God is Sufficient for Everything you Need!

Paul was in prison when he wrote to Timothy. He was experiencing physical discomfort, personal attack, and desertion. Why would the Lord allow one of His most faithful servants to endure such suffering? Why didn’t He step in and protect him? At times God doesn’t rescue us from hard situations because He’s providing something better. We may feel as if He’s abandoning us, but in reality, He is protecting us—not by deliverance but through strengthening. Have a wonderful allowing God to strengthen you though your difficult times.

“Yes and the Lord will deliver me from every evil attack and will bring me safely into his heavenly Kingdom” ~~ 2 Timothy 4:18

 

When trouble and pain pay a visit, we must view the circumstance from God’s perspective and ask ourselves these questions. Which is a greater demonstration of the Lord’s power—changing something around me or changing something within my heart?

 

Which is the greater faith builder—seeing God’s deliverance from every difficulty or experiencing His presence and strengthening in the midst of trials? Which reward is greater—immediate relief from discomfort or tested and refined faith that will result in praise and glory when Christ returns (1 Peter 1:7)? Which answer to prayer is greater—that God has removed something and given me external peace, or that He’s left me in a trial and given an internal peace that nothing can steal, not even my circumstances? 

 

Does God have to fix something for you to be happy? If He removes the situation, you may never learn that He is sufficient for everything you need. Instead, let Him change you, and you’ll discover His joy in whatever circumstance comes your way.

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Run the Race with Perseverance

Every one of us has a race to run and we all have days that are easier than others. We cry out to God and ask Him to hear our prayers. But one thing we all need is the right “clothing” to run this race called life. There comes a time when we need to change our clothes in some way. The clothes we wore when we were first saved were right for that time, but today there may be need for our clothing to change and become new, maybe some new equipment or maybe we need to get rid of some things that are holding us back. The scripture below defines what is needed in order for us to finish the race.

Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us~ Hebrews 12:1

Some days we feel like we can conquer anything as this scripture reveals.

For by You I can run through a troop, and by my God I can leap over a wall.~ Psalm 18:29

Then there are days that are harder to get through which is revealed in this scripture.

And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint in acting nobly and doing right, for in due time and at the appointed season we shall reap, if we do not loosen and relax our courage and faint.~ Galatians 6:9

When they shoot a movie, it is has been told that they shoot the last scene of the movie first and that they go back and make the movie in bits and pieces until it reaches that final scene. God does the same thing when He looks at us. He already knows the last scene of our lives. He sees us completed in Him. We make mistakes throughout life and there are times we spend too much time focusing on how we feel and what we see, instead of what we know. We need to see ourselves as God see us as well as seeing others as God sees them. In the scripture below Gideon did not see himself as God saw him ( A Mighty Warrior) and he even questioned God. We have all done that at one time or another and asked God are you sure this what I am supposed to do or where I am supposed to be?

“Now the [a]Angel of the Lord came and sat under the oak (terebinth) at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, and his son Gideon was beating wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, The Lord is with you, you mighty man of [fearless] courage. And Gideon said to him, O sir, if the Lord is with us, why is all this befallen us? And where are all His wondrous works of which our fathers told us, saying, Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt? But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian. The Lord turned to him and said, Go in this your might, and you shall save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you? Gideon said to Him, Oh Lord, how can I deliver Israel? Behold, my clan is the poorest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house.” ~~ Judges 6:11-15

We as Christian will never excel to the point God would like us to be as long as we just want to exist and most Christians these days are just merely existing. Some are held back by the spirit of fear. Notice what the following scripture says…

“For God did not give us a spirit of fear (of cowardice, of craven and cringing and fawning fear), but [He has given us a spirit] of power and of love and of calm and well-balanced mind and discipline and self-control.”~~ 2 Timothy 1:7

God has provided us with the POWER and LOVE as well a sound mind. No one has to live in the spirit of fear. Fear comes as a result of us not seeing ourselves as God sees us. We are afraid to step out in faith and by this I mean radical faith not just rational faith. We have to know that within each one of us is the power of God, His love and that the spirit of fear is something we need to extinguish! We need to quit leaning on how we feel and leaning what we see and start leaning on God and excel to the limits of what He wants us to become in Him!

