Renew Your Spiritual Strength Every Day

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Spiritual strength dissipates just like our physical strength. When you exert yourself physically, you tire and must rest and replenish your energy reserves. If you don’t, your body will force you to rest. You’ll faint!

 

Spiritual energy is expended in a similar way.  It takes spiritual energy to live in a fallen world, where the world (the mindset around you that opposes God and His kingdom), the flesh, and the devil must be resisted and kept at bay. And you get tired spiritually just by living for God each day. It takes energy! Be aware that one of Satan’s tactics is to wear out the saints (Daniel 7:25)!

 

You also expend spiritual energy when you minister to others. Witnessing to an unbeliever during a break at work, teaching a Bible study, visiting the sick in a hospital, ministering in a nursing home, even praying in intercession takes spiritual energy. And those energy reserves must be restored!

 

The Word is spiritual food. It feeds the spirit in a similar way that natural food nourishes our bodies. After a season of ministry and of just living in the world, we must take time to step aside with the Father and partake of His spiritual source of life and health. If we don’t, then we’ll become weak spiritually and may falter when the pressure of the world or the flesh come against us.

 

Praying in other tongues is another way to strengthen the spiritual nature. When we pray in tongues we edify or build ourselves up spiritually, much like an alternator in your car engine builds up your car’s battery for its next use. Jude tells us to build ourselves up on our most holy faith by praying in the Holy Ghost! Isaiah said that praying in tongues brings a rest and a refreshing! Take advantage of what God has given you!

   

Build yourself up from the inside out today by feeding on the Word during your break or lunch, and by praying in the spirit quietly throughout the day. You’ll find God’s power overwhelming your weakness, or as Paul said it, your mortality will be swallowed up by God’s life!

How To Keep Anger Under Control

Be angry, and do not sin: do not let the sun go down on your wrath (Ephesians 4:26).

    

When I was a teenager I would get angry and go into a rage. I would scream and kick. I remember one time I was working on my car and having difficulty. I beat the side of my car and slammed my fists repeatedly on the ground in anger. I knew I was out of control.

 

After I was born again and Spirit-filled anger sought to work its way back into my life. I saw quickly that if I didn’t get it under control, I would end up doing something that would hurt my relationships and my employment. So I researched the subject of anger, and implemented some simple principles to keep myself out of trouble. Here is what I discovered.

All of us have to learn to deal properly with anger. Anger in itself is not sinful. It’s the motive behind it and the actions that it produces that make anger sinful and harmful.

If you can be angry and not sin, then anger must at times be an appropriate emotion. A person who is never angry has some serious emotions and mental issues to deal with. Even God is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11). Jesus became angry when He saw His Father’s house being defamed by the crooks and thieves doing business in the name of the Jewish religion. He overturned their money tables and turned the animals loose. He drove the hypocrites out in blazing anger! But Jesus never sinned! This episode of anger was not sinful.

 

Here’s the bottom line. Anger that is rooted in selfishness is sinful anger. Anger that is motivated by a desire to honor and please God and see fairness and right rule is not sinful anger. Anger at injustice and wrong living are appropriate, but anger must always be controlled.

Notice what the Word says about anger. An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgression (Proverbs 29:22). He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city (Proverbs 16:32). A wise man restrains his anger and overlooks insults. This is to his credit (Proverbs 19:11- Living Bible). Do not hasten in your spirit to be angry, for anger rests in the bosom of fools (Ecclesiastes 7:9).

 

Ask the Father to help you control anger. Make a decision not to confront or speak about a difficult situation until your anger is under control. I usually separate myself from the situation that brought anger and find a place to be alone. Then I ask the Lord to help me understand what’s going on. And I pray in the spirit. But I will not confront until I have love, joy, and peace within me. Sometimes I find that I must delay confrontation for hours and sometimes a few days until I know I have anger in check. Great harm results from uncontrolled anger.  

Above all, meditate on God’s Word about anger. Go to a concordance and find the scriptures that relate to anger and meditate on them daily. The Holy Spirit will then empower the Word and enable you to control your responses to difficulties. Make a decision to walk in peace, and when you lose it, get alone and sort out what happened. Ask the Father to help and cast the care of the situation on Him. Never speak when overly angry. Remember, a soft answer turns away wrath.

Keep Your Attitude Right When Things Are Tough!

