Tag: treasures of heaven

Absolute Abandonment to the Father

Mark 10:21
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

On earth, only Jesus has achieved absolute abandonment to The Father. Only He could. Yet He commanded His disciples to follow Him. He was asking them to follow the lead of their Master. He was asking them to release their hold on the things of this earth and take hold of His kingdom.

As disciples of Jesus Christ in this age, we are also called to follow the lead of Our Master. We are therefore called to be diligent in the constant process of releasing all of our carnal desires as we fully surrender to the will of the Father in our lives. This is an ongoing and arduous process for each of us.

In our time on earth, none of us will reach the point of absolute abandonment to the Father as Jesus did. Only when we reach our place in heaven with Jesus, will we have completed the process and stand before the Father in the perfect and pure image of Our Savior.

Let us continuously recognize and renounce our earthly desires through the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us begin shedding all of our shortcomings one by one through the grace of Almighty God and the saving work of Jesus Christ. Let us commit ourselves to unconditional identification with Our Savior.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your precious love and provision. We proclaim our love for You and humbly offer to You all that You have given us. Father, we pray that we will be led by the Holy Spirit to surrender all that we have, all that we will every have, all that we are and all that we will ever be to You. May we exchange the things of this earth for the treasures of Your kingdom. May we take hold of the fullness of the eternal life in Jesus as we release our hold on our worldly possessions and desires. We ask all these things in the name of Our Lord, Our Master and Our Eternal King, Jesus Christ.

The Childlike Joy of Christmas

Matthew 18:3
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

What a wonderful time Christmas is to a small child in our culture. They go to bed on Christmas Eve eagerly anticipating the arrival of the gift giver. They burst from their beds on Christmas morning knowing that they will find gifts with their names on them under the Christmas tree. Many of the gifts will be there simply for their pleasure. Other gifts will be there for their comfort and provision. They receive them all with great joy. All the while, they never doubt that the gift giver will provide for them that which they could not provide for themselves.

This is the type of reliance that God wants to see from all of us. God wants us to rely on Him for everything without ever considering that we could provide for ourselves just as well. Of course, the gifts that He gives to us are far more valuable than anything we could find under a tree. Almighty God provides us with the gift of life. He sustains our lives with every single breath we take. Along the way, He sees that our pleasures, our provisions and our comforts are taken care of. Then He provides the greatest gift of all – eternal life in His heavenly kingdom. All He ever asks from us is to accept His Son as Our Savior.

Let us learn to respond to Our Heavenly Father like small children. Let us run to Him for everything. Let us seek the arms of our gracious Father whether we need comfort, provision or direction. Let us rejoice in knowing that He has the power to provide whatever it is that we need or desire. Most of all, let us completely trust in Him for the true treasures of His eternal kingdom.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the blessings and the benefits that we receive as Your children. We bless the name of Jesus who made it possible for us to inherit Your kingdom and all of its provision and protection for all eternity. We pray, Father, that we be renewed in our minds so that we may become as simple, as humble and as teachable as small children. May we discard forever all the self-seeking lifestyles, distrust and deceit that we learn from the world. May we walk in the excellence of Our Savior. We ask all these things in the name of Our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

Harvest Beyond Our Imagination

Matthew 25:18
But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.

What a shame it is to accept our salvation and then to remain mostly unchanged by the Holy Spirit within us. In doing so, we are like the servant that took the talent from his master and buried it in the ground without doing anything with it to increase its value to the master.

When we do not access all that is available to us through the Holy Spirit, like the non-productive servant we will see the flow of the gifts from Our Master cease. We will see ourselves denied the opportunity to reap from all that God has stored up for us. Remember Jesus Christ gave everything for us. He held back nothing. He expects the same from us in return.

Also remember that Jesus rewards those who are faithful in their service to Him. If we look for and seek the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we open our access to all the treasures of heaven. We enable God to prepare us to serve Him and bear fruit for Him in the manner that He planned for us. Often we will find that our harvest for the King is well beyond the limits of our imagination.

Let us eagerly seek the instruction and guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us hold back nothing from the Lord. Let us insure through our total submission that we reap all that God has planned for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gifts and talents that You have given us. We call on Your Holy Spirit to take us beyond what we see and understand about our own capabilities to a place where we are releasing things in our lives that are not even imaginable to us now. May all the gain we see and all the fruit we bear be for Your honor and Your glory. We ask all these things in the name of Our Bountiful Lord, Jesus Christ.

Remembering the Christmas Event

1 John 4:9
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

Christmas is the celebration of a spectacular supernatural event. Our Heavenly Father sent His Son to this earth so that we might have eternal life through Him. This event was one that could not be accomplished by the efforts of man. Only God could orchestrate such an act of love and supernatural endowment.

There are scoffers around each Christmas season who try to deny the great gift that has been provided for all mankind to receive. They try to logically dissuade others from having faith in the true story of Christmas. Yet to do so, they must try to make others believe that the God who directs the earth in its orbit, who feeds the burning furnace of the sun and who upholds the entire universe itself will prove unable to fulfill His own promises.

Is it possible that the One who hangs the world on nothing is unable to deliver on His promises to His children? Does He not hold the winds and the clouds and the oceans themselves in His hand? How can He fail His children? We have every reason to be absolutely firm in our faith.

