When Jesus Left The World: The dilemma of saying 'Goodbye" to friends

When Jesus Left The World                                  by Kelly Durant 4-30-17

Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

2. Have you seen a new advertisement about a web company, a site where you can post things to sell called, ‘Let Go’? You might see a person holding on to some old amplifier or machine taking up space in the house for years not being used and then it is offered for sale and then someone out of nowhere comes to buy it.

This simple commercial represents many things in life. Sometimes we hold onto too tightly to many things but then there comes a time when we have to just ‘let go’ and accept the fact that we no longer can keep holding onto the past.

As humans, we tend to hoard and collect too much stuff. We also as humans have a hard time moving on to seeing new horizons. Are you familiar with the phrase that says something like this, ‘In order to see new lands you have to be willing to say goodbye to the shore you are leaving’?

3. This is a difficult subject. Everyone by now knows we have a new appointment and that we are leaving Hialeah and it is not easy at all! It is easier to let go of stuff that it is to let go of people! But always remember that every time God knows what he is doing when a change comes. We love you and will miss you!

Changes are difficult and we are reminded that we are not always in control of everything. Do you recall this verse, Matthew 5:36 ‘Nor shall you swear by your head, because you cannot make one hair white or black’? No matter how hard I concentrate my hair will not change back from grey to brown, so whether we like it or not we cannot stop all that happens to us in this life. We live in a fallen, decaying world and kids grow up, and people pass on to the next life.

I think I must have been 2 or 3 years old when I found out that no matter how loud I yelled and cried in the store, if mama wasn’t going to buy ice cream for me there was nothing I could do about. All our lives we discover over and over that some things may go as we want and others will not. God has His plans for us, and we have our plans for ourselves, and others have their plans for us, but life can only be lived well by allowing God to take us where we need to go. And many times we do not understand it at all but we will one day, if not on earth in heaven.

4. My wife and I have had to say goodbye to our loved ones and friends too many times in our lives! Remember that even before the Salvation Army we moved around a few dozen times. We do have deep holes of sadness and joy in our heart remembering our friends in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Atlanta, and many places. We would love to have them and you with us all our lives but it is not possible.

What is wonderful though is that from time to time we are able to see a few friends in Atlanta or at some camp, but it is not the same, it is hard to catch up on years gone by when you only have a few minutes to chat. Thank God for heaven because there we will be able to spend eternity together and we will finally be able to hear the complete story of everyone’s life, not just parts, and that is fascinating to me. I thank God for your lives and how we know you.

I remember very well the first shepherds or pastors I had in Oklahoma that helped me learn the Bible and prepare me for mission work. I only knew them for about 9 months but when I had to say goodbye to them to go to the mission field I cried a lot as they prayed over me saying goodbye. I use to never cry but the experience of being loved, and the fact that one has learned to love by someone teaching you God’s word, is invaluable! It is emotional. God’s love takes away our stone hearts and gives us a heart of frail flesh that can feel love and give love!

5. So at age 21 I got my first taste of what it is like to have to say goodbye to your mentors, to your brothers and sisters in Christ. And I said goodbye to my mother! I was afraid, I thought I would not make it, but what I discovered is God will always put good people in your path. In God’s work I have never lacked for friends who loved and cared for me and my family. No matter who you have close to you, you always learn to get along and do the mission God has for you.

Do you ever wonder what happens to your friends after you leave a place? There is nothing more satisfying than to hear that one of your friends went on to do good things for God and others. Some of our kids in Atlanta are Cadets now! Not everyone has the calling to move around, not everyone can be Officers or missionaries, but we always respect what everyone can do for God. Each person has great value when living governed by love and holiness. We are always made happy remembering our friends that we got to share at least a few years together.

Each of God’s children are important to him and God wants you to do great things for Him. Never think that the mission is over just because you have to say goodbye to your Captains or pastors, it only means that your mission is just starting! New is always different, but we adjust and then all becomes well.

6. What did Jesus say right before he ascended into heaven? 28:20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. There is nothing more I could add to that!

