Let Go Of Your Anger And Offense

 

 

In the moment, everyone's anger always seems righteous. Anger is a feeling, after all, and it sweeps over us and tells us we're being denied something we should have. It provides its own justification. But an emotion is just an emotion. It's not critical thinking. Anger doesn't pause. We have to stop, and we have to question it.

We humans are experts at casting ourselves as victims and rewriting narratives that put us in the center of injustices. (More on this in a bit.) And we can repaint our anger or hatred of someone —  say, anyone who threatens us —  into a righteous-looking work of art. And yet, remarkably, in Jesus's teaching, there is no allowance for "Okay, well, if someone really is a jerk, then yeah — you need to be offended." We're flat-our told to forgive, even — especially! —  the very stuff that's understandably maddening and legitimately offensive.

That's the whole point:

The thing that you think makes your anger "righteous" is the very thing you are called to forgive.

Grace isn't for the deserving. Forgiving means surrendering your claim to resentment and letting go of anger.

 

~From Unoffendable by Brant Hansen 

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!

Come Out Of Your Comfort Zone

 

 

Yоu wеrе nоt created tо ѕіt down оn your gifts, talents аnd рurроѕе.  God іѕ саllіng ѕоmе of уоu tо соmе uр hіghеr.  It scares уоu bесаuѕе dоіng so requires уоu to step оut оf your соmfоrt zone.  It rеԛuіrеѕ a leap оf faith and bеlіеvе іt оr not, thаt’ѕ just where God wаntѕ you!  Hе wаntѕ you tоtаllу dереndеnt оn Hіm tо whеrе уоu аrе ѕееkіng Hіѕ fасе fоr thе next move аnd іnѕtruсtіоn.  Gоd hаѕ саllеd for uѕ to wаlk bу fаіth аnd nоt bу ѕіght (2 Cоrіnthіаnѕ 5:7).  Cаn уоu see whу?  Because thаt is the оnlу wау tо truly please the Lоrd.

 

~From The Best Devotionals For Her, by Rebeca Alison

 

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Be Bold In Your Prayers; Take That Leap

 

 

How desperate are you for the blessing, the breakthrough, the miracle? Desperate enough to pray through the night? How many times are you willing to circle the promise? Until the day you die? How long will you knock on the door of opportunity? Until your knuckles are raw? Until you knock the door down?

The persistent widow’s methodology was unorthodox. . . . Going to the personal residence of the judge crossed a professional line. I’m almost surprised the judge didn’t file a restraining order against her. But this reveals something about the nature of God. God couldn’t care less about protocol. If He did, Jesus would have chosen the Pharisees as His disciples. But that isn’t who Jesus honored.

Jesus honored the prostitute who crashed a party at a Pharisee’s home to anoint His feet. Jesus honored the tax collector who climbed a tree in his three-piece suit just to get a glimpse of Him. Jesus honored the four friends who cut in line and cut a hole in someone’s ceiling to help their friend. And in this parable, Jesus honored the crazy woman who drove a judge crazy because she wouldn’t stop knocking.

The common denominator in each of these stories is crazy faith. People took desperate measures to get to God, and God honored them for it. Nothing has changed.

God is still honoring spiritual desperadoes who crash parties and climb trees.

God is still honoring those who defy protocol with their bold prayers. God is still honoring those who pray with audacity and tenacity. And the crazy woman is selected as the gold standard when it comes to praying hard. Her unrelenting persistence was the only difference between justice and injustice.

The viability of our prayers is not contingent on scrabbling the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet into the right combinations like abracadabra. God already knows the last punctuation mark before we pronounce the first syllable. The viability of our prayers has more to do with intensity than vocabulary. It has more to do with what we do than what we say.

There is a pattern repeated in Scripture: crazy miracles are the offspring of crazy faith. Normal begets normal.

Crazy begets crazy. If we want to see God do crazy miracles, sometimes we need to pray crazy prayers.

 

~From Draw the Circle by Mark Batterson

 

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Three Remedies To Fight Temptation

 

 

We saw how three remedies that help us fight temptation are (1) remembering the presence of God, (2) remembering God’s larger plan for our lives, and (3) remembering to rely on God’s power to fight our spiritual battles.

