A Year Of Abundance

As we enter the Jewish New Year 5183 (2023 for America). The abundance that we will be experiencing can go either way Blessings or Curses. We can either choose life or death.

What the world, and we receive will be based on what we are sowing. Joshua 24:15 says:

If you decide that it’s a bad thing to worship God, then choose a god you’d rather serve -and do it today. Choose one of the gods your ancestors worshiped from the country beyond The River, or one of the gods of the Amorites, on whose land you’re now living. As for me and my family, we’ll worship God

Joshua 24-15 -the message

The people of the World are dulled -hard of hearing, preventing repentance and healing.

We will reap what we sow.

The account of the farmer planting seed. When anyone hears news of the kingdom and doesn’t take it in, it just remains on the surface, and said the evil one comes along and plucks it right out of that person’s heart. This is the seed the farmer scatters on the road (Matthew). This is part of the parable in Matthew 13.

We should all be hearing from the Lord everyday. For, we cannot live on bread alone. But, what does this mean? It means that human beings need more than the simple necessities to keep the biologically alive, they need things that feed them mentally, spiritually, aesthetically (artistic), and they need things that give their life meaning.

The abundance this year can either be a blessing, or a curse.

This year I plan on seeing and hearing from God like never before. I will choose to path that brings blessings and not curses.

This year will be a harvest of abundance like never before. What will you choose abundant blessings or abundant curses?

Being Controlled By Fear

Today, many people in the world are facing a greater fear that they have ever felt in their lifetime. Crises of all kinds, and abundant misinformation, inflation, and crime is taking our sanity on a never ending roller coaster ride. Our world has never felt less peace and more fear-filled.

Fear is not a new concept in our world. From the beginning of Scripture and throughout its pages, fear is present and acted upon. While fear may always be part of our lives, how we respond to fear is what matters the most.

It’s easy to become controlled by fear, we just have to remember the scenes from Covid from people buying up all the supplies in the grocery stores and the fighting over who was wearing a mask and who wasn’t. If we turn on the news it’s hard not to become fearful from what is being reported.

God had a call for everyone’s life and fear will hold you back from fulfilling that calling. 2 Timothy 1:7 says “For Gid had not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.”

The spirit of fear is tormenting. It intends to keep you from fulfilling your destiny that God has on your life; from living a joyful, peaceful life.

Fear is a natural, powerful, and primitive human emotion. Sometimes fear stems from real threats but it can also originate from imagined dangers.

Fear is a powerful emotion that can be used against us. Fear is our most powerful emotion and the one that motivates us the most. Nothing makes us more uncomfortable than fear.

And, we have so many fears, pain, disease, injury, loss, failure, abandonment, crime, and so on. We get scared because of what we imagine could happen. Once we become frightened, everything seems Scarlet, and our fear response becomes amplified.

It’s called potentiation when your fear becomes intensified and you react more powerfully. For example, if you are afraid of snakes, and you see one, you might jump back and scream – even if it’s a harness garter snake.

Last week I heard someone refer to the news as “Fear Porn.” The media must sell advertising in order to stay in business and to sell advertised it must attract an audience, to attract an audience it must offer interesting news. And the type of news that attracts the most people is negative, and negative news that inspires fear attracts the largest audience. Anymore the News they cover isn’t based on facts, they are only in it for the money. And because human beings tend to have what’s known as Negative Bias.

We are more likely to remember negative experiences than positive ones. We dwell on and ruminate more over, insults, criticism, failure, loss and abandonment. with the news media advertising fear, death, food shortages and sometimes even criticism for the past few years. Even when we turn it off, all that negativity is soaked up in our brains, and our flight or fight response goes into overdrive.

It’s our Negativity Bias that curs us to notice bad news. The news media know this and use it to their advantage. There’s an old saying in television news: “If it bleeds; it leads.” The more a news story scares you, the more likely you are to watch it and follow it.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed and hence clamorous to be led to safety.

