Since I've been saved, I spent months and months striving to feel a consistent happiness or peace, and I took many wrong turns along the way. Satan is a deceiver and he wants to lure us towards seemingly more attractive/easier/quicker fixes to our "problems" that have nothing to do with trusting God and living in faith. I started to realize, after I had been saved, that I had a deep sense of self-loathing and complete lack of self worth. There were times when I felt so pitiful for myself that I even rebelled against God, feeling entitled to selfishness and other vices because I felt like my life was unfair. This is not of God.
You are a child of God, and yet you feel pain, and yet people betray you... Stop looking at people, and look to Jesus. Only in him can we anchor true hope, feel true joy and love, and build our faith. I let my situations and the people around me draw me away into distractions because I wanted to numb my pain. Why not look into the face of God and let him take it from you through faith? God did not will for us to feel all the suffering and have diseases and all that, but remember that Satan came to steal, kill and destroy? Our sin alone is what keeps God's presence and love from truly manifesting in our lives. One of my biggest sins is those moments where I take my eyes off Jesus and get distracted by life, like earthly pleasure or meaningless prattle with people. We have this lifetime to seek the face of God, and to manifest God so that people can know him. What are we doing?
Father God, I ask you for more grace for all of us to truly seek your face and to fear you. You promised us the Holy Spirit to enable us to do this, and we can have as much of you as we want if only we would seek more. Let us have the grace to seek you more. In Jesus name.
Not too long ago, when I felt the enemy attacking me by bringing up my situations in life and the unfairness of it all, I felt completely engulfed with the suffering of Christian friends and emotional pain. I wondered why God created us to suffer and questioned him as to why this was a good idea. It was not long before I remembered a passage in Romans 8:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Please, think about it for a moment... All of creation is suffering because not all of the children of God have been revealed, and because we do not truly understand who we are in Christ. We are children of the Most High, a royal priesthood, the bride of Christ, and truly loved. We need to ask God to truly reveal all of that to us, in order that satan's lies no longer cause us to feel overwhelmed by life, hurt by people, and so forth.
I also realized that I am a soldier in the army of the Lord. We are at war right now, and it was not supposed to be comfortable. Yet the Lord promises to be our strength among a myriad of other wonderful promises. Take this verse for example (Isaiah 40:31):
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
What if some of the pain we are going through right now is enabling us to better empathize with those who are heading to Hell. Imagine if every pain and bad feeling you ever had were multiplied infinitely and that would be the only thing you could ever feel forever. That's where they are headed, an eternity of severe hopeless doom. An eternity without God. Why are we not weeping for them? How can we weep for ourselves thinking that God is treating us "unfairly"? How can we become overcome by sadness and fear because of what happens in our earthly life? This life is not our own to be sad about. Our lives were bought from us at the cross, and Jesus deserves our full vessel. That includes all earthly desires and comforts. We cannot let our earthly desires and standard of life overshadow our desire to know him and to obey his every word.
Christ kept preaching about Heaven on Earth. That is because, from day one of salvation, we are meant to already be in Heaven. That is available to us. Let us ask the Lord for more grace to enter his rest and stop striving to feel happy or worthy. Heaven is already available to you.
One of satan's tricks, into which I often fell, concerns how I was subconsciously trying to battle my self-loathing and severe lack of feeling worthy. I had come to the realization that God loved me and that I am "worthy" as a sort of head knowledge, but Satan used my wish to stop hating myself to lure me into another sort of striving. I was performing to try to build a sense of worth, trying to impress people and living in my own strength, but that is meaningless. Even though I felt good most of the time, it was really just a facade. It starts going towards pride and trust in the self rather than true feelings of worth and trust in God.
How much better to have worth be this: a deep revelation of God's love for me? How much better to realize worth by the revelation of the importance of human life and our chance to manifest God to all of creation, to let him so use us that people can see and know Christ. Worth is so much more genuine if you have nothing to prove to anyone, when you simply just love God and love people. It feels so much more restful that way, as well.
When we are feeling wronged by the situations in our life, by people around us, or simply feeling unfortunate, then we do not understand the gospel and God's love for us. I urge you to pray to the Lord for a deeper revelation of who he is and his love for you. Once we taste more and more of his goodness, we begin to realize that being able to spend all eternity with our wondrous Lord, forever getting to know him more is the greatest privilege and gift of all. Everything we think we want, that we feel we miss, pales in comparison to what we already have as Children of the Lord. The deep connection that he has made available to us, with himself, is an unfathomably marvelous gift. He is the maker of all that there is!
We should be grateful for the times when everything is taken away because there are less distractions to keep us from seeking him. We should be grateful for everything that the Lord gives and takes away, for the prayers that are answered, as well as the prayers that are not yet answered. We must learn to truly trust him and know that he only wants good things for us. Let us pray to know his heart. Let us pray for the Lord's thoughts to be our thoughts, his ways to be our ways, and his love to stir our hearts so deeply that every lie from satan becomes something that leaves us completely unaffected.
