Change Up

Good Morning and Happy Monday.

Today is a brand new day and God has given us a new start, in Lamentations 3:22-23 "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." They are new every morning, because Acts 17:28 "For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'" Because great is His faithfulness to us, to me.

When I live and move and have my being in Him, I want to honor God, to serve Him, to love Him, to put Him first in all I do. He calls me to be thankful in all things in Psalm 100:4 "Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name." Give thanks to Him, praise His name, rejoice and be glad. Wait I have to rejoice and be glad? What is there to be glad about?

God has given me a new day to live, to be alive, to make the choices that He wants me to make. He says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18-19 "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit." When I read that verse, if I do not give thanks to the Lord am I actually causing my ungratefulness to quench the Spirit? It is very clear, do not quench the Spirit. In everything I must give Him thanksgiving. I can't see why I am going through a hard place, but that hard place is forming me and making me into who He wants me to be. It isn't easy, but the refining fire is not easy, to purify us, Zechariah 13:9 "And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’”" 1 Peter 1:7 "So that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."He turns up the heat to shape us into who He wants us to be. Look at the purest metals, they don't become pure just by sitting there, they become pure by having the heat turned up and the bad metals are melted away, just the same in our lives. The bad junk is melted away from our lives, because God turns up the heat. He wants us to be a pure people and all the junk gone from our lives.

Is He turning up the heat in your life? Take it as a blessing, because He is purifying you, He is making you what He wants you to be. He wants to make us more like Jesus. Are their area's in your life that He is trying to change? Is He turning up the heat? It is time to praise Him in the storms, to thank Him even when it is tough. Have a heart of thanksgiving and praise Him in the storms, it will change our perspective, no longer are we grumbling and complaining about the heat, we are praising Him for it.

Do you have a grocery list of things you want God to change? By changing our prayers from asking to thanking, we change our perspective from the wanting, to the walking by faith. He says ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open. They are all action items that we must do, ask, seek, knock all are things we must do and then walk by faith and not by site. It isn't just sitting waiting, but actually living according to what God wants us to do.

1 Peter 5:10  "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you." So next time you think you are going through a hard time, give God praise, thank Him for this time that is meant to change you, to make you more like He wants you to be. For He is faithful to carry us through, He wants us to be a pure people, this time is for our purification.

Thank you Lord for Monday's and for new days.