Tag: uplifting

CLIMBING

Life is like a staircase stretching from earth to heaven. There are people that are just starting on their journey with Christ that are behind us. Others are on steps ahead of us. Each one of us has a responsibility to help those on the stairs behind us. None of us are perfect. None of us will ever be perfect enough to sit in the judgment seat. But we can reach down and lift up those who are not as strong. Hopefully, the ones before us will do the same for us.

Phil 1:5-6 (5) For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now; 6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

We can be confident that as long as we depend on Christ, he will keep us. It is in him that we will grow in truth and righteousness. We need to examine ourselves and try to walk as close as possible. It is not our place to judge our brother. God will complete the work he started.

Matt 7:1-5 Judge not, that ye be not judged. 2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. 3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? 5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

We need to pull the piece of lumber out of our eye before we can see clearly to help our brother with a speck of dust in his. In other words, we need to walk righteously before God and worry about our own issues and shortcomings.

Each day is a chance to climb higher in understanding and wisdom. We are called to love one another and help someone along their way. Have a great week.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

FINDING BEAUTY

A little girl, named Sara was walking along the beach for the first time. As she walked along, she started picking up seashells. Her mother pointed out one shell and the little girl said, “No I don’t want that one it is broken.” Her mom said, “Sometimes broken things can be beautiful.” The little girl picked it up and kept walking. When they got home the mom placed that seashell on a shelf. It had pretty, purple spirals around the cone shape, even though it had a piece broken off it.

Many years later, Sara looked at the shell and it reminded her of that vacation. She smiled remembering what her mother had said to her. “Sometimes broken things can be beautiful.” Her mind wandered to how life had left her broken at times. She suffered from depression and felt broken until God set her free. Smiling she understood what her mother was talking about, Jesus makes beautiful things out of broken things.

———-

People’s lives are often like this shell. We have broken places, but we can still be beautiful. We can still be useful, even if we are not perfect or fully together. God does not call the perfect. He calls those he has had to work on and recreate. Then he takes that brokenness and uses it to reach those that are broken and lost.

We have to be vulnerable and show our scars sometimes. Many people are dealing with terrible things. They are needing to see that God has delivered us from the things that broke us. It will give them hope that they can be delivered too.

We were broken, but now are whole and complete in Jesus. I once was lost, but now am found.

Psalm 147:3 3 He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

PRESSED

Isaiah 53:5 -But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Often, we use this verse as one that encourages people to know that our God is a healer of our bodies and emotions. But he also was bruised and beaten for our spiritual healing. If He had not gone to the cross we would not have any right to salvation. I want to focus on the bruised portion of this verse.

Olive oil is often used for anointing oil. It is an earthly representation of God’s anointing or the Holy Ghost. In order to understand the oil of anointing (Holy Ghost) in our lives as Christians, we need to understand how olive oil is pressed.

The fruit is washed and then put into a press where the fruit is pressed and crushed. There are different presses and processes. But the oil is squeezed out of the flesh of the fruit. Jesus was beaten and bruised in order that we could receive healing spiritually, physically and emotionally.

John 16:7 Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

The oil of the anointing of God is placed within us as believers. When we are born of the Spirit (Holy Ghost) we have that anointing within us. It is what sustains us and gives us the power to walk out our witness. As we grow from level to level we must walk through some trials. The things we face will press in and squeeze our flesh, it will bruise and crush us. Every trial takes us to a new level of anointing.

Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

We don’t have to literally hang on a cross, but we must constantly sacrifice (crucify) the desires of our flesh. As we do this, we release what God has placed within us as his anointing. We will walk through tough times and things that we will not know if we can get through process and pain. But with every pressing, God’s oil will help us grow in Him.

2 Cor 3:20-18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

With every new level, we will walk more like Jesus and less like us. With every new level, there is a new devil. The enemy will fight because he knows if we truly get a hold of who we are in Christ, there will be no stopping us. With every new attack, we need to press into Jesus. Knowing that He is always with us and will not leave us to fight alone.

