Pay Attention When Something Feels Wrong

Posted on May 27, 2024 by daaorg1214

When we give our lives to Christ and become born-again, the Holy Spirit, God’s seed, comes to live inside us. Jesus Christ said in John 16:13(NLT), “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future.” The Holy Spirit helps us to pray and to grow closer to God. He is the One who establishes the intimacy between us and our Heavenly Father that we desire so much. The Holy Spirit also communes with us spiritually, and when the enemy has plotted against us and we’re about to step into a trap, the Spirit is the One who warns us. This is why, more than any other time in history, it is crucial that we pay attention when something doesn’t feel quite right.

Watch what you say
Your confessions are a powerful instrument towards your wholeness and happiness in life. Some people hear this and think it is too radical to believe. They think that way because for a while now, believers have been taught certain things about faith, and it causes people to try to treat the goodness of God like a kid in a candy store. That’s not faith, that’s fantasy, and it leads to disappointment.

The reality is that we can’t please God without faith. Hebrews 11:6 tells us this. Faith is a fully persuaded, sold out belief in what God has promised in His Word. All blessings come from God and abide in the realm where He lives. Faith requires the full faculty of our minds and the words of our confession. Both must work together to transfer blessings in the spiritual realm into our natural realm. This is the way God set things up.

Without our confession and believing, we could not be saved. Romans 10:9(NLT) affirms, “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” 1John 4:15(NLT) declares, “All who confess that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God.” Our salvation is received by the confession of our believing, and God’s forgiveness is received by the confession of our sins. Proverbs 18:21 declares that death and life are in the power of the tongue. We must open our mouths and speak words of life.

God created us in His image. He designed us in such a way that our minds and hearts must be aligned with His thoughts in order to bring His bounty from the spiritual realm into our physical realm. We do this through prayer, by the confession of truth, and by continuing to renew our minds to what God has said in His Word. Many of us don’t do this. We have made a habit pattern of speaking words that are against what God says. Just in the span of a casual conversation with a friend, we can nullify the blessings that were slated to come our way because we failed to confess the truth. Instead, we gave into negative and unfruitful talk because this is what our friends are used to hearing and it’s how they are used to speaking. We have got to change this if we want to step into greater levels of blessing.

Out of bounds
The standard of faith set by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is extraordinary, and God expects us to utilize the faith we’ve been given. Jesus Christ said in Mark 11:23(NLT), “I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart.” We’re so used to listening to what society says and doing what society does that for many of us, this phenomenal truth that Jesus spoke seems radical. Some of us simply don’t believe what he’s telling us about having faith and speaking to our circumstances through the confession of our faith.

Jesus said in Mark 11:24(NLT), “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” Believing and trusting God when we pray is the appropriate mindset for the believer. Nothing less will do, but most people simply do not believe they can have what God says they can have by the power of their confession. We need to get it into our minds and hearts that faith is the norm. Doubt and fear are abnormal, because 2Timothy 1:7 tells us that God didn’t give us doubt and fear; He gave us a spirit of love, power, and sound mind.

It’s our responsibility to exercise faith, and if we don’t, our lives will not be as blessed as they could be. Our lack of faith positions us further away from God. It moves us out of bounds, and this is where we experience feelings that tell us something is wrong. Often, we don’t realize it, but these are warnings that we are too far outside the boundaries of where God says we should be. We’re confessing and thinking the wrong things, and they are taking up too much space in our hearts. Our lives are heading in the wrong direction. We feel it, but because of all the noise in the background, we can’t hear the message that was spoken to our spirits.

That feeling is telling us that something is going to happen as a result of what we’ve been saying and believing, and it isn’t going to be well with us. Know that the Holy Spirit is speaking to your spirit and warning you to begin to renew your mind and change the way you think and speak. Do not allow this warning to fall on deaf ears. Often when something feels wrong, it is wrong, and we need to pay attention. Through our faith, prayers, and confession, the Holy Spirit will help us turn things around. Then, the only thing we will feel is incredible gratitude to God because He warns us when we’re out of bounds, and He is always willing to help us find our way back to Him.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Jesus Calms the Storm

Posted on May 20, 2024 by daaorg1214

Leslie’s youngest daughter, Vanessa, had been a very quiet and reserved child until she turned 14 years old. She began to date boys and skip school, all the while her mother and two older siblings were completely oblivious. It wasn’t until her grades began to slip that Leslie caught a glimpse that something was wrong. Their father passed away shortly after Vanessa was born, so Leslie was a single parent with three children and two jobs. She couldn’t believe the things the teachers were saying about her child, and after two years of struggling to help Vanessa to get back on track, Leslie was tired and still very worried about her youngest.

She was so thankful that Vanessa had made it to her senior year, but her grades were not what they could have been. Vanessa had fallen deeply in love with Reggie, a boy that had barely made it through school himself. He foolishly used drug money to lavish Vanessa in the extravagant prom dress she wanted, and this had placed her whole family in jeopardy. When Leslie found out about it, she was beside herself. All too familiar with news stories about what happens when you mess with the wrong players, she hustled to come up with the money to make things right. The last few years had taken a toll. Her fears and anxiety were at an all-time high, and she was worried about what Vanessa might do next.

Some of the issues that many of us are facing today are nothing like those of the past. Situations that we never once imagined can land on our heads in a blink of an eye, and life as we know it is forever changed. Troubles and challenges like the ones Leslie have faced with her daughter can bring life and death consequences. The emotional weight of continuing uncertainty is also a huge burden. It can feel as though our backs are against the wall, and there’s no way out, but this simply isn’t true. Matthew 11:28-30(NLT) tells us, “28 Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”” We need Jesus, plain and simple. He can and will take our burdens and replace them with his love and light. We must have faith in this.

