Video Bible Lesson - A Prayer to Pray against Sin You Can't Shake By Chara Donahue

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

7/30/2020

A Prayer to Pray against Sin You Can't Shake

By Chara DonahueBut he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. – 2 Corinthians 12:9You have seen how it steals from your life. You have had others call you on it. You have half-heartedly tried to leave it behind but keep finding it lurking at every doorway. It is your favorite sin. Not that you love it, you may even despise it, but somehow you have yet to shake it. We sometimes settle for calling them vices, weaknesses, or flaws, but Christ has far more in mind for us than captivity. He desires freedom for His people, and giving life to the spiritually dead.The first step in escaping the tangles of sin is always looking first to the only one who has defeated sin and death out of his deep love for us, Jesus Christ. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8 Sin continuously pulls down all of humanity with its corrosive ways, but those who have had its stain wiped from their hearts have the power to say “No”. The only way for that stain to be lifted is by seeking Christ as Savior, He clothes us in His righteousness and our filthy rags will be no more. When we begin seeking to walk in victory, we first must set our eyes on the one who is eternally victorious.Let’s pray to our Father now for the strength we need to shake the sin in our lives:Lord, I confess there is sin in my life I can’t shake. I’ve struggled silently for so along against it. I’ve dismissed it, justified it, tried to convince myself it isn’t as bad as I know it really is. Lord, I know Satan desires me to leave my sin in the dark. I confess it to you, and bring it to light.Lord, I need your strength to defeat this sin. I am thankful that your power is made perfect in my weakness. I don’t boast in my sin, but boast in you who works in my weakness to make me more like you. I know that I have the opportunity to glorify you by fighting against this sin in my life. Give me wisdom and perspective in the moment I am tempted to sin – help me in that moment see my sin as you see it, and not do the sin my heart longs to do.Oh Lord – who will save me from this body of death! Thanks be to God! Thank you Lord for rescuing me and saving me from my sinfulness. It is only in your grace that I am saved, and I am so thankful.In Your Name I pray, Amen!

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

Streams in the Desert 

A cup of cold water only  (Matthew 10:42).

What am I to do? I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good work, therefore, any kindness, or any service I can render to any soul of man or animal let me do it now. Let me not neglect or defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.
--An Old Quaker Saying

It isn't the thing you do, dear,
It's the thing you leave undone,
Which gives you the bitter heartache
At the setting of the sun;
The tender word unspoken,
The letter you did not write,
The flower you might have sent, dear,
Are your haunting ghosts at night.
The stone you might have lifted
Out of your brother's way,
The bit of heartsome counsel
You were hurried too much to say;
The loving touch of the hand, dear,
The gentle and winsome tone,
That you had no time or thought for,
With troubles enough of your own.
These little acts of kindness,
So easily out of mind,
These chances to be angels,
Which even mortals find
They come in night and silence,
Each chill reproachful wraith,
When hope is faint and flagging,
And a blight has dropped on faith.
For life is all too short, dear.
And sorrow is all too great,
To suffer our slow compassion
That tarries until too late.
And it's not the thing you do, dear,
It's the thing you leave undone,
Which gives you the bitter heartache,
At the setting of the sun.--Adelaide Proctor

Give what you have; to someone it may be better than you dare to think.
--Longfellow

 

Defeating the Devil's Strategies.....Dr. Charles Stanley

Defeating the Devil's Strategies

Dr. Charles Stanley

John 21:15-19

All of us make tracks through the valley of failure. Then the key question is, What we will do next? Sadly, many believers who stumble give up a vibrant kingdom-serving life for a defeated existence. But failure can also be a chance for a new beginning of living in Christ's strength.

In pride, Peter thought his faith was the strongest of all the disciples' and swore that even if the others left Jesus, he never would (Mark 14:29). Yet when the time of testing came, he denied even knowing Christ--and did so three times (Matt. 26:69-75). Satan hoped the disciple would be so wounded by his own disloyalty that his faith would be undermined by shame, condemnation, and despair.

Likewise, when the Enemy sifts believers today, his goal is for us to become shelved and ineffective for God's kingdom. That's why he goes after our strengths, especially the areas in which we proudly consider ourselves invincible. But if we're willing, the Lord can use our failures to do spiritual housecleaning, as He did in Peter's life. After the resurrection, Jesus met with the disciple personally and restored him, preparing him to become a great leader in the early church. He made it clear that Peter's potential to serve was defined, not by failure, but by his unwavering love for Christ.

Peter laid down his pride, received the healing Jesus offered, and put on courage with the Holy Spirit's help. He then risked his life fearlessly to further the gospel, and many came to Christ through his example. Failure was the catalyst that grew in him a stronger, more authentic faith.

Familiar Faithfulness

Familiar Faithfulness 
NICKI KOZIARZ

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Hebrews 10:23 (ESV)

If you’ve felt like this year has been uncomfortable and unfamiliar, you are not alone.

If you’ve wondered what God is doing in this season, you are not alone.

