Acts 17:28 NIV
‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’
Encouraging Words…
How wonderful it is to go through life knowing that you are His offspring and that I live in Him and through Him my every move and my whole being is covered by His love.
John 10:10 NLT
The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.
Personal Challenge…
Have you ever been in a place in your life where everything is really going the way that it should, but you still have that void in your life, that bout of sadness and remorse, that pain from mistakes in your past. If so, it is definitely a time to hold even tighter onto our Lord for it is probably the enemy trying to steal the joy that God is giving you. God’s purpose for us is to give us a full life. Jesus claimed all victory over death and that was not just the death that we encounter physically at the end of our life here on earth, but those daily deaths that try to turn us away from the Source of Life.
Proverbs 18:10 NASB
The name of the LORD is a strong tower; The righteous runs into it and is safe.
Encouraging Words…
No matter what is going on in our lives we always have a place that we can run to and be safe…it is into the arms of our LORD.
Psalm 62:5 NIV
Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.
Encouraging Words…
Even in those times when life gets me down I know that I can find rest and hope in my God. He is my refuge.
Deuteronomy 7:9-10 NASB
“Know therefore that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments; but repays those who hate Him to their faces, to destroy them; He will not delay with him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.”
Encouraging Words…
Isn’t it a blessing when you know that you are covered by His covenant and His lovingkindness? Doesn’t this build that desire in your heart to love Him more and to keep His commandments?
1 John 2:4-6 NASB
The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.
Personal Challenge…
It is not enough to go through life saying that I am a Christian, because _______ (you fill in the blank). It is necessary for us to live our lives, every moment of them, being a lover of Him and those whom He has placed in our lives, obeying His commandments, and doing His work, not in order to earn His love but because of His love. Being a Christian is not a noun, it is an active verb.
James 1:5-6 NASB
But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.
Encouraging Words…
As I begin the trek through Proverbs I am reminded of how much that book talks about wisdom, Godly wisdom. Just as Solomon requested wisdom when he had the opportunity to ask for anything from God, we have the opportunity to ask God to give us wisdom. He will give it to us generously if we ask for it in faith and without any doubt. God is so good.
Romans 12:1-2 NIV
Therefore, I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Personal Challenge…
We Christians in the modern world have gotten so used to having our God conform to our desires, our society, our way of being. However, we are told to offer ourselves to Him as living sacrifices, to do what is holy and pleasing to Him (which is always different than what is pleasing to me and those in this world), to not conform to the pattern of this world, but transformed by Him. This is all definitely a personal challenge for me, but the results are so worth it…the ability to test and approve God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will in and through my life.
Luke 18:27 NLT
He (Jesus) replied, “What is impossible from a human perspective is possible with God.”
Personal Challenge…
Once again I must be reminded that it is not up to me to do the impossible thing, whether it be raising support so that I can keep working in Haiti, or doing the work that I am called every day to do, or being loving to those whom God has put in my life, or being a good husband, father, grandparent, brother, friend, or neighbor. The sooner that I can embrace that all things are possible through God and that I must humble myself before Him and let Him do the impossible, the sooner I will see His hand in my life.
Proverbs 16:18 NIV
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
Personal Challenge…
Isn’t this the one sin that seems to be the root of most other sins? Pride…making it all about me, hearing things in conversations through a filter that is all about me, expressing what I express from the perspective of me. This is one of my ongoing personal challenges…eliminating the focus on me and putting the focus on others, with Love.
Verse of the Day 