156) Courage
In the days ahead, Christians will need to know more about courage. The times ahead will be very challenging and the evil one will use fear and intimidation to bind up the body of Christ. Circumstances and events in families, individual lives and society will appear to be more and more overwhelming. The existing structures that keep in check the power of fear and intimidation will crumble more and more.
Confusion will be more evident and anxieties will increase as the pressure from Satan increases. Solutions will be less obvious and issues will appear more complicated.Ideas and groups will become more polarized as the difference between light and darkness grows greater. However, every time sin increases, God’s grace will abound even more.
The life of Jesus Christ was filled with courage. This courage is His gift to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. I will define courage as the ability to live the gospel out in the manner that makes Jesus come alive and known. In this way we become living pictures and sound bites of the gospel that Jesus presented and preached.
Jesus had great courage because He had a clear vision of what He was called to do. We lack courage because we lack vision of what we want from our lives. Courage helps us to reach the goals and or vision that we have set for ourselves. In the coming times, our goals and visions will be tested for their worthiness.
We will be challenged and our goals will be tested. We will remain strong when we reach for our goals because of Christ and in the power of Christ. It is in the power of the Holy Spirit that we will have the determination and the perseverance to continue despite the tests of fear and intimidation. (read more)
157) Mercy
Almost everyone wants God’s mercy. However, we are in constant need of a better understanding of God’s mercy. We humans can grasp the concept of justice a lot better than the concept of mercy. We like to see and measure things so that we can explain and control them. We like to say this will happen because of that and to predict the outcome of events and personalities.
God in His delightful ways has not allowed us to cut up and evaluate His mercy for us. His mercy is fantastic, unbelievable and overwhelming. Even the most gigantic analogies would not do justice to describe God’s mercy.
It is not right to talk about mercy without giving a definition. For the terms of this talk, my definition is: Mercy is the kindness and favor of God that we don’t deserve.
Various examples can give us some ideas of the vastness of His mercy. For instance, if we took all the grains of sand on the earth in one big pile, it would not equal one grain of His mercy. Or it we took all the waters of the earth and put them together, it not would equal the tears that He has cried over His people. Or it one took all the stars in the sky and made them into one big light, it would only be a faint shadow of Gods mercy for us.
Mercy is not just an event, but a condition of the heart whereupon God visits, renews and heals His people. We constantly need to ask the Holy Spirit to give us revelations of God’s mercy. It Is in seeing His mercy that we will begin to understand His justice. Mercy is an undeserved act of God, forgiving and forgetting what we did wrong while accepting us as we are. (read more)
158) Loving God With All Your Heart
I would like to tell you how we can love God with our hearts and not just our heads. Romans 12:1says to present your bodies to God which is your spiritual worship. I want to go through some points to help us understand why it is important to love God not just with our heads but with our hearts.
The Lord said it is the heart, as this is the center of our being. What comes out of a man’s heart expresses what a man is really like. That’s why we need to love God with our heart and not just having an intellectual knowledge of God.
The heart has more of a capacity to understand God than the head does because with the head we try to rationalize and understand God, but with the heart we love God. It is important that we understand that if we try to understand God with just intellectual knowledge, we will be very limited and we won’t be able to cope with Him. Our hearts allow us to cope with Him but our heads alone don’t allow us to cope with Him. Our heads attempt to understand Him but our hearts allow us to cope and have a relationship with Him.
Friendship is one of the central themes of our relationship to God and to one another. God is a heart trip. We have to do heart work to understand God and not just hard work. Our heads lead us to hard work, but our hearts lead us to heart work. It’s important that we grasp this because it is by heart work that we begin to understand God’s heart and begin to understand one another.
What are some of the principles that help us to begin to grow in heart work?
1. Our hearts are more important to God than our heads. That means God has established the heart as the center of our being. We use our heads but we live with our hearts. It is important that we understand the difference. If we just use our heads, then our relationships are going to be based on circumstances and information; then they are going to be shallow. (read more)
The Love Chapter I Corinthians 13
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
“Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. Quotations and/or reprints in excess of one thousand verses, or other permission requests must be directed and approved in writing by Zondervan Bible Publishers.” All verses are NIV except those that are otherwise noted.
The Eagles Cry 