Moving Forward

"You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. 33 You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess." Deuteronomy 5:32-33

 The people of Israel needed to look back to the time when Moses received the Ten Commandments from God and once they reviewed the past, then they were to use that as their foundation and to move forward. Sometimes in life, we need to look back briefly before we begin to move forward. We may need to take an assessment of how far we have come in our relationship with Christ. It may begin by asking yourself this question, “Where was my faith five years ago?” Then when you review where you were, then you can then ask, “where am I now in my faith”. Now you can truly assess your growth. Once an assessment is made of where you are now, you can look forward as to where you believe God is leading you. Moving forward may not always have a clear path or clarity of your final destination. I do know that God will always give you the next step. It is funny, for I have found that the next step I need to take is always with faith.  I think it is like the time I was driving in fog. I could not see the road ahead of me but I could see the lines on the road directly in front, and all I could do was follow the lines, even when I could not see the road ahead. This is like our lives, walking in faith. We are to just be obedient and follow God’s Will in obedience, even when we don’t know where we are headed. Sometimes God will show us the road and where we are headed and other times, He just wants us to trust in Him. He wants us to walk in faith like Abraham, when he was called to leave his home with his family, and didn’t know where he was called. Faith, even as small as a mustard seed, is still faith. He never asks us for huge faith, but as long as we have faith, that is what will get us moving on his path.
Question: How has your faith walk grown in the last five years?

What to Wear

"Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14

 I had the honor to speak at a Women’s Group and this was the scripture that they wanted me to talk about. Wearing clothes is quite significant. We have the choice everyday to put on whatever garment we choose. Just as we go to our closet and look for an outfit to wear, we also wear our attitudes. We can put on the garment of grief, sadness, anger or any of those emotions that come from the enemy. Or, we have the choice to take out the new clothes, put them on, and wear the attitudes of kindness, forgiveness and mostly love. It is not the other person’s choice but it rest squarely on our own shoulders. We choose what we wear daily. We need not have to go back and take out the old sin nature that is torn and stained. We used to wear old dirty rags when we were not saved. But when we were saved, we now wear new garments and they are like new and clean clothes.We are all new creations in Christ and with that comes new clothes which is a whole new attitude and perspective in life. We choose to wear the new or the old. What do you choose to wear today?

Prescription for Peace of Mind

Philippians 4:6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you.

Paul writes about peace of mind and it is about how to achieve it. The greatest way to achieve this peace of mind is, not to worry. Replace worry with prayer. It seems to be a quick and simple process, when we begin to worry, we pray and then fix our thoughts on Jesus.I was thinking today about how easily we can lose our peace of mind. It can begin with a thought and we grab hold of the negative thought, which then creates a negative emotion. This keeps on multiplying and then it becomes “worry”. Paul, in Philippians 4,  gives us the prescription on how to deal with worry. Like today, I had to call the pharmacy to refill a prescription. On the bottle it states the name of the drug and then the description of how to use it. We have the same written in God’s Word for us. It goes something like this:

Prescription for Worry
Take 1 prayer of petition and thanksgiving,  as needed for peace of mind
Use daily with thoughts that are true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of praise.
If you put into practice daily, you will maintain your peace of mind.
Precautions: Guard your heart and minds

This prescription for worry is written by the Great Physician himself. It is delivered to us personally and the prescription never runs out. Now this is something to always rejoice in!