Give Thanks to God
“Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! Let Israel say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Let those who fear the Lord say, “His steadfast love endures forever.” Out of my distress I called on the Lord; the Lord answered me and set me free. The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me? The Lord is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes. All nations surrounded me; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! They surrounded me like bees; they went out like a fire among thorns; in the name of the Lord I cut them off! I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: “The right hand of the Lord does valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exalts, the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!” I shall not die, but I shall live, and recount the deeds of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter through them and give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord; the righteous shall enter through it. I thank you that you have answered me and have become my salvation. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Save us, we pray, O Lord! O Lord, we pray, give us success! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has made his light to shine upon us. Bind the festal sacrifice with cords, up to the horns of the altar! You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God; I will extol you. Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!”
Psalm 118:1-29 ESV
https://www.bible.com/59/psa.118.1-29.esv
What it means to be led by the Holy Spirit
When a person truly believes in Jesus and accepts the scriptures as truth, they are given the Holy Spirit to lead them and take them where they would have otherwise never gone.
That can look like a trip to Cancun to find a man working at a resort who is praying for his child to be healed, so God sends you to that resort on a vacation with your family but what you discover is that you were actually sent there to pray for a sick child that God wants to heal. How do you know that is why you are there? The father of the sick child is carrying your bags to your room when the Holy Spirit gives you a quick impression in your thoughts of a sick child. You take that thought and ask the man if he has a sick child that is causing him concern. When he says, “yes, how did you know?” You can then tell him that the Lord revealed it to you and made it known that you are there specifically for the purpose of praying for that child to be healed, and you must go to the child immediately to do that.
That one impression that was in your thoughts was crucial that you act on it immediately in order to save that child’s life, and this is what it means to move with the Holy Spirits direction. You don’t go to your room and out to dinner and then hope to find the man later to pray for the child. You drop everything and you go immediately to do the work the Lord has for you to do there! No exceptions and no excuses are going to work if that child dies, so don’t allow that to happen by being quick to respond to God.
If that has happened in the past, repent for not acting on God’s instructions right away of for doubting it was His instructions, and ask to be cleansed from all unrighteousness and then move on to the rest of the work God has for you to do! Don’t linger in what you messed up or how you should have and could have responded, but take it to heart that you need to be alert and ready for whatever God shows you to do.
A person that believes in Jesus and has the Holy Spirit will know that they are a new creation, because they will no longer want to listen to the gossip and meaningless chatter of the people that don’t believe. The believer will have a hunger for righteousness and they will not be satisfied by the plans and ideas of unbelievers as the solutions needed in the world. They will want to honor God and they will want to seek his council and help with everything they do. They will also be more focused on those around them and how they can help them than on what they want or need.
A person that knows who they are and that they are here for the purpose of bringing God’s will and plan of salvation to the places they are sent, are the ones that are led by the Holy Spirit.
Don’t allow negativity to infiltrate your thoughts or pollute your relationship with the Lord. God is not working to hold people down, but He is the One wanting to lift them up higher to hear His voice and turn to be saved.
When a person is praying for help and the Lord sends you to help them the next day, believe that the Lord has given you what that person needs or He wouldn’t be sending you! You will have what you need the moment that you need it or a few minutes before you find that person, so don’t fear what will happen, but trust the Lord that He is leading you and you will not fail.
You will never fail when you allow Love to lead you. Even if it seems like a failure at first and the people all laugh and ridicule you as being naïve or a push over or crazy for helping someone that none of them wanted to help, don’t listen to their fears and excuses for not being obedient to the Lord, but instead pray fervently for the people that God sends you to help. Pray for wisdom and understanding to be able to help them and not act out of fear or guilt, but rather out of a pure heart that has genuine love for those people.
Then pray for all the people that made fun of you to be given a deeper understanding of God’s heart and will for their own lives and the people in their lives. Pray for them to be blessed with the faith to believe and receive the Holy Spirit and pray for them to begin acting on that faith and following the leading of the Spirit to rescue those crying out for help.
Don’t ever allow negativity to dominate but always allow the love of God to fill you and keep you in perfect peace as you follow and do the works God has planned for you to do. Don’t limit God by believing he can’t or won’t do something, because He can and will do anything needed or asked by those who believe without wavering.
Have faith in God and hold fast to His plan of salvation and share it everywhere you go with those He shows you to help.
Come Up Higher
When the world seems to be pulling down the people with negativity and lies that come from a lost and blinded world, it is the time to get away with the Lord for awhile and just close out all of the world!
When we take the time to just completely receive from God and not allow any other interruptions or priorities to come before Him, we can suddenly find ourselves going from the lowest place to riding on the heights with the Lord covering us and leading us each moment. Oh how awesome is our King Jesus?!
