Pray Know God
It all begins with an idea.
Enjoy the read!
Read & Meditate
Mathew 16:13-20: When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Reflect & Restructure
We can tag along with someone’s faith and be encouraged by them for a season. However, there is a point when we have to get grow past Moses or Joshua and calling Him the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob. If He's not our God that means we have not been with Him, which means we don't know Him. So many of us know God of the Word but we don't know the God that lives inside of us. Jesus said, Who do you say I am?, in Mathew 16. Why would He ask that question to people who have spent time with Him? This does not make sense, but it did to Jesus. We all have to answer that question for ourselves and in our own hearts. We have to know that the answer to that question decides how we operate in all our interactions and relationships. The answer decides how our file of life is going appear to others and to God himself. What we believe is what we see and what we believe is how we conduct our life. Our life lived has nothing to do with our speech or how passionate we are about things but has everything to do with how our faith is revealed.
There are few things that God will reveal to us about who we are and how we are. We must recognize that it is not the same way that a human, finite being would reveal it. Therefore do everything we can not to use their treatment of us or their words to define us. James 3 actually says that when we are mistreated the person is partnering with the devil so there we have it. We are not to place so much stock on other people’s opinion or view of us. Instead, our Father will reveal the areas He wants to work on in partnership so that we can experience the right view of who He is. How many of us and others we know who have fallen away due to the actions of another person? The bible says that God opposes the proud but give favor to the humble. Pursue meekness become a person who is willing to go along with whatever He wants to do. A meek person is some that goes with the flow even when they are treated unfairly. God wants to strongly support us but we have to make Him personal and He has to be the reason for every season. We have to know God, allow him to show us ourselves, surrender to His prompts so that our lives will show evidence that He lives in us! Do everything in our power to keep the unity with God and make Him ours. Afterall, He is our God, right?
Respond and Implement
When you fast set your minds on the attributes of God!
Example of Attributes of God:
God Is Immutable – He Never Changes – Malachi 3:6
God Is Omniscient – He Is All-Knowing – Isaiah 46:9-10
God Is Omnipresent – He Is Always Everywhere – Jeremiah 23:23-24
His Grace and Peace Be with you!
Prayer, Scripture and Soul
It all begins with an idea.
Prayer, Scripture and Soul
This week’s blog is meant to help us prepare to lean into God and find our home. It is our prayer that you will be edified and equipped. We also ask that share our blogs with others, tweet, repost, email to your friends, or just tell someone about them. Enjoy the read!
Read & Meditate
2 Chronicles 7:14:“if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.
Reflect & Restructure
Prayer is, at its heart, the communication that is the fabric of the human being relationship with its Father, God. Praying together was one of the hallmarks of the church from its start. In Acts, they gathered to pray in the days after Christ's death -- this is even before the big event in Acts 2 that started the church. Then right after that first event, they devoted themselves to prayer. How do we start? Just pray, offering whatever we're thinking and feeling to the Lord. Whatever we bring, it's a start. As we pray more regularly or more often, the usual experience is that a strange thing starts happening to us. We start being more truthful in prayer, we start turning away from what we did wrong, our attitude become more confident, we start taking the time to listen, we start looking for the signs of divine dialogue in our daily life, we start hungering to read the Scriptures, we start wanting to pray with others, we also think less and less about ourselves.
This year, in 2025, why don’t we start with inviting God to speak into our spirit to help enable full surrender of our souls. This year start with what we could call “extended time of soul searching”. Start with focusing more on soul searching with God is always a good thing and will bring ourselves to a place of awareness of the need to guard our souls. This is accomplished through more time alone with God and is not because lengthy confession or repentance is more acceptable than brief confession or repentance, but because we need time to dig into our souls with scripture and The Holy Spirit in order to discern where did that response come from? Why is difficult to forgive? Why does that keep showing up in our life? It does take time to mediate on how scripture that will divide and dive into our souls to help us discover those things and begin to get free from them.
