Affliction-Good or Bad?

What is affliction?

Affliction-a state of pain, distress, or grief, misery; a cause of mental or bodily pain, as sickness, loss, calamity, or persecution; mishap, trouble, tribulation, catastrophe, disaster; adversity, misfortune, trial; refer to an event or circumstance that is hard to bear

According to the definition, many would say that affliction is a bad thing. Well lets look at it from a different perspective.

Hebrews 11:23-25 talks about Moses choosing to suffer affliction with the Israelites instead of enjoying the pleasures of sin for a season. Can you choose whether or not you suffer affliction? I say no. You can choose how affliction affects you. Every one, whether they be a saint or sinner will suffer affliction. If you haven’t met affliction, I will say what my grandpa says, “Keep living.” If Moses would have stayed in Pharaoh’s house, he would have had a different type of affliction. When we choose to suffer affliction while living a godly life, we have a real source of strength to draw from, and afflictions aren’t so unbearable. One type of affliction is being tried in the fire. Maybe it’s the fire of persecution, family issues, financial hardship, temptation, etc.

Let me give you an illustration. When a potter makes a vessel, its shaped and decorated, then it is placed in the fire. It is only after firing, that the article is pottery. When it is taken out, the colors are shown and it’s polished (shiny), ready to be put to work. We are not ready to be put to work until we’ve been through some type of shaping and firing process.  No one can tell a person how to do Algebra if they haven’t studied math past adding, subtracting, dividing, and multiplying. No one can tell a widow how to deal with the loss of her husband if they haven’t lost one. Experience births advice, counsel, encouragement, teachable moments, etc. One thing that you should take note of, is that the pottery is not in the fire forever.

When you are facing fiery trials and afflictions, remember as women of God, you are not alone. Look at Daniel chapter 3 verses 21-29. If you aren’t familiar with the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, you may need to read the whole chapter. They were thrown into a fiery furnace because of the stand they took. They refused to bow down to the image King Nebuchadnezzar had set up. After they were thrown in, the king observed that there were 4 men walking around in the furnace when they threw 3 men in bound. After he observed this, he called Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out. He didn’t say, “You four come out of there,” but he called them out by name. Therefore, we can take solace in the fact that the fourth person in the fire, the Son of God, stayed in. He knew that one day you and I would be tossed in fiery furnace situations and would need Him to walk with us.

I Peter 1:6-7 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

Note: Gold, when placed in the fire doesn’t lose any thing but it’s impurities.

Hopefully at this point, your perspective is changing about afflictions. Here are some more scriptures to help you with this subject:

I Peter 5:10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.

Romans 8:18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

II Corinthians 4:17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

If we patiently endure in faith, blessings of comfort and hope will come into our lives, and we will be able to partake of that incomprehensible joy. Great eternal blessings come to those who endure affliction.

Prayer-God we thank you for your goodness, your grace, and your mercy. We thank you for our light afflictions, tests and trials. Your word says to give thanks in all things. We realize that the things we endure are for our making and are not meant to destroy us. We are grateful to know that Jesus is with us while we go through. Our friend that sticks closer than a brother or sister. We pray that  you will continue to open our minds and change our perspectives about you, your word, and your will. We believe that you will answer our prayers. We thank you in advance. Amen.

-Jenn

Pour Out My Heart

**Taken from a page in my daily devotional book**

If you knew for a fact that God heard you every time you prayed, you’d be inclined to keep praying, right? If you were convinced that God caringly bent His ear your direction whenever you approached Him with something that was on your heart, you’d be more apt to come clean with Him. So why do we typically struggle to maintain a regular prayer time?

Maybe it’s related to questions we have about how prayer works. If God is really interested in what we have to say and if He actually listens to the cry of our heart, does He actually answer the prayers we offer up?

Scripture is definitive about this. It assures us that God answers every prayer we pray-every single one. His answers aren’t always the ones we’re expecting or hoping for. But He always responds. Sometimes God replies with yes, sometimes with no, sometimes with wait.

