Video Bible Lesson - A Prayer for When You Are Anxious By Wendy van Eyck

A Prayer for When You Are Anxious
By Wendy van Eyck

1/2 Hour of God’s Power with Scott Ralls

1/15/2020

#Jesus, #Christian, #Bible, #Salvation, #Heaven, #God, #HolySpirit

The Hope of Peace

The Hope of Peace

Dr. Charles Stanley

Romans 15:4-13

Despite man's best efforts, the world's longing for peace remains unfulfilled. Each new generation has high hopes for reconciliation among people and nations but in the end faces disappointment.

One day Christ will return and make everything right. Until then, believers are called to be His ambassadors of peace. However, becoming a Christian does not automatically change us into people who pursue kindness and unity.

At times we're quick-tempered and impatient and find it hard to live in harmony with others. We may have trouble letting go of attitudes or habits that hurt those around us—and occasionally we don't even want to. God knows our true character and has provided the Holy Spirit to transform us into Jesus' likeness. The Spirit opens our minds to understand and apply Scripture. He gives us the power to say no to ungodliness and to replace me-centered thinking with a Christ-centered viewpoint. He patiently produces His fruit in us, which includes love, joy, and peace (Gal. 5:22-23). With His help, we can become peacemakers who work to bring about reconciliation between God and others (Matt. 5:9).

While our world keeps hoping for peace through man's solutions, we know the only source of lasting unity is Jesus Christ.

The Lord wants our hearts to be ruled by His peace (Col. 3:15) and our relationships to be marked by a spirit of oneness. How encouraged other people will be when they realize it's the transforming power of God in our lives that brings about reconciliation in our marriages, families, and churches.

How We Overcome

How We Overcome
ESTHER FLEECE ALLEN 

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Romans 8:37 (NIV)

I’d been in a spiritual wilderness season for quite some time. Having resigned from my job, I walked by faith, but as the days, weeks and months went on, God felt more and more distant.  

I wasn’t hearing His voice clearly, and I wondered if I’d misstepped or made a mistake. After year three of unanswered prayers with hope deferred and no job in sight, I asked myself, Would this heart-sick feeling stick with me the rest of my days? Would “Defeated” be my new name?

We will not feel like conquerors every day.

In the seasons and years we feel weary, unseen and tired, it’s important to not rename ourselves in the middle of a storm. We’re meant to be more than conquerors, and “Overcomers” will be a part of our new name — if we don’t give up.

I never felt like the phrase “more than conquerors” applied to me. After being abandoned by my biological parents, losing extended family members, facing financial independence as a teenager and being unsure where I would lay my head at night, I certainly didn’t feel like “more than a conqueror.”

And I know I am not alone.

To the woman facing an unwanted break-up, a betrayal or the death of a loved one — I’m sure you don’t feel like you’re overcoming, either.

But let’s not miss the questions that precede calling us conquerors. The Apostle Paul asks, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:35, NKJV) We’re told we can be more than conquerors in the midst of these hardships and evils — right smack-dab in the middle of a trial.

Being more than a conqueror means whatever the enemy intended to use to take you out — whatever was meant to destroy you — did not in fact destroy you, and it’s now being used for God’s glory.

It means we don’t rename ourselves in the seasons we feel forgotten and forsaken. It means we persevere to the other side of the trial and wait, expectantly, for our new name.

Our stories are important. They’re part of our testimony about what God has done for us. But there’s a second part to our stories. How are we overcoming? How are we being made new? What’s God doing inside of us, not just yesterday or last week or 10 years ago, but today? Do our stories show God’s ongoing faithfulness?

I used to see myself as an orphan, but now I know I am an adopted daughter.

I am more than a conqueror. 

I used to label myself forgotten, but now I know I am chosen by God and included.

I am more than a conqueror.

I used to feel unwanted, but now I know God went to great lengths to save me.

By His power, I am more than a conqueror. 

When we stay in our old names, identifying with our old stories, we make the name-changing process about us. Yet this overcoming process is not about us; it’s about God revealing His name to the world. God will reveal Himself through our stories and the people we become. But the trial is not supposed to be the end. The persecution, famine and distress are not our destiny, nor are they our final destination.

In Romans 8, Paul says our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us (v.18). He explains that even creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed (v.19). If creation is excited to see God revealed through you, imagine God’s delight in bringing about this overcoming process in you!

Romans 8:37 declares that one of your new names is “more than a conqueror” — the victory God has for you will be overwhelming! Don’t give up or rename yourself too soon. Your new name and His name will be on display as we overcome.

Heavenly Father, thank You for being an overcoming God! I know I can take heart because You have overcome the world. Empower me to rise above my circumstances. Help me cast my anxiety on You because You care for me. Give me Your power to overcome. Thank You for giving me the victory! In Jesus’ Name, Amen. 

TRUTH FOR TODAY:
John 16:33, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (NIV)

1 John 5:4-5, “For everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.” (NIV)

Are You in the Belly of a Big Fish?

Are You in the Belly of a Big Fish?
by Fred Alberti

But the Lord provided a great fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah was inside the fish three days and three nights.
Jonah 1:17

Being a homeschool family we sometimes have some rather interesting experiments that we get to enjoy as a family. George is one such experiment. George is a goldfish whose bowl-mate sadly perished. My son's task was to teach the goldfish to come to the top of the bowl when he tapped on the glass. After several weeks of tapping and feeding and tapping and feeding the fish finally learned to come to the top of the bowl.

