{"id":11092,"date":"2020-04-16T16:05:34","date_gmt":"2020-04-16T16:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pjhmail.wordpress.com\/?p=11092"},"modified":"2020-04-16T16:05:34","modified_gmt":"2020-04-16T16:05:34","slug":"it-starts-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/11092\/it-starts-at-home\/","title":{"rendered":"It Starts at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Pastor John,<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">I was reading the exchange between some folk on WhatsApp today regarding a shed, and it reminded me of an experience that I had with Jesus &#8211; He taught me a very valuable lesson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Many years ago I went through a period where I would do my best to help anybody that I could, every time that I could, with any project they were working on. I wanted to do those things for people.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">It was during one of those projects that the Lord spoke to my heart very clearly and changed my understanding about what I was doing. The Lord told me:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color:#000000;\">&#8220;You haven&#8217;t done one thing &#8216;unto Me&#8217; until you have taken care of all of your responsibilities at home, first.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">With that startling but gentle instruction came this immediate understanding:<\/span><br \/>\n<span style=\"color:#000000;\">If I was tending to other&#8217;s needs before taking care of my wife, I was stealing what belonged to her and giving it to someone else. And only what I was doing above and beyond all of my normal responsibilities counted with God. I received no credit from the Lord for substituting something I was supposed to be doing with another task.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">It gave me a new way of looking at the choices I had been making, and convicted my heart that I had been giving away what belonged to my wife. I wonder now if she had been praying, because God showed up to help.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">The Lord was very kind to me in His instruction; I had been trying very hard to do good, but I found out it wasn&#8217;t holy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:justify;\"><span style=\"color:#000000;\">Jerry<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pastor John, I was reading the exchange between some folk on WhatsApp today regarding a shed, and it reminded me of an experience that I had with Jesus &#8211; He taught me a very valuable lesson. Many years ago I went through a period where I would do my best to help anybody that I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-netmail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11092"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11092\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pastorjohnshouse.com\/mailbag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}