God is able

Greetings:
Life has knocked me down on the seat of my pants and stepped on me more than a few times.
I've seen and experienced things I didn't want to ever see or feel.
I have experienced many sorrows and personal failures.
But I don't feel sad about it. I am glad and rejoice that the God I serve is more than able.
God is able to lift us up when we can't do it ourselves.
God is able to encourage us when all we see is darkness and no hope.
God is able to open doors where there are no doors.
God was able when I was running the other way and making poor choices to reach down and touch me.
God's love never abandoned me, faltered or failed.
God's mercy enabled me to get back up.
God has been there for me, even when I wasn't there for him.
I remember the lessons learned and the love felt from God.
In 1 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul is writing to Christians living in the Greek town of Thessalonica whose faith is undermined and tested. To help them, he encourages them to remember.
Why? Because there’s something extremely powerful about remembering.
Remembering God’s work in our past is the key to getting perspective to do God’s will in the present.
In his letter, Paul reminds them about what God did in their lives and the cost that was involved to deliver the Gospel message to them. Paul also reminds them of God’s motherly and fatherly love and how God used him and others to care for them.
He wrote in 1 Thessalonians 2:1-2L "You know, brothers and sisters that our visit to you was not without results. We had previously suffered and been treated outrageously in Philippi, as you know, but with the help of our God we dared to tell you his gospel in the face of strong opposition."
Also look at 2 Corinthians 4:7-16 in New Living Translation to get a clear look at the faith and perseverance of Paul.
It reads: “But this precious treasure  –– this light and power that now shine within us –– is held in perishable containers, that is, in our weak bodies. So everyone can see that our glorious power is from God and is not our own. We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don't give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.  Through suffering, these bodies of ours constantly share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be obvious in our dying bodies. So we live in the face of death, but it has resulted in eternal life for you.  But we continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, "I believed in God, and so I speak." We know that the same God who raised our Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself along with you. All of these things are for your benefit. And as God's grace brings more and more people to Christ, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.”
Just like the Thessalonians, we need to remember. To get perspective, we need to step back from the problems at hand and see them in light of history, our experiences, and who God really is.
Always remember, God is able.
Be blessed.

Five minutes for God

Greetings:
Sometimes just finding five minutes for God seems like a chore.
Sometimes devotions do not really seem like devotion, but work.
Have you ever been to a point that you wondered if God is even there, if he hears your prayers and if he is ever going to answer your prayers?'
Sometimes our faith does grow weak because our time with God is not where it needs to be. During times of doubt we can feel that it is difficult to have faith. 
Where is God in our difficulty?
How can you increase your faith when you see no evidence for it?
God’s Word remains the solid rock that we need when we're surrounded in this world by sin, trouble and doubt.
Spending time reading God's Word every day to combat the secular attitudes and actions around us is not an option, but a necessity. God's Word provides an armor of protection and helps our faith and soul weapons to grow in size, caliber and fire-power intensity.
Is abandoning ship and swimming toward shore the right way to navigate through stormy seas the right approach to take when crisis hits our lives?
Is God still God in the bad times just like He is in the good times?
The truth of the matter is, hard times are exactly that — hard.  But how we approach those hard periods in our lives determines whether we’ll just survive, thrive or sink altogether.
Being prayed up will help fear and doubt to stay beneath our feet where it belongs.
Fear is the believer's greatest enemy. When a believer has fear, he cannot have believing faith.
Fear paralyzes, frustrates and cripples us into indecision and no action.
Fear involves torment as in 1 John 4:18 where it states, “Fear is the prison of the heart.”
Trusting God in hard times requires refusing to be frightened, refusing to be immobilized, refusing to panic and learning to stand firm on God's Word.
The times in my life when the biggest storms struck, it was by faith and trusting God that I emerged.
I was battered and a bit beaten down, but God brought me through it because I was able to reach down and exercise faith and trust the things that I could not see, and watched as God moved in mighty ways.
God didn't promise us smooth sailing, but he did promise to be with us at all times.
We can not forget that God is God, and He is more than able to deliver us every time. Period.
No matter what the prevailing conditions in your life are, believe what it says in Ephesians 3:20 NLT: “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.”
Faith is not the power of positive thinking or positive reinforcement or a gimmick.
Faith is not found within the will and understanding of our human mind.
Faith is not by any human effort at all except by the intake and breathing in of the Word of God and believing what that Word says.
In Hebrews 11:1, faith is defined. It reads, “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.”
Have the faith of a little child and just believe.
In Matthew 21:21-22 NLT, we read, “Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.”
So the key is to get prayed up and studied up and your faith will increase. It be standing ready when tribulations and troubles confront you.
But first, give God the time he deserves.
Be blessed.

