Week 22: Psalm 34:17

The righteous cry, and the LORD hears And delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted And saves those who are crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, But the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, Not one of them is broken. Evil shall slay the wicked, And those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the soul of His servants, And none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.

Psalms 34:17-22 (New American Standard Bible)

 

Many apologies promise movers for being late on the promise this week!  Had a pretty trying beginning to the week already!  Fitting that we are going to be moving on Psalm 34:17 this week though, because it's all about crying out to God when we are in need.  I love The Message version of this passage:

Is anyone crying for help?  God is listening, ready to rescue you.  If your heart is broken, you'll find God right there; if you're kicked in the gut, he'll help you catch your breath.  Disciples so often get into trouble; still, God is there every time.  He's your bodyguard, shielding every bone; not even a finger gets broken.  The wicked commit slow suicide; they waste their lives hating the good.  God pays for each slave's freedom; no one who runs to him loses out.

There's not a whole lot of explaining that needs to be done here.  Are you in trouble?  Are you hurting?  Is your heart broken or your spirit crushed?  THAT DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU ARE A BAD CHRISTIAN!!!  It means you're doing things right.  Satan doesn't attack those already under his power.  In his sermon this week, our Pastor, Scott Estep, said something beautifully on this and I'm going to do my best to paraphrase him: the reason we need Jesus Christ to be our comforter is because we are going to be put in some very uncomfortable situations because of Him.

Christ doesn't call us to cake-walk lives.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer has one of my favorite quotes of all time, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die."  So now you're thinking, "Your pretty sick Jeremy, that's just how I want to start out my week."  It's truth though.

Christ calls us to suffer for Him.  He calls us to uncomfortable situations.  He calls us to all of the pain, rejection and humiliation that He experienced to and on the cross.  He doesn't exclude us from any of it.

BUT HE ALSO MAKES IT BEARABLE.

So do you need help today?  Are you struggling this week?  It doesn't matter what it is.  Christ died so that you would be taken care of in His perfection.  After His resurrection, He sent the Holy Spirit to us to be our comforter, to guide us, to carry us through all of the struggles - NO MATTER WHAT THEY ARE - so that we can stand through it all and find Jesus on the other side.

God doesn't promise us an easy life when we choose to follow Jesus.  He does PROMISE to make our suffering easily bearable though when we give it all to Jesus and allow Him to carry us through it.  So move on it this week.  Give your hurts to Jesus.  Let Him protect you.  Let Him carry you.  He is ALWAYS faithful to His Word!



Week 21: 2 Corinthians 13:3-6

since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me, and who is not weak toward you, but mighty in you. For indeed He was crucified because of weakness, yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him, yet we will live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves! Or do you not recognize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you--unless indeed you fail the test? But I trust that you will realize that we ourselves do not fail the test.

2 Corinthians 13:3-6

Hey there promise movers!  Hope you all had a great week moving with us on the promises of God.  If there is something cool that God did in your life through these promises, or just anything else that He has been faithful in (we know that He is faithful in all He does) please let us know about it!  Nothing makes me happier than reading praise reports on the goodness of God!  We can even post them to this blog so that everyone can get in on the fun.  It is just so awesome that we are able to bring glory to God through our testimony...just another one of the multitude of gifts He has given to us.

This week we are going to focus on the power that we have in God.  2 Corinthians 12:9 is probably a more familiar verse to some of you, so we are going to start there to get an idea of what we are required to do in order to cash in on this promise.  2 Corinthians 12:7-10 is when Paul talks about the "thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan" sent to torment him.  He prays to God three times to remove this thorn, and God answers Paul's prayer; just not in the way he was expecting.  God says, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness."  Ridiculous concept, huh?  We cash in on God's promise of power by allowing ourselves to become weak.  It's just not logical.  That's because it's theological!

I really love how Paul puts this in verse 7, that this thorn was given to him "to keep me from exalting myself."  That is why we need to become weak.  God doesn't do power struggles.  He IS the power.  You have the free will to recognize it or not.  He will not fight you over it though.  You want to keep your power over battling a certain addiction or controlling what you do at work? He is going to let you.  If that's what you want though, you aren't going to have His power.  I don't know about you, but I think I'm going to let God's power do the work in my life.

Now let's turn to 2 Corinthians 13:3-6.  I love Paul's swagger that comes through in this section.  It's a Holy Spirit swagger.  Jesus Christ is not weak!  Let's get that straight right now.  That's my one beef with The Bible Series on the History channel.  Jesus is portrayed as this weakling flipping tables over in the synagogue.  Yes, Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God.  NEVER forget though, He is also the Lion of Judah.  Our God has teeth!

That's what Paul is talking about here.  Yes, Jesus was hung, in weakness, on a cross.  We too have that same weakness in us, that we died to our sins in the same manner that Christ did.  Jesus Christ didn't stay "weak" though.  He didn't stay in the grave.  I read this quote in a fabulous book by Henry and Melvin Blackaby called Experiencing the Resurrection,  and it still gives me goosebumps every time I read it.

Jesus said that those who remain in their sin will surely die (John 8:24). So He died in our place and went to the grave - but with the full confidence that the power of the Father was sufficient.  And indeed, the Father went after Him and reached down into the darkness and laid hold of His Son.  With all the power of Satan and his demons straining to secure the grave, the righteous hand of the Father found its way.  And the power of the almighty God ripped His Son from the eternal chains meant for you and me.  The resurrection power pulled Him from a pit of darkness back into the kingdom of light.

Praise be to God!  Jesus now reigns over the kingdom of light and has complete dominion over all principalities and powers.  Talk about power!  It all belongs to Jesus.  And the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is now in His hands.  Anytime a person cries out to Jesus in repentance and pleads for forgiveness of sin, He hears.  He has been there; He knows the way to rescue your soul. 

I don't know if I really have to write anything else!  Jesus Christ was the perfect example for us.  He was not, is not, has never been, and will never be weak. Yet He became weak to the point of the cross so that His Almighty Father could make Him strong.  That is the example He asks us to follow.  That we become weak to whatever weakness He calls us to, because in doing so we become strong.

