Christmas Love

As we prepare our hearts for Christmas this year, I was reminded about how the colour red is so significant to this festive season. The red and white outfit of Santa or Father Christmas may be what comes to mind, but for me, red is also the colour of love and the blood of Jesus, the son of our Heavenly Father.

The popular verse of John 3:16 is not often referred to at Christmas time, yet when you think about it, it is the real reason for the season – that God loved us so much that He gave us His beloved Son, so that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but be gifted with eternal life. To put it plainly, Jesus is God’s gift of love to us, and even though many may argue that He was not actually born on the 25th December, it is a day set aside for us to remember His birth and what it means to us.

So as we start to sing Christmas Carols and begin to enjoy in the spirit of the festivities over the coming month, let us ponder this miracle gift that has restored us back to God and let us consider what gift we will give Him in return this year…

Wishing you all a meaningful and joyous Christmas season, full of God's hope and peace, found in the blessings of His ‘presents’ and His presence…

I leave you with this poem I wrote as a reminder of the true reason for the season… 

 

Christmas

Christmas is not just a happy holiday,
Or a time for festive greetings.
It’s a very special occasion indeed,
To enjoy time in family meetings.

Christmas is not about the presents,
Or when Christmas Carols are sung.
It’s a time to spend in Jesus’s presence,
And think what He’s birth has done.

Christmas is not about the feast,
Of flowing spirits and luxury food.
It’s a time to remember His birth,
And remain in a peace-filled mood.

Christmas is not about decorating a tree,
Or sending cards to all we know.
It’s about a birth that sets us free,
And for this, our joy should show.

Christmas is not a time for fuss or stress,
Rushing to find the perfect present.
We should think more of those we can bless,
And remain still in Jesus’s presence.

So set a time on Christmas morning,
To take time and thank God for Jesus.
For when Jesus is the reason for the season,
Love, hope and peace will fill your Christmas.

 https://poetrybysam.blogspot.com/2021/12/christmas.html

 

Feeding our Faith with Prayer

The difference between to pray and a prayer is that pray is a means of addressing God, but prayer is the two-way conversation that we have with Him.  In other words, to pray is a verb, but prayer is a noun, a sacred thing.

As Christians, we are called to pray and there are many reasons to do so, but sadly, we only seem to do it earnestly when in need.  Prayer should be our first response, not our emergency back-up when nothing else seems to work.

We should pray before the event, over the event and through the event, and not just after the event.  Although God knows our needs before we even have to ask them, He desires our interaction of being alone with Him. He wants us to commune with Him, to converse with Him, to vent with Him and to seek His presence earnestly and early.

There is something special and powerful when we make the choice and sacrifice to start our day early, alone and in a quiet place, to get into the presence of God in prayer. There is much rest, replenishment and wisdom to be found in this secret place, which sets up our attitude for the day correctly, to face whatever lays ahead.  

When we study Jesus’s example of prayer, we can clearly see the awesome benefits and miraculous results of time spent with His Father.  Unlike ourselves, it should not be a rushed quick request chat, but a lengthy, sometimes overnight time of seeking and listening.

Our prayers are a time of memorial and for remembrance – to remember the person and His faithfulness and to remind God of His promises towards us. It’s like a court case where we get to go before the Righteous Judge with our advocate Jesus and our counselor the Holy Spirit, and plead our case for His ruling, to make our requests and supplications known.

Many of us when faced with adversary, either isolate or talk to anyone who will listen, when instead our prayer time should be when we turn to God for His advice and opinion on the situation, and then wait to hear it, either for Him to speak to our hearts, or through His Word.  When we spend time in prayer, I like to imagine God lays His hands on us to bless us with the touch of His anointing, for there is nothing more powerful than having felt His touch after spending time in His presence.

When we develop a posture of prayer, either with our hands together, eyes closed, or on our knees or with our hands up in praise, it is like a tap that opens up to pour out the filling of the Holy Spirit into our lives, our minds and our hearts.

When we prayer regularly, constantly, consistently and persistently, it fuels our faith and grows our belief, so that every doubt, worry, fear or temptation is destroyed.  It is the power that gives us our Spiritual strength to face our stormy situations with a nevertheless, overcoming faith.

If you are facing a situation with no answers or a scary future, I challenge you today to get serious about prayer and see how God can transform the situation; if not the problem itself, then definitely ourselves to deal with it.  Our breakthrough will come when we stop asking God to remove the problem and start asking Him to help us to get through it.

