Settled

In 1 Samuel we find the story of King Saul and how he tried to sabotage his successor, David.  He was jealous and truly wanted to eliminate him.  There are times that you and I are moved with anger, rage, jealousy and even bitter roots.  In these times we seek to exercise revenge on our enemies instead of letting God handle it. But this is not the right action. God has settled it.

Scripture teaches that we should love our enemies and those who intentionally persecute us.  We should strive passionately to show them the love of God and prepare ourselves to react to them opposite of the way we normally would.  We should keep a changed heart and attitude when dealing with those who seek to bring us harm.  Romans 12 teaches, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him.  If he is thirsty, bring him something to drink because in doing good you are overcoming evil."

When we treat those who oppose us with the love of God, God acts to rescue us and He settles it in the realm of the Spirit. "For the Lord your God is He that goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you." Deuteronomy 20:4

Lovin' Control

We love being in control. We demand it. We love to control every  decision and the path our lives take. But it also would be great to realize God owns the universe and He remains in control of our lives.

It is not always easy to trust fully in God in difficult times. But God knows exactly where you are and He has a plan even through crisis. We are often troubled because we cannot see what God has in mind for our future, and it's hard for us to let go and let God take charge.

If you have surrendered your life to God, then you know that He is in control of your situation. Romans 8:28 declares, "For we know that all things work together for good, to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose." 

When trouble comes, we often wring our hands and fear what will happen next. But God teaches us in Scripture that He is in Control. Yet, many times we keep grabbing the wheel. We keep demanding our way and striving to maintain control. 

Learning to let-go and let-God is certainly a process of maturity. As we grow in our relationship with Christ, we are then able to allow Him the freedom to take control and direct our lives. It is imperative that we realize God always has our very best at heart.

Help!?

Launching a new goal or dealing with a life-change is not easy.  Things like fear and insecurity thwart our progress and can prevent us from moving forward with a positive mindset. When we lack faith or are drizzled with low self image we can get stuck. We must believe in ourselves and also in our Mighty God.

I remember one year we had a heavy, deep snow.  I went outdoors with my rubber boots to help shovel sidewalks and driveways.  The snow was so deep after several steps in, I got stuck and it became very difficult for me to lift my foot for the next step. I was immobilized.

Have you ever felt stuck in life?  Most of us have experienced being stuck at some point in our journey.  When you are stuck, you are temporarily paralyzed and unable to pull yourself out.  Before I committed my life to Christ, I was stuck.  Thank goodness for God’s great mercy and grace.  “He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters.”  (Psalm 18:16)

Once you surrender to Christ, you begin a focused journey and start pushing yourself for improvement.  List some challenges for yourself and strive to meet new goals weekly.  Don’t get stuck or stop for one moment to think about yesterday’s failures, sins or disappointments, but focus on pressing forward with no regrets for yesterday. Move in a forward direction and ask God daily for His help.

He is Able

God is completely capable; He is an able God. He still does the miraculous. He makes a way where there seems to be no way.  He can do the impossible. When you feel things are hopeless, there is hope in God.

There's an old song that goes like this: 

God is able to do just what He said he would do
He's gonna fulfill every promise to you
Don't give up on God, cause He won't give up on you
He's able

God is able to do just what He said he would do
He's gonna fulfill every promise to you
Don't give up on God, cause He won't give up on you
He's able
He's able

He's able. When you are sick - you can cry out to God for healing, deliverance and redemption. When there is sin in your life - you only need to ask, and you can be forgiven. You can truly be headed in the wrong direction with only destruction ahead - but God is able to redeem your life and crown you with the kind of change you have been waiting for.

Psalm 103:2-4, "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all thine iniquities; who heals all thy diseases; Who redeems thy life from destruction; who crowns thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies."  God is My Healer.

God is truly amazing. He's able. He is able to take a heart that is broken and repair it better than it was before.  He can heal a body wracked with disease and sickness.  And He is able to cleanse us of all sin and make us new again.

He's able. Ask God today for the miraculous in your life. When God forgives, it is the greatest miracle of all.  Please email me and let me know the wonderful blessings God has poured on you.  He is an incredible God who desires to bring about a huge transformational change in your heart. 

