Confidence = Obedience?

‘’7 So Jesus went with them.He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 [...]9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.”  Luke 7: 7-9

If you take a look in the bible in the book of Hebrews 11:1, you’ll read that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. That is the best definition of faith and it’s also the toughest problem that christians deal with everyday. Knowing the truth in life is a the most wonderful gift on earth. But this gift is left unopen when we don’t apply, shout, proclaim, praise, sing, pray this truth that God is God, and Jesus is his son, and he died for us. The gift is useless if you don’t open it. Yes, you know you have a gift, but it’s just there, waiting for you to be open. In this verse, the centurion knows the truth and he applies it. God is asking you for one thing today: will you trust me? To open this wonderful gift, you just have to trust the Lord and he will bless you.

Also, trusting him is easy to say. In life, there will be moments where you have to take decisions, and you might fall. It will be hard, but remember, the eagle was not born flying. As it grows up, the eagle mother take apart the nest so that slowly the eaglet learn to have confidence and it takes off. 

God is not waiting there all day long to bother you with problems in life, He just wants  you to learn and to rely on him. And that is now we obey Him.

Confidence = obedience!

Tell the World- Lecrae

When I was in school, my values were twisted. The only solution people offered me was a firm talk about changing my behavior. They told me my behavior would get me killed or in jail. They told me to stop doing what I was doing. They wanted me to modify my behavior. That was a pointless effort though, because my behavior was informed by my values. What I needed was new values. My behavior wouldn’t change, unless my values changed, and my values wouldn’t change unless I was somehow transformed into a new person.

I desperately needed what’s called a worldview transformation.

See, worldviews are subtle and deep-seated, and they are usually taken for granted, since we can’t see, hear, or touch them. Worldviews are our culturally structured assumptions, values, commitments, and allegiances that create our perception of reality. Basically, they explain are how and why you view the world the way you do, and then govern how you respond to the world.

My worldview was not my behavior, but my behavior was conditioned by my worldview. The only way I could see things different is if God opened my spiritual eyes to a Biblical worldview. Anyone can read the Bible, but it takes the supernatural power of God to give someone a transformative understanding of it.

In writing to the Ephesian churches, Paul prays this: “…that…God…may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints…” (1:17-18 ESV). Paul is praying that the Ephesian churches would be illuminated to the truth – truth which only the Holy Spirit can reveal to them. In order to hear from God through His word, we must be made alive; we must be born again.

Second Corinthians 5:17 reads, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” The Holy Spirit of God not only rebirths us, but continues to transform us and our worldview to His own.

HIS RIGHT HAND UPHOLDS ME!

 

Read Psalm 63:8.

My father had huge, very strong hands. Having been a carpenter as a young man, he knew how to build or repair almost anything. His hands are one of the things I remember best about him. He loved to take my hand and hold it in his, especially in church on Sunday morning. My little hand would be engulfed in his. There was such strength in those hands, but also great gentleness. In my childlike weakness, I rested in my father's strength. I knew a place of security.

The hand is the part of the body that enables a man to make tools, build, construct and create. Thus it is associated with power or control. The creative power of our hands is a reflection of the image of God, who intended us to use our hands to lovingly rule creation (Genesis 1:28).

Humanity failed to obey God. But in eternity past, God purposed to make a people renewed in His image for Himself. He saw our sinful pride and rebellion beforehand and determined to make a way for His people to be in relationship with Him.

Out of the depths of His love and mercy, He ordained that He would provide Himself as the payment for our unpayable debt. He knew there would be no other means of rescue. So out of eternity, God reached forth His mighty, loving right hand into the pit of destruction to gather a people unto Himself. He undertook to do for us what we were unable to do.

As He reveals to us our sinfulness and our helplessness, and as we cry out to Him for mercy, we are rescued by His hand and pulled safely out of the darkness into the light. We experience a radical transformation.

The Bible tells us that once we were darkness, now we are light (Ephesians 5:8). Our sin has been forgiven, our debt has been cancelled, and we have been transferred from the kingdom of evil to the kingdom of God (Colossians 1:13-14).

In the pattern of Romans 12:2, what is one scripture from today that the Lord is using to renew your mind and transform your heart? Take this truth to heart and bring it to life throughout your day.

