2 Good Reminder Songs Today.

"The Proof Of Your Love: The Monologue Mix"

If I sing but don't have love
I waste my breathe with every song
I bring, an empty voice
A hollow noise

If I speak with a silver tongue
Convince a crowd but don't have love
I leave a bitter taste
With every word I say

[Chorus]
So let my life be the proof
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You
And what You're made of
How you lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
So let my life be the proof
The proof of Your love

If I give to a needy soul
But don't have love then who is poor
It seems all the poverty
Is found in me

[Chorus]

Ooh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
When it's all said and done
Ooh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
When we sing our final song

Only love remains
Only love remains

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. [1 Corinthians 13:1-7, ]

[Chorus]

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What a good reminder today.

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Second Song:

Mandisa - He Is With You

There's a time to live
And a time to die
There's a time to laugh
And a time to cry

There's a time for war
And a time for peace
There's a hand to hold
In the worst of these
In the worst of these

He is with you when your faith is dead
And you can't even get out of bed
Or your husband doesn't kiss you anymore

He is with you when your baby's gone
And your house is still, and you heart's a stone
Cryin' "God, what'd You do that for?"
He is with you

There's a time for yes
And a time for no
There's a time to be angry
And a time to let it go

There's a time to run
And a time to face it
There is love to see you
Through all of this
Through all of this

He is with you in the conference room
When the world is coming down on you
And your wife and kids don't know you anymore

And He is with you in the ICU
When the doctors don't know that to do
And it scares you to the core
He is with you

We may weep for a time
But joy will come in the morning
The morning light

He is with you when your kids are grown
When there's too much space and you feel alone
And you're worried if you've got it right or wrong

Yes He is with you when you've given up
On ever finding your true love
Someone who feels like home
He is with you

When nothing else is left
And you take your final breath
He is with you

Sin and the Law

Yesterday in my devotions it talked about the Law and how in Christ Jesus we are set free from the law. I always had a struggle with understanding that, because I found that the law is what can keep us from doing the wrong thing, but then the verse that cleared it up for me is found in Romans 3:20 "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin."

So the Law is not done because we know it, but is done because we want to be right with God. The Law shows us where we are sinning and when we seek Righteousness, we seek to be right with God. Being right with God means that I need to be willing to look at the myself and see how I am sinning. It says in 1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." It isn't just on the day that I asked Jesus into my heart, but every day that I need to keep a right heart to God. I need to be willing to confess my sins to Him, for He will be faithful to forgive them, I am not trying to keep my life pure before God. James 5:16 "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective."

God knew that we are human and even when we were saved, we would still sin, I need to be willing to admit my sins, not just to God, but to admit them to others. We learn either by doing or we can learn how to stand by helping each other, by working together, in our homes, our marriages, in life. We need to be willing to say I was wrong and not only ask God to forgive us, but also ask our wives/husbands, children and whomever else we have sinned against. I can't say it is easy to admit my wrongs to others, but it helps build my relationship with our Father, because I am willing to say I was wrong. By asking Jesus to forgive me, but also by asking those I have sinned against to forgive me as well.

Matthew 18:21-22 "Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."

Jesus talks about forgiveness in how He tells us how to pray in Matthew 6:9-13 "Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil."

Forgive us our debts or our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. We need to have a heart of forgiveness, we can't keep score. Mark 11:25 "And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”" Jesus warns us that we must not have unforgiveness in our hearts when we pray. The Lord does not keep score, He wipes our sins out. Jesus wants to set us free, but also to keep us walking in repentance and freedom. 

Proverbs 28:13-14 "Whoever hides his transgressions will not succeed, but whoever confesses and forsakes them will find mercy. Blessed is the man who always fears the Lord, but whoever hardens his heart will fall into disaster."

Proverbs 19:20 "Listen to advice and accept instruction, that you may gain wisdom in the future."

Training for a Life of Favor. By Graham Cooke

I found this very interesting after I had posted my post about Truth. God is moving, He wants to train us, to teach us and to set us free from ourselves. I can either listen or remain stuck in the man I am or die to myself to come alive to Him. He wants to teach us and even through other people and what they have learned and how to find the truth of our Father. Don't be afraid to learn, for fear is not of God, but God wants us to learn, to grow and to experience Him love for us, He wants us to learn how to grow in Him. We don't grow from allowing life to pass us by, we grow by doing James 1:19-27.

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Training for a Life of Favor.

By Graham Cooke

Our biggest problem with favor is that we do not see it the way the Father wants to release it.

We want it mostly as an impartation or an event. Really, that is just a taster. Favor is a banquet.

Favor is a lifestyle of ever-increasing, ever-expanding preference that upgrades our relationship with the Godhead and our status in the Kingdom.


The development of favor goes hand-in-hand with learning the art of walking out and working in the truth of who Christ is for us and who we have permission to become in Him.


Favor is best received as part of a joyful process that enables us to contend against our own negativity, and overcome every circumstance of life because we have found favor in the eyes of God.

It’s the process that makes us rich, not the outcome.

