Month: August 2021

obey God's will

5 Movements Toward Pursuing God’s Will

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Last week we looked at committing ourselves to God’s will. Now consider an area of your life in which you wonder if you are doing God’s will. We will go through five steps for examining our hearts and choosing God’s will. This is not so much an exercise in finding God’s will as it is an exercise in guiding our hearts to abiding in God. Five Steps Toward Pursuing in God’s Will We remind ourselves to consider God’s will. We examine ourselves to determine if we are really open to pursuing God’s will. We try to discern God’s will. We ask ourselves if we are now willing to do God’s will. We do God’s will. The first movement is to get in the habit of reminding ourselves to consider God’s will for the decisions we make or attitudes we embrace. This is simply looking to him for his will. Common Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

God’s Love Consoles Us – Weekly Words Of Encouragement

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When I said, “My foot is slipping, ”your unfailing love, LORD, supported me.When anxiety was great within me,your consolation brought me joy. Psalms 94:18-19 (NIV) We will have times when our foot is slipping and anxiety wells up within us. Whether it is health, finances, relationships, loneliness, or grief we cannot avoid the distress in this world. What makes us different is how we walk through these times. What makes us different is the fact that the Lord is with us and wants to console us. He has many ways of consoling us and they are all signs of his care for us. He may remove the distress, he may reduce it or he may allow it to run its course. He may touch our hearts with his presence; he may bring words from a friend or he may speak through a verse of Scripture. Sometimes we can’t perceive his Continue Reading →

obey

Are You Committed To God’s Will?

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When someone mentions that we should do God’s will it can conjure up images of gritting our teeth and forcing ourselves to do something very disagreeable. There is some truth in this but the supreme reason we do God’s will is that we love him and know that his principles for living will produce more life and happiness than anything else. Learning to do God’s will when we don’t feel like it and when we don’t feel God is one of the greatest and most freeing lessons in the Christian life. Remember that the purpose of all of God’s commands is that we would have more life, bear fruit, abide in the kingdom of God and keep us moving in the direction of the future perfect community of love with God and his followers. The directives in Scripture are ideals that we move toward as we are gradually “attaining to Continue Reading →

Weekly words of encouragement

We Will Flourish – Weekly Words Of Encouragement

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The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon. Psalms 92:12 (NIV) Whether or not you feel like you are flourishing now, God promises that you will. We all want to flourish, to grow in abundance and be fruitful. God made us to flourish (“be fruitful and multiply” Gen. 1:18) and so he made us with the desire to flourish. We have barriers to flourishing now – our weaknesses and the corruption all around us – but God will make you flourish in part now and fully in the next age. Our hearts flourish now as we abide in Christ and partake of his virtues. The Bible likes to compare God’s followers to trees in order to illustrate how we will flourish. Psalm 1:3 says we are like a tree planted by a stream; in other words, we have plenty of sustenance for growth. Continue Reading →