You Bled

 

 

You bled your heart out
Now I feel love beat in my chest
How wonderful
You gave your beauty
In exchange for my ugliness
How wonderful

You left your perfection
And embraced our rejection

How marvellous, how boundless
Is Your love, is Your love
How wonderful, sacrificial
Is Your love for me

You put on our chains
Sent us out through the open door
How wonderful
You took our sadness
Crowned us with joy and real peace
How wonderful

You left Your perfection
And fought for our redemption

Yes Jesus loves me
Yes Jesus loves me
How wonderful
Yes Jesus loves me
This is love
You gave Yourself

Deep Dive

On Animal Planet the other day, there was a guy who was bitten by an extremely venomous snake somewhere in the bush in Africa. The snake bit him in the ankle and the fast-acting venom hit his bloodstream very quickly. His friends rushed him to the nearest place where he could get a ride to the hospital. It took them several hours to get him treatment. Finally, after a long series of events, the hospital staff identified the type of venom and gave him anti-venom to counteract the deadly poison.

This man's friends knew he was dying, and they did everything possible to get help for his critical condition. In today's passage, you'll see that Jesus did the same thing, except that he was responding to those in critical condition, spiritually. Jesus cultivated relationships with people who were spiritually dying and in need of serious help. His radical lifestyle was marked by love, sacrifice, and reaching out to people who needed salvation.

Today, spend some time thinking about the people in your world (e.g. school, work, neighborhood) that God may be prompting you to reach out to. Many people have never experienced the love of God or the hope that he gives. What are some ways that you can be intentional about sharing Jesus with them? How can you introduce them to this idea of community?

⁹ As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him.

¹⁰ While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. ¹¹ When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

¹² On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

Matthew 9:9-12

The Lord is my Shepherd- A Psalm of David

ESV Psalm 23: 1-3

1. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.  2. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.  3. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

We all need guidance in our lives. Imagine a world where anyone can drive in any direction without any rules or purpose. The roads would be very dangerous and messy.
The same applies to our spiritual lives. Imagine living a life without rules, direction or purpose. Like the roads, its a dangerous and messy life. We need a map and rules to follow to reach our destination, safely. 

Like King David knew when he wrote the Psalm, the lord will Shepard us through life. If we follow his word (the bible), we will find the rules of living life the right way, the direction to follow and the purpose of the journey.

He will give us rest and peace within and he will restore our souls to continue for his glory.
Today, take a moment to think of what you are doing for Gods glory. Are you letting the Lord guide you or are you trying to create your own destination?

Read the rest of Psalm 23 and learn how King David conquered fear and built his confidence through his faith.

Nicodemus- Sho Baraka

He is lord over all... John 3:1-21

Do you struggle to believe Jesus is who He says He is? Do you struggle to believe Jesus is truly LORD overall? Do you struggle to believe salvation is truly yours and that you can fellowship with Him before death? Do you believe that He is concerned with your diet, friendships, purchases and interactions? I think many of us believe that Jesus is concerned with our soul and eternal being. However, I believe many of us also dance on the fence of understanding with regards to submitting all things unto Him, as communicated in 1 Cor 10:31.

Nicodemus sought out Jesus because he understood that He was no ordinary man. He knew that He had to be more than just a prophet and that His teachings were more than just mundane.

Once Jesus hit Nicodemus with the truth of salvation and eternal life, I can imagine him scratching his head in confusion. He probably had a similar response to the father in Mark 9, “I believe but help my unbelief.” The important catch is that Jesus didn’t just speak of an after life, he spoke to Nicodemus about a Kingdom. This Kingdom can only be understood once an individual was born again.

Many of us who frequent the Sunday gathering can find ourselves like Nicodemus. We know Truth is necessary for a life of righteousness. We know this man was more than just a prophet. But part of us can’t fathom forsaking our old ways of thinking. We still want to go on with business as usual. I would ask that you check your bank account and see what you spend the most money on. Evaluate the kind of people you spend time with. What is your favorite past time? What burdens your heart? Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, you can see what your heart truly loves.

When Jesus says He is LORD, that is no passing statement. When He is speaking of this Kingdom, this is a shaking up of everything we once knew. He is saying that you spent many years processing the world and your life through a particular lens. However, He has come so that you may have a more valuable perspective and way of doing things. This is not negotiable. This is definitive.

Many of us want Jesus just to change some stuff in our heart as if we have some things together. We learn a culture of Church, but we don’t adopt a Kingdom mindset. It’s easy to fall in love with the Christian culture and not the Christian Christ. It’s easy to learn Christian lingo and not know the Christian LORD. Pharisees understood a culture, but denied the power of Christ.