So Paul urges us, "test yourselves to see if you are in the faith."  Are you bearing good fruit?  TEST YOURSELF!  You can't and won't have the power of Christ unless you are in Him.  Like we said last week, it's all about your position in Christ.  If you are in the True Vine, you will bear good fruit.  If you aren't bearing good fruit, you need to take a look at your position.

So get in position this week.  Go all in with the True Vine that is Jesus Christ.  Bear good fruit and walk in the power of the Lion of Judah, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End, the Great I AM!  Let His righteous hand rip you from the clutches of Satan just as He did 2,000 years ago with His own Son.

MOVE IN THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION!

Week 18: Romans 8 (Yup the whole thing!)

Hey fellow movers!

I must apologize for making you read all of Romans 8 (not a sincere apology, you should cherish diving into God's word) but I just couldn't pick one verse to focus in on!  It's like those old Ruffles potato chip commercials, "Betcha can't eat just one."  I just can't pick one promise from this chapter in Romans.

This week is all about victory.  We might spend a few weeks on this topic, because victory happens to be something that God promises us a lot of!  I am very thankful for that!  I won't go through every verse of Romans 8 here - you are all more than capable of reading it on your own - but I will highlight a few of the verses that really moved me.

First, the very beginning of Romans 8, verses 1 and 2.  "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death."  Your end of the bargain = you must be in Christ Jesus.  His end = He will free you from sin and death.  We win on that deal.  It's not just freedom from the act of sin and things that lead to death either.  It's freedom from the entire mindset of sin and death.

I can testify to this personally with my addiction to tobacco products.  When I finally gave that garbage to Jesus and let Him have His way with it, He didn't just get rid of the tobacco from my life, He got rid of the entire mind control it had over me.  The urges, the desires all went out the window.  Verse 5 says, "For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit."  So it's not just freedom from the sin that God is offering here, it's freedom from the entire lifestyle of sin!

Verse 11 might be my favorite in the chapter because, to be honest, I don't think there is any better promise out there than this: "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."  Hillsong does a song called "You Are Here" in which the bridge says, "The same power that conquered the grave lives in me."

You wanna talk about something that will give you a little Holy Spirit swagger!  The Spirit that raised Christ from death to life is in YOU!  The Spirit that performed all of those miracles, that healed all of those people, that defeated all of those demons IS IN YOU!!  I don't even need to go on.  We'll just stop the promises group right here (kidding...still tune in next week)!

I love verses 15-17.  Paul describes the relationship that we have been called into with God.  Not a relationship of slaves to a master, driven by fear; but instead of children and heirs to our Abba, Father, Daddy.

Verse 18 - "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."  Without God, this life is as good as it gets.  With Him though, this life is a bad as it gets.  The suffering we experience on this earth won't even be a blip on the radar when we finally enter fully into God's Holy Presence.

Verse 26-27 - "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."  We have the promise of our own personal prayer "helper" in the Holy Spirit.  Like a prayer instruction manual.  The Holy Spirit knows the mind and will of God and will pray for us, through us, through groanings too deep for words.

Verse 28 - "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."  Great promise, just remember, it has to be HIS purpose.

And then we hit the pièce de résistance, in Romans 8:31-39 (I'm going to freely go bananas bolding my favorites):

What then shall we say to these things?  If God is for us, who is against us?  He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?  Who will bring a charge against God's elect?  God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns?  Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.  Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, of nakedness, or peril, or sword?  Just as it is written, "For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered."  BUT IN ALL THESE THINGS WE OVERWHELMINGLY CONQUER THROUGH HIM WHO LOVED US.  For I am convinced that neither death, not life, nor angel, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Ok, so maybe I should have just bolded the whole thing.  You get the point though.  It is impossible not to be completely on fire when you grasp the victory God has PROMISED US!  This isn't a 50/50 chance you'll have victory.  Not 60/40, 90/10 or 99.999999999999999999999999999/0.000000000000000000000001.  It's God's promise.  It's as good as gold.  It's DONE!  Just like when the whole universe was created, He spoke and it happened.  God's Word is not idle.  It MOVES!!!  So what are we waiting for?  Let's move with it!

Be victorious brothers and sisters in Christ!

Week 17: Isaiah 30:18-26

 

Therefore the LORD longs to be gracious to you, And therefore He waits on high to have compassion on you. For the LORD is a God of justice; How blessed are all those who long for Him. O people in Zion, inhabitant in Jerusalem, you will weep no longer. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry; when He hears it, He will answer you. Although the Lord has given you bread of privation and water of oppression, He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, "This is the way, walk in it," whenever you turn to the right or to the left. And you will defile your graven images overlaid with silver, and your molten images plated with gold. You will scatter them as an impure thing, and say to them, "Be gone!" Then He will give you rain for the seed which you will sow in the ground, and bread from the yield of the ground, and it will be rich and plenteous; on that day your livestock will graze in a roomy pasture. Also the oxen and the donkeys which work the ground will eat salted fodder, which has been winnowed with shovel and fork. On every lofty mountain and on every high hill there will be streams running with water on the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall. The light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days, on the day the LORD binds up the fracture of His people and heals the bruise He has inflicted.

Isaiah 30:18-26

 

 

I absolutely love this passage.  I apologize that it's a little long, but there is just too much goodness to ignore!  I don't think there are any of us out there who would be willing to say we don't want the direction of the Lord.  I am at one of those times in my life where I need His direction so badly.  So many life altering decisions that I have coming up, I really need God to guide my steps.  I think we all need to get to a point where this desire of God's direction becomes a necessity in everything we do, even in our daily routines.

That is what first drew me to this passage though.  Verse 21, "Your ears will hear a word behind you, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or to the left."  I have actually had this verse written up on a little white board on our refrigerator at home for about a year.  Sadly, as too many things God bring to my attention, it has been up there so long that I had forgotten about it.  Just another decoration that's been hanging on the wall so long it now gets overlooked.

