Category: Spiritual Gifts

Posted on

Joy and peace

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 NIV

What does ‘God of hope’ mean? The first thing that we can know about the term ‘God of hope’ is that it is another name for God. The One and Only God. It is a beautiful way to describe God. The second thing is that the hope that God gives us when we accept His gracious gift of forgiveness and salvation is the hope of what lies ahead. Not just in this life but in the next. In the afterlife, for all of eternity. Our God is the God of hope, of resurrection, of eternal life, of not being held captive by the power of sin. This God, our God, wants to fill us with joy and peace.

Our lives are empty before we come to Christ. We fill them with all kinds of things that the world says are going to satisfy us, make us feel whole, but they don’t. Instead they make us feel like we need to keep looking for more. What we need to be filled with is from God. Joy and peace are just the start of what God can fill us with.

Joy is different from happiness. Happiness comes from what is occurring around us, those temporary situations that make us feel happy. Joy comes from within and it comes from being God’s child. When we are accepted into God’s family as heirs, we have the ability to be filled with joy. God will give it to us, but we have to accept it, and express it. True joy can be seen in how we deal with life, not just the good parts, but also it’s challenges, hardships and moments of utter despair. Joy comes from inside and from God.

Peace is defined in the world as being moments when there is no conflict in our lives. That is not the peace that is being talked about here. This peace is a state of mind that comes from God. Knowing that we are saved, not by anything we have done or could ever do, but by the grace that our amazing God has extended to us, can bring peace. We have to set our minds to focus on God and the peace that He has placed inside of us. Just like joy, true peace can be seen in our lives by the way we handle everyday life, good and difficult times. We build our relationship with God one moment at a time. We come to Him for forgiveness when we have sinned, we speak to Him in prayer and we place our faith in Him.

Peace and joy come from God. They are dependent on our inner situation, whether we are born again or still living in darkness. To be born again, we have to place our faith in Jesus, which means to also place our trust in Him. In the verse Paul wrote that ‘as you trust in him’. Trusting God to do what He says He will do is scary for us. We are used to dealing with each other, imperfect human beings who do not always follow through with what we have promised to do. God is different in that He doesn’t lie, He doesn’t make promises He doesn’t plan to keep. Placing our trust in Him is a sur thing and we won’t be disappointed by Him.

In the end of the verse Paul states ‘so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit’. Joy and peace are part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. When we are truly at peace and we are filled with joy, we are able to live life overflowing with hope. To be overflowing with hope means to have so much hope that you can’t contain it inside any longer and it flows out into every part of your life. Hope can also be described as a deep sense of assurance. Just like joy and peace, hope can be seen by others in our actions, our attitude, and our words.

To be filled with joy and peace and to be overflowing with hope are all blessings from God. When the Holy Spirit fills us, He enables us to be connected to God’s grace and love. Therefore, we can’t force ourselves to be filled with joy, peace or hope, it happens because of that connection with God.

Below are some questions that you can answer. Again, I would love to hear your responses if you are willing to put them in the comments section. If you don’t want to leave them where others can read them, you can private message me on my Facebook page ‘For His Honor.’

Do you experience joy?

How does joy present in your everyday life?

Are you at peace?

What does being at peace look like for you?

Are you saved by the blood of Jesus?

Posted on

Ascension Day

“Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11 NIV

Today is the day that those who are followers of Jesus celebrate His ascension into heaven, when He was taken up into the clouds, alive, right in front of the disciples. Christians and churches all over the world celebrate this event today. 

This event, the ascension, is important to our faith, the Christian faith.  For us to believe that the ascension meant anything, we have to first believe that what Jesus did on the cross is real and true.  We have to believe that Jesus went willingly to the cross, to not just take our sins and pay for them, but to actually bear our sins as if He had committed each and every one of them. 

After paying the ultimate and final price for our sins, so that we could have a relationship with God, the Father, Jesus was placed in a grave and remained there for 3 days.  After those 3 days, Jesus rose from the grave, not as a spirit, not as a ghost, not as a zombie, not as anything other than a live human being.   He defeated the one thing that every human has to face in their life, He defeated death.

After spending time with His disciples, Jesus was taken up to heaven, not by dying again but in the very body He had been walking around in – His glorified body.

The Ascension marks the exaltation of Jesus to His rightful place as God, sharing the heavenly throne with His Father.  The ascension of Jesus happened right in front of a lot of witnesses, it was visible for everyone to see, it was physical – He was lifted into the clouds to heaven. This very visual, very physical occurrence is just one more thing that skeptics could not explain.  They tried using their limited earthly knowledge and there was no other explanation than that Jesus had risen from the grave and 40 days later rose into the clouds in front of a large crowd of people.

It is important that people saw this, just like when He rose from the grave.  It was important for people to see Him, touch Him, eat with Him, talk with Him, walk with Him.  The witnesses needed that physical reassurance that He was no longer dead.  Not ascending right after the resurrection made it hard for the unbelievers, the pharisees, to be able to say that the resurrection was made up.  The same is true for the ascension, if there had been no witnesses to it, those who opposed Jesus would have said that it was all made up too.  That His followers were not letting go of what they believed and were willing to tell lies to continue with their claims.

I am sure that the unbelievers and the pharisees did that anyways, but those who saw Jesus physically and were with Him when He ascended, they had the physical and visual experience of watching Him ascend that probably stayed with them for the rest of their lives.  Others could say that they were lying but they knew they were not.

It is important to us that Jesus ascend because it showed that He had finished what He came to earth to accomplish. Now that His objective was completed, He was returning to heaven.  Jesus needed to return, to ascend, so He could take His rightful place at the right hand of God the Father.

