Fellowship with God's Trinity

 

Prayer is the most important spiritual discipline we can accomplish. Prayer is speaking to God from our heart. Rote prayers and formulas for prayer are unnecessary. God already knows our heart and delights in hearing our own words (Luke 16:15).

As we mature in Christ, God places His burdens upon our heart for the lost people groups in our world, for those laden by illness and natural disasters, for people devastated by the loss of a loved one through death or divorce, and those suffering from other distresses caused by this sin-cursed life.

God gives us His heart and lays His burdens on us a bit heavier as time progresses. When we faithfully pray, the intense weight is terrible at times, but the fact that God trusts us with His heart is joyful and spurs us on to persevere in prayer.

As we acknowledge our dependence on Christ in all things, especially in prayer, we pray in the Spirit as well as with our human understanding (1 Corinthians 14:14-15). We see mighty answers to our prayers from a God who delights in bringing us joy (Psalm 149:4).

We stop limiting God by our doubts and carnal thoughts. We follow our Lord Jesus' example and pray the prayer, which never fails, "Lord, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Luke 22:42)

God already knows our needs, but He delights in our dependence on Him. Our Father savors the words of praise and adoration, which we pour out in our prayers.

He delights in our companionable silence when there is no immediate need to lift up in supplication. We bask in the warming rays of His continual presence.

We yearn for intimacy with Him, and He snuggles us under the shelter of His wings as He showers us with His love (Psalm 17:8). We even experience the fullness of His glory from time to time.

We pray without ceasing all through the day, regardless of the circumstances in which we find our self. We look for His seed for a miracle in the negative aspects and rejoice in His provision and blessings in the positive experiences.

Prayer:

Father God, as we take time in Your presence more and more with each passing day, Your love shines in us and through us as a beacon to the lost and dying world around us. Your Word shows us that the Saints of old persevered in their anointing by abiding in Your presence. Help us to fully surrender to Your Spirit each moment of our day.

Remind us in the midst of our infirmities that the ministry of prayer and intercession is the most powerful task You share with Your Body. When we allow You to remove our need to stay busy, You use our whole being in this vital ministry. We do not need to be bed-ridden to be effective in prayer; it is simply a matter of priorities. Prompt us to cry out day and night for Your Kingdom to reign over all the earth.

Thought for the Day:
When we pray without ceasing, we abide in fellowship with the Trinity and access their power in every circumstance in our life.

Proof of God's Love - Part 1

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I love the discipline of the Lord, because I know it is a sign that He loves me (Hebrews 12:5-6). He points out idols, which I erect in my life; and He helps me to lay them down at His feet.

They are not obvious idols like money, addictions, covetousness or seeking other gods. They are sly, subtle idols, which usually stir up negative emotions in my soul.

For instance, I like everyone to be happy. I am tenacious and dogged, and I will move mountains to ensure that those I love are happy and content.

However, having everyone delighted and satisfied is an idol in my life. This state of sublime joy is impossible to attain through human effort.

I have to be willing for my family members to be unhappy and discontent, and to stop trying to fix things for them. I need to lay my family's happiness at Jesus' feet and allow Him to work out His will in their lives.

Another idol, which He recently exposed in me, is that I like having my ideas valued and taken to heart. I come up with good ideas, because of the analytical mind God gave me.

However, some people reject my ideas before they even hear my whole thought (Proverbs 18:13)​. They acclaim ideas, which other people have; but disdain most of my ideas. God delivered me from these idols and so many more.

The Lord only disciplines His children (Proverbs 3:12). This is a sign of His enduring love for us and that He cares enough to remove things from our life, which have a negative effect on us.

Prayer:

Father God, remind me to walk in Your Spirit and not to care if people receive my efforts to do Your will. They have issues of their own that You are working out in their soul. Their behavior and words are no real reflection on me.

I want to make a difference in people’s lives, but I do not want to walk outside of Your will. I lay down my need to help others and I commit myself to Your will for my life and theirs.

Thought for the Day:

Idols come in all sizes, shapes and packages; God will reveal them to us as we listen to His Spirit each moment of the day.

Spiritual Awareness

As God proves His Faithfulness to us, our intimacy with Him grows. We feel safe and we trust Him with every aspect of our life. This makes it easier to submit to His will (Ephesians 2:10). 

