Are You Being Complacent or Are You Living Your Life With A Determination To Fulfill God's Purpose In The Earth?

What is on your mind today?   Did you wake up thinking about how good God is?  How he brought you through yesterday into this new day and blessed you with brand new mercy for today.    God is a good God and we have to make sure we are not taking his mercy and grace for granted.   

Sometimes in life we can become comfortable and complacent.    To be complacent means to be satisfied in your own self-achievements.   It is as though we are saying to God we've done enough.   We're okay.   We have accomplished all that we need to accomplish and we are satisfied.    

Aren't you glad Jesus was not a complacent person?   Aren't you glad that He didn't stop at the point where he turned the water into wine?    Aren't you glad that He said not my will but thy will be done?   Aren't you glad that He was not satisfied with self-achievement but He wanted to achieve God's plan and purpose in the earth and He did that all the way to dying on the cross for us.

That is how we need to think.   We need to think how God thinks.   He thinks with a mindset of love and compassion.   He thinks about what we need and He sacrificed His Son to give us what we need.   Live your life sacrificially and have a your mind set on God and be determined to fulfill His purpose.   Don't be complacent in your own self achievements.    

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION

I Chronicles 16:11

Seek the Lord and his strength, seek his face continually.

Are You Allowing The Struggles That You Are Encountering In Life To Trick You Into Believing You Can't Make It?

Saying and doing are two different things.   It is easy to say a thing but backing up what you say is a little more difficult.   God wants us to be doers and not just those who hear His Word.   He wants us to live the Word we read about, hear about, and speak about.   None of us are perfect but we all can strive to do what is right.    

When you think about the word strive, it means to make great effort to achieve or to obtain something.   It involves struggling and fighting vigorously.   A lot of times in life we get lost in the struggle.   We give up or we quit because we "feel" as though we can't make it.   We have to get to the place where we refuse to quit and we refuse to give up and we have to understand that we are not fighting alone.   God is our strength.    We have already been declared victorious in all the challenges we will ever face because the battle has already been won.    Even when it looks like we have lost a challenge we have to remember THE BATTLE HAS BEEN WON.    

Today I want to say don't give up.   Don't quit and don't give in.   Know that God is with You.   Know that He is watching over His Word to perform it in your life.   Stay in faith.   Don't allow the struggle to trick you into believing you can't make it.   Not only can you make it, you will make it because God is on your side.   

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

Psalm 118:6-9

King James Version

6 The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?

7 The Lord taketh my part with them that help me: therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me.

8 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man.

9 It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes.

What Are You Going To Do In and With This Fresh Start God Has Given You Today?

New beginnings.   Are you ready for a new beginning?   Are you ready to begin again right here right now?   Do you understand that God has been merciful to you?  Do you understand that what you went through didn't have the power to take you out?   Your trial is now your testimony.   It is now a reference point in your life.   A point where you can go back and tell others what God did for you and it will encourage others and help others understand what He can and will do for them too if they are willing and obedient.    

So today is a new day.   It's a fresh start for you.   It's a good time to go to God and ask God for forgiveness for any sins known and unknown.   It's a good time to invite Him in and to ask Him to lead, guide, and direct your footsteps.   It's a good time to commit or recommit to Him.    It's a good time to say thank You to Him.   Thank Him for what He has brought you through and thank Him for the place He has brought you to in life.    

This very moment that you are living in is new to you.   It is a moment that you have never lived before.   Make the best of it.   Be determined in it to move forward with God.   Understand, God makes all things new.    No moment in our lives is a moment that we have ever lived before.   Walk in the newness of God today.  

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

Revelation 21:5

King James Version (KJV)

“And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.”

How Are You Responding To The People and. The Situations You Encounter In Life?

Are you doing what God has told you to do despite what others are doing?  Sometimes life gets hard and sometimes people around you don't respond the way you thought they would or should but you can't allow another persons response to control your actions.    If God tells you to pray for someone, you need to pray.   If He tells you to give to someone, you need to give.   What you do should not be based on what another person does.   It is hard sometimes to move past what someone has done to you.   How they treat you and how they respond to you can be hard to overcome but remember everything you are doing should be looked at as your response to God and His love for you and not your response to people and what they have done to you. 

