Resolution #1 - Resolve To Pray

Start the day with God and keep him with you all day long.

Philippians 4:6  Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.

1 Thessalonians 5:17 Pray without ceasing.

Psalm 86:1 Bend down, O Lord, and hear my prayer; answer me, for I need your help.

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Worry is a universal trait, everybody does it, in fact it is probably the greatest time waster that is known to man. Worrying is so natural for us to do that we do it even when things are going well, we worry that things are going too good and that the bottom is about to fall out from under us.

God has a better plan, he wants us to trust in him no matter how things are going, through the good and the bad, he wants us to talk to him about it and leave it in his hands. I need to be determined to pray more in every circumstance because if I don't then it will get pushed off of my to-do list.

We should develop pray as a way of life seeking to know him so that we can react to every situation the way that he would. A prayerful lifestyle declares that I need God and that I trust him to handle whatever comes my way.

I need to:

• Set aside a time to talk to God each morning at the begining of the day
• Focus on worship, before I ask for anything that benefits me, leave the shopping list behind
• Ask God to shape me and help me to realize that everything works out for my good, he is working in every situation and sometimes the bad times are meant to shape my character.
• Remain in prayer throughout the day

Thank you Lord for wanting to hear from me. I confess that it is easier to pray for my wants and forget that I am talking to the God of the universe that deserves my praise and adoration before I make my request.

Perfect Gifts: Salvation

The redeemed will sing forever "Jesus saves!"

Ephesians 2:8  God saved you by His grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

Romans 5:15-17  But there is a great difference between Adam's sin and God's gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and His gift of forgiveness to many through this other Man, Jesus Christ.   

16  And the result of God's gracious gift is very different from the result of that one man's sin. For Adam's sin led to condemnation, but God's free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins.

17  For the sin of this one man, Adam, caused death to rule over many. But even greater is God's wonderful grace and His gift of righteousness, for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through this one Man, Jesus Christ.

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FYI: The world's greatest Christmas gift has already been given, the pressure is off, so you don't have to knock yourself out to give the perfect gift. We have all received gifts that were not so great and we had to pretend that it is really a great gift, sometimes the gift is wrapped so well that it gave us false hope, the best of our efforts to give perfect gifts will fall short.

God gave us the perfect gift in his son. It didn't come in beautiful wrapping and at first there were very few people that realized what a great gift it was, there wasn't any of the usual signs that this gift would be anything special, some people even hated the gift. (Matthew 2:16-18, John 1:10-12)

God gave this perfect gift to every one of us even when we were not his friends, we don't usually have a shopping list that includes all of the people that have wronged us but God gives to all of us, even while we were his enemy. (Romans 5:10, James 4:4)

God didn't shop at the last minute for the perfect gift, ever since the beginning of time God knew that this gift would be given. Adam and Eve didn't surprise God and give him a reason to worry and rethink his plan. (Ephesians 1:3-5, 1 Peter 1:18-20)

The day of salvation is here

2 Corinthians 6:1-2  As God's partners, we beg you not to accept this marvelous gift of God's kindness and then ignore it.  2  For God says, "At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you." Indeed, the "right time" is now. Today is the day of salvation.

When you believe then God saves, it's that simple, your work didn't do it for you. God's gracious gift of forgiveness is waiting for you to accept it. It is so dangerous to think that you have another day to wait before you accept the gift and open it. After all of the effort that God went through to give such a perfect gift it is so rude of us to ignore it or to refuse to accept it. (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Perfect Gifts: Mercy

Our mistakes do not have to haunt us.

John 3:16,36 “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 36 And anyone who believes in God's Son has eternal life. Anyone who doesn't obey the Son will never experience eternal life but remains under God's angry judgment."

John 8:7-11 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. 10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

11 “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

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Do you think that your life has been full of mistakes and poor choices and you think that God couldn't want to have a relationship with you? It's pretty easy to see that we all deserve some pretty severe consequences for the things that we have done against God but God does not want our relationship with him to be full of fear and despair.

As good and perfect as God is, we can easily see that we fall way short of his standard but we don't have to live with this hopeless situation hanging over our heads, in an incredible display of mercy, God has given us the opportunity to receive eternal life if we believe on his son.

We are as bad off as the adulteress with a group of Pharisees hanging around with rocks in their hands, God has the right to throw rocks at us and we deserve it just as much as she did but thankfully he has given us a way out of judgement.

God's love is merciful

Titus 3:3-5 Once we, too, were foolish and disobedient. We were misled and became slaves to many lusts and pleasures. Our lives were full of evil and envy, and we hated each other. 4 But "When God our Savior revealed His kindness and love, 5 He saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit.

Sin takes us places that we really don't want to go and it cost us more than we think that it will but as Christ followers we have received the wonderful gift of mercy which completely eliminates the judgment that we deserve. It's hard to imagine a just God loving us so much that he would go to such great lengths to satisfy his demand for justice by sacrificing his own son.

"God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy."

Have you ever found a gift that you forgot that you ever received? Satan tries to get us to forget about this gift, he doesn't want us to live with victory over our failures instead he wants to keep us beat down with our guilt.

"Mercy Came Running" by Phillips Craig and Dean

I was bound by the chains, From the wages of my sin
Just when I felt like giving in,Mercy came running
Like a prisoner set free, Past all my failures to the point of my need
When the sin that I carried, Was all I could see
And when I could not reach mercy, Mercy came running to me. 