Utilize your time in prayer and reflection, meditation, lingering in the presence of God to lead to change rather than trying. This will assist us with recalibrating our minds for another battle and other challenges that will come our way. We must schedule time for it, even in an extremely busy schedule, late at night or early in the morning.
God is no hurry, He wants to spend time with us and knows our heart. Why don’t we seek out the still, quiet moments to allow Him to show us our heart?
Respond and Implement
Read the scripture and pray it back to God before you start your day without cell phones, ipads or technology.
Pray when we have trouble concentrating or have a decision to make
Send an email prayer to a family member, coworker or friend
His Grace and Peace Be with you!
Be Led By Jesus
It all begins with an idea.
When seeking help, being discipled, being shepherded or following leadership these are 3 things you should ponder and pray about.
Read, Ponder, Pray and Set Expectations
Humility
Colossians 3:12 - “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, tapeinophrosunē [humility].”
The uncommon virtue of humility. Virtues are habitual exercises and inclinations of the heart for good things. Virtues are truly valuable, important or yours when you desire them want to receive and you want to provide for others. Virtue consists in the beauty of those heart-exercises and of the actions that flow from them. Uncommon virtues are in limited supply both in world and in the Body of Christ, sounds weird doesn’t it? But mainly, and most importantly, uncommon virtues are those habitual exercises of the heart rooted in what makes us disciples of Jesus. In other words, the uncommon virtues flow from our union with Jesus Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, by definition, no unbeliever exercises any uncommon virtue. They exercise common virtues, which have external similarities to the uncommon virtues, but they are radically different because they have no roots in a person’s relation to Christ. Humility involves the possibility that you are wrong in your thinking, words, actions, and emotions no matter how smart you think you are or how many times you have read the scriptures. More importantly, it means allowing Jesus to lead you even when it does make sense to you.
Sacrifice
Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,...”
To be “a living sacrifice” is to be fully at God’s disposal—to be available and willing to obey Jesus in whatever he asks, invites you into or commands. Come with a total allegiance and submission to the Bible — the Christian Scriptures — as our only infallible authority. This means you come with no authority except what you can see in the Scriptures, to savor in your own soul, and to show in the power of the Holy Spirit for the upbuilding of others. John Piper: “Christ’s sacrifice was so complete, so glorious, so full, so decisive that it secured an eternal redemption. If you have Christ, you have eternal forgiveness for all sins.” Offering your body as a living sacrifice to God is to make a daily decision that your desires must die so that you can be free to do with your body what Jesus desires. In the same way that you once used your body to serve yourself and fulfill the lusts and passions of your flesh. In the Old Testament, when someone offered an animal to be burned, it was meant to symbolize a larger truth—that everything they have is at God’s disposal. Don’t give Jesus your leftovers.
Trust
Jesus gives you the strength to endure grief, disappointment, or hopelessness but the process can be lonely and scary. You have two alternatives: you can cry in sinful disdain over the work that Jesus is doing in and through you, or you can lament deeply with hope in the joy that is set before you. The weeping itself is not the issue — that is probably the most God-glorifying response. But if your weeping comes simply from angered pride, or the shattered shards of your sinful nature, others' sin or your brokenness or other’s brokenness, you’ve moved away from lamenting the way things are to resenting that things are not the way you wanted them to be. The author of Hebrews tells us Christ’s cries were heard because of his reverent submission (open to reason, decided to put Himself) to God (Hebrews 5:7). You are broken. The great thing about being broken is that if God is the Maker, your Maker, He always puts you back together in a way that looks more like Christ than before. In the process, painful though it was or it might be, you will see He also has a son or daughter with special needs: YOU. Relying on God is not a matter of mental willpower; it’s a lifestyle. It’s a holistic shift in daily focus, and it involves mind, body, and soul. Your anxiety/worry is often rooted in trying to avoid suffering. You rely on God by trusting He will do what’s best, even when you experience suffering, loss, and sacrifice. You rely on God that He is a loving Father.