When we come to that big whammy of an issue in life, we must understand that it’s spiritual warfare. Ephesians 6:12(NLT) tells us, “For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.” It is very easy to attribute our troubles to a flesh and blood individual, a person that comes against us and perhaps those we love. We think that if we can handle the person through our own solutions, we’ll be all set. But often, when we try to do this, we find that the person continues to plague us in other ways.

Romans 8:7(NIV) says, “The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.” A mind that is governed by the flesh will always look to the flesh for solutions. A mind that is governed by the flesh is consumed with fear and tied to responses dictated by fear. This creates an unstable foundation, and very little can be built on it. Jesus Christ is continually knocking at the door, asking to come into our hearts, minds, and lives in a greater way so that a sturdy foundation can be built on him. He’s the One with power and authority, and our trust in him allows us to use it.

Our children learn faith or fear from us. They practice what they see us doing, both good and bad. If we don’t believe deep down that God is our salvation, that we have nothing to fear because He will provide and protect us, they will pick up on this. We must be ever aware that this can be a great hinderance in their lives.

A carnal mind is hostile to God, because it is rebellious against fully believing and trusting Him. A spiritual mind is the mind of Christ. It is the mindset of faith and this is the mind that God requires us to have. There will be storms in life, on this we can depend. We will endure hardship, but the solution is Jesus Christ! He taught the disciples this, and they had to learn the spiritual reality of faith in Christ during scary situations. In Matthew 8:23-27(NLT), we learn about one of those times.

This passage says, “23 Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples. 24 Suddenly, a fierce storm struck the lake, with waves breaking into the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. 25 The disciples went and woke him up, shouting, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” 26 Jesus responded, “Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!” Then he got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly there was a great calm. 27 The disciples were amazed. “Who is this man?” they asked. “Even the winds and waves obey him!””

The disciples were called by Jesus Christ to follow him. We have that same calling. He walked with them daily and taught them the Word of God. In Jesus, the disciples had the overwhelming privilege to witness the living Word of God up close and personally. They saw the miracles, power, love, authority, and truth that he demonstrated in his life. They witnessed the perfection of his walk on earth, but when they found themselves facing the storm, they forgot about that. This was no ordinary storm. It was sent by satan to destroy them, but Jesus Christ was asleep. He could sleep through the storm because of his faith in God, but many of us will not practice the peace and calm that he did.

The disciples ran to Jesus Christ shouting “Save us!” How is it that they could run to him to be saved, and still be afraid? This was unstable thinking, because we cannot have faith and fear at the same time. Jesus straightened out the waves, and he straightened them out as well. He calmed the storm and demonstrated his power to help the disciples. He will do the same for us.

We don’t have to hide the reality of our trials, troubles, and tribulations from our children and those we love. However, our faith in Jesus Christ must be louder than the problems we face. So often we show our loved one a mentality of disappointment, sadness, and defeat. We can’t fake it, and they know us better than anyone. They see our lack of faith because deep down, that’s what we’re feeling. We must renew our minds to God’s Word and have faith in Him. We must recognize that our very lives are a testimony of the love, power, and victory of Jesus Christ. God knew about the storm way before it occurred. He’s already solved it. All He requires from you is that you really and truly believe it. ■

Changing Our Hearts

Posted on May 13, 2024 by daaorg1214

When thinking about the human heart, most of us first consider the vital organ of the human body that is necessary to keep the body alive. In the physical sense, the heart is a large muscle. As it beats, it pumps blood around the entire body, carrying oxygen and nutrients throughout all the parts, while also getting rid of unwanted wastes. Its design allows us a glimpse of God’s masterful and brilliant handiwork in creating this intricate organ that supports our lives. It also paints a detailed and precise portrait of how important the spiritual heart is to the survival of the human soul. Just as the body has a heart that keeps it alive and thriving, the soul has a heart as well. The condition of the heart of the soul is the determining factor as to whether we will live an eternity with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, or whether our souls will be tormented by eternal darkness.

In the Gospel of John, Chapter 3, Jesus Christ had a conversation with Nicodemus about God’s Kingdom and the requirements to become a citizen of it. He said in John 3:3-6(NLT), “3 I tell you the truth, unless you are born again, you cannot see the Kingdom of God.” 4 “What do you mean?” exclaimed Nicodemus. “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” 5 Jesus replied, “I assure you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit. 6 Humans can reproduce only human life, but the Holy Spirit gives birth to spiritual life.”

Humans are three-part beings. 1Thessalonians 5:23(NLT) says, “Now may the God of peace make you holy in every way, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ comes again.” We are human-spirit, human-soul, and human-body. Without any of the three, we would not be human, we’d be something else. Our Heavenly Father was meticulous in our design. Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that He created us in His own image. We are of His kind, for in His brilliance, He made all living creatures after their own kind. Elephants can’t have giraffes, and kangaroos can’t give birth to whales. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He made us spirit, soul, and body, after His kind.

God made us spiritual beings that are housed in a body. As His created spiritual beings, we are having an earth experience, but heaven is our home because it is where our Creator lives. God’s requirement is that in order to be His children, we must be born twice. Jesus Christ said in John 3:5 that in order to enter God’s Kingdom, we must be born of water, which is referring to the birth where humans are incubated in water in a mother’s womb, and we must be born spiritually, which is to receive God’s seed through spiritual conception.

Through our faith in Jesus Christ, our dead human-spirit that was severed from God through Adam’s sin, is recreated by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is God’s seed, and he comes to dwell inside us when we accept Jesus Christ as Lord of our lives. 1Peter 1:22-25(NLT) tells us, “23 For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. 24 As the Scriptures say, “People are like grass; their beauty is like a flower in the field. The grass withers and the flower fades. 25 But the word of the Lord remains forever.” And that word is the Good News that was preached to you.”

