Tag: goodness

Seeking and Obeying the Counsel of the Holy Spirit

2 Peter 1:3
His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

God sets the vision for our lives and puts everything in place for us to fulfill the plan. He provides His Holy Spirit to stand by us, to guide us and to instruct us in the person, the grace and the righteousness that is Jesus Christ. There is absolutely nothing in this world that can stop us from meeting the plans that Almighty God has set aside for us.

We must, however, take all the small steps needed to move from one place to the next higher place that God has planned for us. We must be obedient to the urgings of the Holy Spirit as we overcome the callings of our flesh. We must allow the Holy Spirit to move us from a knowledge of Our Savior into a meaningful relationship with Him.

Along the way, Satan will challenge each and every step. And once we really start making progress, Satan will turn his evil on those around us, especially those close to us. Built up by our faith and strengthened by the Holy Spirit, we will overcome. As we surrender to the whispers of Our Helper, our tiny steps of obedience will take us to our special calling and allow us to live godly lives through the One who has called us.

Let us make the Lord, Jesus Christ, first in our lives. Let us learn to seek His counsel in all things. May the voice of His Holy Spirit drown out all the noise that the world sends to keep us from our manifest destiny in Christ.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your promise to complete Your good work in our lives. Thank You for the faith that You provide us through the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We pray that You will help us to build a relationship with Your Son and His Holy Spirit who has been sent to be Our Helper. Help us to become tuned in to every tiny whisper from the Holy Spirit that reminds us of Your promises and guides us in faith on our journey of sanctification. We ask all these things in the name of the Anointed One, Jesus Christ.

God Wants to Get His Hands on You

Jeremiah 18:4
And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do.

God has the power and the authority to raise up nations to do His good work. He also may dispose of nations as He sees fit if they do not please Him. He certainly has the power to rule over individual lives. He will always rule and reign perfectly according to His justice and His goodness.

Our Father in heaven rules over the lives of all men through His Son, Jesus. Jesus puts His hands on each of us to insure that we are molded uniquely in accordance with the Father’s plans for our lives. Jesus is the Great Potter. He keeps His hands on us, His clay, at all times. He is in no hurry to form us according to His purposes. He knows that He will take whatever time is necessary to get us to conform to the purposes that His Father has for our lives. He will even break us, the clay, if it is necessary for Him to see us reach our chosen form.

As the clay, all we have to do is surrender to the hands of the potter on our lives. From the point of surrender, we should have no concerns for the potter will form us perfectly. We simply wait on the glory of our finishing.

Let us surrender all that we are to the hands of the Great Potter. Let us rejoice in knowing that there is no better place to be than in His hands.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You that You have good and perfect plans for our lives. We thank You for Your patience as You mold us into the good and faithful servants that will stand before You one day in the image of Your Son, Jesus. We pray for the grace to surrender to the hands of Your Son on our lives. We pray for the strength to endure through the shaping process. May we become the perfect vessels of Your love that You created us to be. We ask all these things in the name of the Great Potter, Jesus Christ.

The Inexhaustible Treasure of Grace

John 1:16
And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

There is nothing more complete, more sufficient or more perfect than the fullness of Jesus Christ. To borrow from the teachings of Charles Spurgeon, the fullness of Christ is reflected in His Deity, His manhood, the atoning power of His Blood, His righteousness, His power over death and His endless grace to pardon, to regenerate, to sanctify, to preserve and to perfect.

The fullness of what we have received from God can be summed up in one word grace. It is the great gift that we receive through His Son, Jesus, that we do not deserve and could never earn. It is the unmerited good will of God directed toward us. It is the gift that cannot be received by unrepentant sinners. It can only be received by those that have been washed clean by the Blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ. It is all that has been perfectly and completely prepared for all men by Our Savior.

And finally, a perhaps most importantly, God’s grace through Jesus Christ is cumulative and never ending. When we live in the fullness of Savior, we receive goodness upon goodness, joy upon joy and abundance upon abundance. It is the good will of God towards us and the work of God in us.

Let us humble ourselves before Our Savior. Let us surrender to His presence in our lives. Let us prepare ourselves to receive the fullness of His amazing grace.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the unmerited favor that You bestow on us through Your Son, Jesus. We bless the name of Our Savior for making it possible for us to receive Your unlimited flow of grace in our lives. We pray, Father, that You will open our hearts to receive the fullness of Your Son, Jesus. We ask that You show us how to tap into the inexhaustible treasure that He holds in His hands for us. We ask all these things in the name of the source of all grace, Jesus Christ.