Sometimes we have days that we are extremely tiring, but being tired is not a sin. Sometimes the most spiritual thing we can do is simply Rest! The pursuit of the promise of God is wrapped up in our cries!

 

Take this moment right now and just talk to your Father!!  He loves you unconditionally no matter what you have done or not done…He WANTS to hear from you!!!

 

 

God has a Purpose for your Life!

 How thrilling it is to be reminded that God has designed and created us, and He has a master-plan for our lives. You see, we can dwell on the pain. Or I can dwell on the wonderful love and faithfulness of the Father. It all depends on our focus. So many times in life we find ourselves looking for significance. What is my purpose? Why am I here? Does my life really matter? We see the vastness of the universe and wonder, “Can I really matter that much?” The good news is that God is keenly aware of who you are. Have a wonderful day in His presence.

 “I cry out to God Most High, to God who will fulfill his purpose for me. He will send help from heaven to rescue me.”~~ Psalm 57:2-3 

The answer to the questions above is a resounding, “Yes!” You do matter, God does care and you are very significant. Like the Psalmist, when we feel overwhelmed, when we doubt whether we matter or not, we can cry out to God, the same God who said that He will fulfill His purpose for you. Did you get that? God has a purpose for you and He will fulfill it. And God is committed to do whatever it takes to fulfill that purpose, even if it means sending help from Heaven itself to help you. So today rejoice in your significance. God loves you. God is vitally interested in you. God will fulfill His purpose for you.

Visualize yourself yearning to know your purpose. You can sense an emptiness, a grief over a sense of your own insignificance. And so you yearn. As you are feeling low God comes by and calls you by name. He puts His arm around you and begins to tell you all about the purpose He has for your life. Feel the joy in knowing that you were created for a purpose. Feel the peace that comes from knowing that God loves you and has always had you in His plans. Rejoice and then affirm, “I have a purpose.”

Comfort!

What has been filling your thoughts and occupying your mind in recent days? Perhaps a loved one who is sick, an employer who is difficult, an injustice that you have observed, a longing that you have, or a sorrow that you feel? Or maybe all of the above. In spite of your many tangled, confused, and anxious thoughts—the psalmist says to the Lord—your comforts fill my soul with joy. Although he describes the onslaught of anxious cares as a “multitude,” he insists that the comforts that God has provided far outweigh and exceedingly outnumber the stresses of life. Have a wonderful day as you allow God to comfort you and give you renewed hope and joy.

“When doubts filled my mind, your comfort gave me renewed hope and joy.” ~ Psalm 94:19

The psalmist expresses that the encouragement that God has provided in His Word is so intensive and so uplifting that he has been led, not only to be consoled, but to be delighted. This speaks of a transcending comfort that is powerful and substantial enough to reverse the very trend of the mind toward worry or fear.

Have you experienced the soul-delighting comforts of God’s Word as of late? Has your tendency to worry or fret or grieve been overruled to such an extent that the inertia of your thoughts is now toward joy and peace and satisfaction?

When one looks at the love and faithfulness of the cross, at the wisdom and majesty of creation, at the sweetness and surety of God’s promises, the anxiousness of life is overwhelmed by the comforts for the soul.

“Because He Loves Me!”

“Because he loves me, says the Lord, I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name. He will call upon me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.” ~ Psalm 91:14-15

I just love reading psalm 91 because it is so full of promise and the love God has for us. I love how God wrote His word to relate to us. When He expresses a desire, He brings it down to our level. He relates to us in terms that we can understand. As I read this passages below, I can relate to the thoughts and desires God has for those who love Him. 

He starts the verse by saying “because he loves me”. He’s talking about anyone and everyone who loves Him. He doesn’t say, because he is perfect, or because he says all the right things. He doesn’t say, because he has a lot of money, or is a good parent. No, God says…”because he loves me”. That is the only requirement He has. Everything else is just fluff. What matters is that we love Him. It’s not complicated and it doesn’t require rules and regulations. It’s very simple…it’s just love. And because we love Him, the Lord promises so many things.

In these couple of verses God promises so many things He will do. He will rescue us. He will protect us. He will answer us when we call upon Him. He will be with us in trouble. He will deliver us. He will honor us. He promises to do all of this, simply because we love Him. That is so amazing to me. It is so comforting to me. It is so humbling to me.