He has rescued me so many times and is so faithful that I can’t even believe that it is possible for him to still want to help me after so many failures on my end.
Thankfully it isn’t about what I can do or have to do, but it is always about what He has already done and will always do, because He is Holy and Righteous and is all wisdom and understanding that we need to succeed and be forever satisfied and living in a constant state of peace.
Love is our greatest weapon against evil in this world. In fact, love is the ONLY thing that can destroy evil completely, so when everything seems to be going wrong and the attacks are nonstop against your faith and finances and family, go ahead and lift your arms and head and sing to the beautiful victory in Jesus, because that is what will turn the battle into a blessing quickly!
Never believe that the Lord has turned from you or that he won’t help you. He will always help when we cry out to Him, and He never remembers our past mistakes when we ask for forgiveness from them, so don’t dwell on them, because it is not good and the Lord doesn’t want us to be condemned by what was already washed away and is not even a thing that is going to be remembered ever again by God!
Let go of control and just abide in that perfect love for awhile so that you truly can understand and grow in faith by trusting the Lord to be your true savior and the fullness of God’s salvation will begin to take hold of your life.
What is Truth?
What if everyone started to believe the Truth about God and the Lord Jesus was exalted instead of violence, crime, hatred and oppression? What if the schools shared the Bible’s history when they teach our children about things like the Big Bang Theory and other man created theories?
Why is it so crazy to offer the teaching of the truth in the schools? Who is really in control of a nation when the mention of God is banned from the government and schools?
How was school prayer seen as something worth fighting to take away from our children’s schools, and then allowing them to later be legally justified when they kill the unborn child that they weren’t old enough or ready to raise?
What if they had learned about God and knew that He was real because they learned to pray and they learned about the Bible and it’s true version of creation, so they were not lost and living in darkness?
When the people want to argue about nonsense like if a child should be allowed to praise the Lord for scoring a touchdown during a school game, or threaten to stop them from praying before a game, there is a need for the people to wake up and seek God!
There is a timeline for the earth and no matter how hard the people that don’t know God seek to save themselves and their environment, they will not be able to do it, because it is only God who is able to save anything or anyone, so why not believe and receive the Truth.
The thing about the unbelievers is that they don’t know they are being deceived because they are blinded to the Truth, because they refused to believe and so be saved. It is heartbreaking to think of how many people willingly choose to live separated from the perfect love that the Father God lavishes on all who believe in Jesus and are reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus.
I remember taking an anthropology course as a freshman and being asked to decide if there was enough evidence to in fact consider God to be real or if it was just a way for the poor and oppressed populations to find comfort in their existence by believing there was hope after this life.
Well I don’t know how people would ever consider that it would be more logical to declare no God instead of holding onto the hope of there being one. Why would a person take the chance of being wrong on something that huge? If you choose to believe how does that hurt anyone? It doesn’t. But if a person chooses to reject God and live for themself and then finds out at death that they were 100% wrong, and now they are to be separated and tormented away from the presence of God for all eternity, what kind of logic or reasoning could ever come up with that being the best choice?
Think about this for a moment if you don’t know the Lord yet. Because as long as you don’t believe, you will remain blind and deceived and under the power of the spirit of the world which all the disobedient are currently controlled by this spirit if they haven’t believed and received the Truth.
My point in writing this is to help others see the difference in Truth and the Spirit of the world, so that they might quickly turn from the wrong pathway and run into the everlasting arms of love and safety. God doesn’t choose that anyone should perish or live apart from him. Man decides his own fate by accepting or denying God’s free gift of salvation in Christ Jesus.
Jesus promises to manifest himself to all who will believe in him and make him their Lord, so it’s not like the atheist or satanists that mock and laugh at Believers are causing the believers to suffer in any way. It only proves to them how lost and blind and deceived those people are, so that we all feel sorry for them and continue to pray that they be set free and have eyes to see and ears to hear and be saved.
As for the children being denied the Truth in schools, it won’t remain that way for long, and the next generation will live by faith in Christ and they will never be oppressed or fear anyone or anything because they will all be taught by the Lord and great will be their peace! And that will all happen because of the prayers and the devoted children of God that teach in the schools, work on the police forces, work/own every businesses, sit in the seats of government, work in the medical community and any and all other places where there are people! The church is everywhere and not just a building. It’s an entire civilization that lives in a higher realm and brings love and light to the dark and fallen world through their reconciled lives in Christ!
Full of Life
www.bible.com/59/act.2.17-21.esv
““‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke; the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”
Acts 2:17-21 ESV
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