Hebrews 1:3 says “The Son is the shining brightness of God’s glory. He is the exact likeness of God’s being. He uses his powerful word to hold all things together. He provided the way for people to be made pure from sin. Then he sat down at the right hand of the King, the Majesty in heaven.”

In returning to His rightful place beside God the Father, Jesus is able to do a few things on our behalf. First, He is able to mediate for each believer. Pleading our case so that God will continue to forgive us because we are righteous through Jesus. Second, He went to prepare a place for us there so we would be at home with Him.  He promised His followers that He was going to prepare a place in His father’s house of many rooms.  He is preparing a home for us so that we will be comfortable with Him in heaven.  Heaven, where there is no war, no death, no pain, no tears, no hate, but instead there is peace, eternal life, love and joy. Where we are able to spend eternity with God and with Jesus.

Every heart that is troubled, every mind that is filled with regret and guilt, every person who believes the lies that the devil has told them about being too far gone to be saved, every one of us is able to come to Jesus and be saved.  I pray that if you have not accepted this gift, that you will reconsider your decision today.

Below are some questions that you can answer. Again, I would love to hear your responses if you are willing to put them in the comments section. If you don’t want to leave them where others can read them, you can private message me on my Facebook page ‘For His Honor.’

Have you accepted the gift of salvation that God planned and Jesus carried out?

What do you picture heaven to look like?

What do you imagine the disciples were feeling as they watched their friend, the Messiah, float up into the clouds and out of sight?

Posted on

Using our gifts

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 1 Peter 4:10 NIV

God is gracious to us, everyone of us. He has given each of us at least one gift, if not more, that we can use in our lives. Our choice is if we use it to serve Him or if we use it to serve ourselves. When I say we are given a gift or two, I mean that God has placed in each person a natural ability to do something. That natural ability is not present for all the things we can do, but typically for the specific gift that God has graced that person with. I am not saying that the natural ability means that you don’t have to learn things, work at things but the process of learning what you need in order to use your gift, is not typically difficult.

For example, someone who has the gift of teaching, still has to learn the material, how to present the information to others and how to prepare the material in a way that the desired amount can be covered. However, as they are learning those skills, they may not have many challenges in learning it, it may seem as if it just comes naturally to them.

Some examples of other gifts are the ability to play music, encourage others, lead, preach, provide comfort to others. This is not an all inclusive list, but only a few of the many gifts that God has graciously giving to people throughout time. Sometimes we struggle to figure out what our gift or gifts are. You would think it would not be a hard thing to figure out since I believe we have some natural ability to do it, but we don’t always want to acknowledge what our gift is and that can happen for a few different reasons.

Sometimes we just don’t want to use the gift that God has given us. For example, a person who is naturally musical may not want to be recognized as having this gift because they don’t want to play the instrument or sing in front of others. Another way to look at this is to think of the person who has the gift of hospitality and is amazing at it, but doesn’t want to do it because maybe they want to teach. At this point, our desires sometimes influence our decisions about whether we will or will not use our God-given gift.

There are challenges we may face if we try to pursue using a gift that God has not given us, and that is that we may not be very successful at it. Not accepting that God has given us a certain gift is one issue that we face as human beings. Another other issue is the idea of wanting a gift like someone else has. This is not just wanting to have a different gift and trying to pursue it, but I am referring to wanting a different gift because you have seen what having that gift looks like for someone else.

God has given us the gifts that He has deemed to be the perfect gift for us to use to further His kingdom. If we are willing to stop and remember that God is perfect and knows best always, then we should be willing to submit to His guidance and pursue using the gift He has given us.

We need to each figure out for ourselves what our gift is from God. There are assessments that can be completed to help us figure out what gift we have and the assessments are pretty accurate. When we do figure it out, then we should pray asking God to show us how we can use it. It is a gift from God and can be used to further God’s kingdom.

If you don’t know what gift you have been given by God, here is a link to an assessment that can help point you in the right direction. https://gifts.churchgrowth.org/spiritual-gifts-survey/

This is only one of many that are available on the internet. I pray that you are using your gift or gifts to being others to Christ and if you don’t know what your gift is, that you explore the many tools available to determine it.

Below are some questions that you can answer. Again, I would love to hear your responses if you are willing to put them in the comments section. If you don’t want to leave them where others can read them, you can private message me on my Facebook page ‘For His Honor.’

Do you know what your gift is?

Do you know if you have more than one?

How are you using your gift?

How would you like to use your gift?

Posted on

Clothe yourselves

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” Colossians 3:12 NIV

God chose to create us. He chose to let us continue living after sin entered the world and He chose to send Jesus to pay the final price for our sins so that we could be able to spend eternity in heaven with Him. He chose all of that. When we choose to believe in God and follow Christ then we are choosing God. God loves us very much. God has shown us compassion, He has been kind to us, He has been gentle with us and He has been patient with us.

When we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we are to imitate Him in our actions, thoughts and words. We take off hatred, hostility, cruelty, impatience and pride. We are to replace them, as a new creation, with compassion, gentleness, patience and kindness.

Humility comes when we realize that we can do none of this without Christ, that those actions and thoughts are hard to be consistently shown by us if we rely on our human nature. We need to rely on Christ to help us demonstrate to others the same love and compassion that has been shown to us.

Heavenly Father, please help us to rely on You to show others the love and compassion, the patience and gentleness that You have shown us and instilled us to show others. Living in this world and trying to rely only on ourselves is a losing battle. Help us to not let the devil get a foothold in our lives. Continue to give us the strength we need to live life as Your chosen people. In Christ’s name Amen.