So don’t look at prayer as an obligation that you need to do to please God. Accept it as a wonderful privilege to pur out your heart to Someone who cares for you more than anyone else in the world.

Psalm 62:8 “Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah.”

Prayer for the day: It’s called “emptying prayer.” Take out a blank sheet of paper and write as fast as you can all the stuff in your heart about which you are concerned. Transfer the title of these worries to the Lord.

Change your perspective and change your life.

-Jenn

A Living Sacrifice

Romans 12:1 “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

Presenting our bodies to God is a service that is within reason. If something is within reason, it’s not extreme or impossible to do. If a pair of  heels are a reasonable price it doesn’t take a lot of debating and questioning about whether or not you are going to buy them. As ladies of style…many of us will already have an outfit in mind that will be a perfect match. So why is it hard for some of us to present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice….holy….acceptable. Well, what is a sacrifice? What does it mean to be holy? What is acceptable?

Making a sacrifice is an act of giving up something precious. One definition says a sacrifice means to surrender something for the sake of something else. When we give our bodies to God, He has many blessings that He will bestow on us. We just have to be obedient.In presenting our bodies to God, we sacrifice actions that aren’t pleasing to God, but are precious to the world. When we begin to see our bodies as something precious, we will watch how we and everyone else treats our bodies. Our eating habits change, our exercise either begins or increases, we watch what we wear, we don’t take our bodies everywhere, and everybody cannot see or touch our bodies.

I Corinthians 6:19-20 “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” Our bodies belong to God, but He wants us to present them to Him. Our salvation has been purchased with the precious blood of Christ….a price that we cannot repay….therefore presenting our bodies to God is….guess what…reasonable.

Presenting our bodies in a holy way is pleasing to God.  A holy woman will endeavor to shun every known sin, and to keep every known commandment. She will have a decided bent of mind toward God, a hearty desire to do His will-a greater fear of displeasing Him than of displeasing the world, and a love for all His ways. A holy woman will strive to be like our Lord Jesus Christ. She will not only live the life of faith in Him, and draw from Him all her daily peace and strength, but she will also labor to have the mind that was in Him, and to be “conformed to His image.”

Acceptable….when something is acceptable, it is adequate to satisfy a need. What is this need? There are so many people in the world who need to know Jesus. God desires to use us to bring people to Christ….to be a positive example in the church….to serve the church….to fulfill our roles in the home….etc. In doing this we will be pleasing to our Lord. We are called with a holy calling…to service. We must be dedicated and devoted to serving Him. As women of God there is always something for us to do in the church. In the body of Christ everyone is not the head nor is every one the foot. There are some fingers, ears, eyes, etc. among us. I encourage each of you to seek God to find out what your role is in the Kingdom. Whatever our role is, we must be dedicated to it and do it.

We must view ourselves as precious to God and realize that we are valuable. We were all created in the image of God and are beautiful. Take another look in the mirror…what do you see? Not what do you want to change….but what do you see? When looking in the mirror you are looking at a someone beautiful, strong, special, and intelligent. Don’t see her? Look again. You are exactly who God desires as a sacrifice. Doing this may seem hard, but the bible says that it’s reasonable.

Change your perspective and change your life.

-Jenn

God’s Will

I John 5:14-15 “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”

In gaining clarity about who God is, His love for us, and His plans for our lives, we begin to pray that His will be done. When walking with God, and desiring the things He desires, we tend to pray for the things He wants us to have.

As women of God we must desire more of God. More than just enough to escape a fiery hell; to be saved from God’s wrath; to call ourselves Christians; to manage our guilt; to get a ticket to heaven; to squeak through heaven’s gate. There should be a longing for more than the bare minimum God has to offer. More than what people often settle for. To long for everything God wants to give us. To long for more than enough to bend our will to His; to awaken our consciences; to transform our mind; to conform us into His glorious image; to give us an abundant entrance into heaven.

