“The light shines in the dark, and the dark cannot put out the light.”
John 1:5 EASY
In this darkness,
Still I shine
And the darkness cannot
Put out my light.
“The light shines in the dark, and the dark cannot put out the light.”
John 1:5 EASY
In this darkness,
Still I shine
And the darkness cannot
Put out my light.
“But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”
Romans 13:14 KJV
To wear Christ is to allow Him be your guide. It means he is your coach forever showing you the way to go.
Make not provision for the flesh means to not buy anything or go/stay anywhere that can cause you to sin (fulfil the lusts of your flesh). You may have to change your schedule or daily routine .
This tells me that the lusts are always there, it I don’t have to fulfil it.
Today I experienced a huge miracle. Suddenly, I understood Jesus saying, “…My strength is made perfect in weakness” in a new way.
It means that God uses our weaknesses and deficiencies to carry out His plans and purpose for us.
In practical terms, God will work with our anger, jealousy, lack of love, selfishness, impatience and stubbornness to take us to where we need to be.
And that place we need to be may not necessarily be fantastic but we can rest, assured that it is the best place we could ever be in life at that time.
Wait on the Lord;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!
Psalm 27:14 NKJV
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15:13 KJV
Jesus laid down his life willingly for me. He died on my behalf. He is saying here that the greatest type of love man is capable of showing is to lay down their life for another.
Jesus showed me love in greatest measure. He did this by giving up his life for me.
He still loves me today… but more.
“Bless the LORD, O my soul…:”
Psalm 104:1 KJV
In this context, to bless God means to praise and honor Him. In simple terms, it is to tell God how great and awesome He is.
One cannot bless the Lord by being quiet, you speak, write or demonstrate. Maybe mention or list the things He did that you are really happy about.
In the sentence above, the Psalmist was telling his soul to bless the Lord.
What is the Soul? It is the seat of the will, emotion and intellect/mind of man.
Why did the Psalmist want his soul and not his body /lips or his spirit to bless the Lord?
1. God only accepts worship willingly given
2. God has emotions and He wants us to express our passion for Him even as He did us throughout the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ
3. God wants us to be fully aware and present when praising Him. Not doing it mindlessly to pass time or while being distracted.
Worshipping God grudgingly, mindlessly or without really meaning it, is abomination to God and waste of time.
So bless the Lord, O my soul!
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
Psalm 51:17 KJV
The only way to pay for your sin I.e. to have your sin record cleared is to sacrifice. Since the wages of sin is death, someone or something’s must die in your stead in order to save your life.
Animals were sacrificed to God to pay for sins. So it was easy for a rich man to keep on sinning with the mindset that he will just kill some animals later to pay for everything.
I am reminded of how many times we dismiss the nudging of the Holy Spirit and go ahead and sin with the mindset that we will just ask for forgiveness later. We feel rich in terms of being alive and being able to talk.
Today, there is only one sacrifice we can offer God to get our sins forgiven….to escape the Death that is the wages of sin: A broken spirit and a contrite heart.
What is a broken spirit? A spirit that is broken. What is a spirit and how do you break one? My spirit is the invisible me that lives inside my body. It is the real me that will remain forever after my body dies.
So how can I break my spirit i.e. myself? To be broken means to be damaged. It means to be nonfunctional…to be not useful. It’s means I should be trashed. That I am broken means I can be handled anyhow. It means both my owner and other people are free to despise me and trash me.
When something is broken, it is useless and should be discarded…Unless the owner decides to pick up the broken pieces and fasten them back together one after the other.
When I am broken, I am at the mercy of my maker/owner, Jesus.
Applying this practically, when I have sinned, I should come to God confessing my uselessness, wretchedness, deserving to be thrashed and done with/cast away from His presence, that I am in danger as the devil can come in to cause chaos in my life. Just confessing my foolishness and really feeling all this in my heart genuinely.
It takes understanding the seriousness of my little sin, that unless God has mercy on me now, the devil can take my life (because he now has access) and I would literally end up in Hell.
In reality, we don’t always feel this sorry for every sin. We feel more sorry for the big sins and less sorry for the small sins. So in order to get to this level of brokenness, we have to first note down the sin(s) we committed, then go back to the Word… the 10 commandments, Jesus 2 summary commandments, maybe Bible stories…and just check what the consequence is for that little sin.
Maybe then, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we will weep before God, broken and be accepted and forgiven by God. Then God will put us back together, piece by piece.
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I am enough
I will do valiantly
I will do valiantly
I will do valiantly.
From Jeremiah 36:3, we see that when God pronounces judgement, it is not that He hates us and wants to punish us. It is so that when we hear the terrible things God is going to do, we will fear Him/become wise, and turn from our evil way so that God may forgive our iniquity and our sin.
So there is no justice among us,
and we know nothing about right living.
We look for light but find only darkness.
We look for bright skies but walk in gloom.
We grope like the blind along a wall,
feeling our way like people without eyes.
Even at brightest noontime,
we stumble as though it were dark.
Among the living,
we are like the dead.
We growl like hungry bears;
we moan like mournful doves.
We look for justice, but it never comes.
We look for rescue, but it is far away from us.
For our sins are piled up before God
and testify against us.
Yes, we know what sinners we are.
We know we have rebelled and have denied the Lord.
We have turned our backs on our God.
We know how unfair and oppressive we have been,
carefully planning our deceitful lies.
Our courts oppose the righteous,
and justice is nowhere to be found.
Truth stumbles in the streets,
and honesty has been outlawed.
Yes, truth is gone,
and anyone who renounces evil is attacked.