The Holy Spirit made us alive in Christ, but our hearts and minds are completely under our jurisdiction. God has given us free-will, and He will not force us to bring our hearts and minds up to the standard of our new life in Christ. This He leaves totally up to us. The Holy Spirit will give us a new heart, but our invitation to him must be clear and contain a willingness to be submissive under his guidance.

God warns us in Proverbs 4:23(NLT) to, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” Get a visual on this, see yourself standing outside the gates of your soul’s heart, manning the post, ensuring that nothing evil or sinful gets past the gate. This is the vigilance you must have about your soul’s heart. You must guard it with the Word of God, so that you will have a heart that pleases Him.

When we give our lives to Christ, guarding our hearts is just about the most important task we can undertake. Standing guard requires us to examine our emotions, thoughts, and words, and determine who is the source of them. Are they giving life and inspiring others to love God, or are they seasoned with the negative and selfish buzz of the world? Our commitment to God is demonstrated by what is in our hearts and what we let out of them. This is why God said to His prophet, Samuel, in 1Samuel 16:7(NLT), “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The LORD doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” No one other than God can look into an individual’s heart, and our hearts tell Him what is most important to us and who we really love.

Jesus Christ commanded us in Mark 12:30(NLT), “And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” This is a heart that is sold out to God, and if we have even a hint of doubt that our hearts are not fully committed to Him, now is the time to change them. We need to be praying that God will give us a new heart so that when our Savior returns, we will be ready.

Ephesians 5:26-27(NASB20) says, “26 so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.” Jesus Christ is going to rapture his church. We are his bride and he is coming back for us. It is up to each of us to be without spot or wrinkle. He took care of the sin issue when he gave his life on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. We are born-again and covered by the blood, and he tells us to remain blameless. It’s not about being polite or nice. It’s not about looking sharp on the outside. The inside is what God cares about. We’re not perfect. Yes, we all make mistakes, but despite our errors, our hearts must be loyal to God through the Lord Jesus Christ. If they aren’t, now is the time to get into God’s Word, surrender to His Spirit, and allow the Spirit to help us change our hearts and get right before God. ■

How Do I Make a Man Love Me?

Posted on May 6, 2024 by daaorg1214

The minds of many women are occupied with the question, “How do I make a man love me?” We want to know how to make him light up when we walk into a room, and we want him to absolutely adore us. We desire the ultimate commitment from a man, and we want him to make us feel secure in his love and devotion. It’s the real love that we’re after. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes, we want him to be oozing over with a Christ-like manhood. When we’re sad, he will do anything within his power to make that sadness go away. When we’re working on a project, he’s all-hands-on-deck. We never have to beg him to spend time with us because he makes us feel that being in our company is the highlight of his day. He’s loyal to the end, and this is the man we want to love us. We want him prepared and prepackaged with the capacity to return the quality of love that we give him.

Facts

I went to college with women that had been pumped and primed by their mothers to marry a college man of a certain breeding. They were told what to do and what not to do, and many of them followed the rules to a tee. Their studies were second to landing the right man and securing a wedding date and marriage soon after college. Growing up, all of us probably learned some portion of a formula-based thinking about how to get a man. It might have been primarily focused on the man’s physical desires. We were told to do this or do that to secure his affection. The reality that no one schooled us about is this; the way you begin a relationship molds the quality of it. So, if it isn’t beginning with the love of God in our hearts, and we don’t renew our minds to His Word and fill our hearts with His love, that relationship has nowhere to go but down.

It’s a fact that objectifying men based on preconceived notions of who they are and what they like is just as horrible as objectifying women. The reality is that there’s no way to hold a relationship together when physical attraction is used as a net to capture and keep someone tied to it. That’s never a successful strategy.

Marriage was sanctioned by God in the very beginning. He established it for His purpose, and we can never forget this if we desire to marry well. Through the marital union, God provides for our needs, and when Jesus Christ is the head of that union, the couple and their family unit is blessed and unified. If we take marriage out of the holy and appointed purpose that God has set, we’re setting ourselves up for failure.

As women who desire to partner with a man in marriage, we are deserving of someone that is capable of giving all the love and devotion of which we, ourselves, are capable of giving. This is both the mindset and the heart required for starting a solid relationship, because it sets the stage for mutual respect and unity. We can’t afford to neglect the words of Jesus Christ in Luke 12:48(NLT), “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” So, out of respect and reverence for God’s institution of marriage and its purpose, we should never expect of someone more than we have proven willing to do and give ourselves.

God has equipped us through Christ to continually exceed the love of which we think ourselves capable. We should also understand that our personal commitment to pour into our spouses, to give, share, and serve them, is also a required mind-and-heart-set for God’s daughters. We should forever be willing to give and share at or above the level we expect to receive.

The right motivation

All human beings have needs, and all human beings that are capable of intelligent thought can perceive those needs mentally, emotionally, physically, and most importantly, spiritually. So, our needs are multi-faceted. As women, we should not expect men to be any different. Primarily, we all want to be loved. We want people in our lives that love and support us. Please be clear that God created us in such a way that His love, and the desire for it, is at the root of all our needs. This is basic for all human beings, but many deny it. Although they seek elsewhere to get their needs met, only God can fill our cups and make us fulfilled in life.

1John 4:8(NLT) clarifies any misunderstandings we might have about this. It says, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” God is our Creator, and He created us by, in, with, and through His love. He made us what He is, because Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that we were made in His image. So, we are made to both seek and give love, but not just any ol’ love. We’re created to seek and give God’s love.

Most people make the mistake of trying to separate God’s love from romantic love, but that is impossible. Romantic love is only possible through God’s love. So, don’t try to separate romantic or any other kind of love from the Creator who is love and created all that we survey. As God’s people, our love for God is the right motivation no matter what we might attempt to do. When our motivation isn’t to love God and share His brand of love, but to fulfill our own personal agendas, we run into problems and the blessings we seek escape us. This is where many single women are today. They want to find someone to love them, but do not have an intimate relationship with God, the Source of all love. Because of this, they can’t see the blessing even if it is standing right in front of them.

