Learn more here about I Am Prospering Everyday: Scripture Declarations & Prayer Prompts.
Available in hardcover and paperback.
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Learn more here about I Am Prospering Everyday: Scripture Declarations & Prayer Prompts.
Available in hardcover and paperback.
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This morning at the Lakewood Church service, Lisa Osteen Comes said:
If you don't know The Word, Satan will use that against you!
Many of the answers that you are seeking are in the Bible. Just open it up when you feel discouraged.
When I open up the Bible each morning, I feel like I am sitting with Jesus.
I feel that the Bible is the closest thing that we have to God on earth. I know we have the Holy Spirit and He is the presence of God in us. I can feel him but I can't touch him. I can touch the Bible.
Fall in love with the Bible. It will change your life. As you read, the Holy Spirit will help you to understand. Get a version that is easier for you to understand. The Holy Spirit will give you spiritual wisdom and insight.
What the Holy Spirit hears from the Father he will transmit to us. We sense the answer in our spirits and it's registered in our minds. Like a thought, something we need to know, something to pray for or an answer to a prayer. It's like an impression that you can't get away from and that you know did not come from you. A still, small voice.
The Apostle Paul describes God's voice as a perception. Everyone was saved on the ship during a hurricane because Paul listened.
Philip, the disciple, heard the voice of The Spirit that sent him to help the Ethiopian man in the chariot. Because Philip listened, he was able to explain the Gospel to him and he was saved and chose to be baptized on the spot.
God's plans are higher than our plans. There were many times that God interrupted my plans and the outcome was much better than I could ever have imagined.
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For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things,
to whom be glory forever!
Romans 11:36
Jesus Christ of Nazareth is worthy of our acknowledgement everyday of the sacrifice that he gave. He was obedient to the request of Our Father, to his own hurt. He gave his pure blood and his unblemished body for us. Because of his sacrifice, we can
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We who are growing in Christ are called to suffer with him because we are heirs to the throne and joint heirs with the Savior. What does it mean to suffer with Christ? It is not a concept that our fleshly being readily accepts. The word suffer does not denote fun and pleasure.
To suffer with Christ means that, through the experiences that God allows into our lives, we are able to identify with what Christ felt. Even more important is that we are able to perceive, through difficult experiences, that Christ knows how we are feeling. Why is this important? Because it sets us up for spiritual riches in the New Heaven and the New Earth and for the best rewards.
It sets us up to rule with Christ. Even though this is at the end of time, it is what those who love Christ are living for. No matter how attached we become to this world, no matter how immersed we have to become in it to survive and thrive, we are always living for Christ's return to claim us.
Our Father allows trying experiences into our lives so that we can better relate to what Jesus did for us. You have heard it said that Only what's done for Christ will last. It is not only about accepting Jesus as Savior, but also about being able to relate to his obedience to the Father at his own hurt. Since all that Jesus did was for us at Father God's request, it is the Father's will that we experience a little of what Christ did.
While none of us have been called to be crucified on a cross, God allows symbolic crosses, in the way of highly-challenging experiences, into our lives. These experiences can be somewhat minor or devastating. He wants us to bear the experiences on behalf of his beloved and obedient Son. Through developing a personal perception of what Christ endured, we become one with him. Not only does this please Our Father but it comforts us to know that we are understanding more about what the Lamb of God suffered.
Does your flesh want to fight with someone to show them that they can't do you that way? Let them do it. Jesus had to let the soldiers do him that way. We don't even know the extent of all that he had to suffer, for it was much more than what has been revealed to us in the Bible.
Is someone trying to take something away from you that they are not entitled to and your fleshly spirit rises up to fight for it? Let them take it. Jesus had to let them take his garments from him and divide them, and so much more did he have to allow them to take.
Do you feel alone in your trials, as if the whole world is against you and winning? Accept your feelings and continue on in fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for you are not alone. Jesus felt the hatred of so very many who were against him and he had to endure as Our Father allowed them to continue with their evil plans against him.
You don't want them to feel like they are winning against you so you want to fight them? Let them think they are winning. Jesus had to be unfairly judged and convicted. Every step of the way of his suffering he had to let them all think they were winning. He had to let them think they were winning as he suffered and died on the cross.
You want to speak up for yourself and argue with them? Don't be deceived by your flesh. Don't become enraged and allow sickness to come upon you because of what God is allowing them to do. Jesus did not open his mouth when he was mistreated and unfairly charged, judged and sentenced. He had to allow himself to be quiet. Most of all, he had to suffer allowing them to have their way with him, as if they were in control.
