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(c)Sandra Johnson/Draw Nigh To Hope
You are worth a lot to God. Do you know how much?
Do you see the value in yourself that God sees?
How can you be in relationships with people who don't when you have a choice?
There needs to be a transformation so that you can see you how you really are in the Kingdom of God.
Romans 12:2
Psalm 119:105
You mean SO much to Our Father. You don't deserve inferiority or mediocrity. Nothing like that is worthy of you. Get it right and see yourself like God sees you! You can learn. He's given you his Word to teach and elevate you.
Take the journey upwards now. Step on the elevator of God and be uplifted to the heights of understanding where he intends for you to be. You mean something to God, more than you've ever known before.
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Image Credit: Google
That hurt and affected me negatively for years but I kept on writing and studying about writing and publishing. That and other slights and rejections starting in early childhood crushed my spirit in many ways.
Though that mean comment often replayed in my mind, it eventually faded into the distance. Though it had done damage, one day I found myself to be successful, in satisfaction and fulfillment, in pursuing my writing goals.
Sharing salvation should flow with your spirit and personality type. God reveals our personality types to us and how we are most inclined to share The Gospel.
Every person who knows Jesus can witness. It is talking at the appropriate time, to anyone who is receptive, about our relationship with God and what his Son Jesus Christ has done for us. The Holy Spirit reveals to us those who are ready.
It is not we who bring people to salvation. It is the Holy Spirit. God prepares the heart of a person to receive. If it's not the right time and God's Holy Spirit has not yet prepared that person's heart, then he/she will not accept Jesus. No amount of cajoling, pressuring, threatening and shaming that person will work. He or she will only become stubborn in spirit and be pushed further from God.
Be at peace. Work with God, not against him. Let the Holy Spirit do his work and go with God's flow in talking to people about Jesus. Witnessing should always be done in peace.
You want to be a Christian but you are scared because of other Christians? You've been attacked with hatred for who you are? You have cried because you have been treated so viciously? You want to be a Christian but you don't feel accepted for who you are? Some Christians want you to think that God hates you and that you are going to Hell? You have read some in the Bible and you just want to love God without being in constant fear that God hates you and won't accept you?
Don't be afraid. Christians are just humans. Haters will always hate at the drop of a hat. This is because many Christians don't grow in God's love for themselves, so they can't love anyone else. There are many Christians, however, who love you because they have accepted the Love of God into their hearts. God loves you just as you are. He is not surprised by who you are. He knew long before you were born what was going to happen. He doesn't judge any of us by sexual orientation.
You want so badly to be a Christian? Being a Christian is based in Christ you know, right? Christian = Christ-Centered. You have just as much of a right to The Son Jesus and The Father God as any one else.
God has only one requirement for you to get to him. It's to accept his only son as the only way to him. You don't have to clean up your life first, or change yourself or anything. God Our Father knows everything about you already. All the whys, hows, whens and whats about you are known already by him who loves you.
Jesus The Christ is the only bridge from God to man, Once you accept Jesus as your Savior you become a Christian. You become saved despite your LGBTQ+ status or anything else about you. You are moved into position to begin to know God personally, through the sacrifice of his Dear Son. All because of Jesus. I understand why you want to know God so badly. It is truly wonderful to be in the Kingdom of His Dear Son.
I hope that this has helped. Just remember that Our Father is not an unfair God and it would be unfair for him to reject you because of who you are. He's a just God but most of all, he's a God of unrelenting, immeasurable love. Nothing can separate you from his love, except rejecting his Precious Son Jesus.
Love in Christ.
If you don't know Jesus in the beauty of holiness, in the essence of spirituality, then how he looks to you will not save you.
If knowing him is dependent upon how you think he should look, then it's possible that you could be as lost as the person who does not know Jesus and, therefore, does not know God.
If you cannot accept Jesus Christ as looking like all ethnicities, all skin colors and all races, and ultimately as none of them, then do you truly know Him? Do you really understand who he is and why he came?
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| Image #4 |
The ignorance and darkness is not in choosing to see Jesus as white, brown, red or yellow and having images like that in your home. The darkness is in insisting that he CANNOT exist in any other way than how you choose to see him.
