MONDAY
Prayer Time
Open up, ancient gates!
Open up, ancient doors,
and let the King of glory enter (Psalm 24:9 NLT).
What does your prayer life look like? Are you getting quality time with God? Are you getting some "alone" time with Him? Are you coming to Him in praise or just with your wish list? Are you spending a good portion of your time, listening for Him to speak? If so, then when God speaks, do you act in obedience?
These are all valid questions that all followers of Christ should ask themselves. We should spend time each day with a time of devotion and prayer. Being a Christian is so much more than going to church on Sundays and Bible study on Wednesdays. We must develop that personal relationship, speaking to God and listening for Him to speak. He does hear our prayers. His timing is perfect. We must keep in mind that His timing might not line up with our timetable. Often, this will make us rely on our faith and through our experiences, our faith will grow.
If you want to grow deep in Jesus, begin or extend your personal prayer time. Bring Him all your needs, no matter how small and be sure to praise Him for answered and also unanswered prayer. It's been said that unanswered prayer is sometimes the best answer that we can receive. God knows the big picture, we don't'. Trust in Him. Have faith in Him. It's not the size of our faith, but the size of our God.
Lord God, help us to spend more one-on-one time with You. Help us to not only bring You our needs and our wants, but help us to be still and listen for You to speak. Lord, help us to have the faith that You hear our every word, even when You are silent. Help us, Lord, as we struggle with the busyness of life. Help us to silence the noise around us, so we might hear Your soft voice. Lord, help us to be obedient when You do speak and help us to be willing to do what You ask. Help us, Lord, we need You. We ask and pray in the mighty and matchless name of our Savior, Jesus Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
TUESDAY
Help Is Available
Come and listen, all you who fear God, and I will tell you what he did for me. For I cried out to him for help, praising him as I spoke. If I had not confessed the sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God did listen! He paid attention to my prayer. Praise God, who did not ignore my prayer or withdraw his unfailing love from me (Psalm 66:16-20 NLT).
I am so thankful that God saved me from myself. He will do the same for you. I know there is someone who is reading this that is struggling with addictions. It might be gluttony which I struggled with or you might be struggling with porn or other sexual addictions. Sin is sin. We have to lay this at the foot of the cross.
Get on your knees and pray for Jesus to come into your heart. Repent of your sins and earnestly pray that He will remove that sin from your life.
Be forewarned that you will be in a spiritual battle between God's will in your life and what the world says is okay. It will get tough at times. But, you now have Jesus on your side, He will never forsake you and will always be there for you. Don't be confused, it's not going to be easy. But with Christ, all things are possible.
Lord God, thank You for saving us from ourselves. I pray that we will let You have our hearts and lead us today, tomorrow and for the rest of our time on Earth. Father, help us to decrease so that You will increase. Help us to be more like Jesus today than we were yesterday. In His name, we pray. Amen.
WEDNESDAY
Doers not Sitters
Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves (James 1:19-22 NLT).
Scripture states in James 1:22, that if we are not doers of the Word, we are only fooling ourselves. Are you claiming to be a Christian and sitting on the fact that you are saved? Becoming a Christian is not just saying the right words. There has to be a heart change and a continued spiritual growth while we listen and follow Jesus' calling for our lives. God has blessed each of us with different abilities and “callings” in our lives. Some people are meant to be evangelists, some are meant to be suppliers of funds for those evangelists. Some are meant to lead small groups, some are meant to be members of a small group, etc. But we are all called to be doers, not sitters.
I challenge each of you, to get up and go “do” for God's kingdom. Serve someone, help someone, love someone, provide a service to someone in need, but go and do. Being Christ's hands and feet to the lost and dying world is what we are called to do, as followers of Jesus Christ.