God brought it back to me this week though; and then some.  I saw that verse on the fridge and prayed for God to guide me.  Then I decided that I would go back and look up some of the different translations of that verse.  What I found was the rest of the promise!  It completely blew me away!  The promise could really go all the way to the end of chapter 30, but I decided to cut it off at verse 26.

I love how this promise starts off though.  God, the Creator of the universe, LONGS to be gracious to us!  God, the Lord of EVERYTHING, is literally waiting on His throne to have compassion...ON US!  And the only thing that is asked of us in return?  That we long for Him.

When we long for God, He longs for us.  Even when we don't, He still longs for us, He still pursues us.  He longs to be gracious to us; He waits to have compassion on us...so what are we waiting for?  He can't come to us with His promises until we come to Him.  We can't receive His gift until we ask for it.  Once we start to long for Him - the way He longs for us - that is when His promises start coming alive.  So let's look at the promises we have in store for us in this verse alone:

1. You will weep no longer
2. He will be gracious to your cry, hear it, and answer it
3. He will no longer hide himself from you - your eyes will see your Teacher
4. You will hear His voice and He will guide you
5. All idols, addictions, impurities - anything that gets in the way of your relationship with God - will be defiled in His presence.  He will give you the strength to tell these things "Be gone!" (How powerful is that?!?)
6. He will give you rain for the seed you sow, food from that seed and it will be rich and plenteous...in other words, God will bless your socks right off!
7. I love verse 26 too...your nights will be as bright as day, no more darkness!  Your days will be seven times brighter than they were before you came to Jesus!  He will bind you up and heal you!

God doesn't ask anything from us, but that we long for Him the way He longs for us.  Come to Him and He will come to you.  I was joking with Jake Kohring this morning because we were trying to isolate one of these verses to move on, but there was just too much goodness!  I made the comment that we should just move on the whole book of Isaiah this week.  There is so much truth in that though. 

We are moving on promises week by week.  One (ish) promise a week.  But when you come to Jesus - when you long for Him the way He longs for you, every single promise in the Bible becomes YOURS!  Even if you aren't real sure about all of this, come seek Jesus anyway.  When you find Him, and you will find Him, it will be impossible not to fall head over heels for His grace and mercy.

So let's move this week friends!  Let's pursue God with the same tenacity, desire, longing and love that He has been so faithful to pursue us with.  Let's long for God the way He longs for us, and let Him open these promises in our lives!

Week 14: Proverbs 16:3 & Mark 11:24

"Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed."

Proverbs 16:3

"Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you."

Mark 11:24

Hello fellow promise movers!  So I had an extremely difficult time deciding on which promise to move on for this week (as you can probably tell by the title of this post).  I was really stuck between these two passages from Proverbs and Mark.  Then this morning while I was joining in prayer with my friends Jake and Matt (continuing our promise from week 12 in Matthew 18), Matt suggested doing both of them.  His exact text read: "Sounds like they parallel.  Go with both...ha!  Doesn't commit to God assume some kind of prayer anyway?"

Absolutely it does!  If you and I are going to commit our plans to the Lord, we better be covering those things in prayer!  So we're going to break tradition (Jesus hated tradition that got in the way anyway, right?) and go with a little double promise this week.

And what a promise they are!  Commit whatever you do to God and you have guaranteed success!  Now there's a promise!  A lot of exclamation points here!  I apologize!  I'm excited!  Seriously though, does it get any better than that?  We live in a world that measures everything by how "successful" it is and God is telling you that He has a way for guaranteed success...just give it to Him and let Him do the work!  It almost too easy!

The same could be said with the verse from Mark.  "All I have to do is ask and believe and whatever I pray is as good as mine?"  Pretty much.  It's a lot harder than it should be though.  The problem comes in the believing.  We live in a world that lives by the quote, "If it's too good to be true, it probably is."  That is not the case with Jesus though.

I could sit here all day and write out Bible verses and famous theologians who agree that all you have to do is pray, ask and believe - to commit your works to the Lord - and it will be done.  If I did that though, you'd spend all your time reading this and not living out this outstanding promise from God! 

So stop reading and start doing!  There's only one way to find out if God's going to keep His promise.  So what are you waiting for?  Commit everything you  do to the Lord and He will bless your sock off and make you successful.  Pray, ask and BELIEVE WITHOUT A DOUBT and God promises it will be done.  Yes, it is absolutely too good to be true, but so is the fact that a perfect Savior would leave His throne to die for us and give us eternal life.  You believe that, so why doubt any of the promises He has made to you through His word?

MOVE!

Week 13: John 12:26

"If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him."

John 12:26

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!  A little late I know...but Christ is still risen, so technically every day is Easter!  I hope you all had a blessed time moving on the promise from last week.  I want to take a quick moment before I get into the new promise to remind everyone of the old promises.  Not trying to be a jerk or anything...it's more of a reminder because I have really struggled with it.  The point of moving on these promises is so that it makes changes in us permanently.

I realized this a few weeks ago, but I have not been doing very well at abiding in Christ the way I did when those were the promises we were moving on.  So just a friendly reminder...don't stop moving on the old promises!  Keep abiding, keep humbling, keep meditating, keep finding people to pray with.

Now on to the new promise!  I read a book a few years ago called Experiencing God by Henry and Richard Blackaby.  The book completely changed my life...I would highly suggest giving it a read if you haven't yet. 

One of the things they talked about in the book was how we approach going about God's work in our lives.  So many people, and I am one of them, constantly pray that God send them a task.  The Blackabys offered a new way to look at it, and John 12:26 mimics that.  Instead of praying that God send a laundry list of tasks for us to accomplish, we should instead pray that He reveal where He is already working in our lives.

This isn't to say that God doesn't or won't give us to-do lists.  I'm not suggesting that God doesn't give us specific tasks and ask us to follow Him to go accomplish what He has set out to do.  That's the first part of Jesus' promise here, "If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me."  Many times we miss the second part though, and I believe that is what the Blackabys were trying to point out.  "where I am, there My servant will be also."  So it's not just about being specifically sent out by God.  Every single day we wake up and put our feet to the ground, God is sending us out.  When we don't have something specific from Him it doesn't mean we get the day off from being a Christian.

