Today's Reading: Psalm 12 & James 1:12

Have you ever felt alone, abandoned, helpless? 

Have you ever felt like you were being forced to swim against the social currents out there today? If so, how did that feel? David gives us some insights into these emotions in this Psalm and some encouragement. 

There was a time when I was the ONLY Christian in the faculty of the elementary school I was employed in! And it was hard! The staff knew I was a Christian and I felt as though I had very few "friends" in that school though I remained friendly with everyone. I felt I was always being watch, talked about, for they wanted to take me down, so they would no longer feel any glimmer of conviction and be free to live as they saw fit in their own eyes. 

During that time I could relate to Elijah, who at one time, also felt He was the only one left on earth to fight for what was right! He was a great prophet, used mightily by God in the days of Ahab and Jezebel, but the fight became too hard at one point for Elijah, 

“I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of Hosts,” he replied, “but the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I am the only one left, and they are seeking my life as well.”

So God lets Elijah in on His plans,

Then the LORD said to him, “Go back by the way you came, and go to the Desert of Damascus. When you arrive, you are to anoint Hazael as king over Aram. You are also to anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel and Elisha son of Shaphat from Abel-meholah to succeed you as prophet.

Then Jehu will put to death whoever escapes the sword of Hazael, and Elisha will put to death whoever escapes the sword of Jehu.

Nevertheless, I have reserved seven thousand in Israel—all whose knees have not bowed to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” - 1 King 19:14-18 (emphasis mine)

We can see in Psalm 12 that David was also acquainted with that same feelings. 

Help, Lord, for no one is faithful anymore; those who are loyal have vanished from the human race. Everyone lies to their neighbor; they flatter with their lips but harbor deception in their hearts. - Psalm 12:1-2Therefore, Lord, we know You will protect the oppressed, preserving them forever from this lying generation, even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.

Have you been praying for something or someone for a long time, and nothing seems to be happening? It’s tempting to give up, isn't it? We can become discouraged praying for the same things over and over again and never seeing even a glimmer of hope. We can begin to doubt whether God’s going to answer us, or even if He’s listening to us at all.
 

I'm sure you're able to testify that at times, when we make a request to God, God often wishes to answer in a better way than we’ve prayed for. Therefore, I believe sometimes God denies our prayer requests because we’re thinking and asking too small. He wants to give us something bigger and better that will put His glory on display! But first, he has to prepare our hearts for it. So God uses delays in answering our prayer to help us grow, get ready, and prepare us for a bigger and better answers.

2.) Persistent prayer works to focus our attention.

God doesn’t need to be reminded! I believe it's more to remind us Who the source of our answers and all our needs is. If every prayer you ever prayed were instantly answered we might be tempted to look upon God as a Genie and fail to revere Him as we should. God wants us to reverence the Blesser over the blessings. 

3.) Persistent prayer clarifies our request.

A delayed answer gives us time to search within to see exactly what we are asking for and to refine our prayers if need be. I believe when we persist in prayer to your heavenly Father, it tend to separate the deep longings from mere whims. It’s not that God doesn’t want to answer our prayers, but He wants us to be certain of what we really want.

4.) Persistent prayer tests our faith.

James 1:3-4 says, “When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing” (NLT). I believe God uses these times to grow our faith and those closest to us. Just think how Hannah's faith grew once her prayer was answered - enough to give her son Samuel back to God. Spiritual maturity comes from having our faith tested, one of the ways God’s going to test our faith is by delaying some answers to your prayers.

Finally, we need to remember while we are persisting in prayer that: 

• God does hear our prayers. 
• He knows our heart and our deepest longings.
• He has our best interests at heart and see the big picture.
• His answers are sometime, wait 
• And sometimes His answer is no, but we can trust that it is only because He has something better in mind for each of us. 

Did you know there is great power found in a grateful heart? It’s true, and they have research to prove it!

