Author: LB

Important Prayers

We spend so much time on this earth seeking pleasure. Maybe basking in the sun on the beach thinking “this is as good as it gets”. We avoid thinking about heaven, hell, eternity and what comes after this earthly life. We involve ourselves in so much to distract ourselves from what comes next. When we come up against earthly problems, we are so quick to go to God and want His help. We will go to Him when we want something in this life or when crisis hits. Our prayer life reflects our focus.
We spend more time praying for the sick (which keeps them out of heaven) than we do praying for the salvation of unbelievers (which could keep them out of hell).

What are we doing to distract ourselves from the thought of eternity that God has put in our hearts?
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NIV)
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

What has God prepared for us in heaven?
1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)
9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—

Afraid To Get Dirty

The problem is not always that we are unwilling to help someone in pain. We are simply blind to the fact that they exist. We overlook hurting people because we are in a hurry or because we don’t want to deal with the mess of a broken life.

Jesus Christ willingly gave up Heaven and came to Earth as a man … and went straight for the messiest lives, those in the greatest pain … the losers and the misfits.

Jesus felt every pain we have ever felt or ever will feel.

Jesus was misunderstood and slandered.

Jesus was beaten, tortured, and then crucified to pay for our sin.

It must break the heart of God when we so easily toss aside what cost Him so very much … the chance to help one of His broken lambs.

Look around you, friend. Someone needs you to see them – to really feel their pain and then be willing to do something about it.

The Great Commission

 

Angry at God

Read 2 Samuel 6:1-11

David got angry with God because David thought he was doing a good thing and things did not work out as planned. David’s plan was not a God thing so when God intervened, David got mad. David was afraid of God because of what happened while trying to do what he thought was good. David was celebrating and was devastated by the events that interrupted the celebration.

Many have been in the process of just doing life when it is interrupted by an event or events that just turns our world upside down. When we experience a devastating event in our lives or the lives of our loved ones, our heart can shatter into so many pieces that we don’t even think God is able to put it back together. We can get so emotionally tangled up that we get upset with God and don’t let Him help even when He wants to. Sometimes we refuse to move ahead to restoration just to spite Him.

Our lives have so much potential when we give them to God. If I can be honest, instead of allowing Him to work, we choose to pout. God knows how we feel. He knows our questions and our resentments. He wants to be gracious and restore us to more than we could be on our own. Instead of asking God our questions, we choose to decide for ourselves why something has happened. We get stuck in a rut and can spend years there refusing to come out.

We make a choice everyday to who we allow to work in our lives. We can spend it listening to satan and his lies or we can tell God how we feel and ask Him for His answers. We may or may not get the why’s to what has happened, but we will be told what to do with what has happened. When we can trust God to use what has happened for His glory,  He will give us back ground that has been given to the enemy.

Life in a rut will only get worse. We have a Cross that Christ offers to each and every one of us that can take us so far beyond what we can ask or imagine that we and others will see that it is only through Christ that all we do can be accomplished. It is time to let God get us out of the rut. We decide what our future holds.

When we get past ourselves, God will be able to take us past our past and into a future with a future.

Women Are Important To God

Strong Women: May we know them. May we raise them. May we be them.

We live with less power than we have available to us. We can gain access to that power by continuing to learn who we are in Christ and then applying what we learn to how we live.

Beth Moore has said, “We can know so much more than we know”.

Women are important to God and He has a purpose for each of us and wants us to know Him more fully.

We have all experience closed doors and open doors in our life. That is God’s way of leading us. God has a plan for each of us.

11 In him we were also chosen,[a] having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12 in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. Ephesians 1:11-12 (NIV)

God chose us and it is through Him that we find out who we are and what our purpose is. He knew us before we knew Him and had plans for us that would give us hope and joy. He will work all things together for His overall purpose and His glory.


Paul during his 1st missionary trip was enjoying success. And then he looked to the north, south, and east but had road blocks. Those closed doors led to an open door in the west. Lydia was there and responded to Paul’s message.

Max Lucado wrote “Is Lydia the reason the Holy Spirit blocked Paul’s path? Was God ready to highlight the value of his daughters? Perhaps. In a culture that enslaved and degraded women, God elevated them to salvation coheirs with men. Proof? The first person in the Western world to receive the Christian promise or host a Christian missionary was a female.”

We are all loved and valued by a gracious God that wants us to know that we are loved. The more we learn about God and draw closer to God, the more we will realize the love He has for us.

Jack Hayford says that those who answer Christ’s call are the freed. The freed then become the freers.

He writes, “Christ’s light seem  to penetrate gradually. Boldness does not come quickly, but only as the freed learn the truth. Ongoing patterns of discovery, then, are needful–a constant challenging of old patterns of thought through growth in the truth. Ignorance is rampant, even among the enlightened. Bondage straps minds, even among the freed. There are power-releasing truths to be discovered. Truths which will become implemented as keys, as the freed become the freers.”

 When we realize what we have in Christ, we need to share it with those that need it. It is something that we should desire for everyone. It is by this process that we can take back ground that was once ours that Satan has stolen from us.

God is working. There is power within reach and if we continue to desire to have more of God in our life, we will see that power work. He won’t just give it to us. God wants us to have it but we have to want it, ask for it and seek it.