In growing to this point in our walk with God, we can move from selfishly asking God for what we want. We begin to ask for what He wants. I had to get to a point in which I wasn’t afraid to say, “Lord, your will be done.” I was afraid of receiving a no for the things I desired most. God will give us our desires when we delight ourselves in Him, but He will do it in His own way and timing. Perspective Change: It took me understanding that He knows what’s best for me; knows me better than I know me; loves and cares for me like no other. Since then, things have been going better for me. I had to change my perspective of God and know that He has better plans for me than I do.

Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”

I encourage each of you to begin to open up and allow God to work in your lives the way He wants to. When we allow God to conform our will to His, our desires are His and our prayers are answered. The scripture says that He hears us when we pray according to His will. Knowing that fact….we are able to obtain what we’re praying for. God loves each and every one of you and has good gifts to bestow in the lives of this children.

My prayer for you all is that you will move from a place of pain to power, from worry to worship, and from tears to a testimony. How do you get there? Change your perspective about God and His will for your life.

Change your perspective and change your life.

-Jenn

Faith

Anything that you set out to do in life requires faith. It takes faith to lay down at night and expect to wake up the next day. It takes faith get into your car and expect it to start. It takes faith to go to your job expecting to still have one.  Faith is not only essential in everyday life, but also in living for Jesus Christ. It is often refered to as a “Faith Walk”.

Faith is expectation without visualization. Check out Hebrews 11:1. To expect something of someone, a person must have faith in the one they’re expecting something of. To view a situation as hopeless, but pray and ask people to pray is a waste of time. As I tweeted a couple of weeks ago, “a prayer void of faith isn’t worth praying at all”. We must realize as women of God that we serve someone who is more than able and capable of handling anything. With God, there are no impossibilities or limits. Many times, we must allow our faith to be stretched by taking God out of box. It requires a great amount of faith to say “Lord, your will be done” and to allow God to do things His way in our lives.. Think about it, nobody knows us better than God. He knows what we need, when we need it, and how we need it.

Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith [it is] impossible to please [him]: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and [that] he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

In living a saved life, it is our endeavor to please God. For us to receive answers to prayer, salvation, etc. we must believe that God is a reality and will bless those that spend time with Him regularly. A few months ago, the Lord led me to set a prayer time. I picked an early hour to seek Him after paying close attention to the Psalms (Psalm 63:1 -O God, thou [art] my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;). I was spending time in the Word of God, but not a whole lot of time in prayer. In order for the prayer time to be effective, I had to change how I looked at prayer.

The church I grew up in believes in having everyone pray. When this started, I was in my pre-teen years and the last thing I wanted to do was pray in front of everybody. The experience wasn’t enjoyable to me because we stood too long and I always started crying. Whenever the pastor would say “lets come around the altar”, I would sigh because I didn’t understand the value of prayer. I loved Jesus and was saved, but didn’t quite grasp the concept of prayer. Then some of the members started saying what I would say in prayer. I was thinking, “What am I going to say now?” As I’ve gotten older, I realize that when this happens, God is trying to move me to a higher place in Him. He is maturing me and allowing my faith, prayer vocabulary, and prayer language to grow.

In spending time with God regularly, my faith has grown, spiritual gifts have been stirred and revived. I have a clearer understanding of the scriptures and life in general. One thing I always ask for before reading the bible, is wisdom and understanding. The bible says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth to all men liberally.

Prayer and bible reading should not be a chore to those who have faith in God. It is a joy to those who understand the value of their salvation. Looking at these actions through the eyes of faith, one will begin to believe the word and act on it. Inactive faith is dead faith, which is really no faith at all. Activate your faith and apply it to whatever you’re believing God for and watch things begin to work out for you.

So I encourage each of you to look at your faith walk differently. Change your perspective and change your life.

-Jenn