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February 21, 2009. You feel like you are on the raft in the middle of the ocean. All has been pretty calm and beautiful so far. Breezes have blown. The sun is comfortably warm. Your fresh drinking water supply is intact. But suddenly, with but a quick and low profiled warning, a storm is upon you. The winds blow, the waves become gigantic. No one is expecting you to survive. Something within you cries out to God for help. You know that He has called you. He never promised it would be easy. But now you see that all you have believed in and for is imperiled. How great is the cost? It could cost you everything just like the calling of Christ cost Him everything. Good news – you have all the faith you need to overcome and bring the greatest of victories. I believe in you because I love you.
2 Corinthians 11:24-25 “I’ve been flogged five times with the Jews’ thirty-nine lashes, beaten by Roman rods three times, pummeled with rocks once. I’ve been shipwrecked three times, and immersed in the open sea for a night and a day.” Ras Robinson
February 21, 2009. Things are coming together. You received an unexpected blessing. You knew a task had to be done, but it has begun much quicker than you anticipated. I sent the ones to help. It is being done right when it should be, according to My plans. If you will adjust, and receive My help and My helpers, you will be pleasantly amazed at what will be done. You were not planning on starting the task so quickly, but you adjusted to My schedule, rather than insisting on your schedule. If you will walk in My ways and by My instruction you will be on My time table. I bring things together.
Psalms 25:4-6 “Show me the right path, O LORD; point out the road for me to follow. Lead me by your truth and teach me, for you are the God who saves me. All day long I put my hope in you. Remember, O LORD, your compassion and unfailing love,” Bev Robinson
by Bill and Marsha Burns
http://ft111.com
The Lord has spoken to us and given us direction so that we know mentally where we are going, and we have times of spiritual exhilaration, but those times are quickly engulfed and extinguished by the storms. The storms of life have often obliterated our spiritual visibility. It’s hard to see where we are, let alone have any vision for what’s ahead. As a people, we are tired and battle weary.
There seems to be no end to the onslaught – spiritual attacks against God’s people in health, relationships, work, and finances. The difficulties of this present time have caused a subtle, but deep-seated discontentment and insecurity. And, this discontentment, which is all storm-related, has opened the door to a seducing spirit that prods us to find contentment in our flesh through fantasy and trying to find ways to escape the trouble.
Philippians 4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.
Thanksgiving will accelerate the spiritual process that will get us to a place of stability and of believing God for His direction and leading. We have to cooperate with the flow of the Holy Spirit as He re-establishes divine order in our lives, and the Lord said that our sense of contentment will be restored by making a decision to be content and by putting things in perspective through our faith.
Philippians 4:12 I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.
1 Timothy 6:6 Now godliness with contentment is great gain.
2 Peter 1:2-8 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self–control, to self–control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
by Dr. Frederick K.C. Price
Hebrews 10:23 says: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.”
There are two words in that verse which I want to examine-confession and hope. Before I learned how to walk by faith, all my wife and I lived on was hope. But hope will not change your circumstances. It takes faith to release the power of God to change your circumstances. Hope will only keep you alive until things change. If you never bring faith to bear upon your circumstances, all you will do is live in hope. Your circumstances will never change.
However, in order to really walk by faith, you have to have hope. Hope is a goal setter. What’s your goal? My goal or objective is to reach the top of the mountain in all areas of life. Everybody should have a goal. If you do not set a goal you will never reach one. This is one reason why many people, and even many Christians, never achieve anything. They never set goals. They have nothing for their faith to obtain. Hope sets the goal and faith achieves it.
Hebrews 11:1 says: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Hope by itself has no substance. Faith adds substance to your hope. If you do not have hope then you have nothing for your faith to obtain. On the other hand, if you have hope and do not have faith then you have nothing by which to obtain that which you hope for.
I want to challenge each of you to high hopes this New Year. I have high hopes and I obtain the goals I set. Though there still are some that have yet to manifest. I know that some things take more time than others.
I want to challenge you to have high hopes, to set some goals for 2009. If you do not set any goals you will never reach any. Now be careful and use wisdom when you set your goals. Do not set them so high that you become frustrated and lose hope. If you do, it will cause you to give up and do nothing.
