Our Desires And God

Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4

Some Christians say this means that God will give you the desires that you should have. Other Christians say it means that he will fulfill the desires that you have always prayed for, your fondest wishes, your purest and most beneficial desires and long-standing hopes. I believe it is both. They both are important to Our Heavenly Father.

Our relationship with God should be a two-way street. If we don't believe that he cares about our desires, then we are not relating to him. It is of great value that we decide to hear his thoughts and plans each day but he also wants us to turn over to him our thoughts and plans. 

What about our long-standing desires that have not happened? Well, that doesn't mean that they will not, or that God has said no to them. We should continue to believe him that we will realize them, no matter how impossible or unlikely it seems. As we allow his will to come about in our lives, we will see how he imparts his desires for us into our desires. All will be well with us, always, as we grow in trusting him.

So, don't toss aside your most important goals and dreams. God cares for you. He cares about what is important to you. The most important thing is that you tell him what your desires are. Be specific and understand that he wants us to spell it out to him. In that way, we show that we believe he hears, cares and wants to communicate back and forth with us. He wants to hear from you as you purpose to hear from him each day. 

Being A Positive-Minded Christian

Living a successful Christian life and doing things God's way requires a positive mindset. Walking in the Spirit requires a positive mindset. Being transformed by the renewing of our minds through reading the Word daily requires positive mindsets going in. Allowing our faith to be increased by God requires positive mindsets. Make no mistake, for wonderful changes to come about, we have to start with positive mindsets. We have to believe! That is positive-mindedness. 

Have you been negative-minded when coming to God in prayer? Were you raised in a negative-minded family? Have your trials and troubles in life fostered a negative mind in you? Are you so tired of life, so tired of praying, so tired of hoping that your mind is now negative to God's possibilities? Well, the Holy Spirit is our Comforter and Guide and will restore positivity and faith in us if we let Him.

Allowing the Word to sink in as we read it daily will prune us. We are the branches of Jesus Christ and we have to be regularly trimmed in spirit and attitude. This cutting process will convert and transform our negativeness to the positive-minded position that we need to be in to receive from Our Heavenly Father. 

Are you eating and drinking The Word daily? Are you reading around in The Bible rather than reading the same old scriptures that are tired to your mind and heart? Are you ensuring that you are getting a balance of The Word rather than reading The Lord is my shepherd or Our Father, which art in Heaven everyday? Are you becoming familiar with more obscure scriptures? It takes the entire Word, Old and New Testaments, to transform us and round us out to positive thinking, feeling and behaving. 

I Feel Optimistic Today Prayer

 

Dear Heavenly Father:

I feel optimistic today! 

Let not my optimism come through fleshly feelings because my flesh is unreliable. I refuse to walk in the flesh.

I pray that my optimism comes through confidence in your right hand of righteousness, discernment of your angels surrounding me and comfort from your Holy Spirit. 

My optimism is through my faith from walking in the Spirit. 

When I am out of the Spirit, show we the way to return to the Spirit so that my Godly optimism may abound. 

I thank you that I have a hope and a future and that my way grows brighter everyday!

In Jesus' blessed name I pray.

Amen!

 

Blessed Wednesday! Focus On The Positive!

God's will includes living our lives to the fullest no matter what circumstances we are in. There are many ways that we can more appreciate what God has done and live more uplifting, fulfilling lives. Giving thanks and reaching out to help others helps us to focus on the positive that serving God through Jesus Christ brings into our lives. Even though it is very difficult sometimes to feel positive, God's knows our hearts and will help us if we ask. 

We are so used to working things out for ourselves that we have been trained to not ask for help. We forget that despite how things have been or are for us, God cares about every little thing that concerns us. Just because he doesn't always change our difficult circumstances doesn't mean that he does not care. His plans are just so perfect and his blessings so great that we can't perceive them in advance.

The cares and troubles of this life easily get us down. Some of us have many more struggles than others, so we often feel hopeless and alone. Despite this, our compassionate and kind Father in Heaven is always near to help us to focus on the positive that is available to all who love him and believe in salvation through The Lamb, his precious Son, Jesus Christ.

Help is always near, through The Father, who knows everything about us, through The Son who is ever interceding for us, and through The Holy Spirit, who is given to all Believers as a comforter and a guide.

