Desires, lust and stuff!

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.

1 Peter 2:11

The other day I was reading this verse and it just occurred to me how bad sinful desires can be. In this day and age sinful desires like lust are being promoted and are just seen as innocent. But notice it says in this passage that it wages war against our souls!

I think of all these things and its true the more I engage in sinful desires here and there the more distant I feel from God no matter how innocent the world calls it it wages war against my soul and yours too, especially desire for sinful things. So how can we protect our souls? the verses that comes to mind are Ephesians 6:11-18.

We need to be serious about prayer and I need to too because prayer is our communication with God it is what keeps us going and provides us with what we need to stay focused and continue the journey its our ammo. If we pray according to God's will our prayers will be given what we ask for --- yes that's true read it here in 1 John 5:14-15. Our will needs to become God's will else we cannot fully commit to Him or be sure of our salvation.

Jesus loves you and He will be delighted for you to intentionally spend time with Him and give all that you have.

Don't worry trust God he has a plan for you not just everyone else!

Be encouraged

In Christ 

Jaleen :)

In Christ alone

13 I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Phillipians 4:13

13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13

From the verses above, highlighted in bold are the things which show how we owe all of our glory for doing good to God. It is a false idea to think that any of our works are our own doing. As much a you think you are capable of doing good without God you cannot. Yes thats right, it is God who enables us to do good we can do no good without him. You may be thinking I know many people who do good without God but that is not right because the good we do without God is not really good but it has a catch to it or some condition. Likewise we can't truly love without God because God is the only true love. The world's idea of doing good and true love is most distorted. So we need to know God's great works and love and reconnect with Him by his Holy Spirit or else the world's ways will influence us. We need to fix our eyes on Jesus and making use of our most powerful tool we have which is prayer. People may disagree with what we tell them but they cannot dampen our prayers.

Day 6: Make use of God's Armour

14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Ephesians 6:14-17

Every day we need to pray to be clothed with the armor of God so that we can resist any spiritual attack and so we can stand when the day of evil comes. Eph 6:11-13 

But something God was showing me the other day was that when a soldier prepares for battle he clothes himself with armor and he is prepared to fight. However what good is it if he stands against his opposition clothed with all his armor (his shield his sword and the rest) but doesn't use it? We need to use our armor which we have been given. 

Our sword which is our attacking weapon is the word of God which we need to be reading and living by and it is the sharpest sword there is! (see Hebrews 12:4)

Our helmet of salvation and salvation is found in none other except Jesus (see Acts 4:12)

Our belt of truth, we live by the Spirit of truth (see John 3:20-21)

Our feet fitted with the readiness to spread the gospel (see Matt 24:14)

Our shield of faith which is in Christ Jesus (what He has done and is yet going to do in our lives) (see Hebrews 12:2)

Our breastplate of righteousness which is the righteousness we have in Jesus Christ (see Psalm 106:3)

Let us pray,

Lord Almighty, I pray that you would clothe us with your armor, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the belt of truth and our feet with the readiness to spread your Gospel and that you would help us to use your armour to bring Glory to your most Holy name. Please help those of us who are are saved to continue in you and for those who are not saved to come into the knowledge of the savior Jesus and to know that salvation is found in His name only. Help us in our weaknesses to come to you and to remove any hindrances and let us devote ourselves to you. Bind Satan I pray. In Jesus name I pray this prayer, Amen

Be encouraged, 

Jaleen x

P.S please check out this post if you want to become a Christian or know more

Day 4 - Thanksgiving

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's 

will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

This letter in which this verse was given was for believers and gave them instruction on how to live and these believers were warned by Paul that the day of the Lord was coming but he tells them that it should not take them by surprise. Later on he tells the believers what God's will is for those in Christ Jesus which is shown in the verse above notice he tells us to rejoice always and to pray continually and give thanks in all circumstances this can be hard sometimes and we have rough days where we are genuinely feeling discouraged and these commands that seem simple when everything is going well in our eyes but become so hard to apply in the midst of trials, big decisions or non christian environments. So how can we do these things in these hard times? If we look at the following verses we need to fix our eyes on Jesus (see Hebrews 12: 1-2) when we fix our eyes on Jesus we begin to see people in a new perspective and when we submit to God we will find it easier to rejoice and be thankful and pray. We also need to be fixing our eyes on those things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely and admirable which is everything that God is (see Phillipians 4:8) and often in hard times we are focusing on the opposite of these things when we take our eyes off God and to the world and our focus becomes on those things which are false, ignoble, wrong, impure and horrible thoughts. When we fix our eyes upon God and realize our dependence on Him we truly can pray continually even by frequent small prayers throughout the day.

