Lent Week 6 Day 33

Psalm 22:6-8,

But I am a worm and not a man,
    scorned by everyone, despised by the people.
⁷ All who see me mock me;
    they hurl insults, shaking their heads.
⁸ “He trusts in the Lord,” they say,
    “let the Lord rescue him.
Let him deliver him,
    since he delights in him.”

This psalmist is feeling pretty low and bad about himself. He feels small like a worm and feels like God is faraway. People make fun of him and say if God is for him then why doesn’t it show. What I’m getting from this passage is not to have self pity and feel sorry for myself. God will show up when I accept my circumstances, be thankful for my life and always worship and praise God. Prayer: Help me God to always have a good and thankful attitude. I will praise and thank You always because You are good and You will never leave me! Thank you, Amen.

Lent to Repent

Day 33

Scripture reading today is 1 Peter 2:1-3, 21-25. It is talking about how we should cease from all deceit, insincerity, evil speaking. We should crave to know God’s ways because we have tasted the goodness of God. Jesus has shown us how to live and is our example to follow. He died for us to die to sin and live upright. We used to be going astray and now we are back with the Shepherd.

Ann says: Today I pray that the shape of my day will look like the cross in every way.

I was thinking about what Ann said the shape of my day being the shape of the cross and I pictured something. The vertical beam of the cross represents our relationship with God and the horizontal beam is our relationship with people. So to live a cross life is to have fellowship with God, worship and praise Him, then bring that light and love to others.

Day 21- Go about doing good as Jesus did.

Day 22- It’s the sin God hates!

Day 23- True beauty comes from a clean heart that sees God

Day 24- Have faith Jesus is the Truth

Day 25- Fast from your sinful nature

Day 26- Believe Jesus, deny self, walk in the Kingdom

Day 27- Follow the Holy Spirit, return to God

Day 28- True worship connects you to God’s grace

Day 29- You have to follow the Holy Spirit continually to keep fear out

Day 30- Fear is flesh, Faith is spirit

Day 31- Thirst for God and put your hope in Him alone

Day 32- Find God’s light then live in it

Day 33- Live the shape of the cross

 

 

Lent Week 3 Day 17

John 4:23, But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.

Jesus was talking to the woman at the well and she thought God could only be worshiped in a certain place but Jesus explained God is looking for people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth. It doesn’t matter “where” we worship as long as the place of worship comes from our heart. True worship is a heart that is right towards God. We worship in our spirit and in His truth. Worship is a state of the heart. Praise comes because of worship. I wrote something about this here.  I pray, I know I have right standing with You because of my faith in Jesus. Help me to also have and maintain a pure heart towards You, to worship you truly in Spirit and in Truth.

Trail to the Tree

Day 17 Behold Your lamb

This is the last day of Trail to the Tree. Ann didn’t have anymore days on there so starting tomorrow I think I will add her new devotion Lent to Repent.

Today’s reading is about Jesus’ resurrection. When the angel told Mary that He is risen and go tell the disciples.

Ann says: So give us courage to run, Father, great joy coursing through these veins, to tell the world!

This joy to tell the whole world came to me when I had my salvation experience. I wanted to tell people in the grocery store and people I had known about this Jesus that I found! I did do all those things and even people at the church. I found out later in the Bible that we must confess with our lips that Jesus is Lord. Romans 10:9,

that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

This is why I write this blog. Hoping someone who doesn’t know this good news might come to know it through the working of the Holy Spirit in these words. I pray that God will use me to type and the Holy Spirit will direct the people who need the good news to read something here that will wake them from their sleep. I looked up the word Gospel recently and it comes from the Greek word “euangelion” which means the joy news, You receive joy from the Holy Spirit when you receive Jesus. 1st Thessalonians 1:6,  You became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you welcomed the message in the midst of severe suffering with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. Something else I learned from Ann Voskamp is a clenched white knuckle fist can’t receive anything. We have to have an open, humble hand to receive light. Flames need oxygen to light. If you want to ignite the flame in your heart and become on fire for Jesus then I invite you to receive Him in your heart today.

Day 1- Get your thinking straight and be in God’s presence

Day 2- Be reading the Bible and trust God

Day 3- Reverence, worship and praise God and Jesus for who God is and what Jesus has done.

Day 4- Be faithful to Him and He will be faithful to fill you. Look to Jesus with gratitude and prayer.

