Month: July 2023

Let’s say that you had a grandson, and you went out and built him the best backyard playground in town. You spent thousands of dollars on it, and invested countless hours to put this together. When you’re all done, you walk your grandson into the back yard to show him to new surprise. He first screams with excitement and then he cries because he thinks of how wonderful of a grandpa he has, and gives you the biggest hug you’ve ever received. Then for the next month, he can’t stop playing in his new playground and continually thanks you up and down for such a wonderful gift. Wouldn’t that make you feel good inside for blessing him in such a way? You would probably want to run out and do it all over again, just because he loved it so much and was so thankful for everything you did.

Now consider if you went through all that work and spend all that money, only to have your grandson go jump on the swing a few times and leave, and act as if you haven’t invested a dime in it. Never once did he show any appreciation, or thankfulness for all you’ve done. Wouldn’t that make you feel awful? Wouldn’t that make it hard for you to continue blessing him in the future?

How do you think God feels, when He’s done so much for us (He made us, gave us such wonderful bodies and minds, then when we messed up, He sent His son to die for us, etc.), and then we go throughout the day not even stopping to think about all He’s done for us? We’re too busy taking our children to the baseball game, watching TV, and countless other things… that we don’t even stop to think about all God’s done for us. How do you think that makes God feel? Do you think He gets overwhelmed with joy, and can’t wait to send us more blessings? If you were in His position, would you feel that way? Wouldn’t you want your people to be thankful for the goodness and blessings you have showered upon them?

When we are thankful for the goodness of God in our lives, it touches the very heart of God and encourages Him to shower even more blessings upon us. A thankful heart is truly a floodgate to the blessings and goodness of God in our lives!

Psalms 37:4, “Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”

Read More

Guilt can serve two purposes, it can show us the problem so that we might repent and receive forgiveness, or it can rub our mistake in our faces and make us feel hopeless. The Devil is known for putting guilt on people, and is known as the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10).

How can you tell the difference between condemnation (bad for us) and conviction (good for us)?

First, I’d like you to ask yourself, “Why am I feeling guilty? What is the purpose of this guilt?” Of course your feeling guilty because you’ve probably done something wrong, but there is a reason why your feeling guilty. There is a source or sponsor of your guilt; it could be God or it could be the enemy. God uses guilt to convict us (conviction) of our sins so that we might change and make things better (receive forgiveness), whereas the enemy uses guilt to burden us down and make us feel hopeless about what we have done.

When God convicts us, it’s so that we might recognize the problem, and work on fixing it. When the enemy condemns us, it’s to make us feel like there’s nothing we can do about it, and give us a rotten feeling with no hope. Therefore, ask yourself, “Is this guilt trying to bring me to repentance, or is it trying to tell me what a loser I am?” God doesn’t tell us what a loser we are, His desire is rather that we may be reconciled with Him and receive forgiveness from our sins. The enemy likes to show you the mess, while God wants to show you the solution.

If you have sins that you haven’t repented from, then by all means, repent and turn from your wicked ways!! Don’t try to blame your guilt on the enemy if you know your guilty and you haven’t repented of your sins!

If your sins are forgiven (1 John 1:9), and the enemy is burdening you down with guilt, you may have to renounce the spirit of guilt, and command it to leave. Also, resist the Devil and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

Read More

It is often harder to forgive ourselves then to forgive others. But what we must focus on, is that when God has forgiven us, we are CLEAN (Psalms 103:12). We need to stop blaming ourselves for not being good enough, and accept the fact that our sins have been forgiven (1 John 1:9). God Himself doesn’t even want to remember our sins (Isaiah 43:25), so why should we? Are we smarter then God to remember something He chooses to forget?

Read More

When a person sins against us, the enemy loves to place within us a wall against that person; a roadblock in our way of loving that person as Christ loved us. Forgiveness is basically a choice that we make to destroy that roadblock that is in our way of loving them as Christ loved us.

Jesus died to tear down the roadblocks caused by our sin between us and God, and we are required to do the same to those who wrong us (Matthew 6:15).