Just like our muscles need exercise, and how we say Grace before we eat to bless the food to our bodies, we need to exercise our faith with prayer so that God can bless our day.

In conclusion, I leave you with this simple acrostic for prayer –

P = Praise God for who He is and for His faithfulness
R = Repent of your attitude, sin or lack of faith and unbelief, and ask for His forgiveness
A = Ask God for His help, for answers, for whatever you are needing
Y = Yield and submit to whatever is God’s will for your life and for your situation
E = Empty your mind of all your worries, concerns, doubts or what makes you confused
R = Rest in God’s presence and be replenished and restored

 

 

 

Taking Control of your Thoughts

As my South African nation was thrown into turmoil last week with looting and anarchy, gripping fear into the hearts of its people, I was reminded how important it is to control our thoughts.

What we choose to see and hear and focus on creates what we will think and it’s these thoughts that manifest into our emotions, which result in what actions we take.

There are so many verses in the Bible that teach us about taking control of our mind. Colossians 3:2 instructs us to fix our minds on heavenly things, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 tells us to tear down and take captive our wrong thoughts, and 2 Timothy 1:7 says we have a sound mind and we must not fear.

Without being disciplined or using self-control to choose what we think about, the devil will use our thoughts to try distract us from what really matters and if he can’t do that, he will discourage us with fears, worries and stress, to kill our faith, our joy and our peace.

The word ‘control’ comes from the Latin word ‘contra’, which means to check, verify or oppose.  Think of your mind as a security road-block, that needs to be thoroughly checked before anything can enter it – is your thought kind, is it pure and is it Godly and holy? Any thought that does not pertain to heavenly importance, or for no good reason, should be rejected entry and cancelled out with the promises of God.

We can never hope to be transformed into the image of Jesus until we learn how to renew our minds with right-thinking.  Our thoughts are like birds that fly into our head, and we need to make sure that the bad ones do not make a nest, but are shooed off before they can ever land.

Steven Furtick teaches 3 helpful questions in his sermon “Taking control of your mind”, to stop us asking the wrong questions, based on Paul’s response to being thrown in jail.  See Philippians 1:12-26. 

1. What does it matter? See verse 18.  This question reflects your priorities and decides what your distractions you will allow.
2.  What does it mean? See verse 22a. Asking this, helps us to see our circumstances from God’s perspective and discover His purpose for it.
3. What will we choose? See verse 22b. God gives us the freedom to choose our thoughts. 

Using Steven’s computer analogy ‘R U N CTRL’?, we need to be doing a CTRL+ALT+DEL, so we can remove any bad, negative or evil thoughts and reboot our minds back into alignment with God.

I also learnt from Craig Groeschel from Life Church, in his sermons about the mind, that our thoughts are framed by our past filters, which are determined through our life experiences and in many cases can be warped.

This is why the same event or circumstance can happen to many people, but they all respond differently.  We need to make sure that our filters are from a clear, untainted Godly perspective, without any worldly corruption, or warped by the devil’s lies that we have believed from our childhood or past trauma’s, as this makes our vision blurry and makes us react or respond wrongly in our thoughts. These wires that are crossed in our brain are what are known as strongholds.

The way we destroy these strongholds is to find the Spiritual scriptural truth from God’s Word, that will break them. You then you need to write it out, meditate on it and confess it until you believe it; until your renewed mind and filters have been transformed.

God wants us to live a life like a beautiful transformed butterfly, flying high and seeing life from a heavenly perspective, not like a dull, restricted caterpillar, ready to curl up and think its life has ended.

Only when we have learnt how to renew our minds with right-thinking, and have broken down our strongholds, will we ever win the war in the battlefield of our minds.

We can choose whether we will focus and obsess about the problems of the world, or whether we will change our attention and share the solution instead. What we share on Social Media can either add fuel to the flames of fear and panic, or it can restore hope and bring comfort.  The choice is YOURS…

The Importance of Fathers

Whilst the world recently celebrated their dad’s on Father’s Day, many children and adults had no father to spoil. Sadly, the cause of this is not always due to their death, like myself, but for many, it is either the choice of the father not wanting to be present or involved, or the choice of the mothers to exclude the father from their child’s life.

The World’s culture seems to place little value on the role of fathers. Evidence of this is found in the pop culture and media to government policy. Yet, studies have shown that fathers play a vital role in the emotional and overall development of children, not just for sons, but for daughters as well.

