Author: Charlie Brignac

I am forever a student of the Word and a disciple of Jesus Christ, finding life applications in Scripture. I write about Christian themes, including bringing others to Christ, the matchless name of Jesus and various spiritual concepts like a penitent heart and overcoming darkness. I focus on Christian teachings, personal faith and reliance on the Holy Spirit. I invite you to read through my daily writings. Think them out for yourself through your study of God's Holy Word. Pray on the meaning of the message. Then let the message come alive in your life.

Shutting the Door on the Cares of the Day

Matthew 6:6
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Without question, one of Satan’s greatest skills is his ability to keep us distracted from building our relationship with God by keeping us focused on the business of life.  One of his greatest lies is planting the seed in our minds that God does not want to hear about everything in our lives.  Through the perfect work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can turn both of Satan’s tactics against him.

The first thing that we should do each day in the privacy of the morning is to invite Jesus to join us throughout the day.  Then everything public in our busy lives will be marked by His presence.  Everything that comes our way as a challenge or a trial can be handed to Him immediately through brief and constant prayer.

Because we have given Jesus the burdens of life throughout the day, we can shut the door on all the cares of the day that usually distract us as we try to pray at night.  Instead of focusing on our cares, we are free to focus on Our God.  We can worship Him, we can praise Him and we can soak in His love.  We can grow in our relationship with Him according to His good and perfect plan for our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing Your Son to be the yoke that we can take to make our burdens light.  We rejoice in His presence with us throughout the day and night.  We pray for the wisdom and the grace to share all of our cares with Our Savior throughout the day.  We ask, Lord, that You teach us how to come to You without distraction in the evening so that we may spend the time growing in our relationship with You and refreshing ourselves for the next day to be spent in the yoke of Our Savior.

Exposed by The Light

2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the light, the truth and the way.  No darkness can exist in His presence.  When we accept Him as Our Savior, He comes to dwell within us and the process of removing all the darkness from our lives begins.  

All of our sins are brought into the light by the Holy Spirit.  Repentance is required.  To do otherwise is to suggest that we are sufficient in our own ways.  It is not enough to be sorry for our sins.  We must recognize our unworthiness.  We must recognize our need to be cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb.  We must fully submit to Jesus so that we will have the strength to turn away from the darkness, so that we may live in the light.  This process will continue as long as we are in our corrupted bodies.  It will not be completed until we stand before Our Father in heaven at His Throne.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for exposing all the darkness in our lives.  We pray that we will fully submit to the cleansing process.  May Your Light extend to the outer margins of our lives.  May no element of our lives be untouched.  May the complete work of the Blood of the Lamb prepare us to take our place in heaven for all eternity.

Experiencing Kingdom Living

Matthew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus told the rich young ruler that to inherit the kingdom of heaven he must give up everything and follow Him.  As with the young ruler, the relationship that Jesus seeks with us is one in which we place the relationship with Him as the single most important thing in our lives.

Jesus asks us to yield to Him.  He wants us to understand our impoverished position without Him.  It is only through this yielding relationship that we can enter into His kingdom.  Nothing that we do or we own without Christ merits our eternal place with Jesus.

There is great blessing in our lives when we reach the place where Jesus is our single highest priority.  We are freed to begin to enjoy the fullness of what Our Savior has prepared for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the way, the truth and the life that is in Your Son, Jesus.  We thank You for drawing us away from this world and drawing us into a relationship with Our Savior.  We pray, Lord, that You inspire us to make Your Son the center of our lives.  May we begin to experience here on earth the fullness of the kingdom living that is being prepared for us.  

Good Things versus God Things

Matthew 11:28
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

God’s plan for our lives calls for total surrender to Him.  The enemy has a different plan.  The enemy uses all the facets of our lives on earth as areas of distraction from our full surrender to Our Lord.

Our work is the biggest distraction for most of us.  Recreation, hobbies and even family activities can be other big areas of distraction for us.  All of these activities can be good and extremely productive.  That is why Satan is so successful in distracting us from God.  Satan entices us to replace God with good things.

Ironically, all of these good things that distract us from God are also the culprits in generating much of the stress and struggles that we face in life.  In an effort to do all these good things, we create time, financial and relationship pressures that burden us. 