Within ourselves, we do not stand a chance against satan. That is why the world is so dark and evil right now. But being blood-bought, Holy Ghost-filled children of the Most High God and King, the enemy is under our feet. He will not defeat us, as long as we walk in the power and anointing that has been given us by Jesus Christ.

HEALING

Isaiah 53:5 – But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

He was wounded for our sins. Jesus’ death brought healing opportunities for our souls. But he also took stripes for our physical healing. Jesus heals us today. We can anoint one another with oil and pray for healing. God will heal us if we have faith.

Some say I don’t believe it; miracles don’t exist today. To those I would say don’t waste your time praying if you don’t believe it. If you don’t believe you won’t receive it. If God is not able to heal these bodies, he has created, then how can we trust him for our salvation from hell? That is a bigger miracle than healing our bodies.

James 5:14-15 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

I have a unique perspective; I was raised to know the power of God. My grandpa had the gift of healing and miracles. I used to travel in the summers with him and my grandmother to revivals all over the upper east coast. I have seen things that God has done. I have experienced healing of my own. I recently was sick and had pain in my side after a few minutes of my parents praying for me I got better. I claim the blood Jesus shed for me. I am blessed to be his child. He healed me of chronic sinus headaches many years ago. He delivered me from depression and constant anxiety. Many more things that I cannot even remember.

Our lives as Christians are based on faith. Heb 11:6 -But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. The God of the universe lives within us, we have all power. We just have to access it by faith.

As Jesus was being beaten, bruised and crushed something happened, his anointing flowed. Just as olive oil flows from crushed and bruised olives. That process released anointing. That same anointing lives within us. This is why we can pray and ask for healing, and he will deliver us.

3 JOHN 1:2 Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. If we expect to receive things from the Lord, we need to have a relationship with him. We need to walk by faith and not by sight. As we grow in our relationship with God we gain power. The power we gain is to be used for the glory of God and to help others.

James 1 3-8 (3) Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 4 But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. 5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. 7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. 8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

It comes down to what I wrote about a few blogs ago. Who’s report are your going to believe? Are you going to trust God or trust man. Do we have faith? Do we not have faith? We have to have this matter settled concerning these things before the enemy attacks. We have to have a made-up mind that no matter what comes our way we will walk by faith. That is what it means to be a child of God. We have to be determined that on this day, I will trust the Lord for all of my needs, physically, spiritually and financially. He is the God that cannot fail. When our eyes pop open tomorrow we need to say, “I trust you Lord to supply all my needs and take care of me. I will do all I can to be the light and witness you have called me to be on the earth.”

The time is drawing close that God is going to divide those who fully trust from those who partially trust. We are about to see the church rise up in the power and anointing that it once had many years ago. How else will we show the unbelievers the way to Jesus? Evil is all around us, but do not fear Lord Jesus is near.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

A LESSON FROM JEHOSHAPHAT

Rejoice, for victory is ours. Just as in the days of Jehoshaphat, we can sometimes find ourselves surrounded by the enemy. He did something that, to the natural world, looks stupid. He put worshippers out in front of the army.

2 Chronicles 20: 1- It came to pass after this also, that the children of Moab, and the children of Ammon and with them other beside the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.

He received word that many others were plotting to come against him from beyond the sea. He feared and he started seeking God. He declared a fast throughout all of Judah. The people prayed and God honored their prayers.

God told them to go down before their enemy.

In verse 17 Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, not be dismayed; tomorrow go our against them: for the Lord will be with you.

They worshipped the Lord for what he had said to them. The next morning, they rose early to start the march to the wilderness. Jehoshaphat stood before them and said (verse 20) ….Believe in the Lord your God, so shall be established; believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.

