Without Trust, It Is Impossible….

…To please God, that is.

We live in a cynical society. Everything from our personal to private lives, the words we say and the motives behind our actions, all of these are under attack or will be before we know. Homosexuals believe we are “haters” simply because they don’t trust us. Pro-Abortionists trust that we don’t truly care about the best interests of a woman desiring to have an abortion or the life that she carries inside of her. These are but two of the many issues that confront the body of Christ in today’s society. Why? Because they have not love. Oh sure, they will say that they are open minded and all embracing of all people of all walks of life, but not really. You know this to be true whenever you speak to someone on any topic where the wisdom of the Bible contradicts the wisdom of the World. And even to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they do love, it’s not the right kind of love. The kind of love we’re talking about is found in 1 Corinthians 13, it’s the kind of love that they are all looking for but are unwilling to submit to.

Submit to love?

I can understand responding to love but the very word submit, unfortunately, carries with it a negative connotation in today’s vernacular, but that is exactly what we all need to do, submit. We need to accept the love of God on His terms and conditions, which are for our good, and trust Him.

Love and trust go hand in hand because God is love and He is the God that cannot lie. As we take Him at His word His love is shed abroad in our hearts and we respond. We desire to share this love with others through our demonstration and testimony. We don’t hate the adulterer, the alcoholic, the pedophile, the homosexual, the abortionist or the woman having the abortion, quite the contrary. We were once those people, doing what they are doing looking for love and fulfillment and coming up dry and empty. Much like the smoker with emphysema tries to urge younger smokers to quit before it’s too late, so too the Christian reaches out to our neighbors with the love of the Savior before it’s too late. The great commandment is to love the Lord thy God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength and the second one is to love our neighbors as ourselves. It’s the way we please God. The world can’t do it because they do not love God and where there is no love there is no trust. Without trust, it is impossible to please God. Our task is to help them see God in the light of scripture and through the faithful witness of the Holy Spirit in our lives. May they see the love of God in us today, come to trust Him as we do and thereby bring joy to Him and experience the wonderful rewards that He has waiting for each and every one of His children.

Greater Cleaner Coverage.

Wednesday, May the 11th, the crew headed back out to take another crack at cleaning up the signal of 103.5fm in Syracuse. It was a beautiful day and one might say ordained of the Lord. The sun was shining, not a cloud in the sky and I imagined what it must have been like for Abraham the father of us all. They stood on that hill overlooking the city and the  lakes Onondaga and Oneida wondering how many people would be impacted by our Lord Jesus, as He would open up His word and promises to them as He did to Abraham on Mount Moriah so many years ago. We may never know just how many people have come to know Christ or yet will come to know Him through the broadcast of the Gospel on WZXV,

but that’s not what we are called to know. Our call is to proclaim the Gospel to every creature, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to do the rest.

So they took up their cross that day and followed their call. They were there to take down an existing antenna and replace it with one more suitable for the job while contemplating the idea of moving the antenna mount to the south/west corner of the building, something that would have made the project more involved. The premise was that we were receiving interference on our receive antenna due to structures and foliage directly in front of us, as you can see in the picture below.

So they prayed, sought the Lord’s wisdom and began unhooking everything. They thought, why not hook up the new antenna first in a manner that would push us out away from the antenna mount and center us optimally to the other structures and trees there on the hill? So they did just that as you can see from this image.

After

They were surprised at the immediate clarity of the signal. Two of the crew decided to drive around Syracuse and check out the signal strength while another member of the team began the process of taking apart the old receive antenna and lowering it to the ground from the roof. They drove through Nedrow and made our way over to East Syracuse, Kirkville and finally made their way over to Liverpool. They were greatly pleased with what the Lord had done and the wisdom He had given to our engineer team. Praise the Lord. We can’t wait to see the fruit of God’s work in the lives of those in Syracuse. We are not any stronger, signal wise, but the clarity is tremendous as we are high above any obstructions  and able to reach areas that we were not able to before. Thank you for all of your prayers, words of encouragement and your financial support. Just when we are tempted to take this ministry for granted, the Lord uses listeners like yourself to remind us what we are doing, why we are doing it and who we are doing it for. Please tell your loved ones about WZXV in the Syracuse area on 103.5fm.

New Look, Same Message

New look, same great message.

We are so excited about our new home on the web. Now I know many of you have just gotten used to navigating around our old home but I think you will find your way around our new one much quicker. The menu items are more intuitive, respond quicker and give us a greater ability to update content so as to keep you posted as to what the Lord is doing. We would love to hear what you think. Get in touch with us here either by phone or email and give us your input. One more thing to note. Many listeners have called and emailed to tell us of dead links, error pages or just the inability to get to the page via Google and other programs. I have been asked to let you know that we are working on those issues and hope to have them remedied soon. One way to help is to clear your cache of old remnants of WZXV and type the address into your address bar. Second, patience truly is a virtue and sooner or later the web will catch up and those search engine links will catch up in about 2 to 6 weeks, sorry, but that one is beyond our control. Other than that I hope you have fun looking over the website and be looking for continued growth as we look for ways to meet your needs according to Gods riches in glory. Thank you for your patience, prayers, gifts, and for listening to WZXV. Stop by WZXV today.

