Author: Joe

Stay Filled with the Holy Spirit

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If you’ve ever gone through life wondering if we can know what the will of God is, STOP wondering and know that you can!

“Stay Filled with the Holy Spirit” is the second of four thoughts on how we can better prepare our hearts to hear from our Lord.

When God seems to be less-than-descriptive with His plans for your life, know that you can always be a doer of His Word, and in so acting, you will be living in His perfect will for your life. In fact, sometimes when you just don’t know what to do, doing only what the Bible says is the best thing you can do.

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Consecrating Ourselves to God's Will

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One of the most common questions Christians, and even non-Christians, have is how they can know God’s will for their lives. I believe that we can know God’s will, direction, and purpose for our lives. I also believe that He is constantly trying to communicate with us but we’re just not listening or maybe don’t know what His voice sounds like.

“Consecrating Ourselves to God’s Will” is the first of four thoughts on how we can better prepare our hearts to hear from our Lord. Portions of the following were adapted from Kenneth E. Hagin’s book Following God’s Plan for Your Life.

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Responsible Freedom

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Ask anybody in America what they think is the best part about this country and it will most likely be “freedom.” I would agree; this is the land of the free! But at Christians we too are free. In fact, I would say we have a greater freedom than anything this world can give. We have freedom in Christ!

The Bible has much to say about our freedom in Christ. Here is a short list:

John 8:32
Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

John 8:36
So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Romans 6:7
anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Romans 6:18
You have been set free from sin…

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The Daily Grind

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I read the following quote by Susan Jeffers and thought, “Now that’s an interesting quote…one with a concept that I’m not familiar with.”

“We have been taught to believe that negative equals realistic and positive equals unrealistic.”

I can somewhat understand how a realistic view of life may be seen as negative or “glass half empty” but I don’t think I’ve ever correlated a positive outlook with being unrealistic. I think we have to maintain a positive sense of hope, believing that things will not always be as they are now. The daily grind of life is called a “grind” for a reason. No matter where our grind happens — on the job, in our careers, or at home as a stay-at-home parent — it will slowly grind away at us unless we choose to have a positive, godly view of people, events, and circumstances. Does that mean we all need to be “Pollyannas”? Absolutely not! That would be truly unrealistic. Just know that at times life will not be fabulous, fun, or fair and during those times we need to change our view from the hopeless to the hopeful by focusing on our Lord Jesus!

“…everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

1 John 5:4-5

Multiple Second Chances

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Have you ever wished that you had a second chance at something? I know I have. Maybe it was a bad purchase that involved a lot of money or something on the job that could have been done better. Maybe it was how we treated a friend or what we should have done for somebody but didn’t. Regret and wishing we had second chances may be a part of our normal life but with the Lord Jesus, it doesn’t have to be.

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The Miracle of Life

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Even though babies are born every moment of every day I sometimes forget how much of a miracle they truly are. Today I got to see the first newborn of some of our friends and he was as precious as could be. Beautiful eyes, lots of hair, and a good strong grip! As we talked about their new baby we also discussed how modern science still does not know how life begins. Scientists know what happens to the cells after conception and can explain the various stages of human development in the womb, but they are unable to explain how or why life begins with the seed of a man and a woman coming together. Although modern science will continue to advance and most likely discover much more about the miracle of life, the answer to the how and the why will still be wrapped up in a love note recorded in Jeremiah 1:5…

    "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…"

    Love,
    God

Happy newborn, friends. I pray that he will bring you much joy!

Loved for a Purpose

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What do Christians always tell nonbelievers about the love of God?

They tell them that God loves them for who they are and nothing that they could do would ever change that, but how often do you hear believers telling other believers that?

Well, I’m here to tell you that God loves you, Christian! And nothing that you’ve done in the past, even after becoming a Christian, and nothing that you are going to do will change how much God loves you.

Romans 8:38-39 says:
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But why is this so important? Don’t Christians already know that they are loved by God?

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Being a Light

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CNN.com posed a story 6:08 p.m. EST, December 19, 2006 entitled, “Reality check: 95 percent of Americans had premarital sex.” Following are some excerpts from the story:

NEW YORK (AP) — More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

“This is reality-check research,” said the study’s author, Lawrence Finer. “Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades.”

Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that studies sexual and reproductive issues and which disagrees with government-funded programs that rely primarily on abstinence-only teachings. The study, released Tuesday, appears in the new issue of Public Health Reports.

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How Approachable Are You?

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You are a Christian. You’ve been one a long time. You gave your life to Jesus Christ and now you read your Bible, pray often, and you’re at church every time the doors are open. Your family, friends, and neighbors know that you are a Christian because you’ve told them so and because you can, and have, quoted chapter and verse to them from your Bible. (They also know because of all of the forwarded “Christian” emails you send to them.  🙂 ) You are a wealth of biblical information and are able to speak the truth into any situation, but how approachable are you?

Once people know that you are a Christian will they be able to approach you with real life issues and hurts? Are you accessible when they have deep spiritual questions that only the God of the Bible can answer?

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