Fear not only sells more advertising but it also gets more votes. Politicians, successful ones at least, also understand our negativity bad and will exploit it to gain power. Fear is how our governments get us to follow the laws to take away our freedom.

It’s a fact that social control is best managed through fear.

Do Not Let The Devil Win

Have you ever felt like everyone and everything has abandoned you; that you were totally alone and that no one cared what happened to you?

I think everyone of us at some time in our life has felt this way or will feel all alone in this way.

Life can throw us some weird things so and make us feel things we didn’t know we could. I have been in those places and I’m not proud of the bad choices I’ve made because of them. If your not careful it will lead you down some very dark paths.

Despite the people who are trying to help you out of these situations. Sometimes the only one that can help during these battles is God, because what we are fighting isn’t physical it’s spiritual- it’s a battle in our spirit. The devil love to come during those times to get us to think God has forsaken us and will not help, but the devil is wrong.

We can rely on God’s promises in Hebrews 13:5-6 it says “Be free from the love of money, content with such things as you have for he has said, “I will in no way leave you, neither will I in any way forsake you.” “So that with good courage we say, The Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?”

Jesus felt this way also, He felt like God had forsaken Him even while He was doing what the Father wanted Him to do. Mark 15:34 states that “And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” Which is interpreted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Our greatest spiritual battles are when the devil tries to get us to give up on ourselves and God, Jesus in the flesh cried out what He felt, but in His Spirit He fought the battle knowing thatGod was with Him no matter what it seemed like on the outside. He won the battle because He cried out to God “into your hands I surrender my Spirit.”

So many times in my life I have had to ask God to help me, so many times I have cried myself to sleep, asking God to fix it- fix me. He has always come through on His promises.

We cannot stop the battles of life from coming, just as we can’t stop a bird from flying over us, but when the battles comes and are fought in our minds we can still fight the good fight by standing on the knowledge of God’s Word and our relationship with Him.

When it comes to our battles in our own minds, we can either allow them to dwell and manifest evil or do what the Word of God tells us to do and that is yo cast down vain imagination and everything that exalts itself against the Word of God. Nothing is obtained freely but we have to fight to obtain victory. Don’t allow the devil to win in your life but allow God to help you fight the good fight of faith.

See Yourself As God Sees You

How do you see yourself? Pause for a moment and think about it. What thoughts have you had about yourself.

I used to see myself the way my mother seen me, a trash, unworthy of anything good. So many of us find ourselves basing our self-worth on how others see us and our accomplishments, feeling shame from our past, defining our value based on our looks, or setting unrealistic standards for ourselves.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. If on,y we could see ourselves as God sees us.

I want to show you the three thought patterns that can act as roadblocks to our thinking and living the way God desires. These destructive thought patterns were actually identified by Albert Ellis in 1973.

We will contrast ideas with what 1 Peter 1 tells us about how we can prepare our minds for action. Adjusting our thinking to Scripture is the foundation of being holy in all we do. (1 Peter 1:15). Without something solid to base our lives on there is no hope of anything.

1. I must be loved or approved by virtually every other person in my life.

If we are living to make sure that others love us, we give them the permission to evaluate us based on what we do – we give people the power to determine our self-worth.

When we leave home, many of us have “internalized parents.” who are voices in our head that tells us what we should do, what is important, and how we see ourselves. Have you ever been in a situation where you have to make a decision and you can hear one of your parents says, That’s not responsible…” or “I told you what would happen?”

Many of us are so concerned about being loved that we give the opposite sex permission to elevate us. Growing up we might sacrifice our own identity to get attention and acceptance, even to the extent of pretending not to be bright or kind because we think others won’t be impressed. Or we might deny ourselves food to use weight to try to fit in with the body images portrayed in on Television or social media. Even as adults, we buy into the beauty myth, thinking that our appearance is the only thing that matters. And that will it will bring us acceptance and approval from a partner.

I have a friend who has taken care of herself all her life. She will even wear hats outside so the sun will not damage her face. Now that she is getting older, she is getting dark spots on her face. She almost had a nervous breakdown over a light brown spot on her face.

