Tag: Jesus

Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled

I wasn’t sure how to start this post, I was going to go in-depth into the scriptures but I didn’t feel led to do that, the only verse that stuck out to me after praying about this post was in John 13:21 “After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified,” Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”

To hear those words coming out of Jesus’ mouth is to understand He was 100% God and 100% man. He felt what we felt, He had emotions, He knew the road ahead of Him and knew that the stage was finally being set for His death. He then later tells the disciples that He will soon be departing (John 13:33) again the disciples do not fully understand what He meant by that. And finally, He told Peter that he would deny Him 3 times! (John 13:38)

But the response that He tells His disciples is the best part. He tells them all in John 14:1 “Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God believe also in Me.” In this life friend, we hear bad news practically every day. Do we let the anxiety of it all build up? It is so depressing if one were to focus on the troubles of life. Jesus then tells the disciples of a promise. “…In my father’s house are many rooms. if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.” What a relief and what a promise! That the troubles of life will not always be forever but those whom God calls his own when Jesus returns on the clouds to rapture those who are in Christ will meet Him in the air. What a day that will be.

What To Do with Stress

Stress can wear us down and put us in a place that’s almost too hard to escape from. It’s easier to make excuses not to do something than it is to actually accomplish it. Why is that? Why is it our natural instinct to sit and dwell in our stress, than to think of ways to overcome them with God? Why can’t our first instinct be to hand it to God and allow Him to work through us? It’s because we are HUMAN! We are fearfully and wonderfully made. God designed us so that we have Faith and carry it with us for others to see. If everyone lived a stress-free life, when would we have the opportunity to hand things over to God and see his works be revealed? When we give our lives to God to be handled, he shows us our faith is for His good.

Jesus walked this earth to show people his father’s greatness and holiness. Jesus healed the blind and weak to rise because he wanted as many followers of his father as he could gain. He showed those miracles so people would believe. God gave us his only son so we could live with him in Heaven. He wants that for us all. It takes faith to walk with Jesus. It takes Jesus to deal with what is given to us each and every day.

To simplify our lives and to fill it with the right people we must first put our hearts in the hands of Jesus. If our hearts are not filled with the love of God then our dreams, will not be placed there for the right purpose.

I know it’s hard to determine if we or God placed our dreams within our hearts. I know I struggle with the idea of is this for my own selfish reasons? Or is this because I need to move to a place in my life that God has in store for me? I first pray about it. If I’m still praying about it for years, then it’s most likely God telling me to move forward. Remove the obstacles that prevent God from working in your life. He has a grand design for you. How comforting is it to know that the creator of the stars and universe knows you by name and has a plan for your life? Lay your fears, stress, sorrows, and unknowns at his feet because He can only take them away and make something life-changing for you.

Who is Like our God?

When we ask this question to ourselves, several thoughts come to mind. For me, the attributes of God come to mind like His goodness, His sovereignty, His faithfulness, His love, and gracious Father.

And then I think back, on all the times of His goodness, His faithfulness, and His presence is evident in my life. The memories cascade of the trials and hardships, in sickness and near death that I’ve experienced and have come to ask the question over and over in awe “Who is Like our God?”

The book of Psalm 113 asked this same question:

 Praise the Lord!
Praise, O servants of the Lord,
    praise the name of the Lord!

2 Blessed be the name of the Lord
    from this time forth and forevermore!
3 From the rising of the sun to its setting,
    the name of the Lord is to be praised!

4 The Lord is high above all nations,
    and his glory above the heavens!
5 Who is like the Lord our God,
    who is seated on high,
6 who looks far down
    on the heavens and the earth?
7 He raises the poor from the dust
    and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
8 to make them sit with princes,
    with the princes of his people.
9 He gives the barren woman a home,
    making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord!
Psalm 113 1-9 ESV

The only way to know what He is like and to describe Him is to know Him. Not just to know of Him; You see, God loves companionship, He loves relationships, and He longs to commune with His creation. He is always attentive, He never slumbers nor sleeps and He always keeps His promises.

Q: How do we know God?

A: We know God through Jesus, He is the door.

John 10: 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.”

We can search for hope, security, and peace in a religion, in a church, in a person but at the end of our journey we will find out that we have been looking in all the wrong places. Jesus is always inviting the prodigals, the lost, and the hurting into a relationship with Him. Who do you say God is in your life?

If you don’t know Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Saviour, Do not wait! He loves you, He sent His Son to be the sacrifice for our sins so that in Him we may have life and life abundantly.

Romans 10:9 9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

Against All Hope Part 2

28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.”29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.” – Mark 5:28-29

You don’t hope for what you see, you hope for what is to come.