We spend time in prayer, Bible reading, fellowshipping with His Saints and continually seeking Him. We also develop a confident intimacy with our Father God, which deepens over the years.

Spending time with God increases our spiritual awareness. We learn His ways, and He transforms our nature by His Spirit into His fruit and divine nature (Galatians 5:22-23; 2 Peter 1:4). 

His Spirit illuminates His Word for us. He gives us discernment to make good judgments (John 7:24). Living in His presence brings us total satisfaction as we joyfully die to our flesh and to this sin-filled world (Romans 8:13). 

Eventually, our union with Christ takes priority over everything else in our life (Colossians 3:3-4). We are a better mate, employee, friend, child, parent, employer, etc because of our relationship with Him. 

Since He dwells within us, we live a fuller and more fulfilled life. We come to realize that He is our all in all (Ephesians 4:6; Ephesians 2:8-9). We can do nothing without Him (Philippians 4:13). 

God is our high tower. We run to Him and are safe (Proverbs 18:10). Under His wings we trust (Psalm 91:1,4; Proverbs 29:25). He is our Rock, stronghold and deliverer in whom we take refuge (Psalm 61:3; 91:2; 144:2). 

He is our shield and the horn of our salvation (Psalm 18:2). Our love and respect for the Lord provide our children and us with a secure future (Proverbs 14:26; Deuteronomy 5:10, 7:9; Exodus 20:6).

Prayer:

Father God, lead us by Your Spirit into a richer relationship with You. You promised that everyone who believes in and trusts in You will enter Your eternal life (Hebrews 4:1-11; John 3:16-18).

Bring us to the end of our striving and allow us to enter into the rest You already prepared for us (Matthew 11:28-30). It is only then that we can experience an intimate relationship with You and enjoy a keener spiritual awareness.

Thought for the Day:

God calls us to be still before Him and to patiently wait on Him. - Psalm 37:7

Balancing the Soul and Spirit

 

Our spirit, the third entity of our existence (body, soul, spirit), is originally dead in sin, until we repent and come to Christ as our Savior. This starts a gradual process of total surrender to God’s will for our life. We no longer follow our heart, but listen to God’s Spirit instead (Jeremiah 17:9). The Spirit keeps us grounded and focused in comparison to the fickle and wayward emotions, which guided us in the past.

At salvation, Christ unites us with Himself in one Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17; John 17:11, 20-23). Then, God’s Spirit fills us with His fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). We have a more peaceful and secure life now. Our spirit is filled with love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, meekness, self-control and faith, regardless of the emotions presenting in our soul. We can take the emotional wounds of our soul to Christ and allow His Spirit to exchange them with His fruit through our spirit.

Sometimes we still allow our soul’s emotions to dominate over God’s spiritual fruit in our spirit and to dictate our behavior. This is a common human malady. One of the goals of our Christian walk, however, is to surrender our soul’s emotions to God and then to walk in the Spirit and to express the fruit of God’s Spirit. Our spirit is not angry or depressed, our soul is. It is not hypocritical to be joyful, even when we feel depressed, or to show love to someone we feel anger toward.

This is part of the higher calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14). We cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit, only God can, but we must choose to exhibit them rather than negative emotions. We do this by walking in the Spirit all day long. Our spirit is always exhibiting the nature of Christ, the fruit of God’s Spirit, and can overcome the negative feelings in our soul

Negative feelings are a direct sign that we are not taking care of our soul. We feed our body food all day long, and we study the Bible to feed our spirit, but our soul needs care too. We do this by paying attention to how we feel. Then, use the Serenity Prayer Principle. If you can fix the situation causing your soul stress, fix it. If not, then submit that need or feeling to God for Him to heal or to fulfill.

Prayer:
Father God, our spirit is eternal and connects with Your Spirit in our inner man (2 Corinthians 4:16), our true spiritual self. You deliver us from the power of darkness and open the door for us into the Kingdom of Your Son (Colossians 1:13). We are Your emissaries to the world in which we live. Your love flows like a river through us to those You place around us. Remind us that our self-life is dead and we no longer live, but Christ lives in and through us (Galatians 2:20).

Thought for the Day:

God cares for us abundantly more than we could ever ask or think (Ephesians 3:20-21). He will meet the needs in our soul.

