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The Most Important Thing In Life Is Your Heart
How are you doing today? I would love to hear your answer right now. Most people respond to a question like this with how their circumstances are or with something about their job. But my question to you today is though “How are you doing on the inside of you; in your heart?” [Read more…]
A Wise Man Builds His House On The Rock By Hearing God’s Word And By Putting It Into Practice
What is the solid foundation of a solid marriage? How can your family withstand the storms of life? Why not
build your house on something stable, something that can stand through every test and trial? [Read more…]
There is such a great need in this hour that if we who have strong marriages and homes can have vision for helping hurting marriages, our own marriage will even get better. If you have gone through a broken marriage, God can
God Can Rebuild Your Life So You Will Avoid Making The Same Mistake That You Have Made In The Past
reconstruct your life and either use you to help other people as a single or lead you to remarry. God can rebuild your life so you will avoid making the same mistake that you have made in the past.
Here are some issues that cause difficulties or areas of conflict in the marriage relationship.
1. Pride
James 4:6 says,… God resists the proud, but gives grace unto the humble.” Pro 16:18 says, Pride goes before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. A proud person will not receive the grace of God.
We’re in a generation now in which many children have grown up in divorced homes. They’ve gone through tremendous hurts. If they don’t receive the ministry of the Holy Spirit, they’ll enter a marriage relationship with past scars and wounds.
This is an hour for the Church to rise up as never before because of the number of people who are entering marriage from a totally different perspective. We are in a materialistic, selfish generation. When you get two selfish people together, you have war. They want to grab, they want to get and they want their own way. In fact they demand it. [Read more…]
Out Of The Mouth Comes The Overflow Of The Heart
The Power of Confession
We can learn how to re-write our future with the words we speak. We might not realize it, but God expects from us when we come into the Kingdom that we want to grow and develop. It’s the same as any other profession that you have to learn. First you have to learn the words they speak in that particular arena, isn’t it? Every profession has some words in it that you and I don’t have to use if we are not working in that area.
So, first you have to change your way of thinking, then your way of talking, then your way of looking and then you change your purpose in life. You go from the basics to the advanced and then further and you keep going and going. That is the process that the Word of God takes.
Right now in these times that we live in God is demanding more from us, so that He can put more in us and that more can come out of us and bring more to us.Wow! That is something to think about, isn’t it?
Mat 12:35 says: A good man out of the good treasure of the heart brings forth good things and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings forth evil things. Do we want good things to come forth? Of course we do. You see, your future is in your heart and you bring it forth, whether you know it or not. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. We can’t change that from happening. It is a principle of the Kingdom and a way we are designed to operate.
Out of the mouth comes the overflow of the heart. So, we can bring forth good things or we can bring forth evil things, like it says in the last part of the verse. You could say instead of treasure, a deposit of the heart, because somehow it has to be deposited in the heart. Whatever is deposited in there will eventually come out.
Babies in Christ desire the sincere milk of the word that you may grow thereby. You cannot grow on the milk unless you drink it. You have to put it in there. So, the plan of the Kingdom of God needs to come into the heart, so it can come out of you and that it would manifest into your life. There is nothing that can stop you!
That’s why Jesus said “don’t seek after what you are going to eat and what you are going to put on”, that is what the world seeks after. He told us to seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things will be added to us. That is the way things will come into our life. Nobody can stop you but you, because your future is in your heart and not in somebody else’s hand. They don’t have your future.
The government doesn’t have my future, my best friends don’t have my future and my parents don’t have my future. My future is in my heart. It has been given to me through the Word of God. The devil cannot stop it. If you have your dependency on the government, the government can stop it.
Pro 4:23 Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. The word issues means in the Hebrew: boundaries, borders or forces come out of the heart. You keep your heart means that you guard your heart. One translation says that we have to keep our hearts with all vigilance and with all our might. It is that important!
Whatever comes in your heart and especially if it comes in there in abundance; it will control your life. But the good news is that he has put believers in this earth so that nobody can keep us from our destinies but us. God made it that way and that is the good news.
The revelation has to take root in your life that the color of your skin cannot hold you back and the color of somebody else’s skin cannot stop you. Wherever you come from cannot stop you, wherever you were born cannot stop it. You future is in your heart and not somebody else’s hands, so if God is for you and nobody can stand against you.
