Sunday 11/11 ~ You can never fall beyond hope

The scripture for today, November 11 (11/11), is Romans 11:11a as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

0-REV-Cover-No Logo-KINDLE-thumbnail“Again I ask: Did they stumble so as to fall beyond recovery?  Not at all!”

Though everyone is a weak human, you may decide to live for God. But you are still a weak human. Satan has lost you and wants you back. He will try hard to make that happen. Often, the new Christian is the one he attacks the hardest.

Satan never lets up and periodically causes bad things to happen to you so you’ll blame God, just as he tried to do with Job.  He will tempt you with more things than before you became a Christian in his attempts to get you back. So sometimes you may stumble and fall.

God knows what is happening.  He stands with you. He is so proud of you when you stand up to Satan and say, “Never!  I will not blame or forsake my Lord!” He sees how your spiritual muscles are growing when you do.

But, if you sometimes fall, you are not beyond hope. Never, never believe you are beyond hope. That is a lie! God never leaves you.  He continues to stand next to you, holding out his hands and saying, “Take them. I will lift you back up. You will be okay again.”

So, you do. And so, he does.

He is amazingly patient with us. He loves you so very much.

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When you can’t find your faith, light a candle of hope

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Wednesday 11/7 ~ Seeing the face of God

The scripture for today, November 7 (11/), is Psalm 11:7 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

00-Stephen-Cover-Kindle-Thumbnail“For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face.”

The face of God! How all who believe in God long to see his face. With human perceptions, you cannot comprehend it. But you can comprehend this…..

God’s eyes ~ “The eyes of the Lord are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good” (Proverbs 15:1).

God’s mouth ~ “I have put my words in your mouth” (Isaiah 51:16).

God’s nose ~ “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma….The smoke of the incense together with the prayers of the saints went up before God” (Genesis 8:21; Revelation 8:4).

God’s ears ~ “The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their cry.”

  • Perhaps when you continually watch both good and bad people around you with the same kind of care that God does……
  • perhaps when you speak the words that come out of the mouth of God……
  • perhaps when you send your prayers like sweet incense to God……
  • perhaps when you are attentive to the silent cry of those around you ~~
  • just perhaps, in some way, you are seeing the face of God.
  • Perhaps.

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Thursday 11/1 ~ Faith has proof

The scripture for today, November 1 (11/1), is Hebrews 11:1 as found in the New Testament of the Bible;

00-LUKE-KINDLE Cover-Thumbnail“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (KJV).

Notice, faith is not based on a feeling. It is full of substance, for it is based on evidence. What evidence?

First, faith is complete confidence that the Bible is divine. You can know this in large part because the prophecies about large nations and empires during Bible times came true after the lifetime of the prophets. Today, most people never heard of many of those large nations and empires because their destruction was so complete. But an investigation of encyclopedias shows that, in Bible times, they did exist.

Second, faith is complete confidence that Jesus on earth was divine. You can know this in large part because numerous prophecies about his birth, ministry, and death came true centuries after the prophecies were made. No one man could have contrived and forced all those prophecies to be fulfilled in his lifetime.

Finally, faith is complete confidence that the account of Jesus’ life was written accurately by witnesses who saw him and talked with him. These witnesses afterward traveled the world telling people about him, suffering hardships, and often torture and death. They would not have gone through all this for a lie. Further, we have manuscripts that date back to less than a century of the actual events, something no other ancient writing can do.

Yes, faith has substance because it is based on evidence. And in the Bible, you can have all you need.

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Monday 10/22 ~ Guilty Conscience?

The scripture for today, October 22 (10/22),  is Hebrews 10:22 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

Love Letters of Jesus & his Bride, Eccelsia-THUMBNAIL“Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.”

The previous verse said that Jesus is the great (high) priest over the house of God (the church). Therefore the sprinkling refers to the sprinkling of blood the high priests did on the Day of Atonement once a year. (See Leviticus 16 in the Old Testament.) Today your heart (which we cannot see or touch) is sprinkled with the blood of Jesus.

And how are you to be cleansed from that guilty conscience with our body (which we can see and touch) being washed? I Peter 3:21 says, “Even so does baptism now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh but the answer of a good conscience toward God.”

You do not have to guess whether you were sincere enough when you gave your heart to the Lord. Your conscience never has to wonder if you did it right. For God gave you something you can actually do to give you a good and clear conscience toward him.

From henceforth, you can draw near to God in full assurance. Full! Not partial. Not wondering. Not with ups and downs of faith. But full!

God thinks of everything!

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Saturday 10/13 ~ No more, Satan. You are going to lose. Get used to it.

The Scripture for today, October 13 (10/13), is 1st Corinthians 10:13 as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

00-Hero Alone-COVER-KINDLE-Thumbnail“No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful: He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”

What are you tempted to do or not do on a regular basis in your everyday life? Then look at the source of your everyday temptations ~ Satan. Do you really want to be Satan’s slave?

Romans 6:16 explains it this way: “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey ~ whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?”