Personal Identity

 

 

When we seek our personal identity from our mate, family, job or material possessions, we can lose it overnight. Then we are adrift without an anchor to stabilize our life. We may look to our character, talents and independence for our identity until we are accused, or even falsely accused of a crime and put in jail or dismissed from our job. However, if we draw our personal identity from Christ in us, we find a solid rock on which it can stand for eternity, regardless of our circumstances in life.

Paul related his struggle with his personal identity in Romans 7; and at the very last verse, he realizes that God freed him from sin, as well as the condemnation of sin (Romans 8:1). He comprehended the fact that the law of sin and death no longer has any power over the Saints of God, because we are set free by the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2). Our sinful self died in Christ, and we are raised to walk in His new life (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Christ is our whole life (Colossians 3:4). Jesus did only those things, which He saw our Father do (John 5:19). We have no separate identity apart from the Father either. We live only to please and bring honor to our Lord. His life flows through us and we bear much fruit (John 15:5). We grow in the knowledge of God, and He fills us with endurance and patience, as we joyfully thank Him for His love for us, for His blessings in our life and for replacing our identity with His (Colossians 1:10-12).

We wait on God to give us His thoughts, living from our spirit instead of from our human soul – our mind, will and emotions. We refrain from listening to our human thoughts, so that our words and thoughts come only from Christ within us. We desire God with our whole heart, seeking only His will for our life, and using the gifts, which He provides for us, as He opens doors that no man can close.

Prayer:

Father God, we relinquish our dependence on our self and we rely totally on You. We hunger and thirst after Your righteousness (Matthew 5:6). We thank You for increasing our faith and for helping us to live for Your glory. We totally surrender our life to You, and we thank You for Your spiritual wisdom and understanding (Ephesians 1:17). We succeed in life only through the power of Your might (Ephesians 6:10), not by our human reasoning and efforts. Regardless of the circumstances in our life, our personal identity comes from our relationship with You.

Thought for the Day:

We wait on the Lord until Christ is fully developed in us as our personal identity. – Galatians 4:19

Come to My Funeral

 

 

As we habitually die to our self-nature, we continually live in God’s presence, following the leading of His Spirit and walking in His will. Even if we live in the most perverse of circumstances, His life in us sustains us through it all. We focus on the spiritual, eternal aspects, which no one and no circumstance can steal from us. We have His guarantee that the world will pass away, but that if we live according to His will, we live with Him now and forever (1 John 2:17).

How many of us are truly willing to lay down our life every single day? John 13:38) The Good News is that Christ in us enables us to die to sin and to refuse to fulfill the deeds of our flesh, which rise up within us (Romans 8:13). All authority is givento Jesus, and He continually lives within every Born Again Believer (Matthew 28:18). He is our victory, and we live victoriously as we follow the leading of His Spirit moment by moment throughout our day.

Dying to our self is not a very popular concept today (1 Corinthians 15:31). We live for our self, and we wallow in the desires of the flesh. Therefore, to crucify our flesh is a foreign concept to most Christians today. We can expect nothing less from a society that purports the concept of, “If it feels good, do it.” There is every type of degradation and deprivation known to man permeating every facet of our society. It constantly bombards us.

Are you willing to join me at my funeral? We simply need to decide that we are willing to no longer promote our self, and instead to promote Christ and His Kingdom in the earth. His Word and His Spirit reveal to us His will for our life. His Spirit conforms us into His image (Romans 8:29). By His loving care for us, He proves to us that He is worthy of our trust and praise. He calls us to live joyfully, prayerfully and thankfully in ever situation (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

Prayer:

Father God, once we separate our self from this world, and live for You, we learn to be content because You are always in us and with us (Philippians 4:12). We willingly lay down our life for You, just as You freely laid down Your life for us. Keep us in the center of Your will. Do not allow us to wander to the left or the right. Teach us to have faith in Your faithfulness and to empty our self of our own abilities and effort, so that we can enter into Your rest (Hebrews 4:10). Show us the works You established for us to accomplish before the foundation of the world, and help us to walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).

Thought for the Day:

God is in control; and He is working out all things, even the most perverse and negative circumstance, for our ultimate good. – Romans 8:28