Read More

Matthew 22:37-40, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Anything that violates those two key commandments is a sin.

Read More

Two voices are speaking: Satan likes to come along and tell you, “Look at that sin you did 5 years ago! That was so bad! You are such a failure!” But Jesus, through God’s Word, tries to tell you that if you turn to Him, you will be forgiven (1 John 1:9), and your past will be forgotten: Isaiah 43:25, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.”

You are faced with a choice: You can either listen to Satan’s lie that you are a failure, or you can listen to God’s Word that tells you that your past has been washed away and you are a new creature in Christ! 2 Cor 5:17, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Whichever voice you listen to will crowd the other one out: If you have two dogs who fight all the time, and you can only afford to feed one of them, how do you know which one will win? The one you feed! The same is true in the spiritual realm. The more you listen to Satan’s lies and deception, the more he will build strongholds in your mind, and the more strongholds that go up, the harder it will be to hear God’s voice. The other side of the coin is true too… the more you feast yourself on the truth in God’s Word, the more it tears down strongholds and makes it harder for the enemy’s voice to penetrate your system.

If you listen to Satan’s lies that you are a failure, he will continue to feed you that lie, and it will grow into a stronghold (a lie that is believed, or an incorrect thinking pattern). Your feelings are quite often a direct result of your thoughts. If you think you are a failure, you will feel like one.

If you listen to your heaven Father, who is speaking truth to you through His Word, you will begin to tear down the strongholds in your life. When you meditate on the truth in God’s Word, it will become part of you, and before long, you will be feeling different, simply because you are exchanging lies of the devil for the truth in God’s Word. When you believe that your sins are forgiven, you can then allow your conscience to be cleansed from dead works by the blood of Jesus: Hebrews 9:14, “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”

Read More

Forgiveness is a choice. We must choose to forgive those who have done us wrong, then lay the whole mess in God’s hands, and leave it there. Give your hurts and hard feelings to Him. Think about Jesus… here they murdered Him (they didn’t do that to you or I!), and yet one of the last words that left His mouth were crying out “Father, forgive them!” Look at the depth of God’s love for us! God’s deep love for us was expressed through Jesus’ death on the cross. When we begin to comprehend the great expression of love that was towards us, that same love will begin to grow in our hearts, and flow out to others. That is why it is important to grow in God’s love and become well aware of how deep and rich it is, because when we understand His love for us, we will find that forgiving others becomes naturally and the choice becomes much easier to make.

Read More

Guilt is cultivated when you continually allow yourself to dwell and think about how badly you’ve messed up, your pasts, the sins you’ve committed, etc. The enemy loves to remind us of our past failures, so he can keep us thinking about them. The problem is, if we allow ourselves to fall for this trap, it allows the enemy to build what they call a stronghold in our minds.

Your best bet is to learn what is going on, and stop Satan dead in his tracks. Learn the difference between condemnation and conviction, and stop listening to condemnation. Condemnation comes from the devil, and it’s meant to build strongholds in your mind and weaken you spiritually.

Read More

Pay attention to your thoughts and speech for “always” and “never’ statements and beliefs. If you find any, take it to the Lord and follow these steps.

1. Identify who or what you’re holding judgment toward in your heart.
2. What lies do you believe about yourself, them, God, and others because of the judgment?

Now that you have identified who and what you have believed, let’s lay it at the feet of Jesus and take back the ground given to the enemy.

Read More

One of the hardest things I’ve been walking through for some time now is learning not to “explain myself.”

For as long as I can remember, I have felt like I had to explain, in detail, why I do what I do, chose what I chose, the decisions I made, or who I am. It’s especially hard when someone has the wrong idea about me, something I did, or has devised their own presumptions (aka rude assumptions) behind a choice I made.

These things are undoubtedly rooted in wounding that became a coping mechanism, a way to protect me and avoid conflict or rejection.

While it’s important to offer some explanation for some occasions, I felt I had to explain ALL the details so they would UNDERSTAND me or my choices completely. How does this connect with control? Keep reading. I’m almost there.

Read More