Thank you Lord for the gift of mercy through your son, help me to be merciful. I know that I need to re-gift this present.

Perfect Gifts: Hope

I will hope in the Lord no matter what is going on around me.

Lamentations 3:17-24 Peace has been stripped away, and I have forgotten what prosperity is. 18 I cry out, "My splendor is gone! Everything I had hoped for from the LORD is lost!"

19 The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words. 20 I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.

21  Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this:  22  The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease.  23  Great is His faithfulness; His mercies begin afresh each morning.  24  I say to myself, "The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him!"

Psalm 31:24 Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.

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What an awful time to be me, I used to have it going on but now what do I have to look forward to? Maybe you had it good for a while, things were going smooth, but easy street isn't a very long road to travel and before you know it you are on a detour.

Back in the day the Lord was blessing Israel, they were living on some awesome real-estate and all of their enemies had been defeated, what could go wrong? In Israel's situation, they were away from God, that was the reason for their trouble, the fall of Jerusalem to the armies of Babylon in 587 BC was their own fault.

Maybe you knew what peace was for a season and now it has been stripped away, sometimes our suffering can leave us without hope, but for the child of God that isn't a fair assessment of our situation and we should realize that difficult times does are not an indicator of how God feels about us.

Trying times may be for punishment but they may be a tool for growth and could have nothing to do with punishment. Either way we can't allow ourselves to believe that God's love for us has changed. God's love is constant and dependable, it is his love that sends difficulty our way for our own good, that can be hard to see in the heat of the battle but if we are patient we will overcome. (Lamentations 3:22-27)

Our hope is in Jesus

Romans 8:23-24  And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as His adopted children, including the new bodies He has promised us. 24  We were given this hope when we were saved.

We have hope, although we may groan now, the child of God is looking forward to better days. A day is coming when those that have been adopted by God will receive our inheritance as his children and move on to glory to spend eternity with him.

This Christmas season we need to remember that one of the great gifts that we have received from our Lord is the gift of hope. There isn't a good reason to despair but sometimes the season of hope turns into the season of nope, we forget about the bright future that we have. We must remind ourselves that the Lord's faithfulness is great and his mercy to us starts fresh every day.

I have a bright future and I should live like I know it so that others will be drawn to the Lord when they see the hope that I have in Christ.

Lord help us to live with excitement that comes from the great hope that you have given to us, help us to live it out each day to the fullest extent so that the world will see the gift of hope that we have been given. I pray for comfort for the people at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut and I pray that they will have hope in you to get these through this tragedy. Amen.

Perfect Gifts: Forgiveness

Christ came to forgive.

Hebrews 10:4-10 For the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. 5 That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, 

“You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. 6 You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. 7 Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God— as is written about me in the Scriptures.’” 

8 First, Christ said, “You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings or burnt offerings or other offerings for sin, nor were you pleased with them” (though they are required by the law of Moses). 

9 Then he said, “Look, I have come to do your will.” He cancels the first covenant in order to put the second into effect. 10 For God’s will was for us to be made holy

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God's "Perfect Gift of Love" for us wouldn't be perfect if it didn't prompt him to do something to meet our desperate need. It is only natural for any lover to meet the needs of those that he loves.

Our God is a generous lover that has been willing to meet our needs ever since he first created us. God made the perfect environment where we lived without any unmet needs, there wasn't anything that we lacked until the day that we rebelled against him, and even then he met man's new need.

This wasn't a surprise to God, he knew that we would make the wrong choice and suddenly for the first time we would have an unmet need. God didn't allow it to stay unmet for very long.

Genesis 2:15-17 The LORD God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and watch over it. 16 But the LORD God warned him, “You may freely eat the fruit of every tree in the garden 17 except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die.”

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil did not give them any knowledge about forgiveness ad mercy. All they knew was that according to God's warning they were supposed to die.

Ever since the first sin back in the garden there has been blood shed to cover the sin, animals were killed to make clothes for Adam and Eve and after the nation of Israel leaves Egypt, God gives them the sacrificial regulations that are a foreshadow of the work of the coming Messiah. 

My need for forgiveness is never going to stop while I am here on this earth, but the need for a sacrificial lamb has been taken care of forever, Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of the shedding of innocent blood to cleanse us from sin.

How could anybody see their beloved headed for destruction and just sit back and watch?

God has so been so merciful to offer forgiveness to us so freely and he expects us to do the same for each other. How willing to forgive would we be if somebody had done us wrong hundreds of times? Yet Isaiah says that God will forgive us generously. (Isaiah 55:6-7)

Re-gifting is required

Colossians 3:13-14  Make allowance for each other's faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.

God forgave every single one of the crimes that I committed against him, how can I possibly refuse to forgive those few people that have done me wrong? The people around me haven't done as much to offend me and their offenses are so minor in comparison to the way that I have treated God.

We need to change our feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, towards the offenders in our own lives so that we can live with compassion, understanding, and empathy. 

Christmas is all about forgiveness, God sent his only son to earth so that we could receive this gift and now that we have it we need to also give it to others. It may take some work to consider letting somebody off the hook, to swallow our pride and allow somebody to wrong us without seeking justice but we need to follow God's example and restore broken relationships. (John 3:16, Ephesians 4:32)

Thank you Lord for the gift of forgiveness, thank you that you never stop giving it, forgiveness is something that I am never going to stop needing.