And if you’ve struggled to find anything that feels normal, you are not alone.

Lately, life has felt hard and ever-changing. There is a fear inside many of us as we wonder if life will ever feel normal again, and crave that which feels familiar.

I’ll be honest. The circumstances, pain, loss and disorder our world has experienced in recent months have left me feeling like it’s all exceeding the plan of God’s goodness.

But I know this isn’t true. And I’m sure you do, too. We often find ourselves (falsely) believing that what we see is what we should feel. So when we see darkness, we feel darkness. We see gloom, and we feel gloom. When we see hopelessness, we feel hopeless.

The book of Hebrews was written to be a source of encouragement for the Jews in Jerusalem who experienced persecution for their belief in God. Their faith had been flipped upside down, and nothing felt normal to them either.

They were craving God’s familiar faithfulness, and the writer of this verse was trying to remind them of this sacred place that never leaves us.

This is one of the many reasons I love the Word of God, because for every hard thing we will walk through on this earth, there’s someone who walked through it before us. As we study the Bible, we see the wisdom, encouragement and Truth which applies to us today.

And this is why we can declare Hebrews 10:23 for our lives right now: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” Tucked in this verse is the promise of God’s familiar faithfulness — both then and today.

Seasons may come and go, but His familiar faithfulness remains. Life will twist and turn, but we can always see His familiar faithfulness if we decide to look for it. We will question and wonder, but our doubts don’t change His familiar faithfulness — they simply try to cover it up.

God cannot lie, He never changes His mind, He never forgets His Word, and He has never failed anyone with the fulfillment of His promises. Jesus’ death and resurrection never stop existing. It’s up to us to look for the familiar faithfulness of God in seasons that feel uncomfortable, unfamiliar and ever-changing.

Today, my news feeds will be filled with heartache, hard situations and heavy struggles in our world. It might make me question His faithfulness, but I will still find it through the pages of my Bible.

My friends will text, call and tell me they feel weary. I will feel it, too. But I can bring them into the presence of Jesus in prayer. There in that place is His familiar faithfulness.

There is a fresh wind of grace flowing into our lives today through the Holy Spirit. It’s not stale, old or even normal. But it is familiar. And as we worship, praise and declare His faithfulness over our lives, that wind will feel stronger and stronger.

Every day, let’s be expectant and hopeful there’s something new we will experience with God. Because we are the ones changing, shifting, growing, maturing and becoming more like Him each day.

I’ve got to be willing to admit my own shortcomings with these faith struggles. As I do, I can rise up and become a little stronger, knowing how much I need God.

Thankfully, the writer of Hebrews was willing to be vulnerable with us about how much we need to be reminded of God’s familiar faithfulness. The willingness to pen words that speak faith to our spirits today is something we can hold on to.

May we do the same for the people around us today. Jesus is worth all our trust and devotion to stir the familiar faithfulness of Him every chance we get.

Father, thank You for never changing. When life is painful and unsteady and I crave Your familiar faithfulness, may I turn to Your Word to remind myself of those who have walked with You in faith before me. And as I’m encouraged, please give me the confidence to remind others of Your faithfulness. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

TRUTH FOR TODAY:
Lamentations 3:22-23, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is thy faithfulness.” (RSV)

2 Corinthians 9:13, “Because of the service by which you have proved yourselves, others will praise God for the obedience that accompanies your confession of the gospel of Christ, and for your generosity in sharing with them and with everyone else.” (NIV)

Defying Gravity

Defying Gravity
by Katherine Britton

“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand.” – 1 Chronicles 29:14

While I was in elementary school, family friends made the decision to leave the States for Kiev, Ukraine. This family of seven, including children my age, had to downgrade from a four-bedroom suburban home to an 800 square foot flat. That meant getting rid of a house full of clothes, toys, yard tools, furniture, dishes – a whole host of personal preferences and “needs.” Each family member had the luxury of one big trunk as they moved halfway around the world.

For this family, however, the joy of sharing the Gospel in a former USSR satellite nation outweighed all their possessions. My dad asked his friend how he was handling the sudden “loss.” His answer was telling.

“Actually,” the new missionary responded, “this is the most freeing thing I’ve ever done.”

This family found a special freedom far before I began to sniff it out. For me, this reorientation is coming slowly, helped along recently by a little book called The Treasure Principle. In it, Randy Alcorn uses a science metaphor to explain why our friends felt unshackled rather than empty. He writes:

It's a matter of basic physics. The greater the mass, the greater the hold that mass exerts. The more things we own—the greater their total mass the more they grip us, setting us in orbit around them. Finally, like a black hole, they suck us in.

Consider our materialism that way – the more stuff, the more mass. The more mass, the greater its gravitational pull. And the harder it is to escape.

Compare this to David’s exhilaration in 1 Chronicles. He is humbled not by how much God has blessed him with – but by how much God has allowed him to give away. The king of Israel, a center of the ancient world, found his joy not in the palaces and the women at his disposal, but in the act of returning to God was rightfully God’s. How many of us can say the same?

