Monthly Archives: January 2015

January 16, 2015 · 5:30 AM

10 Scriptures On Being Spiritual

1. It is love, then, that you should strive for. Set your hearts on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of proclaiming God’s message. (1 Corinthians 14:1 GNB)

2. And I will give you [spiritual] shepherds after My own heart [in the final time], who will feed you with knowledge and understanding and judgment. (Jeremiah 3:15 AMP)

3. I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. (Ephesians 1:16-17 NLT)

4. My brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in any kind of wrongdoing, those of you who are spiritual should set him right; but you must do it in a gentle way. And keep an eye on yourselves, so that you will not be tempted, too. (Galatians 6:1 GNB)

5. And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], (Ephesians 4:23 AMP)

6. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. (1 Corinthians 2:12-13 ESV)

7. Be careful therefore how you listen. For to him who has [spiritual knowledge] will more be given; and from him who does not have [spiritual knowledge], even what he thinks and guesses and supposes that he has will be taken away. (Luke 8:18 AMP)

8. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. (Romans 12:10-11 NIV)

9. For this reason we also, from the day we heard of it, have not ceased to pray and make [special] request for you, [asking] that you may be filled with the full (deep and clear) knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom [in comprehensive insight into the ways and purposes of God] and in understanding and discernment of spiritual things– (Colossians 1:9 AMP)

10. Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner. (1 Peter 4:12-13 MSG)

Spiritual Discipline

I was visiting a friend recently who was working on a LEGO project with his kids. They had hundreds of LEGO pieces neatly arranged on their table and a step by step guide. I watched as they looked at each step, found the pieces, decided where they went, put them on there and moved on to the next step. Each step took a while because you had to find the right pieces in the right color and then look at a cartoon drawing of where they went to help them place them.

After watching them build for about twenty minutes, I began to get curious. What were they building? I couldn’t tell from where they were in the project. They showed me the picture on the box so I could see the final outcome. I looked at it and where they were and quickly realized this was going to take days to build. It was not your average LEGO building project. It was going to take multiple steps to get through it along with time and dedication. It reminded me of the spiritual discipline it takes to walk by faith.

For many of us, God has put a dream in our heart or has given us a promise of where He wants to take us. In essence, He’s shown us the picture on the box. We then have a series of steps to go through in order to achieve that picture. Each step takes time. First we have to get the courage to take the next step. Then we have to find the pieces of that step and find where they go. Once we get them in place, it can be a while before God shows us the next step. When He does, the process starts over.

After a while of following the steps God has laid out for us, we can begin to see what He is doing and how those parts fit into the overall picture. In the beginning though, it’s tough to see how any of it relates to what God is doing, but these are the foundational pieces. If we don’t get these in the right place, the rest will not work. It takes spiritual discipline to follow the steps God gives us. That discipline produces the patience and endurance needed to get us where we’re going because it’s easy to want to quit along the way.

If you’re looking at your life and wondering what God is doing, ask to see the box. Let God remind you of the final outcome. To make something incredible, it requires a lot of small steps and intricate details. Don’t get so lost in the steps He has given you that you lose sight of what He wants to do in and with your life. Also don’t worry about the next step until you’ve completed this step. God will reveal each step in His time not yours. Psalm 37:23 says, “The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their life.” God knows the details of each step of your life. Trust Him and follow where He leads.

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January 14, 2015 · 6:48 AM

Spiritual Acumen

A few years back, I was a general manager of a store for a Fortune 15 company. The company had hundreds of stores across the U.S. and almost 100,000 employees. To give you an idea of the size of this company, every quarter they had revenues in the billions of dollars. They were so concerned about how the little things affected the company as a whole, that they sent me and other general managers to a business acumen class. They wanted us to understand how the CEO and other C level employees thought as well as how our decisions affected the bottom line.

Until then, I had mainly thought of my store as a silo. I had never really considered the role I played in how profitable the company was. The conglomerate of stores like mine were what was driving the billions in revenue. If I made poor decisions each day, the company as a whole took a hit. Suddenly, I quit making decisions based on the temporary circumstance of my store and started making them based on how it affected the company as a whole. I quit comparing my store versus other stores around me and started comparing to the company average. Either I was helping the company or I was hurting it.

The same can be said of our Christian life. There are decisions you and I make each day that are based on our temporary circumstances and not on our eternal goals. We look at how things will affect our near future instead of our eternal future. When we do that, we slow our growth down and affect our life as a whole. We create problems in the future that can be life altering because we don’t have the spiritual acumen to see how our decisions affect everything in our life.

Zig Ziglar once said, “If you take care of the little things, the big things will take care of themselves.” He understood acumen. He understood how each decision that is made sends a wave that gets bigger into our future. If each of us could grasp that, we’d have a lot fewer issues and more spiritual growth. Hebrews 12:1 says, “Let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and the sun that so readily clings to and entangles us.” We can strip those off by making better decisions regarding our spirit man based on our whole life.