The Kingdom mindset is proactive, offensive and not just reactive to outside influences. We are to be a light in dark places.

This is the great issue with creation: we want to be GOD, but we fail miserably at it. The false god (flesh) in us desires to continue to believe that we have our own best interests at heart. We believe we know more than GOD. There is a way that seems right to man, but the end leads to death (Proverbs 14:12). This betrayal has been a thorn in our flesh since Genesis. But praise GOD, for we have a great redeemer who not only came to die for our sins but who also came to establish His Kingdom that is not of this world.

Because of the Kingdom mindset, sin is no longer our master. Money is no longer our lover. Status is no longer our goal. Sex is no longer our crutch. Fear is no longer our snare. Service is no longer a chore. Charity is no longer a burden. Hate is no longer our venom. Differences no longer keep us from fellowship. Love is no longer an option. Peace is our partner and joy is our song. Jesus is our LORD and Savior and that is no passing statement. We filter all we do through this very understanding.

Life will only be ruined when we play lord. We are terrible gods. It’s been proven through history and scriptures. He is the one true LORD and Savior. Once we believe that, our lives will reflect the Kingdom agenda of our Father.

The Real Deal

Sometimes cleaning out Grandpa’s attic pays off. For an Ohio man, it paid off in the discovery of a more than 100-year-old set of mint-condition baseball cards. Appraisers placed the cards’ value at $3 million.

One key to the high value of those cards was the fact that they were well-preserved. But beyond that, the true worth of the cards rested in the fact that they were authentic. If they had been fakes or counterfeits—no matter how good they looked—they wouldn’t have been worth the cardboard they were printed on.
The apostle Paul had something similar to say about Christianity. He said that our faith would be completely worthless and counterfeit if Jesus’ resurrection were not the real deal. It took bravery and confidence in God’s plan for Paul to say,

 

“If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty” (1 Cor. 15:14) and “If Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” (v.17).

The Christian faith rests on the authenticity of this story: Jesus died on the cross and was raised from the dead. Praise God for the clear evidence of Jesus’ death and resurrection (vv.3-8). It’s the real deal, and we can stake our eternity and our total dependence on God on its truth.

 

 

Lord, we’re eternally thankful for the truth
confirmed in Your Word and in our hearts that
You died and rose again for us. We love You, Lord,
and lift our voices in praise!

God is the only true God.

The Joy of Knowing

 

Happy is the man who has learned the secret of coming to God in daily prayer. Fifteen minutes alone with God every morning before you start the day can change circumstances and remove mountains! But all of this happiness and all of these unlimited benefits which flow from the storehouse of heaven are contingent upon our relationship to God. Absolute dependency and absolute yieldedness are the conditions of being His child. Only His children are entitled to receive those things that lend themselves to happiness; and in order to be His child, there must be the surrender of the will to Him. Man does not come to know God through works—he comes to know God by faith, through grace. You cannot work your way toward happiness and heaven, you cannot moralize your way, you cannot reform your way, you cannot buy your way. It comes as a gift of God through Christ.

 

 

Daily Prayer

Thank You, heavenly Father, for the gift of joy which comes from knowing Your Son, Jesus Christ.

The Real You- Billy Graham

It is significant that our first astronauts, while being trained for their moon flights, were required to give twenty answers to the query, “Who are you?” Take the same test yourself. When you have made your list and run out of things to add, ask yourself if you have truly answered. Do you really know who you are? Scientists agree that our desperate search leads all humans to seek heroes and to imitate others, to “paste bits and pieces of other people on ourselves.” We make love as some actor would. We play golf in the style of Jack Nicklaus. Part of this process is natural, for we learn by imitating others. The tragedy is that the person we assemble is not genuine. “Who am I?” you cry as you roam the world looking for yourself. Consider this: there are three of you. There is the person you think you are. There is the person others think you are. There is the person God knows you are and can be through Christ.

Daily Prayer

Lord, help me to break through the façade and know myself as You do. 

Bible Emergency Numbers

"My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." Exodus 33:14

How to repay God- John Piper

What keeps the paying of vows free from the dangers of being treated like a debt payment is that the “payment” is, in reality, not an ordinary payment, but another act of receiving which magnifies the ongoing grace of God. It does not magnify our resourcefulness. We can see this in Psalm 116:12–14.

The psalmist’s answer to his own question, “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits?” is, in essence, that he will go on receiving from the Lord so that the Lord’s inexhaustible goodness will be magnified.

