Staying charged up with God

Greetings:
So many times I pray for God to strengthen me. Over and over I call out to him to make me stronger, but I still fail, and fail and fail.
But I keep praying, God strengthen me.
Does that sound like something you have prayed?
Then it hits me between the eyes and my eyes are opened.
I’m praying for the wrong thing. Instead of asking for God to strengthen me, I need to be praying for God to be my strength, the source of my power, my faith.
Look at 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NLT and you'll get a better perspective of what I mean from the words of Paul.
He writes: “Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.' So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
God's  power is made perfect in our weakness.
That means instead of asking God to remove the things that plague me – my  pride, my laziness, my fears of may things in life maybe all this time I should have been praying for God to be my strength in all these things.
We need to stop asking for Him to make us different than we am. Stop trying to be something we am not. Stop pleading for Him to take away all of our  “thorns”.
We have had it all backwards.
We need to understand we are insufficient, but His grace is sufficient.
We are weak and God's power is made perfect in that weakness.
We want to hide our problems, fix them and then celebrate our victories. Instead, we need to boast gladly of our weakness.
Trying to make ourselves spiritually strong only leads to fatigue, frustration and doubt, yet Christ’s unending power rests in us.
God's power and strength never grows dim and never needs recharged. We do.
Sometimes the strongest among us are the ones who smile through silent pain, cry behind closed doors, and fight battles that nobody knows about.
They draw their strength from a super-strong God that we serve.
In Deuteronomy 31:6 we read that God goes ahead of us in our time of trouble to prepare the path.
It is written: “So be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid and do not panic before them. For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.”
Understand that I am discontent with my own weaknesses and difficulties, but I can choose to have contentment knowing God has a plan for it all. God's strength shines in my times of being weak. He gets the glory and praise for my life victories.
Let us engrave Philippians 4:13 (NLT) in our hearts – “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.”
Lord I pray, keep me weak, so that You might be my strength.
Be blessed.

Can we be weak and still be strong?

Greetings:
Have you ever felt weak, rundown and tired in your faith?
Have you ever been battered with disappointment, confusion, pain, sickness grief and true sorrow?
Can a person be weak and still be strong?
Those are interesting questions that many of us have asked.
But those questions are answered by the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 where he writes: “Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
I don't have the answer to why bad things happen to seemingly good people, but they do.
The problems in our life are often blessings in disguise. We must learn to view them from this spiritual point of view.
The greater the burden placed upon us, the greater the faith required to “hang-in-there.”
 It takes faith to continue living for God when things turn for the worse in our life. It's easy to be happy and praise God when everything is going great, but the true test is to continue in your walk and increase you faith in time of trouble or burden.
Exercising of our faith and the trials that go with it will make us more mature and stable in the Lord if we will be patient and not give up.
I don't know of one Christian who is invincible. We are not Superheroes.
We do get knocked down.
Proverb 24:16 (NLT), it says: “The godly may trip seven times, but they will get up again.  But one disaster is enough to overthrow the wicked.”
The key is to keep getting up when we are challenged. Keep trusting in God.
Thankfully, I have learned that my problems are really rainbows in disguise.
Keep praying and praising and the rainbow will come when we realize that our weaknesses are really our strengths and our strengths weaknesses.
Be blessed.

Trust God, not matter what

Greetings:
God keeps stressing to me the importance of having faith in each of our lives.
In The Bible in Hebrews 11:6, it says it is impossible to please God without faith. If we want to please God, then we have to grab on to faith and never let go.
Faith is taking God for His Word and believing the promises in it.
Knowing what God's Word has to say about something gives us the ability to believe it. Our faith should be based upon God's Word, not some made-made promises, ideals or doctrine.
Faith believes in the unseen. If we could see it, it would not be faith.
Faith is not some kind of make believe fairytale stuff.
Faith is trusting God.
It doesn’t mean I sit and wait for the Lord to have a plane fly overhead with a banner reading:“Go this way!”  That would make it pretty easy to know a direction to go in a situation we are facing. God doesn't operate like that.
We all have promises from God already given to us in his Holy Word – The Bible.
God says, 'I am for you, not against you' ;'I have a plan to prosper you and help you'; 'I am with you. I will provide'.
God Wordsbsays by the stripes that Jesus took for our sins, we are healed.
God Word says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
 No matter what hurdles, challenges, circumstances, situations, hurts, bruises, wounds we face, when we look with eyes of our faith to our Lord, we see the Lord calling us.
His hands are outstretched like when I was teaching my small daughters to walk – and said to them, “Come on, you can do it. Come on, come to me.”
We must never forget Hebrews 11:6 which states, “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
It is hard to take direction from God on some days and in some things without our own human conditions attached to it. That is where faith comes in.
When God speaks to us, we need to step back and put what we feel away, put what we think away and put the whys away and just do it.
We know it's God's direction if we have peace in our heart, even when our carnal mind might be telling us something different. Stand on faith and believe.
Be blessed.

The beauty of silence

Greetings:
Let us begin this morning by bathing ourselves in the beauty of silence.
Enjoy the stillness, the tranquility, the peace of just soaking in the quiet time.
Too often we get caught up in the sounds of busy all around us in a very busy fast-paced world that thrives on robbing us of our time of silence.
I wonder at times if we don't let the noise of the world keep us from hearing the voice of God.
Silence is indeed hard to find.
There seems to be no escape from loud music, loud machines, noisy generators, and loud voices.
But the kind of noise that endangers our spiritual well-being is not the noise we can’t escape, but the noise we invite into our lives.
Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out loneliness.
Some of us use noise as a way of shutting out our own thoughts. Hearing other voices and opinions keep us from having to think for ourselves or dwell on our own problems.
Psalm 131:2 says, “I have calmed and quieted my soul.”
Don't let the chatter and loudness of the world all around us keep us from hearing what God has to say. But to hear, we have to be able to listen.
If we look to scripture we find that even at his busiest time, Jesus always sought out a place of solitude where he could have his own conversation with God.
Mark 1:35 says, “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”
In Luke 5:16 we read: “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.”
That place of silence is a place where God has our full attention
That place of silence is a place where we can pray and listen.
That place of silence is a place where we can pour out our souls and open our hearts to God's direction, his plan and a place to receive comfort from the loving arms of God.
That place of silence is a place where are burdens can be laid down and real inner healing can begin.
Everyone has a different place where they can find silence.
For myself, it's very early in the morning in the office area of our home. Another place for my silence is sitting on the deck of my home and hearing nothing but the sounds of nature. It is there that I can have my time to have a conversation with God.
We must remember not to let the busy sounds of the world keep from letting us hearing voice of God.
Be blessed.

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.