Oneness with Jesus Christ is the only way for us to successfully balance all that we deal with in life.  Jesus is the fulcrum.  He balances our load by providing the right foundation for all that we do.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for being our refuge.  We bless the name of Jesus for being our port in the storm, our deliverer from our sins, our shield against the enemy and our comforter for all of our cares, fears and sorrows.  We pray, Lord, that You will draw us into full surrender to Your Son, not only in the words of our lips, but in the actions that come from our hearts.  We seek to find the rest for our souls that is only available through Our Savior.

In the Hands of the Vinedresser

John 15:1 – 2
I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser.  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Once we accept Jesus as Our Savior, we become benefactors of two of God’s many promises.  Two of His promises that dramatically impact us daily are: 
1) the promise to perfect His strength in our weakness 2Cor 12:9
2) the promise to finish the good work that He starts in us when we call upon His Son as Our Savior. Phil 1:6

In order for God to fulfill these promises, we must come under a continual process of pruning.  Because of our sin nature which will not depart us until we die, this pruning process will never stop while we are alive on earth.  

Jesus is the Vine.  We are the branches, all nourished by the same True Vine.   Our Heavenly Father is the vinedresser.  The will of the Father is to have the vineyard produce bountiful fruit, so He prunes us (the branches) each according to our fruitfulness.  The more we abide in the Vine, the more fruit we will produce.  The more fruit we produce, the more we abound in what is good and the more the Vine and the Vinedresser are glorified.  

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your tender loving care as You transform us from sinners into saints.  We bless the name of Jesus for His sacrifice on the Cross that makes this transformation possible.  We delight in the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives who stands by us as we turn away from our old lives and live anew in the fullness of the Vine.  We pray that we will respond to the Holy Spirit as He always turns us to the Vine for our nourishment and never to the world.  Father, we claim Your promise to perfect Your strength in our weakness.  May our fruit be bountiful and may it be pleasing to You.  We rejoice in knowing that You will see the harvest to completion for Your glory.  

Walking in the Fullness of Jesus Christ

Luke 18:22
When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “One thing you still lack. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

The young ruler, as he is often called, was given the directive that is captured in the passage above.  It was a hard word for the young man.  He walked away from all that had been offered to him.

For most all of us, God’s words do not come to us in such a direct manner as the words spoken to the young man.  They do not come in clear audible context.  God’s directives come to us in the faint internal whisperings of the Holy Spirit.  We receive more of a gentle urging of the spirit rather than an anything audible.

These urgings are designed to test our obedience.  If we ignore the urgings, they will become weaker and weaker until they eventually cease.  If we are obedient to the urgings, they will become clearer and clearer to us.  God’s inspiration will become a greater part of our lives as we begin to seek the urgings of the Holy Spirit in all of our endeavors.  We will learn to walk in the fullness of Jesus Christ.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for drawing us to Yourself through the gentle urgings of the Holy Spirit.  We praise You for  providing the ever present Counselor in our daily lives.  We pray that our minds and hearts will be receptive to all that the Holy Spirit brings to us.  May our obedience bring richness to our daily walk with Our Savior.   

May Jesus Know Us

Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Mary Magdalene was a terrible sinner but she was forgiven from her past sins by Jesus as He cast 7 demons out of her.  She accepted all that He had to offer to her.  Following her deliverance, Mary Magdalene traveled with Jesus as one of his followers.  She was present at Jesus’ two most important moments: the crucifixion and the resurrection.  Based on what Jesus had done for her, Mary was brave enough to stand by Jesus in his hours of suffering, death and beyond. She had a true relationship with her Savior.

On the other hand, when it came to doctrine, Mary was not well schooled.  She certainly would be made to look foolish if challenged in doctrine by the Pharisees who were known for their knowledge of God.  But with all their knowledge about God, they did not know Jesus.  They did not have a saving relationship with Him.