Children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them, thus providing a feeling of security, both physical and emotional. Children want to make their fathers proud, and an involved father promotes inner growth and strength. Studies have shown that when fathers are affectionate and supportive, it improves their child’s cognitive and social development, and instills an overall sense of well-being and self-confidence.

The fact that men and women are different, results in a significant different parenting style. Dads, for instance, love their children more dangerously by playing rougher, more likely to encourage risk-taking and encouraging competition. They provide kids with a broader diversity of social experiences and introduce them to a wider variety of methods of dealing with life. They tend to instill rules, justice, fairness and duty in the way that they discipline, thus teaching objectivity and consequences of right and wrong. They prepare them for the challenges of life and demonstrate by example respect towards woman.

A father shows his daughter what a good relationship with a man is like. If a father is loving and gentle, or strong and valiant, his daughter will look for those same qualities in a man.

Sons see their fathers as heroes, modeling themselves after their character and seeking their approval from a very young age. When a father is absent, young boys look to other male figures to set the rules for how to behave and survive in the world, which is why many turn to gangs. As for daughters without a father or father figure, they often end up seeking a man’s approval in all the wrong places.

A mother’s influence promotes sympathy, care and help, by the way they model these traits, thus demonstrating to children the value of healthy relationships. Neither style of parenting is adequate in and of itself. Taken together, they balance each other out and equip the next generation with a healthy, well-rounded approach to life.

In an analysis of over 100 studies on parent-child relationships, it was found that having a loving and nurturing father was just as important for a child’s happiness, well-being, and social and academic success, as having a loving and nurturing mother.

Research from the University of Pennsylvania indicates that children who feel a closeness and warmth with their father are twice as likely to enter college, 75% less likely to have a child in their teen years, 80% less likely to go to jail and half as likely to suffer from depression. Studies demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt, that fathers play an important and irreplaceable role in healthy child development.

What this means for single mothers raising their children alone, is the importance of including the father in their lives as much as possible, but only where this will have a healthy impact. Where there is no father to speak of, either by choice or death, then they need to find a good male role model for their children, either in an uncle, a family member or through their Church.

From a religious standpoint, an adult who has never had a father figure present in their lives, will battle to have a healthy relationship with their Heavenly Father. The good news is that for a child with no Father or orphaned, God offers full adoption into His family.

It is said that anyone can father a child, but it takes a special kind of a man to be a daddy. If you have never had a dad in your life, or perhaps don’t know who your father is, then come to your Abba Father, whose love and grace can heal all your broken pieces and help change you into the son or daughter you were created to be.

Fighting from Victory

Have you ever felt under attack on all sides from the devil?  Whilst we may not know whether it is in fact the devil’s doing, consequences of bad choices, a generational or other curse or even, if like Job, God has allowed the problem to test our faith, the bottom line is the same. Our victory is gained by our attitudes and our words of faith.

We may be familiar with the concept of binding the enemy and loosing God’s blessings to cancel out perceived curses in our lives, but sometimes it seems as if we are fighting against a relentless enemy, putting all our focus on the devil instead of standing on the Word and declaring our victory in His name.

The key to winning the war is changing the focus of our prayers, instead of reaching TOWARDS a point of victory, pray FROM a point of victory.  We do this by boldly declaring the victory God has already given us through Jesus’ death on the cross.

Psalms 100:4 says we are to enter His courts with praise. We stand against the enemy by putting on our Holy armour according to Ephesians 6:10-18, standing on   the promises that God has given us.

Remember that the enemy has already been defeated, so we just need to remind him of this by using the authority we have in Jesus’ name. 

Sometimes we act like dogs chasing our tails, trying to get what we have already been given. Jesus is our mediator and He is the one who intercedes on our behalf.  We do not need to beg God or persuade Him to release His power, but simply exercise the authority He has already given us.

Powerful prayers in fighting the enemy is by acknowledging our inheritance and the blessings we already have. Proverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue, therefore we need to speak death and defeat to our sickness or problem, curse it and command it to leave; then speak life by releasing the living, resurrection life of power that God has given us through His Word. God clearly tells us to “choose life”.

Another important aspect of spiritual warfare is being aware and recognising the enemy behind the chaos.  The problem is not your boss, your husband or your child but it is the devil using them as puppets to push your buttons to try and destroy your relationships, and to steal your peace and joy.  When we can see that, it helps us to separate the person from their behaviour and allows us to more easily forgive what they said or did.  Satan uses people to get our focus off of God and what we should be doing for Him.

