Tag Archives: Christianity

August 5, 2019 · 6:01 AM

Seeking God’s Approval

Too many times I’ve been a victim of paralysis through analysis. I feel God prompt me to do something, then immediately the voices come in. What if this isn’t God? What are they go to think of you? One of our greatest needs as humans is the need for acceptance. We want to fit in and we want to belong. Doing what God asks sometimes will cause us to do something that will seemingly put that acceptance at risk. It’s in those moments we have to ask ourselves, “Whose approval are you after? Whose approval means more?” Asking myself those questions is the only way I can combat the paralysis that comes from the other questions about what people will think of me.

Noah was a person who had to deal with this. God told him to build a boat because it was going to flood. It’s believed that rain was a foreign concept at that time and a boat was too. God gave him the instructions on how to build it and let him get to it. He didn’t worry about what other people thought. Instead, the Bible says that he did all god commanded him to do. Because of an obedience that regarded God’s request as more important than any of his friend’s opinion, God saved his family and established a new covenant with him.

Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of human opinion disables; trusting in GOD protects you from that” (MSG). Each of us must make the decision to trust God whenever He speaks to us. It’s rarely easy to do, and the fear of losing acceptance will always be there to create a tension in the situation. Finding a way to push through that tension is critical to obeying God. Even when it seems counterintuitive, awkward or crazy, you can’t let it disable you. Lives and eternity are often at stake. You can break through the paralysis through analysis trap by deciding to trust God and seeking His approval above all else.

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August 2, 2019 · 5:49 AM

Blessing The Poor

Much of Jesus’ ministry was directed to the poor and the helpless. The Early Church followed His example. When the met with Paul, they recommended that he remember the poor. They even created a group of seven individuals to make sure to feed the widows so they could continue to preach the Gospel. They never wanted to sacrifice people for the ministry, nor did they want to sacrifice the ministry for the people. They understood that the Gospel is all about giving of yourself to other people, so they did all they could to find the balance in helping people spiritually and physically.

Today, we still have the poor with us, but helping them isn’t always at the front of our minds or ministry. Nearly 3/4 of the population of earth lives on less than $10 a day. Millions of people in these poor countries are offered jobs, but when they show up, they are captured and are forced into the sex trade. Christine Caine’s A21 organization is one of the leaders trying to stop this. There are other organizations as well like Daughters of Cambodia. I have friends who are out right now trying to raise awareness of the sex trade there and are working to create one in the Philippines. Some are working to eradicate the orphan crisis, and others the homeless crisis. What are we doing to for our part as individuals? We must return to our spiritual roots, take the blinders off our eyes and remember to help the poor once again.

Here are some Bible verses on helping the poor.

1. God always blesses those who are kind to the poor and helpless. They’re the first ones God helps when they find themselves in any trouble.

Psalms 41:1 TPT

2. Give your love of justice to the king, O God, and righteousness to the king’s son. Help him to defend the poor, to rescue the children of the needy, and to crush their oppressors.

Psalms 72:1, 4 NLT

3. In everything I showed you [by example] that by working hard in this way you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, “It is more blessed [and brings greater joy] to give than to receive. ”

ACTS 20:35 AMP

4. Happy are those who are concerned for the poor; the Lord will help them when they are in trouble.

Psalm 41:1 GNT

5. God’s righteous people will pour themselves out for the poor, but the ungodly make no attempt to understand or help the needy.

Proverbs 29:7 TPT

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July 26, 2019 · 5:59 AM

No Excuses

One of the things I’m really good at is making excuses. I can come up with them quickly and effortlessly. We all make excuses for why we did something we shouldn’t have. They are used to deflect responsibility for the wrong we’ve done. In the Garden of Eden, Adam made the excuse that it was Eve’s fault, and she made the excuse that the snake tricked her. God wasn’t happy with creating excuses back then, and He still isn’t today. Part of repentance is owning up to our mistakes and taking responsibility for our actions. If we can’t do that, how can we truly be sorry for our actions?