The power of love

God is love. He demonstrated His great love for us all when He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to give his life as a sacrifice for our sins. God’s love comes to live in us when we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. The only way to have God’s love in our hearts is for Him to put it there through the new birth experience. The Holy Spirit comes to dwell inside us and gives us the desire to please God and love others. This is power, and without it, we are disappointed and defeated in our efforts.

We are incapable of making someone love us, and in truth, this is never something a child of God would have to do. 1John 4:16(NLT) tells us, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” When God’s love is in us, we will want to please Him by loving others through Jesus Christ. Despite our differences and backgrounds, we are all created by God and programmed to love and to be drawn to love. It’s in us, and it is a very spiritual reality. Those who live in love are drawn to others who live in love as well, because God is in them.

Trying to make a man love us is like trying to fit a square peg into a round whole. It’s an unnatural thing to do. Obedience to God’s Word takes care of all our needs in life. Sometimes we forget that love is power, because God is love and all power is in His hands. You and I don’t have any power of our own. It all belongs to God. He’s demonstrated the power of His love through His Word. Because of His wonder working power, we’ve seen up-close and personal that love is the power that motivates, attracts, transforms, and changes things for the better. So, making the right man love you requires no effort from you at all. God will take care of every detail of your marital union when your heart is full of His love and your desire is to do His Will and put Him first in your life.■

Be the Reason

Posted on April 29, 2024 by daaorg1214

One of our primary responsibilities as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is to be the reason that others think God is good. There is in truth no boundary for His goodness, because He is good all the time. As followers of Christ, we should be so convinced of God’s goodness that it should be oozing out of our pores. Faith in God is infectious, and He intended that it should be that way. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5:16(ESV), “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Through the new birth reality, Jesus Christ has given us his light, because we have his Spirit abiding inside us. He has empowered us to shine bright so that everyone can see that the Source of our light is God, and because of our shine, they will give glory to Him too.

Psalm 145:9(ESV) says, “The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” God is good to the last drop, and He has designed the universe and everything in it to cooperate beautifully with His goodness. It’s the driving force of all that is lovely, pure, kind, and excellent. When humanity was at its worse, God sent His only begotten Son to the earth to offer his life as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that every person, those who love Him and those that do not, can have the gift of eternal life. God sent Christ to do for us what we were totally incapable of doing for ourselves. So, like His goodness, God’s love knows no bounds. It is unconditional and unlimited, and through Jesus Christ, He has lavished His love on us all.

Our blessed Savior told us in John 10:10(NKJV), “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” A more than abundant life is the kind of existence our Heavenly Father desires for each of us. We owe everything to Him for what He’s done for all of humanity through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of his finished work, we can have a meaningful life with solid relationships, a fulfilling marriage, financial stability with plenty left over to share with others, and most importantly, because of Christ, we can have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Even though some of these blessings may not have manifested in our lives yet, a more than abundant life is the empowerment of God to every person who has faith in Him, and He means for us to enjoy this level of living. Deuteronomy 8:19(ESV) says, “You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.” Again, God has empowered us to reach out and grab His many blessings. He wants us to have our needs taken care of, to have good health, good relationships, and plenty of money in the bank. The question is whether we want it, and if we will meet His requirements to receive it.

Sometimes, our faith is below the threshold of our privilege. God wants us to be blessed abundantly, but we haven’t raised our thoughts and confessions to the level of blessings we desire. Some of us hang our heads low, and because we will not renew our minds to God’s Word and elevate our faith, we appear to others to be stagnant and uninspired. That’s a witness we need to change. Just because our girlfriends are lonely and feeling hopeless, we do not have to make ourselves small to fit in. Instead, we should put the glory and blessings of God on full blast.

No matter who we are or what we do for a living, someone has eyes on us. That’s just the simple truth. People look at how we move through our lives, especially when we’ve made it known we’re a believer. The reality is that our witness can either be a blessing to them or a hindrance, but God has empowered us to be a blessing and to leave a lasting impression of His glory.

Jesus Christ said in Mark 11:23(NLT), “I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart.” Doubt is an enemy of faith. It keeps our view obstructed so that we do not see the opportunities that have our name on them. In the Old Testament, this is what happened to the Israelites. They refused to trust God’s promise when they were in the wilderness. Moses sent spies to the land that God had promised them, and all but two of the spies brought back bad reports of fear. Numbers 13:33 tells us the spies told the people of Israel that they felt like grasshoppers next to the inhabitants of the promised land. That fear quickly spread among the others, and because of their doubt, they traveled around in circles in the wilderness until the unbelieving eventually died there.

They missed the promise of the Father because they refused to trust it. This should never be said about those of us living in the victory of Jesus Christ today. 2Corinthians 4:6(NLT) tells us, “For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.” You and I know the glory of God seen in the face of Jesus Christ because Christ lives in us! That’s why we can do as our Redeemer commands and let our light shine in the lives of others.