You are not living in a desert. In Christ, you are in Heaven on Earth. Will you believe this?
Bless you, my friends. The Lord let his face to shine upon you, in Jesus name, amen.
You are a child of God, and yet you feel pain, and yet people betray you... Stop looking at people, and look to Jesus. Only in him can we anchor true hope, feel true joy and love, and build our faith. I let my situations and the people around me draw me away into distractions because I wanted to numb my pain. Why not look into the face of God and let him take it from you through faith? God did not will for us to feel all the suffering and have diseases and all that, but remember that Satan came to steal, kill and destroy? Our sin alone is what keeps God's presence and love from truly manifesting in our lives. One of my biggest sins is those moments where I take my eyes off Jesus and get distracted by life, like earthly pleasure or meaningless prattle with people. We have this lifetime to seek the face of God, and to manifest God so that people can know him. What are we doing?
Father God, I ask you for more grace for all of us to truly seek your face and to fear you. You promised us the Holy Spirit to enable us to do this, and we can have as much of you as we want if only we would seek more. Let us have the grace to seek you more. In Jesus name.
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Not too long ago, when I felt the enemy attacking me by bringing up my situations in life and the unfairness of it all, I felt completely engulfed with the suffering of Christian friends and emotional pain. I wondered why God created us to suffer and questioned him as to why this was a good idea. It was not long before I remembered a passage in Romans 8:
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Please, think about it for a moment... All of creation is suffering because not all of the children of God have been revealed, and because we do not truly understand who we are in Christ. We are children of the Most High, a royal priesthood, the bride of Christ, and truly loved. We need to ask God to truly reveal all of that to us, in order that satan's lies no longer cause us to feel overwhelmed by life, hurt by people, and so forth.
I also realized that I am a soldier in the army of the Lord. We are at war right now, and it was not supposed to be comfortable. Yet the Lord promises to be our strength among a myriad of other wonderful promises. Take this verse for example (Isaiah 40:31):
but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
What if some of the pain we are going through right now is enabling us to better empathize with those who are heading to Hell. Imagine if every pain and bad feeling you ever had were multiplied infinitely and that would be the only thing you could ever feel forever. That's where they are headed, an eternity of severe hopeless doom. An eternity without God. Why are we not weeping for them? How can we weep for ourselves thinking that God is treating us "unfairly"? How can we become overcome by sadness and fear because of what happens in our earthly life? This life is not our own to be sad about. Our lives were bought from us at the cross, and Jesus deserves our full vessel. That includes all earthly desires and comforts. We cannot let our earthly desires and standard of life overshadow our desire to know him and to obey his every word.
Christ kept preaching about Heaven on Earth. That is because, from day one of salvation, we are meant to already be in Heaven. That is available to us. Let us ask the Lord for more grace to enter his rest and stop striving to feel happy or worthy. Heaven is already available to you.
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One of satan's tricks, into which I often fell, concerns how I was subconsciously trying to battle my self-loathing and severe lack of feeling worthy. I had come to the realization that God loved me and that I am "worthy" as a sort of head knowledge, but Satan used my wish to stop hating myself to lure me into another sort of striving. I was performing to try to build a sense of worth, trying to impress people and living in my own strength, but that is meaningless. Even though I felt good most of the time, it was really just a facade. It starts going towards pride and trust in the self rather than true feelings of worth and trust in God.
How much better to have worth be this: a deep revelation of God's love for me? How much better to realize worth by the revelation of the importance of human life and our chance to manifest God to all of creation, to let him so use us that people can see and know Christ. Worth is so much more genuine if you have nothing to prove to anyone, when you simply just love God and love people. It feels so much more restful that way, as well.
When we are feeling wronged by the situations in our life, by people around us, or simply feeling unfortunate, then we do not understand the gospel and God's love for us. I urge you to pray to the Lord for a deeper revelation of who he is and his love for you. Once we taste more and more of his goodness, we begin to realize that being able to spend all eternity with our wondrous Lord, forever getting to know him more is the greatest privilege and gift of all. Everything we think we want, that we feel we miss, pales in comparison to what we already have as Children of the Lord. The deep connection that he has made available to us, with himself, is an unfathomably marvelous gift. He is the maker of all that there is!
We should be grateful for the times when everything is taken away because there are less distractions to keep us from seeking him. We should be grateful for everything that the Lord gives and takes away, for the prayers that are answered, as well as the prayers that are not yet answered. We must learn to truly trust him and know that he only wants good things for us. Let us pray to know his heart. Let us pray for the Lord's thoughts to be our thoughts, his ways to be our ways, and his love to stir our hearts so deeply that every lie from satan becomes something that leaves us completely unaffected.
You are not living in a desert. In Christ, you are in Heaven on Earth. Will you believe this?
Bless you, my friends. The Lord let his face to shine upon you, in Jesus name, amen.
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