Read, Ponder, Pray
His Grace and Peace Be with you!
LET US LOOK AT GOD: WHO IS HE
It all begins with an idea.
To find out the true identity of something/someone, you have to start with the original/origin. In Exodus 34:6-7, God fills out His own birth certificate and describes to us who He really is. It is this self-description that is referenced time and again for the rest of Scripture. This is the identity that ought to shape our lives. Our lives or our witness ought to be shaped by the true identity of God not our identity. Our lives are not to be shaped by what's in style or what draws a crowd, but rather by the true identity of God. Hear these words about God's true identity (Ex. 34:6-7, NIV).
Read: Exodus 34-6-7 6 The Lord passed in front of Moses, calling out, “Yahweh![a] The Lord !The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.7 I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations. I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But I do not excuse the guilty. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations.”
He starts with "The Lord, the Lord" or "Yahweh, Yahweh El." God begins by reciting His own name twice followed by "El," the biblical designation for "Deity." This is the only place in the Bible where this repetition is found, but it serves two purposes.
1. It causes us to pause and take notice as He announces His name twice. This is to emphasize the name of God and reminds us of His name "I am that I am" (e.g., Martha, Martha; Peter, Peter).
2. It connects us back to the first description of his name with Moses in Exodus: "Moses, we have had this same conversation before" (vv. 3:13-15).
He restates the name He had given to Moses already: "I am was. I am is. I am will be." He doesn't stop there but then begins to unpack what the "I am that I am" means.
Compassionate and Gracious God.
Loving and Faithful God.
Forgiving and Just God.
Read: Ephesians 1:5 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure
God gave as an identity that is rooted in His sacred truth granted as stated in the Bible. As such, we are not left with the freedom to act independently to try figure out who we are. He has constructed our self-identity and provided us with divine revelations that explicitly shapes our understanding of the self. God reveals that all if us are people are created in the image of Him. In part, this means that humanity is ultimately designed to bear God’s image, be like Jesus and to magnify His glory. This is most evidenced when we live out the call of Jesus to love the Lord with all our hearts, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves
Read: 2 Corinthians 5:13-21
He also shaped us by His redemptive narrative of the Gospel as viewed through the themes of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. As God’s Creation, all of humanity was perfectly designed to worship Him and love him. As we were subjected to the Fall, all people now bear the identity of sinner since the heart resides in a state of death wherein people place self at the center and are no longer concerned with God’s glory. A person in this state is identified as condemned. As partakers of Redemption, by grace, a person is enabled to place faith in Jesus Christ, at which time sins are forgiven and due to God’s mercy, the identity of condemned is replaced with the identity of redeemed.
God securely made us and see us rooted in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Though still prone to sin, wander and rebel, His gift of the new self is no longer ultimately identified by sin, but by what Jesus has accomplished on behalf of those who place faith in Him. This identity (who are are) is gifted to us by God and cannot be earned by good deeds. Since all those who put their trust in who God is and who they are (the Believer) become united to Jesus by faith, all that is true of Jesus becomes true us them. Therefore, in Christ, the Believer is holy, perfect, righteous, accepted, approved, valued, and loved by God.
Who we are is continually being transformed by the Holy Spirit. Though considered perfect, righteous, holy, and loved in Christ, God is also committed to working in the heart. This work is actually to create perfection, righteousness, holiness and love in the inner man to progressively resemble the character of Christ through and through. This transformation is ongoing and lifelong and will find its completion at the conclusion of this earthly life.
God the Father who is using every situation or circumstance in life, both joyful and distressing, to conform those who trust who He is and who they say He is into the image of Jesus to assure completion to the new self. He uses This transformation to rewire the heart to align with His heart, and places Jesus as center of all things. His workings progressively restore humanity to operate by its original design. The original design is journey and growing with yearning to love God and others becomes to the end that it becomes our purpose, central motivation and joy of life.
His Grace and Peace Be with you!