Dear Lord, we are surly tired in these days of want and need. We have not always loved You with all our heart nor served You. We confess that we have not always shown mercy to others, when You have shown it to us. Forgive us, O Lord, all our sins, our neglect, our indifference, our lack of mercy. In your mercy, O Lord, turn your face again toward us. Help us, we pray, and give us today what we need to support ourselves and our dependents. Fill also our souls with your shared love and peace. To You belogs the glory both now and forever; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
Prayer for Mercy
Dear Lord, we are surly tired in these days of want and need. We have not always loved You with all our heart nor served You. We confess that we have not always shown mercy to others, when You have shown it to us. Forgive us, O Lord, all our sins, our neglect, our indifference, our lack of mercy. In your mercy, O Lord, turn your face again toward us. Help us, we pray, and give us today what we need to support ourselves and our dependents. Fill also our souls with your shared love and peace. To You belogs the glory both now and forever; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Poor in Spirit
The Poor in Spirit Be-Attitude is God’s expectation of His Children to have an attitude to counter Pride and personal independence. This attitude was called for in Isaiah 57:15: The high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, the Holy One, says this: “I live in that high and holy place with those whose spirits are contrite and humble. I refresh the humble and give new courage to those with repentant hearts. We acquire it through what James 4:7-10 calls for: So humble yourselves before God. Resist the Devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners; purify your hearts, you hypocrites. 9Let there be tears for the wrong things you have done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter, and gloom instead of joy. 10 _ When you bow down before the Lord and admit your dependence on him, he will lift you up and give you honor. How can you draw near to God? James gives five ways: (1) Humble yourselves before God (4:7). Yield to his authority and will, commit your life to him and his control, and be willing to follow him. (2) Resist the Devil (4:7). Don’t allow Satan to entice and tempt you. (3) Wash your hands … and purify your hearts (that is, lead a pure life) (4:8). Be cleansed from sin, replacing your desire to sin with your desire to experience God’s purity. (4) Let there be sorrow and deep grief for your sins (4:9). Don’t be afraid to express deep heartfelt sorrow for what you have done. (5) Bow down before the Lord, and he will lift you up (4:10; 1 Peter 5:6). Although God and the Devil are at war, we don’t have to wait until the end to see who will win. God has already defeated Satan (Revelation 12:10-12), and when Christ returns, the Devil and all he stands for will be eliminated forever (Revelation 20:10-15). Satan is here now, however, and he is trying to win us over to his evil cause. With the Holy Spirit’s power, we can resist the Devil, and he will flee from us. Bowing before the Lord means recognizing that our worth comes from God alone. To be humble involves leaning on his power and his guidance, and not going our own independent way. Although we do not deserve God’s favor, he wants to lift us up and give us worth and dignity, despite our human shortcomings. If we do this, we will acquire the kingdom of heaven. Prayer to be Gentle
Loving God, continue to call me to gentleness. Teach me to be a minister of Your love no matter where my lifelong journey may lead me. Dear Father, Help me to see you in all I do in my life; Clear and direct my mind as I start each day, Help me to know where you lead me each day, Help me to follow each step of the way. If a friend has a need or a burden to bear, Help me to be there to show gentle care. I pray not for riches which tend to rust; I just ask for strength, to give you my trust. Hel me to be all you want me to be; Let others see God’s plan living in me. Then when the day’s challenges have ended; my will and knee’s have been bended. Kindness
In the last posting I had noted that the next step is to work on “Kindness.” Well then, let us take a look at how the dictionary defined “kindness.” Kindness is the state, quality, or habit of being kind (Kind is: being sympathetic, friendly, gentle, tender-hearted, generous, etc.). Being kindly means being gracious, benevolent, agreeable, pleasant, having a gracious manner. By these definitions, I think you can see the power in that word to improve the quality of life for yourself and the people around you. I believe that; based on that definition, you can remember people in your life who were that way. They probably had an impact on your life and others around them. Imagine how you could have an impact on the people around you. And don’t you think that this would bring a smile to your lover – God’s face. This state of kindness will bring others to your family with your lover – God and join you for an eternal love fest. And that came about because you worked on being kind. Besides, Kindness, being a positive thing, it also means avoiding the negative things that would reflect negatively on your relationship with your lover – God. A few of these are as follows: Avoiding Lying, Stealing, Greed, Adultery, Cheating, Wild Living, Drunkenness, Arrogance, Dissension, selfish ambition, Anger, Jealousy, Discord, Hatred, Lust, etc. That is no small list to avoid. But you know what, If you have been working at the areas covered in the previous postings. These mentioned in this posting should be almost gone, because they would have hurt your relationship with your lover. Imagine the hurt on His face if you haven’t got rid of these areas. And that is why He has and will give you the power to deal with these areas. Not only do these areas hurt your relationship with your lover – God, but they also affect your relationship with others around you: impacting your quality of life. So over future postings we shall touch on these again. All the good qualities we have learned in the past postings will have helped you conquer them. But if you are still having major problems with these areas, go back and specifically work on “turning control of your life to God.” The next area we will discuss is the area of gentleness. I look forward to sharing with you this area. “I can,” Audra commented. “see how it would be difficult to trust if in releasing control of your life to God, you had to worry about the future.”