God is going to use YOU!  That is what this promise is all about.  God wants you to follow Him.  Jesus is asking you to be where He is.  If He's not telling you to go somewhere, then ask Him where He is currently working in your life.  There may be a co-worker whose heart He has been "tenderizing" to receive the Gospel.  If you're waiting for Jesus to lead you somewhere else, you'll miss the fact that He's working right in front of you.

So focus on serving Jesus this week.  Listen to Him.  If He tells you to follow Him somewhere, then go!  MOVE!  If He tells you to sit still and rest in Him, then stay!  DON'T MOVE!  If He doesn't tell you to move or stay, then ask Him where He is currently moving in your life.  Ask Him to show you where He is and get there.

When you do, He promises that His Father, our Father, will honor us!  It doesn't get better than that!  Ok, enough reading...get moving!

Week 12: Matthew 18:19-20

"Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. "For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst."

Matthew 18:19-20

 

 

Greeting everyone!  I hope everyone had a blessed time moving on the promise from Psalm 73 last week and that those of you who chose to fast drew closer to the Lord through that.  I have a feeling this won't be the last opportunity we have to fast through our promises to move on, so if you didn't have a chance to fast...don't worry...your time will come!

 

For this week we will be moving on a promise Jesus gave us in Matthew 18:19-20.  Thanks go out to Amanda Valantine for suggesting this verse.  If any of you have suggestions for promises to move on please let me know.  It is such a blessing to me to have others get involved!

 

For the promise this week I'm going to ask you to get out of your bubble and reach out to someone else.  All of the promises up to this point have been pretty singular, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the Bible calls us, very clearly, to be part of a body.  This means not doing things on our own.  I'm going to push it even a little further.

 

I am sure that some of the people reading this are involved in church and that is fantastic.  I don't think you are a lost soul if you don't attend church.  The Bible doesn't say anywhere that you have to attend church service once a week to earn eternal glory.  I do think it is incredibly beneficial to get plugged in to a body of fellow believers.  It's like working out.  I have always been more disciplined when I have a friend working out with me to push me and keep me going.  On the days I would rather sit on the couch and watch TV, having a friend to keep me accountable keeps me off the couch and on the treadmill (or bench, squat rack, bike trail, etc.).

 

So that is the promise this week.  Jesus promises us that when two of us agree on anything, it will be done by God!  That's as good as gold!  Where two or three are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ, Jesus promises that He will be there with us.  What more could you ask for?!

 

For this week find one or two people at least to join with you in prayer.  I know that we all have incredibly busy schedules, so it may not be possible to physically get together with these people every day, but get in contact somehow and agree in prayer.  Praying together is such a powerful tool that is not utilized nearly enough! 

 

I'm going to take it even further though and "highly suggest" (this is like when your mother "highly suggests" you clean your room) that you involve someone you don't normally turn to.  My wife and I pray together all the time.  I absolutely love it!  But I'm suggesting - and am also going to participate - incorporating people I normally don't share my prayer requests with.  This whole promises thing isn't about reaffirming what we already "do right" - it's about pushing ourselves to go deeper.  So if our promise is on joining others in prayer, I'm not going to sit here and say, "Well, I pray with my wife...so check that one off the list."  I am going to push myself to go deeper.

 

So find a new prayer buddy, or a couple!  Talk about your requests to God, get in agreement (I should mention that this is a great time to make sure your motives are Spirit led...so don't just agree on everything, but challenge each other) and pray!  Then after all of that, know without a doubt that Jesus is there with you and that your prayers are answered!  God promised!

 

Have a blessed week moving on His promise!



Week 11: Psalm 73

"Whom have I in heaven but you?  And earth has nothing I desire besides you."

Psalm 73:25

Hey everybody!  This week we will move on Psalm 73.  It's a little different than most of the other promises that we have moved on thus far, so let me explain how I see this going.

The beginning of Psalm 73 is a little depressing.  It talks about the universal truth in life that "nice guys finish last".  I'm paraphrasing...that quote isn't from the Bible (the Christian one anyway).  Verses 1-15 talk about how those who are wicked always seem to be getting the best life has to offer, while those who do their best to live righteously fall flat on their face.  The author sums it up in verse 16, "When I tried to understand all this, it was oppressive to me".  That seems to be a common theme when we try to understand the happenings of this broken world. 

The author gives us some great insight on what we should do when we start feeling this way though, "till I entered the sanctuary of God; then I understood their final destiny."  When we enter into the presence of God it changes our perspective on everything.  We go from looking at things from a material, worldly, limited view, to an eternal perspective.  Upset about how "unfair" life is?  Enter the sanctuary of God (and by sanctuary I mean anywhere His presence dwells, could be church, your living room, the city park) and see if it doesn't change your mind about the very concept of "fair".

But I digress...there are many promises in this chapter:

1. God is always with us (Verse 23)
2. God holds us in his right hand (23)
3. God guides us with His counsel (24)
4. God takes us into His glory (24)
5. Where flesh and heart fail, God is our strength and portion forever (26)

Verse 28 ends the Psalm and says, "But as for me, it is good to be near God.  I have made the Sovereign Lord my refuge, I will tell of all your deeds."  I really like this verse/promise because I have really been praying a lot, asking the Lord for more boldness to share my testimony with those around me.  Being near God and making Him our refuge makes it easy for us to share our testimony and His deeds with those we come in contact with.

The key to the promise stands in verse 25 though.  "Whom have I in heaven but you?  And earth has nothing I desire besides you."  What do you desire on earth besides the Lord?  God brought this down on me like a hammer when I was praying about which promise to move on this week.  God lays all of these promises down at our feet - ours for the taking - but we cannot collect on them if our priorities aren't right.  It makes sense too.  Until I can honestly say, "Lord, earth has nothing I desire besides you." why would He give me more "things" to get in the way...more "things" for me to put before Him.

Jana and I have been talking about fasting to draw deeper into God.  I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to do this, and I ask that you prayerfully consider joining us.