Company

Take a moment and ask yourself what kind of company you keep. Who are your peeps? Did you know who you hang around can greatly influence your life and ideas. If you are not careful, those you spend the most time with can genuinely rub off on you.

My Dad used to always say to me in my teenage years, "Watch who you hang around, cause birds of a feather flock together!" Scripture is also explicit that we should be careful who we hang with for fellowship. We tend to become very much like the people we spend time with. Often, their views become ours, whether good or bad.

1 Corinthians 5:11 speaks out to us against keeping company with those who say they are believers, yet live otherwise. Paul exhorts, "But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother who is sexually immoral or covetous, or an idolator or a reviler, or a drunkard or an extortioner-no, not even to eat..."

When we fellowship with those who say they walk in Christ Jesus, but their lifestyle reflects they actually walk in disobedience, then our fellowship embraces and reinforces their conduct. We may think we are being a good influence on them, but according to the Word we are applauding and approving of how they are living. The Word teaches rather, if we take a stand against their lifestyle and refuse to fellowship and eat with them, they come to realize they do not walk in the truth and perhaps may see their need of repentance. Scripture gives us godly wisdom.

Walk Straight

There is a lot of talk these days about the homosexual lifestyle and many have accepted it as part of our new mindset. You will hear terms like bisexual, trans-sexual, homosexual and transgender. Although, many have followed this path, this kind of being straight is not really the type of straight I want to discuss with you today. I am sharing my heart with you about being upright and straight spiritually. Scripture talks quite a bit about walking straight. In Matthew 7:13-14, Scripture exhorts, "Enter in at the strait gate for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter that way. But strait is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few there be that find it."

It is imperative that you remain in a right relationship with God Himself and stand upright before Him. This does not mean you are perfect and your life is flawless, but it means you strive everyday to walk in the ways of righteousness. If you fall down, you get up out of the mire and brush yourself off and walk again. Psalm 11:7 states, "For the Lord is righteous, He loves righteousness; His countenance beholds the upright." 

I have grown to love the Message bible translation which shows this same verse in Psalm 11:7 like this, "God's business is putting things right, He loves getting the lines straight; Setting us straight. Once we are standing tall, we can look Him straight in the eye."

There is no shame in our conversations with God when our lives are straight.  When we have taken proper action to put things in order in our lives, we can look God straight in the eye and we can see Him smile back at us.

The world is fighting for your attention, putting up a fight in an attempt to distract you from everything that God wants you to pursue.  You have an enemy who loves to jerk you to the wide road and keep you off track.  And he would like for you to never get things straight.  Your enemy prefers you to never prioritize your life or align it spiritually.  Today, I ask you to join me in firmly assuring the right order of things.  Prioritizing is important, so we can stand tall and look God straight in the eye. 

The Beach

I love the ocean. My family always took a trip for a week to the beach every summer.  There's just something kinda amazing about taking your sandals off on a hot sandy beach and stepping into the cool, clear ocean water. But there is something very different about taking off your shoes to step into water that is polluted with all sorts of debris and you cannot see what's underneath the surface. To step down into water that is polluted, mushy and full of algae does not give you the same exhilarating feeling as fresh, clean water.

There is just something refreshing about the ocean waves. It's a feeling of refreshment and renewal.  You can usually see your feet in the water or reach down for a seashell because the water is fairly clear.  But often in our lives the next step is not clear to us.  

Many times, when God gives us instructions it's just not clear to see His plan or know what He is up to. We want to hear the full detailed plan. And we must learn daily to trust in His process. God commanded the priests who carried the ark of the covenant,"when you reach the banks of the Jordan River, take a few steps into the river and stop there." (Joshua 3:8)  

Perhaps, we are afraid to step into the water when it is muddy and uncomfortable. We do not like it when we are unable to see what's next. We want to understand the why, but we must learn to simply trust God. The more time we spend talking and listening to God, the more we will clearly understand His direction. Surrender is an act of will that we must release control to Jehovah God. He always knows what is best and we must listen to His Divine guidance.

