Running this race with JOY!!!!

 I'm reading through Acts at the moment, and I've been analyzing two men that I've been reading about this week. They are such an awesome example for us to follow as we live for Christ. 

The first man I found fascinating was Stephen.  

Here is a list of some of the things he was. 

1) He had a good reputation and was wise. (6:3)

2) Full of Faith and the Holy Spirit. (6:5) 

3) Full of grace and power and did many wonders. (6:8)

4) He was truthful in word and deed. (6:13) 

5) He was bold. (7:1-53) 

6) He was at peace. (7:54,55)

7) He believed in God. (7:59) 

8) Selfless. (7:60) 

9) Martyr for the cause of Christ. (7:60) 

The other person that caught my eye was Philip. 

We all know him as the person that helped the Eunuch. But he was much more than that. In Acts 8 we see how obedient he was to God. God told him to go to a desert place, and Philip obeyed God. There God used him to minister to a poor dying soul that thirsted for the knowledge of God's saving grace. Philip not only obeyed God, but acted in obedience by opening his mouth and speaking to this Eunuch. And the Eunuch was saved!!! By the obedience of Philip, someone was brought to the light.  

The lives of these men were undoubtedly difficult!! And so were the lives of others. Take Paul, Peter and James for example. Paul's chronic imprisonment, and Peter's amazing escape from prison. James was martyred for his faith in God. 

But something that really stands out to me with these amazing men is their attitudes!! They were obedient and selfless when it came to obeying God's call. All they wanted was for the human race to be saved, so therefore they were willing to go wherever God told them to go. 

A few chapters later Paul tells of his attitude, and it so convicted me. Let me share these following verses with you. I will emphasize the verses that stood out to me. 

Acts 20:19-24.

You know, from the first day that I came to Asia, in what manner I lived among you, serving  the Lord with all humility, with many tears and trials which happened to me by the plotting of the Jews; how I kept back nothing that was helpful, but proclaimed it to you, and taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks, repentance to God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. And see, now I go bound in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city, saying that chains and tribulation await me. But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. 

I have read those verses over and over this past week. You see, Paul expected trouble. Yet he still determined to run the race that God had designated to him with JOY!! He wasn't distracted when he didn't know what was going on, but instead he took the uncertainty and ploughed on ahead, doing what the Lord had required of him. Preaching and teaching even though it meant imprisonment.

This past week for me has been tough. I have someone in my life that is frustrating me to the core, and I feel like giving in to the enemy and exploding. But that's not the way to handle trouble. This person is part of my race, and I need to run it with JOY! So I need to have joy when I deal with this person, not hatred!! You see, Jesus says that in the world we will have trouble, but he also says he has overcome the world and that he will also send to us a Helper. His Holy Spirit!!! 

Another thing that I need to remember, and that is, just like these martyrs thought of nothing else except pleasing their master and fulfilling the Great Commission in reaching the lost for Christ, I need to see this person as a soul that needs to be saved. A soul that is dying a slow painful death that will one day end in eternal damnation. This person needs the love of Christ shown to them. They don't need my anger, but God's love. 

Oh God, fill my heart with your love and mercy!! Don't let me forget how much you loved me, and demonstrated it by dying a painful death on the cross for me. 

God's amazing promise

This devotional is from KJ, a friend of mine. 

 My best friend and I were individually reading the same book and sharing with each other by email what we had learnt from it. One day, as I was reading a chapter, I paused after this phrase: “Dillon was trying to not remember what he couldn't forget.”Oh, those words stood out to me in red capital letters. I tried to read on, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. It wasn't what the author wanted to point out, so why did it bother me so? The Holy Spirit uses things that can seem strange and odd to teach truths and bring back memories. For me, there are some good memories, yet others are sad and regretful memories.

I was recently at a conference where the speaker spoke about the phrase: “Remember Lot's wife.” Or you could say, “Do not forget Lot’s wife.”  Forgetting is when there is something you don't think about, but it is still filed somewhere away in the back of your brain and then something triggers it, and bang, it all floods back into your head as if it happened yesterday.  All those feelings, emotions and disappointments weigh you down all over again.

God doesn't keep a record of our past sins. He doesn't file them away. He chooses not to remember them. Isaiah 43:25 says, “I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins.”