It was 12 long years of searching, spending and hoping for a cure. A blood disorder that no doctor could find a remedy for. I wonder if she, this lady who had this issue that we read in Mark 5 ever at times gave up? She did have a good reason to stop searching, to give up hope, but she pressed on even into the crowd.

I believe at times we may have an “incurable” type of issue that we might have. Something so big that it’s not within our power to receive or have the questions answered right then and there. God works in mysterious ways, I’ve known of individuals who have gotten instantly delivered from drugs, and alcohol and others who took many years to receive deliverance. We may have to wait, 1, 5, 10 years or longer until, not our search, but our cure, and our Promise is met, and our deliverance is met. We never stop searching, even though we know the One to search for. We must never stop or lose momentum in the waiting, in the pursuing. But simply come to him with the faith that touches His hem.

2. Will I let anything stop me from believing?

Stop and think, what is your “incurable” issue? What is it that you are needing from the Lord today? Is it healing? restoration? deliverance?

Against All Hope

If the ups and downs of our lives were pinpoints on a graph, what would yours look like? Would it be one straight line going up? Or would it look like a mountain range with highs and lows? Throughout our lives, we encounter blessings, victories, trials, and hardships. But how are we remaining hopeful even in the lows of life?

Jesus told his disciples in John 16:33 “In this world, you will have trouble but take heart! I have overcome the World.”

So when you’re against all hope when it feels as if the odds are stacked against you. Ask yourself

  1. Will I still believe it anyways?
  2. Will I let anything stop me from believing?
  3. Will I always expect God to answer?

Abraham was “against all hope,” it says in Romans 4:18 “In Hope, he believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told.”

Abraham hoped when there was no hope. The hope he had made no human sense, Abraham hoped when the facts were contrary to logic. They were both well past the age of childbearing but “Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age since she considered him faithful who had promised.” – Hebrews 11:11

They didn’t let what was contrary become the roadblock to their promise, they were against all hope but yet they still believed. What is it in your life that you’ve been believing for? Are you hoping against all hope?

Because of the Blood

Part 1 – He made us Righteous

Have you ever stopped and realized what the Blood of Jesus has done for you? Have you ever thought of what He has bought for us? What do we get to experience because of the Blood?

  1. He made us Righteous
  • Question: What is righteousness? Answer – A right standing before God.
  • Romans 5:9 “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”

Christ lived a life that completely fulfilled God’s demand of righteousness and thus offered himself on the cross as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. Our own doing, and our own achievements could by no means compare to the sacrifice of what Christ gave.

Without Christ paying the penalty for sin, we would have never been justified

Isaiah 64:6 “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the ind, take us away.”

Nothing makes us good enough to be accepted in God’s family than only through the Blood of Jesus, that’s when we become justified, that’s when we become righteous before God, He sees the blood when He sees you, He doesn’t see your past, he doesn’t see the mistakes, he sees a blood-bought child of God.

Question: What made Christ become the ultimate sacrifice for us to be made righteous? His Love.

JOHN 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son so that whosoever would believe in Him, would not perish but have eternal life.”

— Christ became the lightning rod, absorbing all of God’s wrath so that you and I could stand justified, righteous in his presence!

– When you question the love that God has for you, look to the Cross!

“God made Him who knew no sin to become sin so that you and I might become the righteousness of God” – 2 Corinthians 5:21

He Was Right Their Waiting

John 4:7-15   7 A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

This story explains the longing of the human soul, the desire to fill the void that man alone cannot fill but yet so many are visiting these empty wells that can never satisfy. But only He can fill. Here are 3 key areas of how He meets us where we are.

  1. He breaks down barriers

The Woman was a Samaritan and Jesus was a Jew. That’s like having a democrat and republican in the same room, there’s going to be some tension. Not only that, but a man talking to a woman was not of that time. But history tells us that the samaritans and Jews was fierce and long-standing. It dates all the way back to the patriarchs. 

Jesus doesn’t care about your social status or what party you vote for. He rises above all that Because He sees through your walls, He knows the shape you are in and He wants to be right in the middle of it all. But will we let Him?

  1. He knows our needs

Jesus knows this World cannot satisfy the heart. He knows the possessions, talents, gifts that He has given us will not fill us with contenment but only will make us long for more. The World is an empty well, but The Well only offers the Living Water. He met this woman because He knew she needed to hear Him and to see Him. 

  1. He is always waiting

She came for the water, but she didn’t know of a Living Water who was already their waiting for her. In our darkest moments, in our time of a need. He is always there at the well, no matter how fast we run to that Well, He is always there waiting before we get there. What is it that you need today? Come to Well today.