You have to make a choice to go for it and act on this principle, will you? That way there is nothing inside of you, no bitterness can come into your heart because you are making a great choice to protect and guard your heart will all diligence, right?
Our Covenant of Wealth
We have a covenant with God and in that covenant is the guarantee of wealth. These are desperate time for people who do not know their covenant with God; we have to know what is in our covenant. We need to know how much God wants
to bless us, how much He wants to provide for us and how good He is. That provision is all part of what is set before us as it says in Psalm 23 “there is set before us a table in the presence of our enemies.”
You and I can live in these times and we can thrive and not just survive, we can flourish and we’re not going to fail!
2Chron.16:9 says: For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is willing or loyal or perfect toward him.
This is a covenant scripture; the word STRONG in the Hebrew means WEALTH. So, God wants to show His Wealth to us; He wants to demonstrate His Wealth to us.
Our covenant with God is His total commitment to support us, defend us, protect us and provide for us. God wants to provide for us. God has a covenant-passion and a determination. It is rooted in LOVE and it all comes from His LOVE. It comes from that overwhelming Love that He has for you and I to get that to us; it is a demonstration of that LOVE.
There is a covenant demonstration to locate his covenant people and to bless them. He is looking throughout the whole earth. There are people that have rejected it, because they have been taught something different and criticized this teaching. But you know, I want to receive everything that He has for me, what about you?
The devotion that God has toward us is an undying devotion that compels Him to extend Himself to us with everything He is and with everything He has. God is searching and looking for us.
We cannot say in our heart, “my power and the might of mine hand have gotten me this wealth”. NO!! But you shall remember the LORD thy God: for it is He that gives thee power to get wealth that He may establish his covenant which he swore unto thy fathers, as it is this day. Deut 8:17-18
God has given us the POWER to get wealth. That is what the Bible says! Dare to believe God! Why does God give us the power to get wealth? It says “that He may establish his covenant which he swore unto thy fathers”.
We can see that in two ways:
1. To establish His covenant on the earth.
2. To establish His part of the covenant.
So that you and I in these times that we are living in we can thrive. It is because of the covenant that He has with us. Wealth is His part of the covenant.
A covenant is an exchange, we exchange with God in that covenant. Everything that He has and everything that He is, is ours. In that covenant exchange God is compelled to give that to us. We have to learn that in a covenant exchange, we give the other part everything that we have.
We are in covenant with God and He has given us everything that He has, everything that pertains to life and godliness. Life is everything you need! Prosperity is a sign of the covenant. Deut 8:18 NLT says remember the LORD your God. He is the One who gives you power to be successful, in order to fulfill the covenant He confirmed to your ancestors with an oath.
We are symbol of the BLESSING, of the covenant with God in this earth and that is what His wealth upon the earth does. He establishes His covenant on the earth through that wealth and he gets done what He needs to get done. God gives us the wealth in order to establish His covenant by evangelism, preaching and teaching (maybe blogging too 🙂 ) God is looking for people who preach that side of the covenant, who will let you know that it is God’s will for you to walk in His wealth.
I choose to believe the covenant; everything that pertains to life and godliness is in it. If we don’t believe it, who will? God believes in us, so it should be an easy choice for us to believe Him especially because He has written it all down for us to read and to apply it to our life, how easy can it get? Choose to believe!
"I Would Rather Teach One Man To Pray Than Ten Men To Preach." (Charles Spurgeon)
This article presents seven simple thoughts on prayer, and then shares insights from different individuals. I didn’t feel that a lot of explanation or amplification was needed on these.
1. Prayer is not a religious ritual.
“Real prayer comes not from gritting our teeth, but from falling in love.” (Richard Foster)
“I live in the spirit of prayer. I pray as I walk about, when I lie down and when I rise up. And the answers are always coming.” (George Mueller)
“Unless I had the spirit of prayer, I could do nothing.” (Charles G. Finney)
“Beloved, it is not our long prayers but our believing God that gets the answer.” (John G. Lake)
“There is no need to get to a place of prayer; pray wherever you are.” (Oswald Chambers)
2. Prayer is not a one-way conversation.
“God must speak to us before we have any liberty to speak to him.” (John Stott)
“The true spirit of prayer is no other than God’s own Spirit dwelling in the hearts of the saints. And as this spirit comes from God, so doth it naturally tend to God in holy breathings and pantings. It naturally leads to God, to converse with him by prayer.”