Seek the truth for real freedom

Greetings:
One of the most popular scriptures in the Bible comes the Gospel of John, the eighth chapter and 32nd verse. It reads:"You will know the truth and the truth will set you free,"
What does this really mean?
What is the truth and what is freedom?
Freedom is what Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are ultimately about -- God's freeing Israel from bondage in Egypt
Truth and freedom go hand and hand. This is why the Christian world is in the condition it is in. The vast majority of Christians do not really mark the death of Jesus Christ in the way that God commands us to observe it.
They understand that Christ died for our sins. But they miss its full importance — its full impact.
Truth will produce freedom only as it is used. That ought to be self-evident. We can know something is true, but if we fail to use it, what good is it? Its value is worthless unless it is used.
Freedom and truth come to those who press on and seek it. Freedom, the kind of freedom that God is involved in bringing us into, comes progressively, not all at once.
This is shown by the Days of Unleavened Bread. It took the Israelites seven days to get to and across the Red Sea. It took them another 40 years to get into their own land, into their inheritance, the Promised Land.
This is a difficult message to bring into words. But we must connect the Old Testament with the New Testament to understand it.
What kind of message does it send to God if His children, those called by His name, either do not seek truth or carelessly ignore what they have?
To ignore truth is to ignore God and, by extension, to ignore salvation.
Remember, salvation is the active, continuous process by which God delivers us from what causes disease in the mental and physical areas of life and eternal death in the spiritual realm.
David in Psalm 51:6 said, "Surely you desire truth."
John writes in 4:23, "Worship the Father in spirit and truth."
We seek both freedom and truth by learning God's Word and then applying it to our daily lives. There is no short-cut answer. It takes time, study and prayer.
Truth comes to those who ask, seek, and knock for it, then use it in our own lives to glorify God. We do not always easily find it. Truth emerges only after a long and sometimes confusing search of conflicting information.
Needless to say, we must find it and preserve it.
Be blessed.

Say please and many thank-yous

Greetings:
I come from an 'old-school' family in which I was taught to say 'please and thank you' at a very early age.
As Christians, we ought to say frequent and many 'thank yous' in our relationship with God and in our prayers.
Being thankful is key in our Christian walk.
Many wise and necessary things can be said about thanksgiving, but thanksgiving to God is a spiritual weapon God has given us to maintain our spiritual wholeness that enables us to maintain our joy and peace and confidence in Him.
Conversely, if you want to see joy and peace and faith (trust) in God diminish in your life, simply walk in thanklessness.
Demonstrating to God often that we are thankful for what we have … rather than what we don’t have, or maybe have lost, can be the difference between increase His blessings to us, or withholding them. 
The Bible tells us in Psalms 100:4 (NIV) to “Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
Being thankful shows honor.
Every major painful situation we go through in life may well be a trial God has designed for us - usually to test us. 
A thankful person constantly stays in tune to God and inquires: "What am I to learn through this painful situation?"
A thankless person rarely asks God that question, but rather just grows angry and bitter inside for God allowing them the pain they are going through without learning a thing from it.
A thankless person tends to be a complainer or a whiner – always remaining bitter about the past over one thing or the other. 
A thankless person tends to be a "Why God?" person or a person who asks 'why me God'.
A thankful person stops trying to constantly stay focused in on the 'whys' God and asks God what can I do to make it right.
Many Christians grow frustrated in their prayer lives because they have not walked in being thankful.  Being thankless can greatly affect our prayers.
Though God’s mercy and grace and patience transcends limits we often have difficulty comprehending –– we can quench the Holy Spirit by failure to obey the following scripture:
Look at 1 Thessalonians 5:16-19 (NIV), it says, “Rejoice always,  pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit.”
Being thankful may or may not change your circumstances. But it will change what your circumstances do to you.
Your circumstances will either destroy you or build you up depending on how you see them. But when you say "thank you", you recognize that beyond your circumstances and your control there is still  a sovereign God who loves you and assures us that he is working all things together for their ultimate good.
Psalm 111:1-5 in the Living Bible sums up being thankful this way, “Hallelujah! I want to express publicly before his people my heartfelt thanks to God for his mighty miracles. All who are thankful should ponder them with me. For his miracles demonstrate his honor, majesty, and eternal goodness. Who can forget the wonders he performs—deeds of mercy and of grace?  He gives food to those who trust him; he never forgets his promises.”
My Momma was right. It is the right thing to do to say, “Thank you”.
Be blessed.