Dear Father: Increase our faith, restore unto us the joy of our salvation, uphold us with your free Spirit. Help us. We love you with a perfect love in our reborn spirits and nothing can separate us from your love. Thank you, Father! 

 

We Never Have To Stop Praying

We never have to stop praying. We are encouraged to pray without ceasing. (I Thessalonians 5:17) 

There are formal and informal ways to pray. When we accept this, the many ways to pray 24/7 open up to us. We don't always have to get on our knees with a scripted intonation of phrases and quotes.

Prayer, in it's essence, is talking to God. Talking to Jesus. How much more candid, honest and heart-felt are conversational words versus rehearsed prayer speeches.

Being tired or discouraged and not feeling like praying is not even an excuse. We can ask the Holy Spirit to pray for us. He will then utter on-target words that we cannot.

Pray without ceasing and grow closer to God.

God's Will Is Not Offensive

Whatever God allows is for a reason, no matter what pain it causes in the flesh, in the mind, in the heart, in the feelings, in the emotions, in the life of his children. What God allows is for a reason and it is without offense, if we love him.

In other words, as we grow in devotion and understanding of God, we don't see what he allows in our lives as offensive. That does not mean that we don't struggle with enduring it.

It is hard sometimes to acknowledge and accept God's will. Our Heavenly Father, however, is always there to help us as we endure what he allows.

In the reborn spirit of each of us who loves Jesus Christ, there is no pain, no suffering, no offense, no feelings, no problems. It is in the flesh where all of the troubles start. The flesh is not compatible with God. The flesh cannot be reborn. It cannot understand nor accept what God does. Our flesh, in fact, is always against God.

It is when we are in our reborn spirits, spiritual thinking, that we walk with God and where we do not suffer prolonged mental and emotional hurt nor hate him.

What Would We Do Without These Two?

I Am So Thankful For My Prayer And Bible Study Life!

How About You?  

It's how we get our strength to successfully endure unexpected daily challenges.

It's how we get the power to forgive and pray for enemies, real and perceived.

Through our prayer habits we become renewed each day.

Through Bible reading and study we learn the nature of The One True God.

We find ourselves becoming transformed into being more like Jesus Christ in attitude and commitment towards Our Father.

We grow in hope.

 

 

God's Light Shines Through You

 

No matter what it looks like,

the God of Peace is with you. 

You are a channel for God's goodness.

It is not your flesh that is the channel.

It is your reborn spirit.

No matter what is going on with you,

your body is still the

Temple of the Holy Spirit. 

Sometimes it may not seem like it

but you are valuable to God.

The light of His life is always

in you and shining through you.

Be encouraged that the Spirit of God

operating in you is always working

 to promote life and peace,

in you, through you and around you,

to the far reaches of the earth,

to the end of time.

 

Christian Poetry: Look Up

Look up, even though your heart is broken.

 

Look up, even though you are oh so discouraged.

 

Look up, even though it seems impossible.

 

Look up, even though you can't take it anymore.

 

Look up, even though nothing has ever worked out for you.

 

Look up, even though you don't think that God loves you.

 

Look up, because you are God's by your own choice.

 

Look up, believe and confess that these issues will work out for your good, because the word, ordained by your loving, Heavenly Father, said they would. 

 

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

 

 

How To Deal With Problems

See Any Problem As Something Good.

This goes for all challenges, setbacks, difficulties, trials, tragedies and tribulations. Even if nothing good seems to be coming from a problem, why go through the additional trauma of seeing it as something bad from which you will never recover?  Seeing it as something bad is the only other alternative to seeing it as something good. It's one or the other and we have the power to choose.

 

I realize that in some disastrous situations, some tragedies, some heartbreaking occurrences, it is next to impossible to stop and think that good will come from it. It would be difficult to do this but not impossible. If we are not able to do it in the midst of trial, we can take control and do it later. Do you realize how powerful the human brain is? Do you know that anything that exists began in the mind, then it was believed, then spoken or written, then it came into being?

At SuccessConsciousness, these important facts about the power of our God-given brains are shared:

 

Mind power is one of the strongest and most useful powers you possess.
This power, together with your imagination, can create success or failure, happiness or unhappiness, opportunities or obstacles. This depends on your mindset.