Big deal right? Right, that is until the fish started to do more. Anytime someone would walk by the bowl he would get all excited and start moving his mouth like he was yelling at whoever it was that was walking by the bowl. This became rather normal and we would just ignore him or comment that he was yelling at us in Spanish.

Then one day my kids were listening to an FFH song titled "Big Fish." It was then that George decided to really show off what he could do. When the song played George would begin to swim around like he was dancing in the water and would seemingly move his mouth to the words (move over Ashlee Simpson).

I particularly like the first verse of the song which goes like this:

Are you in the big fish
Are you sitting in the belly of a world gone mad
Have you turned your back in His wish
On His will for your life, have you made Him sad
Do you want to get out of the big fish
Listen to God and follow His plan
And you won't be part of the main dish
 He'll spit you out on to dry land

I've sometimes felt like I was in the belly of a big fish. I had decided to do something my way instead of first seeking the Lord's guidance and leading.

You, whoever you are, God has a plan for your life. Maybe you feel like you are wasting your time at a dead-end job. Or perhaps you have no job but would desperately like one. Maybe you think you have the dream job but the Lord has been speaking to you in a still small voice to give it up for something else. Like Jonah, you may not particularly like the mission God has for you but He has the intention of making you ideally suited to carry that plan out.

Will you follow His plan or will you turn your back?

Maybe you've already chosen to turn your back and feel that there is no way out now. If that is the case I've got good news for you. The Bible has this to say about Jonah, "From inside the fish Jonah prayed to the Lord his God" (Jonah 2:1). God is the God of second, third, and fourth chances.

Commit your way to the Lord today.

Intersecting Faith & Life: Buy a goldfish if you don't have one already. As you feed it remember that the Lord has a purpose and a plan for your life. Ask Him to reveal it to you daily. 

3 Ways Jesus Showed How To “Die Daily”

3 Ways Jesus Showed How To “Die Daily”By Emily Massey

“I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31)

As Jesus’ disciples, we are called to follow Him. That was Paul’s mission in life – to imitate Christ. And it is what he and the rest of the apostles literally gave their lives to preach to the world through their words and actions. We may not ever get the honor to literally die for Jesus Christ because of our faith in Him, but by God’s grace, we can imitate His selflessness every day.

How do we imitate Christ in our everyday life? Here are three ways Jesus lived a selfless faith on earth.

1. Jesus humbly approached the Father through prayer.

Even though Jesus was God in the flesh, He still leaned upon God the Father for everything He said and did while He walked this earth. Jesus would rise early to pray and seek God for His will for the day.

2. Jesus obediently submitted Himself to the will of the Father.

Each day, we are faced with the temptation to satisfy our flesh and go outside the boundaries of God’s perfect will. We discover what that will is when we read the Bible and study it for ourselves to learn God’s ways. We are not perfect, but thankfully Jesus was, and because of His sacrifice on the cross, we have been given the precious gift of the Holy Spirit as born-again believers.

We read in Luke 22, when Jesus was praying in the garden on the night before His crucifixion, He cried out to the Father: “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22: 42).

At His most desperate hour, He yielded His life to God’s plan, even when it meant that He was going to die a very painful death. Yet, He knew that wasn’t where the story ended; there would be a resurrection.

3. Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve others.

Jesus ministered to thousands upon thousands of people during His time here on earth. John 22 tells us that if all the things Jesus did were all written down, the entire world could not contain the books that would be written!

Who is God asking you to serve? What selfish desires do you need to lay aside to put someone else’s life before your own? Are you too busy or too distracted to serve others?

The Verge of the Unknown - New Year

The land whither ye go to possess it is a land of hills and valleys and drinketh water of the rain of heaven; a land which the Lord thy God careth for: the eyes of the Lord are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even to the end of the year. (Deuteronomy 11:11-12)

Today, dear friends, we stand upon the verge of the unknown. There lies before us the new year and we are going forth to possess it. Who can tell what we shall find? What new experiences, what changes shall come, what new needs shall arise? But here is the cheering, comforting, gladdening message from our Heavenly Father, "The Lord thy God careth for it."

All our supply is to come from the Lord. Here are springs that shall never dry; here are fountains and streams that shall never be cut off. Here anxious one, is the gracious pledge of the Heavenly Father. If He be the Source of our mercies they can never fail us. No heat, no drought can parch that river, "the streams whereof make glad the city of God."

The land is a land of hills and valleys. It is not all smooth nor all down hill. If life were all one dead level the dull sameness would oppress us; we want the hills and the valleys. The hills collect the rain for a hundred fruitful valleys. Ah, so it is grace and brings down the shower of blessing; the hills, the bleak hills of life that we wonder at and perhaps grumble at, bring down showers. How many have perished in the wilderness, buried under its golden sands, who would have lived and thriven in the hill-country; how many would have been killed by the frost, blighted with winds, swept desolate of tree and fruit but for the hill- stern, hard, rugged, so steep to climb. God's hills are a gracious protection for His people against their foes!

We cannot tell what loss and sorrow and trial are doing. Trust only. The Father comes near to take our hand and lead us on our way today. It shall be a good, a blessed new year!

He leads us on by paths we did not know;
Upward He leads us, though our steps be slow,
Though oft we faint and falter on the way,
Though storms and darkness oft obscure the day;
Yet when the clouds are gone,
We know He leads us on.
He leads us on through all the unquiet years;
Past all our dreamland hopes, and doubts and fears,
He guides our steps, through all the tangled maze
Of losses, sorrows, and o’er clouded days;
We know His will is done;
And still He leads us on.
--Nicholaus Ludwig Zinzendorf