On every side I am ever hard pressed, but never hemmed in; always perplexed, but never to the point of despair, always being persecuted, but never deserted, always getting a knockdown, but never a knockout! (2 Corinthians 4:8 – Williams)

Tough times are a result of us living in a fallen world. None of us are immune.  Jesus told to be of good cheer when we face pressure.

  

James tells us to count it pure joy when we fall into all kinds of tests and trials. Our attitude when going through a hard place determines how the Lord is able to minister to us during the specific test. If I gripe and complain, I don’t receive all that the Father has for me.

  

If I choose to walk in joy, thanking God in the middle of the problem, I am then allowing the very power of God to invade the situation.

Some of the deepest works of the Word into my life have been during my most challenging days. When I came to the end of myself, I found Jesus and the Father standing there as a rock, ready to embrace me in my weakness and lift me into another level of obedience and faith.

Don’t despise the hard place. Thank God while going through it. I didn’t say thank Him for it, but to thank Him in it. Thank God in everything, no matter what the circumstance may be, be thankful and give thanks: For this is the will of God for you who are in Christ Jesus, the revealer and mediator of that will (1 Thessalonians 5:18 – Amplified).

A pearl is the result of an irritation in the oyster. Diamonds are a result of tremendous pressure deep within the earth. Large muscles result from regular and repeated resistance. Spiritual maturity often results from great struggle. Smith Wigglesworth said great victories come out of great battles.

Kenneth Hagin said hard places are God’s method of taking you into deeper places in Him.  Don’t forget that Jesus who is our example, was led by the Sprit into a hard place (the wilderness) to be tempted by the devil.

  

The Father sees the end from the beginning. Keep your focus on the written Word and on Jesus the living Word of God. Set your gaze on the Son of God by looking at the perfect law of liberty. Keep walking with God and believing the Word in the face of pressure and adversity. On the other side of the test you’ll be more mature, and the glory of God will shine brighter in your life!

  

Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation (Romans 5:3-4 – Amplified).

Don't Quit!

And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns (Phil 1:6 – NLT).

 

This verse has been a great encouragement to me over the years. Discouragement and disappoint affect us all at times. At one point in my life, it seemed as though all that the Lord had done in my life was for nothing. The enemy attacked me with discouragement as I looked back at where I had been and then looked at where I was at that time in my walk with the Lord. My goals had not been realized. My plans had been hampered by circumstances beyond my control.

I’ve found that the toughest times in life can actually be the times of greatest spiritual growth. As fire tempers metal, difficulties have a way of bringing the dross, the negative things that hinder life, to the surface in us. And then the Father in His gentle, loving way begins the process of ministering life and changing us.

 

The Holy Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance. When the Father brought you into His family, He placed a down payment within you. The indwelling Holy Spirit is the guarantee that He will finish what He started.

Listen to Him speak to you today:

The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands (Psalm 138:8).  

The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day (Proverbs 4:18 - NIV).

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:12-13).

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:18).

The Lord is well able to finish what He started in you. Don’t give up while in process!

Feed Your Faith And Starve Your Doubts!

So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

 

We need to feed our faith daily on the Word! Faith is the victory that overcomes the attacks that come against you in a fallen world. Hear Jesus say to you today: If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.

 

Right now in the circumstances of my life my faith is either pulling me towards or unbelief is pushing me away from: healing in some part of my body, financial supply, change in a grueling circumstance, a better job position,  or daily ministry to the unsaved.

Time spent building up your faith today by meditating in the Word will ensure that you’ll have the needed faith when a crisis arises in your life or with some family member. Don’t wait until you need it to get faith. Plan ahead and build it up now. I take time every day to meditate on scripture and build up my faith. In the end, it’s what I can believe that determines what I receive from the Lord.

Don’t be like the people in Jesus’ home town who limited Him by their unbelief. Now He could do no mighty work there, except that He laid His hands on a few sick people and healed them.  And He marveled because of their unbelief. Then He went about the villages in a circuit, teaching (Mark 6:5-6).Give Jesus the ability to live big in you and minister strongly through you by keeping your faith fed on the word of God every day.

I’ll leave you with these familiar passages for meditating on to build up your faith in the Word:

God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (Numbers 23:19)

My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of My lips (Psalm 89:34).

Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven (Psalm 119:89).