Taste & See

Do you daily realize God is so good?  We are called blessed and favored, if we place our trust in God.  Sometimes we find it easy to trust only in ourselves, in our talent and ability, in our intellect. We often place our trust in the brakes on our automobile and we do not think twice when we apply the brakes while driving. We trust that they will in fact stop the car once applied. When we were little, most of us experienced jumping off a high place into the arms of an adult with total and complete trust that they would catch us. Never did we think we would fall to the ground. We believed.

Have you ever stopped at the bakery and glanced over the gooey-gooey confections?  Some looked scrumptious while there was maybe one that you really had no desire to taste. But the baker noticed you staring at it and insisted you give it a try. Once you tried it, you realized that your perception of it was completely wrong. 

Maybe you've seen God as a mean, cruel judge. But maybe your perception of Him has been all wrong. The Psalmist shouts "Try Him!" in Psalm 34:8, "O' taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him." 

The truth is: God is inherently good. Nothing can change that. He loves you and watches over you throughout your daily comings and goings. He is a good, good Father who daily loads you with benefits. And He desperately desires the opportunity to pour out the rain of abundance upon your life.

However, it should be so much easier for us to place our total trust in an Almighty and Sovereign God who watches over this vast universe, who spoke this world into existence with His very words, and who dearly love those who follow hard after Him. We should find it easy to place our trust completely in Him. Choose today to commit your life to the only God who can truly can a difference in your future. 

Call on Him now and He will hear your heart cry. He is a good, good Father. He is forgiving, merciful and kind. When we repent, He throws our sins in a sea of forgetfulness and refuses to remember them. He is long-suffering toward us and longs for our desire to follow Him and walk in righteousness.

Backward

Do you realize that everything you listen to, or read, or see affects your spiritual stance with God?  It's important that we soak up the good, the lovely, the wholesome, the positive - because this is what will affect our heart and prevent us from sliding backward.

Scripture suggests that mans' rebellion basically originates in his thoughts. Before rebellion and sin ever takes place, it is usually conjured or schemed up in a man's thought process. No one backslides or falls away from God's grace overnight. No one who walks in close fellowship with Christ and who has come to know and understand the mighty, powerful works of the Spirit....... steps out of bounds in the twinkling flash of a moment. But those steps are pondered.

Sin and rebellious thoughts that are against God's plan, purpose, and precepts are in one's mind long before the act of sin begins. We must keep a grip on our thoughts and what our senses soak up everyday. We must pay attention to what we are exposed to.

In 2 Corinthians 10:3-6, the Word teaches that christians possess the power to live overcoming lives. Here, we are taught that we must refuse to live according to the carnal nature of man (the flesh) and that we must pull down the strongholds of the enemy. 

We are also taught that if we want to live holy and pure before God, we must, "cast down imaginations" or evil thoughts. And cast down, "every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God" or those things that tend to push strongly against us and what we have learned to be true (according to God's Word).

The ultimate authority for the christian is the Word of God. We must strive to live by its' precepts. And through the power of God's spirit which lives within us, we can overcome and not slide backward. 

Increase

Sometimes, we face a mountain of financial instability. The root cause is usually our fault and could be brought on by bad business decisions, overspending, being a poor manager or simply a failure to surrender to God what rightfully belongs to Him.  Malachi teaches, "Prove me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out blessing that you shall not have room enough to receive." But often we are greedy in our hearts and try to tip God instead of tithe.

If you truly want to walk in financial increase and blessing, you must learn to give to God and others.  The promise of Scripture is, "Give sparingly and you will reap sparingly, but give bountifully and you will reap also bountifully."  I want to be a part of the bountiful and abundant blessing of the Lord. This all begins in the heart.  

When we get our paycheck, we must learn to trust our finances with God by bringing 10% of all of our increase to God. Our filthy lucre is then sanctified and the lump remaining is blessed and stretched to meet every need in our life.  Proverbs 3:9, "Honor the Lord with thy substance and with the firstfruits of all thine increase." And the blessing of Deuteronomy 28:1-2 will come to you as you walk in obedience. Give and it will be given to you, pressed down and running over.