DISCLAIMER:  I say prayerfully consider because you absolutely, 100% have to pray about this before you do it!  Jana and I have prayed about it and the Lord wants us to do this.  If the Lord does not want you to do this, you won't get anything out of it.  I have fasted without God and can tell you it's worthless...it just leaves you hungry and no fun to be around.  There is no shame in not doing this with us if you don't feel led to, just cling to the promises we have mentioned and make God all that you desire.

Jana and I have decided that we are going to do a technology fast, specifically our smart phones.  We have gotten way too comfortable spending too much time checking Twitter, Facebook, playing games, checking the weather, scores of sporting events, our e-mail...whatever else these amazing things can do now.  This alone isn't a problem...I see my smart phone and all this technology as one of the best ways I can spread the Word of God, but when some of these things start getting in the way of our quiet time with God, we have a problem.

There have been mornings that I have skipped my prayer time with God to write this blog.  Unacceptable.  There have been mornings I have thought, I'll check Facebook to see if any of my friends need prayer...and we all know how that ends.  Unacceptable.  It doesn't matter what it is, if there is anything that gets in the way of your relationship with God, it must be put in check.  This fast is a great way to set your priorities right.  Even if there are things that haven't elevated themselves in priority above God, but they are just getting too close for comfort, get them in check before they become a problem.

So ask God what He would have you do.  If He wants you to fast technology, do it!  Maybe He wants you to go traditional and fast food (not McDonalds and Burger King, but fast from food), maybe not even for a whole day or the whole week, but perhaps He wants you to fast through lunches this week, or fast on Tuesday and Thursday.  Maybe He wants you to start a month long fast or maybe He doesn't want you to fast at all.  You have to ask Him what He wants.

Then whatever He tells you, obey, move on it and watch the promises come to life!

Week 7:Psalm 25:9

"He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them His way."

Psalm 25:9

 

Happy Monday everyone!  We are going to stick with the humility promise for one more week with Psalm 25:9.  I really like this promise.  I think that too many times, we Christians don't realize all that we have in the death and resurrection of Christ.  Romans 8:11 says, "But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you."  Hillsong sings a song called "You Are Here (The Same Power)" that sums it up with this line: "The same power that conquered the grave lives in me, lives in me."

 

This promise is one that gets overlooked too often.  Christianity isn't easy.  There are hard teachings and moral questions that tend to fall in "grey areas" for some people.  The different answers to these questions are what have led to all of the different denominations that we have today.  How should we be baptized?  How should we take communion?  How should we worship?  These are just a few of the surface questions that have caused separation in the body of Christ.  So who has the right answers?

 

Loaded question...I know.  Jesus Christ has the right answers.  He has all of the right answers.  He has the only right answers.  He is the way, the truth, and the life.  In a world that is slowly trying to get rid of the concept of universal truth, trying to convince us all that "truth" is a matter of personal opinion or preference, there is still a voice of reason.  It is the same voice that spoke all of us into being, and He is still speaking.

 

That's what makes this promise so alluring.  Those who humble themselves before the Lord will be taught His way.  God Almighty Himself will teach us what is right if we will humble ourselves before Him and acknowledge that His way is indeed the right way - the only way.  That's all we have to do and He will teach us.  John 14:26 tells us, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."  I can promise you're not going to get any better education than that!

 

I want to add a little challenge to the end of this.  We started a group on Facebook for this little challenge and I shared this challenge with them last week.  I share it with you now because it ties in perfectly with Psalm 25.  In verse 12 this theme of being taught is extended, "Who is the man who fears the Lord?  He will instruct him in the way he should choose."

 

I set out last week to learn how to fear the Lord.  Job 13:11 says, "Will not His majesty terrify you, and the dread of Him fall on you?"  I realized that I had never been terrified in God's presence.  Tenth Avenue North has a song called "Hallelujah" that opens with this line, "At first I was afraid, but not because of fear.  But the Holy of Holies was drawing me near."  I wanted that.  It sounds like a crazy thing to want, doesn't it?  I want to be terrified.  That's how deep I wanted to be in God's presence though.

 

And He did it for me.  I was painfully aware of how great He is and how I am not.  The combination of all that God is plus all that I am not creates an atmosphere of complete awe.  It creates the perfect environment for humility and even terror.  I am going to ask the Lord to do it again this week.  I would challenge you to try it too.  Hit your knees and invite the Lord to humble you, even to the point of terror.  Then move on His promise that He will reveal His way to you.

 

What are you waiting for?  Get MOVING!

God is Faithful! (Week 4 Testimony)

Hello all!

I wanted to share a testimony of the Lord's goodness and faithfulness. Just this past week we moved on the promise from John 15:7 which says, "If you abide in Me and My word abides in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." We took this promise to heart and asked for some specific things this past week!

First of all, as a teacher I have the benefit of snow days and two-hour delays on occasion. I really desired to have a delay on Monday and the Lord provided as I asked. I know it sounds simple and unimportant, but the Lord cares about things big AND small! In addition to that He blessed me with a two-hour delay on Tuesday also! I'm really thankful for the extra hours!

In addition to asking for something small like a two-hour delay, I asked for something a little bigger this past week. My fiance and I are planning to wed on the 23rd of March (next month!!) and we recently put an offer on a house. The original closing date was scheduled for on or before Feb 15. If closing occurred on the 15th, I would not be able to move into the house until March 15th to give the seller a month to move out. That would only give us a week to get things ready before the wedding and we did not like that. We prayed and God provided according to His word!! Instead of closing on the 15th, we asked the Lord to close the house on the first of February (last Friday). He gave us the clearing on Wednesday of last week and the closing happened on none other day than last Friday (the first)! This gives us two extra weeks to set up the house and get me moved in before my wonderful fiance, Liz, joins me after our wedding.

Liz and I are so blessed in how the Lord has moved over the past 6 months or so. He is super faithful and never ceases to bless those who follow Him. Be blessed today knowing the Lord is on your side and as you call upon Him He will answer and provide even greater things than you might imagine. Don't be afraid to ask God for specific things and trust that, according to His word and will, He WILL provide!!

