DISAPPEARING COURAGE

Psalm 31:24

Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart, all ye that hope in the LORD.

Courage is: trusting that the Lord is in control of everything even when He asks us to do something out of the ordinary.

Courage is a quality that is sadly and rapidly disappearing in God’s people. The world today continuously tells us to be “normal”, to “follow the crowd”, and to “fit in.” Being different in how we act and how we follow the Lord’s way of doing things, is seen as shameful.

Romans 12:1,2 says "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." This is the greatest calling to courage. Not only are we to be different and stand out as God’s children, but we are stand firm on what we believe so that we can be a witness to the world by declaring God’s goodness in our lives.

Going against the flow is difficult but not impossible. The pull of the world is so strong. But the strength that the Lord can give us is stronger than anything that the devil may try to discourage us with. If we are willing to put our faith and hope in the Lord, we will be able to stand firm with the courage that the Lord provides for us.

It is up to us as Christ’s people, to bring courage back into the definition of who we are. We have nothing to fear, and the Lord of All has our backs. Not only that, but He has our entire being in His hands. There is one thing alone that can stop us… that is ourselves. We must not stand in the way of allowing God to do a huge work through us! We must not let courage disappear for good!

A MYSTERY

Matthew 24:35-36

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only.

I believe this passage says it plainly. The end of all things will happen, but the day and time remain a mystery!

PERFECT TIMING

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

   A time to be born,

And a time to die;

A time to plant,

And a time to pluck what is planted;

       

       A time to kill,

And a time to heal;

A time to break down,

And a time to build up;

A time to weep,

And a time to laugh;

A time to mourn,

And a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones,

And a time to gather stones;

A time to embrace,

And a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to gain,

And a time to lose;

A time to keep,

And a time to throw away;

A time to tear,

And a time to sew;

A time to keep silence,

And a time to speak;

A time to love,

And a time to hate;

A time of war,

And a time of peace.

NO GREATER LOVE

John 15:12,13

This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.

The other day I heard someone explain the contrast between lust and love. This is how they put it:

Lust – Meeting my needs at others expense

Love – Meeting others needs at my expense

Lust is all about “me.” What can I get out of this? How will this profit me?

Love is all about the “other person.” How can I make this situation better for them? What can I do to invest in their life?

That really puts it in perspective for us. We tend to get love and lust confused with each other, as though they are the same “feeling”. But when we really think it through, we realize that they are exact opposites. Lust is what comes naturally to us as humans, but it is something that we must strive to overcome as Christ’s children.

Love is a choice. We must decide that we will love someone no matter what. Even to the point of laying our life down for the other person.  

When we start to ask ourselves what our motives are for doing certain things, we will realize how many times it is for our own gain. Christ came to be the true example of love. He gave His life for the whole world. He had no motive to get anything in return.  He did not just give His life by giving His time to others and treating them with kindness. But He actually died in their stead. He died in our stead.

He died instead of you.

There is no greater love than this!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Colossians 1:12-14

….giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,

 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Happy thanksgiving everyone! Never forget to be thankful for the ultimate gift that God has given us. He has rescued us from our bondage to sin, and offers us full forgiveness. When we decide to accept the forgiveness that Christ has provided, we are given the privilege to be His children!

So as you enjoy your family, friends, rest, and turkey, don’t forget to thank the Lord for His everlasting love! We don’t deserve it, but He gives it freely. To show true gratefulness, don’t wait any longer to accept His free gift. If you already have, share it with some who hasn’t, today!

Have a great Thanksgiving!

INVISIBLE YET REAL

Ephesians 6:12, 13 

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

The spiritual evil that we see spoken of in this verse is something that we as humans are not fully able to wrap our minds around or really even begin to imagine. It is a power that cannot be matched or defeated by anything or anyone on this earth. Though we may start to think as a human race, that we are all-powerful, we realize soon enough no matter how much physical strength we have, it is truly worthless in spiritual warfare.

There is a real battle going on in the spiritual realm. As spiritual beings, we must never blow off the reality of spiritual warfare in our lives. And it must never be something to think of as a fairy tale. Not only is it real, but it is more dangerous and more intense than we can even start to understand.

As people, we try to build up our self-confidence with pride, power, and the riches of this world. We are deceived by ourselves into thinking that they will make us feel like someone more in control of or more important than others. It is not until we come up against this spiritual evil, which tramples us with no trouble, that we realize how incapable we are against it.

God doesn’t just allow us to have this helpless feeling for no reason. This feeling of incapability is actually a tool that He uses to point us to himself, to help us to realize how much we need Him. People will say that Christianity is just a “crutch”. But no, we can see that it is much more than that. We are given the privilege to trust the Lord as our Savior. We are given the honor to take on the armor which He has provided for us. We are also blessed with the assurance, that the same God, who created us, is also our closest and most personal protector. Through Him we are able to stand! This is a truth that does not deserve to be mocked!

