Listen

God has blessed my family with a beautiful house, furniture, a new car and a town I call my home. I was so happy, I started telling my friends how I am was so blessed and I kept on talking about “ME, ME, And more ME”. I was not aware that I was bragging to my friends that I am better than them. I opened my house to my friends and I started to preach how I almost lost all, but because God loves “Me” I did not. The more I told the story, it became more about me and soon my story was all about what I did and not what Jesus did for me.

James 3:9-10

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing

Matthew 14:11

What goes into a man's mouth does not make him 'unclean,' but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him 'unclean.' "

Roman 12:3

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.

A friend visited me in my new house and she shared her personal problems with me. She needed to talk and she wanted me to just listen. I am shamed to say it now, but I started to preach and I told her to read her Bible. She asked me if I could just let her finish talking before judging her. When she said this, I felt like Job’s friend.

Job 2:11

When Job's three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, heard about all the troubles that had come upon him, they set out from their homes and met together by agreement to go and sympathize with him and comfort him.

Thank God, she told me to stop talking and just listen to her problems. She did not want me to sin. God used her to show me how easy it is to sin by preaching too much.

Genesis 3: 1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

Today I am learning to listen because God speaks to us through people and we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand what God wants from us.

James 1:19

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for man's anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.

I believe God kept me alive this long not to take me to heaven (not now), but to use me as a very, very small tool to share my story to help those who are lost and show my lamp that Jesus has given me.

Genesis 1: 1

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

God is Love, Jesus is my teacher, and Jesus took me out of darkness and put a light on my path so I will not get lost. Testing comes from God but Temptation comes from within our own desires which Satan uses to pull us away from God.

James 4:7-9

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.

Blessed is the one who reads the words, hear the words and keep the words. (Revelation 1:3)