We need to determine to live our lives with no excuses. It’s a habit that is hard to break because our brain doesn’t like to be in uncomfortable situations where we take full responsibility for our actions or inactions. We must choose not to make excuses to justify our actions. I like to say, “If you have to justify it, you shouldn’t be doing it.” Justifying is just an excuse with wrapping paper on it. When we cut out excuses in our lives, we will see tremendous growth in every area. Our inaction turns into action, and our actions turn into right actions. Think about the excuses you’ve been giving to God and yourself, then make a conscious effort to live a life with no excuses.

Here are some Bible verses on living with no excuses.

1. By making excuses you’ll learn what it means to go without. Poverty will pounce on you like a bandit and move in as your roommate for life.

Proverbs 6:11 TPT

2. And now, children, stay with Christ. Live deeply in Christ. Then we’ll be ready for him when he appears, ready to receive him with open arms, with no cause for red-faced guilt or lame excuses when he arrives.

1 John 2:28 MSG

3. Now we know that everything in the Law applies to those who live under the Law, in order to stop all human excuses and bring the whole world under God’s judgment. For no one is put right in God’s sight by doing what the Law requires; what the Law does is to make us know that we have sinned.

‭‭Romans‬ ‭3:19-20‬ ‭GNT

4. For ever since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through His workmanship [all His creation, the wonderful things that He has made], so that they [who fail to believe and trust in Him] are without excuse and without defense.

ROMANS 1:20 AMP

5. As for you, my friends, you were called to be free. But do not let this freedom become an excuse for letting your physical desires control you. Instead, let love make you serve one another.

Galatians 5:13 GNT

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July 25, 2019 · 5:38 AM

Having Integrity

I’ve always heard it said that integrity isn’t what you do in front of others, it’s what you do when no one else is around. Many times we are one person at work, another person at church, another person with our friends, and another person at home. In fact, when doing a DISC personality assessment, we tell people to pick their environment. Some more comprehensive ones actually show you the differences in your personality type between the environments.

When it comes to being a Christian, it’s important that we always live with integrity no matter what environment we are in. We don’t have to pretend that we aren’t human and that we are perfect because we’re not. We can live real lives, admit our struggles, show our brokenness and still live with integrity. It’s by our love that they will know we are His disciples, not by our pretending to be perfect.

I love the book of Psalms because David, who was a man after God’s own heart, is vulnerable enough to share and show his true self. He was a man of doubts, sins, fears, and worries. I think that’s why so many of us soak up the Psalms and why they resonate with us. David was a man of integrity and didn’t pretend to be anyone other than who he was. He was honest in his prayers and his praise. He was the same man in public and in private.

In Psalm 101:2, he vowed to God, “I will lead a life of integrity in my own home” (NLT). He understood the importance of integrity and knew that it started at home when no one was looking. Each of us can learn from his example. Being a person after God’s own heart isn’t about being perfect. It’s about having integrity, being able to admit when we’ve sinned and following after God matter what. If we have integrity at home, it’ll bleed into all the other areas of our lives.

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Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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July 24, 2019 · 5:52 AM

Helping The Poor

For the second half of my childhood, my family’s economic situation changed for the worse. For a while, we had to move out of our home and into a trailer that a lady at church owned. Instead of getting to go to the store for new clothes, I got to go through bags of hand-me-downs. We went to the store’s clearance section for canned goods that were missing labels. Mom would make what she called “supper surprise” because no one knew what we were going to eat until we opened the can. Through the years, we never went without though. People brought us groceries, furniture and cars when we needed them. God always provided.

I often think of Matthew 25:34-40 when I think of that period in my life. Jesus was talking about Heaven and He told the righteous people that they were welcome in because when He was hungry, they fed Him. When He was thirsty, they gave Him something to drink. When He was naked, they clothed Him. They didn’t understand that when they helped someone in need, they were doing to Him. I often pray that God would continue to open the windows of Heaven and bless the people who helped us during that period. Whether they knew it or not, they were giving to the Lord.

