Promise for Today - It Bears Repeating for the Dark Days

Seventy years are given to us! Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.
Psalm 90:10 NLT

Some days in this life are so very difficult. Sometimes, it runs in seasons. Thank God He has given us the Bible - His Living Word - to get us through those times. To strengthen and to guide us and to give us hope in the dark days. To give us words that breathe and speak life. I love the rest of this Psalm...

"Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom. O Lord, come back to us! How long will you delay? Take pity on your servants! Satisfy us each morning with your unfailing love, so we may sing for joy to the end of our lives. Give us gladness in proportion to our former misery! Replace the evil years with good. Let us, your servants, see you work again; let our children see your glory. And may the Lord our God show us his approval and make our efforts successful. Yes, make our efforts successful!"

Prayer:

Father,
           You know the number of our days - You plan our lifespan before we ever draw breath. We want all that we do to be successful in fulfilling Your purpose for our lives. Help us, O God! In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Practical Applications to Forgiving Others

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
“No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!"

Matthew 18:21-22 NLT

As promised, the practical applications toward forgiving others. 

How to Start the Process of Forgiveness:

#1 Express and vocalize your forgiveness every day. Say it out loud.
     Example: Today I choose to forgive _______ for _______.
     I choose to let go of it in obedience to God's Word.

#2 Pray daily for the ability to forgive through the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart.

#3 CHOOSE not to meditate and relive the issue every day.
     Do not nurse, curse and rehearse the hurt and unforgiveness.
     Don't tell it over and over.

#4 Reinforce your decision by daily reading God's Word.
     Search out the Scriptures that instruct us about forgiving.

#5 Choose to show compassion, mercy and kindness instead of bitterness from your heart.
     Remember, forgiving others is NOT A FEELING.
     Forgiving others is a choice to be obedient to God's Word.

How to Know When You Have Forgiven Someone

#1 Forgiveness is accomplished when the issue is no longer your issue.

#2 Forgiveness is accomplished when you can pray a blessing and not a curse over the former offender.

#3 Forgiveness is accomplished when you no longer require payback.

#4 Forgiveness is accomplished when you can respond in kindness, and not resentment.

#5 Forgiveness is accomplished when you can give a fresh start.
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Forgiveness is not about feelings. 

Forgiveness is not presented as an option. 

Forgiveness is not just a choice - it's an act of obedience to the words of Christ. 

If we want to be forgiven, we must forgive.

Prayer:

Father,
           Thank You for making provision so that we can be forgiven of our many trespasses against You. Let Your Word manifest in us so that we walk by faith and not by our feelings, and so that we can truly love and forgive others as You have forgiven us. We've asked it before and we ask again. Help us to realize that forgiveness is a choice to submit our will to Yours.. Help us to understand Matthew 18 and forgiving others seventy times seven... Remind us to choose to forgive and speak forgiveness every time it comes up. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Accepting the Terms of Forgiveness

If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15 NLT

Lately, the most popular topic of discussion has been about forgiveness. How do we forgive the unforgivable? I refer people back to the Word. The only Truth that doesn't change with time or man-made laws. Christ died so that we could be forgiven. Without His shed blood, there is no forgiveness of sin. Read Hebrews 9:22 in the NIV. It is SO important to note that even though Christ's blood has been shed, unless we avail ourselves of it and do as He commands, we cannot be forgiven.

Everyone knows this verse in Matthew 6:12, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," part of the Lord's Prayer. How Jesus Himself taught us to pray. Three short verses later, verse 15, Jesus tells us, "But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father WILL NOT forgive your sins." [emphasis mine]

This is not merely a suggestion or just good advice. It is the non-negotiable terms of the covenant of forgiveness. Do we accept His terms?

Tomorrow, I will post the very practical applications my Pastor taught today about how to know if you've forgiven someone and how to start the process of forgiveness.

Prayer:

Father in heaven,
           Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

Promise for Today - Inciting

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works...
Hebrews 10:24 NKJV

I love using Bible apps to help dig deeper in God's Word. If we go to BibleGateway.com and search for a single Scripture, we have the option to see it in all English translations. We can see our Promise for Today Scripture at this link: (To see it in all English translations).

I wonder how often this verse has been misconstrued. Just reading it at face value seems very calm in today's vernacular, doesn't it? To consider one another, perhaps being thoughtful in how to stir it up a little to have us think about love and good works. No, that's not it at all.

"To consider" will translate to thoughtfully and attentively think of one another. To take into consideration their personalities. What motivates one person would not necessarily motivate another. So, if we're going to "consider one another", let's do it with continuous care, paying attention, thinking about each other, and helping. Some translations even read to provoke, rouse, or encourage one another to love and good works. Those are not passive.

And to stir up love and good works is also translated as sparking, or to stimulate and INCITE them to love and good works. Incite them?!? That's a whole 'nother side of stirring up. In many Bible translations, it reads "spur each other on". Think about what spurs are used for...