(Jonathan Edwards)
Jesus said in John 15:7, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.”
3. Prayer is not a matter of talking an unwilling God into doing what you want Him to do.
“Prayer is not conquering God’s reluctance, but taking hold of God’s willingness.”
(Phillips Brooks)
“Prayer is not a means by which I seek to control God; it is a means of putting myself in a position where God can control me.” (Charles L. Allen)
“A sinning man will stop praying. A praying man will stop sinning.” (Leonard Ravenhill)
“I can no longer condemn or hate a brother for whom I pray, no matter how much trouble he causes me. His face, that hitherto may have been strange and intolerable to me, is transformed into the countenance of a brother for whom Christ died, the face of a forgiven sinner.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
Remember, we don’t pray to change God. Prayer allows God to change me.
4. Prayer is not a substitute for action.
“Prayer will become effective when we stop using it as a substitute for obedience.” (A.W. Tozer)
“I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” (Frederick Douglass)
“We Christians too often substitute prayer for playing the game. Prayer is good; but when used as a substitute for obedience, it is nothing but a blatant hypocrisy, a despicable Pharisaism…To your knees, man! and to your Bible! Decide at once! Don’t hedge! Time flies! Cease your insults to God, quit consulting flesh and blood. Stop your lame, lying, and cowardly excuses. Enlist!” (C.T. Studd)
5. Prayer is not informing God about things He didn’t know.
“Prayer is not designed to inform God, but… to humble man’s heart, to excite his desire, to inflame his faith, to animate his hope, and to raise his soul from earth to heaven.” (Adam Clarke)
6. Prayer is not an exercise is hyper-technical precision.
Some get excessively concerned about technicalities when they pray. Granted, we want to pray accurately, according to the truth of Scripture, and according to the leading of the Holy Spirit. But people can get so caught up in hyper-technicalities that they get off track when it comes to simply trusting God.
• Was I binding when I should have been loosing?
• Was I interceding when I should have been supplicating?
• Was I praying to the Father when I should have been talking to Jesus?
As Corrie Ten Boom said, “Nestle, don’t wrestle.” The simplicity of David’s faith is expressed beautifully in Psalm 131:1-2 (NLT): “I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.”
7. Prayer is not a peripheral activity of the church.
“Prayer is not just getting ready for Christian service. Prayer is Christian service.”
(Adrian Rodgers)
“It is obvious that Paul did not regard prayer as supplemental, but as fundamental—not something to be added to his work but the very matrix out of which his work was born. He was a man of action because he was a man of prayer. It was probably his prayer even more than his preaching that produced the kind of leaders we meet in his letters.” (Oswald Sanders, from Dynamic Spiritual Leadership)
“I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.” (Charles Spurgeon)
“You could remove the powerful preaching from our church and it would still continue. You could remove the administration of pastoral care through the cell group system and the church would still continue. But if you remove the prayer life of our church it would collapse.” (David Yonggi Cho)
May your walk with Him will be rich and sweet!
By: Tony Cook
Often times people feel a sense of emptiness when they pray, like your prayers are not heard or you didn’t do it right. You can’t concentrate or you easily get distracted. I can help! Check this out!
When You Take Offense At Someone, Your Spiritual Walk Is Immediately Crippled
Talking you into offense is a major strategy satan uses to get you dig up the Word seed. When the Word is in your heart, satan has no authority to get it out himself. He has to convince you to cast the Word out of your heart. If he can get you offended, you will destroy your own harvest. When you choose to become offended, you stumble and make false steps in life.
The Amplified Bible gives a good illustration of this concerning those who have stony-ground heart: And in the same way the ones sown upon stony ground are those who, when they hear the Word, at once receive and accept and welcome it with joy; And they have no real root in themselves, and so they endure for a little while; then when trouble or persecution arises on account of the Word, they immediately are offended (become displeased, indignant, resentful) and they stumble and fall away. Mar 4:16-17
When a person chooses to take offense, immediately his spiritual walk begins to wither away. The flow of life from his spirit begins to ebb and he begins to dry up inside. The Amplified says “they stumble and fall away”. Becoming offended is a stumbling block.
We never, ever should be drying up on the inside. We are believers! We have the Word. Psalm 119:165 says, “Great peace have they which love thy law and nothing shall offend them.” As we continually feed our spirits with the Word and keep our roots strong and established, we gain spiritual strength we need to avoid the enemy’s strategy of offense altogether.