“Scientific studies have proven gratitude increases neural modulation in the brain, in the prefrontal cortex, which regulates negative emotions. It also activates dopamine, the neurotransmitter responsible for making you feel good.” That’s scientific talk that basically states that the results of maintaining an attitude of gratitude is instant happiness that will prompt you to continue to giving thanks.

A good friend of mine once confessed that she had been hospitalized due to a nervous breakdown and what helped her most to recover was reading her Bible and writing down 12 things she was thankful for in a journal each day- a practice she still swears by and practices today!

Gratitude also curbs other symptoms of anxiety, helping us to deal with the disorder more effectively according to a study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the United States.

• It can reduce Insomnia
• Reduces stress hormones in the body
• And can positively impact bodily functions, memory, and emotions.

 BUT more importantly, giving thanks is something that each one of us are commanded to practice on a daily basis; anxiety, or no anxiety. (Phil. 4:6-7, Col. 3:15, 1 Thes. 5:16-18, and many others)

So, How Can We Best Practice Maintaining an Attitude of Gratitude? 

(These are just a few suggestions and if you have any other proven habits, I hope you'll share them with us as well)

1.) Keep a Journal

Write down all that is causing any anxiety, sadness, fear, etc. And then find at least 3 things to be thankful for right now. Even if it's, 'I'm thankful I woke up and I'm still breathing!'

2.)  Stop to Meditate

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things." - Phil. 4:8

 Focus on all the good things in your life and start thanking God for each. You’ll eventually become a thankful person by nature.

3.) Share Your Gratitude with Others 

This may seem silly, but it goes a long way towards practicing gratitude. 

Writing down your thoughts,  dwelling on the positives and then sharing your positive thoughts with God and others will go along way to develop an attitude of gratitude and squelch all those anxious thoughts that try to take over.  

Blessings, 

sue

Saturday, December 15, 2018

This coming week's memory verse is Jude 24,25

To Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen. (NIV) 

Have a blessed and precious day and week everyone!

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Week Forty-six...

Welcome!  We pray that you have all had a precious time worshipping the Lord this morning!  Below you will find some thought provoking questions that will provide you a starting point to your journal writing to complete this week.  We hope that you will find this time soul satisfying!

Our reading this week was 1 Corinthians 7 - 2 Corinthians 13...

1. Think carefully about your regular activities, your thoughts and dreams, your use of time and energy and money. What do these “bits of evidence” suggest about the prize you are seeking in life? Commit your best efforts toward pursuing Christ as your act of worship.

Remember that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. You also must run in such a way that you will win. All athletes practice strict self-control. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. (1 Corinthians 9:24-25)

2. It’s an old exercise, but a good one. Read 1 Corinthians 13 and substitute your name every place you see the word “love.” Is this accurate? Where do you fall short? How can living like this be a lifestyle of worship?

Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever. (1 Corinthians 13:7-8)

3. What do you consider to be your “thorn in the flesh”? Thank God for His presence and power in your life regardless of whether He removes the thorn or provides you with the strength to endure.

I have received wonderful revelations from God. But to keep me from getting puffed up, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from getting proud. Three different times I begged the LORD to take it away. Each time He said, “My gracious favor is all you need. My power works best in your weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9)

After the Sadducees try and fail to trip Jesus up, the Pharisees decide to step up and have a go at it by asking Jesus a question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”  Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:36-40).

Jesus hadn’t even hesitated a moment to answer.  And of course the Pharisees had to have known this verse, for they prided themselves on observing the Law. Jesus was quoting from the Shema; a prayer that was prayed each day in the morning and evening by all, and by doing so, Jesus now left them exposed and vulnerable!

The Pharisees over the centuries had lost sight of the very "heart of the matter"! They had become so in love with following the exact letter of the Law, they forgot the Lawgiver! They actually forgot what loving God looked like! And without love for God, the external observance of the Law became an empty form of religion.

Jesus goes on to warn them specifically of this danger in the following chapter: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean” (Matthew 23:25-26). It's a matter of the heart!!