 

~From Taking God to Work: The Keys to Ultimate Success, by David L Winters, Steve Reynolds 

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Cling To Jesus

 

 

Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. Just as the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. — John 15:4-10 NASB


Jesus’ allegory is simple. God is like a vine keeper. He lives and loves to coax the best out of his vines. He pampers, prunes, blesses, and cuts. His aim is singular: “What can I do to prompt produce?” God is a capable orchardist who carefully superintends the vineyard.

And Jesus plays the role of the vine. We nongardeners might confuse the vine and the branch. To see the vine, lower your gaze from the stringy, winding branches to the thick base below. The vine is the root and trunk of the plant. It cables nutrients from the soil to the branches. Jesus makes the stunning claim, “I am the real root of life.” If anything good comes into our lives, He is the conduit.

And who are we? We are the branches. We bear fruit:

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. — Gal. 5:22 NASB

We meditate on what is “true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable... excellent and worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8 NLT). Our gentleness is evident to all. We bask in the “peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Philippians 4:7 NIV).

And as we cling to Christ, God is honored.
 

My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples. — John 15:8 NASB


The Father tends. Jesus nourishes. We receive, and grapes appear. Passersby, stunned at the overflowing baskets of love, grace, and peace, can’t help but ask, “Who runs this vineyard?” And God is honored. For this reason fruit bearing matters to God.

And it matters to you! You grow weary of unrest. You’re ready to be done with sleepless nights. You long to be “anxious for nothing.” You long for the fruit of the Spirit. But how do you bear this fruit? Try harder? No, hang tighter. Our assignment is not fruitfulness but faithfulness.

The secret to fruit bearing and anxiety-free living is less about doing and more about abiding. 

~From Anxious for Nothing by Max Lucado

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God Uses Your Weakness

 

 

Abram had no idea what God had in store for him. His mind couldn’t imagine what God was going to do. Yet he packed up his camels, his turbans, and what-have-you, loaded up the family, and headed toward a strange land. He was the original Grapes of Wrath story. What made him do it? His faith. His faith that God wasn’t going to do him wrong. His faith that God wasn’t going to lead him to a place with no provision for him and his family. His faith in God’s promises.

What if Abram had stayed?

What if he had decided that the whole venture was just a little too risky? What if he chose to stick with what was familiar? I don’t know the answer to all of that, other than knowing that God wouldn’t have been able to use him the way He did. Sure, God has a destiny for all of us, a plan that He has known since before we took a breath, but He never forces us to do anything. We take our own steps, whether they are toward His will or away from it.

The thing that’s scary is that the steps toward His will are the hardest of all because they require us to leave the familiar. Wasn’t it Loretta Lynn who said something like, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”? And yes, I just quoted Loretta Lynn. Bear with me because this isn’t the first time and certainly won’t be the last.

It’s all about faith.

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. — Hebrews 11:8

Only [God] can take the weak things of this world and use them for His plans and purposes.

He is the architect and the builder. Our job is to take the step of faith, away from what we know and away from the false security we cling to, toward what He is building with our lives. He never promised it would be easy, and He certainly never promised it would be on our timetable; He just promised that with Him all things are possible and He’ll be with us always.

 

~From Everyday Holy by Melanie Shankle 

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!

Five Great Blessings From Brokenness

 

 

 At least five great blessings come from our being broken.

The Blessing of Understanding God Better

As we are broken, we understand the absolutes of God — that His commandments are exact, His promises are sure, His methods and His timetable are entirely His own, and His provision is complete.

We understand the Scriptures more fully. We see patterns of how God works in human lives. We have a deeper understanding of God’s love. We know more fully what it means to be accepted by God on the basis of nothing in ourselves, but solely because He is a loving Father. We understand more fully the purpose of the Cross. We grow in understanding God’s patience and love and kindness and forbearance. We have an experiential understanding of His long-suffering. We know with a growing certainty that He is in control of our lives completely and eternally.

The breaking process always lifts almighty God, the cross, and the grace of God to a higher level in our lives than we had placed those truths before. We are given a glimpse of God’s glory and of His divine nature. We come to a new depth of understanding of all God’s many attributes.

There is no end to what we can learn about God. This blessing is therefore an infinite one.