Call on God for daily courage

Greetings:
Having Christian courage is key to our walk. God promises to help us, be with us, but still we fear and lack courage at times.
The pain we experience may be physical, as in war. Many Christians are dying daily at the hands of terrorist throughout the world for their steadfast commitment and love of Christ.
The pain may also be mental as in confrontation and controversy.
Courage is indispensable for both spreading and preserving the truth of Christ. It's been that way for decades.
In Matthew 24:9 (Amplified Bible), Jesus promised that spreading the gospel would meet with resistance: “Then they will hand you over to suffer affliction and tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake.”
Therefore, true evangelism and true teaching of The Word will take courage.
Do we tell only the truths that are safe to tell?
Nobody respects a coward. We admire people who are courageous. In nearly every movie that has a hero we admire. It is because of their courage. The bad guys nearly always turn out to be cowards.
Some of us can remember when we were still a kid in school and someone would dare us to do something dangerous. Some of us probably did some of the stupidest, most dangerous life threatening things we've ever done. Why? So that we wouldn’t be labeled with that dreaded word 'chicken'!
We wanted to come off in the eyes of our peers as courageous…not as a coward.
In our Christian walk, every one of us faces choices every day in which we come out either courageous or a coward. It takes a great deal of courage to face the daily challenges of life without becoming considered a wimp.
It takes enormous courage to be a Christian when most unbelieving people automatically despise you when you openly reveal that you are a person of faith in Jesus Christ.
The mainstream media in America hates Christians with a passion in terms that they are threatened by those who have an absolute moral standard and they punish them, belittle them, and try to discredit them at every opportunity.
But you know, it's doesn't matter what they say, or what they write about us as Christians. God knows our heart and he will get us through it all.
We must remain steadfast in our love for God and deserve to serve him by spreading the good news of God's salvation no matter what is said or written about us.
We must remain constant in our morals and stand up for what is right and confirmed in the Word of God.
God is with  us.
An amazing amount of courage comes from settling in your heart and mind that our beliefs and values are right and line up with the Word of God.
We must humbly ask the Holy Spirit to give us understanding as we study and meditate on God's Word. We are strengthened when the rightness of our beliefs are reconfirmed in the experiences of everyday life.
We should increasingly feel and express our dependence on our Lord. Then we should ask Him to empower us and accomplish His purposes in us and through us in all we do and in all we face. We need to believe Him to do it. If we do those things, we will find ourselves living with the supernatural courage that only God can give 
May each of us learn to live with the courage God wants us to have.
Be blessed.

Try a little kindness

Greetings:
When you think of kindness, what does that mean to you?
Is kindness a bag full of fresh garden vegetables taken to a friend or even a complete stranger?
Is kindness an encouraging note sent by a friend?
Is kindness a caring shoulder to cry on?
Is kindness bowl full of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven delivered from a friend?
Is kindness a telephone call just to say 'hello and how are you doing'?
Is kindness greeting someone on the street with a smile?
Kindness gives a person a warm good feeling, it just does.
No wonder it's one of the fruits of the Spirit.
Read Galatians 5:22-23 and see that kindness is there in the list of fruits that we should cultivate in our orchard of life.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
When we're kind, others get to experience that warmth, and whether they realize it or not they are also experiencing some of God's own character.
When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.
Through the life of Jesus Christ we see the greatest, most complete example of kindness we'll ever know. God saw a whole lot of hurt, brokenness and despair.
He saw people with no hope of breaking free from pain and suffering. And so he sent his Son to our rescue.
There wasn't any kind of logical reason for him to do that. No one deserved this kind of special kindness.
Titus 3:3 reminds us of where we came from.
"At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures … "
The key word is "enslaved."
Sin enslaves us like a prisoner shackled and chained in the deepest, darkest jailhouse.
We are deceived by the things the world says will make us happy—clothes, cars, a big bank account, popularity among our peers.
But when we accept salvation, the chains of enslavement are broken and we are set free.
God knew what we needed before we even asked for it. That's kindness—the ability to recognize the needs of others and take steps to meet those needs.
Kindness is understanding.
Kindness is compassion towards others when we have nothing to gain.
Be kind today in some way, reach out, see and act on the needs of others above our own wants.
Be blessed.

We are designed with purpose

Greetings:
I believe we all were created on purpose. Nothing was an accident when it comes to our lives. Long before we were ever born, God saw us, knew us, and choose us.
Though we may have some wonderful plans for our own life, it is of utmost importance that we find out The Lord’s purpose for our life.
Proverbs 19:21 (NIV) tells us,  “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.”
The word purpose is a noun and in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary it is defined as: “The reason why something is done or used; the aim or intention of something; the feeling of being determined to do or achieve something; the aim or goal of a person; what a person is trying to do, become.”
We all need to talk to The Lord about our individual purpose. God wants us to discover our purpose even more than we do. Our purpose isn’t just about us. It’s about what God wants to do through us. It’s about touching and blessing the lives of others. Our purpose matters.
It’s possible that we might know at least part of what we were created to do, but that we still may feel like a piece of the puzzle is missing.
Psalm 139:15-16 says, “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”
God had all of our days written out before we were born. None of us were a mistake or an accident. We haven’t been placed on this earth by chance. Where and when we were born, the parents God gave us, our personality, and everything else about us was orchestrated by God for a specific purpose.
Some people would like advice us what this  purpose for our life is, but only the Lord can reveal our purpose to us. Seek God in the quiet time of prayer and study of God's Word to learn it.
We each have a role, a purpose in God's ministry. As Christians, none of us should be satisfied to simply be a spectator, content with coming to church on Sunday morning and just watching.
We are the feet and hands of God's work on earth. When we begin to walk in our God-given purpose, there will be a tangible grace or an anointing upon our life.
Our purpose is one of action. We can pray and pray for the needy in our community to be blessed, but unless we move and act to help them, feed them, comfort them and feed their spiritual hunger, little will change on its own.
Our purpose is woven into the very fabric of our existence. It is the theme of our life. It is expressed in our passions, our desires, our dreams, gifts, talents, and our vision for the future.
If we never fulfill our purpose, there will always be a deep sense of dissatisfaction in our heart. Pray that God reveals the purpose he has ordained for each of us. Know it, then run with it.
Be blessed.