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever (Isaiah 40:8).

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Isaiah 55:11).

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away (Matthew 24:35).

For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them (Mark 11:23-24).

  

God Wants to Help Me Do What I Can't Do Myself!

But He said to me, My grace (My favor and loving-kindness and mercy) is enough for you [sufficient against any danger and enables you to bear the trouble manfully]; for My strength and power are made perfect (fulfilled and completed) and show themselves most effective in your weakness. Therefore, I will all the more gladly glory in my weaknesses and infirmities, that the strength and power of Christ (the Messiah) may rest (yes, may pitch a tent over and dwell) upon me. So for the sake of Christ, I am well pleased and take pleasure in infirmities, insults, hardships, persecutions, perplexities and distresses; for when I am weak [in human strength], then am I [truly] strong (able, powerful in divine strength) (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 - Amplified).

Grace is unmerited favor. Another definition of grace that I came across years ago is God’s ability to help you do what you can’t do yourself. Grace helps your inability and your weakness. We’re helpless to save ourselves from our sins so God’s gives us His grace through faith and we enter the family of God and or sins are cleansed.

Faith changes things and circumstances as we exercise it and stand in the tough times. But grace is directed towards us personally. Faith changes things but grace changes people.

 

Grace helps me in every small detail of life. Grace quickens, empowers, motives, and changes me. Jesus by the grace of God took our sins and freed us from its wages. When I come to the end of myself and feel whipped, defeated, and powerless, grace enters lifts me up, and enables me in the impossible circumstance.

Hebrews 4:16 tells us that God’s throne is a throne of grace. We can approach it with boldness to find the necessary strength to face every challenge that life brings our way.

Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace (the throne of God's unmerited favor to us sinners), that we may receive mercy [for our failures] and find grace to help in good time for every need [appropriate help and well-timed help, coming just when we need it] (Hebrews 4:16 - Amplified).

Grace is accessed by prayer. Jesus obtained the grace in the garden of Gethsemane during a time of prayer to go to the cross and become our sin.

 

Today, grace is available for every challenge you face. Divine ability is waiting for you to tap into it to help you in family matters, in tense relationships on the job, in situation with your children, or to enable you to conquer a life dominating habit. Let’s approach the throne of grace early today and obtain the necessary grace for this day’s challenges. We are never alone. The Father’s ability, strength, wisdom, guidance, life, power, and nature are ours today. It’s called GRACE. Spend some knee time accessing it!

A Land in Crisis Needs the Light in Us!

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 will forgive their sin and heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

The land of the free and the home of the brave is in crisis; a crisis of choosing darkness over light and cursing over blessing. Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known (Deuteronomy 11:26-28 -NKJV).

As we celebrate the fourth with our families and friends, let’s take time to pray for God do a HUGE work in us, the church of the Lord Jesus. Because as goes the church, so goes the nation.

When a nation is challenged, God looks to the believer in that nation to humble themselves and pray.  All change within a nation starts with the believers in that nation. We must humble ourselves, examined our lives, repent of sin, and ask God for mercy not only for ourselves, but also for the nation in which we live.

We are to also seek His face. Seeking God’s face in Old Testament usage means to live in such a way that our lifestyle makes Him smile. A small child will often do things to get mom or dad’s attention, and to make his parents smile.

The next phrase in this scripture is turn from their wicked ways. When we turn in repentance from that which displeases the Lord and do the things that bring His smile, He goes into action for the nation.

Then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. All of this starts with three words: if my people.

Let’s not wait until the congress passes laws that are in favor of christian values; let’s not wait until prayer is allowed in schools again. Let’s not wait until laws are passed that outlaw the killing of  innocent children through abortion.

Let’s start right now to deal with ourselves; to make a choice to live in obedience to the loving voice of a Father through His word; to love our neighbors as we love ourselves; to treat others the way we want to be treated; to let His light shine in how we behave each day at home with our immediate families.

His mercies are renewed every single day. Let’s beseech God on behalf of our beloved country. Father, forgive us for our personal sins against you and your Holiness. We humble ourselves and ask you to manifest your presence in us in a fresh way in us. Use us as individual lights in the darkness of the hour. Move us into positions to speak with others about you and your love, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness. Bring a fresh moving of the Holy Spirit to this nation through the prayers of your people. Bring healing to this land, in Jesus’ name.