We should understand that even the demons are profoundly knowledgeable about Jesus, but they do not know Him.  Full knowledge of Jesus means nothing unless He knows us.  The only way that Jesus knows us (as in accepts us into His kingdom) is if we have accepted Him as Our Savior.  When we accept Jesus as Our Savior, then our relationship with Him springs forth for all eternity.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing us with a Savior.  We thank You for sending Your Son to this world so that all could know Him.  We thank You for sending the Holy Spirit to open our hearts so that we could receive Your Son as Our Savior.  We pray, Father, that You will teach us how to go beyond our knowledge of who You are and move into a living relationship with Your Son. May Jesus become the center of all we do.  May He know us.

The Fullness of the Harvest

John 3:7
Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’

Birth is the beginning of life.  To be born again is to begin to live anew.  We must have a new nature, new principles, new affections, new aims.  

By our first birth we were corrupted by sin.  Thus we must be made new creatures.  We must be entirely different from what we were before.  We cannot be the same.  We can look to nature for an example of the process.

A small tree rises from the soil and the farmer sees that it is a crabapple.  The farmer knows that the crabapple is healthy but it will never bear good fruit.  So the farmer grafts a golden delicious apple tree into the crabapple tree.  The new tree is now capable of bearing good fruit.  The roots, however, are still of the crabapple.  The roots will continue to produce crabapple shoots.  If the farmer does not prune the crabapple shoots, the new tree will not reach its potential for producing golden delicious apples.

So it is with us.  We were grafted into the body of Christ and given a new life by Our Savior.  The Holy Spirit indwells us to make sure that we are pruning away all of the sin from our old lives.  Unless we submit to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we will not reach the fullness that Almighty God planned for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for grafting us into Your kingdom through the sacrificial work of Your Son.  We rejoice that You have sent the Holy Spirit to help us to overcome the sin that we inherited and continues to rise up against us as we seek to live as new men and women in Christ.  We pray, Father, that You will provide the inspiration that we need to submit to the Holy Spirit and the strength that we need to stand against the enemy who comes to steal our fruit.  Through Your grace, may we see a full harvest from our lives.

Being Prepared for God’s House

Hebrews 12:5
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him.

Once we accept Jesus Christ as Our Savior, the Lord begins His work in us.  He promises that He will complete every good work in us.  He also promises that He will discipline us as needed to get us to the way, the truth and the life that is in Him.  He will leave no blemish untouched.

As the Lord works on us, we can think of ourselves as a piece of old furniture that needs refinishing.  Our old stain is no longer acceptable at the place where we will be displayed.  We need a new refined finish.  Our new finish cannot be applied until all of the old stain is removed.  The first part of our refinishing will be relatively easy as our old stain is stripped away.  This first step, however, will reveal the depth of the old stain.  This then leads to the tough part of the process.  To get rid of the stubborn stain will require sanding, scraping, chipping and maybe even gouging.  This tedious process will be repeated over and over until all the old stain is completely gone.  Only when all the stain has been removed completely will our final finish be applied.

Let us submit to the work of the Master.  After all, He is preparing us for a place in His house.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for preparing us to join You for all eternity.  We bless the name of Jesus for His precious blood that He shed so that we may be washed clean of every stain of sin in our lives.  We bow before You, Father, in full surrender to Your good work in us.  Take us into Your hands and prepare us to stand before You in the image of Your Son.  We rejoice in knowing that we will be in service to You in Your house forever.

Living Through the Dark Seasons

1 Thessalonians 5:9
Do not quench the Spirit.

The changing of seasons in nature is very easy to observe.  The new growth of the spring is always preceded by the dying out in the winter.  

So it is in our growth as Christians.  The Lord allows us to go through trials and periods of distance from Him in our relationship with Him.  How we respond during these periods of dying out determines the size and the fragrance of the new bloom.  The more we let ourselves die to Christ in the winters of our lives, the greater will be the produce of our spring times.  The more we let ourselves live in the flesh in our winters, the lesser will be the produce of our spring times.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for giving us seasons of growth in our relationship with You.  We rejoice in knowing that You have planned for us to go through these growing seasons with the Holy Spirit as our helper.  We pray, Lord, that when we enter into our periods of darkness that we may learn to respond to the checks of the Holy Spirit as we battle against the attacks of the flesh.  May Your strength be perfected in our weakness as we blossom in Your perfect light.