Home Sweet Home

Well, at last we have arrived at our new home in Syracuse. No worries, the frequency is still 103.5, but now we are situated on the southwest leg of a tower belonging to WTVH.  If you live in Syracuse you can look up on the hill southeast of the city, and there you will see a giant fork like tower.  We are to the north of that tower, 393 feet in the air.

Our New Home

We are so excited about what this new elevation will mean for our signal and for the people of Syracuse. As it stands right now, our signal is pretty dirty, however, it is really clear from obstructions. We could get the signal well out side of the normal range while we were driving around. What does that mean? Well, Lord willing, once we clean things up, we are thinking that we may fill that void on the thruway where we were hoping the Auburn translator would fill, but did not.

Receiving 99.7

If you will notice our old location was not more than a couple hundred feet away. Believe it or not, we are a little higher with our receive antenna than we were at the other location. We have a sinking suspicion that that could be the problem with our reception. The engineer was playing a game with our signal and the Earth to try and cancel our other frequencies. Now that we are higher up that trick is no longer working. Pray that the Lord gives our engineer insight as to what can be done now to help.

Inspecting The New Broadcast Antenea

Because of our new elevation, we needed new hardware to comply with our original application for the old location. Our power is not any greater on the transmit side but again, once we clean up the signal we will have a perceivable increase. Did I say Lord willing?

Up Up And Away

Here you see the riggers raising our broadcast antenna up to the 393 foot mark. If you look at the pic at the top of this post, we originally thought we were going to be in the second to the last white segment of the tower. We found out we were wrong, but a good wrong. We learned that we were actually going to the top of the last red section, even higher. Praise the Lord! You would not believe how heavy that equipment was but it went up pretty easy with the winch. Have you noticed how blue the sky is? It was a gorgeous day, the Lord is so faithful. To think we were upset about last week’s attempts. God know He had a greater day in store for us.

Climbing To The Heavens

In this picture you can see just how high we went. Dave, one of the riggers, is waiting for the antenna. He actually has to climb higher than the location so that they can then lower it into position. It took the riggers about an hour to climb with the tag rope and coax cable and they were up there for about an hour before they began their 2 hour descent anchoring  the cable all the way down. They started their climb a little after 12 and were back on the ground around 4pm. They were cold due to the fact that they were sweating on the way up because the sun was so warm.

Making The Connections

Here you see Grey, our Engineer, setting up the equipment and getting it ready for the connections. This building, believe it or not, is one of the nicest of all the buildings that our translators are in. We broadcast from buildings such as sheds in the middle of the woods and even tractor trailers, so believe me, this place is nice! See the blue paint around the perimeter of the room? We believe that this room use to contain water for which they cooled the old transmitters that had been housed in the adjacent room.

Left to Right-Joel, Lee, Dave, Greg

These men were outstanding workers. They did a great job and they worked non-stop until it was done. Not once did they take a break to do anything other than what they were there to do. Dave and Lee helped us on our Buffalo build. We owe a big thank you to Jem Star Construction for a wonderful experience and a great group of guys. You gotta love climbing to do what these guys do for a living. So, overall, we were blown away at what the Lord did in delaying our attempts to build last week and we could not have asked for a more beautiful day. Thank you again for all of your prayers and support and please continue to pray that we can clean up that signal and deliver a clear concise message from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Prince Of The Air, Beware.

Evil Dignitaries?

According to Webster’s Dictionary the definition of the word dignitaries is, one who possesses exalted rank or holds a position of dignity or honor. Would you say that President Barack Obama holds a position of honer? Now, here is my point. I have had to re-think the way I think about the President, Senators and Congressmen right down to my hometown Mayor. Why? Take a look at 2 Peter chapter 2. In this chapter Peter reminds us of two key figures in our Christian walk of faith, Noah and Lot. Specifically he touches on what the civilization was like during their time here on Earth. You’ll remember that God saw that man was violent and that their thoughts were continually evil, we know this from Genesis chapter 6:5-13. Lot? Well he lived amongst a sexually unclean civilization and we are told that it grieved him to his core, or soul, because of what he had to watch going on around him. Now certainly you and I can relate to both these men, in the sense that we are living in a world that is replicating the lifestyle of their day. Would you not? Is sin abounding? Is sexual immorality a problem? Is violence on the rise? My point, is not to “point” out the similarities of the different ages but rather something else that Peter points out in his Epistle. Look at verses 9 & 10 of 2 Peter chapter 2.

“The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.” Stop right there!