Let us celebrate openly and with great fervor the birth of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Let us freely share the love that He has manifest in us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for sending Your Son to live in this world so that we may be supernaturally endowed with His presence in our lives and we may become heirs to Your eternal kingdom. We bless the name of Your Son, Jesus, who became poor so that we may have all the treasures of heaven. We rejoice in knowing that the Holy Spirit is with us each day to provide us with the peace that only Jesus can offer. We pray that as we receive these wondrous gifts that we surrender to the reign of Our Savior in our lives. May our lives become our love gifts to You, Father. May the world know us by our fervor for Our Savior. We ask all these things in the name of Our New Born King, Jesus Christ.

The Regenerating Grace of God

1 Corinthians 1:30
God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.

Without Jesus Christ in our lives, we are depraved and corrupt. With the regenerating grace of God through His Son, Jesus, we are benefactors of the redemptive process. We are freed from sin and made pure and holy in the eyes of Almighty God. Through this salvation process, we receive all the fullness of the treasures of heaven so that we are fit for the service to which we have been eternally called.

Are we willing for God to make holiness as real in us as it is in His Son, Jesus? The sanctification process begins at the instant that we humbly receive Jesus Christ as Our Redeemer. The sanctification process flourishes as we deny ourselves and rely entirely on Jesus to release His holiness in our lives. The sanctification process is a continuous journey until the day we stand before the Lord in the fullness of our completed holiness.

Sanctification is impossible in our flesh alone. It is only possible with the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit in full operation in our lives. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we access all the perfection and holiness that is Jesus Christ. As long as we remain surrendered to Our Savior and seek the ongoing work of His Holy Spirit in our lives, we will live a life of holiness on this earth. It will not be uninterrupted holiness like we will experience in our glorified bodies, but it will be steady and it will be pleasing to the One who is calling us to our eternal place of glory.

Let us strive to be holy as Our Savior is holy. Let us learn to rely entirely on the indwelling Holy Spirit as we battle our tormenting flesh and the attacks of the enemy. Let us show the world around us our freedom from sin that they may be drawn to Our Redeemer.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for taking us from the corruption of our old man into a condition of holiness in our new man in Christ. We worship You and bless Your name from the fount of holiness that Our Savior has created within us. We pray that we will receive the grace that we need to remain steadfast on our journey of sanctification. We seek to have our journey become a living testimony to those who you have placed in our lives. We pray for the wisdom and the courage to share our sanctification story with the flock that you have given us. We ask all these things in the name of the Holy One of God, Jesus Christ.

Lacking One Thing

Mark 10:21
And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”

On earth, only Jesus has achieved absolute abandonment to The Father. Only He could. Yet He commanded His disciples to follow Him. He was asking them to follow the lead of their Master. He was asking them to release their hold on the things of this earth and take hold of His kingdom.

As disciples of Jesus Christ in this age, we are also called to follow the lead of Our Master. We are therefore called to be diligent in the constant process of releasing all of our carnal desires as we fully surrender to the will of the Father in our lives. This is an ongoing and arduous process for each of us.

In our time on earth, none of us will reach the point of absolute abandonment to the Father as Jesus did. Only when we reach our place in heaven with Jesus, will we have completed the process and stand before the Father in the perfect and pure image of Our Savior.

Let us continuously recognize and renounce our earthly desires through the inspiring work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us begin shedding all of our shortcomings one by one through the grace of Almighty God and the saving work of Jesus Christ. Let us commit ourselves to unconditional identification with Our Savior.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your precious love and provision. We proclaim our love for You and humbly offer to You all that You have given us. Father, we pray that we will be led by the Holy Spirit to surrender all that we have, all that we will every have, all that we are and all that we will ever be to You. May we exchange the things of this earth for the treasures of Your kingdom. May we take hold of the fullness of the eternal life in Jesus as we release our hold on our worldly possessions and desires. We ask all these things in the name of Our Lord, Our Master and Our Eternal King, Jesus Christ.

Preparing Harvest for the King

Matthew 25:18
But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money.

What a shame it is to accept our salvation and then to remain mostly unchanged by the Holy Spirit within us. In doing so, we are like the servant that took the talent from his master and buried it in the ground without doing anything with it to increase its value to the master.

When we do not access all that is available to us through the Holy Spirit, like the non-productive servant we will see the flow of the gifts from Our Master cease. We will see ourselves denied the opportunity to reap from all that God has stored up for us. Remember Jesus Christ gave everything for us. He held back nothing. He expects the same from us in return.

Also remember that Jesus rewards those who are faithful in their service to Him. If we look for and seek the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we open our access to all the treasures of heaven. We enable God to prepare us to serve Him and bear fruit for Him in the manner that He planned for us. Often we will find that our harvest for the King is well beyond the limits of our imagination.

Let us eagerly seek the instruction and guidance of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Let us hold back nothing from the Lord. Let us insure through our total submission that we reap all that God has planned for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gifts and talents that You have given us. We call on Your Holy Spirit to take us beyond what we see and understand about our own capabilities to a place where we are releasing things in our lives that are not even imaginable to us now. May all the gain we see and all the fruit we bear be for Your honor and Your glory. We ask all these things in the name of Our Bountiful Lord, Jesus Christ.