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If we go into an Asian person's home and see an Asian Jesus on the wall, we should be able to say, That's my Jesus! Hallelujah!
If we go into a Caucasian person's home and see a Caucasian Jesus on the wall, we should be able to say, That's my Jesus! Hallelujah!
If we go into a Native American person's home and see a Native American Jesus on the wall, we should be able to say, That's my Jesus! Hallelujah!
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| Image #12 |
A Scandinavian Jesus! A Chinese Jesus! An Aleut Jesus! A Brazilian Jesus! JESUS! JESUS! JESUS! HALLELUJAH!!!
Jesus Christ is all in all. He is everything that we all need, through the love of Our Father who sent him.
Image #4 http://www.intermix.org.uk/news/news_291205_02.asp Jesus Intermix
Image #7 https://jesuswithoutbaggage.wordpress.com/2016/06/20/pondering-the-many-faces-of-jesus/
Image #9 Vatican Museum Icons Jesus Blessings https://www.europeanproceedings.com/article/10.15405/epsbs.2020.10.05.105/image/6
Image #12 Vincent Barzoni’s “His Voyage: Life of Jesus.” https://richmondfreepress.com/photos/2020/jul/16/294950/
Other images from the usual Pixabay.
~ Proverbs 15:1 Are you angry, upset or disappointed in someone? Do you want or need to respond to them? Don't do it until you pray. Also, sleep on it for at least one night if possible. It will make a world of difference in your response, your relationship with God and in your Christian walk. ~
Daniel answered and said:
Blessed be the name of God forever and ever, for wisdom and might are His.
And He changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and raises up kings; He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to those who have understanding.
He reveals deep and secret things; He knows what is in the darkness, and light dwells with Him.
I thank You and praise You, O God of my fathers; you have given me wisdom and might, and have now made known to me what we asked of You.
Let us be like Daniel. Send up a sweet-smelling savor, a sweet incense of praise to Our Father today and everyday!
We can do nothing without Christ.
We can do all things through Christ.
Our lives are hid in God through Christ.
He who does not know Christ does not know the Father.
Christ is the Resurrection and the Life.
Through Christ is the only way that man can come to the Father.
His pure shed blood and his unblemished, broken body restored us to the Father.
God The Father loved us so much that he sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world to die for us, so that whoever chooses to believe in him should live forever with him.
Because Jesus lives, those who have accepted him as Savior will be resurrected into life and the resurrection into death, the second death, will have no power over us.
Jesus Christ of Nazareth saves us for God The Father.
God's Holy Spirit draws us to himself.
God forgives us, through Jesus, for what was not our fault.
Even while mankind did not care, could not care and hated the light of truth, because we're all born into this world into darkness, God sent his precious son, Jesus, to be betrayed, unfairly charged, judged, convicted, ridiculed, struck, spit upon, beaten, scourged, burdened, subjected to all manner of insults and degradation of which all of it we were not told, nailed to a criminals' cross and tormented while upon that cross.
Most of all, Jesus was denied a way out when he asked his Father three times as he prayed and sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. He felt intense, paralyzing fear, like you and I feel at times.
Most of all, God, the loving Father, separated himself completely from his dear and precious Son for a period of time while he hung and suffered on that hideous Cross.
Jesus The Christ, the Bright and Morning Star, the Lamb of God, the Beginning and the End, was changed forever...for us.
Is there anything that we cannot do for Christ should our Father ask us?
It is with God's love only that we can love our enemies because it is his love that covers a multitude of sins. When we try to love with our own, fleshly love, we can't, especially when we have been offended, disappointed or hurt. God's love, however, triumphs over all of that. It is through God's love in us flowing out towards the unlovable, that we are able to make Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the Cross valid.
If we can't come to love those whom we insist that it is impossible to love, then Our Savior's sacrifice has no power in our lives. If we are working with God to love ourselves then we can, through the help of his Holy Spirit, come to truly love those who have offended us.
Ask God to fill your heart with love and expand it within you so that you can love the unlovable in the way that pleases him.
HAPPY FRIDAY!
The love of God shed abroad in our hearts will not allow confusion, dishonesty, deviousness, deceit or ulterior motive.