When we grasp the fact that there is a battle for our heart by an enemy who is trying to dominate our lives through our choices, of what we say, what we think, what we do and what we believe, we can be better prepared to respond correctly.

Satan cannot control us outside of our will – he needs our consent and co-operation, which is why we need to be careful of our choices in order to resist him. He will try every scheme he knows to discourage us, deceive us, oppress us and destroy us. A toxic environment of our heart and any unrighteous living is an open invitation to the enemy to enter, just as wrong and negative thinking will create strongholds in our minds that the devil will feast on.

Robert Morris shares in his sermon ‘Under Attack’ that a deer only pants when it is chased by an enemy, and its first action is to run for water.  We need to do the same, by running to our living water, which is the Word of God. Run to God, the shelter in your storm.

We need to stop listening to our negative, anxious thoughts and attack back with praise and worship as our weapon to defeat them. Every day, we need to be fighting the war within us between our spirit and our soul (mind, will and emotions), as they are both contending for control.  

When it comes to praying, many of us are losing the battle, merely by praying incorrectly.  We need to stop explaining to God how to do His job better, or giving Him ideas of how to solve our problems. We must stop griping and start thanking Him; praising Him for our victory in faith, even before our victory comes.

I’m not saying we can’t pour out our hearts to God in desperate situations – rather Him, than to the people around us – but just like in the Psalms, once you’ve vented to God, make sure that you end off by standing firm, and by letting your hope be your anchor to trust Him with the outcome.

I can honestly testify that when we choose to keep a good attitude about our problems, or difficult circumstances, instead of complaining and whining in a ‘Woe is me’ pity party, the issues always get resolved that much quicker. 

When we declare and speak out our faith, and the promises from God’s Word, we break the strongholds of incorrect thoughts, remove our doubts, build up our faith and align ourselves with God’s Spirit, activating the authority and power within us to win the battles.

Every day, we should mentally put on all of our armour, as listed in Ephesians 6:14-18, but remembering that it ends off with praying in the Spirit, which is the key to unlocking our victory. 

Remembering that the devil knows how God sees us and what He thinks of us, will automatically change our countenance. Satan already knows the outcome and that we win in the end, but he is trying to distract us from our path and to lead us away from it.  He does this by stirring up challenges and by disguising himself through people. He knows our weaknesses and what will ensnare us. He is trying to trip us up and rob us of our inheritance.

Our spirit is our connection to God and alive unto God when we are born again. We commune with God spirit to spirit though the Holy Spirit. This is the only thing that cannot be intercepted by Satan.  Man’s soul realm is his mind, will, and emotions, e.g. our worldly, carnal self, all subject to change and attacks of the enemy. That’s why it is so easy for Satan to attack us in this realm and why we need the baptism of the Holy Spirit, to give us that fullness of fire to resist.  When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we can walk tall with victory, knowing that the roar of our Father is behind us, scaring off the roar of the enemy.

In conclusion, I was reminded at Church recently by Gabe Philips of Life Changers Church - Milnerton, that Communion is also an effective Spiritual weapon in winning the war against the enemy.

When you consider all of our Spiritual Armour which is; the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes shod with the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, they are all rooted in what Jesus died for and what taking Communion represents.  When we partake of Jesus’s body, represented by the bread, we are claiming healing not just for our bodies, but our minds and all of our broken pieces.  When we partake of His blood, represented by the wine or grape juice, we are receiving the forgiveness of our sins and covering our lives with His blood, that has redeemed us and protects us.

In Psalms 23, we are reminded that Jesus has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies. The first communion, when Jesus initially demonstrated and charged us to remember the importance of these two elements, was held at the Last Supper.  When we feast with the symbols of Jesus’ body and blood, by eating the Word of God, the Spiritual realm is shifted to bring about our victory. Sometimes it may not seem like God is doing anything in the natural, but rest assured, that things are moving behind the scenes in the Spiritual realm, and the devil is going down!

Whilst God may choose to take our trials or problems away, true spiritual victory comes when we can have a Godly perspective on what is happening to us, whether they go away or not. The true victory is when we have reprogrammed our thinking with a renewed mind, being able to still praise God regardless of our circumstances.

So, my fellow soldiers in the Lord’s army, go forth with your full armour to fight your battles the right way, rejoicing with praise, taking Communion, and declaring that the war has already been won. You have the victory!