Day 5- Notice the miserable and suffering, ask God to reveal them so I can tell them the Good News that there is hope and there is a Savior, His name is Jesus!

Day 6- Stay close to God with a repented heart. He will bring life out of the mundane if I trust Him to do it.

Day 7- Relationship means dependence. Depend on your relationship with Jesus to do God’s will and bring Him joy and joy to yourself.

Day 8- Don’t hesitate to ask God for help out of all temptations, trials, distresses and troubles. Keep God on your mind, always.

Day 9- Being thankful and having faith for the presence of God in my life will prompt miracles.

Day 10- Let my heart stay vulnerable so God can multiply His love through me.

Day 11- God helps us through the words of Jesus.

Day 12- Surrender and live a new life

Day 13- Receive and give thanks for God’s grace and live holy

Day 14- Remember grace through Jesus to stay awake

Day 15- Pray for the Holy Spirit’s presence to stay out of darkness, repent when necessary

Day 16- Praise, Honor and Glorify God and Jesus and wait to see what He does!

Day 17- The time is Now, receive Jesus today and go tell the world!

 

 

Lent Week One Day 3

Today is about reverence, worship and praise toward God for who He is and toward Jesus for what He has done. I wrote an article about reverence, worship and praise here . What I read today brought these scriptures to mind. Romans 5:8, But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 1 John 4:19,  We love because he first loved us.

My reading was a poem and a quote. The quote is about how the blood of Jesus is forgiveness of sins and the cross represents the sinners that we are. He bled forgiveness on each one of us. We all have a cross to bear, our own sinfulness, but Jesus’ shed blood washes it away. Picture yourself carrying this heavy, burdensome cross across a river and a big gush of water like in the wild rapids comes along and takes the cross from your back and washes it down river. Jesus can do this for us.

The poem was about seeing God for who He really is. Having reverential fear and awe towards Him. We shouldn’t take His presence lightly. It is an honor to be in His presence. We should remember that we need God to survive and thrive. We take His Holy Spirit for granted these days. The Israelites didn’t have His Holy Spirit. We need to take God’s presence seriously and be thankful Jesus made a way for us to be with Him.

Trail to the Tree was about the gift of rescue. Ann wrote:” Father, we paint ourselves red with Jesus’ blood so that satan can not enter into this soul place to wrack ruin and death, but that You would come through the door of our hearts…that we would come through Jesus, the door, and into Your Presence.”

We are rescued just as the Israelites were on the first Passover. They painted crosses with blood of a lamb on their door posts so no death would come inside. So by faith I paint with Jesus’ blood a cross on the door of my heart so no evil can come into my thinking, my attitude, my love, my peace, my joy. Jesus rescues me and also protects me.

Day 1- Get your thinking straight and be in God’s presence

Day 2- Be reading the Bible and trust God

Day 3- Reverence, worship and praise God and Jesus for who God is and what Jesus has done.

Thank you God for loving me even as a sinner. Thank you for Your mercy and lovingkindness and for sending Jesus to save me. Thank you Jesus that You saw Your mission through to the end to save us all from death. Thank you that You loved us first and died for us to live.

 

Seek Jesus And You Seek Wisdom

In Chronicles 9 Queen Sheba visited King Solomon and she experienced his wisdom. She had HEARD of his wisdom and didn’t believe it until  she went to see him and experienced it for herself. There is a similarity to her seeking King Solomon and us seeking Jesus. Do we really want to seek Jesus, experience Him for ourselves or do we want to let someone else lead and guide us through so called church? I choose to seek Jesus for myself. Know the truth from my own experiences with Him. We can only KNOW something through experience. In Proverbs 9:10 it says worship and reverence for God is the chief and choice part [ the beginning ] of wisdom. The knowledge of the Holy One is insight and understanding. First we have to have a respect for God and a heart that worships Him before we can receive His wisdom.To have a heart for worship means we have to be born again. The Bible says we can only worship in spirit and in truth, so if we aren’t born again of His Spirit we can not worship Him. We are dead in our sins until we are made alive by God’s power.  Chronicles 9:23  says God put wisdom in Solomon’s mind. I like what Joyce Meyer says in my Bible in putting the Word to work, she said, God-given wisdom is far more valuable than wealth.

