4GIVEN

The cliff note to the Gospel can be summed up Like this; God’s love as our Creator… human sin and our broken world… God redeeming us through Jesus Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension… repentance and faith in Jesus alone making us new creations in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). Yes, the Gospel Message is simple and profound at the same time! Paul said that by grace he preached “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8). Like one diamond with many facets, the gospel has unsearchable riches and depths to pursue over a lifetime – God reconciling us and restoring our relationship, forgiving our sin, setting us free from the chains of sin’s power, raising us to new life, adopting us into his family, sending us as his ambassadors who advance God’s kingdom in the broken places of our world, being reconcilers between people, pursuing justice, as God is making all things new. Undeniably, we can never fully understand what all these things mean! Therefore, we must humbly submit, bow in awe and wonder! There is a reason Isaiah 55:9 declares, “God’s ways and thoughts are higher than ours” and for this reason we should appreciate that the Gospel is simple in nature but respect that it’s unequivocally profound in every sense!

You’d be surprise of the number of believers that are weighed down by false guilt because they think God is angry with them. Let me say this loud and clear, GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH YOU and NO, he’s not holding your sins against you (2 Cor 5:19-20). When Jesus said, “ TETELESTAI”, He meant it!! In Christ, God made an irrevocable and irreversible covenant with man. In this covenant he promised not to remember our sins and not to be angry with us (Heb 8:6-12). Observe Isaiah 54:9-10, “To me this is like the days of Noah, when I swore that the waters of Noah would never again cover the earth. So now I have sworn not to be angry with you, never to rebuke you again. Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you. Romans 3:23 reminds us that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” God already knows you’re a sinner and is well aware of your shortcomings. So instead of being angry, He desires to remove your sin (1 John 1:9). God wants to give you the Rx that will heal your spiritual sin-sickness. That remedy is a relationship with His son, Jesus Christ! So today, remove your cloak of heaviness and put on your garment of praise because God isn’t angry with you because He loves you and has already forgiven you!

As believers it’s important to understand that God’s timing is always perfect, just as all of God’s ways are perfect (Psalm 18:30; Galatians 4:4). At times it may ‘feel’ like the opposite but, life has taught me that waiting on God’s perfect timing is less exhausting than sitting around whining and complaining. Patience is indeed a virtue and our measure of it reveals the degree of trust we have in God’s timing. Remember, patience is also a spiritual fruit (Galatians 5:22), and Scripture makes it clear that God is pleased with us when we display this virtue: “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for Him” (Psalm 37:7), for God is good to those who wait for Him (Lamentations 3:25). Typically, we start to questioning God’s timing when we are looking for guidance or deliverance from a difficult situation. We can rest assured, however, that our heavenly Father knows exactly where we are in our lives at every given moment. Look at this way, it’s always the better practice to wait awhile to allow things to fall into place than to rush and have things fall apart! God uses these waiting periods in our lives to bring out the best in us. Trials strengthens our patience and allows our Christian faith to mature and become complete-not lacking anything (James 1:3-4)! So today resonate on Psalm 18:30 and never forget that, “As for God, his way is [always] perfect: The Lord’s word is flawless; he shields all who take refuge in him.

“So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.” Romans 12:1 (MSG)

Don’t let your emotions be the decision maker. Always stop and pray! Let God lead as He alone can change anything (circumstance, trial, difficulty, and situation) because He causes all things to work together for our good and His Glory (Rom 8:28). Never forget, “All the promises of God are “YES” in Christ and the “AMEN” is spoken by us to the glory of God (2Cor 1:20)!”

When your knees hit the floor this morning thank God for another day! Rise up, rejoice, and remind yourself that good, bad, or indifferent today is going to be spectacular masterpiece because this is the day the Lord has made specifically for you (Ps 118:24)! Trust that God is with you and he is your helper (Heb 13:6) even if you experience obstacles along today’s journey. Don’t forget, be patient with yourself, and remember that at the end of the day that big things are achieved not all at once, but one day at a time. Lastly, before you lay your head down for the night, fall back on your knees to give God the praise, honor, and glory for his faithfulness and for doing as he promised by covering/protecting you and your family from all hurt, harm, and danger!

Life would be less complicated and stressful if only we would remember to focus on the big picture. Our life is like a giant puzzle and like most puzzles, the most important part of the puzzle is the full view picture printed on front of the box. This picture depicts how things are supposed look once all of the pieces are put together. Fact is, without this full view picture, the puzzle wouldn’t make sense. This full view picturesque of the Christian life is not found in any other person or thing except Jesus Christ. He is the only One that will bring so much beauty out of all our chaos. 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 reminds us that, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love.” Do you really know who is putting the pieces of your puzzle together? Well, it’s certainly not you. Psalm 139:16 confirms that God is the Author (puzzle solver) of our lives.Therefore, no matter what things may look like, a new piece of the puzzle is coming. God has already selected the right piece with the answer you have been praying for and yes, God always sees the completed puzzle [you] because He put it together before the beginning of time!

Please revisit Matthew 14:22-33 and in summarization we find Jesus walking on water on the Galilean Sea in the middle of cat 5 hurricane and he said to his disciples who was freaking out in the boat, “Don’t be afraid.” Courageous Peter confirmed it was Jesus and then hops out of the boat, starts walking to Jesus, and then he freaks out because of the terrifying 157 mph winds! Peter takes his focus off Jesus and starts sinking. Jesus saves him and then they both walk back to the boat through the storm. Once they are back on the boat the storms finally dies down completely. Did you catch it?? The disciple thought they were doomed but it wasn’t until Jesus and Peter stepped back into that boat that they began to worship him. So many preach about Peter getting out of the boat but rarely do we hear about the saving power of both Jesus and Peter re-entering the boat. The purpose of this powerful historical illustration is not only about the storm, it’s really not about jumping out of the boat more so than it’s about who was in the boat. Jesus didn’t come to calm our storms….He came to save our souls!

We all want the Astros to ‘TAKE IT BACK’ but there’s somethings we need to ‘TAKE BACK’ in our lives and although you may be struggling right now keep declaring; I am blessed, I am favored, I am healed, I am delivered, I am strong, I am loved and every curse spoken to me or against me is annihilated, obliterated, and destroyed. Isaiah 54:17 acutely reminds us that, “No weapon that is formed against us shall prosper; and every tongue that rise up against us shall be condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, says the LORD.” This in it of itself is enough to give God a shout of praise because He accepts and loves us with an unconditional love. He empowers,strengthens, and propels us to thrive, flourish, and be successful no matter what this world, our flesh, and the enemy adversely throws our way!!

#TakeItBack2019

#DeclareAndDecree2019

Waiting on God can really put some mileage on our patience. However painfully uncomfortable, I am learning there is actually something happening while nothing is happening and that God uses waiting periods to change me. Isaiah 60:22 reminded me that, “When the time is right, I, the Lord, will make it happen!” God wants us to learn how to follow him and put down our demanding selves — to put in check that screaming child in us. One way he helps us do this is to say, “Wait.” That miserable, uncomfortable, sometimes painful waiting room is one of God’s most powerful tools that grow us and sets us free. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon us to embrace the power and blessings we receive when we relinquish our rights for control. By doing so, it unites and ignites our hearts to his and it increases our level of maturity and character that we will take with us into the future, and it enables us to enjoy the blessings that God prescribed for our lives even before the beginning of our lives.