Tag: Spiritual

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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 6:45CSB

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

19 See, 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

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

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

5 Those 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. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’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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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 4:15-17CSB

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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Who Is Satan?

Satan (the Devil) is one person in the Bible that everyone knows, even if they’ve never been to Church. The problem is that most Christians don’t actually know who Satan is or how he deceives the world. When pastors teach about Satan, 99.9% of the time, they use verses that have nothing to do with Satan while seemingly ignoring the verses about Satan. If we never really know who our enemy is or how he attacks, how will we ever defeat or overcome him? Join ArieRashelle as she searches through Scripture to clarify the being that is Satan in her video, Who Is Satan?

Revelation 12:9
Isaiah 14:12-15
2 Peter 2:10-11
Jude 1:8-9
Job 1:6-12
Isaiah 6:1-7
Zechariah 3:1-2
Revelation 12:8-12
Genesis 3:1
Genesis 3:13-15
Revelation 12:2-4
Revelation 6:4
Psalms 12:6
Psalms 66:10
1 Corinthians 3:11
1 Peter 1:7
Isaiah 48:10
Proverbs 17:3
Job 2:1-7
2 Samuel 24:1
1 Chronicles 21:1
Genesis 18:20-22
Revelation 12:10
Revelation 12:13-17
Exodus 19:4
Isaiah 40:30-31
Micah 7:17
Luke 10:19
1 Peter 5:8
Luke 22:31-32
Matthew 4:1-11
Luke 4:1-13
Matthew 16:23
Mark 8:33
Luke 22:3
John 13:27
Revelation 2:12-13
Genesis 30:27
Numbers 23:23
Leviticus 19:26
1 Kings 20:33
2 Kings 17:17
Revelation 2:24
Genesis 3:2-7
Psalms 104:21

Who Is Satan?

The Revelation 12 Account of Who Satan Is

1 And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. 3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. 5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days.
7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. 11 And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death. 12 Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

Revelation 12:1-12

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The Tongue’s Power

21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. ~ Proverbs 18:21

The tongue has the power to speak life or to speak death. That’s a very frightening thought, if you think about it, that our tongues hold that much power. I want you to stop and think about what I just said for just a moment. Our words are life, and they are death, and people throw words around as if they count for very little or for nothing.

People will let words like:

  • I will never succeed
  • I can’t do anything right
  • I will never make friends
  • I am a born loser
  • I will never get over this sickness
  • This is killing me

Just roll off their tongue as if it was water on a duck’s back, so to speak, without us even thinking about it. Listen, you don’t have to know it in order to speak it into being.

Words are alive because they are breath, which is spirit. Therefore, words will never die. That’s why the words of our prayers can come up before God as a memorial years after they have been spoken.

That’s also why the prayers of:

  • The saints long dead
  • Grandmothers
  • Grandfathers
  • Parents
  • Holy men and women of God

Will come to pass eventually because they are words that were spoken.

On the flip side, that is the same reason why curses, also known as generational curses, can plague generation after generation after generation because words have the power of life or death, and if they are life or death, that means they do not die, but they can be canceled.

Dear LORD, please forgive me for every careless word I’ve spoken about myself or other people. Please cancel each and every curse I’ve spoken, whether out of anger or idle talk, in the mighty name of Jesus. Please let life be the words I speak out of my mouth instead of death. Let my words be holy and pleasing to You, LORD God. Bridle my tongue. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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Combat With Humility

6 But He gives greater grace. Therefore He says: God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. ~ James 4:6CSB

Shame enters us when we dwell in sin and are conscious of it. To combat this shame ourselves, we become prideful. We try to justify our own sin and force others to accept and affirm it as well. If anyone protests or disagrees, that shame (fueled by pride) comes to the surface and gives birth to anger.

Pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame.