I find that so amazing. Not only will He not go and count up all our sins, but He also won't blame, accuse and hold these sins against us on the final day. He sees us as white as snow; without blemish. Jesus bore ALL of our sins on Himself; not one of them was missed out (Isaiah 53:6).  What freedom and joy we can have as we come to God, knowing that His love doesn't change depending on how good, bad or wicked we have been. If we are His beloved child, He will forever hold us in the palm of His hand.
WOW!! Now that is a good, amazing, comforting memory I had temporarily forgotten. ;) But like Dillon, I have sins - things of the past, that I try not to remember but can never forget. If only I could remember them no more.  But I was born into a sinful and fallen world, and Satan works craftily and brings these thoughts back to haunt me.

"Oh, you've done it before; it won't hurt to do it again"

"Look how many times you've done what you thought and knew you shouldn't do. You'll never be able to reach that high standard. What's the point in trying and then not reaching your goal and failing one more time?"

The devil uses half-truths to make you believe him. Once again you find yourself falling down the slippery slope of sin.  But guess what? Now there are more regrets that Satan uses the next time to display your weaknesses.
No matter how much Satan reminds you, no matter how many times you forget and then think about those thoughts again, the devil is not the one we should have our ears tuned too. We must sharpen our conscience to hear and listen to God's quiet voice, His Spirit. He says, "I did it for you. I have defeated the enemy. I have won the battle with victory, and remembered your past no more.”

So put your full armour of God on, clothe yourself in God’s Word, and stand firm against the schemes of the devil. Satan will threaten and throw his fiery darts at you. But you must run to the cross. Lay your burdens, your yoke, your emotions, and your thoughts down on Christ. He dumps them deep into the sea and puts a sign up saying, 'No Fishing'. Trust in the Lord, because He remembers none of your short comings, but sees you as righteous through the blood and sufferings of His only Son. Meditate and dwell on the Word, and you will live and have peace".

Prayer

 Prayer

A lot of kneeling will keep us in good standing with God. 

Why worry when you can pray? 

Take time to be holy; speak oft with thy Lord. 

Spend much time in secret with Jesus alone. 

We have to pray with our eyes on God, not our difficulty. 

The "good warfare" is waged on ones knees. 

Prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will make a man cease from prayer. 

Your job is to pray for that person, not change him|her. 

Time alone with God is like a cool, refreshing breeze on a hot summers day. 

Prayer is a powerful connection between our needs and God.-and he is ALWAYS more than enough. 

Do not pray that it would be easy. Rather that he would give you strength. 

God always answers prayers. But often the answers are different than what we expect. 

When life gets too hard to stand, kneel and pray! 

  Who prayed in the Bible? 

(These are just a few of the people mentioned in the bible that prayed.)

Genesis 20:17  -  Abraham prayed 

Job 42:8,  -   Job prayed 

Psalm 55:17  -  David prayed

Daniel 6:11 - Daniel prayed

Habakkuk 3:1  - Habakkuk prayed 

Matthew 14:23, John 14:6, John 17:9, - Jesus prayed 

(Jesus offers prayer on our behalf. 14:6) 

James 5:17,18 - Elijah prayed. 

I read somewhere once that prayer is how we talk to God, and reading the bible is how God talks to us. Therefore, prayer is how we communicate with God. Our thinking of prayer gets so mixed up now tho. We think of prayer as a means of getting what we want. In fact we don't even pray anymore unless we want something, or we are in a crisis and want deliverance. And then when God doesn't answer the way we wanted, we think he's dead and didn't hear us, or he has decided that he doesn't want to listen to us anymore and therefore doesn't answer prayer. But God always answers prayer. He's always there listening to us. And he always has an answer for us. In fact, it says so in Isaiah 65:42. "It shall come to pass That before they call, I will answer; And while they are speaking, I will hear."

Again in Jeremiah 33:3 "Call to me and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you did not know."

His answers are "yes, no, and wait." Therefore, the way he answers may not always be what we want him to answer. 

But prayer is also how we build our relationship with God. Prayer shouldn't just be asking what we want. Prayer should be our way of getting to know God fully. While bringing our needs before God is not wrong, in fact, he asks us to as he is our Father, we should not put our focus just on our needs and wants when we are praying. 