First, lifting up the cup of salvation signifies taking the Lord’s satisfying salvation in hand and drinking it and expecting more. This is why I say that “paying” back to God in these contexts is not an ordinary payment. It is an act of receiving.

Second, this is also the meaning of the next phrase: “I shall call upon the name of the Lord.” What shall I render to God for graciously answering my call? Answer: I shall call again. I will render to God the praise and the tribute that he is never in need of me, but is always overflowing with benefits when I need him (which I always do).

Then the psalmist says, in the third place, “I will pay my vows to the Lord.” But how will they be paid? They will be paid by holding up the cup of salvation and by calling on the Lord. That is, they will be paid by faith in future grace.

Christian Life: Flat as a Pancake?

"But many who are first will be last; and the last, first." Matthew 19:30

 

      A mother was preparing pancakes for her 5-year-old son Kevin and 3-year-old son Ryan. When the boys started arguing over who would get the first tasty pancake, she saw a great opportunity to teach them a Biblical lesson.

 

   "Boys" she said, "if Jesus were sitting here this morning, He would say 'let my brother have the first pancake, I can wait.'"

 

Kevin turned to his brother and said, "Ryan, today you get to be Jesus!"

 

I'm afraid there are far too many 'Kevin Christians' in the church today...sitting at the table of life letting others be Jesus because it might cost them something personally.

 

 We can have the fish on the car, the WWJD bracelet on our wrists, and the Bible on the coffee table, but it's what's inside that counts!

 

 So what are the 'pancakes' in your life that make it difficult to be Christlike? Here are a few that the Bible lists:

 

  "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Matthew 6:24

 

  Here is a big lie: when you get what you want you'll be happy...wrong! True contentment can only be found in serving God. If the almighty buck has a hold on you, drop it like a bad habit- because it is!

 

   "Don't team up with those who are unbelievers. How can goodness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness?" 2 Corinthians 6:14

 

  Some people are happy to follow Jesus until they fall in love with the wrong person or get hooked up with the wrong group of friends. Just keep in mind that if Jesus isn't your best friend, He is no friend at all.

 

  "And you cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me." Luke 14:27  This one pretty much sums it up, doesn't it?

 

Carrying your own cross means you take a intense look at your life to find the things that come between you and your Lord, then nail them to the cross with brutal force...daily!

 

  "The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is the hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ." - C.S. Lewis--Mere Christianity

 

Trust me on this one: the second pancake is worth the wait. -

 

Think About What You’re Thinking About- Joyce Meyer

If you're a believer, you probably think some Scripture-based thoughts throughout each day, but think about this: Are you mixing them with negative thoughts or just any random thoughts that come into your mind?

For most of my life, I simply thought whatever fell into my head. Much of what was in my head was either lies Satan was telling me or just plain nonsense.

Read Mark 4:24. It tells us the more time we spend thinking about the Word, the more power and ability we will have to walk in it. It also says the more we read and listen to the Word, the more revelation we will receive to understand it.

In the flesh we are lazy and want to receive from God without any effort on our own part, but that's not the way it works. You will only get out of the Word what you are willing to put into it.

I encourage you to make a decision to meditate on God's Word every day because every moment you spend absorbing it, the more virtue and knowledge you will receive from God.

Prayer Starter: Lord, I make a decision to spend more time in Your Word every day. I know that when I do, I will get more out of it and receive more powerful revelation from You.

What Love is This- Kari Jobe

“Jesus, I want a deeper revelation of You. Thank you for the price you paid so I can have grace and freedom.”

All the things around me can change, but I love the fact that He does not change. He is consistent. He can handle every detail of our lives. When we don’t feel that we have the strength, we can rely on His strength.

Life would be so different if Jesus would never have come to earth; if He would have never died for our sins. I sometimes sit and think about the very day that He was crucified. The day that He gave Himself as a living sacrifice for our sin; for our freedom. We have been given a gift because of Jesus. He thought of us the entire time of His crucifixion. His arms were stretched out on a cross, and He was reaching out to us to receive salvation from Him. An incredible exchange, our sin for His forgiveness. He loves us and wants a relationship with us. That’s so amazing. I want to write from that place of love, a love song back to Him; to Jesus for all that He did on that day. “What Love is This” is that love song.

Ephesians 3:17 “…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend the width, length, depth and height. To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled.”

Think of a few times you have felt Christ’s love reach to you.