Tag: #Jeremiah29:11

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Alert Messages

How is God getting your attention to help you stay on track with your mission this season?

For me, He has highlighted a couple of key relationships and reminded me to remain steady and keep in touch. Both of these relationships embody my past, present and future, symbolically, in different ways. There are key heritage elements to them that God is bringing around again to fulfill Divine purpose.

Acts 20:31 TPT tells us to “be alert and discerning.” To be alert means to be “watchful and ready” (Encarta). To be “clear-headed and responsive.” God’s alerts are intended to strengthen us. Ephesians 6:15 TPT says to “Stand on your feet alert, then you’ll always be ready to share the blessings of peace.”

God knows there is a lot going in our lives. He doesn’t want us to be distracted and miss sudden moments of opportunity for protection and blessing (Mk 13:36). No, He desires we be awake and attentive to His guidance.

1 Thessalonians 5:8 TPT reveals a strategy by saying that we “stay alert and clearheaded by placing the breastplate of faith and love over our hearts, and a helmet of the hope of salvation over our thoughts.”

1 Peter 1:13 TPT affirms this by saying, “…prepare your hearts and minds for action! Stay alert and fix your hope firmly on the marvelous grace that is coming to you. For when Jesus Christ is unveiled, a greater measure of grace will be released to you.”

Not only is Holy Spirit highlighting key relationships, He is also extending grace to grow. He enabled me to see and experience a glimpse of something He forewarned me about recently. I believe He’s building me up to face more of the same just ahead in greater measure.

In these ways, and many others, God protects us and works His new-wine plan to establish right priorities that bless our lives. He knows the stronger we are in Him, the better equipped we will be to follow through with His directives, especially when challenges come.

God desires that we be alert and “overcome every form of evil” (2 Ti 4:5). 1 Peter 5:8 TPT reminds us to “Be well balanced and always alert, because your enemy, the devil, roams around incessantly, like a roaring lion looking for its prey to devour.”

I love that God has a beautiful future for each of us, one to prosper us, not to harm us (Je 29:11). Psalm 112:7 TPT confirms this by saying, “They will not live in fear or dread of what may come, for their hearts are firm, ever secure in their faith.”

I believe that God is making old things new again, especially concerning families and that which is important to them. I believe that, as these family’s souls continue to prosper, they will be lifted into more redeemed settings—a Godlier atmosphere in Spirit and physical form. Many are relocating to places that reflect their heart’s desires. Some are returning to their roots. Others are moving to more peaceful neighborhoods.

Ecclesiastes 5:19 AMP reminds us that “to whom God has given riches and possessions, He has also given the power and ability to enjoy them and to receive [this as] his [allotted] portion and to rejoice in his labor—this is the gift of God [to him].”

I believe God is working to share His beauty of riches with us in many forms to demonstrate and instill His goodness. Also, I’ve noticed that, as we come closer to God, His grace increases and brings it all to fruition (1 Pe 1:13).

This was true of Naomi and Ruth and their new extended family, how God swiftly restored them, in Naomi’s homeland, after suffering loss. It was also true for King Saul’s grandson, Mephibosheth, who was restored to the King’s table through King David. A purposed solidity occurred for these families, a type of permanence and holy establishment.

I believe God is calling us farther into manifest, righteous legacy and is showing us that there is no place like a Heavenly home to be experienced and shared. I believe God is bringing this around to continue to pour out in new ways. And with all this going on, He reminds us to keep His instructions and encourages our preparation by alerting us.

Was there a time in your last season when God specifically instructed you to not look back? He did for me. That’s because He had us heading into a new season we’re now in. So, what do you see as you look around? I see beauty and opportunity. I see new life.

Matthew 7:11 TPT asks us, “…how much more ready is your heavenly Father to give wonderful gifts to those who ask him?”

Pray with me if you will…

Dear Lord,

We thank You for all of the ways You alert us to stay on track with You. Help us to continue to walk with You in every way. Help us to not drop anything that’s important to Your heart and plan for us. Help us to “remember to stay alert and hold firmly to all that” we believe (1 Co 16:13). Help us to be “mighty and full of courage.” Help us to be strong in Your Spirit above our flesh (Matt 26:41). Thank You for Your beauty of Spirit and form. Thank You for Your good gifts, even the gift of spoils. Thank You for teaching us the way we should go on the narrow path with You (Ps 32:8). May we experience it and use it for Your glory.