Prayer, also, shouldn't be a once a day thing. It should be an all day thing. God is with us all the time, so it doesn't make sense to only to talk to him at night before we go to bed. No!! Rather, we should talk to him wherever we are, all the time. Remind yourself over and over, that he is there all the time, so you can talk to him even in the car driving to work. 

Prayer should also be a time where we can thank God for everything he has done for us. He suffered on the cross so we could be clean before God. He bore the shame that we should of carried. He suffered on our behalf. 

We can thank him for his love for us. He suffered and died because he loved us. And yet, so selfishly, we refuse to love him back. Or else we only give half our love to him, and keep the other half for ourself. 

In fact, we have become so cold in our love towards him, that we barely think of him during the day, and at night we stagger through a prayer that sounds something like this: Help me God to do everything right. Help me look good to the people I meet. Help me not make a fool of myself. 

Well, how selfish is that? God sent his son to 

this earth to suffer the most unbearable pain you couldn't even imagine so you could be forgiven and free, and you just stagger through a sloppy little prayer praying that you will be benefitted. 

Remember, I am speaking to myself here. Its so easy to think of what is happening around me, that I forget to talk to the one who is watching over me 24|7. 

Now I want to list a few reference on what the Bible has to say about prayer. 

2 Chronicles 7:14-16. We need to be humble when we pray. 

Psalm 122:6. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. 

Matthew 5:44. Pray for our enemies. 

Matthew 9:38. Pray for more labourers in the harvest.

Matthew 26:41. Never cease from praying. 

Romans 8:26. Jesus helps us pray by interceding for us with groanings too deep for words. 

Romans 12:12. Be faithful in praying. 

Ephesians 6:18. Pray all the time.

Philippians 4:6. Pray about everything instead of worrying about it. 

1 Thessalonians 5:17. Pray without stopping. 

Now of course these are just a few of the many verses on prayer. These are more tellling us how to pray. Like when it tells us to be faithful in praying, and never stopping. They tell us about some of the things we should be praying for also. 

I challenge you to look at your prayer life and see what shape it is in. 

Is it empty and sorry looking? Or are you constantly tuning in to your blessed saviour? 

Out of control, and into his arms.

 So I was figuring out what devotional I wanted to do this week. I had two that I wanted to post. So I decided to combine them together. So here’s two for you :) 

No. 1) Mum came to me this morning and told me how my room stunk because of my bird. Now I had been meaning to clean his cage out, but hadn’t had the time. I didn’t think it was too bad. But boy, was mum right. It was pretty bad. But I thought to myself, how easy it is for me to become like this bird cage. I get so dirty and stinky on the inside. Anger, resentment, bitterness, hate, ect, start filling my heart, and pretty quickly I become a filthy cage that needs to be cleaned out. I used to think that as a Christian, we wouldn’t struggle with those things. But it seems like the enemy attacks us with those feelings even more so when we are saved. That’s what it feels like to me anyway. But what is frustrating to me, is that I can’t clean my heart of those things by myself no matter how hard I try. Only God can. But all too often I want to do clean it by myself, so I don’t take those feelings to God. Then I end up a mess. A mess over due to be cleaned.  Instead of trying to clean by myself, I need to run to God and tell him my feelings, and ask him to clean me. Here’s a few verses from Psalm 51:   Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgression and my sin is ever before me...Behold I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me...Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow...hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit...The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 

No.2) If you’re anything like me, you like to be in control. Controlling even the most smallest details.  If you are like me, then you will also like to have everything figured out and organised. I have to watch out with this, cause while it’s good to be organised, organising God is not good. And I’m very prone to doing this. I think I know what God should be doing, so when he doesn’t do what I wanted or asked him to do, I think he has disappeared, therefore forgetting his promises that say he’ll never leave me or forsake me. I like things to happen without trouble and to happen right then and there. So when God doesn’t work in the my timeframe, I get angry and frustrated at him and tell him he’s too slow.                                                            But it says in the bible that God is unchangeable. Therefore, he will not change to fit in with what I want. Instead, I need to change. I need to change in my attitude. Instead of telling him what to do, instead of telling him he’s so slow, I need to humbly submit to his authority and timeframe. Maybe what I’m asking for will only come to pass in heaven, so I need to change my will to his, humbly submitting to his authority, knowing that he knows what is best for me.