Lord, we praise Your name, thanks be to You, Lord God, for giving us work to do in Your kingdom. This is not work so that we might be saved, but work that we desire to do because we are saved. We can't out-give You, Father. We praise You and pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
THURSDAY
Submit – Submit – Submit – Submit
Do not be stubborn, as they were, but submit yourselves to the Lord. Come to his Temple, which he has set apart as holy forever. Worship the Lord your God so that his fierce anger will turn away from you (2 Chronicles 30:8).
“Submit to God, and you will have peace; then things will go well for you (Job 22:21).
So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, says: How long will you refuse to submit to me? Let my people go, so they can worship me (Exodus 10:3).
Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities— for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him (Psalm 2:12).
Why are we such a hard-headed people? We must listen, obey and submit to God before we can experience His fullness in our lives. He has so much to offer us but we, are stiff necked children. We tend to always want it our way and do it our way. We should decide to try it God's way!
Lord my God, please help us develop a deeper relationship with you by our submission to Your will for our lives. Lord, we know that you have much more to offer us than what we can do by ourselves. We know this to be true, but we still try to do things on our own without Your guidance. Father God, that usually doesn't work out too well for us. Lord, we pray for all who are reading these words. We pray that they will be convicted on how they need to fall to their knees, accepting You as their King and submitting to your authority. Father, we also pray for our nation. Lord, have mercy on us. Father God, please save us from ourselves. Lord, Your will; nothing more; nothing less; nothing else. Amen.
FRIDAY
The Endless Battle
“This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the LORD your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9 NLT).
We all have battles to face in our lives. Some battles seem endless. Some are skirmishes but some are sieges.
No matter the battle, go in to that fight, knowing that God is with you.
Lord God, we can put our faith in You. Father God, You are with us always. You will never leave us or forsake us. We are Your children, Father, and You will correct us, scold us and reprimand us, when it is needed. We know that Your discipline is always done for a purpose, for our good and with love. Help us to fall into your arms for strength when the battle becomes intense and lead us by Your amazing grace. We love you Lord God, help us to love You more every day. We ask and pray in the might name of Jesus and by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SATURDAY
Acceptance And Restoration
This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins (1 John 4:10 NLT).
Wow, it doesn't get any better than being a child of the most high God. We can look near and far but we will never find anyone who loves us more than our God, our Creator. He loves us so much that He accepts as we are, but because of that love, He will never leave us as we are.
We praise You, Lord God. We come to you broken and You heal us. We come to You undeserving of and You restore us and call us worthy. We come to you in times of blessings and in times of defeat and You open your arms and share in our victories and pick us up in our defeats. You are our God who has bestowed your amazing grace upon each of us. Thank You, Lord. We give thanks, praise and prayer in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.
SUNDAY
Gloom, Despair, and Agony On Me
Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith (Galatians 6:7-10 NLT).
In this day and age, we are experiencing many deceptions of the Devil. The world is turning drastically in the wrong direction. During these times, it is easy to throw up your hands and say, I give. Y'all win. I'm tired of fighting the good fight. Many say, well, it's just prophecy being fulfilled, which might be, but does that mean we should throw in the towel? Absolutely not.
Recently, I read that if we “stand for nothing, we will fall for anything.” My friends, that is so true. We must realize that God's commandments are to be followed. When we blow it, which we will, we must come to God with heartfelt and sincere repentance. We are all broken and in need of a Savior.
In this time of gloom and doom, we must realize that God has placed us here, in this time, to make a difference. We must study the Bible, emulate Jesus, live the Good News in our walk so that we can share that Great News. The world is lost, but we (Christ followers) have been found. Why give up when we can guide another soul into the arms of Jesus so that they might inherit God's Kingdom? Yes, we grow weary, but we are not to give up. We are to fight the good fight until God calls us home. One day, we might hear, “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in handling this small amount, so now I will give you many more responsibilities. Let’s celebrate together” (Matthew 25:21).
Lord God, thank You for saving us from ourselves. Lead us, Lord, to share The Good News with others. Father, may the lost be found. Thank You, Jesus! Amen.