We live in a physical, material world. But we have the chance to defy its hold on us with every cent, toy, and “need” that comes our way. Are you ready?

Intersecting Faith & Life: I want to relearn the joy of giving in a more tangible way than ever before. As Alcorn puts it, “We give because He first gave to us” the most valuable gift of all. What ministries, families, or other kingdom cause is on your heart?

The Power of Prayer to Deliver You from Fear

The Power of Prayer to Deliver You from Fear
by Lynette Kittle

A few years back, our family of six attended an out-of-town conference, staying in a large hotel in the greater Los Angeles, California area. Like Ezra fasted and prayed before embarking on a journey, we fasted and prayed beforehand for safe travels and protection over our luggage (Ezra 8:21).

With a packed hotel busy with conference attendees and our room located directly across from the elevator, it was an active area with people coming and going 24/7. Because it was such a high traffic location, I asked my husband and daughters to make sure to put items away in their suitcases each day before leaving for the conference. Besides not wanting items to get lost or broken in the cleaning process, I didn't want us to leave anything out that might tempt an employee or guest passing by to be dishonest.

Needless to say, after attending conference events all week long, along with traveling back and forth between the hotel and conference location, we were tired and dragging between the numerous sessions.

Rushing to leave our room on the final night of meetings, I found myself the last one out of our room. Later on in the evening while settling into my seat to listen to the speaker, a thought briefly crossed through my mind. Did I close the hotel door completely on my way out? Trying to go over my steps and actions in leaving the room, it wasn’t clear in my mind.

As fearful thought started to invade my mind, I resisted the urge to let my imagination run wild with possible scenarios of an open room full of open suitcases. In the midst of my processing, Psalm 119:114 calmed my anxious thoughts by reminding me that God is our refuge and shield.

So rather than let my thoughts run away with worry, I let God’s word assure me our possessions were under His watchful eye.

Realizing it was too late at that point to do anything about it, I was comforted in remembering how we had prayed at the beginning of our stay specifically for protection of our suitcases.

Like Psalm 34:4 states, “I sought the Lord and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.”

God delivered me so much so from all my fears that by the time we returned to the hotel later that night, I had completely forgotten about my earlier concerns. As we stepped off the elevator, all six of us stopped in our tracks in seeing our hotel room door unlocked and standing wide-open.

Walking into the room it looked like every piece of luggage had been left unlocked and on-display throughout our room. For the four-plus hours we had been away, our possessions had been spread across an open hotel room and in full view of a busy hotel elevator. Yet it looked like everything was still there exactly the way we left it.

A Prayer to Remind Us God Works for Our Good

A Prayer to Remind Us God Works for Our GoodBy Lori Hatcher

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”(Romans 8:28)

This Scripture brings comfort, direction, and hope to Christians every day. Sadly, it’s also one of the most misquoted and misunderstood verses in the Bible.

I’d like to share three things about this popular verse you may never have noticed.

First, Romans 8:28 doesn’t mean we can live any way we choose, and God will fix our messes.

To understand the truth of Romans 8:28, we can’t just quote the part of the verse we like: “And we know that in all things God works for the good...” and skip the rest, “of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

This verse says to those who love God and are doing their best to obey his commands, “Even though bad/sad/evil/wicked things will touch your life, I (God) will use them to ultimately bring about good, both in your life and in the world.”

Second, Romans 8:28 tells us God can use all things together for good. He doesn’t say all things are good.

No matter how rose-colored our glasses are, there’s nothing good about cancer, sex trafficking, or death. Until Jesus returns and conquers Satan once and for all, sin will continue to drag its poisonous tentacles across our world, damaging and destroying everything in its wake.

The truth of Romans 8:28 reminds us that although sin and Satan are powerful, God is more powerful; He is able to redeem and restore anything for our good and his glory. All things may not be good, but God can and will use all things for good.

The final thing you may never have noticed about Romans 8:28 and its accompanying verse, Romans 8:29 is the ultimate good God wants to accomplish in the lives of his children:

“For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (v. 29).

A wise Bible teacher once told me, “God allows everything into our lives for one of two purposes—either to bring us into a relationship with himself or, if we already know him, to make us more like his Son.”

As long as we live in this world, people will attempt to reconcile God’s sovereignty with humanity’s suffering. Verses like Romans 8:28 assure us that no suffering is wasted, and God is always at work for our good and his glory. When we cannot comprehend why trials come and struggle to imagine that anything good can come from them, we can rest in the security that God is in control.

Please pray with me:

Father, sometimes I can’t understand how you can bring beauty from the ashes of my life. I struggle to trust you with the broken pieces. You say in your Word that without faith it is impossible to please you, and I want to please you. I want to trust you. I want you to make me more like Jesus and use my trials for my good and your glory. Help me believe the promise of Romans 8:28. In the strong name of Jesus I ask, Amen.