Beauty in your life- change your thoughts for a positive outlook
I believe there are two important inventions of my life time. One being the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). The freedom to get money out of your banking account any time you want has been a great convenience. Introduced by John Shepherd-Barron.
The other important inventions is the heart transplant. Invented by Dr Robert Jarvik a massive milestone in medical science. It has saved many lives since it was invented.
A promise from God always requires a process. God is more interested in the journey than the destination. His promise involves a journey of faith, obedience, trust, and perseverance.
There are steps in this process:
God offers us promises through His grace, but receiving them requires a response of faith, trusting His Word even when the path isn’t clear.
God provides the promises but we as believers walk the path of growth and character development to receive it in His perfect timing.
We may need to take a step of obedience, like Abraham did, leaving the familiar to go where God leads.
Staying humble, turning from sin, and walking with God through prayer and seeking Him, not just times but also in troubled times.
We need to meditate on biblical promises, speak them aloud, and agree with God’s Word, not our circumstances, living as if the promise has already been delivered.
This process involves perseverance and patience. The process builds faith and character, that often requires long suffering, and worshipping while waiting on God’s perfect timing.
God leads us to an intimate relationship with Him, and this is crucial because He makes promises based on knowing us and seeing what’s in our heart.
We need to recognize that entering into the promises of God often requires battling lies in our minds, which acts as a battleground for claiming our inheritance.
God is the promise keeper and His promises are assurances that He will fulfill His word and provide for us. Throughout the Bible, God has a flawless track record of keeping His promises from Noah to Moses.
God does not change Hebrews 13:8 emphasizes that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He is faithful to His promises encouraging us to hold on to hope.
As I was reading the other day, I read something that really suck with me, “Heaven is the gift, but our journey reveals the giver.”
We can trust God to keep His word simple because He is faithful in all He does (Psalm 145:13. God‘s faithfulness is the anchor in our storms. His nature guarantees His promises, because He cannot change. He cannot break His word. Rest in His faithfulness knowing every promises finds it’s “Yes” in Him.
My childhood wasn’t the greatest and because of my childhood and as a result, I’ve made some bad choices. It’s crazy how when your told every day you are a worthless human being can brainwash you into actually believing that. And believing that causes you to do something that “normal” people would never do.
Brains are powerful, complex organs that control many things like thought, memory, and emotion. Thankfully with a lot of hard work we can change how our brains perceive things. And once we can change our perspectives our life changes too. The hard thing is our desire to change. Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
If we can change our perspective it changes our lives.
There is a Parable of getting ready for Jesus in Matthew 25:1-13 planning for a beautiful wedding, 5 we’re ready and 5 we’re not. This is not physical readiness but Spiritual readiness.
Right now we must prepare for our wedding with Jesus, this means having Spirit-filled faith (the oil) and being clothed in Christ’s righteousness not just outward religious acts, to be ready for Jesus’s return as a bride getting ready for her groom.
I once heard a good example of being prepared for Jesus’s return. Imagine a groom standing and waiting for a beautiful bride. When she came down the aisle and he was awed at her beauty knowing she had prepared for this day with great excitement. Now imagine the same groom waiting for his bride but when she came down the aisle, she was in an old stained dress, and she hadn’t prepared at all and wasn’t excited in the least. Do you think the groom would accept her?
This parable symbolized the wise virgins’ preparedness with extra oil for their lamps, representing inward spiritual life, not borrowed faith. It’s about an intimate relationship with God, making us holy and prepared for the unexpected arrival of our Bridegroom Jesus.
There are a few key meaning we need to pay attention to:
“Let’s rejoice and be exceedingly glad, and let’s give glory to Him. For the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready. It was given to her that she would array herself in bright, pure, fine linen for the fine linen is the righteous act of the holy ones.”
I think we need to prepare our garments for the wedding and spiritual readiness. It’s important to cultivate our intimacy with God, not just with activity. We need to focus on abiding and receiving the God and the Holy Spirit, rather than just preforming religious duties and stop confusing activity with intimacy.