21 And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers unto the Lord, and that should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army, and to say, Praise the Lord; for his mercy endureth for ever. 22 And when they began to sing and to praise, the Lord set ambushments against the children of Ammon, Moab, and mount Seir, which were come against Judah; and they were smitten. 23 For the children of Ammon and Moab stood up against the inhabitants of mount Seir, utterly to slay and destroy them: and when they had made an end of the inhabitants of Seir, every one helped to destroy another. 24 And when Judah came toward the watch tower in the wilderness, they looked unto the multitude, and, behold, they were dead bodies fallen to the earth, and none escaped. 25 And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead bodies, and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves, more than they could carry away: and they were three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much.

God took the enemies of his people and turned them against each other. By the time they arrived, the enemies had destroyed one another. All that was left for Jehoshaphat’s army was to collect all the spoils of war. It took them three days to gather all the riches of the enemy.

God will take what the enemy tried to use against us and give us a blessing while destroying our enemy. Today we have an enemy that is determined to destroy us. He hates us because God loves us. He wants to take each of us to hell. He cannot harm us if we keep our focus on God. God has made promises to his people today just as he did in the Old Testament. He wants to prosper us and bless us. He will go before us and fight for us.

We need to remember how Jehoshaphat put his worshippers out front before the battle. In the natural, that seems like a ridiculous idea. They would be mowed down by the enemy without protection. But God told them to march, but they would not have to fight. Worship invites God’s presence. The word says he inhabits the praise of his people.

He will go before us and fight for us. We need to go to war on our knees. We need to first invite God’s presence to us through worship. Then we pray for God to destroy the evil in our country. America needs to be saved from an enemy that is not a country but satan himself. The pure evil that is consuming and taking over everything.

By faith, we can reach out and pull down the enemy’s strongholds in the land. By faith, we can ask God to allow the evil to be revealed so that it can be destroyed. We will not have to fight if we have prepared for battle with prayer and worship. God is calling for his prayer warriors to go to battle on their knees. He is asking for his worshippers to arise.

He will fight our battles if we keep our eyes on him. He is craving a relationship with us. He wants us to get back to the place where he is the center of our lives. He wants to have his rightful place and that is first. If we keep our God Focus, we have nothing to fear.

Have a good week, my friends.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

INVENTORY

If anyone’s ever worked in a business or owned a business that handles inventory. You know, every so often, you gotta stop and take count of damaged or broken items? You write that off your list as being broken, and you get new. This helps to make sure the figures you show are correct.

I want to talk to you today about spiritual inventory. There are so many things in the Bible that we talk about Christians not needing in their lives. All the different temptations and sins, things that are contrary to what we should have as Christians. We are told to bear fruit and to love one another. We should be gentle, kind, good, humble and all these different things. This is a small list of the inventory we should have in our life.

There are times when we pick up different things which are contrary to what we need to have in our lives. Sometimes it’s important for us as Christians to slow down and ask God for help to take inventory of what we’ve got in our lives. We need to learn to not be swayed by people, sometimes they’ll come along and they’ll brag on you and they’ll brag you up. And if you let it go to your head, you can become self-righteous.

While other people come along and they’ll criticize and they will pick. That makes us self-conscious. We should never be self-righteous or self-conscious about anything. If we can get to the point where we walk in between those things, before God, we’ll be doing a pretty good job. It’s easy to look at people sometimes and compare ourselves, which God tells us not to do.

There are times when we find out things or suspect things that someone else is doing wrong. Instead of praying for them, we get self-righteous and judgmental. We start talking about it, “Well, I would never. I have never.” It’s easy to be judgmental of other people. Which falls into that being self-righteous, they go hand in hand. Be careful about what you say, because the very thing that you say, “I would never.” If you’re not careful, you will end up doing that very thing. But God is faithful, and God is good, and he is just to forgive us of all of our sins and all of our shortcomings and our failures. I’m so grateful for his mercy and his grace.

I was raised, in the Pentecostal church. In that denomination, there is not a lot of room for people to make mistakes. They teach you need to live right, live right, live right. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. So much so that there is not a lot of room for God’s grace when we fall. Sometimes we forget about all the things that we’re told to do, because we’re so busy going you can’t, You can’t, You can’t. That we don’t tell people they can, they can, they can. They can walk humbly before the Lord. They can encourage one another. We can and should lift one another up.

