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MINI-SERMON #1
REASON FOR EXISTENCE 

Way back in March, 1986, I had written my first sermon.  It was inspired by a customer at a restaurant where I worked as a waitress.  One evening when we weren’t busy I was talking to him.  Not knowing how I got started  I began telling him Bible stories for about an hour. I said I would write and try to explain the basics to him. He told me to make it simple. 
Again he came in when we weren’t busy.  Now in 2009 I realize God sent him in!  PTL!  I began with more Bible stories for about a half hour.  When he was leaving, he said: “Thanks for the Mini-Sermons”.  Thus the Mini-Sermons were born.  It was all a miracle and I know this was God’s plans for my life.  I had the holy boldness to pass out 100 copies a week to my customers.  They were eager to get them. I could have been fired for doing this but no one tried to stop me.
Last night when I knew I was to bring them back to life, I heard a preacher talk about how we need a wilderness  or dessert experience before we can go on to greater heights (God’s “go” power.)  In 2000 I began writing again but this time on the computer---not with an electric typewriter.  I wrote steadily for 3 years. 
My wilderness period was sleep apnea and I was in a deep depression, followed by a slight heart attack.  I didn’t want to do anything or see anyone.  I hated that time but I felt unable to do anything.
I know the Mini-Sermons were God’s doing. With more understanding and in God’s plans, I will be rewriting them in the order I first wrote them. They were written for those who didn’t know the Lord yet.  But it doesn’t hurt to read and remember what God has done in your life if you are already living for God.  These are step by step lessons on what salvation is and how to live as you go on.  May God bless you as you as you read. A long time ago God wanted someone to talk with and to love.  He wanted man to be His constant companion with an intimate relationship.  He made man in His own image with a free will to decide whether he wanted to love and serve God.  If man was forced to love God, it wouldn’t be love.
Before He made man out of dust, God created a beautiful new world for man to enjoy and care for.  He would be denied nothing. To prove man’s love and loyalty to his Maker, he had to be tested.  God gave him one simple rule.  “It’s all yours except for the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”  Read Genesis 2:16-17.  Right from the start man showed his greediness and dissatisfaction.  He wanted even more than God was giving him.  So he ate from the forbidden fruit.  It wasn’t the fruit that Adam Eve really wanted.
The devil has always been a liar and a deceiver.  To show who we are dealing with to this day and to the end of Satan’s reign as Prince of this world (but only with God’s permission-a big part of God’s test for us.  Jesus said in John 12:31 “Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of the world be cast out.  Satan wasn’t  happy to be just one of God’s created beings like we are.  Isaiah 14:12-16: “How are you fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!  How you are cut down to the ground, which did weaken the nations!  For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven.  I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.  I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.  I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.  I will be like the most High.  Yet you shall be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit”. The devil will be discussed more fully in another issue.. When we know our enemy, we can fight and win more successfully.
The devil comes in many disguises to work his purposes.  And just As God can reign in our hearts as well as in heaven, so can the devil.  We have to choose which one we will follow.  Satan came to Eve in the disguise of a serpent to present his first temptation.  Read 3:1-7.  God gave His first and only command at this time to Adam.  Eve got it from Adam.  She added her version to it when she said: “God has said: You shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”  God didn’t say a word about touching it.”
The devil jumped right in and said: “You shall not surely die: for God does know that in the day you eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good from evil.”  Did Eve feel inferior because Adam was created first and she was made from his rib?  way?  Think about it; just my question.  Why did God choose to do it that way?  Think about it.
Eve wanted to be wise so she ate the fruit.  Adam didn’t question her but he deliberately ate it anyway when she offered it to him.  He knew he was being disobedient. Men and women have been disobedient ever since.

Because of their disobedience, they were thrown out of paradise and not permitted to return.  There had to be a way to get back to God and be restored to God’s original plan for them.  God, being God, knew what man was going to do so He already had a back-up plan, involving His only begotten Son Jesus Christ.  Even before Jesus was born in the flesh, God had him in mind.  God also had us in mind. He had plans for each of us.  Some obeyed and some went their own way.
Matthew 18:3 “Except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”  Children have to depend on others to take care of their needs.  They accept their help with blind faith.  We can only become a child of God in His Kingdom, by accepting Jesus as our savior and Lord of our life, by this same blind faith.  We have to believe God can and will take care of all our needs.  But too soon, the physical child learns the sinful ways of the world and strays from the protective  cover of their parents.  Too soon, the spiritual child of God has to be careful of his walk with God or he too can stray from the path.  There are so many temptations all around him.  More and more every day. He is often weak and gets off the right path.  One good thing is the Holy Spirit will pull him back.  Man can get stubborn and fight it and if he doesn’t become too hard hearted, he will turn to God eventually.  Why do we waste all that precious time?
Since man could not obey one little command, God has to treat us like little children.  He cannot talk with us as man to man like He once did with Adam so he became a Father to us.  He has to teach us His ways by repetition, scolding, chastising and often severe punishment.  Although we often anger Him or run away from Him, He remembers we are only made of dust.  Only through His grace, mercy, unchanging love, patience and understanding of man’s sinful nature, could He be able to remold us into the perfect spiritual being He meant for us to be.  He did not take away our freedom to choose.  We choose which side we want to be on in the game of life or death.
To be continued.