Actively seeking the Holy Spirit, he is the source of true faith and readiness, which cannot be earned or borrowed.
We need to live in righteousness which clothes us in Jesus’s righteousness through a life transformed by Him, this makes us holy and without blemish. Ephesians 5:27 tells us we should not have a spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but should be holy and without defect. The only ways to do that is through living righteously.
We need to stay, vigilant and present. This parable stresses constant readiness for Jesus‘s return, which could be at any moment.
The foolish virgins were unknown to the bridegroom, we need to be focused on knowing Him, not just knowing about Him.True preparation involves a personal, relational knowledge, and not just outward appearance.
In essence, preparing our wedding garment means having a heart filled with God’s spirit and a life clothed in his righteousness, ensuring we have genuine “oil” of faith and a relationship to welcome Jesus when He comes.
I don’t watch or play sports. But I watched when my son played baseball when he was young. I’ve always held the idea that sports were a pacification tactic historically formed to distract people from political apathy, loss of rights, or corruption. During the Roman Empire, the government called it “bread and circuses.” It’s difficult for me to move past the original purpose of sports because they were founded as a raw, essential, and symbolic ground for human survival, rather than merely entertainment for a business.
We are living in a time of deep, spiritual confusion, where truth is trampled, wickedness is celebrated, and the name of God is mocked. The nation is not only in political turmoil, it is in spiritual freefall.
Yet, we are not without hope. Throughout history, when people have cried out to God in repentance and desperation, God has always answered. In these challenging times, we need to have a supernatural move of God. An awakening needs to happen.
While good things are happening if people don’t become spiritually awakened nothing will change.
Many people are looking at God as the enemy. Satan counterfeits God’s work to create spiritual confusion. America is experiencing spiritual shifts, with rising personal spirituality with many seeking to fill that God shaped hole within them in other places.
The internet offers endless spiritual paths, from ancient wisdom to new age beliefs, along with a cluster of other religions brought in when the last administration was in charge.
Do be direct I think people want to come here for our prosperity, but then still want to practice and force their religion on us. America didn’t get prosperity by following other religions, we got it by following the One true God.
America isn’t less spiritual, but the fast shifting of social values and increased secularism leads people to questioning and often times confusion.
Satan aims to obscure truth, create doubt, and hinder people’s true purpose in life which leads to unclear identity, indecision, distorted reality, and emotional turmoil, through deceptive thoughts, distractions and manipulation. I believe this is what we are seeing today. We need to focus on Jesus, seek God’s Word, and have clear headed discernment of the times in which we are living.
1 John 4:1 says, “Beloved , do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world.” This verse instructs us to discern true spiritual messages from false ones, the key test being whether they are spirit confesses the Jesus aligns with their own spirit.
My first computer I had was a HP laptop with Windows 3, which sounds almost crazy now.
It looked similar to this:
We’ve all been caught in the storm watching flood waters rise, and wondering how we got there. Thinking where is God in our storm when our arms are weary, our souls are battered, and life has left us breathless.
It is here, in the midst of the storm, that we have two choices. Am I going to allow God to use this storm, or allow the storm to shatter us, and push us away from God? In the midst of stress, pain or heartache, it can be so easy to allow the storm to make us bitter, to let it drive us away from everything God has planned for us.
When it comes down to it, this is a choice only we can make. We can let God refine, shape, and define us through this broken place, or it can sweep in like a tornado and destroy everything in its path. We can hunker down in our pain or depression or loneliness, or we can lean into God, and allow Him to lead our steps and fill our souls.
It’s times like this, as we sit in the storm, it’s easy to feel alone, like no one sees and no one cares. But even in the storm, at the darkest moments of your life, He is there. And because He is God even in the storm, you cannot be list to Him, even in the storm you are still His child. He saw this storm before it even reached you, and had already worked out what you need to go through it. He will see you through the storm. But trusting God is the key.
