Your Days Are Written in God’s Book

Hear God’s Word for you in Psalm 139:16-17. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God, how vast is the sum of them.”

God nurtured you in the womb, and since your conception He has watched over you. Your days were not written haphazardly. Your life is not a random thing. His thoughts of you are precious and too vast to count. He thinks of you continuously and of new ways that He can bless you, just because you are His special child. He has written the script of your life. He chose every part of it. He is looking forward to reveal the chapters to the story He has already written.

God thought through all the details – your siblings, your birth order, large family or small family, city family or rural. He foresaw your pain, too. He knew that out of that brokenness comes a larger story, just like when Jesus took the loaves, and He blessed them, then He broke them, then He multiplied them to feed many. Because of His love, His power, and His blessing on you, He causes all the pain and negative things to be transformed into good things in His story for your life. So take courage. God has given you everything you need to be an overcomer, to have victory over the negative parts of your heritage, and to live in the beauty of all that He placed within you.

In God’s master plan and design He chose and designed every part of your
spiritual heritage. He reached back into generations past and chose different parts of your heritage. Your generational blessings go back a thousand generations (Deuteronomy 7:9). He chose the spiritual treasure chest of generational blessings that is set aside with your name on it. You are blessed to be an heir to this spiritual treasure. Seek God for it and ask Him to release it at His appointed appropriate time.

Love is who God is and what He does.  He says of you, “You are My beloved child, in whom I am well pleased.” That’s what He said of Jesus, and you are in Jesus and Jesus is in you. You are beloved. That is your incarnate identity. He pours out His loving kindness on you every day in big ways and little ways. Be blessed to receive your belonging and worth in His love. Be blessed as God’s love validates and affirms that you are special, His covenant child. God thinks you are the best. Be blessed to celebrate your identity and legitimacy. Today be aware of your belonging, inclusion, significance, and worth in Him.

Be blessed in the name of your Father who has carried you
until you reached this place (Deuteronomy 1:31).

Cast All Your Cares

Down, dejected, depressed, determined to carry the weight of the world upon himself, he expressed how everything was coming apart and that so many things were wrong in his life.
Listening for a time as he anguished over his list of woes I finally asked him if he had considered giving it to God and letting Him sort it out. He said that he hadn’t prayed in years.
Is there a correlation here?

My prayer for you this week:
 I pray that you are “casting all your cares on the Lord because he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall. Amen.” Psalm 55:22

Have a great week.

By: Alec Niemi

He Has Reconciled You

“Once you were alienated from God … but now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” Colossians 1:22

Thought
“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven!” You’ve probably seen this bumper sticker or something similar. In one sense this is absolutely true. But, from God’s point of view, Christians ARE perfect. That’s the incredible message Paul gives the Colossians. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice, God does not see our imperfections. He sees us through Christ’s perfection. Look at these concepts and marvel! Look at how God views you and give thanks! Be humbled by God’s grace to us in Jesus and rejoice! Holy, without blemish, and free from accusation — there’s nothing left to say but “Hallelujah!”

Prayer
Father, thank you for providing the sacrifice that makes me clean. Thank you for seeing my worth through the perfection of Jesus and his sacrifice. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for paying off my debt to sin and for sharing your perfection with me. May my life today, and everyday, more closely resemble the perfection you have given me by your grace. In the name of my Savior Jesus, I pray. Amen.

By: Phil Ware

By Rick Warren – We Love Because God First Loved Us

“We love because he first loved us.” 1 John 4:19 (NIV)

The Bible says in 1 John 4:19, “We love because [God] first loved us” (NIV). God is always first in everything. He takes the initiative. The only reason you can love God or anybody else is because God first loved you. And he showed that love by sending Jesus Christ to Earth to die for you. He showed that love by creating you. He showed that love by giving you everything you have in life. We love because God first loved us.

If you want to learn how to love other people, you’ve got to first understand and feel how much God loves you. When you feel that unconditional love, you’re going to start cutting people a lot of slack. You’re not going to be as angry as you’ve been in the past. You’re going to be more patient. You’re going to be more forgiving. You’re going to be more merciful. You’re going to show other people grace.

The reason why you see people who are judgmental, sarcastic, angry, self-righteous, and always putting other people down is because they’re putting themselves down. They don’t feel good about themselves. They don’t feel loved. They don’t feel forgiven. They don’t feel grace. They feel guilty. They feel bad about themselves. And if they feel bad about themselves, they certainly don’t want you feeling good about you.

Maybe you’re one of those people. Maybe you’ve been hurt by parents or peers or partners. Maybe you’ve been abused or misused or rejected or abandoned or betrayed. You’ve got some scars on your heart.