Process is the story of how we become like Jesus and the journey that He takes us on into Fullness and Abundance. The journey is more than reaching a destination. It’s about how we travel and who/what we become on the way.

Without an experience with the always brilliant Holy Spirit, we will not understand how essential process is in our development. That almost guarantees that we will return to our default position in our circumstances. That is:

• Believing God will do it, but we do not step into the promise, own it and live in it (i.e. the process). 
• We step into the promise and believe it, but we do not act as though it is real now! Therefore we give up on it when circumstances don’t change. 
• We don’t follow through strongly enough and we settle for a measure of blessing, but not fullness.

There is no breakthrough without follow-through.

Our training is always about learning God’s nature and our identity in Him. We train in favor and relationship combined. We learn how to behold and become.

Jesus has full favor and employs it on our behalf as we engage with Him in the course of life situations.

His Presence in us generates an expectation of the Kingdom working on our behalf. That is what we are learning when we talk about favor as a lifestyle.

Growing in favor is a huge part of growing up in Christ in all things. Relational training is concerned with learning who God is for us. He is unchanging; unceasing; unfailing.

Favor comes to us in surprising ways and occasionally through very difficult people.

A lifetime ago I was a landscape specialist working with some contractors and also for myself. During another dip in the economy, I was searching for work. I heard of a homeowner with a drainage problem in his rather large grounds.

Long story short: his garden had an underground stream. Four drainage companies and tens of thousands of pounds had produced no cure. A large section of an immaculate lawn was wet, boggy and an unsightly mess.

A thoroughly disillusioned, impatient and angry landowner showed me the scale of the problem. Tension was thick in the air. “Well,” he demanded. “What can you do that others can’t?”

“I’ll pray about it,” I said. “I bet no one has done that.” Streams of profanity ensued. It was the only job on the horizon; I took it.

Cue for meaningful dialogue with a certain king. Silence. I’m not put off by God’s silent routine. I know he loves me. He accepts that I’m weird, I know that He is not normal. He is a talker, so silence is mostly an invitation to sit, ask questions and ponder.

Waiting on the Lord is a very restful activity. On this occasion He and I were trying to out-peace one another. I won because the Prince of Peace is a resident in me.

Favor should always make us smile. Is anything too hard for the Lord? [Gen. 18:14]. At least I wasn’t an older woman, way past childbearing, trying to have a kid. In the Hebrew the word for hard is Pala, which carries the context to mean “making difficult things wonderful.”

As a verb Pala means to be marvelous, wonderful, magnificent.

When Pala is used with God as its subject, it expresses actions that are beyond the bounds of human powers or expectations. All we can do is agree with David: “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes” [Ps. 118:23].

A better interpretation occurs when we remove the difficulty and put God in its place. Then Genesis 18:14 reads, “Is there any situation where God cannot be magnificent?” Much better question.

In the silence I heard: “If you cannot change it, make a feature out of it.”

The Holy Spirit loves puzzles. Water is the thing that can’t be changed, therefore water is the answer.

I built a water garden. Beautiful pond with lilies, an island, a bridge and a pergola. A bench, swinging seat, lots of flowers. Perfect. Added thousands to the property value. The homeowner threw a huge party, invited me, recounted the story of me praying and got me lots of work. Favor.

Life is the training ground for favor.

Situations never get easier. The point is, you get better. Favor is the tipping point that turns things around. Your current situation is absolutely ideal to grow in favor with God and man. The bigger the situation, the more favor you need. Perfect.

Be calm. Put on some worship. Think deeply about Him and you together. Ask good questions. Wait joyfully. Expectation will rise and your favor will come to you. His name is Jesus.

Truth

Each day I can make a choice to walk with Jesus or I can make it about how I feel. Being a follower of the One True God is a choice. Yes, I can chose to go to church on Sunday, but does that make me a Christian a Christ follower? When I made a choice to allow Jesus to be the Lord of my life, I have to put away the childish things, like my way, my wants and I have to allow Him to be real to me. When I do not walk in the Spirit, I walk in the flesh, the flesh will bring fear, doubt and so much more. The flesh is what Jesus came to set me free from. The Bible contains so many scriptures about what living in the flesh will do.

In my flesh, I will do the things that grieve God, because in and of myself I am just a man, but with Jesus, that man is dead, the way of the world can't be what I love, I have to love to honor God 1 John 2:15 "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.", I have to yearn to honor God. It is a choice that I must make.

When I go around life, living by feelings, when there are good days, I will feel like drawing closer to God, but on the bad days, well, I will want to do what I want to do and not live for Jesus Christ. The Bible talks about these very things, the Bible talks about coming alive in Jesus Christ, how He must be greater than myself. If I want wisdom, I must seek it and I will find it. I must put Jesus first, I must make a choice to grow closer to God every single moment of the day. If I allow myself to rule, I will not allow Jesus to rule in me. God talks about how I must pray without ceasing, for this is the will in Christ Jesus. It isn't just when time allows, it is a choice to bring Jesus into my main focus. When I focus on Jesus, my words, my actions are to honor Him more than self.

