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!

Praise Report

Hey fellow movers!  I had mentioned in the promise from last week that I had a lot of really cool stuff happening in my life, but didn't have time to completely explain it all at the moment.  Well I have time now!  God is so outstandingly GREAT!  Now even if I had just been diagnosed with some life threatening disease and lost everything I have, this would still be the truth.  God is exactly who He is regardless of our circumstances.  There are just those times when the blessings fall and you can't help but look up to the heavens and tell Him, "Really God?  You know that I don't deserve any of this and you still just keep heaping it on!"  The past few weeks have been like this for me.

As some of you know I have been really struggling with my career path lately.  I had a teaching job I was interviewing for last year that I thought was a sure thing and it completely fell through. It was a very confusing time of me asking God what He wanted me to do and God not really answering.

I was very blessed to be able to work a full time construction job with a great friend, but I knew that construction wasn't what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life.  I prayed and prayed and prayed that God would just tell me what He wanted me to do.  If it was construction, I would be the best construction worker in the world.  If He called me to go back to school, I'd study my tail off to be the best.  If He wanted me to go into ministry, I was ready for that too.

Instead of answers though, I just got silence.

I pushed on though.  I clung tighter than ever to God's promises.  I knew that He had a plan for me, and as frustrating as it was to not be let in on what that plan was, I had resolved to let His plan take shape and just be prepared when it finally started moving.

May 6 was when it started moving.  The exact same day that I wrote the promise we moved on from Romans 8.  Exactly four hours after I posted it actually.  Funny that the Romans 8 promise was all about victory in Christ, because it started off a string of huge victories in my life...all because Jesus has already won the victory.

Four hours after the post I got a phone call from the Principal at Lakota High School to inform me that they wanted me to be their new High School English teacher.  Huge victory!  It gets better though.  They wanted me to start that Friday!  They were even willing to forgo the substitute teacher pay to go ahead and start me on my salary schedule!  Huge victory!  That's not something that just happens all the time.  That's something that happens when we trust in God to keep His promises to us!

On top of all this, there have been a multitude of supplemental positions I have been offered, both at the High School and outside of it.  I have literally gone from wondering what I was going to do with my life, to having to be very selective with what I want to do because God has blessed me with so many potential paths to choose from.  I told some of my friends that I feel like I am drowning in God's blessings right now.  It's a great feeling after going through the desert.

Now let me get one thing straight...I am not; in any way, shape or form; tooting my own horn here.  "Well," in my most snotty, arrogant voice, "the only reason this all happened is because I am so great and never gave up on God.  I never even doubted for a minute that He was going to do something totally awesome for me because I'm totally awesome."  Not how it is at all.

I don't think a day went by that I wasn't frustrated that God wasn't answering me.  I had questions all the time.  I had thoughts that I constantly had to fight back that God had forgotten about me.  I was convinced that my blessings weren't going to come on this side of heaven.  This isn't about how awesome I am.  I didn't do anything to deserve any of this!  Jesus did it all!  He is the One that deserves all of the blessings that I got.  And I am the One that deserves all of the punishment that He got.

That's the way these promises work though.  They are incredibly lopsided in our favor.  All we have to do is cling to Him who first loved us.  I read something great in one of my devotionals this morning that is simply too good not to post.  It was a devotion from Joseph Prince called, Destined to Reign.  It talks about John 15:5, how we are branches in the vine, who is Christ.  In it Prince says that the devil "wants you to focus on your condition instead of your position in Christ."  I absolutely love that!

We get so caught up in the moment of our condition that we forget the most important factor - our position in Christ.  He has already won the victory, and just like John 15:5 promises, if we abide in Him, we position ourselves to bear good fruit for Him.  There is no other option.  When we abide in Him, when we cling to Jesus Christ, the only thing we can do is bear good fruit...the only thing we can do is be victorious!

So focus on your position...not your condition.  If you make sure you are positioned in the True Vine, you cannot be anything but victorious!  He did it for me; He will do it for you.  Just cling to those promises!

Week 20: 1 John 5:5

"Who is the one who overcome the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?"

1 John 5:5

 

Hello there promise movers!  Pretty simple promise this week, but sometimes in the kingdom of God, the simplest things are the most powerful.  Would you like to overcome the world?  I sure would!  According to this promise, the only thing we have to do to have victory over the world is believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God!

 

Verse 4 tells us that "whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world -- our faith."  It doesn't matter what part of the world you're looking for victory over; sickness, fatigue, lusts, addictions, relationships, finances, career - faith in Jesus Christ grants you victory over every single aspect of the world.  Not just slight victories either, but complete and total victory!

 

So exercise your faith this week.  If things are getting hard and it's looking like the world is starting to get the upper hand, cling to this promise, along with the countless other promises that God gives us in His Word.  YOU ARE VICTORIOUS OVER THE WORLD!  Not because of anything that you did or didn't do, but because you have put your faith, hope and love in the One who first conquered the world: Jesus Christ!

 

That's it!  Told you it was pretty simple.  Now go and walk in victory my friends!  Move on this AWESOME promise the Lord has granted us!

Week 19: 1 Thessalonians 5:24

Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

1 Thessalonians 5:24

Hey fellow promise movers!  Man do I have some outstanding praises to report.  I will have to get to it a little later in the week though.  I have been so blessed by our Mighty God that I just don't have any time to get into it right now!!

This promise is fairly simple, so I won't make you read a whole lot of my blabbing(sighs of relief going up around the world).  I absolutely love this verse.  We could make this the verse that this group is all about.  If God isn't faithful, we are wasting our time moving on His promises.  If He isn't faithful and only keeps some or even most of His promises, this group would be completely hit or miss.

The only reason we are able to move on these promises week in and week out - and expect results - is because HE is faithful.  I love the description of Jesus we read from Revelations 19:11, "...and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True..."

Here's the only catch.  You can believe God is faithful all you want.  You can believe it more than anyone else in the entire world.  You CANNOT see the promise fulfilled though until you MOVE!  James 1:22 tells us, "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves."  I can believe every single word that Jesus said.  I can believe it with all my heart, soul, mind and strength.  But what good am I if I never DO what He says?  What kind of love is that?

So this is a huge promise.  What is God's promise to you?  It could be anything.  A child, a financial need, a job, salvation for yourself, a loved one?  Whatever His promise is to you - He is faithful.  Like Revelations says...it's one of His names...what He goes by.  He is literally called, Faithful and True.  He will bring it to pass!

So how do we cash in on this promise?  We move from being hearers of the Word to doers of the word.  We'll keep it contained to 1 Thessalonians 5 as a great place to start for this week.  Starting in verse 16 we get some great advice as to how we can actively live for Christ.

1. Rejoice always - yes, even when you don't feel like rejoicing.
2. pray without ceasing - yes, even if it makes you look crazy.
3. in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus - emphasis on the words IN EVERYTHING
4. Do not quench the Spirit; do not despise prophetic utterances - God might tell you to do something you don't want to.  He might be leading you somewhere you don't want to go.  Don't stop the Spirit with your reservations.  He's God...He's got you covered!
5. Examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good; abstain from every form of evil. - be very cautious what you let have a hold in your life.  Like the song says, "Oh, be careful little eyes what you see/ears what you hear/mouth what you say/feet where you go"

There is even a little additional promise added on in verse 23, "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."  In all honesty, that's the better of the two promises.  When we do what Christ says, He sanctifies us ENTIRELY!  As flawed as we are, we are no longer because Jesus Christ has promised us His sanctification...He has transferred His holiness to us.  And how do we know we can trust Him?  Because "Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass"!

What are you waiting for?  Let's MOVE!

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!