Week 5: 1 Peter 5:6-7

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you.”
1 Peter 5:6-7

Wow!  What a promise!  We humble ourselves before the Lord and He exalts us!?!  Seems a little backwards doesn’t it?  What exactly do we mean by exalted.  Webster’s Dictionary defines exalt as, “to raise in rank, power or character.” and “to elevate by praise or in estimation : Glorify”  Are you getting how ridiculous this idea is?  And as if that isn’t enough, we also have the promise that we can cast all our anxiety on Him because He cares for us!

The Lord of all creation.  The Creator of the heavens and the earth. I AM!  Everything that God was and is and is to come is going to exalt us!  Everything that God is and He cares about our anxiety and worries.  It should be the other way around!  We should be the ones exalting Him.  That’s not the promise though.

So what does it mean to humble ourselves before God?  It’s all about your heart.  We have to come to the realization that He is God and we are not.  I like this promise in 1 Peter because it says that God will exalt us “at the proper time”.  I think this is a huge part of being humble before God, realizing that He has everything under control, including the time line of things.  Being humble before God isn’t worrying about how we are going to get our schedules to work or why we aren’t being healed or delivered from something on our time table, but instead giving it all to God because He is worthy of having it all.

Humble is the opposite of proud.  It’s giving everything we have to God – our money, our talents, our relationships – and knowing that He can do it all better than we ever could.  It’s laying all of our trophies down at the feet of Jesus and no longer striving for human accolades, but only for the love of the Father.

Yesterday in church, our worship pastor, Pastor Amanda, talked about why we lift our hands during worship service.  She talked about how it is an outward showing of what is going on inside of our hearts.  The same happens for me when I am humbling myself before God.  I like to get on my knees to pray; not because it’s comfortable…it’s not…and not because God hears me better from that position, but because it is an outward showing of what’s going on in my heart.  There are even times when I become so humbled by God that my knees aren’t low enough and I find myself flat on my face, practically trying to dig a hole in the floor to get low enough before the Almighty.

You don’t have to do those things.  It can be a very good place to start for no other reason than to allow your body to mirror your heart.  Humbling ourselves before God isn’t an act though, it’s a way of life.  Just like abiding in Christ.  And just like the abiding we did last month, I am looking forward to humbling myself under God’s mighty hand until it becomes so natural that I am constantly living in a state of humility before God.

Have a great week MOVING!

Healing When We Abide

It was Saturday, January, 12 and I was starting to get a cold. The cold was nothing serious at this point, but I was starting to feel a little achy and my throat had a little scratch in it. This is always such a bummer when I start to feel sick on the weekend ,so I was trying to combat it with extra sleep and lots of tea with added cinnamon and sugar of course!
When I woke up Sunday morning my throat was still scratchy but my husband, Jeremy, and I were able to go to church together for the first time in a long time. This is a rare occurrence because we both serve on the worship team at church. Later on that day we went out to eat with my mom and brother and I was feeling good. After returning home from a quick trip to Walmart, I started to feel really bad. I tried to lay down for a nap but was not even able to do that because I could not swallow. I was in so much pain.
Monday morning came and I wanted to try and go to work that day. I thought I would be okay and the day would go fast, no big deal. It was a terrible day and to be honest, I barely made it through. I was starting to feel worse and worse, my fever was 103.5 and I didn’t know if I was going to make it. This is not to say I thought I was going to die, I just felt so bad and I was in so much pain.
When Jeremy and I were laying our son Elam down for bed, Jeremy prayed healing over my body and shared that when we make the Lord our dwelling, no harm will overtake us and no disaster will overtake our home. Like our promise to move on this week (Psalm 91:9-10) says in the New American Standard version, this also includes “Nor will any plague come near your tent”. So as Jeremy started praying this more and more throughout the night, we started believing it and trusting God to heal me.
Our son Elam still tends to get up in the night and when he woke up about 1:30, I quickly realized my fever broke. This was an answer to prayer! When I woke up Tuesday morning, I felt great! The Lord had healed me and I was feeling back to normal. This was not only a boost to my physical body, but it was such an encouragement to my prayer life. It has made such a difference focusing on abiding in the Lord ALL the time. What a difference that makes on the outlook of situations. What a difference that makes in the situations that life brings us. Dwelling in the Lord, abiding in Christ…every second, every moment, all the time- makes such a difference! 

Week 2: Psalm 91:9-10

"If you make the Most High your dwelling - even the Lord, who is my refuge - then no harm will befall you, no disaster will come near your tent."

Psalm 91:9-10

 

Sorry everybody, I am a day late with this one.  I know you all have been sitting at home so ready to move on our promise for this week and are going to have to start a day late now because of me!  I suppose, like I said last week, it's better late than never.  And on that note, if you haven't yet, please join us!  God did some incredible things in our lives last week as we moved on the promise from 1 John 3:6. 

 

If you joined us, please let us know how your week went - we would love to hear how God moved in your life. 

 

If you are planning on joining us for this week, please let us know - we would love to pray for and with you while we move together on trusting our Lord and Savior!

 

Now on to the good stuff:

 

As much as this pains me to say as a Cleveland Browns fan, our promise to move on this week comes from Baltimore Ravens Linebacker Ray Lewis.  Following their victory last Sunday against the Indianapolis Colts he was sporting a shirt that had Psalm 91 written on it.  Jake decided to look up Psalm 91 (I am far too stubborn a Browns fan to look up a verse on a Ravens player).  Thank the Lord someone doing this experiment isn't an idiot when it comes to sports. 

 

As it turns out, Psalm 91 ties directly into the promise we moved on last week from John 3:6, in which we focused on abiding in Christ in order to eliminate sin from our lives.  So when Psalm 91:9-10 talks about making the Lord our refuge and dwelling place, it kind of caught Jake's attention.  He shared the verse with Jana, Liz and I and we all agreed that this would be a great promise to move on for this week.

 

In Psalm 91:9-10 the outcome changes a little though.  We are still focusing on abiding in the Lord.  We are making Jesus Christ our refuge, the place we run to when we are in need - of anything! - we are making Him our dwelling place.  Just like you dwell in your house or apartment or tent or cave.  When you are dwelling in it, you are surrounded by it, protected by it, it completely covers you.  That is what we have been focusing on in these past two weeks.