I believe that today it is easy to feel my way through life. If I feel like it, I will do it, if I don't feel like it, well I wont do it. If I do things based on feelings, well I probably wouldn't do much of anything and on the days I feel like I am being mistreated, well I will long to honor self more than I will want to honor God. Honoring God, putting Him first, dying to self, is a choice that I must make, not just once, but moment by moment. The beast of self wants to take control and have my live for self, but Jesus says in order to live for Him, I must die. Being baptized is symbolization of that very thing, my death and rebirth in Jesus Christ, but if I am not willing to continue to die to myself, that is just an empty symbol of what He is trying to represent in me.

Jesus has given us the freedom of choice, we have self will, but in order to come alive in Him, we must be willing to say, just as Jesus said, not my will but Yours.

Jesus has given us Peace, He has said John 14:27 "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." He has given me peace, so therefor I have peace, I have to walk by faith and not by sight. I have to believe that He has given it to me, just the same way I must believe that more of Him and less of me will bring Him alive in my life. I believe it is easy to walk through life waiting for Him to give me the things He has already given me and asking Him to give it to me, I have to make a choice to walk in those things. Self will say I can't or I don't feel like it, but Jesus said we have it and I must believe it and that settles it for me.

The Holy Spirit brings us so much more, but I have to make the choice to walk in Him and He in me. I have to die to what I want in order to live for what He wants. The Holy Spirit has given us, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, gentleness and self control. Apart from Him, yes, I can feel my way through life and do those things when I want to, but when I allow Him to live in me and to convict me, to direct me, it is no longer about self, but death of self and life of Christ.

Has these truths made there way from head knowledge to heart knowledge? Do you truly believe that Jesus Christ came to set us free from ourselves, because life of self is the world, but life of Christ is death of self. The Holy Spirit wants to lead me and guide me through the pearls and storms, when I make it more of Jesus, more of the Holy Spirit, I make it less about what I want and more of Him. Dying to self is painful and hard, but once I my will is dead, I can come fully alive in Jesus Christ, but I have to do this moment by moment day by day. More of Him and less of me.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, because no longer is it about am I honoring self, am I honoring other people, but my honor to God is more important than all of those things, because I am dying to all of that. What God thinks of my choice, my words, my actions should be the most important thing to me, not about me, but Him who lives in me. I am nothing and He is my everything. All comes down to my choices, not easy to die, but I can't believe going to the cross for my sins was easy for Jesus and if I am dishonoring Him by my actions, that should make me sick.

God Is For Us

I was thinking this morning about Romans 8:31 "What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?"

How do I view Jesus? That is a very good question, because how I view the creator of all things. Jesus is the one who died for my sins, to set me free from myself, from my human choices, my human thinking, to bring me alive in Him. If I view Jesus as just a man, than I am not allowing Jesus to be real in me. I believe how I see Him can change how I think. 

I will explain. If there is a problem at work, I look at the problem as a mountain, I will become dismayed, down hearted and I will allow my anxiety and worry to get the best of me. I will worry and dread that problem no matter what size it really is. I will think on that problem every thought will go to that problem. When the task is finally completed, the one I spent days and nights worrying about and I finished the task and look back on it, I see that the problem was not all that I had made it to be, it was in fact much smaller than I had originally thought, because as a human I tend to make things bigger than they are. But with God, I tend to make Him smaller than He is. 

If I had take a step back to see the problem was not worth worrying about, because if I turned it over to God, than who could stand against me. The devil will try to steal my very joy every chance he gets. He will remind me of the things that seem like mountains, but God has written about that in His good book. He has said in Matthew 17:20 "He replied, "Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."" All I need to have faith, faith that my Father has everything under control. I need to see my Father as the one that can move mountains, I need to see Him as the one that can turn a bad situation into good, because He is God. I need to stop looking at Him as some thing I hope on, but something that I trust in. He is the only way, not my way. Worry and doubt will consume me, but Jesus will transform me to a thinking that is far greater than I can ever imagine, but I have to see God as something greater and more than just something I pray to. I have to see Him as my savior, my Lord, there to Help me in good times and bad. He will direct me, if I allow Him to, but I have to lay down the way I saw Him to the way He wants me to view Him. I think of the scripture Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction." and Proverbs 9:10 "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." If in fact I realize that God is the one that can transform me, transform my thinking, change me, than I must realize who He is and stop making my problems bigger than Him. He is the one that chose me, made me and has called me. I need to have reverence and respect for Him. Am I more concerned about how others view me than I worry about how God views me and my actions? Isn't it time to realize how God views me is so much more important than the world, how He views my choices, my words, my thoughts, because He knows them all.

How are you viewing Jesus Christ? Is He just someone that was once human, a small teacher, nothing more than that? If that is how you view Him, realize that He is the in fact God. He sits on the thrown at the right hand of God. He is and will always be 3 in 1. He is there to help, guide and make my path light, because He is and will always be my God and my Savior.