Are you afraid? There is a promise from Jesus of peace.
“May peace be with you; my peace I give to you: I give it not as the world gives. Let not your heart be troubled; let it be without fear.” (John 14:27)
Are you depressed? There is a promise from Jesus of rest.
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Are you mourning over your sins? There is a promise from Jesus of comfort.
“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4)
Are you troubled by troubles? Trust in the Holy Spirit to solve them.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)
Are you troubled or burdened by something and in need of prayer? Let me know and I will pray for you. God bless you.Amen.
“And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” (Revelation 5:6)
Blessed rest in Your blood, covering me, in the winter
Blessed rest in Your blood, like silk, flowing upon me in summer
Blessed rest in Your blood, a color more beautiful, than changing leaves in the fall
Blessed rest in Your blood, which in spring, is falling in love after all
Resting in You Lord makes my heart a new song,
Resting in the sweet scent of Your love that carries, me along
How sweet how pure is the joy found in the compassion, of Your eyes
Eyes that burn with truth, and the heavenly skies
I am not worthy, yet I am chosen
Mysteries, of the divine, and no one can solve them
You made a world for us so organized, and complex
You show Your existence in the stars,
Putting our hearts to the test.
The question is this: who will we serve with all nerve?
The World who rejects or Your Son sent to serve?
The question is as follows: who do we believe?
The world or Your Son whose blood did achieve:
An everlasting relationship to You our Father, through His death on the cross
Everlasting life and power, through His resurrection:
By thiseveryonewill know that you are my disciples,if you love one another.” (John 13:35)
Loving is sometimes a hard task and a most difficult command from our Savior, yet He never makes one command without promising His love and His power to guide and pull us through. We were made for relationship. The entire bible points us to the love of God in Christ Jesus. When we read the bible with a heart of willingness to see and to learn the love of God we become better able to share His love with someone else. In doing so we become doers of His word. We will find that His word becomes alive to us when we become more than hearers, seeking to make disciples rather than just be one.
Love can lead us into tricky and vulnerable places but when we hold on to God we also can say with Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” (Philippians 4:13) Love is never easy and yet it never fails and is always beautiful. We can learn many things from one another and although it can feel like we are shoved into it by God we must remember dear brothers and sisters that He loved us so much that He paid the price for us with His very blood. Our appreciation and true worship is found when we love others. After all that’s how the world will know that we are His disciples.
So who can you love today? Accept the shove, engage in the love, and He will be pleased. When facing difficulty in loving someone drop down to your knees recalling to mind your dependency on Him. The world needs you and you were made for a purpose. So encourage, uplift, and persist in loving others.
“Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13:8)
Shove me into love
Help me to love Lord as You do,
And I will be Yours always,
Just show me what to do
People out there are crying
As people close to them are dying
Others are sick and wounded
Water beds made, from, flooded tears
People crippled in pain
Minds, tormenting them, throughout the years
So many ask where are You, in all this?
So many seek for answers
Lord they have a need to know, where You are in all of it.
But I have seen Your beauty in the radiance of the sun
I have felt Your peace invade me, when I was on the run
My struggles are a threshold, that You pull me through
So even in the thick of it, all I see is You
Lord if I can feel Your eyes from heaven, looking down on me
Please help me feel Your love and share it,
So others might be free
Lord I’m certain You have saved me, so I might come to look, more and more like You
But Father if that’s true and I believe it, I need Your help, please
Show me what to do
Shove me into love Lord
Until it hurts my arms, with every hug
Shove me into love Lord
As in love, You drained out,
Your very blood
You say I can do faith, I can do prophecy, but all is nothing without love
Prior to my becoming a Christian I was a love sick puppy chasing after love in all of the wrong places. The theme of my life was a repetition on my tongue and in mind, “I will die for love.” Perhaps you have never voiced your yearning quite as I did but we are all searching for love in someone or something.
The theme of my life is still very much the same, only now the meaning is different. I have learned that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) and I now know that the maker of the heaven and the earth loved me so much that He sent His Only Son Jesus Christ to die for my sins. How awesome is that? Someone died for me so much that He didn’t allow me to die in His place but took the punishment I deserved before a Holy God and placed it upon Himself! So today my “I would die for love.” translates to “I would die for God.” because of His having loved me so much, because of His dying for me, because of my belief in what He did 2,000 years ago on the cross. I love Him because He first loved me (1 John 4:19). Oh how sweet it is to know Him. Amen.
“And He said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” (Luke 9:23)
Lord we thank You for loving us so much that You sent Your Only begotten Son Jesus Christ to submit to the punishment and to pay the penalty for our sins. We thank You for loving us so much that even while we were rebellious against You, You chose to make a way to restore our relationship with You once and for all time. Lord I will die daily for You and if it comes to it for me to die one day forever for my faith I would do so. Lord help me to be able and ready to die daily for You and to pick up my cross and follow You knowing that as I do I am not left alone for You are always with me. This life is a struggle Lord and You never promised that it would be easy but You did make the promise that You would be with me always even to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). Thank You Lord for all the times that You have proven yourself so faithful. Lord I want to know You better this day, teach me Your way, show me Your Salvation, and lead me on the way everlasting. In Jesus name. Amen.
“28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Psalm 62:1 “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him.”
