Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Monday 04/30/2012)

Sorrowful Blessings

Proverbs 10:22 Amplified Bible (AMP)

²²The blessing of the Lord--it makes [truly] rich, and He adds no sorrow with it [neither does toiling increase it].

            How many times have we awakened and immediately began to complain about the day, and all that it held for us to do?  How often do we find ourselves facing events with the children or related expenses and find ourselves, sad and thinking maybe we shouldn’t have had children, or maybe that they are just too much?  How often do we complain, and find ourselves in a place feeling some kind of way about the job we have the house we must care for or the car we have to put gas in?  We have found sorrow and sadness in our blessing and for some of us that blessing has become a burden because of the way we think about it.

            It is like that with Kingdom blessings as well. I remember when I first started to operate in the prophetic gifts and in words of wisdom and knowledge, it seemed as if all hell broke loose in my life and I regretted being used of God in that way, because it seemed I immediately became a target on the enemy’s radar, and people’s too.  Although I understood that anyway and anytime God uses us it is a blessing, but it cost.  But what I did not understand was that God was not adding the sorrow; I was.  I was adding the sorrow by worrying, by focusing on the attacks and all of the disruptive tactics of the enemy and who he was using and trying to figure it out instead of allowing God to handle what was out of my realm.  Truly the blessings of the Lord do make us rich, which means it adds wealth to our lives, our existence, but it is us who adds the sorrow, by the way we think about what He has blessed us with.  It is also us who tries to handle what God did not ask us to handle or to even consider or try to figure out.  We will often be the one who stresses our own self out by making family, jobs, houses, and even ministry sorrowful or burdensome.  I am learning the significance of what goes on in our mind.  Our mind is a powerful tool that is often misused.  When I refer to misused I am referring to the fact that we look for what is negative many times before we look to the positives in our situation.  Many of us take overwhelming joy and pride in being the victim in situations instead of the victor.  We have not learned to focus on the fact that one of God’s most powerful blessings was salvation and through salvation He unlocked the door to so much more.  He gave us victory, or death and over all the power of the enemy.  He gave us health and healing through the stripes He took, and He was bruised for the iniquities that were ours.  He made us above and not beneath and He granted us headship through adoption into His kingdom.  He blessed us with all that He is and will ever be, but instead we are focused on our limited abilities in and of ourselves instead of the blessings of the Lord that truly made us rich, and added no sorrow and took away many more.

            Today is a wonderful day, full of the blessings of the Lord.  The blessings of the Lord will not be without their challenges, brought by the one who is the father of lies, as he seeks to make us believe what he is showing us, but we have a choice to add the sorrow by believing the lies or not. The blessing is not coming with the sorrow. We can give the sorrow to someone who can handle it, who has already overcome it and given us a better and more excellent way. We can choose to apply the answers already supplied to us in the Word of God that renews our minds, our hearts, our lives and gives us relief from those things that seek to take our joy and make our blessings look more like a burden.   Remember, God is our Heavenly Father and just as in most cases our natural father wants great things for us, God wants even greater things for us, so why would He bless us with anything that would bring us sorrow and stress?  He wouldn’t, let’s get our minds right, along with the rest of us!

Words Of Encouragement For Our Day (Friday 04/27/2012)

So Stuck: If My mind Won’t Move Nor Can I

Ephesians 4:22-24 Amplified Bible (AMP)

²²Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; ²³And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], ²⁴And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God's image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness.

            Have you ever walked into a room and forgot what you came into that room for, and you found yourself stuck, right there. Everything within you may have been willing yourself to remember and for the life of you, you just couldn’t.  Sometimes it takes someone reminding us, sometimes it takes us seeing something to jar us, and other times it may take us beginning again, by walking out of the room and starting the process again.  The other day my professor sent us a post that reminded us that although she is the instructor she experiences many of the same challenges we do, the posted simply articulated that her mind had been foggy and in a haze and that she had been stuck for the first portion of the week.  When our mind is stuck, often we are as well.  We cannot move to accomplish what we have set out to do. We get in a rut or just stuck unable to move forward and progress because our mind is holding us hostage to its inability to remember, its ability to remember the wrong things and even being in a state of overload.