Is God's love ruling and reigning in your life? Have you allowed his divine love to break down all of those waste places in your life so that his love can flourish and produce in like kind? Some characteristics of God's love are:
God's love is supreme and corrects everything! When we are allowing God to work his love in our own lives, we inspire it in the lives of others. It multiplies outward all around us. Where God's love is there is harmony in all of its various forms.
Allow God's love to take over YOUR life and experience the evolution and expansion of harmony!
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Help us to receive a deeper understanding of the ways that we should allow charity to reign in our lives, for we know that it involves more than our initial thoughts on what love is. Thank you for the knowledge and help us to be more obedient. Amen!
Nothing else matters when we know who we are in God. Any abandonment, dismissal or spurning that we may endure no longer matters when the value that we are to God through Christ Jesus becomes real to us.
How we are accepted, received, approved and validated by our Heavenly Father everyday can overshadow any rejection that we may encounter. We need to give in more to God's love, which overshadows all, and live in the truth of it everyday.
The World Accepts Whom The Church Rejects
His phone rang in church by accident during prayers.
The Pastor scolded him.
The worshippers admonished him after prayers for interrupting the silence.
His wife kept on lecturing him on his carelessness all the way home.
You could see the shame, embarrassment and humiliation on his face.
He never stepped foot in the church again.
That evening, he went to a bar.
He was still nervous and trembling.
He spilled his drink on the table by accident.
The waiter apologized and gave him a napkin to clean himself.
The janitor mopped the floor.
The female manager offered him a complimentary drink.
She also gave him a huge hug and a kiss while saying, "Don't worry man. Who doesn't make mistakes?"
He has never stopped going to that bar since then.
Lesson:
Sometimes our attitude as believers drives souls away from Church. Our attitude breaks our relationships, destroys our families.
You can make a difference by how you treat other people, especially when they make mistakes.
(author not known)
Our Heavenly Father is The God of Compassion.
Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior Compassionately pleads our cases before his Father.
The Holy Spirit Compassionately comforts us.
Let us likewise be always quick to show compassion towards others.
Do you ever have annoyed, frustrated or angry thoughts about anyone? Do the attitudes or behaviors of some people send you into a fit? Are you tempted to have ill will towards those who have misused or mistreated you?
Have you ever had fleeting or lingering thoughts of wishing problems or misfortune on others? Do you ever find yourself fussing and arguing with yourself about the life that someone lives? I could go on and on and if you profess to have never had any of these types of thoughts or feelings, then you are probably not human.
I have been on a track for a couple of years now where the Holy Spirit reminds me to stop and pray for these persons. You see, it's not just a matter of us crushing the offending thoughts. While that is an intense and worthy process, it's not enough.
Crushing these thoughts essentially buries them but they are not dead. They are like seeds that can sprout again. God gets to the root of the problem so it can be killed. He wants us to do more than bury unpleasant thoughts about others and generate benign thoughts about people who incense us.
Our Father God does not want us to suffer any more thoughts that sprout from roots of malevolence. He wants us to be free of malignant thoughts, no matter how mild or fleeting they are. It's a matter of immediately confessing and accepting forgiveness through the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ, Our Savior, and then stopping to pray for the person. It doesn't have to be a long, intense prayer. It can be brief but it should be heartfelt.
When we turn our growth over to God we begin to recognize opportunities to grow. The Holy Spirit prompts, prods and pricks us when a chance is available to do it God's way. It begins from within, where the roots that need to be purged are. God is precise. He wants it all dug out, every offensive thought that hinders. That still, soft voice of his Spirit will remind us. All we need to do is obey, like I did this morning.
The way that God does it for me is to say in my spirit, Did you pray for her?, during or after a hostile thought. He'll say in my spirit, Have you prayed for him?. He won't say I'm wrong for the thought or that I know I should not have been thinking that.
My Father understands why I had the thought and I sense his loving kindness and his mercy. Now, when thoughts like that come, I end up stopping what I'm doing and praying for the person. If I can get on my knees I do. I offer a quick prayer of forgiveness for myself and blessing for the person.
