Don't Give Up

Lesson 9 - Respect is earned when given. This is something that I was taught as a young child and it has really stuck with me throughout my life. It was also a lesson that I learned in ministry. We are commanded to love everyone but what about respect? Where does that fall into play? I think the two go hand in hand.  The short definition of respect means to regard someone as being worthy of admiration because of good qualities. There are many scriptures that tell us how to be respectful but it is up to us to apply them to our life and live them day to day. Working in ministry for many years I have seen people come and go and one of their biggest complaints when leaving was that they didn’t get the respect they felt like they deserved. Respect is something that is earned and by earned I mean showing others that you respect them by living the word of God before them. In return you will gain their respect. I had a family member that preached respect on the daily for years...

I think one of the absolute hardest things we have to do in life - is let go and let God. We can claim to have great big faith...faith that can move mountains...faith that can heal the sick, faith that can overcome anything but in reality when we are pushed to the test we don't always move those mountains with our faith - sometimes we go around that mountain a few times. Lesson 8 - Sometimes you have to let go of something precious in order to receive something even more precious from God. We have to let go and let God. When we are truly ready to let go of the sin in our life we find ourselves almost running to the altar to give it all to God. We don’t want the bondage holding us back anymore. We confess our ugliest self to God and press forward to the best of our ability to receive the healing, the deliverance and the blessings that He has for us. But what about the 'good' things that we have to let go of in order to receive even better things??? We can barely understa...

Ephesians 2:4-5 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. There are a lot of examples in the bible demonstrating how life can come from death. However for the sake of keeping this blog post short and simple I’m only going to highlight one example. When we become born again we die a spiritual death. This simply means we believe the bible when it says we were born into sin and the only way to be cleansed from that sin is to accept Jesus’ death on the cross as the payment for our sin. (see Psalm 51:5; Romans 5:12) It also means we believe that by accepting Jesus’ death on the cross for those sins that we are made new in Him. We are given a new life after we die to sin. It’s spiritual. I remember when God was dealing with my heart about what a sinner I had been it felt like I was dying. I was miserable. I couldn’t imagine going on with my life the way it was...

Peace is a word that is so often taken for granted. You hear people say they would love to see peace and harmony in the world, in our schools in our homes yet they always attach a stipulation to it. It usually sounds something like this “If my husband would just listen to me then we could have peace in our home.” “If the terrorists would just stop killing people then we could have peace in our world.” “If my kids would behave then we could have peace and quiet.” “If they would just see it my way then I could finally have some peace.” If...if...if… Sound familiar? This has been an extremely difficult lesson to learn and one the I need to be reminded of from time to time. (Okay...all the time!) The lesson - My peace is not dependent on anyone or anything apart from my relationship with God. We can have peace in the midst of a financial battle. We can have peace when the spouse, kids, co-workers act up. We can have peace when the world around us is under attack. We can have peace w...