Commanded to Follow and Be Free

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Our God is amazing. He commands us to live a Godly life and be free. He has given us the ability to free ourselves from our sinful ways. He asks us to fight our flesh that desires: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, jealousy, quarreling, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, envy, drunkenness, and wild parties.

His command is for us to fear Him and be obedient, as Ecclesiastes states:

“Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: fear God and keep his commandments, this is the duty of all mankind.” Eccl. 12:13

Fear, in this case, means being respectful, obedient, and followers of His Word. Live a holy life, meaning, employing the Fruit of the Spirit in all that we do. What is the fruit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

And, since we live by the Spirit let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envious of each other. When we live like this, we will not gratify the desires of our flesh but will be obedient and fulfilled by God’s Word.

At the end of life, God will bring every deed to judgment, including those proclivities we think we so cleverly hid, whether good or evil. When we are obedient, we think before we act. It causes us to question our next step, our next word, and our next deed. The question is, do our actions align with His Word, do they direct our path?

Obedience leads to freedom. Solomon, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, wrote, (paraphrased) Stand firm, do not let yourselves be controlled by the slavery of sin and wrongdoing.

Do not allow your sinful cravings to keep you in chains. Christ died on the Cross for us. Our sins were nailed to the Cross, and we are now free. Our charge is to believe and live in our freedom.

psalm51-12Re-Blog – https://wp.me/p98Coa-Cg
Scripture – Bible.com/YouVerison,Galatians 5, NIV, NLT
Images – YouVersion, Google Images
Resources/References – Hayford’s Bible Handbook

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God’s Word, Our Life

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PRAYER

Thank you, Lord, for giving me your law to follow throughout my life. I have hidden your Word in my heart to follow and avoid sin. Thank you for giving me the Holy Spirit to teach me your decrees. Please continue to give me focus so I can meditate on your precepts. Give me understanding so I can obey your laws. Open my eyes so I can see the wonderful things in your Word, and act on your commandments as the guiding principles of my life. Turn my heart to your statutes and help me keep my focus off my selfish ways. Help me to be more like Christ. Help me walk in your freedom and live in your truth. Let your compassion come to me and show me my salvation.

In Jesus Name, Amen.

Jeremiah 31:3, He Drew You

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Isn’t this a beautiful verse? He has drawn us. Out of his mind, to paper he gave us life. Have you ever observed a child drawing. They do so with such intensity. Their focus is spot on. I can image the Lord doing the same.

The full verse reads:

I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you and continued My faithfulness to you. (‭Jeremiah‬ ‭31‬:‭3‬ AMP)

He loves us with everlasting kindness. It doesn’t matter what we have done with our lives; he loves us still. He has faith that we will find our way when we accept that he unconditionally loves us. His love is merciful and steadfast. It is covenant love. Covenant love is a pact between God and each one of us. It is everlasting.

How awesome is this? Shame cannot destroy it. Missed opportunities cannot destroy it. Pride cannot destroy it. You can run but you cannot escape God’s unfailing loving-kindness. He has drawn us. He created us. We came from Him. He unconditionally loves His creation, i.e., Us.

 

Forgiveness is Not Easy

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Believe me, it is not easy to forgive, because it is not easy to forget past hurts. Before we can forgive as God commanded,  we must first learn how to disconnect from past hurts. This is the most difficult part of the preparation for forgiving. We give life to our thoughts every time we allow them to re-enter our consciousness. They are restrictive, remotely controlled, and Satan’s ploy to distract us and keep us from activating God’s Word in our lives.

It is impossible to remove them if they live in our present day thoughts, they remain part of us and continue to define us as earthly vessels. However, it is possible to retire them to a place of dormancy where they can no longer access energy to be reborn. Each time they resurface and we cowl to their power we replace the power of the Word of God, which is our ultimate power source. Satan created or minimally inspired the hurt that weakens us, by giving renewed life to the experience(s) each time we are distracted by them, meaning they do not lay dormant as long as you continue to give them energy through our thoughts.

Satan inspires and maintains past hurts to weaken us.

Satan knows that as long as we are enslaved by past hurts, we cannot follow God’s command to forgive. This is the wedge he placed between our spiritual development and our carnality. We cannot forgive if we cannot control our thoughts and release ourselves from continuously being victimized by our thoughts.

We must retire the past and allow it to become part of our past, in a catatonic state so we can stabilize our present, and mature as Christian Warriors. Never forget we live in a good fight4principality war and we must take God’s commands to heart and use his principles and weapons to secure our ability to control our own thinking.