In Jesus’ Mighty Name,

Amen.

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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Redeeming Your Time – Part 3

Redeeming our time is a divine expression of reconciliation. God takes regrets, missed opportunities and passed moments in time and reformulates them into something new, while He simultaneously reforms us inwardly. He brings something good out of all of it to benefit us and others. 

God’s power of redemption in our daily lives can break through the resistance of our minds and offer us fresh vision to gain manifest victory.

Nothing is impossible with Him. 

Isaiah 43:18-19 TPT say, “Stop dwelling on the past. Don’t even remember these former things. I am doing something brand new, something unheard of. Even now it sprouts and grows and matures. Don’t you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and open up flowing streams in the desert.”

Friends, God will bring life where there was or is no life. He is life everlasting. So, when we invite Him into our dead, hopeless places, life begins to flow in and through us from Him as our river of life. When this happens, we will experience our prayers getting answered in new ways. 

We need only to have our eyes opened and be aligned with Him.

A few weeks ago, I walked into a store to purchase something small I had had my eye on. It was the perfect throw for a new chair.

When I walked into the store, Holy Spirit immediately drew my attention to the song playing on the store speakers. It was Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop. Suddenly, I heard this song in a new way, as encouragement for my daily redemption from God. The lyrics went:

Open your eyes and look at the day. You’ll see things in a different way. Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow. Don’t stop. It’ll soon be here. It’ll be better than before. Yesterday’s gone. Yesterday’s gone. Why not think about times to come? … Just think what tomorrow will do.

Holy Scripture confirms this message by saying, “Set your gaze on the path before you. With fixed purpose, looking straight ahead, ignore life’s distractions…” (Pr 4:25 TPT). “…fasten your thoughts fully onto Jesus…” (He 3:1 TPT). “Keep your thoughts continually fixed on all that is authentic and real, honorable and admirable, beautiful and respectful, pure and holy, merciful and kind. And fasten your thoughts on every glorious work of God, praising him always” (Ph 4:8 TPT).

Yes, there is a backstory…

Once, when I walked through the deepest and longest character-building time of my life and could not see my way off of the ocean floor, our Lord revealed a few highlights of my life forward. He enabled me to see beyond where I was to where He was taking me. He even revealed a major shift to me that was years up ahead that would make room for more of His promises to come into place. 

These fresh visions of hope kept me going. 

Still today, He opens my eyes daily to see how He has brought me into new life and continues to do so. 

He is our trustworthy God of the impossible—our God of more than enough. He makes a way where we cannot see or find one on our own. He delivers us from limitations and sets us on a higher track with Him.

Hebrews 3:1 TPT reminds us that each of us is “invited to the feast” of our “heavenly calling.”

God desires that we keep moving in His direction, because this is where new life waits to be received. It’s the gift of redemption being worked out in our lives daily. 

We need only to humble ourselves, choose to trust Him at His truth and follow His lead.

So, has God revealed glimpses of your future to you?

Has He given you a vision in your heart?

Have you asked Him about it?

As we walk with Him and seek Him, He will reveal even more! The Lord of our lives will enable us to experience the convergence of small daily victories right up to His complete fulfillment of big promises to us. 

The key is to process this path His way, submitting to His strategies and course corrections. When we follow Him into new life, He will surely deliver us into the glory of His goodness and the fruit in the land.

Pray with me if you will…

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for making me holy and inviting me to the feast of my Heavenly calling (He 3:1 TPT). Take me higher in You, Lord. Show me what You have for me forward—the future You have planned for me (Je 29:11). Open my eyes to see it unfurl daily. Help me follow You into the great destiny you have for me. My life is Yours. I trust You to get me there—to receive all You have for me and nothing that’s not of You.

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, 

Amen.

This video-devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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His Plans or Mine? by Guest Writer Carol B. Ghattas

As a natural list maker, I am proud to say I’m very good at making plans. As a Christ follower, I have also worked to make sure my plans are His plans. In over fifty years of the process, I can honestly say it’s still a work in progress.