Inspire people with your witness. Let it be full of praise for our God! Every believer has the responsibility to let their light shine. People living today are desperately seeking something and someone real. They want to believe the truth and want a witness of someone living it. Let that someone be you. Psalm 34:8(ESV) says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” With our families and friends, and in our jobs, places of worship, schools, and everywhere else, we should be the reason! We should be the reason that individuals who see our light want to come to the table to taste and see that God is good. He truly is and it is the greatest privilege and honor that any of us could ever imagine to live with confidence that His goodness is in our hearts, and it covers us every day of our lives.■

English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

The Spirit of Truth

Posted on April 22, 2024 by daaorg1214

The first born-again Christian that I met who actually talked about being filled with the Holy Spirit was a woman that I had known most of my life. I was 14 and she was a mother of seven with an abusive husband that treated them all horribly. They were poor and she was often taken with illness, no doubt from the many beatings she had endured. She told me, “I go to the Holiness church in town. That’s where I got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost!” For me, this was nuanced and shocking. I was raised in the Baptist church and Christian men and women had been my teachers, mentors, and role models, but the words this woman spoke stopped me dead in my tracks. My coloring box of ‘dignified good Christian people’ made room for a new color. For the first time I saw hope in this once hopeless woman, and it made a tremendous impact on my life.

Living with Holy Spirit power was a foreign concept to me as a young believer, still in high school. I never heard about him from anyone. When I finally did hear about the power of the Holy Spirit, and inquired about him, I was told that this wasn’t for me. It was for those folks who danced and casted out demons, but it was not for me. That simply wasn’t the truth. The Holy Spirit is for every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s not an abstract essence or an empty cloud. The Holy Spirit is a person. He’s more of a person than you and I could ever be.

The Holy Spirit is a gift from God to every born-again believer. In Acts 2:38(ESV), the Apostle Peter proclaimed, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is power from on High. He’s the difference maker in our lives. Jesus Christ tells us in John 16:13 that he sent the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth and to tell us what he, the Spirit, hears from Christ.

It’s not our power we’re using. You and I don’t have any power to call our own. Our power comes from God through His Holy Spirit that indwells us. God tells us in Hosea 4:6 that His people are destroyed because they lack knowledge about Him, they don’t know what’s right and true, and they’ve turned their backs on knowledge. This happened to those living in Old Testament times and it is still happening to many of us. Some of us allow religion to hold us hostage from the truth, and we deny the gift of Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth.

Many of us have studied God’s Word, and some have done so exhaustively. We may comprehend God’s love intellectually, but we can’t understand it with spiritual depth because we deny the Teacher. The Word may make sense to us, but there’s no connection between our minds and hearts to help the Word sink deep because we have denied the Helper. We need to comprehend the Word of God in a way that the power of its truth sinks deep within. Only the Holy Spirit can do that for us.

Jesus Christ said in John 10:10(NKJV), “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” The thief is the devil, our adversary, and Jesus Christ has schooled us on what the thief is up to, however, he doesn’t want us to focus on that, because he has overcome the devil through his sacrifice and resurrection. Our precious Lord and Savior wants us to focus on what he has done for us, because he has made it available for every person to live with his victory, and therefore live a more than abundant life.

It’s no secret that life on earth comes with challenges and setbacks. Although we’re not to focus on the negative, our blessed Redeemer didn’t hide the reality of trials and tribulations. He told the disciples in John 16:33(NLT), “I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Many believers have not understood the awesome Good News of this scripture. Jesus Christ was tempted by satan, faced unparallel opposition, endured being called names and lied about, and walked with power, love, and strength throughout his ministry in the midst of murderous attempts on his life. He was fearless because he understood who he was. He knew that God was backing him through the power of the Holy Spirit, and you and I are called to walk with this same authority and power.

Romans 8:10(NLT) says, “And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God.” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. It is this same Spirit that was in Christ, working in him to complete God’s mission of saving the world. There is no equal to God’s power and that power is in us through the Holy Spirit!

We underestimate our ability to soar like eagles, to conquer obstacles victoriously, and to overcome any situation because we have not allowed God’s Holy Spirit to be at work in our lives to the extent he can. When we don’t know God’s Word, and we’re ignorant about the Helper, we can be stolen from, killed, and destroyed. Many of our beautiful brothers and sisters have fallen because they didn’t realize that God has given us the Gift of Holy Spirit to protect and keep us, and to help us live powerfully. Not every person will accept what Jesus Christ has made available. Some will continue to live beneath their privilege, but don’t let that be you. God has commanded us to live by the Spirit, because the Spirit will preserve and help us to be strengthened with God’s love and power so that we can be like Christ and live a successful Christian life.■

Where Are You?

Posted on April 15, 2024 by daaorg1214

A very nice lady in her senior years said to me recently that she’s been praying to God a long time to heal her right leg. Her last words to me were, “…And I’m still waiting.” This is a sentiment we no doubt hear expressed from many believers, particularly those over 50 that may be dealing with minor health challenges. We need to look under the hood of this, because the idea of praying and waiting long periods of time for the manifestation of the blessing is one that has become a fixture in our way of thinking. When it comes to meeting our future spouses and being delivered from sickness, ailments, and disease, many of us believe that God has delayed the blessing, when the issue is that we have stalled in our faith.

Some of us have never witnessed God heal someone miraculously, and because we haven’t seen it, we’re challenged to believe it. We may not have heard of sisters in Christ fasting and praying for six months and meeting their destiny partners shortly thereafter. Because we’re not witnessing and hearing about the miraculous in the lives of those close to us, it’s possible that our believing has flatlined, and we need to pump some life into it.

“How did I get here, Lord? My heart has been scarred from years of fractured and broken relationships. I’ve been abandoned, talked down to, relegated to the sidelines in so many ways, and I’m just waiting for the weight of all this to move out my way so I can breathe. I want my life to be light and free, like the air You allow to flow in and out of my nostrils. I no longer want to feel powerless and hopeless, Lord, but these seem like constant companions, like I can’t shake them loose for nothing. How did I get to this place where my dreams, once so relentless in my heart, are now like a mist that flutters about and teases me only every now and again? No one understands my pain. I’m disappointed and sad, and I don’t even know how I got here.” The very nice lady didn’t say these words to me, but ‘I’m still waiting’ painted a portrait of pain way beyond that of her right leg.