UNENDING STRENGTH

Isaiah 40:28-31

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

We as Christians, usually find this verse uplifting, inspiring, and promising. But if that is all we take away from reading this verse, a good feeling, we are missing the point of the promise that the Lord is trying to present to us. He didn't just write awesome words like this in His “love letter” to us, to make us feel good momentarily. He gave us these promises to be able to find strength that allows us to be able live life to the fullest.

Before we can fully understand this strength, we have to realize that sin has ruined our view of life, and causes many of us to suffer the feeling of being weary and weak. This makes us come to the conclusion that there is no reason to continue living life. If we fall into thinking that we have no purpose in living, and surviving seems to be a waste of time, giving up on life does seem to be the better option. This is the feeling of defeat. When Christians walk around feeling defeated, we are allowing the enemy to beat us down and use us for evil instead of being used by God for His glory. When the world sees Christians living this way, they are turned away from the truth of the gospel, and have no desire to be part of a life that has no more hope than they do.

Knowing the full power of Christ’s strength in our lives is not natural to human beings. But as spiritual beings that have been renewed in Christ, we see how to find unending strength in reading the verse above. We are to WAIT ON THE LORD. What does that mean exactly? The simple answer is this: surrender your full life to God, put full faith and trust in the fact that He has control over all, and completely accept and take ownership in the strength that the Lord offers. Yes, this may seem impossible, and not exactly something to be called “simple”. But the cool thing is that He does not expect us to lean on ourselves, and learn how to “wait on him” alone, but to ask Him to be our Helper. This is when we will be able to mount up with wings like eagles, and will be able to live with strength and stability that sadly many Christians are unable to grasp.

NEVER ALONE

Hebrews 13:5   

… be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

There are two different types of loneliness that we as people can experience. The first type is when we are truly alone, with no one around and we feel that we cannot be happy unless we are in the presence of other people. The other type is when we are in a large group of people, and may even have many in that group we would call friends, yet we do not feel fulfilled by their company, and still feel as though we are alone.

When we look at these two types of loneliness we realize that they have something in common. This is that we are longing for something that can only be granted by God. That would be security. We try so hard to find security and strength in ourselves or in others. We forget that we are finite and temporary beings, and are only able to understand a very small part of God’s huge plan. We get frustrated or even mad at God when things get tough, because we don’t understand why God allows certain situations to happen. We must learn to trust and find full security in the one who knows all. He understands everything, loves each of his children more than we can fathom, and promises to never leave nor forsake us.

To force ourselves to rest in God’s perfect security is humanly impossible. But if you read near the end of the verse written above, you see that we have a Helper. We have the privilege to go boldly before our great and powerful God, and ask Him to help us, to fully rely on Him, so that we may have nothing to fear. When we allow God to teach us to trust him, our loneliness will be needless. We will be able to know the comfort of security, found in the Master of all that ever was, is, or is to come. He didn’t make His promise “I will never leave nor forsake you” for nothing!! He meant it!

 We are NEVER alone.

A TRUE POWER

Ephesians 4:32   “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”

Forgiveness is something that is hard for us to fathom. Our human minds can not completely understand the greatness of forgiveness. We have been forgiven of so much. There is no possibility of repaying Christ for the debt He forgave us on the cross. But with the knowledge of the fact that God does not expect us to pay Him back, we can experience a kind of joy that cannot be found anywhere else, and it should cause us to want to share that joy with others.

Many times we see forgiving others as a bother, a pain, or a chore. For the moment it seems that it would be easier to stay unhappy in bondage to our unforgiving hearts,  rather than to forgive and live in the freedom that we have been given. Recently I heard forgiveness spoken of as a power. We have the power to forgive! We should not see forgiveness as something that gets in the way, but as something that is a privilege. Forgiveness is something that has set people free, it is something that has changed history, and it is something that has changed my life.

Sometimes it is easier to forgive certain sins more than others. But when we realize that Christ did not put a limit on how much He will forgiven us for, we know that we have no excuse not to forgive. Honestly, it is more than our human strength to be able to forgive, but when we are weak is when Christ can be shown strong in and through us! When we use the power given to us to forgive, we are declaring God’s awesomeness to the world!

A CONSUMING FIRE

Hebrews 12:25-29

See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused

him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from

him that speaketh from heaven:

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once

more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.

And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are

shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken

may remain.

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace,

whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear:

For our God is a consuming fire.

When I hear that last verse, I stand in awe and wonder at the God I serve. He is the creator of all things and is powerful beyond our wildest imaginations. He is worthy to be honored and reverenced so much more than is humanly possible. My God is great! And I do not have the words to describe Him in the way He deserves. Now, if I take a moment to think, I realize that this same God, who is described in these verses, is my Savior! He is the one who forever pursues my heart, and longs for me to grow closer to Him!

It is too easy for me to get caught up in busy-ness of life, and forget about the one I live for. He is the one who gives me purpose. He is the one whom I can find my identity in. When I start to doubt His power and His love, is when the enemy will try to strike me down and cause me to believe lies and become confused. I must stay close to my Savior. I must show gratefulness for the privilege He has given me to speak to Him directly, and bring before Him, everything. He is in control of all, and I must learn to live soundly in the security of His arms.