Proverbs 19:17 puts it this way, “Every time you give to the poor you make a loan to the Lord. Don’t worry—you’ll be repaid in full for all the good you’ve done” (TPT). Whether God repays you in this life or the next, He will bless you for giving to those who need your help. Part of being a Christian is having a heart full of compassion on the least of these. We often make excuses why we can’t give to people in need or we look away, but the truth is you’re not giving to that person or family. You’re doing it to the Lord. He repays us for caring for the poor, the underprivileged, the homeless and the prisoner. He didn’t ask if we thought it was their fault or not they were in that situation. He simply said, “When you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it unto me.”

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July 22, 2019 · 5:56 AM

Spilling God’s Love

One of the toughest things Jesus told us to do was in Matthew 5:44. He said, “I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them” (TPT). I have to tell you, that goes against everything that I want to do in those situations. The easiest thing to do is to hate the person who hates you, curse the person who curses you, yell at the person who hates you and to fight anyone who comes against you. That’s the way I’m wired anyway. The things Jesus is asking us to do here goes against my nature.

I believe God asks us to act this way because we are to be a reflection of Him and who He is. When we are full of ourselves, and someone does something to us, it’s who we are on the inside that spills out onto them. When we replace who we are with who God is inside us, our reactions change. Everywhere we go, we will be spilling God’s love onto anyone who runs into us. The hardest part of being a Christian, is getting rid of all my selfish desires so that I can be filled with more of who He is, but that is God’s desire for each one of us. It’s a constant battle, but it’s one our spirit must be victorious in.

For many of us, we view God as the person we are when someone cuts us off on the road. He’s angry and out for payback. What Jesus said gives us insight into what God is like. Psalm 145:8 does as well. It says, “You’re kind and tenderhearted to those who don’t deserve it and very patient with people who fail you. Your love is like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness.” God isn’t angry and out to get us when we mess up. Like a good father, He’s kind and does everything He can to help us succeed at being more like He is. He’s patient with us in our failures as well. As we get to know Him more, He will become increasingly more evident in our life through our responses to people.

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July 15, 2019 · 5:48 AM

Gaining Internal Confidence

The heart is known as the seat of our emotions. Our emotions dictate our words and actions. You can tell a lot about what’s in people’s heart simply by listening to them and watching their actions. When I hear people talk down to themselves or beat themselves up, it bothers me because it’s a reflection of how they truly feel about themselves. I went to compliment a kid recently about how well he performed and he replied, “I was terrible. I’m no good. I don’t know why I did it.” My heart broke because he’s already let his self talk destroy his confidence. I tried to speak life into him, but more than anything, he needed a change in his heart to readjust his thinking.

Proverbs 14:26 says, “Confidence and strength flood the hearts of the lovers of God who live in awe of him, and their devotion provides their children with a place of shelter and security” (TPT). It’s amazing how much we can accomplish when we have confidence and mental strength. So many of us struggle with an internal picture of who we are. We must remember that we are made in God’s image. The greater picture we have of God, the greater picture we will have of ourselves. A.W. Tozer said, “What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.”

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength. To love Him with all of our heart, we need to know Him more. The more we know Him, the more we will live in awe of Him. It’s no coincidence that He listed the heart first. Everything stems from there: our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves and our relationship with others. If you need confidence in any of those areas, it starts with knowing God. You get to know Him more through reading the Bible, prayer and sitting quietly in His presence. Learning to do these three things won’t just change you, it’ll have a generational effect as well.

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July 4, 2019 · 5:00 AM

Choosing Freedom

Freedom is not something that is uniquely American. It was instituted by a God Himself. His desire is that all of us live free lives. We are the ones who constantly put ourselves in bondage through our actions. We are the ones who put ourselves in position to let others bind us up. God has called us to live free lives according to Galatians 5:1. So why do we do the things that take us away from freedom? Why do we lament the past when we were slaves instead of celebrating the freedoms we currently enjoy?

It’s a problem that goes back as far as time. When the children of Israel were set free from the bondage of Egypt, they cried out, “There we sat around pots filled with meat and ate all the bread we wanted.” In their freedom, they looked back on their time of slavery as a positive thing. They didn’t grasp what it meant to be free, so they would have rather gone back into slavery than to have lived in the freedom that God had granted them. It sounds absurd, but are we so different?

