Devotionals Archives

February 2, 2024February 2, 2024

With Much Fear and Trembling

¹² Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. ~ Philippians 2:12^NLT

I saw a short of a devout Muslim man whose wife had just given birth to their first child. He explained that he was so scared of evil eye and, therefore, losing the child that he didn’t tell anyone, even his mom, that his wife was pregnant. This made me feel so sad. This man is a devout Muslim who prays daily, goes to the mosque, fasts, knows his Quran, but there’s nothing to protect him from evil eye with all that he does. Think about it.

We Christians are promised to be covered by the Blood of the Lamb, a hedge of protection built around us, angels of God concerning us, the prayers of Jesus Himself for us, and the authority of the name of Jesus to cast down and tear down all manner of evil spoken against us, yet we don’t even pray once a day for 10 minutes. This man isn’t even promised eternal life by his god, yet he’s devout to his god. Whereas Christians are promised eternal life and more, but we don’t give God the time of day.

We as Christians get so caught up in the love of God that we forget that there is likewise a wrath of God, which then makes us complacent. This complacency renders its users useless in the art of winning souls and disciplining the nations. True, God is love. True, it’s His love that saves us and keeps us, but never forget that that same love can turn to wrath if trampled upon. Therefore, serve the LORD in the beauty of holiness and work out your salvation with much fear and trembling.

Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me. Please help me never to forget my purpose or to become complacent. Give me the strength and the boldness to be a witness for You. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Fill Up On The Good

⁴⁵ A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. ~ Luke 6:45^CSB

I remember being in university, and a friend of mine told me that they were starting to subconsciously take the LORD’s name in vain when something happened, and they didn’t like it. I don’t remember what my response was or what happened after that, but I remember her saying that. See, at the time, we weren’t living our best Christian lives. We were listening to secular music and filling ourselves with darkness for a period of time. During that time, her subconscious had become darker than light.

See, it wasn’t that we were only filled with darkness that was the problem, but it was that the darkness began to spill over because it had grown more than the Light. As humans, our soul is a vessel that will either have good or evil. It will either be a light or a shade. The state of the Church is much like my friend was while we were acting like heathens.

The Church has a form of love for God, but we don’t fill ourselves with Him; we fill ourselves with the world. And if we seek out God, it’s only on Sunday mornings. Monday through Saturday, God doesn’t hear a peep from us; Sunday morning comes around. We show Him a few moments of our time, and then we’re back to being with the Devil until next Sunday.

Our thoughts are a reflection of our hearts. If it’s filled with foul language, anger, lust, etc., it’s because those are the things we’ve been feeding our hearts. If we want to change our thoughts, we need to change our hearts. How? Repenting of everything we’ve done that we weren’t to do and then replace it with Godly action. We do this by spending time in prayer, worship, and Bible reading daily. We fill ourselves with the good things of God and not the evil things of the world.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Fill Up On The Good.

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Prepare For The New

¹⁹See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. ~ Isaiah 43:19

Renewing your mind is basically changing the way you think. Replacing negative thoughts with positive thoughts. Replacing pessimistic words with words of optimism. Casting down the same old, same old, for the fresh and new.

Therefore:

Do not let circumstances dictate what kind of day you will have
Do not let someone else’s words disrupt your peace
Do not let negative thoughts, which are most probably not true in the first place, take up residence in your mind
Do not speak rash or say the first thing that pops into your mind
Your thoughts become your words, and your words will eventually lead to your destiny

Why? Because God is doing a new thing. Therefore, the responsibility is on us to tune in to His frequencies by the renewing of our minds. We stop focusing on the things that are now, that are keeping us down, and we start speaking God’s promises instead.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Prepare For The New.

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Rewire Your Mind

⁷For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: ~ Proverbs 23:7^KJV

As humans think, that is who we are. Meaning that we become our most intimate, and most pronounced thoughts. My daughter, Arie, has a quote on her wall which reads:

Watch your thoughts,
they become words.
Watch your words,
they become actions.
Watch your actions,
they become habits.
Watch your habits,
they become your character.
Watch your character,
It becomes your destiny

Your destiny can be determined by something as small as your thoughts, and that is why it is so important and necessary to renew your mind. Basically, your destiny depends on it. The Scripture is as plain as day: if you think about sinful things, you will be dominated by a sinful nature. But if you want to be controlled by the Spirit of God, and if you want to please God and have His peace that passes all understanding, then you must have thoughts that are pleasing to the Spirit.

If you say, “I will never make it,” then you will never make it. Your words determine your destiny. So, watch your words. Be intentional with your words, for the enemy is always watching, looking for a way to trip you up and keep you from reaching your true potential in Christ Jesus.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Rewire Your Mind.