Don’t allow offense in your life.
The basic problem with stony ground is that the Word is not rooted because the soil is shallow and full of rocks. Sometimes people get turned on to the Word of God and put it into motion in their lives. But six weeks later – when they don’t see any difference in their situation – they become offended. Nothing has happened. No results. No return. No increase.
We have to be willing to make a stand that the Word of God is true, regardless of how things look and no matter how long it takes to manifest in the natural realm. A lot of times it doesn’t happen because as soon as we want it to and the number one reason why it doesn’t happen sooner is not God – it’s you and me.
Maybe you think, it’s been six weeks since I started believing for my healing and I can’t tell any difference in my body. God must not have heard me. He must not care anything about me.
Be careful! You are offended and you are thinking like stony ground. Don’t let the devil talk you into being offended at God. God is never your problem.
If things are not going right in your lives, we have to look at what we are doing. It is a total waste of time to blame it on God. He is full of compassion. He is always right and he is always good. He always wants the best for us.
When the devil can’t cause us to take offense at God, he tries to cause us to become offended at our pastor who taught us the Word. The enemy whispers thoughts to our minds like, your pastor doesn’t preach right! What he said doesn’t work. That was all just talk!
If you don’t take offense at your pastor, the devil will then try to offend you through your spouse, your children, your neighbor, or your friends – anyone he can find! He wants to get you under his control again so he can put you back into poverty, bondage and sickness. He knows that strife, envy and offense are bog open doors he can walk through to take over your life.
But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth. This wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work. Jas 3:14-16
You see, when you take offense at someone, your spiritual walk is immediately crippled. Your faith won’t work, because faith works by love Gal.5:6. No matter what anyone does to you, it’s never all right for you to be offended, you are wrong! Choose to not give offense a place to start. When you get out of love, immediately repent and make it right. Choose to stay on fire for God and to stay in the Word.
We have to start making the right choices; choices that lead us to the life that God has promised, us filled with blessings. We have the power to choose wisely; satan has NO power over us.
God has a desire for a relationship with us. It is good to focus on God’s desire for a relationship as supposed taking it from the perspective of “I am going for God, I am going after God.” I heard a great sermon form Pastor George Pearsons of Eagle Mountain International Church about how to have a relationship With God; he said that God had challenged him to look at the perspective of how much God desires to have a relationship with us. God wants us to see His side of the fellowship. That is a different point of view on how to build a relationship with God.
So often we have a perspective of God sitting on the throne in that huge authoritative way and that we are the ones always approaching Him . We even might have a Wizard of Oz perspective on what God is all about.
Do you remember the moment when Dorothy and the Tin Man (Haley) and all the rest came up into the castle? When they went into the throne room they were looking at that fire that was came out of there and heard: “don’t come near the fire”. Of course they were standing there shaking. I think that is sometimes the perspective that people have of God, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or subconsciously that we have that attitude towards God.
There is a place where the Lord is saying to us: “I want you to come this time from the perspective of my passion for you, my hunger for you, my desire for you.” God wants to have a sweet communion with us.
Unfortunately there is too often that sense of unworthiness. We think that we are not worthy to have that, but that’s why we are made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.
The universe was created to cradle this earth. The entire universe was made in order to place this earth there. Te earth was created by God for men, for us. And we were created by God for fellowship with Him.
Do you remember the moment when Dorothy and the Tin Man (Haley) and all the rest came up into the castle, when they went into the throne room they were looking at that fire that was came out of there and heard: “don’t come near the fire”. Of course they were standing there shaking. I think that is sometimes the perspective that people have of God, whether it is knowingly or unknowingly, consciously or subconsciously that we have that perspective of God.
In our own development of our own passion that we have towards God we should learn of the passion that God has for us. The greatest thing that God has in the entire universe is fellowshipping with us. That is quite a thought isn’t it? He wants to have koinonia with us. We have been called in this close companionship, this sweet communion. He wants that intimate relationship, He wants a personal friendship.
The more we realize His passion to have a deeper relationship with us, the more we will experience our greater desire to have a deeper relationship with Him. The more you know that He wants you, the more you will want Him. The more you understand the pursuit that God has. It is the best approach on building a relationship with God.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life in psalm 23. The word “follow” here means “to chase after, to run after and to pursuit.” Surely, God in the form of goodness and mercy is after you and pursuing you. HE LIKES YOU!