What Jesus is saying, and all of what we can say when we say goodbye is that we hope that our legacy is this, that we taught you do obey God’s Word to do the mission God has for you. And this verse is very meaningful to me because what Jesus saying to you and me is that ‘He is with you and me always, even to the end of the world.’ That means not just until we die, but until the very end of everything!

Jesus is absolutely real; when we pray, when we are in danger, when we study God’s Word, it is then we can sense His presence still here. He is still here and alive and His Holy Spirit moves in us. It really doesn’t matter that this world is degrading into hell, Jesus is with us to the very end and He has the salvation of our souls in His power and all that really matters that He saves and has a heavenly place for us. There is a line in the hymn of “A might fortress is our God” that says, ‘Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also, the body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still, His kingdom is forever!’ These words are powerful!

7. One way we experience the love of Jesus is by loving each other. That is Jesus legacy.  John 13:35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” It really does change you when you are loved by someone! I have given love and I have been loved back hundreds of times by so many, no matter the culture. Jesus in us is powerful when we connect by His love!

If there is a take away from what we have taught everyone, we pray that it is obedience to Jesus: that you learned how to love, you learned how to be humble, to get hit on the cheek and roll with the punch, and that you learned of your importance to God so you serve Him and others with all your heart in holiness.

I was thinking about it, in 8 years if you multiply an approximate 50 times a year you have heard me and my wife preach, it means that you have heard an approximate 400 sermons! And the amount of hours spent together on Weds., Fridays, Sundays, and at camps or on visitation implies a few thousand hours of our lives spent with most of you! All of this time, and the experiences through the good and bad times, is an unforgettable treasure we are very thankful for! 

8. Here is something to consider, that you and I are never alone, Jesus brought God’s Spirit into the world in His absence, and everyone can receive from Him and we all share that together. John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

I have found it amazing that so many times when you are witnessing to someone, counseling, or praying, it often seems like God puts the words in your mouth. You are amazed thinking, where did that come from? How did I remember all of that to say? Wow, that’s God’s wisdom in me! It comes from the Holy Spirit! So many times we experience Jesus guiding you and me, agreed? We get guidance direct when pastors are not nearby to rely on, so this is a great advantage.

So no matter who your pastors are, Jesus is there, the Holy Spirit is there, and you are never alone in this Christian life. That is what I always have loved about serving God; you are never alone, someone will be there for you, at least a few.

9. Everyone deserves our love and respect and we have given it and received it! We forgive as Jesus taught, and you do as well. You know as time goes by one usually forgets anything bad about the person, and all you recall is the good, or at least I am that way. How amazing is our God of love, amen?

Real friends who love one another as Jesus taught have the supernatural Holy Spirit with them all the time. Real friends never forget the good and remain friends all their lives! If we get to see you again 6 months from now, or only 6 years from now, we trust that our love and connection will be as it is today!

Memorize this beautiful promise of Jesus Matthew 28:20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”  Jesus will return for us all and we all will share heaven together! I can’t wait for the day we are united with Jesus and all our loved ones!

The Winds of Change: Some Love it, Some hate it!

The Winds of Change: Some Love it, Some hate it!       Kelly Durant

John 3:7-8

7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. 8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

2. How many of you like surprise parties? I think we all have seem people who love them, and then there are other people who get mad, scared, or confused when others do something without their previous permission. Some people when they walk into the house and are suddenly greeted by 20 people waiting on them to get home with a cake love the fact others are there for them. But then others that are more shy to jump into the excitement, get bothered or upset.

Like it or not our lives are always filled with surprises.  I recall I knew someone who was a manager and they repeated a certain phrase all the time, “I hate surprises”. For most of us changes and surprises can be somewhat stressful, I think none of us like sudden changes, after all we are ‘animals of habit’ and anything that takes us away from our comfort zone is looked upon as dangerous and undesirable.