Prayer:

Father,
           In James 1:5, You instruct us to ask for wisdom, assuring us that You will generously give it to anyone who asks and You won't reproach us for asking. Give us a deeper understanding of Your Word so that we may apply it in Your wisdom to our lives and to those around us. Incite us to love and do good works, Father. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Keeping an Eye on Us.

Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear Him, On those who hope in His mercy, To deliver their soul from death, And to keep them alive in famine. Our soul waits for the Lord; He is our help and our shield. For our heart shall rejoice in Him, Because we have trusted in His holy name. Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, Just as we hope in You.
Psalm 33:18-22 NKJV

We who choose to follow the Lord can be assured of having His attention. According to His Word, we who trust Him can know and be confident that He rescues His children. He is our help, our Strength, our Protector, and Provider.

He has had the plan for our lives before we ever drew our first breath. Plans that include working ALL things for our good, giving "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness..." We witness this at funerals for Christ-follower loved ones. God moments in the midst of it all - hearts reconnected, relationships restored, love overflowing to support and strengthen the broken-hearted. God's moments of mercy and grace for which we are so grateful because His eye is on us, according to His trustworthy Word. 

Prayer:

Father,
          Strengthen our hearts as we wait on You, Lord. We ask You to comfort and console all those who mourn, according to Your Word. Let Your mercy, O Lord, be upon us, Just as we hope in You. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Drawn Out

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me. 

Revelation 3:20

To benefit from God’s touch inside your spirit, you must welcome Him in... Even if, like Moses, you zigged when you should have zagged, God is still with you and still wants to draw near to you. His presence is not based on your performance. He’s not only with you on your good days or more with you on your good days. He is always with you, because that’s who He is, not because of anything you have or haven’t done. I don’t care what skeletons are in your closet: whether you were once on drugs, whether you’ve spent time behind bars, or whether your marriage failed. The things behind you are no match for the One who is with you.

How do you begin to move forward from a mess you have made?

Let your identity come from the way God has rescued you and not with what you needed rescuing from in the first place. We can romanticize the story, but the truth is Moses had a turbulent upbringing. Things were so stacked against him when he was born that the safest thing his parents could do was put him in a tiny boat and set him floating down a river full of crocodiles. He had to pretend his mom was his babysitter; then once he was weaned, he grew up in the court of the man who had tried to kill him. The deranged Hitler character became his grandpa. Sounds like an expensive therapy bill to me.

God brought good out of Moses’ challenges in the end. But when you are in the thick of it, it can be hard to see that. Moses could have ended up a very confused, very mixed-up puppy. But note that the name Moses, which means “drawn out,” was given to him because he was saved from the river, not because he was cast into it. His name came from his deliverance.

This is key for you and me. It’s so easy to get stuck, to fixate on the bad things you have been through. To focus on the hurt — that you weren’t loved, or that you are divorced, or that you are an addict, or that you are fatherless, or that you were sexually abused.

If you’re not careful, this bitterness can turn into a victim mentality and a wounded spirit. You can let it control you and give you your name. It’s easy to be defined by your dysfunction, but it’s not necessary.

Just as Moses means “drawn out,” you have been called out. The Greek word translated as church in the New Testament literally means “called out” ones. Jesus loved you so much that He called you out of the crocodile-infested darkness into His marvelous light. Royal blood was shed for you! You have been rescued.

Beauty from ashes. Light from dark places. He makes all things work together for good. Every day you have a choice: you can dwell on the fact that you were put into hardship, or you can focus on and rejoice over the fact that God drew you out. God wants to bring you to a place where you are not defined by your dysfunction but by your deliverance. 

Excerpted with permission from "Swipe Right" by Levi Lusko, copyright Levi Lusko. Attribution is listed on the Devotionals Daily blog. July 21, 2018.

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Prayer:

Father,

           We want to be defined only by You and the testimony of what You have done in our lives. We choose to stand on Your Word in Romans that all things work together for good, even those things which we must overcome. Help us, Father, to be bold and to testify of our deliverance through the Cross of Christ. In Jesus' Name we pray. Amen

Promise for Today - Simple Enough

He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city.
Proverbs 16:32 NKJV

Who do you think of as the most powerful man or woman in the world? There are certainly a lot of people vying for it at the moment, and it's only going to get worse.

People’s thoughts generally turn to world leaders or the wealthiest, and the responses are almost as varied as the number of people you ask. However, according to Scripture, it’s the one who, in his weakness, finds his strength in an unseen God (unseen by the world), or the one who rules his own spirit, or the one who controls his tongue.

Doesn’t that seem simple enough to do? Are we that powerful? The Truth is - apart from God, it's impossible.

Prayer:

Father,
          We submit our will to Yours. We want to live Your will for our lives. Help us, Lord. By Your Grace, cause us to be mighty for You. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen