A great devotional to share. :)

Just Because You Love Him

"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love The LORD thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment."

Matthew 22:37-38

There's no doubt about it, when we serve The LORD we are BLESSED. When we obey Him and keep His WORD, we enjoy greater joy and success in our lives than we could ever experience any other way.

Even so, however, that's not the reason we serve Him. That's not our motivation for obeying Him and believing His WORD. We do all those things—and do them gladly—just because we love Him. Because He laid down His life for us, we willingly give Him our all.

We should all have the attitude of the outlaw biker I heard about years ago. He came to a friend of mine when he was still a sinner and said, "I understand you pray for the sick and my son has cancer. Will you pray for him?"

My friend agreed and when he prayed, The LORD healed that little boy. Shortly thereafter, the biker came back and said, "I'm here to give my life to God. He healed my boy, and anyone who would do that for me, I want to serve for the rest of my life."

You and I might not have had the same experience that biker had, but we're in the same position, nonetheless. As born-again children of God, every one of us has been saved from a spiritual cancer that had doomed us to hell. We've been delivered out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into light. We've been loosed from the bondage of death and given God's free gift of eternal life.

What's more, not one of us earned it. Not one of us deserved it. We all received our deliverance just like that biker did—not on our own merits, but in total dependence on the mercy and love of God.

In light of what He has done for us, we owe Him our service. We owe Him our lives and our love.

We ought not be saying, "OK, LORD, I'll do what You're telling me to do because I believe I'll be BLESSED if I do. But I'm warning You, if THE BLESSING doesn't come, I'm not doing it anymore."

No! If we'll just meditate on what God has already done for us, and let the truth of the sacrifice He's already made for us dawn in our hearts, we'll be so in love with Him, we'll jump at every opportunity to serve Him. We'll want to obey Him. We'll say as Psalm 40:8 says, "I delight to do thy will, O my God...."

Of course, THE BLESSING will follow, as it always does, and because we walk by faith, we'll expect it. But as much as we enjoy it, we'll get far more pleasure simply from serving Jesus. We'll do everything we do for Him just because of love.

Kenneth Copeland

What are you thinking?!

God is trying to get his point across on something. I just love how he works, he never ceases to amaze me! Yesterday, I wrote about the evil one and his lies. God was just laying it on my heart to not only speak those words to my friend, but to put it on my blog for someone else that needed it.

On Monday nights I go sit under a teaching of gal who knows her Jesus. Rhea has become a precious friend and mentor to me. 

She said she had a sermon all planned out for us, but that wasn't what God had planned.:)  He wanted her to speak to us about our minds and how we guard them.

She said a lot of similar things to what I wrote about yesterday, only she's tons better at teaching it then I am.

I wanted to add on to what I wrote yesterday because she shared too much good stuff not to!

Yesterday I shared  that we need not beleive Satan's lies, but to beleive God's truths and promises.

Rhea gave some great verses that go along with this so I have to share.

Proverbs 23:7~

For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.

What we think about, what we set our minds on, is what we become.  If we think on the lies, we become what the lies say we are. We live it.

We need to be purposeful/diligent about what we are thinking.

Proverbs 4:23~

Keep your heart with all diligence, For out of it spring the issues of life.

What do you think about during the day?

Rhea had a good word~  " Think on something that brings you LIFE, not DEATH!"

We need to set our minds on TRUTH.

Don't give the enemy access!  I am preaching to myself here!  

We need to line up our thinking with the word of God. If we don't know the word of God we need to get into it and get to know it, and get to know him, that's how we ward off the devil and his lies! We replace it with TRUTH!

There is a verse that I NEED to carry around with me. I have it laminated on my fridge and in my purse, and now I will have one pasted in my car!

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy--meditate on these things.

When I/you have bad thoughts, (LIES) come into your head, we need to line it up with God's word.

 

Go through the verse.

 Is what your thinking TRUTH?

Is it NOBLE?

Is it JUST?

Is it PURE?

How about LOVELY?

 

Chances are the thought doesn't match up and you need to cast it out and think on something that IS true, like some of the things I posted yesterday.

 

Rhea suggested buying a God's promises book and just meditating on some of those verses. What a great idea and easy to do!

 

Don't meditate on lies, or what other people have spoken over you. It is NOT TRUTH.

 

In the end, all that matters is what GOD thinks of  you and says about you, and he adores and loves you so much!

Addiction

I knew one of these days God would get me back on this blog.

This morning I was texting with a person that is important to me. This person has an addiction, a bondage to something.

When I was texting, God told me, someone else needs this message too.

What is addiction?

-compulsive need for and use of something habit-forming.

What is bondage?

-a state of being bound usually by compulsion

-the tenure or service of a villein, serf, or slave

Many of us have addictions or bondages to things and we don't even realize it.

There are many things that we can be addicted to or in bondage to, some examples would be alcohol, smoking, drugs, gambling, food, video games, internet, sex, shopping, work, exercise, we can even be addicted to people.

If it's something that you can't seem to live without, it's most likely an addiction.

Sure, there are some things that may not seem so bad, but there are some that are very destructive, not only to ourselves but to other people in our life too.

Things that we don't really WANT in our life, but we deal with it anyway.

When we have an addiction we hear lies.

 lies in our minds. Lies like, "You will never be rid of this", " this is what life has for you", " You've tried to quit before and failed", "what's the point?", " Your a loser", " You NEED it" " God forgot about you", " it runs in the family", "just give in", "just give up", "things will never change".

Do you know that these are lies from the pit of hell?

God sent his son so that we could live in freedom. Free from addictions, bondage, slavery to things.

He wants us to be set free.

If you accept Jesus as your savior and Lord of your life, you don't have to live that way.

You need to live like you are a child of the king most high, like you are loved like no other, like you have power to overcome. Because you do.

You need to start believing what God says about you and who you are and stop listening to the lies.

It's the evil ones job to make us miserable and sick in this lifetime. He hates us. He wants us to suffer and he does a good job of setting us up, and deceiving us into thinking his lies are truth.

But they are NOT truth. You need to go to the word and find out who you are to God and get that IN you.

Here is a small list of who you are to God.

A victor.

Sheltered.

Precious.

God's child.

Redeemed and forgiven by the blood of Jesus.

Loved.

Accepted.

Beautiful.

Free from condemnation.

Given a spirit of power.

Chosen.

God's temple.

God's workmanship.

More then a conqueror.

An ambassador for Christ.

Redeemed from the curse of sin, sickness and poverty.

Delivered from the power of darkness.

These are the truths that you need to believe instead of the lies that Satan whispers in your ear day after day after day.

Satan wants you to be miserable and stuck.

Jesus wants you to be happy and free!

If you are bound, chained to something, seek JESUS. He wants to set you free.

Get out your bible and spend time soaking up the promises of God and learning who he is and how special you are to him and how much he loves and adores you.

Jesus can satisfy your every need and desire. You don't need anything else.

He is waiting for you with open arms.

Forget the lies. Listen to the one who loves you.