Uncle Iroh

Only when we humble ourselves before the LORD will our sins be washed clean and the power of shame broken within us. Pride gives shame its power, but humility uproots shame and destroys it. Shame cannot stand when we dwell in the perfect love of God that can only be accessed through humbling ourselves before our God.

Peace. Love. Go Forth and Combat With Humility.

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Uproot And Destroy

3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he did successful, 4 Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant. Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority. ~ Genesis 39:3-4CSB

Joseph was sold as a slave by his own brothers to Ishmaelite traders. They went on to sell him to Potiphar, an Egyptian. Joseph could have easily been bitter and refused to work. We would have understood. His own flesh and blood, his big brothers who were supposed to protect him and love him, sold him into slavery. He could’ve mumbled and grumbled at God for allowing this to happen to him when all he did was share the dreams God had given him with his brothers. Joseph didn’t do that, though.

There’s no account of Joseph lashing out at his brothers for selling him or to God for allowing it to happen. There’s no account of Joseph being bitter and allowing it to stop him from achieving whatever he set out to do. Because of this, the LORD blessed all that Joseph did. God’s hand on Joseph was so noticeable that Potiphar promoted Joseph from lowly slave to his personal assistant, putting him in charge of everything he owned, including his home.

The Devil will try to use people closest to us to try to break us down. He’ll have older siblings that you look up to and just want approval from to discourage you and break you down with their words. He’ll use a parent’s busy schedule or misunderstanding of a situation to break you down. All of this with the hope that a root of bitterness will rise up in you and keep you from fulfilling your destiny.

But here’s the thing, only you can stop your destiny from coming to fruition. No one else. So, take a page out of Joseph’s book and keep your trust in the God who sees you. The God who is with you always. If you continue on and refuse to let bitterness build up in you, then the LORD will bless you regardless of what land you’re currently in.

Dear LORD, please teach me not to grow the root of bitterness within me. Help me to uproot and destroy any tree of bitterness that has already made its way into my heart. Help me to forgive those that I feel have wronged me. Help me to let go of past hurts and pains. Teach me to move forward and cling to Your promises and good plans for me above all else. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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One Hour

36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and He said to His disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.” 37 And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38 Then He said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” 39 And going a little farther He fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” 40 And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping. And He said to Peter, “So, could you not watch with me one hour? 41 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 42 Again, for the second time, He went away and prayed, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.” 43 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. 44 So, leaving them again, He went away and prayed for the third time, saying the same words again. 45 Then He came to the disciples and said to them, “Sleep and take your rest later on. See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.” ~ (Matthew 26:36-46)

Have you ever been woken up earlier than usual and gotten the feeling that maybe you should pray, but slumber is pulling you back, so you shake off the feeling and give into a few more hours of precious sleep? That’s how I’ve felt these last couple of days, especially, but this morning something changed. Right after I got this feeling, a thought entered my mind:

Arie, what are you going to do when you stand before me, and I ask you why you never prayed when I woke you up?

To say the least, I woke up immediately and started praying. What a frightful thought to stand before the LORD God and have fallen short. No, we’re never going to reach perfection on this earth, but there are things that many of us don’t do that we can do. The majority of us, myself included, struggle with praying for more than 30 minutes straight when Jesus made 1 hour the minimum. Many of us struggle with reading our Bible every day or setting and sticking to a time to worship every day.

These are some of the bare minimum that Christ is asking of us. He gave us everything and still pours out blessings upon blessings, some of which we don’t even realize He’s given us, yet we struggle to give Him an hour of our time a day. Why He loves us so, I’ll never know, but thank the LORD that He does.

Dear LORD, I’m sorry for all the times I’ve given You less than my best. I’m sorry for all the times I chose something else over You. Please forgive me for each time I’ve fallen short of Your bare minimum requirement of me. Please help me to crucify my flesh every day and to feed and nourish my spirit-man so that I might be able to give You more than just the bare minimum, but my absolute best. Thank You for never giving up on me, and for giving me chance after chance after chance, especially when I don’t deserve it. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.

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