At times it can feel impossible to trust God when we are struggling in the storm He knew was coming but did not save us from and from our perspective to see why we had to endure the storm. The answer is, because we live in a fallen world, or God had a plan through it all, or because we made poor choices.
Regardless of the reason why, God can show up “big” and pour His grace, mercy, and love into our lives in our storm-battered souls. Sometimes we have to go through a storm so that it can strip away everything false that we rely on so we are forced to rely on God.
Our storms are the thing He uses to reveal His goodness and love. Through it, we often see His power in great ways.
I think a great example of this is when the disciples Jesus performed the miracles of feeding the 5000 in Matthew 14. He immediately told them to get into the boat and go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, while He dismissed the crowds. He sent them, and they obeyed.
Then while Jesus was alone praying, the wind started howling and their boat started rocking. They were afraid they cried out, after they had struggled for a long time, battered by the wind and waves before Jesus showed up to rescue them, the winds ceased. (Matthew 14:32). Then the disciples cried out, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Between the time Jesus sent them across the Sea of Galilee, and the time He arrived to save them, did they wonder if He had forgotten them? Were they angry that He had sent them? Did they doubt His faithfulness?
Even knowing He is God in the storm isn’t always enough in the face of the storm, it’s still easy to find doubt creep in.
God told us in Isaiah 43:2, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned, the flames we not set you ablaze.”
I think it’s important that when we are going through the storm, we need to cling to all the past storms God has been with us through. The storms of life are used to build on what we learned when everything was going right. As uncomfortable as the painful seasons are in our lives we need them to grow and stretch us.
The storms may not be sent by God, but He can still use them. They teach us to lean into prayer and lean into the Bible.
They reaffirm what we know in our hearts, for the next time we go through a storm. And give us a solid foundation to stand with confidence that He is God in the storm, and He will never abandon us.
“So do not fear, for I am with you, do not be dismayed, for I am your God, I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” -Isaiah 41:10
My pastor sends out a Psalm every week to pray and meditate on here is this weeks:
I have always tried to make new things when I cook. I have a few go to favorites one of them is a chicken burrito bowl. It’s a variety of vegetables with rice and meat.
Jesus demonstrated a strong leadership style, particularly during his trial and crucifixion, he actively challenged the religious leaders and expose their wrongdoing. His actions reflect a refusal to be a passive victim, instead embodying a transformative approach to love and resistance against evil.
Many people mistakenly view Jesus as passive due to his acceptance of suffering and death. This interpretation overlooks His active engagement in confronting injustice and evil. Yet Jesus demonstrated a strong leadership style that was neither passive or violent.
The Third Way
Jesus exemplified what is known as the “third way, a response to threats that avoid both passivity and aggression. This approach included:
An example of this was when He was being questioned by the religious leaders, Jesus turned their inquiries back on them, maintaining His dignity and identity.
Jesus took decisive action that reflected His active leadership.
He had an active and passive obedience.
This describes the different aspects of Jesus’s mission. His active obedience referred to His perfect adherence to God‘s law throughout His life, while His passive obedience pertained to His suffering and death, which paid the penalty for humanity’s sin. Both are essential for understanding His role as our Savior.
Jesus was not a passive figure, He actively engaged with the world, demonstrating leadership through love, compassion, and righteous action.
Jesus’s command to “turn the other cheek” is sometimes interpreted as a blanket instruction to be passive in all situations, rather than a specific command. Turning the other cheek means to refuse personal revenge and overcome evil with love, not passive submission or cowardice. It’s not about being a doormat or allowing yourself to be abused.
I think I only complain when I get migraines. I can pretty much deal with anything else without complaining. But, with migraines I am not able to concentrate, or think straight at that.
While we live in a broken world God doesn’t want us to ignore or deny what’s hurting us, or making us angry. I think when we complain we are supposed to do it in a way that honors Him. No matter what we complain about God is still in control of them.
From Pity to Praise