When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, their sinful actions didn’t remain outside the perimeters of their physical bodies. When they bowed to the devil and disobeyed God’s Word, sin entered their bodies and brought death with it. They were not ignorant. They knew better. As Adam and Eve walked together with the Holy Spirit in communion and fellowship, the Spirit taught them many things because this is what he does. The Holy Spirit is our Teacher. Jesus Christ said in John 14:26(NCV), “But the Helper will teach you everything and will cause you to remember all that I told you. This Helper is the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name.” God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He does not change. Because of this, we can have some idea of Adam’s and Eve’s days. They were learning from the Holy Spirit and working in the garden of Eden, because that is what God told them to do.

Regarding things that were forbidden, God gave Adam only one commandment, and Genesis 2:16-17(ESV) lays it out. It says, “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “16 You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” From the Word of the Lord, we can understand that once a wrong decision or choice is acted upon, sin enters the body. Without repentance, sin sits, festers, and corrodes us from the inside out. Praise God for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who rescued us from this terrible fate! Through Christ, God handled our sin issue. Our problem is that even though we’ve been rescued from the curse of death and darkness, some of us are still going back to our old ways and picking up old dead things.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they followed the next course on the path that sin lays, which is shame. They hid themselves from God because sin brought an awareness of nakedness, of not being covered by holiness and sacred connection to our Heavenly Father. They were ashamed of their sin, and this was a new and dark development. Shame had not entered the picture until sin came on the scene. Disobedience opened their eyes to sin, and all its cousins. So, they fell. They were out of place and lost their holy positioning, and Genesis 3:9(ESV) tells us, “9 But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?””

“Where are you” indeed. Of course, God knew the physical location of Adam and Eve, because God knows everything. When we examine the translation of these words in Genesis 3:9, we discover that God is making a statement regarding His relationship with Adam and Eve. Sin caused their disconnect from Heavenly Father, and the catastrophe this set-in motion was conveyed in the Father’s question to them. That vulnerability, innocence, and humble dependence on God was lost, and even though many of us are saved today, we’ve lost it too.

2Corinthians 5:17(ESV) tells us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” Our old nature was crucified with Christ when he sacrificed his life on the cross. The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 2:20 (ESV), “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” This is us! We were with him when he nailed our sins to the cross. The flesh has been crucified, and we are new creations in Christ, but some of us didn’t let some parts die. We’re holding on to them and they are harming us.

The disappointment and nagging heartache are always just beneath our resolve of “I’m okay.” They leave us with just enough hope to make it through the day but not enough to live confidently and boldly in Christ. Pain is not a natural state, and neither is loneliness, but they are the familiar. We see these, pain and loneliness, so often in the eyes of others, and sadly, even after some of us are saved, there’s no difference between the fainting faith of those deeply wounded and us. We’ve acquiesced to the level of their apathy and melded our unbelief with their doubt, and this is mainly because we’ve kept some things, some habits, some wrong thoughts, some errors in our hearts and minds. We didn’t kick doubt and wrong believing out the door. For some of us, the heavies that we should have repented, surrendered to God, and released are still hiding out in our hearts and minds.

Our Heavenly Father does not want us in pain. He does not want us to be lonely. Wherever we are in our life’s journey, we must be completely sold out to these truths. Where are we in our faith? Where are we in the level of intimacy we’ve developed in our relationship with God? Where are we in our heads and hearts, and have we released the bitterness, the jealousy, the envy, doubt, lying, and all the other negativity God commanded us to let die? These, and anything like them, are at the root of all our pain, and if we’re wise, we’ll pray for a revelation to see them, confront them, and let them go so that God’s love can heal up our broken places. ■

All Things Working Together

Posted on April 8, 2024 by daaorg1214

When it’s time for a believer to be at a certain point of spiritual maturity in the Lord Jesus Christ, and this person has no recognition or awareness of this appointed place, it can be said that he or she is asleep as it relates to their spiritual appointment. Many will argue that this isn’t true, but our circumstances will bear it out repeatedly. Even as believers, sometimes our lives come to a standstill. It seems that things just aren’t moving, and we’re not as satisfied or fulfilled as we once were. We have a choice. We can remain at a standstill, or we can accept the reality that we’re late for our spiritual appointment, and we need to seek God with all our hearts and minds, because He has some place for us to be.

Make no mistake, there’s a place where everything for us comes together in an amazing and fulfilling way. Romans 8:28(ESV) says, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Be clear that ‘all things working together for good’ is a process of God’s perfect timing. It doesn’t mean that our circumstances and conditions are continually in a state of bliss. We live on earth where people and things are coming against us all the time. Jesus Christ told us in John 16:33 that in the world we will have tribulation, but we can be encouraged because he overcame the world, and through him, we will too.

So ‘all things working together’ is not a drop-off location where things are perfect and pleasing as punch. We don’t get to remain planted there with our hands tucked beneath our laps. But this is the way some of us have trained our minds to think. We forget that this earth experience is grooming ground for our faith, and that our faith will indeed get a workout here. Instead, we have immediacy on the brain. When we’re in a bind or we’re expecting an answer to prayer, we want things working out on the double. Again, ‘All things working together’ is a continual process where we have a starting point and a destination according to our faith. And as soon as we we’ve reached one destination and gained a higher level of faith; another starting point will be revealed.

‘All things working together for our good’ is God working powerfully behind the scenes. We can’t see all the details of what He’s doing, and this is one of the reasons that so many of us become anxious and worried that things are not going to work out. We lose faith because our timetables lack the patience and endurance that God is requiring of us.

Stamina and momentum are not words we typically hear in Christian vernacular, but we should hear them more often because they are very important to our walk in Christ. Stamina and momentum have everything to do with the endurance and patience that God expects all believers to produce. He tells us in Hebrew 12:1(NLT), “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Notice in this verse that God didn’t tell us that HE would strip off every weight that slows us down. He’s given this responsibility to us, and when we reach a point in life where the weight is barreling down on us, we should know that it’s stripping off time. The longer we wait to strip it off, the more stamina and momentum we lose.