 

To this end, all change is a process, a procedure. We must relegate our hurts to the past. We cannot learn to forgive as God forgave us until we rewire our thinking. The scripture says we are not of this world, though it tries to enslave us. We do however live in this world where Satan continues to treat us as pawns in his plan to take over the earth and all that resides on it. Consequently, we must stay vigilant, awake and constantly return thoughts that pervade our thinking back into a catatonic state. In short, we must speak to the hurt, reject the thought and replace it with God’s words.

As a caveat, we should not remain in harmful environments if there is physical or emotional harm, however, if the experiences are behind us, we must learn to take away their power and replace it with the Word of God, our true power source.
The actual scripture reads: “Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.” Col 3:13, NLT

Forgiveness1Our humanistic conversation sounds something like this: He/She harmed me, how can I forgive them? I hate them. God’s response is, I forgave the people that crucified my innocent son, there is nothing worse than that. If I can forgive them, you can forgive those that caused you personal harm as well. Don’t let the hate become a badge of victimization, an albatross around your neck. Capture it once and Forgiveness3for all and put it in cryosleep. Is this easy? No. But God commanded and our answer should be ‘Yes Lord. I forgive those that have done me harm and am no longer bound by the hurt.’

God’s Command to us – FORGIVE, as I forgave you.

 

 

Images – YouVersion, Bible.com; Google Images

Scriptures – Biblegateway.com

Thank you for spending time on my sites, if you like what you are reading, follow me, lisasdailyinspirations.wordpress.com and receive the daily inspirations in your inbox, or visit my other site, youngchristianwarriors.com and subscribe.

This is the Day, the Devil Must Flee

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God’s Promise – To give us wisdom, direction, and a way of escape

This morning I awoke and almost began my day without first thanking God for gifting me with the day. I quickly came to my senses, because without Him I am nothing.

So, I prayed, thanked Him for my continuous blessings, naming some of them, praised Him, and put the blood of Jesus over and around me and my family. I asked God to give me wisdom in all that I do today. I asked for help to incline my ear towards the words the Holy Spirit shares, to open my heart to other people’s needs and to be truthful about myself and my growth as a Christian, woman, wife, mother, and friend.

I verbally put on the Armor of God preparing and equipping myself to spread the Good News and defend myself against the onslaught of the evil one – through the Word, in all my interactions today. (Not my words but His words. It’s easy to cuss belittle, and denigrate, much more difficult to hold your tongue.) I prayed that I reside under the Lords’ wings and shadow throughout this day, and praised Him because He causes the devil to flee from my loved ones and me. I closed by prayer, Praise our Lord, Amen.

This is truly the day the Lord has made. We can begin the day stepping on the floor wrought with the issues of the day or step into the day wrapped in the power of God.

Image – Free Google Images

Scripture – Holy Bible, Bible.com

Thank you for spending time on my sites, if you like what you are reading, follow me, lisasdailyinspirations.wordpress.com and receive the daily inspirations in your inbox, or visit my other site, youngchristianwarriors.com and subscribe.

 

Showing Goodness

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As humans, we often become frustrated when the person on the other end of a business call cannot assist us. The reality is that we are not angry at the person but the representative of the company. The problem is that during work hours the person on the other end of the call is the representative, they are one and the same during working hours and are simply responding according to the company script.

Christ tells us to exhibit ‘goodness’ in all we do, that includes being kind to all people. The person on the other end of the phone does not deserve a curt response or defamed in any way. They, like most of us, are working to earn a living.

So, let’s agree that we can all do better. I can do better. Before speaking when we do not agree with or do not like what is being said, we should quickly think – would Christ respond in the way I am planning to proceed? The answer is an emphatic, ‘NO.’ One of the God’s gifts to us is goodness.

For He satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness.
Psalm 107:9 NKJV

O, my soul, you have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, My goodness is nothing apart from You.”
Psalm 16:20 NKJV

The Lord gave us ‘goodness’ so we could become more like him. Our responsibility is to [try to] purposely display goodness in all that we say and do.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
Galatians 5:22-23 NLT

Our goodness is connected to the Lord, it fills our soul. Without goodness, we are left with exhibiting meanness, and on occasion, wickedness. Absent goodness, we become hosts of evil residing in this world, and cannot proclaim ‘we are in the world – but not of the world’.

We can all do better, we can show goodness in our conversations, actions, and deeds.

Images – Google Images; LAB Photography

Scripture References – Biblegateway.com

Thank you for spending time on my sites, if you like what you are reading, follow me, lisasdailyinspirations.wordpress.com and receive the daily inspirations in your inbox, or visit my other site, youngchristianwarriors.com and subscribe.