We let what other people have said or done to us imprison us in our minds and actions. We let the past dictate our present. God has set us free, but we allow unforgiveness to hold us down and rob us of freedom. We allow grudges and pain to keep us from trusting anyone. When that happens, we hold ourselves back from the future God has for us. We let what man has done to us rob us of the blessings of freedom. We hold ourselves back in that prison not wanting to get out because it’s safer to stay there. Freedom requires action on our part to move forward and to stay free.

Galatians 5:13-15 says, “Use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows… Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom” (MSG). Selfishness is the doorway to imprisonment. Serving others is the way to staying free. When we help others, despite how many times we’ve been taken advantage of, we walk in freedom. When we hold back because of things that have happened, we allow that freedom to slip away. Edmund Burke said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” As Christians, we can’t sit around and do nothing and stay free.

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Throwback Thursday is a feature I’m using to help build some margin into my schedule to pursue other writing ventures. Each Thursday I’ll be bringing you a previously written devotional that still speaks encouragement to us from God’s Word.

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July 2, 2019 · 5:34 AM

Words And Actions

We all know that person who is all talk and no action. Years ago I was in a meeting with my peers presenting our quarterly numbers to the higher ups. We then had to project our numbers for the next quarter. One person in there projected a big bump in their numbers for the next quarter. The highest ranking person in the room asked them, “What are you doing to get that bump?” They said, “Well, what were going to do is…” The boss interrupted, “I didn’t ask what you were going to do. I want to know what you’re doing now to get those results. If you were able to change your numbers that much, you would be going to do It.you’d be doing it right now.” They didn’t have an answer because they were all talk and got called out on it.

Many of us, myself included, have learned how to talk a good game. We know Christianese and speak church lingo quite well. The problem is that Christianity is more than words. It’s actions. It’s not about what we are going to do, but about what we are doing now. We’ve learned to put on the church mask and say the words that others want to hear on Sunday’s, but are we living it Monday through Saturday? Our coworkers, neighbors and children are like that boss I had. They can see through the words to the lifestyle because actions will always speak louder than words.

Proverbs 12:14 reminds us, “Your reward depends on what you say and what you do; you will get what you deserve” (GNT). It’s important that our lives reflect what we say. We need to quit worrying what others think of us. God sees beyond our words and facades. He looks into our heart to see our intent and our actions. If you can recognize those who are all talk and no action, so can others. Proverbs also says that a good reputation is more desirable than great riches. It’s time we quit acknowledging Jesus with our words and denying Him with our life. Our reward in Heaven is based on words and actions.

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June 26, 2019 · 5:46 AM

Influencing Your City

Waco is a small town in Texas. It has always been a place you would only go to if you had a reason to go. It was showing its age until recently when Chip and Joanna Gaines show “Fixer Upper” became a hit. As this Christian couple began to update houses with their unique style, people began to want to visit Waco. Today, it’s a thriving town with people from all over taking vacation there. The city has been transformed by the influx of money coming into it. Buildings have been updated, businesses have moved in and home prices are on the rise. All of this happened because of one family.

The Bible tells us how cities, nations and even the world were impacted by God’s people. Jerusalem was in ruins until Nehemiah built the walls around the city. Wherever Joseph worked as a slave or prisoner, it prospered. Gideon took Israel from being the nation others picked on to being a strong nation. The list goes on and on of people who followed God and changed the culture around them. When you and I do walk in obedience to God’s voice, we can’t help but make an impact on the people around us.

Proverbs 11:11 says, “The blessing of favor resting upon the righteous influences a city to lift it higher” (TPT)”. When I read this verse, I can’t help but to be challenged to think if I’m making the impact in my city that I need to be. Each one of us as believers have the favor of God resting on us, but what are we doing with that favor? Are we being selfish with it or are we trying to impact the world around us? The Bible is clear that when we invest that favor in the lives of others, it’s multiplied. The blessings of God have been freely given to you so that you can use them to influence your city. When we leave our scarcity mentality and quit hoarding God’s blessings, we’ll change the culture of our communities, cities, states and nations.

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