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Hold To What Is Steady

⁵Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. ⁶So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. ⁷For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. ⁸That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God. ~ Romans 8:5-8

Culture shifts daily. It’s an ever-changing, never satisfying, shifting world. Therefore, society needs to have some sort of standard in order to not go into total depravity, which we are not far from today. For instance, today, we have groups of people getting together to promote the normalization of people who feel like dogs. So, they get together and howl together like dogs. They walk around on all fours, barking while on leashes. This is crazy. This is not normal behavior. It seems like society is ‘pulling out all the stops’ in order to make the abnormal normal; we need a balance.

But for that, we need an unchanging standard, which is God, Who is ultimately our final judge. For the Word of God says that the LORD does not change (Malachi 3:6a and Hebrews 13:8). How do we combat this darkness? We start with us. Paul urges us to not let society or popular culture dictate our thoughts and, ultimately, our actions by accepting their perverted notion of morality.

But How Do We Renew Our Minds?

Well, first of all, we must make a conscious decision to make a change. But before we can actually make a change, we must identify the problem or the thing we wish to change, like anger, lust, and other things that God frowns on.

What I mean is to bring our lives into alignment with God. But how do we do that? By knowing what the Word of God says. You can only know what the Word of God says if you read the Word of God for yourself.

Craig Groeschel said, “Our lives move in the direction of our strongest thoughts.”

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Hold To What Is Steady.

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Cling To Sound Doctrine

¹ But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. ~ Titus 2:1

As an online Church, we get firsthand encounters (through the comment section) that we wouldn’t necessarily see in person. Now, don’t get me wrong, we are expecting to one day have a physical church, but for now, the LORD is showing us things and preparing us for the future. So, with that said, my eyes have been opened more and more temperature of the majority of people who claim to be Christians. The majority that I come in contact with are those who will argue their belief to the ground but never be able to show you one single verse to prove their belief.

What a sad state of the world. We are to be Christ to the world, and Christ is the Good Doctor (Mark 2:17). Let’s now put that into perspective. Imagine going to the doctor because you hurt your ankle, and instead of doing tests to see what’s going on with your ankle, your doctor walks in, looks at you, and says you need brain surgery. He hasn’t done a single test but yet is jumping to a conclusion that doesn’t fit the evidence before him that he refuses to acknowledge. Would you go to that doctor?

The majority of us have become like doctors today who don’t try to fix problems, don’t know the root or cause of a problem, yet will put you on addictive and harmful prescription medication that doesn’t fix the problem. This is what we do when we push beliefs that we can’t defend or even find evidence for in Scripture and refuse to accept the evidence shown to us. If we are going to be Christ to the world, we have to be able to show the Word of God to the world. That can only start by first being a student and a studier of the Word of God, to make sure what you are being taught is truly from the Word of God.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Cling To Sound Doctrine.

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Don’t Be Caught Lacking

¹⁵ Instead, you should say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶ But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷ So it is sin to know the good and yet not do it. ~ James 4:15-17^CSB

My whole life, I’ve heard my parents say LORD’s willing when speaking of our future tasks. I myself have even said, but not enough around a certain person that she even told her husband she’s never heard me or my mother say it. When I search through my phone, I have message after message of me and my parents saying LORD’s willing, but I don’t have any to her saying it. This struck me as odd.

See, I was put in her life to help guide her in the Word of the LORD and help her grow in Christ, but I can’t find a message of me saying LORD’s willing to her. This could easily be something that anyone could say was just a coincidence, but I don’t believe in coincidences. I believe in spiritual warfare.

When you become comfortable around someone, and you don’t know why they’re in your life, you stop being intentional with every word you speak. To my own shame, it wasn’t me who showed her or taught her LORD’s willing; it was her husband; she called me to see if he was right. I say to my shame because he had learned it that night and was being intentional with every word he said, making sure to use it so as not to be arrogant, as James says.

I, on the other hand, wasn’t being intentional because I didn’t even realize until recently my purpose in her life. While I was proud of her husband for his desire to grow in the LORD, I felt disappointed in myself that the enemy could remove an important covering phrase from my vocabulary when talking to the person who needed to hear it most.

As Christians, we have to yearn for and earnestly seek the Spirit of Discernment so that the Holy Spirit might be able to speak through us, even in things that we wouldn’t necessarily see as big. We have to be intentional with our words and focused on our purpose in people’s lives so that the enemy has no room to trip us up in our words or actions or the lack thereof.

