun instead of the football "An Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!"

Christmas time has the possibility to bring out the greed in each of us; the Bible calls this “coveting”. Without God, we all have the possibility of breaking several of the Ten Commandments; including: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” (Exodus 20:17)

Part of the reason “coveting” is sin is because in it we try to get things for ourselves instead of relying on God. WE are the ones who know best and so WE are the ones who drool over what someone else has. And that hurts and offends the God who has revealed Himself as a Father and as a provider.

I don’t think that God is against us wanting; but rather against us trying to get something that we THINK will lead to our satisfaction and happiness. So, we settle for less than what God would have given by taking something He didn’t want us to have. Instead of the choicest foods we end up eating “pabulum” (soft, bland, mushy, unappetizing and thus with little worthwhile content; used as a food for weak and invalid people). God knows what we need; we need to ask Him to provide and look to Him alone.

In the story of King David sinning with Bathsheba, I recently noticed a verse that perhaps explains what I mean. In verse 8 of 2 Samuel 12, God (through the prophet Nathan) is wondering why David didn’t go to God to get his needs met. God tells David; “And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!”

As you spend time this Christmas season, learn to look to God alone to meet your needs; ask Him so that you stay away from coveting something that is not rightfully yours.

Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave you your master’s house and your master’s wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more! 9 Why have you despised the commandment of the LORD, to do evil in His sight? (2 Samuel 12:7-9)

Remember; Jesus is the reason for the season.

This is one of my favorite Christmas songs:

"Christmas Time" by One Bad Pig from the album “Swine Flew”

Santa Claus is coming and the kids are getting greedy
It´s Christmas time
I know it´s in the story ´cause I seen it on the TV
It´s Christmas time, it´s Christmas time

You go into the forest and you cut down all the trees
It´s Christmas time
I know you got a power saw, but who plant the seeds
It´s Christmas time, it´s Christmas time

Chorus:
Whoa, whoa
Whoa, it´s Christmas time
Whoa, whoa baby
Whoa, whoa
Whoa, it´s Christmas time
Whoa, whoa baby
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

I gotta buy a present, can´t remember who it´s for
It´s Christmas time
I´ll see you in a hour when I get back from the store
It´s Christmas time, it´s Christmas time

Whoa, whoa
Whoa, it´s Christmas time
Whoa, whoa baby
Whoa, whoa
Whoa, it´s Christmas time
Whoa, whoa baby
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

It used to be the birthday of The Man who saved our necks
It´s Christmas time

Now it stands for Santa Claus, they spell it with an "X"!

It´s Christmas time, it´s Christmas time

Merry Christmas ya´ll

It´s Christmas time, it´s Christmas time...

(TURN UP THE VOLUME TO HEAR IT)
http://www.myspace.com/onebadpig/music/songs/christmas-time-30843049

When the tears fall

By Tim Hughes (When Silence Falls)

I've had questions without answers
I've known sorrow, I have known pain
But there's one thing that I cling to
You are faithful, Jesus You're true

When hope is lost
I call You Savior
When pain surrounds
I call You Healer
When silence falls
You'll be the song within my heart

In the lone hour of my sorrow

Through the darkest night of my soul
You surround me, You sustain me
My defender for ever more

When hope is lost
I call You Savior
When pain surrounds
I call You Healer
When silence falls
You'll be the song within my heart

And I will praise You
When the tears fall
Still I will sing to You
I will praise You
Jesus praise You
Through the suffering

Still I will sing to You

When hope is lost
I call You Savior
When pain surrounds
I call You Healer
When silence falls
You'll be the song within my heart

I will praise You
I will praise You
When the tears fall
Still I will sing to you
I will praise You
Jesus I will praise You
Through the suffering

Still I will sing to you

When the laughter fails to comfort
When my heart aches, Lord You'll be there
When confusion is all around me
And the darkness is my closest friend
Still I'll praise You
Jesus praise You

Tim Hughes (c)2004 Kingsways Thankyou Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWUimGv_xrU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySeBu7hJDmQ&feature=related

JUST THE SAME

Change comes into our lives every day, every moment and from everywhere. Nothing seems to be the same or stay the same. In fact, the only thing that seems to stay the same is the fact that everything changes. Each day we get new chances to see life anew with fresh and exciting opportunities; or to complain about the “good old days”.