Have you set goals concerning your financial and spiritual needs? Do you have any goals with regard to your desires, your family, your husband, your wife, your children, your job, your career, your education, your ministry or your physical health?
You need to have high hopes and there are steps you can take to obtain any goal. The first one is to remain steadfast, as it says in Hebrews 10:23. You have to be tenacious and hold on to your goals. Do not let go until your goal manifests. It takes that kind of attitude. Stay with it even if it takes forever. It may take a while for your goal to come to pass, but if you remain steadfast sooner or later it will manifest.
First Corinthians 15:58 says: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
If you want to reach your high hopes you have to be steadfast. Even if hell rises up against you, if the water rises, you stick with the goal. This is what steadfast means. It takes discipline and commitment to be constant.
Jesus said in John 15:18-19: “If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. “If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”
The enemy will put pressure on you when you attempt to reach your goal. But you can handle it. Jesus did. You are in good company. In fact, you are running with the best. He has already warned you. If they persecuted Him they will persecute you.
Situations may arise in which you are unable to figure out what to do. We all have encountered this at one time or another in our lives. When you are walking in the Word and by the Holy Spirit you have divine, inside information to meet your goal.
Second Corinthians 4:8-9 says: “We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;”
If you are steadfast, standing through the persecution, deliverance is at hand. You can obtain your High Hopes.
by Bishop Keith Butler
By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. Hebrews 11:23 (KJV)
Do you want this new year to be have some new beginnings? Then you’re going to have to forsake the world system. The world will bombard you with the easy way out. However, you have to decide that by faith God’s way is the only way for you.
Moses is a good example of a man who forsook the world. You see Moses was raised in Pharaoh’s house. He was someone of privilege and authority. Yet, he had compassion for his Jewish brethren and killed an Egyptian for beating one and he was driven out of Egypt.
It seemed as though Moses was going to spend the rest of his life in the desert, then God approached him and called him to be the deliverer of His people. But there were some steps that led to Moses having his new beginning:
Verse 24, Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. In other words, he made a decision that he was not going to accept any benefits by any other means than God. If you’re going to have an anointed new beginning, you have to refuse to do it any other way than God’s way.
Verse 25, Moses chose to go God’s way than enjoy the pleasures of sin. You have to make up your mind that as for me and my house; we choose to serve the Lord. This has to be your attitude even if you don’t get blessed–to go God’s way.
Verse 26, Moses esteemed God’s blessing higher than anything man could give him. His attitude was, I would rather get it all from God and nothing from man. You see, you have to stick to this regardless of what men offer you. Yes, you may have to wait a little longer, but that’s all right. If I can’t have it God’s way, I don’t want it period.
Then verse 27, Moses forsook Egypt and followed God. When you decide to follow God, many times you will have to go against the wind. Egypt represents the easy way, the sinful way, and the crowded way. It’s the way everybody wants to go. But Moses made a decision, and he did it by faith, that was to forsake Egypt.
Listen, God is about giving you a new beginning, but you have to determine that it’s going to be God’s way or no way.
Scripture References: John 8:12; 12:25; Matthew 16:26; Mark 4:19
“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.”
(Colossians 2:6-7)
Established in the faith and abounding with thanksgiving. These days it seems that’s a rare combination.
A lot of people have been taught faith over the last several years, and a lot of people have been taught to abound with thanksgiving. But it’s been hard to set the two together. Faith folks want to confess the Word all the time, but they don’t praise God very much. And those who like to praise God just want to jump and shout and dance and have a good time in the Lord. You can’t get them to get very serious about the Word.
Success comes from combining the two.
So, do it! Put them together in your life. When you run into a challenge, don’t just stand around grim-faced and white-knuckled holding onto your faith. Raise your hands high and praise. Start thanking God in the midst of what’s happening around you. Keep thanking Him for the answer until it comes.
Instead of just standing on the Word, let the joy of the Lord enable you to dance around on it a little. It will get you where you’re going a whole lot faster…and both you and God will have a much better time on the way.
Scripture Study: Colossians 2:1-10