Did you see that? Those that despise government and speak evil of dignitaries are lumped into the group of people that not only walk after the flesh but will be punished on judgment day. I don’t know about you but I must confess that my thoughts and speech regarding our Government has been anything but glorifying to the Lord. Am I alone on this one? I am not saying that we can’t be grieved by what we see them doing. But how are we handling it? Are we taking our concerns to God in prayer or are we running around complaining and speaking evil of the Nancy Pelosis, Harry Reeds and yes, even the Barney Franks?

As you move into verse 11 of 2 Peter 2, we learn that the Angels of Heaven do not even speak evil concerning the worlds rulers, and they are higher beings than we. Why is that? Romans chapter 13. The Angels know that all these world leaders are placed there for a reason, time and by the Lord himself? What!?! The Lord? Yes.

Look, I love listening to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity just as much as the next guy. But the voice we all need to listen to is the voice of our Father in Heaven. The Bible tells us in Romans chapter 13 that God has ordained our leadership and to resist our leadership is to resist our God. Again, I am not saying we lie down and do everything they tell us to do. What I am saying however, is that we need to be careful about what we are saying about our leaders both Spiritual and Carnal.

I can’t speak for you, but I certainly do not want to be lumped in with all those characters lost in the flood or in Sodom simply because I couldn’t hold my tongue in regards to our Nation’s Leaders. Romans 13, which speaks concerning our submission to worldly leadership closes with these words;

“But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

So, I ask. Could speaking evil of our leaders be fulfilling the lusts of the flesh? Just a thought.

Twosies, twosies.

Exodus chapter 8 verse 4 tells us ” And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.” The buzz in the news lately has been the recent discovery of Noah’s Ark by some Evangelicals from China and Turkey. Now at first glance I, as a I am sure you were too, was eager to receive this news with joy unspeakable. Here we have another truth from God’s word springing up from the earth. (Psalm 85:11) I don’t know if this is really “the” Ark, but I would like to believe it is, and based upon what the Bible has said, I really have no reason to doubt that it is in fact our brother Noah’s boat.

Now imagine what the Atheist and Evolutionists are doing right now. You have probably thought of some of the many excuses that they will come up with to reject the truth of God’s word. They will say that somebody planted it, or it was an ancient civilization, or that Mt. Ararat was once sea level before there was some sort of cataclysmic disaster (other than the flood) pushed it up in the air. Whatever they come up with it will be preposterous at best and frustrating at worst. God knows how to save those people and so to worry about their reasons for rejecting Jesus is futile. What we need to be concerned about is all the other scriptures that are just as believable, no, trustworthy, as Exodus 8:4.

Regardless of whether this is the ark or not it’s exciting nonetheless and it will be fun to watch the world try to explain it away, or should I say, explain Jesus away. Check out Foxnews and decide for yourself whether this is truly the Ark and let’s see what the Lord will allow man to find next. Is it any wonder that the Lord has put the Ark back in the front of man’s thinking again? There is another flood coming and there is another Ark for escape, His name is Jesus Christ. My fear is that the very same people that doubt Noah’s Ark will doubt the only escape from what is to come. God gave man 120 years to repent during the building  of the first ark and it is His great mercy that has allowed over 2000 years for many of us to come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Don’t reject the truth and don’t doubt your Lord. Jesus is coming, it’s not a question of if, but when. Jesus loves you, get on board.

True Olympic Gold

WOW! How refreshing to hear this young athlete’s view on life. Would that more young people would follow her lead and find the fulfillment and direction that Elana Meyers has found because of Jesus Christ, and to think she represents our great country. Go USA!

Hate Haiti?

Psalm 109:2-4 “For the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful are opened against me: they have spoken against me with a lying tongue. They compassed me about also with words of hatred; and fought against me without a cause. For my love they are my adversaries: but I give myself unto prayer.”

As you watch the video below and come to your own conclusions about what Pat Robertson said please note the constant messages that flash across the screen and listen closely to what Mr. Robertson says and ask yourself this question. Does Pat Robertson hate Haiti or does he want the Haitians to come to salvation?

I know as a Father I desire to protect my children from danger. If I tell my children not to play with fire, it is only because I love them. When they get burned because they refused to listen, my love is there to comfort them, care for their wounds and remind them of their need to listen to my word. So too our Heavenly Father is there for the people of Haiti. Now I am not suggesting that God has sent this earthquake specifically to Haiti and I don’t believe Pat Robertson said that either. But  what I am saying is that if God did send the earthquake to the Haitians, of which 50% are practicing Voodoo and 80% claim to be Christian, is God not a God of love? If this causes them to turn back to the Father that they might get the comfort and care they need and experience freedom, prosperity and fulfillment, is that a bad thing?

Certainly continue to pray for the people of Haiti and visit Samaritan’s Purse to find out what the Lord is doing in the name of love.