When our spirits rise up in a fleshly attitude against him/her/them, whoever is afflicting and maligning us, we must submit to the circumstances that God has allowed to come upon us. In this way, we choose to crucify the flesh and walk in the spirit, understanding that we are submitting not to them but to Our Heavenly Father. It takes bowing in humiliation, like Christ did. It never feels good but obedience to The Most High God is not founded in the feelings of the flesh. Bowing in humiliation and submitting to God is based in knowledge, acceptance and yielding. It is an informed decision.
We know when God is doing this special work in us because the Holy Spirit opens our eyes and ears to what is happening. The Holy Spirit does not do the work for us however, because we would not learn and grow in that way. We have to do the work of cutting our flesh off from what it wants to do, denying it and crucifying it. This causes us to suffer because we can't have our way, our fleshly way.
We suffer as Christ did as we submit to and obey God in these unfair circumstances. This is bearing symbolic crosses for Christ and suffering with him. God has promised to take care of us when we submit to him and let them think that they are having their way.
And all that is within me, bless His holy name!
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
And forget not all His benefits:
Who forgives all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases,
Who redeems your life from destruction,
Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies,
Who satisfies your mouth with good things,
So that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
The Lord executes righteousness
And justice for all who are oppressed.
He made known His ways to Moses,
His acts to the children of Israel.
The Lord is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy.
He will not always strive with us,
Nor will He keep His anger forever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
Nor punished us according to our iniquities.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him;
As far as the east is from the west,
So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
As a father pities his children,
So the Lord pities those who fear Him.
For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more.
But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.
The Lord has established His throne in heaven,
And His kingdom rules over all.
Psalm 103
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We can do nothing without Christ.
We can do all things through Christ.
Our lives are hid in God through Christ.
He who does not know Christ does not know the Father.
Christ is the Resurrection and the Life.
Through Christ is the only way that man can come to the Father.
His pure shed blood and his unblemished, broken body restored us to the Father.
God The Father loved us so much that he sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for us, so that whoever chooses to believe in him should live forever with him.
Because Jesus lives, those who have accepted him as Savior will be resurrected into life and the resurrection into death, the second death, will have no power over us.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth saves us for God The Father.
God's Holy Spirit draws us to himself.
God forgives us, through Jesus, for what was not our fault.
Even while mankind did not care, could not care and hated the light of truth, because we're all born into this world into darkness, God sent his precious son, Jesus, to be betrayed, unfairly charged, judged, convicted, ridiculed, struck, spit upon, beaten, scourged, burdened, subjected to all manner of insults and degradation of which all of it we were not told, nailed to a criminals' cross and tormented while upon that cross.
Most of all, Jesus was denied a way out when he asked his Father three times as he prayed and sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He felt intense, paralyzing fear, like you and I feel at times.
Most of all, God, the loving Father, separated himself completely from his dear and precious Son for a period of time while he hung and suffered on that hideous Cross.
Jesus The Christ, the Bright and Morning Star, the Lamb of God, the Beginning and the End, was changed forever...for us.
Is there anything that we cannot do for Christ should our Father ask us?
HAPPY EASTER!
We who believe celebrate Our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead.
He's at the right hand of Our Father God praying for us till He returns for us.
Because HE LIVES, we will live also.
He IS the Resurrection and the Life!**********
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Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths. (Psalm 3:5-6)
Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass. (Psalm 37:5)
Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established. (Proverbs 16:3)
These scriptures tell us that success is from the Lord. What kind of success? The success that also stores up riches in Heaven. There is a type of success that we can generate through the flesh, through carnal thinking, through the way of the world.
Sharing all of our plans with God first, however, puts us in a position to experience spiritual growth along with the success experience. To begin any journey with a spiritual mind is life and peace. Trusting God with our plans, desires and goals insures that we will not only advance but will be richly blessed when Jesus comes back. Most importantly, God The Father will be glorified along the way.
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Let's be obedient to God to our hurt. To the hurt of our flesh. Jesus was obedient to God to his hurt. What he endured for us was hurtful to the human part of him, as well as to the spiritual, divine part. His flesh shrunk from what he had to do. He came here to do it but he experienced dread, just like we do.
He was so distressed that he asked his Father three times if it could be done some other way. Like the obedient Son that he is, he ended his supplication with Nevertheless, not my will but thy will be done.
We are not even being asked to allow our bodies to be abused, scourged and nailed to a cross. We're only being asked to allow our old man to die. Daily.
Ephesians 4:22-24
Romans 6:6-12
II Corinthians 5:17-19
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