Our blessings are not delayed, we’ve yet to catch up to them. God does not slow the rotation of the earth to catch up with our pace; we must catch up to His pace. This is one of the reasons He is continually reminding us in His Word to put on our new nature which is created to be like Christ. If we do this, we will be prepared for all that God has in store. Some of us have delayed our spiritual growth and maturity to such a degree that our eyes no longer recognize opportunities. They slip right by us. God has designed the universe in such a way that it is continually pouring out the overflow of His blessings, but we’ve not positioned ourselves to be at the right place at the right time.

1Corinthians 14:33 (NKJV) tells us, “For God is not the author of confusion but of peace.” Heavenly Father is a God of order, and one of the greatest disservices we commit against ourselves is to underestimate His nature of peace and His allegiance to structure and order. You and I don’t have the mental and emotional capacity to absorb the true majesty and supremacy of God. It is impossible to even skim the surface of it without the help of the indwelling Holy Spirit. This is one of the reasons why God is so patient with us. He doesn’t punish us for not reading and studying His Word. He leaves the level of intimacy in our relationship with Him totally up to us. We can seek Him first, or we can seek other things, but we will always move at a snail’s pace to blessings if we don’t seek God with all our hearts, minds, and strength.

Romans 8:28 reminds us that God has called us to His purpose. The revelation of our purpose in the Will of God must combine with our intelligence and intention to walk it out. Many of us are finding ourselves in a predicament of stagnancy when it comes to blessings, and it is most often due to the failure to soak in the knowledge of God’s Word and connect it to purpose and action. This causes us to lose momentum on this Christian journey, and it decreases our strength and ability to reach out and grab what is rightfully ours.

Blessings come from our knowledge of the Word of God. When we’re in a season in our lives where we’re not seeing the kind of movement we expect, it isn’t a time to be complacent. It’s a season to seek God like never before and draw nearer to Him with the full assurance that He will draw nearer to us. In Revelation 3:2 (NLT), God warned, “Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God.” Everything, and I do mean absolutely everything is spiritual. The Spirit of God is forever and always causing all things to work together for our good. The closer we draw to our Heavenly Father, the more we will see the many blessings He’s placed before us, and we’ll have the spiritual strength to reach out and grab them. ■

Trying to Get the Man to Change

Posted on April 1, 2024 by daaorg1214

Free-Will is a gift of God that we must become intimately familiar with in our significant relationships. Many women are praying that God will change a man for them, that He will overstep a man’s thought patterns and ways of behaving without the man’s consent. This will never happen. There are pieces of information that we must know so that we remain grounded in wisdom. These will keep our expectations in check when it comes to the significant relationship in our lives. The first is that God will only send you a man that knows Him. This man doesn’t have to be super knowledgeable of the Bible, and he may not be religious, but he knows the reality of God’s sovereignty and righteousness. He desires to do right because he wants to honor God and honor himself. If he doesn’t honor himself, he will not honor you. Secondly, a man must desire to change. He must see the value in it by recognizing the harm that a failure to change will cause. Lastly, a man must love you enough that if something he is doing, thinking, or feeling is causing you distress, he will choose to change.

Romans 12:2(NLT) says, “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.” In this verse, God tells us exactly what we should not do, and exactly what we should do. We should not copy the behaviors and customs of society or the world, because those are contrary to the Word and Will of God. Instead, He directs us to allow Him to transform us, and we give Him permission to do this when we change the way we think.

God is telling us what to do here, but He will not force us to do it. He has given us free-will, and we have the great privilege to follow what He says. We decide whether we will change the way we think and receive the reward of His blessings. The choice to renew our minds to God’s truth is ours to make. Whether we choose to accept it or not, the reality is that: #1 God only sends a woman a man that respects His sovereignty and righteousness, #2 the desire to change according to what is right is a person’s free-will choice, and #3 truly loving someone will motivate a person to change. These are true for all human beings, both men and women. However, as women, we must be especially attentive to remind ourselves of these jewels of wisdom so that we do not punish ourselves continually with wrong actions, bad decisions, and false expectations.

Often, we expect an unattainable outcome in a significant relationship because our expectations are outside the boundaries of right believing. Some of us get into relationships with men that might have peripheral qualities we’re attracted to, but after some time is spent in their company, we find that they are far from being a match for our level of spiritual, emotional, and mental maturity. We may not articulate this, but when we pull back the layers, it’s the reality we must face. Even when there are many good qualities that we appreciate in the man we’re involved with; he can still have non-dominant negative behaviors that sneak out at the most irritating and inappropriate times. These are not insignificant and can ultimately ruin a relationship if we’re not walking in faith.

There’s a place in every woman
Amos 3:3(NKJV) asks, “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” This agreement between two individuals that intend to commit to one another is one that is more than verbal. As it relates to marriage, it is a spiritual agreement that is made at the deepest level. Some of us are praying for the man we’re involved with to change. If after many arguments and disagreements, he does not seem to alter his behavior, we’re at our wits end. We’re not being heard, valued, and respected in the way we feel we deserve. It makes us feel helpless in the relationship because the agreement that two committed individuals should have with one another is not working both ways.

Within every woman, God has created a place at her very core, and her destiny partner is a man that will respond to that place within her. It’s a deep place that we may not be aware of and we cannot define, but we will know definitively when that place has made contact with the right man. We must trust with every fiber of our being that there is something about the right man’s manhood that will come into agreement with that place in order for us to have confidence in his fidelity, loyalty, and commitment. Many of us try to force this with the wrong man, but that is an unfruitful move on our parts. It will not yield the results we seek, and history has taught us this.