If we are living to make sure that others love us for how we look we give people the power to determine our self-worth.

Many even feel pressure from a church community to measure themselves according to certain stereotypes. I know a lady that was told she was not allowed to be a member of the church, because she drank coffee. Some people believe that women are supposed to be nurturing, quiet and well-behaved. I tell you if I didn’t have a breakdown every now and again I wouldn’t be normal. If people expect me to be perfect I can do without those people in my life.

Men are supposed to be competent leaders, rough the gruff, and have a sensitive side too. If we lived to please the church, we may find ourselves negating the interests or gifts that God has given us.

There are plenty of churches out there that don’t expect you to be prefect, prim and proper all the time. They see you as God sees you.

2. My past history is an all-important determiner of the present behavior; because some thing once strongly affected my life, it should definitely continue to do so.

You may feel controlled by a secret. You may have had something happen to you that you have revealed to no-one,nor perhaps to only a few people. Perhaps you feel shame about certain aspects of the family you grew up in, or maybe you have sinful habits you feel embarrassed about, such as gossip of some things you’ve done in the past. Or maybe you feel ashamed of something that has been done to you,

I will tell you, if you don’t deal with these issues they will continue to destroy you. They will have control of you. And healing will never come. You can deal with past sin, family histories, as well as past violations to your body and minds.

It is important to identify whether your feelings in these situations are destructive shame or healthy convictions. Healthy conviction always separates our identity from our behavior. Shame links the two together, so wrong behavior taints our image of ourselves. Healthy conviction alerts us to the fact that we have done something that goes against our internalized values.

I hid my past experiences and events inside for over 40 years. Not telling a single soul. I destroyed my health both physical and emotional because of it. I wasn’t able to even start healing until I broke loose and started sharing my story with others. The grip the hate and Unforgiveness I had for myself and everyone around me began to loosen.

I wasted 40 years of my life because I was afraid to tell a soul with the feeling that they would judge me. When all I really needed to do was to see myself the way God sees me.

Biblical conviction is a God-given emotion that “red flags” a behavior and tells hx it is an act of rebellion against God. It spurs us to confess our sins and experience the love and forgiveness that God has provided for us through Jesus with His death on the cross. 1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Any feelings of guilt that come after we’ve confessed our sin are not from God, but maybe from ourselves or Satan. We will still have to live with the consequences of our sins. God disciplines us to get us back on track so we can continue to experience God’s law be and plan for our lives. Our struggles can bring us closer to God and heighten our faith – of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire – may be proven genuine and may result in praise, glory, and honor when Christ is revealed (1 Peter1:6-7).

3. I should be thoroughly competent, adequate, and successful in all possible respects in order to consider myself worthwhile.

Ten percent of people will struggle with some form of clinical depression in their lifetime. Depression can be biological or situational, and often can be the result of both. However, one of the leading causes of depression is setting a standard that is unattainable, but you wear yourself out by trying anyway. One of the messages that plays over and over in our minds is that we have to “be perfect.”

We often fall into the trap of feeling responsible not just for ourselves, but for the lives of others. I have to stay when I stopped feeling responsible for how my husband behaved or how he felt. It took a huge weight of my shoulders. We don’t have to take on the weight of everyone’s world. We need to only be responsible for ourselves and our young children if you have them.

It is often difficult for us to separate our identity from our behavior. We feel if we don’t measure up. It reflects on who we are as individuals.

Remember God’s grace is a gift. God heals us and brings us freedom to live a new life. Sometimes grace does not come easily to us. We have to work at changing our thinking. We need to humble ourselves when we don’t measure up, knowing that God already sees us as the perfect reflections of Christ (1 John 3:1-3).

Once we extend grace to ourselves, we are able to extend grace to those around us. We need to cease trying to live up to the distorted beliefs we and others have and learn to line our thinking up with the way God views us.

Instead of being so focused on our failures, we will be able to lend a helping hand to those around us and be a vessel of grace to those we come in contact with wherever we go.