Our Final Destination is a Testimony to God’s Faithfulness

Colossians 3:2
Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

As we move toward the new year, let us follow the instruction of God’s Holy Word and set our minds on things that are above in heaven where Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father. Let us intentionally replace the images of sorrow, suffering, personal horror and overwhelming struggles continuing to pile up in the daily news from the world, and perhaps even in our own personal worlds, with images of goodness such as the the joyous images of the Christmas season that are fresh in our minds. Let us recognize that our current reality is in God’s future plan for us and not in today’s news. Let us grasp with hope and faith that God has a good and perfect plan for every broken person and for every painful situation. Let us reorder our thinking so that the power of Heaven can be released in our lives.

Know that it will not be easy to take the higher path. The pathway to fear and despair are easy roads directed downward by emotion and logic. Certainly the world will be ready to mock us if we dare to take the higher road when our destination cannot be seen with the natural eye.

Let us be strengthened by the knowledge that we are always secure in Jesus Christ no matter what is happening around us. Let us rejoice in knowing that our final destination will be our testimony of God’s faithfulness.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the blessed hope and assurance that we have in Your Son, Jesus Christ. We bless His name for He is our anchor, firm and secure. We pray, Lord, that You will open our eyes so that we may see Your goodness in the dark world that surrounds us. We ask that the Holy Spirit renew and reorder our thinking so that we may align our thinking with Your heart and Your kingdom purpose. We ask all these things in the name of Our Hope that springs eternal, Jesus Christ.

God Only Releases What is in Alignment with Our Eternal Good

Matthew 20:23
He said to them, “You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

The apostles, James and John, were seeking a position in heaven that was not in the will of the Father. God had a place prepared for them that certainly exceeded their imaginations, but it was not at the right and left hand of Jesus as they had asked.

We have been taught that we can ask anything in the name of Jesus and it will be granted to us. This is true, but our solicitations can be granted only if what we ask is in the will of The Father. This can cause spiritual confusion for us when our prayers are not answered or, more correctly, have not been answered according to the desires of our flesh.

God has been faithful in providing institutions on earth which can help us to understand how this precept works. As parents, we can recall times that we withheld things from our children because we knew that is was not the right thing for them at the time. What they were asking for did not fit in with the overall good that we were seeking for them. As business leaders, we have denied the requests of good and faithful employees because it was not in alignment with the company’s vision and business plan.

Almighty God has prepared things for us that have been in place before the foundations of the earth were formed. Everything that He grants us through His Son is in accordance with His good and perfect plan for our lives in His kingdom. When we reach our place in the kingdom, we will find it to be beyond our imaginations.

Let us seek the will of God in our lives. Let us live confidently in knowing that the Father will release to us everything that we ask for that is in alignment with our eternal good. Let us praise Him when He withholds something from us for we know that He has something better planned for us. Let us rejoice in His goodness and His faithfulness.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for preparing a place for us in Your kingdom. We bless the name of Your Son, who You have given us to be our mediator as we seek Your grace in our lives. Teach us, Lord, to seek those things that are according to Your sovereign will and pleasure. We pray that the Holy Spirit will redirect us when our petitions are of our flesh and not of the fullness of Jesus Christ who dwells within us. We ask all these things in the name of the True Foundation, Jesus Christ.

Praising God with the Love and Delight that He has Placed in Our Lives

Psalm 150:6
Let everything that has breath praise the LORD! Praise the LORD!

We are stirred up in our hearts to praise God. We are first moved to praise Him for the magnificence of His creation. We are inspired by the Holy Spirit to praise Him for His holiness and His love expressed through the redemptive work of His Son, Jesus. We learn to praise Him because of His power and His glory that we see expressed in our lives every day.

Let us praise God out of the faith that He has built in us through His Holy Spirit. Let us praise God as we are comforted by His goodness and His grace. Let us praise God with the joy of the expectation of life in His eternal kingdom. Let us praise God with the unshakeable confidence that the victory is ours through God’s greatest gift to us, His Son, Jesus.

Let us praise God with the love and delight that He alone has placed in our hearts. Let our every breath be filled with praise for Our Savior, Our Redeemer, Our King. Let us praise Him by allowing our lives to be living testimonies of the Son of God who has come to dwell within us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we lift our voices toward You in high praise. We bring our thanksgiving for Your precious Lamb, Jesus. We proclaim His holiness and His righteousness. We give thanks for His presence in our lives. We pray Father that You open our eyes so that we may see the presence of Your Son in the tiny things in life as well as the large things. May our every breath praise Him as we come know just how dear He is to You and to us. We ask all these things in the name of the One whose steadfast love never ceases, Jesus Christ.