How you respond to God's love is up to you.   You have to remember what you do for others, you are doing for God.   You are God's vessel in the earth.   He created you on purpose with purpose and that purpose includes you being His representative in a lost and dying world.    That purpose calls you to be a light in the midst of darkness and a voice of hope in a world that is filled with fear.

How do your respond to hate?    How do you respond to negativity?   How do you respond to love?    Make sure you are responding to hate with love.   Make sure you are responding to negativity with love.   Make sure you are responding to love with love.   We have to understand that God is love and our response to every situation we encounter in life should include who and what He is.   Let your response always be a love response. 

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

1 John 4:7-10

King James Version

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Do You Realize You Are Past The Point Of Your Past and God Is Ready To Do A New Thing In You, For You, and Through You?

 How often do you look back and wonder what if?   What if you had done things differently?   What if you would have gotten the promotion?   What if?   Understand, God does not wanting you living your life looking back and wondering what if.   He wants you to look ahead with hope and expectation.   He wants you to know that He knows all things.  He knew the choice you would make and he knows the outcome of every situation in our lives before it even happens.   

So, what if?   When we think about what if, let's think about it in a future context.  Let's meditate on the what ifs that come along with us being obedient to God.   What if we choose to walk in God's will, Word, and way?   What if we choose to pray?   What if we love those who choose to hate us?   What if?    We have to know if we choose to obey God, God will always take care of us even when we encounter challenges in our lives. 

Questions will always arise in our hearts and minds but we have to refuse to live in the past.    When the enemy brings up what you could have done, you need to begin to confess what you can do now.   You are past the point of your past and God said He would do a new thing in you.   So live in the expectancy of what God desires to do for you, in you, and through you from this point forward. 

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

Isaiah 43:19

King James Version

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.

Are You Loving Others As God Loves You? Pressing Beyond Mere Words and Fleshly Actions

What is love to you?   What does it really mean to you to love someone unconditionally or have you got to that point yet?   To the point of unconditional love where you love others beyond their faults and you show them mercy.   That's not easy to do.   It's not easy to move mentally and physically beyond what someone else has done to you.   We live in a world where people predicate love based on what a person does for them and if the person does something to them, the love we have for them goes away and that is not of God. 

God's love is unending.   His love never fails.   His love sees beyond our faults and it is a sacrificial love.    God's love is full of mercy and doesn't take record of the wrongs that others do to us.   We have to understand that God is love and in order for us to love like Him, we have to have Him and His Word at work in and through our lives. 

My prayer for you today is that you love others like God loves you.   I pray that you take no record of the wrongs done to you but instead pray for those who have wronged you.   I am praying that you press beyond just loving someone with words and fleshly actions.   I pray that you dig deeper and learn to love unconditionally.    I pray that you walk in agape love just as you are loved by God. 

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

John 15:12

King James Version 

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Are You Learning How To Let Go Of Some Things In Order To Gain Those Things God Has Prepared For Your Life?

 How do you let go when all you want to do is hold on?   How do you release the things that are holding so tightly on to you?   These are big questions when it comes to life.   In life, there will be people, places, and things we will have to release because they keep us in bondage and captivity.   Letting go is not always easy but sometimes letting go is necessary.   

The big questions you have to answer are what is it that you are supposed to be letting go of and what it is that you are supposed to be holding on to?  You have to begin answering these questions by first answering another question and that is, what does the Word of God say?   The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians to prove all things and to hold on to that which is good.   It also says in Philippians to forget what is behind you and to press forward with God.   We have to know how to hold on to God and how not to let go of His unchanging hand.

Letting go is not easy and neither is putting your trust in the unknown but that is what faith is.   Trusting without seeing and it is believing without knowing.   You have to trust that God has a plan and you have to believe that He is at work in your life.     

The main reason we hold on to people, places, and things is because we have allowed ourselves to become familiar with them.    In other words, it's known to you because it has been a part of what you do for so long but just because we are familiar with something doesn't mean it is good for our lives and we have to know how to release some things in our lives in order to gain what God has prepared for our lives.    

SCRIPTURE MEDITATION 

Philippians 3:13-14 

King James Version 

Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.