            There are many of us fast approaching a season of movement, God is wanting us to move, He is wanting to change our situation, it is expanding our territory, elevation, blessing our relationships, ministries, careers, and families, but we are stuck.  We are stuck in a mindset or in a mode because we have not renewed our mind.  Our mind is a vital part of our ability to move.  I remember having a mild stroke and being in a state where my right side had become weakened to the point that I had to learn how to utilize and strengthen it again. It was my mind willing myself to do the physical therapy, accomplish the work necessary to walk without assistance and lift, grasp and even smile. Forward movement requires us to stop with the “I cants” and remember Philippians 4:13 that reminds us we “can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.”  Many of us find ourselves stuck, because our mind is determined to keep us angry, in a place of unforgiveness, feeling some kind of way about people and even remaining in a system of misbelief that has been harmful to us and others.  We have not taken the necessary steps to renew our thinking and replace all that is negative with the Word of the Lord which is truth and life. Instead we remain steadfast, unmovable but not abounding or progressing in anything but anger, self-pity, wrong thinking and wrong acting.

            God’s desire is to see us go forth, move forward, come into His presence live and not die, but for many of us we are doing the opposite because we have not gotten before God asked Him to cleanse our mind, remind us, of who He made us and to correct any lie, even the ones we have chosen to tell ourselves and heal us in order for us to progress, overcome, prosper and live in abundance. It should be our desire to rid ourselves of things that are counterproductive, hurtful, and untrue. The Bible reminds us in Philippians 4:8, “For the rest, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them].”  By allowing God into our thought process it is like that thing that jars us and causes us to finally remember what we came to do, and moves us to begin.  Applying the Word of God to our thinking and putting away anything that can corrupt and disrupt the flow of God in our lives, anything that will cause us to not just renew, revitalize and cleanse our mind, but it will cause us to as the scripture states, “spring from a place of delusion” that hinders not only our mind, but our spirit.

Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Thursday 04/26/2012)

Heaven’s Mandate and Kingdom Dictate

1 Corinthians 6:1-10 Amplified Bible (AMP)

 ¹DOES ANY of you dare, when he has a matter of complaint against another [brother], to go to law before unrighteous men [men neither upright nor right with God, laying it before them] instead of before the saints (the people of God)? ²Do you not know that the saints (the believers) will [one day] judge and govern the world? And if the world [itself] is to be judged and ruled by you, are you unworthy and incompetent to try [such petty matters] of the smallest courts of justice? ³Do you not know also that we [Christians] are to judge the [very] angels and pronounce opinion between right and wrong [for them]? How much more then [as to] matters pertaining to this world and of this life only! ⁴If then you do have such cases of everyday life to decide, why do you appoint [as judges to lay them before] those who [from the standpoint] of the church count for least and are without standing? ⁵I say this to move you to shame. Can it be that there really is not one man among you who [in action is governed by piety and integrity and] is wise and competent enough to decide [the private grievances, disputes, and quarrels] between members of the brotherhood, ⁶But brother goes to law against brother, and that before [Gentile judges who are] unbelievers [without faith or trust in the Gospel of Christ]? ⁷Why, the very fact of your having lawsuits with one another at all is a defect (a defeat, an evidence of positive moral loss for you). Why not rather let yourselves suffer wrong and be deprived of what is your due? Why not rather be cheated (defrauded and robbed)? ⁸But [instead it is you] yourselves who wrong and defraud, and that even your own brethren [by so treating them]! ⁹Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,¹⁰Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.

            I read an article some months back by a Christian artist who had fallen and had fallen into an adulterous affair and fathered a child outside of his marriage.  As I began to read the article I was moved with compassion to pray, as I moved further into the article, I realized that prayer was not the only element needed, because this artist attempted to excuse his behavior by saying people do not understand, the pressures of a gospel artist, because they have people saying they want to have their baby every day and telling them how sexy they are.  My heart sank and tears welled up in my eyes, because I could hear, there are other artist that don’t stray, there are other Christians that are in high profile arenas that never fall, why do we continue to live by the standard of the world, instead of the mandate of Heaven and the dictates of the Kingdom?  Why do we rely on what is acceptable in the sight of man, and we excuse it away by saying we are human, lacking the repentance and the truth that it was choice and willful disobedience?  Because it becomes easier to absolves ourselves and renounce our accountability to God and His law, but if we really understood we are not alone, everyone has stuff, we could use these moments to overcome and to get back on track, and encourage others to stay on track.