What did Jesus say exactly?  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37).  Heart and soul and mind are not three distinct pieces of us, but together they make up our entire being, for they all point to who we really are.  So let me ask you the same questions the iWorship Bible asked us this morning,

• The heart is our emotions, our feelings of joy and gladness, and also despair and sadness: Is your affection for the Lord genuine? Wholehearted? Halfhearted? Or an even smaller fraction of what they once were?
• The soul is our activities- eating, sleeping, working and family life: Is your soul sold out for God throughout your day? Do you truly trust Him for eternal life?
• The mind is quite simply our intellectual activities- thinking and learning (centering our thoughts around Him): Are your thoughts subject to the omniscient One? Do you thirst for His truth and for Him who is our source of knowledge?

Jesus tells us that “[to love God] is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:38).  It is first and greatest in that it represents the heart-beat of all the commandments. Everything we do should derive from a heart of love. Jesus said, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments” (John 14:15).  He doesn’t want our obedience coming from a sense of obligation or anything else, but purely from a heart that is wholly in love with Him!

Really loving God means honoring Him, revering Him, and paying close attention to all He desires in His Word out of a desire to please Him.

BUT He didn’t stop there!

He went on to add something more to the greatest Commandment: “The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself'” (Matthew 22:39).  John in the book of First John explained it this way: “We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.  And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19-21).

Therefore, loving God empowers us to love others. They go hand and hand! 

When you read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) last week, did you feel as though you were falling short? Did you wonder how you could fulfill all Christ Jesus was commanding us to do in those chapters? You and I can’t ever measure up. There is no way we could possibly fulfill all of that consistently on our own! But there is One who can!

Jesus confided in His disciples just before He was arrested that He was going to send us a Helper:

“If you love me, keep my commands.  And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—  the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.  I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.  Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” – John 14:15-21

Jesus loved us perfectly and gave Himself for us (Galatians 2:20).  He came and saved us when we were helpless to save ourselves (Romans 5:6-10).  And now, when we set our hearts to love and follow Him, we are not only united to Him, but transformed so that we can imitate His love towards others, and “By this all people will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).

Through Jesus we not only receive the understanding of God’s will, but the power and desire to follow Him and love our neighbors. 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**What exactly does it look like to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"? This past week I asked the Lord for a verse, or passage of Scripture that best demonstrated to us exactly what it means, and how it's suppose to look to love Him with all our heart, soul and mind! I was surprised by His answer, for it was a passage I was familiar with, but had never connected the two before!! It's too much to adequately describe it for you here, so I'm sharing it through a video on Women in the Word Facebook page. I hope you'll join me there today to learn exactly what it means to love Him in such a way!**

Blessings!

Sue

Yikes! In this passage Jehoshaphat learns, “A vast army is coming against you from Edom, from the other side of the Dead Sea.” They are the Moabites and Ammonites, the two nations born to Lot through incestuous relations with his two daughters. The same nations that would not allow Israel to pass through their boarders on their way to Canaan! The very same nations that hired Balaam to curse Israel as it journeyed toward the Promised Land and were thus forbidden to enter the Lord's assembly (Deut. 23:3–4). They have been like a reoccurring cancer towards Israel since returning from Egypt, and they have assembled a vast army to destroy Israel once and for all! Jehoshaphat, hearing this news, finds himself ill equipped to defend Israel against them! 

Have you ever been there; facing down an enemy you feel helpless and ill equipped to battle?