The Blessing of Understanding Ourselves Better

As we are broken by God, we come to a much deeper understanding of ourselves. We are able to trace the avenues, thought patterns, and trends of our lives from our childhood through our growing-up years. We can gain a new understanding of certain experiences in our past and how they affected us, for better or worse. We see our emotional flaws and discover how poorly we both show love and receive love. We face our limitations and frailties, and we see how fear has stifled us.

In our brokenness we also come to know our God-given talents, gifts, and abilities. We see ways in which the Lord has strengthened us, prepared us, and fashioned us. We also see how God has dealt with us in tenderness and mercy.

One thing we always understand very clearly in times of brokenness is that we are sinners. Brokenness always involves sin — the sin of pride and the sin of rebellion, among the other sinful behaviors God desires to remove from us. The breaking process reveals to us that we are being continually refined by God. Sin is being peeled from our lives, layer by layer.

What a wonderful blessing it is to recognize that while we still have the capacity to sin, we have been freed by Christ Jesus to denounce sin, be forgiven of it, and have victory over it!

Once we truly are broken and once we have totally submitted our lives to God, a peace floods our souls that is beyond understanding and beyond explaining (Philippians 4:7).

The Blessing of Increased Compassion for Others

Along with gaining a greater understanding of the nature of God and of ourselves through brokenness, we begin to look at other people differently. We begin to see that others are no worse and no better than we are.

We all are sinners at our core. We all are in need of God’s grace and the refining power of the Holy Spirit working in our lives. We all need to change, grow, and develop in certain ways. None of us is without flaws and weaknesses.

Through brokenness, we come to the place where we can say:
 

    “Father, You were patient with me. I can be patient with him.”
    “Father, You showed kindness and mercy to me. I can extend kindness and mercy to her.”
    “Father, You forgave me. I can forgive this person who hurt me.”


Brokenness makes us less critical and judgmental. It also opens us up to new ways we can share God’s love with others.

The Blessing of a Greater Zest for Life

When we come to the end of ourselves, we find that we have a greater appreciation of all God’s gifts to us. Our hearts are renewed with thanksgiving and the awareness of God’s goodness to us. Our interest in life is rekindled. The hard parts of our souls break up so that we are quicker to laugh with gusto and to cry with tenderness.

The Blessing of an Increased Awareness of God’s Presence

God is with us always, but brokenness makes us more sensitive to His presence. He comforts us and assures us that He will never leave us or forsake us.

And in our brokenness, in the intimacy of our spirits, God speaks to us of His great love for us. He tells us how much He values us and desires good for us. He assures us that He is with us and is working in us.

When we feel assured of God’s presence with us, we are secure, and there’s no greater security. God reveals Himself to us as our all-sufficiency, our total provision, our ultimate protection. That releases us from fear, pressure, and worry. It produces in us an abiding peace that cannot be described and an unspeakable joy that fills our hearts to overflowing, regardless of the circumstances.

Worth the Struggle

When we yield to God’s purposes in our lives and begin to experience the blessings that come from brokenness, we can say, “I’m thankful for this trial. Praise God it’s over, but praise God that, because He loves me, He used it to refine me. I wouldn’t trade the blessing of this experience for anything in the world!”

The Purifying Work of Pain

The hallmark of several years in my life was pain. God used it to soften me, change my thinking, and expand my compassion for others who are in pain. I wouldn’t trade those changes for anything.

Some things we may not fully understand until eternity. But the perspective that God is at work keeps me from anger, bitterness, and hostility. So I have chosen that perspective.

The Condition for Blessing

God places only one condition on the blessings that He has for us through brokenness: we must be willing to submit to Him.

If we are willing to surrender ourselves to Him, He leads us to total victory in the aftermath of brokenness. It may take months or years for that victory to be realized or recognized, but victory is assured.

But if we balk in rebellion and refuse to surrender to God, we greatly curtail God’s blessing. We place a barrier of mistrust and rebellion between ourselves and His outpouring of blessings into our lives.

God Continues to Work in Us

God will not give up on us. He will continue to work in us, bringing us from one experience of brokenness to the next and blessing us along the way.

Friend, we never outgrow our need to be broken in one way or other. And praise God for that! He loves us so much that He never gives up on us, never loses interest in us, and never rejects us. He asks only that we trust Him to be our God, so that we might be His people and bring Him glory.

 

~From Finding God’s Blessings in Brokenness by Dr. Charles Stanley

 

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!
 