Your thoughts are the main ingredient of this power, and when you add to them focus and emotions, thoughts become powerful and can affect your reality.
The thoughts that pass through your mind are responsible for almost everything that happens in your life.

 

Not all thoughts are equal. Stray ones that you think once or twice cannot do much, but your predominant thoughts, the ones you repeat often, influence your behavior and attitude, affect your actions and reactions, and shape your reality.

Christians know that God has the upper-hand in all that happens in our lives. It is, however, a fact that God works with us. He does not control us. He helps us with our infirmities but he does not control us. That means that we have authority in our lives and also power through our brains. We can decide how to think. With determination and the divine help of The God of All Hope, we can learn to see problems as something good. Problems are not good but they can be used by a loving Father to generate good in our lives.

 

Those who know God always have hope. Our Heavenly Father promised to turn everything for our good, one way or another. We have to choose to believe. If we don't yet feel it, see it, taste it, hear it or touch this conversion of bad to good, we can insist that God has or will convert it to bless us. We can persist in professing this everyday, throughout the day. Why should we confess such a statement when it is so hard to believe in our circumstance? Because he said it. It's as simple as that.

We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him, with those whom he has called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 GNT

Look up, even though your heart is broken.

Look up even though you are oh so discouraged.

Look up, even though it seems impossible.

Look up, even though you can't take it anymore.

Look up, even though nothing has ever worked out for you.

Look up, even though you don't think that God loves you.

Look up, because you are God's by your own choice.

Look up, believe and confess that this issue will work out for your good because your loving Heavenly Father said it would. 

You struggling with a challenge and just don't see how you are going to make it?

See It As Something Good. Start there and the answers and help will come.

 

Scripture Image Credit: Biblia

 

Being Proactive About God's Word

Life comes from the spirit. Healing starts in the spirit. Hope grows with a spirit that is fed every day.

 

We feed our reborn spirits by reading God's Word every day, meditating on it, remembering it and choosing to believe it. We grow the most when we are proactive about God's Word.

 

How Can I Solve My Problem?

 

The human mind is so constituted that if you pour your attention onto a problem without panic, keeping yourself calm and your mind unruffled, and if you maintain faith in God and firmly believe that you are going to get an answer, the answer will appear. Moreover, the more spiritual your mind is, the more definitely will it produce in this manner.

What is your problem? Is it one of health, of business, of your children, of your future? It makes no difference what it is. Do not get agitated, nor depressed over it. Do not try so hard. Do not be in a panic. Do not over-stress it.

Whatever your problem, when you lift your spirits, clear your mind, believe in your potential, take the worry and fear out of your thoughts, and have faith in God, you can do the impossible. You surely can.

How to Handle Tough Times by Norman Vincent Peale

©1990 by Peale Center for Christian Living

Guideposts Outreach guidepostsfoundation.org

Is It All REALLY Working Together For My Good?

Sometimes, the trials that God turns into good for us we may never discern.

Often, this converting of these tribulations on our behalf moves into the realm of the unseen.

They can be the good that God does for us of which we are unaware.

We have faith that he does these things because the Word tells us so.

We may not always see the outcome of God working all things together for our good but we have testimonies of the times when we experienced proof that he did.

We also know that we live among bountiful blessings from our Heavenly Father every day.

 Any one of those unrecognizable daily blessings could be a conversion of bad to good, just for us.

Romans 8:28

 

My Past Is Haunting Me

Are you having problems with unwelcome memories from your past? Is any point or stage from your past life troubling you? Are past experiences, mistakes, journeys, sorrows, sufferings, failed hopes, unrealized dreams, etc., consistently bothering you? Do you feel plagued by past occurrences over which you had no control? 

God is aware. His Spirit is always near and within to help us. Struggling with our pasts, something that is unchangeable, is too much of a heavy burden for us. We cannot and were not meant to bear it alone.

We must always look to God, first as a formal committing over to him each morning the health of our mental and emotional state. Next, we must learn to immediately look to God whenever troubling thoughts and memories surface.

There are many short prayers that you can use. I find that this prayer has been helping me to cast down imagination and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God:

Father, help me to see my past as you see it. Help me to see myself as you see me. Help me to see people as you see them. Help me to look beyond the flesh and into the spirit of myself, every person and every situation, past, present and future.

Pray this prayer, or one similar that you create, and you'll find yourself walking more in the Spirit each day.