Even if you don’t have a full understanding about the word “LOVE”; it might help you to define your relationship with God even more. It is really something when somebody comes up to you and says “I like you”. It builds you up and it is very encouraging. It should have the same impact when they tell you, that they love you.
You have to get that understanding down on the inside of you that God likes you! All sense of unworthiness will dissipate and disappear the more you know how much He likes you and how much He wants to spend time with you. It is really something when you know that somebody wants to spend time with you.
You know, I love to spend time with my family and even more with my husband and when I am not really sure that he wants to spend time with me for some reason; I am disappointed. But God always wants to spend time with us, always! He has so many things He wants to talk to us about. That motivates you spend time with somebody. Knowing that God longs to spend time with you is the key on how to have a relationship with God.
It’s up to our choices, we have the opportunity to choose to give our attention to Him and be with Him. Psalm 46 says Be still and know that I am God. To listen in His presence to things that He wants to tell us; one of the things is that when we tell Him how much we love Him and be still before Him to hear Him say “I love you too.”
A Woman’s Guide to Being Her Best
Every woman wants to look and feel her best, no matter what her age. Whether she’s a 20-year-old college co-ed, or a
We Need To Understand How Our Bodies Change @ Every Age
55-year-old first-time grandmother, a woman wants–and needs–to be operating at peak capacity physically, mentally, and emotionally. The question is, how? In the newly released book, The Women’s Health Diet, (Copyright © Rodale, 2011) by Steve Perrine, with Leah Flickinger and the editors of Women’s Health, readers are told that the best way to accomplish this goal is to give well deserved attention to their personal health, nutrition, and fitness.
In addition, readers are encouraged to understand how their bodies change over the first few decades of adulthood, and learn how to anticipate these physiological shifts in order to adjust their health and fitness routines to better meet their changing needs. [Read more…]
Do you have conversations with your spouse or your friend about the lack in your household? Let’s make an effort to stop that! You should stop right in the middle of that conversation and look at each other and say: “God is our Source.”
He is your supernatural provider and that supernatural provision is above and beyond where that provision comes from. It comes from a higher place. Every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights, from above.
Have you ever wondered where all those quail came from in the Old Testament? It came from heaven; God was the provider. They ate quail every day! What about the manna? That also came from our supernatural provider. One of the names of the father is Jehovah Jireh and that means that He is the supernatural provider. SUPERNATURAL!
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. Gen 22:7-8. There is Jehovah Jireh that provides for Himself what we need. Wow!
It is supernatural that means that you cannot find it in the natural. We cannot explain where it comes from; we should try to explain where it comes from. The supernatural can be described in Eph.3:20: it is the exceeding abundantly above all that we [dare] ask or think. It is God at Work.
The Holy Spirit can untangle any mess that you have gotten into financially. He has done it for many people and He wants to do it for everybody. God is not a respecter of people. God is able to remove supernaturally what is owed and provide supernaturally what you need. That is what happened to Abraham. Abraham said: “My son, God will provide himself a lamb”.
We have to say that to each other: “God will provide” to your spouse, your children and to yourself. “God will provide!” When it looks like it is impossible the supernatural provider will provide in the midst of the impossibility.
And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. Gen 22:9-14
That is what you need to do: lift up your eyes! We have to lift up our eyes of our faith. Every time you have a thought of “what am I going to do?” replace it with “the Lord will provide”. Or “what is going to happen to us” renew your mind with ““the Lord will provide”.
He is your supernatural provider and He lives on the inside of you. We have the debt canceller living on the inside us. Luk 4:18-19 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord, which is the year of God’s debt release. He said, this is fulfilled in your ears right now.
You and I are in a strong position; you might look at your bank account and be thinking that you’re doomed. The truth is that you are not, not when you have the provider living on the inside of you. You are in a strong position!
In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen. How does that speak to you and me today? Whatever we need shall be seen! God will manifest.
When you make a choice to believe and say out loud “I choose to believe” and you release your faith and not waver, not back of, of what you believe; God will come through for you.
Let’s close this post with this scripture: God is not a man, so He does not lie. He is not human, so He does not change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through? Num 23:19 He will carry through what He promised.
If you have a testimony to tell or something else that you like to add; I would love to hear from you!