            In Romans 6:1-6 it reads as follows: “WHAT SHALL we say [to all this]? Are we to remain in sin in order that God's grace (favor and mercy) may multiply and overflow?²Certainly not! How can we who died to sin live in it any longer?³Are you ignorant of the fact that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?⁴We were buried therefore with Him by the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious [power] of the Father, so we too might [habitually] live and behave in newness of life.⁵For if we have become one with Him by sharing a death like His, we shall also be [one with Him in sharing] His resurrection [by a new life lived for God].⁶We know that our old (unrenewed) self was nailed to the cross with Him in order that [our] body [which is the instrument] of sin might be made ineffective and inactive for evil, that we might no longer be the slaves of sin.”  The Bible gives us clear instruction and identification that being buried with Christ we identify with Him and should live to sin no more.  God gives us His strength in our weakness, and if we allow Him true access and identification He is make perfect in our imperfection, but we must choose to accept it.  He tells us that we are to look to His people, those who know Him and abide in Him as a standard and they will judge and assess, even here in the earth, Paul did with Timothy, and with the churches at Corinth, Ephesis, and Philipi.

            As I read a book called “How to Help People Change,” Dr. Adams identified that it is because of sin that we find ourselves not wanting to change, because we have not made the choice to identify sin in us and our need for God and reconciliation to God.  We have learned to live under grace so much that it has become the security blanket that we use to shield us from the responsibility of living a Christian existence.  Just because we once lived according to sin that does not mean we excuse it now.  Bishop preach some months back about our citizenship, being of God’s kingdom, but we live according to the world system, because we do not recognize we are not citizens here, of the earth, this is only a temporary address.  But we choose to place more weight upon what goes on here than doing what is a dictate of the Kingdom and a mandate to reside in Heaven.

            God’s desire is for us to be different, a peculiar people that are vastly different than those we live around that do not proclaim Him as Lord.  If we are conducting ourselves as everyone else does and using terms that man has formulated to excuse behaviors and shut down those who choose righteousness (like so heaven bound we are no earthly good, too holy for your own good, and I thought Christians weren’t supposed to judge), what makes us a witness, what makes us any different than anyone else, what make us identified with Christ?  Salvation is wrought by love, God’s grace and mercy, but it comes to us with responsibility to live a life of obedience and to ever strive to please God and to conduct ourselves according to the mandate of Heaven and the dictate of the Kingdom.  But as I have said many times the choice is ours to make, and God’s to ultimately evaluate and hand out pronounce judgment on!

Words Of Encouragement For Your Day (Wednesday 04/25/2012)

It’s Only A Penny

Luke 21:1-4 Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹LOOKING UP, [Jesus] saw the rich people putting their gifts into the treasury. ²And He saw also a poor widow putting in two mites (copper coins). ³And He said, Truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; ⁴For they all gave out of their abundance (their surplus); but she has contributed out of her lack and her want, putting in all that she had on which to live.

            Every day when my husband and I walk, we find at least one penny, more recently we have been finding three and four pennies on our walk.  It would appear that people disregard pennies because they are the least on the currency scale and because it they have little to no value to them; they are the smallest amount in on our currency system, but what is funny about that is that one hundred pennies make a dollar, and a dollar we would gladly keep.  Every time my mother finds a penny she says that is one cent more than she had a minute ago.  I heard a sermon a few years back, the pastor was relaying a story about a mother in the church that would find pennies and keep them, and she was asked why, the women replied have you ever looked at a penny, the person she was in conversation with replied yes.  She handed  the penny to the individual and asked her to inspect it one more time, the individual did, and the mother of the church asked what the penny said, the individual replied it says “in God we trust,” she said that is why I will always pick up a penny and keep it, it reminds me to trust God.  Today as I picked up one of the three pennies found on our journey I thought, yes “in God I trust,” but I also thought as my mother identified God is a provider.

            In this scripture a mite was half of a penny, but it was the smallest amount of currency they possessed in that time.  But the funny thing is some looked and saw it was only two mites, but to the woman that was giving it she was exemplifying by her actions “In God she trusts.”  She was giving all she had, trusting God that he would be her provider.  A penny is only a penny in the hands of some, but it is a symbol of hope and faith for others, and for some it is a reminder that God does provide.  The least of things to one may be everything to someone else.  It is this way with us and God, to some of us, God is not just everything, but He is the one we cannot do without or make it without. For others He is just God, and he is there when we need Him, but He can be easily discarded because He to us has not become a tangible life force in our lives.  God becomes who the person whose life He possesses sees Him to be.  But regardless of how much or how little we have monetarily we should understand the value of who God is, He should not be an afterthought, or the least in our lives.  He should not be the smallest portion of what we represent but instead He should be the largest.

