03
Nov '18
My Dr. Phil Gift
03
Nov '18
God has given each of you a gift from His great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to Him forever and ever! Amen. 1 Peter 4:10-11
Lately, my life has been inundated with a wave of sadness, tragedy, and heartbreak. The thing is none of it is directly relating to me. It is as if somehow God has given me this ‘Dr. Phil’ gift. Some of you know exactly what that means. People seemingly come to you because in their
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27
Oct '18
Security
27
Oct '18
Being secure in who I am has been a journey. Walking with Christ is amazing. He’s opened my eyes and given me strength I never knew I had. Naturally, I still have pitfalls and bad days. I know when I’ve messed up because I have the Holy Spirit who convicts me and sets my mind on the right path.
As long as I can remember, I have always trusted and believed in God. Even when I walked right into reckless situations, God always knew me better than I knew myself. He knew when I
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27
Oct '18
Shift Your Focus
27
Oct '18
A friend recently shared a post on social media that said “Worship gets you through the hardest times in your life because it shifts your focus from the problem to the Problem Solver”. This post showed up right after a different friend was inquiring about what I’ve been doing since some struggles in my life. I proceeded to tell him that after these struggles came along, I got myself very busy with Godly people doing Godly things. He then said he felt he may have isolated himself in the same situation. I’ll admit, I may have wanted to isolate myself, but God surely didn’t give me that option. God began moving in my life immediately and didn’t give me much of a chance at all to sulk or have pity party with myself (i.e. “poor me!”).
Nope, God grabbed me by the shoulders, shook me a few times, told me to take a few days to get things out of my system, and then we’re going to be on to the next thing. God knew exactly what needed to happen with me, so I didn’t question Him. I got involved more in church, started hitting the gym more, and started surrounding myself more with Godly people.
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27
Oct '18
Filling the Gap
27
Oct '18
Be good to your servant,
that I may live and obey Your word.
Open my eyes to see
the wonderful truths in Your instructions.
I am only a foreigner in the land.
Don’t hide Your commands from me!
I am always overwhelmed
with a desire for Your regulations. Psalms 119: 17-20
that I may live and obey Your word.
Open my eyes to see
the wonderful truths in Your instructions.
I am only a foreigner in the land.
Don’t hide Your commands from me!
I am always overwhelmed
with a desire for Your regulations. Psalms 119: 17-20
One of the first things I tried to do when I became born again was give up something for lent. The funny thing was I was never successful. I would slip up somewhere along the line, and eat the chocolate cake, or I would have that night out where the cheesecake looked too good. Eventually, I would give in. Then one year, I put it all together and found success! There was so much joy in my heart that I enjoyed cheesecake that year much more! In retrospect, each passing year where I failed, I also learned something from my failures. I realized to avoid certain places, or had greater will power to never ‘give up.’ I was
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20
Oct '18
Quiet Time
20
Oct '18
For a lot of us, I know this is true for me, after working a long day it can be hard to find the energy to do anything else. We can tend to make all the excuses in the world for not doing something. Our bodies definitely need rest after working but it’s essential for our spiritual growth to set aside special time to communicate with God. When our bodies get the physical rest they require our minds are sharper and our communication with Him becomes more beneficial.
Finding time to be alone with God is the most important thing we can do for ourselves. Being able to gather my thoughts without outside distractions helps me to be more focused and clear. I know that God understands my heart and knows me
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20
Oct '18
Rear View Mirror
20
Oct '18
When a struggle in life comes at you out of the blue…. on an idle Saturday….. at 2pm….. like a freight train, you feel helpless. (Maybe you saw it coming.. but did you really?) You feel like your whole world is crashing down around you. You feel it fully and deeply and you feel like you can’t breathe. Here’s where we need to take a step back and just look at the whole forest (and see a different perspective).
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20
Oct '18
Just Walk
20
Oct '18
Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to them, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw Him walking on the lake, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost,” they said, and cried out in fear.
But Jesus immediately said to them: “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” “Lord, if it’s you,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to You on the water.” “Come,” He said.
Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and,
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13
Oct '18
Beauty of Wisdom
13
Oct '18
I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence;
I possess knowledge and discretion.
To fear the Lord is to hate evil;
I hate pride and arrogance,
evil behavior and perverse speech.
Counsel and sound judgment are mine;
I have insight, I have power.
By Me kings reign and rulers issue decrees that are just;
by Me princes govern, and nobles—all who rule on earth.
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13
Oct '18
Crave What?
13
Oct '18
I was in a Small Group/Bible Study in the Spring titled “Made to Crave.” Crave is a verb and is defined as this: 1.) to long for; want greatly; desire eagerly 2.) to require; need.
While this actual study is about healthy eating habits (Lysa TurKeurst; Made to Crave), the concept can be applied to so many other areas of our lives. This study could almost be paraphrased as “Who/what is your God?”, as that’s basically the premise of the study. May I ask… what is the most important thing in your life? Is it a person? A material thing? Food? A relationship? A lifestyle? God?? Be honest.. what is it? Think. {..pause here..} Got it?? You may say it’s God, but is it really? I asked myself this same question.
So, I learned in this Bible Study that when we crave and put something – anything – above God, it’s a sin. Yes, a sin. I dislike that I must admit that I’ve rarely looked at it this way. Yeah, I would go about life enjoying the things that God provided for me, and I
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13
Oct '18
Blissful Rejection
13
Oct '18
God has given us everything we could ever want even though we don’t deserve it. He sent His Son to die for our sins. We have so much to be thankful for and so much to look forward to with Jesus leading our lives. Life is amazing with Jesus in control. My worries don’t take over anymore. The things in this world that I thought I needed to feel acceptance, I’m no longer clinging to. When we look at our lives through the eyes of God, it’s so much more rewarding. Sometimes we don’t realize the blessings we miss out on because we are caught up in our own enjoyment and we think we have everything we need and we don’t want to give that up.
We go about living our lives each day thinking we have everything under control. Life is good. We may plan for the future, but we live in the moment. People go through life living to please themselves. What God has given us is an amazing gift, and we tend to miss it because we are so caught up in pleasing ourselves. We don’t want to give up that good feeling so we blissfully reject God. He has given us everything we could ever possibly want, and still we want more. Realizing what we have with God is so much more rewarding than anything we could ever desire here on earth.
Seeing life through an earthly viewpoint, we are never satisfied. We may feel good in the moment and think it can’t possibly be any better than it is. We begin to live for those moments. When they start to become few and far between, we start to become troubled at trying to figure out what happened. We want to get that good feeling back. God wants us to feel good, He wants us to enjoy our lives. Continually rejecting God and thinking we don’t need Him to be fulfilled is a recipe for failure. He’s our Maker, Creator, and Sustainer of life. When we live our lives according to His plan, we thrive.
2 Timothy 4:3 NKJV
For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers;
Jeremiah 13:10 NKJV
This evil people, who refuse to hear My words, who follow the dictates of their hearts, and walk after other gods to serve them and worship them, shall be just like this sash which is profitable for nothing.
John 3:19 NKJV
And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.
Have a blessed day!!!
Rita
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