Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“You have said, ‘Seek my face.’
My heart says to you,
‘Your face, Lord, do I seek.’”
– Psalm 27:8

God isn’t hiding. He doesn’t play hard-to-get. He invites people to seek Him. Elsewhere in Scripture, God promises that those who earnestly seek Him will find Him. He wants YOU to know Him more fully and deeply than ever before. He welcomes you into His loving presence when you pursue Him. The ultimate guarantee of this is Jesus. God sent His eternal Son into the world to reveal Himself and to make the way for sinful people to enter into a relationship of love with their Holy Creator.

When you put your faith in Jesus as Lord, the way was opened. As you learn to abide in Christ – following Him, obeying Him, delighting in Him – you increasingly experience God in His Triune fullness, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Jesus doesn’t hold anyone at arm’s length. He welcomes all who come to Him and embraces them as they seek Him.

Are you seeking the Lord today? Are you drawing near to Him in prayer? Are you stilling your soul at His feet? Are you rejecting and confessing any sin that might have you holding God at arm’s length? Are you meditating on Scripture and delighting in its truths and applications? Are you worshiping the Lord in public and in private? Are you delighting in friendship with fellow believers? Are you serving God in whatever way He has prepared for you? Are you sharing the love of Jesus with others who are seeking God? Seek His face and #FollowJesus!

“All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.”
– Psalm 25:10

Note carefully what David writes here, because it’s certainly true. He doesn’t promise that all of God’s paths are easy, comfortable, safe, popular, or lucrative. This promise is much, much better than those things! All the paths that God has prepared for His people to walk are full of Him. When you choose to walk the path God is calling you to, He promises you’ll find Him there. You’ll walk in God’s steadfast love and faithfulness. You’ll experience more of Him than you could ever possibly imagine. There is nothing better than that. Nothing!

The world pressures and tempts us to choose its paths, but those lead only to emptiness and ruin. The well-worn paths of earthly popularity, prosperity, comfort, safety, and ease promise much but deliver nothing of eternal significance. The paths of God lead to the joy of the Lord on earth and the reward of the Lord in eternity. So, which path will you choose today? The world’s or the Lord’s?

To walk the Lord’s path means choosing to take up your cross each day to follow Jesus. It means denying yourself so that you can fully experience Christ in you. It means making hard choices and sacrifices to obey Christ’s commandments, even when you’d rather not. It is the path of love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, and healing. But it isn’t easy, comfortable, convenient, safe, or popular. Which path will you choose today? #FollowJesus

“For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.” – Romans 8:13

Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for your salvation. By His sinless life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection, He has made the way for forgiveness of sins, salvation, reconciliation to God, and eternal life. All this comes as a gift of grace through faith in Jesus and never as a result of good works. Those who entrust their lives to Jesus receive God’s Holy Spirit and He changes their desires, making them aware of sin’s horror.

Having been saved from your sins, you must not continue to walk in them, excuse them, or defend them. Having been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life in Christ, you must live by the Holy Spirit. One key sign that you’ve truly put your faith in Jesus as your Lord is a new instinct to live a holy life through the Spirit. That is God calling you to start putting the sinful acts you naturally desire to do to death. Whether that’s a natural tendency toward anger, selfishness, greed, cruelty, manipulation, gossip, addiction, sexual immorality, or anything else. To follow Jesus means you must stop following those natural impulses toward sin, which we all have. Though we are all naturally drawn toward particular sins, followers of Jesus must not indulge those. Certainly not without a fight!

Those calling themselves Christian but still contentedly doing the old familiar things Jesus forbids are probably not actually saved. No matter what box you might check on a form, if you’re still living by the flesh, you’re probably still spiritually dead. If Jesus is your Lord, fight against the sins you think define you. Resist your temptations, no matter how difficult or long that battle may last. Receive grace whenever you fail and ask God’s forgiveness. But keep fighting. Don’t play around with your sins and temptations. Don’t flirt with them. Don’t ignore them. Don’t try to manage them. Put them to death! #FollowJesus

“When Jeremiah finished speaking to all the people all these words of the Lord their God, with which the Lord their God had sent him to them, Azariah the son of Hoshaiah and Johanan the son of Kareah and all the insolent men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie. The Lord our God did not send you to say, ‘Do not go to Egypt to live there,’”” – Jeremiah 43:1-2

If you say you want to know God’s will for your life, do you really mean it??? Are you open to WHATEVER answer He may give??? Or are you really just wanting God to bless what you’ve already decided to do???

The survivors in Judah came to the prophet Jeremiah, begging him to seek the Lord’s will. They swore they’d do whatever God said. But once Jeremiah heard from the Lord after several days of prayer, they immediately rejected what he passed on to them. They just wanted God’s blessing on what they’d already decided to do, which was to flee to Egypt. Of course, this ended disastrously for them. It always does when people aren’t sincere about seeking God’s will, thinking we know better.

God will reveal His will for your life (at least the next step or two) if you sincerely seek Him in Christ. Walking in God’s will is absolutely the best and most satisfying way to go. But too often God’s people have already made up our minds and we close ourselves off to God’s will. We ask but we’re really asking God to rubber stamp our will rather than reveal His. If that’s how you’ve been operating, stop! Get honest about whether you’re seeking God’s will or your own. Try to truly open your mind and heart to whatever God may have planned for your life. Honestly seek His will in prayer, meditation, silence, and solitude. Then refuse to dismiss His answer. Refuse to keep asking for a different answer once He makes Himself clear. Once you know what God is inviting you to do, take up your cross daily and simply #FollowJesus

“And when the people came to the camp, the elders of Israel said, ‘Why has the Lord defeated us today before the Philistines? Let us bring the ark of the covenant of the Lord here from Shiloh, that it may come among us and save us from the power of our enemies.’” – 1 Samuel 4:3

The nation of Israel had descended into a sinful, sorrowful state. The religious leadership was rotten to the core and undermining everyone’s faith. So, God tried to get Israel’s attention through a military defeat. However, the leaders of the nation didn’t learn their lesson. In fact, they didn’t even ask what lesson God was trying to teach! They just came up with a way to try and manipulate God into giving them victory. They decided that if they sent the Ark of the Covenant into battle with them, everything would be OK. It wasn’t!!!

The Bible promises that God disciplines those He loves. If you’re a Christian, then God loves you, which means He will discipline you if you get off course spiritually and fall into sin. That discipline will be uncomfortable and may come in a variety of forms. Learn the lesson of the Israelites… when you’re out of God’s will, you can’t fix that by trying to appear more religious. You can’t fix a wrong heart by displaying more religious symbols or objects. You can’t manipulate God into action by using holy objects or sacred activities to compensate for an unholy life. Such hypocrisy only deepens your guilt! It was true then and it remains true today.

When God is trying to get your attention because of some sin in your life, listen to Him! Don’t just double-down on religious practices or put on a more holy appearance. Seek the Lord in prayer until you understand what He’s trying to teach you. Ask God to reveal your sin to you. Then repent of it, rejecting it completely and confessing it to God. Ask His forgiveness in the name of Jesus. God will always forgive you when you do (1 John 1:9). Change your heart and how you live your life, don’t just put on the appearance of religion. #FollowJesus