What decisions have you made lately based on convenience instead of eternity? What can you do to help you remember that the decisions you make today will echo throughout eternity? When we change to an eternal perspective on how we look at our decisions, we begin to make better ones. We will begin to realize what really matters and what doesn’t. Those weights will begin to fall off and we will be free to run the race we were made to run without any self placed obstacles.

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January 13, 2015 · 7:32 AM

Spiritual Adjustment

Every once in a while, my body gets out of alignment. My back hurts, my neck gets tight and I get headaches. I try laying on the floor to pop my back myself. When that doesn’t work, I have my wife stand on it to try to pop it. When all else fails, I visit a chiropractor to give me an alignment. He hooks me up to a machine that sends electric pulses to the muscles and places warm blankets on top. He then comes in and begins to pop my back and put everything back into alignment. It’s not fun, but when I walk out of there, I feel a lot better.

From time to time, you and I can get spiritually misaligned. We lack interest to go to church, we quit reading the Bible and we barely pray. We tell others that we need to get back to those things, but nothing ever happens. We keep going until something bad happens and we go back to church for a spiritual alignment. It’s a cycle that a lot of us go through. When times are good, we forget we need God. When things go wrong, we suddenly remember He is our help in times of need.

Since the beginning of time, that’s the story of the human race. We are constantly in need of spiritual adjustment. We walk out of church feeling great and have a renewed purpose. We do great for a little while, but slowly we begin to fade. We hit to the snooze button instead of getting up to pray. We fall asleep before we crack open the Bible. We tell ourselves, “Tomorrow I’ll read. Tomorrow I’ll pray.” Tomorrow becomes a week, a week a month and so on. It’s the cycle I’ve been on too many times. So how do we stay spiritually aligned?

It’s much like any relationship. It takes work, time and effort. We need to be adjusted when we begin to look at the things needed to maintain the relationship as a checklist. When we look at them like a checklist, they become chores and no one likes chores. God isn’t into making us do chores. He wants us to love Him the way He loves us. He wants us to want to do the things that keep our relationship fresh. He wants us to want to spend time with Him. He doesn’t want us to feel as though we have to.

Ephesians 4:23 gives us the answer. It says, “Be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude. (AMP)” We have to constantly find ways to keep our mind and spirit renewed. We have to switch things up. Read a different version of the Bible to gain fresh perspective. Change the time and place you pray. Sit in a different seat at church. Get out of your routine and find a fresh love for God. That’s how you get your spiritual adjustment. Stay out of a rut and constantly renew your mental and spiritual attitude.

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January 12, 2015 · 6:00 AM

Spiritual Exercise (Video)

Physical exercise has some value, but spiritual exercise is valuable in every way, because it promises life both for the present and for the future.

I Timothy 4:8 GNT

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January 9, 2015 · 6:44 AM

10 Scriptures On Life

1. Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for my sake will gain it. (Matthew 10:39 GNB)

2. Wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life. (Proverbs 9:11 NLT)

3. And this is that testimony (that evidence): God gave us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who possesses the Son has that life; he who does not possess the Son of God does not have that life. (1 John 5:11-12 AMP)

4. For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. (John 3:16 GNB)

5. I am the Bread of Life [that gives life–the Living Bread]. (John 6:48 AMP)

6. Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope, (1 Peter 1:3 GNB)

7. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! (2 Corinthians 5:15, 17 NLT)

8. The thief comes only in order to steal, kill, and destroy. I have come in order that you might have life — life in all its fullness. (John 10:10 GNB)

9. Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ. (Colossians 3:3-4 MSG)

10. For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God. (1 Peter 1:23 NLT)

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January 8, 2015 · 6:53 AM

Heavy Lifting

Have you ever tried to carry something that was too heavy for you? I’m not talking about something you couldn’t lift. I’m talking about something that you could hold, but not for very long. You struggle to lift it, with each step you exhale trying to manage the weight and size of the object. You can only go a few feet before you have to set it down, take a breather, look at how much further you have to go and then try again. You repeat the process over and over until you finally reach your destination. It’s exhausting and can give you medical problems if it’s too heavy or too far.

Imagine carrying that same object and a friend comes over. They see you struggle and instead of offering help, they offer suggestions on how to carry it better. “Lift with your legs, not your back,” they say. How does that make you feel? Clearly they see you struggling, but they are doing nothing to help you. It gets frustrating. How about if instead of helping you they cheered you on? How would that make you feel? “Come on! I know you can do it! You’ve got this.” While it might help morally, it still doesn’t help with the problem.

What you really want when you’re struggling like that is for them to say, “Hey, let me give you a hand.” When they grab the other side, the weight is halved. Suddenly it’s more bearable than it was. You may be able to go a little bit further before you have to set it down. Their physically helping you with the object is a lot more useful than telling you how to do it or encouraging you to do it. Would you agree? Then why do we do the first two when we see someone struggling with heavy burdens?