Your Desires Must Line Up With God's

 

 

Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” He meant that wherever we send our money, our feelings and emotions will eventually go there, too. If we send money toward the things God cares about, our hearts will start to look more like God’s.

Generosity is just a means to an end; it is an investment in the love of God for us and for others.

Giving is the same way. If we want God’s heart, we give to the things He cares about. He honors our steps of faith by changing our hearts and aligning our passions with His.

In Luke 16 we’re reminded about giving to the poor; elsewhere in scripture we’re given the additional tasks of strengthening believers in the body of Christ, and saving the lost through evangelism.  As we give toward these three tasks, God shapes and molds us into the image of His son, Jesus Christ.  What a gift!

As Randy Alcorn has said, “Stare at Jesus long enough and you will become a giver. Give long enough and you will become more like Christ.”

 

~From True Riches – What Jesus Really Said About Money and Your Heart by John Cortines and Gragory Baumer

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Give Jesus Your Pain

 

 

I sat and considered Christ’s encounter with Zacchaeus, a man despised by everyone who knew him. He was Jewish, yes, but he was also a tax collector for the Roman occupiers.

The Romans gave this unsavory job to local recruits and allowed them to keep a percentage of whatever they collected. Zacchaeus and his colleagues took more than what was owed. They were parasites living off the vulnerability of their own people. When Christ decided to share a meal with Zacchaeus, the people were horrified. How could Jesus spend time with a man who was bleeding them dry?

This was His response:

The Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost. — Luke 19:10

I considered the verse and thought about the study I’d done on it years ago. The word used here for lost means “destroyed, ruined, broken beyond repair.”

I thought about Jesus, who didn’t come for those who are doing-just-fine-thank-you. He came to save those who were and are willing to acknowledge they are broken beyond repair. And even now, in His tender way, He comes to the doors of our hidden places and invites Himself in for supper.

Jesus comes to us in the secret shadows and bids us into the light. He wants to be in communion with us, wants to help carry the load of the pain and shame we secret away in isolation.

I don’t think I’m the only one who has constructed walls around parts of myself. We all know that pain is part of life, but when too much of it happens all at once — when it happens too early in life or when we feel helpless to combat it — the pain can make us believe we don’t want to go on. It’s why we build a secret place inside ourselves where it can hang out. The pain might follow us there, but we believe it can’t hurt us as much if it’s walled up. And we falsely think that the world can’t see it either.

We can pretend that everything is okay. And perhaps that’s a sort of saving grace for some of us as children. When I think of the stories women have shared with me through the years — stories of the worst kind of abuse and betrayal — I’ve wondered how they’ve made it. Perhaps some have survived by burying the pain deep inside, but I believe now that others have discovered the beauty of living open, yet broken, with Christ.

In Luke 19, Christ makes His way into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey. The crowds welcome Him with open arms, shouting,

Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! — Luke 19:38 NIV

Then Luke tells us that as Christ looked over the Holy City, He wept “because you did not recognize it when God visited you” (Luke 19:44).

Luke moves away from that panoramic picture and focuses on the weeping face of Christ. Why do you think Christ wept in that moment?

I wonder if Christ ever weeps over us when — even as we raise our voices in worship — our hearts, our shame, our pain is hidden? Is there something you have hidden away inside that you need to bring into the light of Christ?

 

~From In the Middle of the Mess by Sheila Walsh

 

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!

 

God Is In The Mountains And Valleys

 

 

We all want to know right from wrong, good from bad, positive from negative, safe from dangerous, and friends from foes.

So, when things happen that we can’t explain or wouldn’t have chosen, it’s hard to stray away from the logic we’ve learned since kindergarten musicals and vacation Bible school. In fact, if we were to combine the two, I think we’d have songs that go a little bit like this:

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self control go up-up-up… Sin, suffering, pain, illness, hurt, and godlessness go down-down-down.”

In the Bible, we see that mountains and valleys aren’t just “up” and “down” in terms of geography, but they also seem to take on negative or positive connotations.
 