 

The change in this promise comes in the outcome.  Where as abiding in Christ eliminated sin from our lives last week, this week abiding eliminates evil and plagues from our lives.  Now while I can't say that I am incredibly worried about plagues befalling my house, I would be more than happy to see sickness eliminated from my home.  And that is what we are counting on!

 

The rest of Psalm 91 continues to lay out the protection, deliverance and long life that come to those who make the Lord their dwelling and refuge.  I would highly suggest you read the entire Psalm.  I would also highly suggest that you join us in moving on that promise.  Cling to Him!  Cling to Him so tightly that He becomes absolutely everything - even the air that you breathe.  We learned from experience last week that abiding in Christ can eliminate sin from our lives.  This week I fully expect to see how abiding in Him also eliminates evil, sickness, danger and fear.

 

Just to make sure that this experiment is fully put to the test, Jana decided to come down with strep and I have developed a pretty nasty chest and sinus cold.  If there is anything last week taught us, and the Bible continually teaches us, it is that God's promises are faithful and true!  Give it a try...He won't let you down!

 

MOVE!

Abiding In Christ

So the first week is almost in the books.  It happened just like I hoped it would too!  I had such a great week MOVING on the promise of abiding in Christ and that resulting in the complete absence of sin in my life.  It wasn't just that though.  His promise was true (if you had any questions about this, I'll spoil it for you: they always are!) and I did not sin at all while I was abiding in Him.  The few slip ups that I had were all times when I was not abiding very well.

Along with not sinning though, I also found myself in such a better mood overall.  I was slow to get frustrated at work and even while driving...GASP(I tend to be a little impatient while behind the wheel)!  I had a smile on my face a good majority of the day, I was a better father and husband, I was even a better coworker.  I could feel God's love with me the entire time I was abiding in Him, and I was therefore able to love those around me...even those I am normally not particularly fond of.

Now some of you may wonder how one abides in Christ, or gets started doing it anyway.  As I wrote in my post that described what we were going to be doing this week, abiding in Christ is simply being IN Him every single part of the day.  Like one abides in their house or state or country, you remain in Him in everything you do.  This is not as easy as it sounds and it takes a lot of getting used to.  I found myself getting better and better at it as the week went along.  I happened to have a fairly easy time getting started on it because I worked by myself for the majority of the first part of the week.

Now this was the approach that I took in abiding in Christ - it's not the only way, it's not the right way, it's just the way that I did it.  I am sure that for those who are used to abiding in Christ it probably comes very naturally.  I am hoping that this little experiment leads to that...in fact, I know that it will.  Since I am not to that point yet though, I had to continuously remind myself to abide in the Lord.  I did this by quite literally praying and worshiping the Lord all day long. 

As I said, I worked alone most days, so I was able to pray and sing out loud.  This made it very easy to abide in the Lord.  Being constantly reminded of His presence, constantly offering up praises to Him, which in turn, reminds me exactly who He is, makes it very easy to be in a good mood.  Forget Arby's, my good mood food is the Bread of Life (sorry, that was a little cheesy...but seriously, they should make Christian shirts with that)!  Even when I was working with people though, I still got into the habit of praying silently or humming or whistling worship songs.

For anyone wanting a little boost in their walk with Jesus, I would definitely suggest giving this abiding in Him a try.  Even if you set out to only do it for a week, I think...no...I know you will find it too awesome to stop.  This is something that I am going to continue for the rest of my life.  When I first started this experiment I had a feeling that this is how these weekly promises would turn out.  I imagine this is similar to what David was talking about in Psalm 34:8 when he said, "Taste and see that the Lord is good..."

All it takes is a taste of the Lord to find out exactly what He has to offer.  It doesn't say to take a bite and then keep going even though the first bite isn't very good...eventually you acquire a taste for it.  Once you experience a little bit of the Lord, you know it's all good!

That is exactly what this first week has been: a taste of what is to come if we take God at His Word.  If we move on the promises He gives us, we will find so much more than what we are expecting.  I started this week expecting to eliminate sin from my life while I took God at His Word and started abiding in Him.  I got so much more though.  I got an entire life makeover.  He turned my world upside down, showed me how to love, showed me how serve, showed me how to LIVE!  To be honest, I don't want to remember what it's like to live outside of abiding in Him.

So now it's your turn.  Give it a try!  I promise you'll like what you find!

MOVE!

Week One:1 John 3:6

Hey everybody!  I know that this is a little late, being that we actually started our "promise moving" on Monday, but better late than never.  Don't let the tardiness stop you from joining us.  Just like the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 20.  Whether God "hires" you first thing in the morning or with one hour left on the shift, we all get the same blessing in the end: eternal life with the Creator of everything!

The promise we decided to start the year with comes from 1 John 3:5-10,

But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
 

This is no new thing.  I think that a lot of us only look at half of this wonderful truth though.  We are so enthralled with the fact that Jesus forgives us of our sins that we forget something even bigger.  Jesus takes away our sins.  In Him there is NO SIN.  No one who lives in Him keeps sinning.  No one born of God continues to sin.  This is completely different than simply forgiveness of sins.  This is life changing.  This is world altering!

I really like the New American Standard Bible's interpretation of verse six, "No one who abides in Him sins..."  I love that word, "abides".  When I think of the word abide, the first thing that pops into my mind is an abode, another word for your house or the place that you live.  So to abide means to live.  Now we are all familiar with the fact that we are to live for Christ and that He will live in us, but how many of us really follow through with that?  I know that I never used to.

So that is the promise we are moving on.  Abiding in Christ.  Absolutely drowning in Him.  Not just for an hour in the morning during Bible reading and prayer time, not just before bed, or any other silent times in the day while we are praying.  Abiding in Christ is just like living in your house.  If you are there, you are constantly there, constantly under your roof, constantly wrapped in your houses protection from the outside elements.  The difference though, we can take Christ with us.  We don't have to only abide in Him at home.  We can abide in Jesus in the middle of the chaos that swirls around us daily.  The promise is that if we do that, we are 100% incapable of sinning.  We don't need forgiveness (we do, just not while we're abiding in Him because forgiveness is already present) because He promises us that as long as we are immersed in Him we will not sin.  It's impossible to.