Disclaimer I really do recommend reading these verses in context to get the overall view and not just an out of context verse because these verses are aimed at specific people and situations sometimes and I really want you to understand what God is saying to you as you read each mini devotion.

Be encouraged

Jaleen x

Day 2 - The worries of tomorrow

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.

Each day has enough trouble of its own. Matthew 6:34 (NIV)

At times throughout the day I find myself getting so caught up in daily life that I miss out on my quiet time with God and I'm running on the fumes of God's word. Its so easy to worry about all the things that need doing in daily lives and Jesus understands this, He understands how easy it is for us to get caught up in worrying about what we will eat and how much to eat and what it is best to eat and drink and everything that we must do tomorrow and in our human lives and he tells us in Matthew 6:25-34 not to worry. He tells us not to worry about these things because they are not very important and your salvation doesn't depend on what we eat or how healthy or unhealthy we are in what we eat or drink there are more deeper things we should be avoiding like sexual immorality see 1 Corinthians 6:13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. You may be thinking but how do I stop worrying its easier said than done! 

The answer is in Phillipians 4:6-7 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

The way to experience the peace of God is to pray to him he told us to present our requests to him. God is a loving God, he cares about us, he wants us to remain in contact with him which is why he tells us to pray in every situation. Let us therefore draw near to his throne with our prayers and requests not forgetting however to come with thanksgiving for all that He is and has already provided by his amazing grace for us in Christ Jesus. 

Be encouraged, 

Jaleen

P.S please check out this post if you want to become a Christian or know more

Day 1 - Heed the warning

 "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 (NIV)

Recently I was travelling in someone else's car and as we were travelling there were lots of signs and markers to show that there had been a diversion ahead due to roadworks or obstruction to the road but there were many signs and diversion routes that you had to obey to make it to the next clear road and avoid being stuck. I noticed that there was a long queue ahead where people had missed one of the signs and had failed to see the diversion sign and they had become stuck in traffic queues it became quite a mess. It reminded me immediately of a believers walk with Christ and convicted me of my own walk, often there are times where God will show us to do something which may seem small or unimportant to us he gives us warnings and we just ignore them and continue expecting to grow in our walk or for it to have no effect but the more we do this and continue ignoring these "small" things the bigger the consequences become. These things then become harder deal with and we may find ourselves becoming stuck in a bad situation all because we decided that our own way was better. Its time to heed the warning and turn to God, He knows better than what we know of ourselves (Matthew 10:30) and has our best interest at heart. I encourage whoever you may be to let go of your own will and surrender to God in whatever it is God is leading you to.

Pray this with me

"Lord I am fed up of going my own way in life and falling short of you. I just pray that you would forgive me of my sins and help me to walk in your way and for your blessed Spirit to guide me. Help me to surrender my will in all things and take up your will for my life instead of my own. Help me daily to carry my cross and follow you. In Jesus name I pray, Amen."
P.S please check out this post if you want to become a Christian or know more

Weaknesses

Recently God has really been guiding me to this verse lately so I thought i would share it with you:

2 Corinthians 12:9 But he said to me, "My Grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 

When you take time to think about this verse and what it means it truly is amazing. God is saying that His power is made PERFECT in WEAKNESS. Not in strength, not in satisfaction, but he says in weakness. Its so easy to look at ourselves and pick out all our flaws and weaknesses and by doing that you can grow to hate yourself but that is not the purpose of our weaknesses. We have to look at the bigger picture. Our weaknesses are set up to reveal God's power but for this to happen we need to turn away from trying to overcome weaknesses and rely completely on God with them. In 2 Corinthians 12:8 Paul PLEADS with God THREE times to take away a physical weakness which we are not told what it is but we are told that it was a thorn in the flesh so a physical weakness which may have hindered his ministry yet God directed him to verse 9.  Often when we have strengths in areas it can cause us to get tempted to depend on ourselves which hinders our walk with Christ resulting in it being ineffective because we are making ourselves our own foundation when we need it to be about God and not us. If you have a physical weakness in your Chrsitian walk its not given to hinder you but that it can be used by God to reveal his power and to keep your eyes on him and not ourselves which I have also been learning through the reading and studying of these verses.
God bless you all, Jaleen :)
P.S please check out this post if you want to become a Christian or know more