But like it or not we have to be ready for surprises, especially in the traffic of Miami. It seems like a weekly event that some driver does something crazy and almost kills you and me and you brake hard with your heart pounding in your chest after escaping near tragedy. Life is going to throw at us some difficult challenges, and these are continually happening, and there is no way to be ready except with the foreknowledge that we know we must be ready for many things.

3. But can we really prepare ourselves for the things that will come? I don’t think so! You and I have to grow muscles of faith with each battle we fight over these changes. Some battles we win and some we lose. Some people in life end up in bad circumstances and it was not always their fault: It was an accident, or some misfortune. And then there are people who end up in bad circumstances because it is their fault: they looked for! They did not listen to God!

Some people will not listen to anybody! They have to learn everything the hard way! They learn only from the lessons of hard knocks. Do you know people like that? Maybe you are like that to some degree! But let’s look at what come in life from even another angle. Some people think many bad things happen to them because they are cursed! God’s children are free from curses!

It is the trick of the devil to get people to think that all bad things happening to them are a product of some terrible sinister power. There is a certain evil power out there but Satan can only control his own, he cannot control you if you are God’s child! But if one of God’s children falls for temptation, he will fall victim to the power of evil until he repents. Then he or she will pay for the consequences of his actions, and sin always is damaging, embarrassing, humiliating, and makes a fool out of you or me before God and everyone. Sin may provoke disgust and the loss of friends, a mate, the loss of property, money, or even your health! Live in holiness!

4. So after all of this said, we are now led up to this question, who is in control of your destiny?  Who is doing what? God? Yourself? The devil? There are spiritual forces at work and the path a person choses will determine everything about how their life will go but most everyone choses to do life as they please within their possibilities. But not very many of most people’s aspirations become reality. Why? They chose poorly. They chose vanity over God’s will and God gave us freewill so moment by moment you are choosing His will or your own, agreed? However, people can be also possessed by evil spirits or the opposite, guided by the Holy Spirit, and then they have a supernatural support in what they do.

The people who go places in life are the ones who are willing to go anywhere at anytime to obey God. Jesus prepared all his potential followers with this attitude. Jn 4:8 The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:

Jesus compared those who would follow him will be as the wind. Sometimes all things are calm and we feel no wind at all, but then it might start blowing from the east or the west. But you cannot predict the times it will blow, nor the direction, nor anything about its next move because our huge geothermal wind producing globe is always in flux. The wind is uncontrollably wild, it whistles through buildings and forests, and no one can catch it or control it! You just have to be as a sail on a boat and ride with it as it blows you to your destiny.

5. The wisdom of Jesus always amazes me! Then he goes on to say, Jn 4:8 (b) ‘so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’ So if we as Christians are born again (as mentioned in the previous context), then this basically means we must reprogram everything we have learned and start over and be at the will of the unpredictable Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is God’s communication device and we feel it and see its effects and we must learn to flow with it. The wind has a power beyond human power! Hurricanes and tornados prove nothing can stand after the winds have blown over! But destructive wind is not the wind of the Spirit, it is just physical wind.

So if you want to be led by the Holy Spirit then you have to be a free standing object! For an item to blow with the wind it must be free from being weighted down. Are free from your own heavy weights of sin? You and I just need to be free to let the Spirit blow you and me where God sees fit. Staying in one place just to be comfortable can become more of a burden than a blessing, especially if God is trying to move you on and you are being resistant and disobedient.

Jesus wants us to be led by the Spirit, and He gave Himself as an example. He travelled everywhere and was free. What instance comes to mind when we first know of Him being led by the Spirit? It was when he started His ministry! The very first sermon Jesus preached started off with these beautiful Words from Isaiah 41. Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 19 To preach the acceptable year of the Lord. So the Spirit touched Him to do those things! Do you do those things, heal, preach, free, give sight; all of it implies that if you have His Spirit you will be serving God and hurting humanity.

6. The next encounter Jesus has with the Spirit is this, Matthew 4:1 ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.’ What? The spirit leading into temptation? Into a dessert where there is nothing but blistering heat, sand, and sky?