One important distinction should be made before I end.  The focus of this promise is very important.  Should you choose to join us (and we all really hope you do!) the priority MUST be abiding in Christ.  If the focus becomes the result of the promise, not sinning, then you are serving the law and not Jesus Christ.  That is, by definition, legalism.  Even the end goal of this promise isn't necessarily to stop sinning.  Don't get me wrong, I want to stop sinning, but the goal of this whole process is to draw closer to God.  That has to be our end goal for everything.  If it is not, then we end up running after the wrong prize and will not like the destination we end up finding.

So there it is; there is the first promise to move on.  Some of us will be blogging a little later in the week to let you know how things are going or how the week went.  I know my week has been incredible and I can't wait to share more.  Now, I will leave you with the words from the band Switchfoot:

"I dare you to MOVE"

Introducing The Promises

Last year, my wife and I participated in this really cool thing that the National Community Church and their pastor Mark Batterson put on dubbed the “7:14 Experilent”.  Every day at 7:14 during Lent, people around the world dropped to their knees and humbled themselves before God.  The inspiration came from 2 Chronicles 7:14.  Overall the experience was very cool and my wife and I experienced some awesome breakthroughs as we joined other Christians around the world, humbling ourselves before our Lord.

Part of this process was that we would receive text messages every day at 7:14 to give us different things to pray about and reflect on.  One of these text messages was burned into my mind and I haven’t been able to shake it since.  It read, “The world has yet to see what God can do through a person FULLY CONSECRATED to Him.  Why not you?  Why not now?”  It’s a beautiful, yet convicting message.  I looked this quote up before I started writing this and found that it was first said by Henry Varley, a friend of the great evangelist D.L. Moody.  These were supposedly the words that inspired Moody to begin pursuing becoming an evangelist.  Varley’s exact words were: "The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him."

For the longest time, I didn’t do anything of importance with these words.  Out of nowhere though, they came back to me a few days ago.  Believe what you will about spontaneous memory of past events, but I don’t believe in chance.  If you believe in the Christian God of the Bible, then you shouldn’t either.  He is the Grand Weaver, the Architect of everyday, there is no chance or coincidence or happenstance with my God.  I believe that He brought this text message back to me on New Years Eve of 2012 to rock my world in 2013.  I want to document it too, so that your world can be equally rocked.  Why should I have all the fun?

Last year, just after the new year started (January 10^th to be exact), I decided to step up my prayer game.  I experienced some huge breakthroughs from it too.  I was baptized in the Holy Spirit for the first time and spoke in tongues.  I was baptized in water for the first time since I was an infant.  I was so close to God.  He was talking to me and I was talking to Him.  It was such a sweet time in my life.  Then about six months ago the communication line started to go bad.  I could still feel God with me…He just wasn’t talking to me anymore.  I think that time is over now though.  I think that might have been my little vacation.  My time of rest before it was time to get knee deep in the Lord’s work.  Up to my elbows in it.  And believe me, after being so on fire and then having six months off…I am ready to get to work!

As I stated, I believe that this whole plan came from the Lord.  I have been thinking about trying to write a book for awhile and actually started writing a few chapters of a book that was going to be about the promises that God has made to us in the Bible.  Then this text message came back to me.  “Why not you?  Why not now?”  Why not me?  What if I started taking God at His Word?  What if I started living by God’s promises to me?  Through all of history and for the rest of eternity, God has never and will never break one of the promises He has made.  So why am I not living according those promises?

There is an old hymn that most of you are probably familiar with, “Standing on the Promises”:

Standing on the promises of Christ my King,
Through eternal ages let His praises ring,
Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,
Standing on the promises of God.

Standing, standing,
Standing on the promises of God my Savior;
Standing, standing,
I’m standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
By the living Word of God I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises I now can see
Perfect, present cleansing in the blood for me;
Standing in the liberty where Christ makes free,
Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord,
Bound to Him eternally by love’s strong cord,
Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword,
Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises I shall not fall,
List’ning every moment to the Spirit’s call.
Resting in my Savior as my All in all,
Standing on the promises of God.
(Source: http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/h/340#ixzz2GqNxmmgI)

I absolutely love this song.  Those lyrics are so rich and just dripping with God’s truth and goodness.  Just thought I’d get that out of the way so no one thinks I am saying anything against this hymn.  The problem in my life with “Standing on the Promises” is that I am tired of standing on them.  I want to MOVE on them.  The world needs more movers and fewer talkers.  The book of James is big on this topic.  James 1:22 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.”  James 2:18 continues, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’  Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.” and in verse 20, “You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?”  Perhaps the most well known verse from James is 2:26, “As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.”

I think James was going through the same thing I am: just fed up with all the talk.  Jesus said the same thing to His disciples.  Don’t just listen.  Do it!  Jesus compared it to a person building their house on a firm foundation (the one who does what Jesus teaches) versus one who builds on a foundation of sand (the one who listens but does not do).

So I am done standing on the promises of God.  I am ready to start doing the promises of God.  That’s my New Year’s resolution.  Every week, my friend Jake, his fiance Liz, my wife and I are going to search out a promise God gives us in the Bible and we are going to LIVE by that promise.  We are going to document it each week too.  The successes and failures.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  Hopefully it will inspire some of you to join us.  If this little experiment works the way I think it will, it will be something that will change us forever.  By the end of this experiment, the world WILL know what God can do “with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him”.

 

If you would like to join us in this "experiment" please let Jake, Liz, Jana or I know.  We would be thrilled to have you along for the ride and just KNOW that God is going to do some insanely wonderful things through this small act of faithfulness.  Even if you just leave a comment on this blog that you would like to be a part, we will let you know what promise we are focusing on for the week and you can join in on the MOVING!  Ball is in your court...

 

MOVE!