4GIVEN

Excellent read from my twin brother and it’s available for free on pdf. Details and link below!!

Have you ever sat in a pew and thought the pastor, reverend, or priest was talking directly to you? Have you ever had a conversation with a stranger and acquired a sense of direction that you spiritually needed? Have you ever woke up early in the morning and clicked on the TV and a televangelist’s words were very compelling and convicting? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then you will find this book not only interesting but also revealing. The contents scribed within the front and back covers you are holding accentuates the spiritual and mental processes that lead Christians, like you, to a place of serenity and contentment. The Christian’s primary objective is to worship God because it is recorded in John 4:24 that, God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” I pray that the Lord, our God, provides you the spiritual discernment, revelation, confirmation, conviction, and assimilation required to worship Him in spirit and truth. We can no longer live a life of mediocrity because He has called us to a greater purpose. He has predestined us to be conformed into the image of His son, Jesus Christ. Everything we have on earth and will have in Heaven is because of Him. Can you ever imagine life…Had it not been for Him?”

Free pdf below via Dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9j0s19o58i65x07/Had%20it%20Not%20Been%20for%20Him.pdf?dl=0

We all face times where it’s more convenient to trust in our fears and worry rather than to trust in our God. The path of least resistance becomes an attractive option when we fail to see the light of God illuminating the spiritual answers to our carnal dilemmas. Imminent danger arouses our flight or fight responses and this physiological reaction is sometimes birthed from our false perceptions. Unexpected trouble exposing the holes in our faith (Matt 6:30). Simply put, if we trust in our worries more than we trust in our God we simply miss the mark(sin). Through the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ, God has guaranteed us the richness and fullness of His constant abiding love, presence, and protection. I know at times it came be difficult but, in lieu of fighting or fleeing we should opt to turn our ambiguities into gratitude and remember all the times God has seen us through difficult situations. Worries flee before a spirit of gratitude. I Peter 5:7 reminds us to, “Cast all our anxieties on him because He cares for us.” During times of testing, I have learned that meditating on these biblical truths will help drive the ominous clouds of fear and worry away!

God says remember this: I will make a way for you (Isaiah 41:10) I will fight your battles (Exodus 14:14), prayer is the best Rx (1 Thess 5:16-18), and always trust in my timing (Ps 18:2). God will do what he says he will do PERIODT!! God is immutable which means he never changes! God said in Malachi 3:6, “I am the Lord, I change not” and Hebrews 13:8 confirms, “He is the same today, tomorrow, and forever.” All that being said, you can depend/trust God to heal you, deliver you, provide for you, and defend you in all circumstances—-nothing is exempt! Make note, this has nothing to do with the prosperity movement. These facts are biblical truths that we must remind ourselves to overcome the lies we hear from within ourselves about God’s capacity to do what only he can do in and through our lives! YES!!! We can trust God to be who He says He is. God is not going to suddenly stop loving us or suddenly stop being just. In a world where the only constant is change, GOD remains UNCHANGED. We can rely on Him to be our solid foundation in our time of need!

#GodUnchangedMovement

I strongly agree with Joel Osteen, “What has come up against us hasn’t been random. These are strategic attacks for one reason, because of what’s in us: God’s purpose, destiny, and greatness. If we stay in faith and keep moving forward—not bitter because of what happened, not upset because of what we didn’t get, not discouraged by the bad break—we will step into what the enemy didn’t want us to see: levels of favor, influence, promise, and opportunity that we’ve never dreamed. God is taking us where we can’t go on our own.” Beloved, there is a sovereign move of His Spirit upon us that is bringing unprecedented restoration. The Lord is putting a stop to what has been continually coming against us by giving us the strategies to know how to overcome. 1 Peter 5:10-11 reminds us, “And then, after your brief suffering, the God of all loving grace, who has called you to share in his eternal glory in Christ, will personally and powerfully restore you and make you stronger than ever. Yes, he will set you firmly in place and build you up. And He has all the power needed to do this – forever! Amen.” Whether we believe it or not; the power of God is strengthening us and fortifying us. This major breakthrough of encounter with His power is going to bring such a tremendous shift into our lives and the next time the enemy comes against us to whisper his lies, to cause fear, to cause oppression, and to whisper false predictions, decrees, and deceit, it won’t even phase us because of the reigning power of God that lives in us!

The only reason I’ve made it this far is because of God Almighty!! He gets all the (credit) glory! There is no truer statement than this! I cannot begin to fathom where or who I would be right now if I believed God was some unreachable Spirit in the sky. Through good and bad times, God has never once let met me down! He has always listened to my prayers, He has been countlessly patient, He has healed my wounds, He has fought my battles (and won), He has vindicated me before my enemies, He has restored my souls, He has given me favor over my adversaries, relationships, and finances. He has advocated for me, He has preserved my family, He has humbled me, He has delivered me from the hand of the enemy and undeservingly, even when I was at fault i/l/o of judgment and wrath, He showed me grace and mercy. Joshua 14:10 says, “Now look at me: God has kept me alive, as he promised. It is now forty-five years since God spoke this word to Moses, years in which Israel wandered in the wilderness. And here I am today, eighty-five years old!” Simply put, God is a promise Keeper and He has kept me from falling so to present me before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy. I am immovably confident of this, that He who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus (Phil 1:6). Thankfully, God is impartial and He has no favorites. Therefore, what He has done for me, I’m certain He has also done the same for you!

What-a-blessing God gave our world! He sent His one and only son to reconcile us back to himself! God gave us Jesus to pay our debt, to rid us of our sins, and allow us a way to spend eternity with the Trinity. God in Christ replaced our infected hearts when we receive the gift of salvation and this gift wasn’t wrapped in a beautiful box with a bow on top. This Gift was mocked, publicly flogged, crowned with thorns, railroad nails driven in both his wrists & feet, shanked in the side with a spear from which blood and water poured out, and given sour wine to drank. Some say it took approx 6 hours before Christ said, “Tetelestai” and release His spirt (John 19:28-30) but yet he graciously allows us a lifetime for us to die to our flesh!! My point today is to highlight our need to be mindful of the greatest sacrifice known to man and to appreciate the life He offers us to live in Christ. Jesus did not take any shortcuts on the way to our redemption. At the cross, He drank the wine of his Father’s wrath down to the very last drop and He did so for us—that we might enjoy the wine of his Father’s love, join him at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, and live redeemed forever in the glorious presence of the one who took no shortcuts in saving us. This alone is enough to give Him all the praise, honor, and glory He rightfully and unequivocally deserves! Will you join me?!

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)