I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of Heaven and earth. — Psalm 121:1-2

After [Jesus] had dismissed them, He went up on a mountainside by Himself to pray. Later that night, He was there alone, and the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it — Matthew 14:23-24

And a man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord, ‘Because the Syrians have said, ‘The Lord is a god of the hills but He is not a god of the valleys,’ therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’ — 1 Kings 20:28

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. — Psalm 23:4


And so, when we walk through our own circumstantial valleys and encounter things that never would have happened in the Garden of Eden, we think our lives are headed, well, down. Casseroles will arrive and bad news may keep coming, and everything about suffering, from funeral dresses to sympathy cards, sharply remind us of darkness and defeat.

There’s a unique tension that happens when we walk through dark valleys with our mountaintop God. Yes, the pain is real, but so is hope. Maybe “up” or “down” and “joy” or “suffering” seemed like the only options to me, but not to God.

Yes, mountains go up and valleys go down, but God is steady and constant. Maybe the writer of the song took a little inspiration from theologian Samuel Rutherford, who said, “Believe God’s love and power more than you believe your own feelings and experiences. Your rock is Christ, and it is not the rock that ebbs and flows but the sea.”


So, whether we’re talking about rocks or mountains or valleys, one thing remains true: He is with us. God is our only true comfort, and His Word is unfailing.

May we look above the ebb and flow of our circumstances and rest our eyes upon the God who does not move. He is steady in the ups and downs, and His heart is to turn things right-side-up.

Thanks be to Him.


When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. — Isaiah 43:2

He provided redemption for His people; He ordained His covenant forever — holy and awesome is His name. — Psalm 111:9

 

~Written for Devotionals Daily by Kaitlin Wernet, co-author of The Book of Comforts with Rebecca Faires, Cymone Wilder, and Caleb Faires.

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!

Don't Burn Out, Turn To God

 

 

 If you are worn out, here’s the deal: you’re human.

You live with the effects of a fallen world. You live in a world where people need sleep and rest and restoration. God made your body with the need to shut down for eight-ish hours a night. He made your mind with an intrinsic desire to get quiet and recuperate when things are too hectic or overwhelming. He made your soul desperate to find respite and rejuvenation in Him.

If you’re burned out, worn out, needing rest, and feeling tired, the good news is that you’re human.

The bad news is that if we continually resist His invitation to be human and resist our God-given need of recreation, He has the capacity and the loving inclination to break us a little so we are forced to stick close to Him.

God is beckoning you into a life full of pushing, pulling, and advancing for the sake of His kingdom. But He’s also inviting you into a life full of rest and stillness so you can draw near to Him. What would it look like to rewrite Psalm 23 for yourself, reading “He made me lie down” and remembering that first “He invited me to lie down. He went to quiet waters and so I followed Him”?

What would it look like to finally trash the idea that needing rest automatically equals some kind of deficiency or lack?

This is how He made us. He is not surprised. Rather, He is glorified by our resting and trusting in Him.

Let’s follow our Shepherd to the water and the quiet spaces.

And let’s kick the Enemy in the teeth when he tells us we’re not enough because we’re worn out! 

~From Always Enough, Never Too Much by Jess Connolly and Hayley Morgan

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Jesus Bore Our Sins

 

 

The cross is so common in our culture that most people don’t think twice when they see one on a church. But unfortunately, familiarity with the symbol can actually get in the way of understanding what it truly means. So let’s stop to consider how Jesus became the bearer of sin.

We begin with Scripture written long before Jesus was born. Genesis, the first book of the Bible, explains how man chose to disobey God. Because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their descendants are all born under the curse of death, having inherited a sinful “flesh” nature.

In Leviticus, God’s laws for the Jewish nation included observance of Yom Kippur, the day each year when the Israelites fasted, prayed, and sacrificed an animal to atone for sin. In essence, the goat would bear the wrongs done by the people and suffer the penalty that divine justice required.

Centuries later, Isaiah prophesied that a Savior would atone for transgression once and for all (Isa. 53:5, 8; Heb. 7:27). After another 700 years, John the Baptist identified Jesus as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The Messiah had come, though He was totally different from what the people expected—so much so, in fact, that they rejected Him and requested His crucifixion.

In all, God gave 613 laws through Moses. But none of us can perfectly follow even the Ten Commandments. In fact, one reason He gave us these rules is to show us our need for a Savior (Ps. 19:7; Gal. 3:24). Meditate on those commands (Ex. 20:1-17), asking God to speak to your heart.

 

~From Pastor Charles Stanley, Intouch Ministries, Intouch.org 

Stay Encouraged and Be Blessed!