I once heard a person say, “With a friend, joy is doubled and pain is halved.” I could also add burdens are halved. Galatians 6:2 says, “Help to carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will obey the law of Christ.” It didn’t tell us just to encourage someone who is carrying a burden or to tell them how to carry it. We are told to help them carry it. When someone is carrying a burden, it’s a lot like that large object. They may only be able to take a few steps before they’re exhausted. They may not feel like they’re making progress. While words of encouragement are nice, helping them with the heavy lifting is what’s needed.

Think of a time when you’ve had a heavy burden. What is it that you wished people had done for you? Go and do that for someone else. When I see others who are going through something I’ve been through, my first thoughts are, “What did people do that made me mad? What did I wish people had done.” I then go and try to do the second instead of the first. It’s important that we look around us today to see which friends are struggling. While a word of encouragement is nice and a few tips on how to bear the burden is great, I’m sure they’d love some help with the heavy lifting.

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January 7, 2015 · 7:11 AM

Spiritual Superhero

As a kid, King David was my favorite person in the Bible. I heard the story of how he faced a giant when everyone else was afraid. I heard how courageous he was when he fought in battles. I learned that he had one of the greatest friendships in the Bible. He was presented to me as a model person. After all, he was a man after God’s own heart. With all these stories and Bible lessons, I had built up quite the person in my head. He was pretty much the closest thing to a superhero in the Bible.

As I grew older, I learned more about David. I read about his indiscretion with Bathsheba. I found out that he was a murderer. And when I read the Psalms, I see a man who has great faith one minute and great doubt the next. I read about the warrior who isn’t afraid of anything and then hear the same man whine as he hides in a cave. The superhero image took a hit. I found out that he wasn’t perfect. He wasn’t the person I had made him out yo be in my mind. Yet I can’t escape that he was still called a an after God’s own heart.

Many times, we build up people in our mind and place them on superhero status. We think they’re perfect because that’s all we see of them. Sometimes it’s people in the Bible that we see this way. Other times it can be a pastor, evangelist, a church leader or a friend. The truth is that no one is perfect. Each person has shortcomings and fail. We are all a lot like David. We possess the ability to slay giants, but we also struggle with our fears and doubts. We climb mountain tops one day and wallow in the valley the next.

What I’ve learned to see in David, in others and in myself is that God doesn’t expect me to be perfect in order to be a person after His heart. He doesn’t need us to slay giants or conquer enemies to be considered great. What I find over and over again in David’s writings is that after every time he failed, doubted or was scared, he went back to God, apologized and reaffirmed his faith. Psalm 51 is one of the greatest Psalms to me. It’s a prayer for forgiveness and restoration. David shows just how human he was as he wrote it. He also revealed why he was a man after God’s heart.

We can’t get caught up in thinking there are perfect people in the world or that living as close to perfect as possible equals spiritual greatness. We all look at the outward showing of people, but only God sees the heart. David was no where near perfect as I’ve come to read, but he was one of the most spiritual people who ever lived. It’s not in our outward showing that makes us spiritual, it’s in our ability to run to God when we have failed, when we have sinned or have great doubts. Don’t compare your spirituality with someone else’s. You can’t see what God sees. Instead, focus on keeping your heart right with Him no matter what life throws at you.

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January 6, 2015 · 6:42 AM

Love Is Action

How many times have you heard the phrase, “Actions speak louder than words”? I can’t remember the first time I heard it, but I’m sure it was my parents after I’d apologized for something I’d done multiple times. They knew that saying, “I’m sorry” was different than being sorry. There was no power in my words if there was no will in my spirit. Without being sorry, they were merely empty words. There was no guarantee that I wouldn’t do it again. My parents wanted to be able to trust my words, but until they could, they watched my actions.

When I was a sales manager, I had to forecast my projections each week to my boss. I would sit on a call as we went from store to store with each manager saying what their store would do. The longer the call went on, the higher the numbers went. Each store would give a bigger number so as not to be outdone. When it came to me, I would always break the trend and give a reasonable number. I took flack for it on the call each week, but I felt it was better to be able to back up my words.

Some people would rather look good now by what they say and sacrifice their reputation long term by their actions. That’s not God’s way. I John 3:18 says, “Our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love which shows itself in action. (GNB)” It’s easy to say we love others because that’s the right thing to say. It’s completely different to sacrifice what you want for what someone else wants. That’s what love does. It’s choice after choice and action after action that shows whether or not we truly love others.

So many times we are like the managers on those calls where we say the right thing or what we think others want to hear, but we rarely back it up. We use the right jargon and impress people with what we say, but God is looking for more than words. He’s looking at our heart. He’s watching what we do. It’s not just God who is doing that, others are too. They’re basing their idea of Christianity off of the way you and I live each day. They’re listening to our words and watching our actions and we already know which of those is louder.

One of my favorite quotes of all time came from St. Francis of Asisi. He said, “Preach at all times. Use words whenever necessary.” He understood that our lives preach what we believe more than our words ever will. What we do matters more than what we say. We don’t need to sacrifice our reputation or message for temporary acceptance. Live a lifestyle of love and let your actions do the talking for you. That’s the message of i John 3:18.

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