I want to stand before God with a clear conscience. And I want to be able to say. Lord, I’ve done all I can to walk, the way you want me to walk. If he knows, we are sincere in our hearts. His grace is there to pick up the pieces. His blood cleanses all sins. The church, the body of Christ today, is just so easy to get wrapped up in the ideas of man and denominations. We get wrapped up in the number of people that sat in our pews last week. We get wrapped up in our programs and trips to amusement parks. Church, to many, is just a social club, a place to network business ideas over fried chicken.

Live right and do right. You know, love God and love people. And I mean, it boils down to that. Eccl 12:13-14 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. (14) For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.

Spend time with him this week. Ask God to help you with your inventory. I pray you find only good things. But if you are not perfect and find areas that need work, then that is a good thing too. Because now that it has been brought to light, God can help you deal with it and remove it from your life. That vacated space in your life can be filled with new deeper and more exciting things from God.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS.

CHURCH PEOPLE

The day after Easter I went to my favorite place to get breakfast. The nice lady that I chat with at the pickup window asked how was my Easter. I told her it was nice and I got to spend time with my family. She said,”I had to work, and then she did air quotes with her fingers and said, “the church people,” came in after their Easter service. They were rude and angry that we were closing early to spend time with our families. Why would they not want us to spend time with our families?”

I immediately said, “There is a difference between “church people” and Christians.” As I continued my drive to work, I thought about what I said to her. Just because you faithfully attend church each week doesn’t mean you are saved. It doesn’t mean that when Jesus comes again, he is going to take you with him. The messages preached in each service need to make an impact. Each day we need to walk a little better than the day before, even if we are a new Christian.

I know we all get emotional at times and allow our flesh to rise up. Especially when we are treated badly. I have heard many people say that they do not like to work at restaurants on Sundays. Their reason is the “church people”. We need to go out of our way to be kind to everyone. If you go to a restaurant anytime be sure to be kind, even if your server is not kind. Don’t be skimpy with your tips. Christians are supposed to be generous and loving.

Christians will walk in love and will carry themselves with kindness, dignity, and humility. Every one of us has bad days when our flesh rises, and we fail. We cannot impact this world with the gospel if we are walking in our flesh. The times we find ourselves not walking in love is because we have lost our God focus.

Gal 5:16-17 [16] This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. [17] For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. I am grateful that God forgives our failures. We are to walk in the spirit and we will not walk in the flesh.

If we keep our connection to God intact and spend time with him, we are less likely to fall. Staying filled with Him will keep us from walking in the flesh. Psalm 139:23-24 KJV Search me, O God, and know my heart: Try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.

This verse needs to be our daily prayer; for God to search us and lead us. We need to be so full of God that there is no room for the flesh to rise up. As long as we are in this life, the flesh will war with the spirit. I pray I never am categorized as “Church people” I want to be known as a shining light; a Christian that is the real deal. I want people to see Christ in me.

BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS

Reflections

We often do a lot of reflecting over the past year at the beginning of a new year. We find much lost motivation to change and make life better. We look to the future with hope that the upcoming year will be a good year. Everyday, should be met with such hope that the old is gone. Our past is that, where we have been. The future is what God has ordained. Look to him today as you think about the future; because only what is done walking in God’s love counts. ❤️ BE BOLD, BE BRAVE AND KEEP YOUR GOD FOCUS.

God Is With Us

I sit in my quiet living room this evening and thank God for his many blessings. Life gets tough sometimes and we often feel like the pressure of the waves is going to be too much to bear.

Then I am reminded that I am not in the swift current alone. Jesus is there reaching out his hand and pulling me up so I can breathe.

He is our life, our breath, our strength. We are never alone he is with us.

May you have a blessed week ahead. Be bold, be brave and keep your God Focus.