Take a long hard look at your everyday temptations and remind yourself of the source. Then, with courage in your soul and boldness in your heart, stand up and say, “No more! I am not your slave, Satan. I will win over you. God and I are stronger than you. Satan, get used to it: You will lose.

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Thursday 10/11 ~ Playing Peek-a-boo

The scripture for today, October 11 (10/11), is Psalm 10:11 as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

00- Worship Changes KC COVER-thumbnail“He says to himself, ‘God has forgotten; he covers his face and never sees.’ “

You believe in God in some form. And you believe that God knows what you do. But do you sometimes bury your beliefs in your subconscious mind so you can go around doing things you know are wrong? Do you believe you won’t get caught, and you can slide into heaven doing whatever you want?

In other words, do you justify your favorite sins? Do you justify your sins of attitude such as jealousy, impatience, pride, short temper under the guise of an unhappy childhood or getting what you deserve?  Do you justify your sins of omission ~ good things you should be doing, but are not ~ under the excuse that you don’t have time to do them? Do you justify questionable things you do by saying they’re “not so bad” or God is so good, he will forgive anything you do as long as you say you’re sorry every time you do it?

Do you do as children do who cover their eyes so they cannot see anyone and think that, therefore, no one ~ including God ~ can 17see them?

God loves you more than you can ever imagine. He never forgets you. He sees and hears everything you do. The only things he does not approve of are things that will ultimately hurt you and which he calls sin.

Here is a marvelous jewel for you. Take it, shine it up, and put it on display:  Pleasing God is the ultimate form of pleasing yourself.

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Monday 10/8 ~ When you doubt God, God does not doubt you

The scripture for today, October 8 (10/8), is Romans 10:8f as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

07-SHADOW-ChildsCartoonThmbnail“But what does it say? ‘The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,’ that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

The word is in your mouth through confession of your faith in Jesus, and in your heart for truly believing it and not just saying it.

Some say you are not saved by works, and it is true in the sense that you cannot go around doing so many good works that God will feel obligated to take you into his home. You can never be good enough because you sin and those sins need to be washed away (Acts 22:16).

In the sense that you do not have to do anything to be saved, it is not true. After all, Jesus himself said faith is a work: “Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: To believe in the one he has sent’ ” (John 6:29).

To many faithful Christians, there are times in their life that faith is indeed hard work. Are you sometimes beset with so many problems you begin to wonder if Jesus really cares like he claimed?

Continue to work at your faith. You will have your ups and our downs. Sometimes your faith will be strong and sometimes weak. But remember, even when you doubt God, God never doubts you.

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Sunday 10/7 ~ Why would a good God condone violence?

The scripture for today, October 7 (10/7), is Joshua 10:7f as found in the Old Testament of the Bible:

00-LUKE-KINDLE Cover-Thumbnail“So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men. The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.’ “

We today cannot imagine a good God condoning violence, let alone promoting it. But think back. Mankind was quite barbaric in the centuries and millenniums before Christ. For example, when Alexander the Great got offended at what a friend said to him, he cut off his nose and ears and put him in a cage for the rest of his life.

God never runs very far ahead of mankind, or else mankind would not understand, and not even try to follow God. By the time Jesus came, God was saying, “No more violence.”

In this scripture for today, God was telling Joshua to attack people in the Promised Land ~ Canaan. This brings up another question: Why would a good God allow one group of people to kill off another group of people? God told Abraham centuries earlier, “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure” (Genesis 15:16). By this time they were sacrificing children to their gods.

In Leviticus 18:24, 28, God warned the Jews through Moses, “Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled…And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.” So God warned the Jews that, if they got as bad as the previous people in Canaan, he would drive them out too. (Eventually they did, so God did.)

Further, in Old Testament times, God often punished people immediately. Why punish them? Partly to get them away from the good people. And God used armies of believers to do the punishing for him.

Today God does not expect us to do the punishing. Romans 12:19 says, “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay’ says the Lord. On the contrary, If your enemy is hungry feed him…Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Thank God, he has taken the terrible task of vengeance away from us. We can just forgive our enemies and hand things over to God to take whatever steps need to be taken. In the meantime, we can read the Old Testament and learn that God takes notice when people are doing bad things to us. God does take care of us. God does love his children.

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Friday 10/5 ~ Come to me. Please come.

The scripture for today, October 5 (10/5), is 2nd Corinthians 10:5f as found in the New Testament of the Bible:

“Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them; their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now, these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.”

01-Miriam-ThumbnailCoverThis is about the 40 years the Jews wandered in the wilderness between leaving their slavery in Egypt and beginning a nation for themselves. They had the mindsets of slaves. They did not know how to make decisions for themselves. One of those decisions was to leave the gods of Egypt and worship only the one true God.

It was easier to fall in line with what they were raised to believe. They took the easy way out rather than follow the God who had proved the Egyptian gods were not gods at all. They would rather die than change. So they did. They died.

Do you take the easy way out? Do you stick with things you were raised to believe even though you have learned more of the Bible and see those old beliefs are not what God said?

The early Jews did not listen to God, so God did not listen to them. He is calling out to you even now. “Come to me. I want to save you. Please come.”

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