Dear LORD, please forgive me for all the times that I’ve been unintentional with my words. Please forgive me for every time I’ve missed the role I have to play in someone else’s life. Please fill me with Your Holy Spirit and with the gift of discernment. Teach me to discern right and wrong. What I need to do and what I need not to do. Who is in my life, and whose life I am in. Teach me to strengthen my spirit man that I might not be caught lacking. Teach me to be a light in this darkness. Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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It’s Not Always About You

⁷For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. ~ Romans 14:7

I have a friend who I was extremely close to but eventually pushed and put a halt to our friendship because I wasn’t being lifted up. I felt like I was just being torn down. Like they just wanted me in their life to lean on me but it wasn’t reciprocated. This bothered me a lot because I was expecting to have a friend, an older sister, I could go to in hard times, and we could help each other, but it wasn’t like that at all.

This became very discouraging to me. I felt so discouraged that I went to my mom and told her, “I have friends now, but I’m still alone.” I stopped communicating with her in the way that she was used to. Less involved and talkative, so our conversations became fewer and fewer. My mom kept encouraging me by telling me to try to overlook her shortcomings because she believed our friendship was important. One day after she told me that, I went to my computer, sat down, and began to write a song where I was pouring out my frustration with her, and I felt like God was opening my eyes to see (as I’m freestyling in the microphone) that the friendship wasn’t about me. It wasn’t for me. It was for her.

See, I was expecting a big sister I could lean on, but God had other plans. He didn’t put her in my life for me to have someone to lean on. He put me in her life so that I could be someone she could lean on. Someone she could learn from and grow because of. It wasn’t until I stopped expecting my own desires for the friendship and changed the way that I saw our relationship that I was able to speak with her and not feel distant and far off.

The people in your life aren’t always there for your benefit. Sometimes, you’re in their lives for their benefit.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Look For God’s Reasoning Instead Of Your Own.

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Stop Spitting

¹⁹ And He said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” ~ Matthew 4:19

Have you ever spit into a lake or pond and watched all the fish rush to consume your spit because they think it’s food? The fish are hungry, jumping at any chance of possible food thrown their way. This is the world we live in as well. So many people swarm spit, following a large crowd because they’re hoping that they might just be getting fed. They’re hungry. They have an emptiness in them, and all they want is to fill it.

Jesus said that He is the bread of life. He said that man doesn’t live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. He is the Word of God. So many people get caught up with mysticism, magic, and darkness because they don’t know that no matter how much they consume of that spit, they’ll never be nourished and satisfied.

No other religion or belief system is afraid of offending the world the way that Christians in the West are. We’ll even chastise and verbally attack a Christian who shares the Gospel and the love of Christ with another person. We condemn them and tell them that they need to be tolerant of other people’s beliefs like Jesus was. Jesus never gave the people empty words that lead to death. Peter said Jesus alone had the words of life because Jesus alone understood that the hungry fish needed bread and not spit.

Every time you condone, endorse, affirm, or tolerate sin, you’re spitting into the water, expecting to give nourishment to the fish around you. You’re doing nothing more than feeding them empty words that you will one day have to answer for yourself.

Dear LORD, teach me to give real food to the world. Help me not to be afraid of offending or pushing people away. Teach me to love people the way that You do, always striving to share the true Word of God with them. Help me to never spit into the water again but to throw in the bread of life. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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We Are Known And Loved By God

⁷ And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows. ~ Luke 12:7

We callously read this verse without actually thinking about what Jesus is saying here. Let’s just pause for a brief moment and ponder what our LORD is telling us. He says, “Why,” not asking a question, but making an almost unbelievable statement as in, can you believe this? “Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered.” Who does that? God does! He loves us so much that the very hairs on our heads are numbered and known to Him, and not one falls out without Him knowing.

If we can just grab hold of that concept, it should bring a sense, or a feeling of great joy and self-worth that Almighty God, Creator God, Father God loves us that much to take the time to know the number of our very hairs on our head. Jesus is striving to help us get a hold of what is important. It’s not this life or hardships; it’s not even about successes. It’s about eternity, and God wants us to spend eternity with Him.

He proves His love in several ways, and one is that He knows the number of hairs on your head, and not one falls out without his knowledge and re-tallying the sum. Now, if He knows that, then He certainly knows what is going on with us. What our needs and burdens are. Who is persecuting us? Our lack of daily adequate finances, and He cares. So, tell Him your troubles, your worries, your concerns. He cares for you. He loves you with an unfailing love.

Heavenly Father, please help us to understand this huge concept of Your great love for us. Help us not take Your great love for granted but to be overwhelmed with such great salvation that You have lavished upon us. Help us to stir up the eternity that You have placed in our hearts. In Jesus name, I pray, amen.

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