You cannot give to others what you have not received yourself. Unlovely people are unloved people. Hurt people hurt people. If you’re filled with anger and impatience and you don’t feel loved, guess what? You’re not going to be able to love anybody else. You have to learn how much God loves you and let it heal your heart so his love can flow through you. It is impossible to love others until you really feel loved yourself.

The Bible says, “We know and rely on the love God has for us” (1 John 4:16a). Do you know the love of God? Do you rely on the love of God for you? You will have a hard time loving other people until you have God’s love coming through you.

Talk It Over:
– Would you say that you love others with the love of God? How do you show that love to others?
– Why would understanding God’s love help you show grace to others?
– What hurt from your past is keeping you from accepting God’s love and showing it to others?

God’s Embroidery

“My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,” Psalm 139:15

Dana smiled when her daughter Anna looked up at the embroidery on her mother’s lap.
“Mommy, it looks like such a mess on this side!”

Dana responded, “Wait ‘til you see it when it’s finished.”

Sure enough, a while later, Anna sat on her mother’s lap and saw the embroidery from the other side.

She said, “Mommy, it’s beautiful!”

Oh, the underside was still a mass of dangling threads and knots.
But the design on top was spectacular.

So many times I’ve looked up at my Heavenly Father and wondered, “Lord, what are You doing?”

The embroidery of my life looked so messy and jumbled to me.  So many threads were dark.  Yet God’s Word reminds you and me that one day He will bring us up on His knee.

From there we will be able to see God’s beautiful design for our lives from HIS point of view.

By: Vonette Bright

God’s Love

“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.”  Isaiah 53:5

Diana says she’s not afraid of her past.   In fact, her dramatic change speaks volumes about God’s love.
Students who knew the “old Diana” noticed the change.  Campus parties she attended used to include drinking and promiscuity.  Then she met Jesus and turned her life over to Him.

Now she truly cares for her friends.  And she’s also not afraid to share her faith in class… even at a secular university!  Diana wrote a paper for a literature class.  It compared society’s standards for a woman with Bible standards.  She concluded that society inhibits women from experiencing the freedom found in Christ.  In the paper, Diana also shared about God’s love.  She got a perfect grade!

Friend, if others notice you’ve changed, tell them why.

God’s love made all the difference!

By: Vonette Bright

When the Light Goes Out

As I climbed the stairs a few cloudy and rainy nights ago, I noticed a difference. A veil of darkness blanketed my apartment complex corridor.  Halfway up the outdoor stairwell, the rungs disappeared into blackness. Ahead I could barely detect the light pole across the street, but its glow cast down to the pavement, offering very little help from my perspective. Needless to say, a chill clutched my chest for a second. What if someone lurked by my shadowed door?

Normally, a sconce hangs outside my entry to greet me. Via an automatic sensor, it flicks on when the skies darken. The same detector operates the ones at each of the four apartments in my unit along a sheltered, outdoor breezeway. I have become dependent upon its illumination when I come home after dark. It provides not only better ability to see the stairs and my door’s keyhole, but adds a sense of security. Tonight, that safeness I’d taken for granted didn’t exist.

The unexpected darkness unhinged me a bit.  I felt for the keyhole and worked my key into it. After several tries, at last it slipped into place. I turned it, heard the click, twisted the door knob, and sighed in relief as I entered my apartment with the table lamp lit to greet me. Safe.

Had I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dimmed glow emitting from street lamp across the street, I probably would have been able to detect the keyhole better and determine nothing evil lurked by my stoop.  But being a woman alone in the dark stairwell, I panicked –just a touch. That only made things worse. Time slowed as my anxiety increased. I became jittery with my fumbling to open the door as my brain hissed, “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

As a Christian, have I become so used to the light of Christ that I become anxious when faced with darkness? Do I need to “see” evidence of  Christ in order to believe He is always nearby?  Now you may argue a Christian is never totally in the dark. However, there are dark periods in all of our lives simply because we walk the earth.

When difficult times hit me suddenly in life, may I not react the same way spiritually as I physically did in that dark corridor. Instead, let me wait patiently for my faith-eyes to locate my Lord, the One who calms, guides and protects my soul. In blessed assurance, may I stand firm in the knowledge that Christ has already won the battle over the principalities of darkness. I know He is my faith’s automatic sensor, illuminating me with truth when things appear darker than normal.

Unlike the one at my apartment, He will never fail to light my life.

Lord, keep the jitters at bay and thwart the desire to handle things quickly on my own. Even if I can’t see clearly with my eyes, may I always recall what the Psalmist states:  “You are the lamp unto my feet and the light unto my path.” (119:105) Amen.

By: Julie Cosgrove