I came across a native american proverb the other day that makes a lot of good sense.

I believe the native american had life right. They lived off the land worshiped and reverenced God, protected the planet and loved others. After all that’s how we got Thanksgiving. But the white man ruined everything. Not so wise. The native american was wise. White man is all about money and wealth and statue. Native americans just wanted to enjoy the life they had with what God provided because that was enough. Jesus is enough. God has given us everything we need but Satan wants us to think we need more worldly things to fulfill us. It’s the presence of God and His wisdom that will fill us. When we experience it we will see that this is what we have been longing for all along. I  have native american heritage on my dad’s side and I don’t know if that’s why I am drawn to native americans. But even as a child watching those old cowboy movies I always rooted for the native americans. I have a need lately to listen to their music and chant. It connects me with God in a deeper more intimate way than the christian music today. I believe I’m on a journey from surface relationship with God to a deeper one.

Second Chronicles 15: 1-4, The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded. ² He went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Listen to me, Asa and all Judah and Benjamin. The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you. ³ For a long time Israel was without the true God, without a priest to teach and without the law. ⁴ But in their distress they turned to the Lord, the God of Israel, and sought him, and he was found by them.

If I seek God (Jesus) as craving for Him, I will find Him but if I become indifferent and forsake Him, He will forsake me. The Lord is with me while I am with Him. So when I am feeling alone and like God isn’t there, it is me forsaking Him.

KEEP SEEKING JESUS, NOT WEALTH!

 

Reverence, Worship and Praise

These three words are what comes naturally after being born again. Once we are woken up to the fact of who God really is, when we know without a doubt that He is the one and only true living God and He loves us, we begin to have reverence for Him. Reverence is a deep respect for Him. Then, as some would not realize, comes worship. We tend to think singing to God is worship, but as we reverence God there is a feeling that comes and it’s called worship. So, as Kim Walker once said, we worship God in our heart and the singing is a manifestation of the worship we feel.  So, singing is praise! Praise is the expression of reverence and worship.

God showed me several scriptures in the Bible having to do with reverence and worship. Scriptures that tell us if we will do these things God will do something in return. First of all if we want to have wisdom we begin with reverencing and worshiping God. Psalm 111:10 says,  The [reverent] fear of the Lord is the beginning (the prerequisite, the absolute essential, the alphabet) of wisdom;
A good understanding and a teachable heart are possessed by all those who do the will of the Lord;
His praise endures forever. If we reverence and worship we are in God’s will and He will give us wisdom. As followers of Jesus, not only do we want knowledge but most importantly we want His wisdom. When we possess wisdom we have insight and understanding that mere knowledge can not express. Knowledge of something isn’t the same as experiencing it. When Jesus imparts wisdom to us we are experiencing His presence. When we follow the Holy Spirit we are living in wisdom.

When we reverence and worship God we are actually serving Him. If we ever doubt that we are serving,  just look at your heart and see if you are reverencing and worshiping God. As it says in Psalm 2:11, Worship the Lord and serve Him with reverence [with awe-inspired fear and submissive wonder];
Rejoice [yet do so] with trembling. When we are serving God and in His will for our lives we then put ourselves on the path where all blessings flow. Blessings include provision. Psalm 111:5 says, He has given food to those who fear Him [with awe-inspired reverence];
He will remember His covenant forever.  God notices who reverences and worships Him. He will provide for them and never forget them. 

When I read about people in the Bible such as Abraham, Jacob and David, I like to think we are like them only living in a different day and time. This scripture tells me that this is true, Psalm 61:5, For You have heard my vows, O God;
You have given me the inheritance of those who fear Your name [with reverence]. We can have assurance that if we are reverencing and worshiping God as they did, that God is with us too. God is looking for people who will honor Him, put Him first!

And lastly, when we reverence and worship and then praise God, it keeps Satan away! I had a dream once where demons were messing with me and taunting me and I heard the Spirit of God tell me, evil can not inhabit the praises of God!  When we are actually praising God, evil can’t be present. That is comforting to know that evil can’t penetrate the praise we give to God! Luke 4:8, ⁸ Jesus replied to him, “It is written and forever remains written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.’”  This was what Jesus said to Satan when he tempted Jesus.

So, no matter what we do, keep worshiping and praising God! It should be like food is to our body. Do it all day, every day! Keep your head up and hold hands high!