Fortunately, Jehoshaphat immediately turns to the only One who can help, “Jehoshaphat resolved to inquire of the Lord, and he proclaimed a fast for all Judah.  The people of Judah came together to seek help from the Lord; indeed, they came from every town in Judah to seek him. O Lord, the God of our fathers . . . Power and might are in Your hand. . . . We are powerless before this great multitude . . . nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You. – 2 Chronicles 20:3,4,6,12


And God quickly answers their prayer by telling Jehoshaphat the battle was not Judah’s but His, and sets up an unusual battle plan. Instead of warriors leading the way, God instructed him to place the choir up front to march into battle singing praises to His name. Wouldn’t you have loved to have seen the people’s faces when they heard that plan? They were facing destruction! BUT, regardless of how Jehoshaphat felt, his actions demonstrated that he trusted God as he obeyed the Lord. Before Judah reached the battlefield, God had thrown the enemy into such confusion that they turned on one another. Israel stood still and watched the Lord come to their rescue until not one man was left standing.


Imagine a faith so strong that it's able to face down a battle it cannot win, through praise! Praise lifts our eyes and hearts to the One who is able to conquer any battle we face. Praise will restore that sense of peace within us when anxiety threatens to take over! The story of Jehoshaphat and Israel’s army found here in 2 Chronicles proves praise is a great tool in spiritual warfare!

I know that the last thing we often think to do when facing another battle, or even more of the same, is to begin to praise God, but when we make the decision to fix our eyes on Him, and daily give Him praise, no matter what's staring us straight in the face, we’ll begin to realize that God has already begun to release the hold our struggles can have over us.

There’s power in acknowledging that He is worthy of our worship and praise!

 Praise takes our focus off us and our circumstances and puts it back on God! We're all prone to selfishness and selfcenteredness, but He desires our eyes be set firmly on Him, because that's where our true hope is found.  He is worthy of our praise, no matter what we face from day to day.



Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the Lord, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other.- Deu 4:39

 Praise humbles us once more.  As we begin to remember God’s attributes we’re also reminded of our dependency on Him, and begin to acknowledge our need for Him.



"For My hand made all these things, Thus all these things came into being," declares the LORD "But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.'"- Isaiah 66:2

  Praise invites His presence into our circumstances.  God dwells in the praise of His people!  He lives there.

“But You are holy, You who inhabit the praises of Your people.”  Ps. 22:3

“Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O LORD, in the light of thy countenance.” -Psalms 89:15

  Praise defeats the enemy and causes him to flee.  It pushes back the darkness, and blocks the attacks and lies whispered to us.  Evil will flee as we draw near to God.  In this passage, we see God miraculously defeat the enemy, because of the people’s obedience.

“As they began to sing and praise, the Lord set ambushes against the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir who were invading Judah, and they were defeated”  2 Chron. 20:22

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” –Js 4:7-8a

  Praise leaves no room for grumbling and complaining.  Even within our prayers we can find ourselves complain about our problems at times, but though God calls us to “cast all our cares on Him” (1 Peter 5:7) we can do that remembering who He is and that He is able to save us! Praise allows us to focus on Him, and no longer allowing too much attention to be centered around the struggles. Praise helps us to remember what He has already done in our lives and strengthens our faith for the future.

 “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.” Psa. 103:2-4

"By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." Heb. 13:15

 Through praise our spirits are refreshed and renewed in His presence.  We're actually strengthened by our praise and refueled by His joy.  As we focus on praising God and worshiping Him, we realize that our situations don’t have to change for our hearts to become light and full of peace and joy!

“In His presence, there is fullness of joy.”  Psa. 16:11

"Because your love is better than life, my lips will glorify you. I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands." Psa. 63:3-4

Finally, our praises pave the way for God's power to be displayed; allowing other’s lives to be impacted and changed.  I thought of Paul and Silas sitting in prison, beaten, shackled and chained, but they kept right on praising God. God sent an earthquake that shook the cells and broke the chains, and the jailer and all his family came to know Christ that very night.

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone's bonds were unfastened.”  Acts 16:25-26

All my bones will say, “Lord, who is like You,
Who rescues the afflicted from him who is too strong for him [to resist alone],
And the afflicted and the needy from him who robs him?” - Ps 35:10

Each day we have to choose whether we will be ruled by the anxieties of the world and busyness of our lives, or to look up to Him, the One who holds it all together, and praise Him throughout our day!