Many of us choose a man, give ourselves to him, and make future plans for marriage with him when his manhood has not connected with the very core of us. Often, this is why we are exasperated, because we are expecting something he cannot give. We lose so much stamina and momentum on this journey of life when we do this.

You must be led by God
We cannot make a man change. No words of a mere human have caused another human being to truly change. Only God and His Word can do this. He has commanded us to seek His Will in all that we do. We need to hear from Heavenly Father that His blessing is upon our relationships. We can never get ahead of God, and if we do this, we must seek the Lord’s forgiveness and ask for His help and wisdom.

It isn’t God’s Will that we are involved in relationships that are rollercoasters of ups and downs. We must be spiritually prepared for significant relationships because the wrong one can mess us up. We must be sharp in recognizing the Spirit’s directives, and we should have proven that we are humbled in total surrender and submission to his direction and guidance. If you have not made a habit pattern of walking by the Spirit, you will not perceive the warnings, information, and guidance necessary to preserve a union.

Know that he’s for you
If you are of the Lord, and the Lord is not in him, do not risk your life. Seek God with your whole heart! The man that is the one God has sent will not think it is a burden to change the things that jeopardize your relationship, because he will have confidence in the love of Christ in you. No longer will you allow yourself to be concerned with attributes and small things that irritated you in the past. This man will humble himself before God, and because of this, he will move you at your core. The Holy Spirit will testify in you that he is indeed the one that God has sent. Then you can have confidence that no matter what comes your way, the two of you will walk together in agreement as the love of God in Christ works within you both.■

Help Is on the Way

Posted on March 18, 2024 by daaorg1214

There was a time in my life when I struggled with doubt and anxiety. I questioned if God really heard my prayers and wondered if He was happy with the kind of life I was living. I had doubts because the situations that plagued me were emotionally draining, and they didn’t seem to be getting any better. I struggled spiritually because I couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening in my life and was convinced that the scriptures in the Bible would not relate to my circumstances. Then, one day I received a phone call from a woman of God. She challenged me to be completely honest and open with God and with myself, and then trust Him with the problems I faced. She encouraged me to be committed to let go and let God for the next month, and to, “Be still, take a pause, and watch what God does.” I accepted her challenge.

Boy, this was more challenging that I thought it would be. I became more observant of my thoughts and habits, and I began to see that some of them had been holding me back for a very long time. It was a fight to stop worrying, and I had to continuously tell myself, “Give it God. He’s got it.” I started to read in the Bible about those that had endured great difficulty and leaned on God to get them through it. Hebrews 12:1 tells us that we’re surrounded by a huge crowd of witnesses who walked this earth with their hand in the hand of our Heavenly Father. They grew in their faith and learn to trust Him utterly and completely. God tells us to look up to those folks, Abraham and Sarah, Abel, Enoch, and Noah, because their records of believing prove that God cannot fail. Their examples show us that God keeps His promises and His Word is true.

Hebrews 12:1(NLT) encourages us to “strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.” In most cases, a person won’t strip off a weight if we don’t know what it is or realize that it’s weighing them down. God tells us in His Word that sin and the oppression from not knowing Him or what He requires of us weighs us down. Bad attitudes and feelings of jealousy, envy, bitterness, resentment, arrogance, and selfishness weigh us down. When we entertain thoughts of sexual immorality and practice it, this is a heavy weight. Many of us have never confronted the reality that we’re participants in these things, and they are weighing our souls down. They cause us to draw into our lives the very situations, people, and circumstances that we don’t want.

Even though we may not have ever confronted the weight, we feel something blocking our journey forward and upward. We sense very deeply that something is wrong, and its draining us emotionally. Many of us think it’s someone or something in our external environment that is causing this, but no person or situation on the outside has the power to rule what is going on inside you. God didn’t give human beings the ability to look inside another’s heart and mind. We live from the inside out. God has given us the gift of free-will, and He holds us responsible for what is in our hearts and minds. The internal workings of your soul are your responsibility and only you can change how you act and what you think, speak, and do.

It’s internal, that’s what spearheads the issues of life. God instructs us in Proverbs 4:23(NLT) to “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” We must come clean to God and lay bare before Him. He already knows what’s in our hearts, but we need to acknowledge it as well. We must humble ourselves before Him and recognize that He has the power to transform us into the people He desires us to be.

Hebrews 12:1 tells us that God has set a race before each of us, and His Will is that we run it with endurance. This means that we must have spiritual strength and stamina. If we refuse to strip off the weight, we will continue to move at a snail’s pace toward our destinies. But if we are obedient to God’s Word, and if we seek God’s help, He will open our eyes to see the things we need to release so that we can have the kind of life He wants to give us.

In Colossians 3:10(NLT), Heavenly Father commands us to “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” If we don’t recognize the things we have to put off, we might not recognize the things we need to put on. We must read God’s Word and learn about Jesus Christ because his is the example that God commands us to follow. If you’re anything like me, I was so accustomed to handling problems on my own terms and under my own conditions that I blocked out God’s help. Because of this, my limited resources were constantly exhausted, but God’s resources are unlimited, and He offers them to us freely.

In the Old Testament, God’s people refused to change their thoughts and attitudes and would not be humble in the sight of God. They refused to seek only our Heavenly Father for provision and help. Instead, they went off the rails, worshiping idols, and bad things happened because they turned their backs on our Heavenly Father. God reminded them in Isaiah 41:27(NLT) that He was the One who told them, “Look! Help is on the way!” and He delivered on His promise. It doesn’t matter what situation we face in life; God is willing to come to our aid. Things can get very uncomfortable for us when we take our eyes off Jesus Christ, but when we anchor our confidence in God, we can be assured that His help is on the way.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

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