            Just as a penny is not just a penny, it is a symbol, and a reminder; God is not just God someone I say that I serve.  He is my all, and my everything.  As the song says, “God is the source and the strength of my life, He moves all pain misery and strife, He promised to keep me, never to leave me and never, never fall short of His word!”  God should be our all and all, not just Him, He or the name we call after all else fails or the one we consider of little value until He is all we have left.  When we are living daily we should know that we are giving away that God that signifies everything in us, not just the least of us! It’s not just God, just like it’s not just a penny, He is reliant upon who holds Him, what they see in Him and how they utilize Him, just like that penny!

Words Of Encouragement For Your Day ( Tuesday 04/24/2012)

Lessons In the Garden

Genesis 2:7-17 Amplified Bible (AMP)

⁷Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath or spirit of life, and man became a living being. ⁸And the Lord God planted a garden toward the east, in Eden [delight]; and there He put the man whom He had formed (framed, constituted). ⁹And out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight or to be desired--good (suitable, pleasant) for food; the tree of life also in the center of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of [the difference between] good and evil and blessing and calamity.¹⁰Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it divided and became four [river] heads.¹¹The first is named Pishon; it is the one flowing around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.¹²The gold of that land is of high quality; bdellium (pearl?) and onyx stone are there.¹³The second river is named Gihon; it is the one flowing around the whole land of Cush. ¹⁴The third river is named Hiddekel [the Tigris]; it is the one flowing east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.¹⁵And the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and guard and keep it.¹⁶And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may freely eat of every tree of the garden. ¹⁷But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.

1 Peter 1:18-19 Amplified Bible (AMP)

¹⁸You must know (recognize) that you were redeemed (ransomed) from the useless (fruitless) way of living inherited by tradition from [your] forefathers, not with corruptible things [such as] silver and gold,¹⁹But [you were purchased] with the precious blood of Christ (the Messiah), like that of a [sacrificial] lamb without blemish or spot.

            I will never forget when I started going to College many years ago, I remember going into the counselors office and reviewing my degree requirements, and finding out that I needed to complete not just one but two history courses.  I remember thinking to myself, Gosh, didn’t I take enough history when I was in high school, as I pursued other degrees I found that each field of study required me to learn of its historical base.  I have since learned that there are lessons to be learned from the very foundation of each field of study, just as there is something to be learned by looking back into the Garden experience.  Many people don’t like to look at the Garden because it angers them, that it was at this point, and juncture that all life and living changed, and some like to blame Adam, some take pleasure in blaming Eve, and all seem to blame the serpent, but as I have meditated and reviewed this period, God gave them, everything in the garden, He gave them freedom, but He also gave them something that few talk about, which is real freedom came with boundaries.  The boundaries in turn spoke of the responsibility to be obedient; Adam was told run free, eat what you like, do what you like, when you like, BUT don’t touch this one tree; don’t eat of it.

            God has given us freedom once again that was purchased through the blood of Jesus Christ, but He gave us boundaries, He told us not to touch certain things and not to behave and even hang out with certain types of people.  You see with freedom comes responsibility.  In the Garden it was the responsibility of obedience and today, it is the same for us.  As we see in the case of Saul, Samuel told him to wait until he got there and he would perform the sacrifice; when Samuel delayed, Saul, took matters into his own hands and performed the sacrifice.  He allowed fear, pride and disobedience to cost him not just the kingdom, but his peace and his life.  The same lesson was first seen in the Garden, God told Adam, do not eat of this tree or you will surely die, but Adam allowed the enemy to get to his helpmeet and to beguile her and then because woman was created to help, aid and come along side of she came along side of Adam and said she had done it and nothing happened so it was okay for him too, and he allowed distractions, false evidence to lead him to a place of disobedience.  Not only did he fall and he lost his freedom, perfection and eternal life.  Adam didn’t just lose it for himself, he lost it for all of mankind and it was at that point we required a savior to reconcile us back to God and regain our connection, freedom and our life.

            History is important it gives us lessons and clues as to what to do and what not to do.  This lesson from the Garden was three fold, God gave us freedom, but with that freedom, came responsibility to be obedient.  Just as today, we have free will to choose whom we will serve, what we will do with our lives and whether or not we will be obedient to God or not.  But in our choosing we must understand that we are responsible for the end result, not God, not Adam not anyone else.  You see God gave us a cheat sheet, it was the events of the Garden, He showed us that this is what will keep us separated from Him and cause us to lack the freedom He desires for us, and if we are disobedient that it can cause us to forfeit the abundance of life He planned for us and if we refuse to come back to Him that we can lose life eternal with Him.  The lesson is clear, will we choose, to be responsible to abide by the boundaries and be obedient to what God is asking of us here in the earth, in order that we may gain life and have it more abundantly and eternally, the choice is always ours!