We should forgive the persons for whatever it was that made us offended, vindictive, judgmental. They may not even know us but we know of them and God is not pleased with our thoughts. He wants better for us. Sometimes, the source of our rancor is in our minds or we are just in a bad mood. At other times, our spiteful thoughts can be justified because of real, hurtful events and experiences.
Whatever the source of these types of troubling thoughts, we don't have to suffer brushing them under the rugs of our minds where they can trip us up later. We can go further and be cleansed of them. Rather than pretend that you never have thoughts like these, submit to God and allow His Holy Spirit to help you. It will make all of the difference in your spirit, attitude and growth. Be pruned! Be purged! Be strengthened!
Don't hate and don't retaliate. We don't know the reasons why God allows us to suffer unfairness, mistreatment, harassment, persecution and other types of attacks, but he always has a plan for us.
The Word encouragingly tells us that all things, not some things, all things work together for good to those of us who love him, who are the called and always according to his purpose. Romans 8:28 We also understand that the good will of God towards us, while primarily for the World to come, is also for our present place of habitation. Luke 18:30
It is Our Father's will that some of the good that is built through trials and tribulations come to us during our present, earthly life. All things work together for good but some we will receive after we leave this dying world. In Hebrews 11:13-17,39-40, we read a summary of faithful Believers who journeyed through a life of commitment to God but left this world not having received the promise despite all that they endured.
One thing is sure. God does not and cannot lie. Every jot and tittle of his Word will come to pass. Matthew 5:18 We can have faith that none of our endurance, suffering, sorrow and tears will be wasted. If we are faithful to God and determine to not hate those who show hate towards us, and not retaliate against those who are malicious towards us, we will eventually receive good through their ill will and hurtful actions.
So we, as faithful followers of Jesus Christ, choose not to hate and not to retaliate in thought, word or deed. We choose to love (with God's love because our flesh cannot love with purity) and let God handle the repayment and vindication against those who offend. I will repay, says Our Father regarding those who are on a mission to malign others. Romans 12:19-21 Our rewards, both here and in the New Heaven and the New Earth, are worth waiting for through Godly endurance of all that he allows. We choose to love and let God.
His dad was the Associate Pastor of First Baptist in Atlanta when the senior pastor was asked to resign. Charles Stanley was asked to preach on Sundays until a suitable replacement could be found. As he preached, the pews began to fill, young couples started to return, the youth ministry started to grow and volunteerism grew to an all-time high. There was a new excitement in the church.
Yet some of the longtime members of the church resented Charles Stanley's growing influence and popularity. It didn't help that there was a grass roots movement started to elect him as pastor. The old guard thought he was too young, too evangelistic and too spiritual, emphasizing a personal relationship with Jesus.
The powerbrokers started to politic to have Charles Stanley removed. People started to take sides. Two weeks before the vote to hire or fire Charles Stanley, Deacon Myers walked up to the pulpit as the Wednesday night service began. He started to talk about the growing controversy and as he did, horror upon horror, he used the word damn.
Charles Stanley calmly walked to the pulpit and said, Now you need to watch your language. With clinched fists the man responded, You need to watch yourself or you might get punched. Charles Stanley didn't back down or step away and then all of sudden Deacon Myers reared back and punched his dad.
His dad didn't retaliate. It was his dad's response to all this that marked Andy for life. He stepped right back up and stood by Deacon Myers. Andy Stanley said, In that moment I wanted to be that kind of man. From that moment on, it didn't matter what anybody said. Because actions speak louder than words.
That event revealed his dad's character. When we open the pages of scripture, we discover that character is defined by the very nature of Jesus Christ- a stumbling block for some but a rock solid foundation for others. Character is the will to do what is right, as defined by God, regardless of personal cost. Andy Stanley SermonCentral
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| God emits love all of the time. |
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| We will experience God's love in the way that we think we should. |
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| We will know God's love in a perfect existence. |
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| We should always pray and expect God's confirmation when we feel we have met the one. |
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| Moderation and merging of both searching and waiting for Christian love is important. |
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| Don't go by feelings, which got you into romantic trouble before. |
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| We Christian woman have to learn how to submit to a man after God's own heart. |
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| God will confirm in the heart of the woman that indeed that man is the one. |
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| God never changes and his order is supreme. |