So why did it He lead Him there? Because God has a plan with each of us to train us to learn how to conquer the temptations of Satan! The Spirit may lead you to a certain place for a certain time for a certain lesson but then God moves you on for the next mission. At that moment you first feel sure you are doing God’s will but then attacks come to you. When things happen you may not understand it, but later you will. All things each of us experience, while on God’s path, are for a reason. Everything is God’s design so we grow in faith.

So the Spirit is never wrong even when things seem to go wrong after obeying. I have been tempted to think, well, why did God open doors for me to go to this certain country when many things there were so hard. But if God wanted all those things to happen to me for a reason, for a lesson, then even though I suffered, thank God I learned from going where I had to go!

7. I will give you examples but I will not name the countries. of what I learned about people and human nature while being led by the Spirit to go preach there. I see now I was too naïve to Satan’s control over regions but once you live to experience dozens of cities, it becomes clear that the fight we have is to remain strong and to win others for Jesus. It implies a very intense persistence that must last you all your life and that is not easy! What is easier is to take the wide gate to hell, but is that worth it? A few years of rebellion to later pay with eternity?

Let’s consider my previous life before serving God, one of being led by my own spirit. What were my temptations that God wanted me to learn to detest? They were sex, drugs, and rock and roll!  Consider this though, human pleasures were created by God to be enjoyed but within the context of His statutes implies that, marriage, natural medicines, and music are all amazing created by God, but Satan has hijacked all things good to make them excessive and evil. Human pleasures are like a fire, controlled in the fireplace they give warmth, honoring God in all things we do and is what He wants. But what happens when we do not honor God with our appetites?

Sex: In a certain city I saw horrible frighten faces offering sex for cheap in the streets, so instead of getting attracted I was disgusted. Drugs: In other cities drugs were commonplace and I often had to pray with high young people so their bad trips and shaking bodies would calm down, I grew to hate drugs, which I once thought were cool to experience. Music: I used to play loud music all day, and in many cities I had to put up with loud party music playing all night long making it necessary to put cotton in my ears to sleep. So, sex, drugs and music all took on a totally different paradigm when experienced from the Spirit of God’s perspective and not the flesh!

8. What else did I learn? That people, including immature or false Christians can be cruel, selfish, backstabbing, hypocritical, and piously religious holier-than-thou critics who, instead of embracing and loving you as a brother (or sister), they seek to step on you and show off they are better than you! How many people do we know that appear to be led more by bad spirits instead of by God’s Holy Spirit?

It could take me the rest of my life to write about all that God has taught me, and most you of could share similar stories in your ministry experience! But obedience to God’s will is what is needed to be on the path of spiritual growth. Even Jesus had to learn, so we must ask the Lord, ‘Lord take me where I must go to learn obedience to your will!’

When we think we are in God’s will and things are not glorious and beautiful we must remember what was said about Jesus that He had to learn to subdue His half flesh nature. Hebrews 5:8 Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; Imagine how much more you and I will have to learn all our lives! And I am old, and I am still learning more about God and His teachings from the Spirit!

9. Are you ready to get blown away by the Holy Spirit? You cannot control it, but if you ask for it, it will come and it will show you where to go and what to do. Luke 11:13 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

The problem with the wind of the Holy Spirit is too few ask for it, too few let it blow them where God wants, too few ask for it daily, and too many Christians remain comfortably numb weighted down by their own stubborn will. But going where God leads is like riding an exciting roller coaster where the wind in your face, and the ups and downs are intense, but the ride is overwhelming invaluable at the same time.

Our life in God is wild, it is compared to the unpredictable wind as in John 3. The Salvation Army started out with people getting sent, and hasn’t God blessed our service following and doing as Jesus did? The ‘winds of change’ in the world are always happening with governments rising and falling, but that is the world so what is of extreme importance for our heavenly destiny is that we get blown by the Spirit of God and not the spirit of the world! Trust in God, He knows what He is doing with you and me!