Resting in the Lord and allowing Him to do His will, His work, His way is freedom. In it there is peace, joy, beauty, and life everlasting through every trial and tribulation. We can war and we can choose to rebel against Him but when we do we rage in hellfire instead of carrying peace to heaven. Afflictions and educating from the Lord are for our good. Choosing to praise Him and to humble ourselves before Him in the beginning, in the midst of, and assuredly at the closing of them honors and glorifies God. In Christ our battles are won in adversity when we abide in and rely on Him. Christ is the Only way. When we truly rest in Him we find, there is no better way. May Your lovingkindness be upon us Lord in proportion as we have hoped in You (Psalm 33:22). Amen.
Breaking and breakthrough happen when we choose to allow the Lord to have His way in us. He will be seen in us when we give Him full reign and full power to take over us and to take on our lives. This is what resting in Him means. This is why His burden is light (Matthew 11:30). We were never meant to carry our loads alone. The glory of the Lord and the filling of His Spirit are found when we let go. May we let go and allow God today honoring Him in glory and in praise by supplication and with thanksgiving trusting in His promise that He is with us all the way. Amen.
When we go into our prayer closet without expectation or hesitation but by prayer invite the Holy Spirit to lead us, our soul is refreshed, joy is restored, peace surely comes, we confess when we are convicted, we glory in forgiveness, and the Lords power and presence become our own to share. When once there was dryness now we have struck His promise of living water (John 7:37-39); there are streams in the desert (Isaiah 43:19). Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Amen.
“What You give them they gather in, You open their hand, they are filled with good.” (Psalm 104:28)
When we read the Word of God He speaks to us and He reaches us so that we can in turn reach someone else. God offers us a fragment of heaven through His written Word, this fragment of heaven that He gives us overflows in worship to the great Giver until we just have to share it with someone else. When we do, the hope is that that person will go on to share the love and the joy that we have been given with someone else, and on, and on, and on.
So many times we wonder what heaven will be like. The bible gives us hints of it’s beauty, glory, and majestic splendor, and yet how often do we ask ourselves how we can replicate heaven here on earth? When we pass on the incomplete picture of heaven that the good Lord shares with us here and it is then shared with others, the fragment of heaven that God shares with us grows and He is honored and glorified. A more complete albeit imperfect picture of heaven is then manifested here on earth. So what will that picture of heaven look like here on earth from God’s standpoint? A portion of the pure, complete, perfect, and everlasting worship of the Lord, love for Him, and enjoyable and peaceful love for others here on earth. For what is heaven but the perfect and eternal worship of God and the perfect and pure, love for one another?
Today everyone is struggling and everywhere it seems as Jesus has said, that the love of others is growing cold (Matthew 24:12). Believers of Christ have the gifting of being blessed so that we can be a blessing to others. While the world is in turmoil let us abide in the love of God so that we can be the light of the world and the salt of the earth. When we are strong in the Lord we are able to see His goodness even when the circumstances around us look dim. Once we do we are then able to share His light with those in the world whose vision is blinded, by the darkness around them.
Today let us remember when we see someone struggling,
“The Lord reaches me so He can reach someone else.”
“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
I am on a journey of love through Christ. On this journey I have found myself being led, being convicted, experiencing freedom, self-reflection, and the center of who God is.
“The one who does not love has not become acquainted with love, for God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
I have begun to ask myself certain questions like why am I afraid to love? What’s holding me back from loving others with full abandon and surrender of myself?, and when I blog, when I speak, when I do anything is it from a place of selfishness or one of selflessness, which points others to the love of Jesus Christ our Lord?
“Beloved, let us love and seek the best for one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.” (1 John 4:7)
Love is the center of who God is. It can be an overwhelming thought and yet one that changes lives and the world. The Word of God is a love story that points to the endless and awe inspiring love of God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our love is flawed. Our world needs love. Before we open our mouths, before we write a single word, before we preach the gospel, and before we walk a step it’s important that we mindfully search our hearts in the Spirit to make certain that we are guarding our hearts and our tongues. What we say and do as the light of the world must first be kind, patient, thoughtful, encouraging, and enduring.
“Love endures with patience and serenity, love is kind and thoughtful… it is not rude; it is not self seeking… it does not rejoice at injustice, but rejoices with the truth… Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4 -8)
To reach the heart of God is an act of Worship to Him for the love He has for us. He will enable us to love as He does in total dependence on His leading. We must be willing to ask ourselves the tough questions about our fear of commitment, our holding back from love for fear of being hurt, our desperation to be loved and yet why it is that we are so incapable of loving as He loves. We are fallible and yet by our willingness to pour out one sweet act of love at a time we can ourselves be expressions of His love to a world that is growing more cold minute by minute, precious second by second. To be salt to this world and the light in the darkness we can begin to reverse the violence and the animosity that comes as we together as a people draw away from the valuable expression of the One true Gods perfect love for his children.
Today I invite you to ask yourself why? Why are you doing what you are doing and is it coming from a place of Christs selfless love for you?
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, then I have become only a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.” (1 Corinthians 13:1)
Today let us shine our light through His love: one word, one action, one blessed deed to all in devoted Worship to the One who loved us first.
“We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
Pour out His love and live blessed this day. Amen.
Facing Life In Christ 