Sometimes things change for a season and then they are brought back; “retro”. Movies and television shows have been re-written and brought back to life and modernized, hoping that we wouldn’t notice the change. Television hosts are bounced from time slot to time slot and from station to station; all the while hoping that their loyal audience will stay with them.

Products like the Ford Mustang and “original” Coca-Cola, and others have gone back to the old formulas and reintroduced them hoping that we wouldn’t realize that once again they’ve changed. But they’re not the same, and we know it. Nothing will ever replace the smell of those old cars and sugar-laced Coca-Cola.

Sometimes I don’t like change and I wish that things could stay just the same. This year my beloved Dallas Cowboys are a mirrored opposite reflection of the great team that they were in the nineties when they were Super Bowl Champions three out of four years. I’m still a Cowboy fan, but now we shout greetings to other fans; “WHAT about those Cowboys?” instead of; “How about them Cowboys?” I don’t like being in last place.

Change affects all of us deeply at times. In my lifetime I’ve seen way too many relationships end in divorce and families fractured. Homes become shattered and changed; no longer “just the same”.

I’ve seen too many people getting laid off or losing their jobs that they had for 20 or more years. It’s hard to walk around an office or business or factory when close friends are no longer working there. 

I’ve heard too many cries wondering when life would stop changing; for at least a little while, so that they could put up their feet and catch their breath. 

My friend, are you looking for hope in this ever changing world you find yourself in? The Bible tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. (Hebrews 13:8). Isn’t that great? What it is saying is that as the world we live in ever changes; GOD DOESN’T CHANGE!

In another place in the Bible, God tells us; "For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob.” (Malachi 3:6)

Our world may change, but God doesn’t. The same God who was with Daniel in the Lion’s den, Noah during the flood, David when he was fighting Goliath is still the same today. To me, those are comforting words. They are kind of like hearing that the shingles may blow off your roof during a storm but your foundation will remain unchanged!

And because He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He is still longing for you to get to know Him. Do you know Him? You can, today! We may not be able to start each day with no change, but we can awaken with the hope that as we turn to God each day, we will find His mercy fresh and new waiting for us to use. Great is His faithfulness; in that we can place our hope!

Are you ready to get your life “stabilized”? Have you tried to clean up your life with no success? Are you tired of trying to do it your way? Call 1-888-NEED –HIM; someone is waiting to talk with you.

JUST THE SAME by Phil Keaggy & Buck Herring (Original Lyrics) (unreleased demo)
When Moses and his people 
From Egypt's land did flee,
Their enemies behind them,
And in front of them the sea.
God raised the waters like a wall,
And opened up the way,
And the God that lived in Moses' time
Is just the same today.

When David and Goliath met,
The wrong against the right,
The Giant armed with human power
And David with God's might.
God's power with David slinging stone,
The Giant lowed he lay,
And the God that lived in David's time
Is just the same today.

Just the same, just the same today.
Just the same, just the same today.

When Pentecost had fully come,
And the fire from Heaven did fall,
The mighty wind, the Holy Ghost
Baptized them one and all.
Three thousand got converted
And were workers right away,
And the God that lived in Pentecost
Is just the same today.

Just the same, just the same today.
Just the same, we're just the same today.

Other version:
Locked into a corner, up against a wall
I know you've been stumblin, trying not to fall.
I can feel your sorrow, I can share your pain.
I can hear the questions exploding in your brain.

Walking in the shadows, feeling all alone
Looking for the answer, rolling every stone.
Tears that run in silence and laughing in a game,
Though my eyes can't see you
I know we're much the same.

Much the same, much the same this way.
Much the same, much the same this way.

Miles may lay between us,
And rivers where the bend,
But near you is a brother,
In whom you can depend.
So share the weight with others,
And call upon His name.
Don't try to bear the load alone
Cause Jesus took the blame.

And He's just the same, just the same today.
And He's just the same, just the same today
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIoWFO3PXf0&feature=related