When we begin to acknowledge God and put him first in everything we do, He will hear us and begin to answer our prayers. He will protect us and provide for all our needs. All we have to do is to learn to trust him, and when we call on Him He will be there waiting.

Have a wonderful day saturated in God’s love for you. Love you all in Christ <3!!!  Please share this blog and Please visit me on Facebook.  I pray that whoever you share this with will come closer to their walk with Jesus!

God is good—all the Time!

“For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.” ~ Psalm 100:5

I believe the greatest lesson of faith is the acknowledgement that God is good—all the time, even when we can’t feel it with our emotions. Oswald Chambers wrote, “Faith by its very nature must be tested and tried. And the real trial of faith is not that we find it difficult to trust God, but that God’s character must be proven trustworthy in our own minds.”  But there are days, which sometimes turn into weeks, which sometimes turn into entire seasons, where our heart wonders, God, are You really good? I pray that the promises of God in His word will help encourage your heart to know that God is good, all the time.

Let me encourage you to trust the sovereignty of God. You might ask if God is in control of everything and bad things still happen, how can He be good? When life is hard, do you ever doubt that God is good? When your prayers seem to go unanswered, do you ever secretly think it’s because He’s mad at you or trying to punish you? So do you ever wonder, How could a good God let this happen?

Questions like these are the exact reason we’ve got to trust what the Bible says about who God is. Our feelings can trick us. Our limited perspective of what’s happening in our lives makes it hard to know what exactly is good for us and what isn’t. That’s why when we’re tempted to doubt that God is good, we need to run to God’s promises.

In case there’s still that nagging place in your heart that’s saying, If God is really good, why hasn’t He fixed this? this passage is just for you. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Romans. 8:28). In other words, a good God makes sure that even the bad stuff gets worked out to our benefit. Be reminded that  “This too shall pass and be redeemed. The more you cling, the more you’ll see He really is good. We can know for sure that He has a plan to make sure even the bad stuff in our lives will be worked for our good. Will you cling to that truth today?

Let go and Let God!

All of us like to feel that we are in control of our lives. God wants to be the one in control. He does not want us to control Him. We need to just accept the circumstances & acknowledge that we are powerless to it and leave it with God to work out the details-believing that He has our best interests in mind anyway. He is better at it than anyone else! By giving a situation over to Him, we are placing it in the best hands possible. We know that God will do whatever He has planned, hence, His will be done.

We must allow God to be in control of every area of our lives. God knows where you have come from and He knows where you are going. In order for God to be in control, we first must totally surrender ourselves to Him. For some, that might be difficult, but total surrender is a process that we must go through. If we fail to yield, God will allow us to get ourselves into certain situations that are designed to teach us a lesson, but in the end, after we have gone full circle, we will come to the place that we will agree that it is best to let God be in control.

Letting go is one of the hardest things that we must learn to do. Many of us hold onto our past which keeps us from moving forward. Some of us hold onto unhealthy relationships thinking that we can’t make it without a certain person in our life. Some of us hold onto past hurts which hinders us from being free to accept the love of another person. Some of us hold onto old ideas and precepts that close us off from accepting what may be a better way. Some of us can’t let go because of our pride, but regardless of our reasons, we have to be willing to let go of it all if it is in the way of God being our first priority. God considers anything that we hold onto too tightly as competition and He has told us that we are not to have any other gods before Him. Anything that we can’t let go of becomes an idol to us and God will not allow that to continue to exist.

We must come to the place in our lives that we place everything that we love and hold dear to us into the hands of God and trust Him with it. We must have faith in God and not wonder if God will take care of us. We all need to get to that point where we are willing to obey and trust God no matter what the cost. Let go and let God take control of your life so that you can enjoy His blessings and reach the destiny that He has planned for you.

Trusting God!

 

Do you have a difficult time trusting God? Is there an area of your life that you need to entrust to the Lord? Let me give you a few reasons why you can trust God! You can know that God will never fail you!

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”~~ Proverbs 3:5-6

Trust carries the message to “rely on someone for security”. Honestly, I can’t come up with anyone better than God to rely on! I know that my life is secure in His hands. I know that He will never fail me!

