Tag: love

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Sacrifice of praise

“Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.” Hebrews 13:15 NIV

When I studied this seemingly simple verse, I found that it is saying a lot. First there is the idea that the word ‘through’ is talking about how the only way to remove the wall that separates us from God is to acknowledge Jesus as the final and permanent sacrificial offering. Acknowledge that He is the One who came to save the world by removing that wall that separates us from God, giving us the ability to communicate with God.

The next part, “Let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise” is thought to be Paul talking about how, as Christians, we are sacrificing all that we are each and every day in order to follow God’s will for our lives. We know that God’s will is better than ours, but the idea of dying to self is hard at times as our desires are strongly rooted in us. However, the willful submission of them in order to follow God’s plan for our lives is our sacrifice of praise.

The last part, “the fruit of lips that openly profess His name.” conveys that we should be willing to speak out to God. That we should not be only thinking thoughts of praise to God but we should be vocalizing them, in song, poems, reciting of scripture or our own created prayers of praise. We are to be voicing our connection to God and expressing out loud how much thankful we are, how much we love our Lord and how much we want to be like Jesus.

So, as I read this verse, at first glance I didn’t take in all that it has to say about how important our public profession of faith in God is. However, knowing that the Christian path begins with knowing that Jesus is the path by which we are able to communicate with the Father, and the sacrifices of our desires for His desires is how we follow, then the idea of publicly professing our belief in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit is the natural conclusion.

If we are willing to give up our desires to follow God’s will for our lives, then we should be willing to say all of that in public for others to hear and possibly decide for themselves if they wish to do the same. This is a way of life that is too good not to share and to important to be kept to ourselves.

Do you openly profess God’s name?

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Keep giving thanks

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Philippians 4:8 NIV

I have written on the 2 verses that precede this verse before. In Philippians 4:6-7, we are instructed by Paul to not worry about anything but with thanksgiving make all of our requests known to God and the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. This verse naturally follows as what we are to think about instead of all of the challenges and problems were are facing.

As we end the week of Thanksgiving, many of us have been thinking about what we are thankful for from the big things in our lives down to the little things that we some times or most time take for granted. Having been focusing on the positive things in life for the last week may have changed the mindset of some. I know it always does me good to focus for a while on the positives and push the negatives far from my mind.

So if we listen to Paul at this time, I pray that we would keep our focus on what is true, what is right, what is pure, what is lovely, what is admirable, what is excellent and what is praiseworthy. By keeping our minds focused on these things, I believe that we keep our minds focused on God, because all good things come from God.

I pray everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that as we move forward to celebrating the birth of Christ, our Lord and Savior, that we continue to give thanks and keep our focus on God. Keep giving thanks!

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Rejoice in all circumstances

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NIV

This is the second devotion for this verse that I promised when I posted Wednesday’s devotional. I wrote about giving thanks on Wednesday and I want to look at rejoicing always today. The world would have us living life by a set of standards that places us in a mindset of negativity and a lifestyle of complaining. As I said on Wednesday, thankfully we don’t have to live by the world’s standards.

As a Christian, we have a different set of standards to live by, the ones put in place by Jesus. His idea of how to live is usually the exact opposite of what the world views as the way to live. The world will tell you that you should only feel and express the emotion that fits with the circumstance you are in. For example, if you are in a disagreement with another person, then you should feel angry or hurt by the situation and therefore you should express anger or sadness, possibly even entertain the idea of revenge. The way that Jesus instructs His followers to face that situation, is to have the emotion of anger or sadness, but to then give it to God, and choose to express love for the other person or show forgiveness for their part in the situation. See, the exact opposite.

The reason that Christians can choose to express joy at any time is because our joy is not determined by our situation, but by the fact that we are God’s children. If we rely on our situations to be joyful, then we are only joyful when the situation calls for it. Situations change which means our emotion changes per the world, but God doesn’t and since we are to base our joy in Him, our joy does not have to change. Even in some of the most difficult times in Christians’ lives, joy can be found.

As a Christian, an expression of joy in a difficult time doesn’t mean that we don’t experience other emotions such as sadness. Jesus isn’t saying we should not feel our emotions, we should, we are not robots. The difference is what we are choosing to do with our emotions at that moment. The world would say we are to remain in the sadness, where Jesus is telling us that we are to focus on Him and remain in the joy that we have because we are connected to Him. We are connected to Him because Jesus is always with us. As a child of God we can remember that situations change but God doesn’t change, we can count on Him remaining the same.

Are you able to rejoice in all things?

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Thanksgiving

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” Colossians 2:6-7 NIV

I know that I have written about these verses before, however, I purposely did not write about the last section of them during that post. I wanted to save this portion of the verse for today, Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving has always been a special holiday for me. I have always loved the food that is associated with this day. I have always loved the idea of having people gather and celebrate what we are thankful for in our daily lives.

When I still lived at home, my mother would invite her friends and people she worked with to Thanksgiving dinner, especially if she knew that they didn’t have family locally. Over the years, my husband and I have developed a tradition of opening our home up to our extended family’s friends for any occasion. Today is not going to be any different. We are blessed today to have several people outside of our immediate family join us to celebrate Thanksgiving.

I am thankful for the ability to be able to share what the Lord has blessed me and my husband with. I am thankful that the Lord brought me and my husband together and that my husband is such a giving person. I am thankful for the many blessings the Lord has given me and my family such as heat, clothes, food, a home, jobs, relationships, love and most importantly eternal salvation.

If you would like, please leave a comment about what you are thankful for, what you have been graciously blessed with. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

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Anxiety

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” Philippians 4:6 NIV

I love this verse because it makes it sound so easy. Just don’t be anxious. That is so much easier to tell someone else to do than to hear yourself or try to do sometimes. For non-believers, it can be very hard because they are trying to not be anxious, all on their own.

When we struggle with worry and anxiety, we are actually stepping back away from our faith. When we worry, we are trying to figure out how to control the outcome of a situation that we are either in or believe we may be in sometime in the future. The only true control we have over things is the control of how we respond to our own feelings, how we respond to others, and how we respond to the events that are occurring either around us or to us.

We do not have control over what someone else thinks, feels or does. We don’t have control over the situations that are happening around us. We only have control of ourselves and there are times when we don’t have very much control over that. However, the wonderful news is that as believers we are not on our own, we have God to help us. God is right there with us and will give us strength to do things we do not believe we can do, such as not worry or be anxious.

In Philippians 4:6, God, through Paul, has given us the very method that we are to use to calm ourselves, to take our faith and exercise it by giving the worry or anxiety to God. Paul wrote that we are to not be anxious about anything, but in every situation we are to pray. We are to pray and ask God for what we need. There is an extra part in the verse that we may find difficult to do while we are praying and asking God for what we need and that is the part of the verse that says we are to do this with thanksgiving.

Who is thinking about being thankful when they are in the middle of feeling anxious? Not many of us but that is what we are instructed to do, be thankful. What are we to be thankful for? That varies from person to person, but a good place to start is to be thankful that God wants to be and is your God. That He wants to be involved in your life and that He loves you. Those are some very large things to be thankful for. This may be hard to do at times but being purposeful in expressing our thankfulness to God in prayer is a step towards exercising our faith and giving our worries and anxieties to God.

I pray that as you go about your day today, that you are able to express your thankfulness to God for who He is and how much He loves you. Have a great day.