I think, if most of us go back to our 2020 list of goals or plans, probably 99 percent of us can say they were a bust. 

So, what do we do when our plans go bust? Do we still trust God? Were our plans not His? What happens when God upsets our plans?

After all, didn’t God see that we had great aspirations for 2020? For me, things had been looking up. I was expecting a stellar year in my life, ministry, work, and family.

How could a global pandemic, civil unrest and governments in turmoil really be part of His plan for our good and prosperity?

And what does all this mean in relation to our faith? 

My go-to verse for this situation is a favorite. It’s Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV, which says:  

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”

It helps me to think about when this verse was written: Was it during a great time in the lives of the Jewish nation? Hardly. They were a people who had just been taken into exile. Everything they knew and loved, including their most precious Temple, had been destroyed by a pagan nation. They’d been forced to walk from their homeland to a foreign one with a foreign language and gods. So, how could the God who had brought their ancestors into the Promised Land say that He had their good in mind after allowing them to be forced out of it?

I believe the answer lies in the fact that we don’t serve a fast-food God, but one who has the whole of time in His sight.

I believe God is saying, “I’m with you even in the midst of the mess, but you’ve got to trust me over everything else.”

Only when we trust God’s plan over man’s, will we be able to call on Him with the confidence that He hears our prayers. Only then can we see Him in the midst of a pandemic, because we’re looking for Him, not earthly solutions.

So, as we sit longing for more stability and an end to a global pandemic, wondering when life will return to normal, we must remember that…

GOD MUST BE OUR FOCUS and nothing else matters.

As I write this post, I look out my window and see a gentle breeze moving the dried, winter-broken leaves of the trees outside. Maybe you’re feeling like one of those browned leaves, hanging on by a thread to the branch. Yet, anytime we see the leaves move, we know the wind is there…just like His Spirit; and that gives me hope.

How did you feel the breeze blowing in your life in 2020? I encourage you to write it down, so you don’t forget. And remember, the winter may last a while longer, but spring is sure to come.

God is here. He’s not MIA. He never was in 2020, and He won’t be in 2021. He’s got plans. He’s known them from before the beginning of time, and He is working them out. You can see it if you take time to think about it. 

God didn’t leave the Israelites in Babylon forever, but it was more than a fast-food run — seventy years more, to be precise. If you think about your age right now, you may be saying, “I don’t have seventy years to wait!” Well, maybe not, but you do have today to trust Him. That’s all He’s asking.

Friends, keep living in your season of change. That’s what He told the Israelites to do: build houses, have children, seek the good of the land in which you live. That’s all any of us can do.

I choose to trust God and do good, knowing as I do, He will make himself known to me and answer my prayers. He has the same plan for you, and it’s a good one.

So, what will you choose? 

God’s plans are the best, so we can rest in Him.

Grace and Peace to you.

Carol B. Ghattas is a veteran in cross-cultural ministry, a popular author, blogger, and speaker on Islam, missions, and Christian living. She served with her late husband for more than 30 years on mission fields among Muslims. To find out more or connect with Carol, visit her blog at lifeinexile.net.

This video-devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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True Value: Our Intrinsic Worth

Psalm 139:17-18 TPT assure us, “Every single moment you are thinking of me! How precious and wonderful to consider that you cherish me constantly in your every thought! O God, your desires toward me are more than the grains of sand on every shore! When I awake each morning, you’re still with me.”

Friends, value is intrinsic to God.

Our truest value is God in us and God with us.

The origin of value is worth.

He is worthy.

His inherent worth, which is fixed, inseparable and innate, is sealed in our spirit, where His legal approval, substantiation and confirmation flow congruently.

1 Peter 2:7 TPT tells us, “As believers you know his great worth—indeed, his preciousness is imparted to you…”

But do we know this truth deep in our soul? In our mind, will and emotions? Do we know that Jesus is our validator, our strength, that He is our Treasure, and that we are His (1 Pe. 2:9).

Do we know that He is the Pearl of Great Price? Gold?

Do we know in our soul that, of everything God willed into creation, He values us most?