“Yes,” George answered. “It would, and that’s why we need to change another attitude, hope. In other words, we have to stop thinking about what we are going to face or do in the future and concentrate on trusting our lover to guide and help us through the future. And this means, that we need to change our attitude of what we hope (concern for the future); from the impact we will have on our lives to trusting that God will take care of it and that all we have to do as hope, is to think about our future sharing love with God in the eternal love fest.” “We have to keep in the forefront of our mind; that there will be no more challenges or assignments after our graduation. Only the joy received in sharing love with someone on earth, multiplied countless times. So much so, that we cannot fully comprehend it in earthly body terms, and our spirit will be fully part of all the love that God and all his children that join him share.” “The closest we can come to it is the joy we have during a honeymoon, or after a birth of one of our children. But you have to take that and multiply that hundreds of times, to even come close. And the alternative to that is knowing that for eternity you will not be sharing any of that love.” “To fully understand this hope, we must fully understand and do love and trust. Because only then can the Spirit work in your heart, mind, soul/spirit and guide you to that hope. It is that hope for the future eternal love fest that will get you through any challenges, tests (e.g. dealing with forgiveness), or assignments our lover God will give us in order to bring us more fully in love with him.” “And once we come close to this level we can see the quality of our life improving. We do not have to have concerns about the present or the future. We need only concern ourselves with pleasing our lover as we walk through the doors of life opened by our lover hand in hand with him.” “But,” Audra inserted in the conversation. “I find it so hard to wait for things to happen” “Well,” George responded. “Let us look next into “Patience” as an attitude to work on next.” Related articles Once you have established that you love God enough to turn over control of your life to your lover and trust Him with your life; you will be able to look forward to the everlasting love fest when you join Him. This is called hope. This hope offers you joy for the future, but it also offers you joy and peace for the present.
You have joy and peace for the present; that you are pleasing your lover and that you have the most powerful influence in this world guiding you, by opening the door of what you need to do next and giving you the power to do it. This simplifies life, all you have to do is ask: "Is this something my lover would want me to do?" If it is, then all you have to do; is to do your best. God, your lover is responsible for it. This really improves the quality of life. Trust As we have seen to have love we must submit control of our life to our lover. This release of control shows that we "Trust" our lover and thereby love him with our WHOLE heart, mind, soul, and strength which he requires of anyone who will join him in that eternal love fest. So therefore trust is the proof of love.
Trust means that we believe our lover wants what is best for us and that we want to join him. That is the proof of the right decision to join him. And by putting that trust into effect we receive the peace that we have the Creator himself in charge of our life. What more could anyone ask for. This peace and trust gives us a better quality of life. And as a result we are in a better position to master the challenges and assignments we may receive from our lover. An important factor in this trust is that our timetable and God's timetable are not the same.. Usualy we think in minutes and God thinks in years. We must learn to wait. Since love is placing the needs, desires and requirements before your own; it is critical that the control of your life is submitted over to your lover, for these two reasons:
1. For your lover to place your needs, desires and requirements to the level of importance they should be, He must have that control. 2. And if your lover's needs, desires, and requirements are to be second to His, you need to relinquish control to him so you can concentrate on what your lover should receive from you. By relinquishing that control you achieve the peace and love your lover God wishes to give you. And he also will give you the power to complete the challenges and assignments you receive from your lover. That is why you need to relinquish control to your lover, so you can improve the quality of your life. God wants spirits who can join Him in an eternal love fest. Love requires that you place your lover's needs, desires, and requirements as more important than yours. This requires a thoughtful commitment made by deciding the question whether you will be committed for eternity to placing God first and in control of your life and existence or retain control yourself. To make that decision and commitment, God provides us with a training plan to make that decision and commitment with full thought.
That training plan consist of placing these spirit/souls in a temporary body on the planet earth. God uses this training plan and its many parts of it to help us to choose which way to make that decision and commitment . When we complete the training plan and make the decision and commitment, God removes the spirit from the body and those who have chosen to love him with all their heart, mind, spirit/soul and strength and brings them into his eternal love-fest. This training program uses such things as challenges that force the trainee to either trust God or themselves to get through it. Also he uses Assignments which help us to reinforce our commitment to God. He has many other procedures in his training program such as being parented in what love is all about. All of this helps us make that all important decision. God being a God of love and seeking praise and glory, created the angels who eternally will bring that honor and praise. But the angels can not bring him love. Because a key ingredient of love is the ability to choose whether to love someone (put their desires and requirements before their own) or not. The angels do not have that capability. So God created humans who have that ability.
These humans were created as spirits like their creator. These spirit manifestations of the spirit world although like God, did not have the powers of God of creation and other powers. were called souls. They did have the power to choose to love God with all their heart or not. But for them to make that choice successfully they needed to be schooled in the pros and cons of their choices. So he created a training school for them called earth along with a temporary body to be used during that training. He established a training program where they go through such training as challenges which force them to choose to depend on God or themselves. And they are given assignment where they are asked to do something for God to show their love of Him or not. And they are given tests to force them to choose which is more important to them, their needs and requirements or God's. When they have completed the training program and made their final choice they graduate by leaving their earthly body and their life on earth. They then either share love with God in a eternal love fest with Him and each other OR NOT. |