Have you ever leaned on your human understanding more than the wisdom of God? If you have, you’re in good company. We all tend to lean on our own understanding at times! But the encouraging part is that we don’t have to. We can trust God! We can lean on Him and know that He will always come through.

A simple truth to cling to is this, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).” God’s ways are higher! We can’t begin to comprehend what God is doing in our lives, but we can trust that He will do all things well. When we acknowledge God in all our ways, He truly will take away all the obstacles that we face in life. He will clear a path before us, so that we can walk uprightly in His plan for us!

With God….all things are possible!

When we ask for God’s help, we dedicate our endeavor to Him. We admit that in our strength this would not be possible but we proclaim that God can accomplish anything through someone who is willing. We put God’s courage into our heart with His truth. We retrain our minds by taking the words “I can’t” out of our vocabulary.

“Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.'” ~~~ Mark 10:27

Do your circumstances seem impossible? Are you battling discouragement or fear of your unknown future? Keep your eyes on the Lord every day and not on your circumstances. I pray that you will start to learn how to walk in faith and stand on the promises of God speaking God’s Word to the liar and deceiver, Satan.

Never doubt that God is in control. He has a plan and a purpose for your life. He wants you to walk in faith and praise Him instead of giving up on His mighty power. He wants you to learn some very important lessons during your spiritual journey in your wilderness as you are headed to your promised land. In His timing He will restore whatever you’re going through and make you stronger than ever before.

Yes, I know that life is not always easy or fair. I understand about mountains of circumstances. What are you going to do? we need to go to the Lord, praying, choosing to praise the Lord and believing that nothing is impossible for Him and He can delivery you so He can get all the glory, honor and praise.

Will you worship and praise your Lord today and everyday? Will you walk in faith instead of fear of the unknown? The enemy likes to put fear upon each of us as we look at the mountain of circumstances that we each face. What bad report are you dreading? Do not fear bad news, but choose to trust in the Lord.

Forever Faithful!

There are many people who are hurting in many ways. There are a lot of tough things going on in people’s lives. One common theme is a desire to see God come through. A desire to be victorious! God has a record of being faithful at least a Gazillion times. More times than we will ever be able to count. It’s hard to see His faithfulness at work in our lives at times because we see things from our perspective. We see things unfinished, full of pain, agony, often bewildered by circumstances, and just frustrated by the lack of control we have. We need to take our eyes off of the circumstances and put our eyes on the One who is in control! The One who never steps off the throne, never says He’s too busy, never calls it quits, never says He’s having a bad day, so He can’t help us. He is always there! We just have to stop and become available. Stop and listen! Stop and allow Him to work! Stop and get a new perspective on the current situation!

“Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them– the Lord, who remains faithful forever.” ~ Psalm 146:5-6

There are many people who are hurting in many ways. There are a lot of tough things going on in people’s lives. One common theme is a desire to see God come through. A desire to be victorious! 

It’s hard to see His faithfulness at work in our lives at times because we see things from our perspective. We see things unfinished, full of pain, agony, often bewildered by circumstances, and just frustrated by the lack of control we have. We need to take our eyes off of the circumstances and put our eyes on the One who is in control! The One who never steps off the throne, never says He’s too busy, never calls it quits, never says He’s having a bad day, so He can’t help us. He is always there! We just have to stop and become available.  Stop and listen!  Stop and allow Him to work! Stop and get a new perspective on the current situation! 

God sees things from a better perspective. Are you willing to trade in your earthly perspective, so God can give you an eternal perspective? Things look a lot better from where He is sitting.

God can and will move the boulders in your life! Trust Him with the details! Sure during our battles it is always tough to see how God will be faithful, but that is why it is so important to look at His track record. David looked back and rejoiced in God’s faithfulness. He saw how God rescued him. How has God rescued you? Find time to rejoice in God’s record of faithfulness in your life. The more you concentrate on how faithful God has been, the more you will trust Him to be faithful with your current situation. He’s got this!  He really does! He won’t fail you! He won’t let you down!

Have a wonderfully blessed day.  Please won’t you share this blog and I pray it will encourage someone or many in the Lord!  God bless you!  Please visit me on Facebook too!