We were bought by Jesus’ priceless blood, which is worthy beyond measure.

He pursues us with His relentless love.

To reconcile us to His greatest intimacy.

He is a father to the fatherless, a husband to the husbandless.

He is our Creator.

And we are His handiwork.

He loved us while we were still wayward sinners and brought us into His Kingdom full of rich promises by His amazing grace.

A royal inheritance.

Of security and provision.

For us–His beloved sons and daughters.

The sum total of His precious thoughts of us are vast (Ps. 139:17).

He is our gateway to righteousness.

He gives us His understanding and priceless wisdom to triumph over fear and foolishness.

Praising Him is a strategy He gave us to triumph over wickedness that tries to defeat and destroy us, to steal our anointing, to diminish our hope.

God anoints our mind (Matt. 26:6-7) and our walk (Jn. 12:3). He provides Himself as our Anchor of hope–beyond ourselves and beyond others. He, as a trustworthy hope, who cannot be snuffed out.

God puts His own everlasting faith inside of us, so we cannot lose when we cling to it (1 Pe. 1:7). Faith—the great and consistent equalizer of value, honor, and respect—the confidence of our hope for God to produce His promise.

He helps our unbelief, to know Him as strong when we are not.

So, we can value what He values.

He renews our mind and puts a new heart and spirit in us, so we always have a compass of true life when we tap into Him.

We can receive His blessings that are tied to the condition and action of our heart.

“When our faithful obedience, which is the righteous action of the faith God puts in us, meets God’s faithful grace, a synchronicity of blessing occurs. Good fruit is produced. Treasures are discovered and recovered. Much of value is realized.”

We prosper as our soul prospers (3 Jn. 1:2).

Our soul prospers when we value God, above our ways, as our ultimate authority, who exalts us in due time.

With God we cannot lose.

But without Him we will surely fail.

Did you know that poverty is rooted in insecurity, the cracks of our foundation?

A lack of knowledge of God and His ways leads to a lack of trust in God, which leads to a lack of submission to God, which leads to a lack of His blessing.

Feeling insecure in any particular area of life is a red flag to trust God more. But it’s hard to trust God intimately when we don’t know Him specifically in Word, deed or character.

Our path to finding security in God is to repent from holding onto all that makes us feel insecure, all that opposes His truth, such as fear, hurts, injustices, unforgiveness and unbelief.

To honor God’s infinite glory-worth, we must repent from walking on any path of pain instead of His way, which is faith, love and truth.

When God highlights our insecurity to us, we can thank Him for inviting us up higher. We can simply pray and receive His help to overcome:

Psalm 118:5 TPT tells us, “Out of my deep anguish and pain I prayed, and God, you helped me as a father. You came to my rescue and broke open the way into a beautiful and broad place.”

In Psalm 139:24 TPT, David invites God to “See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways—the path that brings me back to you.”

Luke 3:5 NIV reveals God’s will, which is that “Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth.”

God’s Glorious Presence with us reveals His infinite, intrinsic worth. His substance. His essence. His true value in us and for us.

His will is to prosper us (Jer. 29:11).

He desires we know this.

Partnering with God, on the narrow path, honors Him as an expression of respect for His worth and the value He extends to us.

Pray with me if you will . . .
Lord, Thank You for Your worthy Presence in me. I renounce all forms of poverty and receive You as my inherent true value. By Your grace, lead me to experience a deeper inner awakening of Your truth, value, love, life and rest for my weary soul. Purge from me any contemptuous false treasure—especially the idol of hopelessness—by overthrowing it. Heal and deliver me from all that does not please You, so I can have a pure heart of honor toward You and others. Make me into a person of valor, determined to trust and obey You. Help me to guard against entering into any type of bondage forward. Enable me to receive Your finest blessings. Thank You, Lord, for doing that which only You can do. And now, I declare Psalm 139:5 TPT over my life: “You’ve gone into my future to prepare the way, and in kindness you follow behind me to spare me from the harm of my past. With your hand of love upon my life, you impart a blessing to me.” Thank You, Lord. I love You. In Jesus’ Mighty Name. Amen.

This video-devo was graciously re-posted by Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.