Proverbs 27: ⁴ Anger is cruel, and wrath is like a flood, but jealousy is even more dangerous.

 

during this insecure time in my life I have recognized that I have jealousy... I sometimes think my jealousy is based on selfishness though because I don't want someone else's.. I just don't want anyone to touch anything of mine... LOL!

 

recently I was looking at two people and I could almost see the jealousy on them.. not about me.. probably not about a person in general... but about a position... their desire for position and recognition was so great that I felt I could almost see it or cut it with a knife...

 

my thinking was... how sad to be so insecure in who you are made to be that you want this recognition and title so badly.. to allow it to eat you up...

 

then I was thinking of myself... and I thought... if something.. anything at all... has been given to me by God.. it would also mean that it would be mine until God determined it is no longer mine.. no one could 'take' it from me... and if God had determined something is not mine.. then no amount of fighting on my side would be able to cause me to have it or hold on to it...

 

I found this to be very freeing... I can't keep what is not mine.. and I can't lose what is.. so why worry about others touching/wanting it...

1 Peter 5: 7 Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you. 8 Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.

give all your worries and cares to God because He cares about you...

that is so much easier said than done...... I find in my own life.. I give my worries or cares to God.. just to snatch them back again... if they were physical items I could touch and feel.. I can almost see myself just rolling them around in my hands.. thinking about them.. knowing that there is nothing I can do to fix them.. yet I can't seem to actually give them to God and leave them there either... 

it's somewhat amazing that we know we are powerless to fix something... yet we seem unable (or is it unwilling) to let it go either..

he roams around like a roaring lion... seeking who he can devour...

idk about you.. but I don't want to be devoured by the enemy.. not by any enemy... I don't really want to be controlled by anything.. I think in order for me to be protected from being devoured or controlled.. the answer would lie in Jesus... I would have to completely give myself over to God... 

in my mind I think I have done that.. but if there is something else taking up my mind space.. then that part of my mind is not given over to God... *sighs*

Father.. change me... from the inside out... I give you reign over my mind... keep reminding me.. when my thoughts begin to wander.. to give whatever it is.. back to You... so that You are Lord Supreme over my life! 

since starting this made to crave bible study... I have had to actually look at my eating habits...  and I can easily admit.. most of the times when I eat I am not hungry... I think it has to do with a few different things.. one of them is the t.v. commercials... just make you imagine you need to eat... another is what I am thinking about... when I am wrestling with things in my mind.. I pick something up to do with my hands... namely food... often not even junk food.. but excess is still excess... it just happens to be better excess than it used to be... 

Ephesians 2: 8-9 ⁸ God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

 

you know... I think we all say the right words about believing that salvation is a free gift... then we begin to think that we have to be a certain way or do certain things in order to be 'accepted' in God's eyes.. if He accepted us when we were deep in sin.. my guess is that He will surely accept us when we are trying to not be living in sin...

 

so in a sense.. we are all trying to 'earn' something from God...

 

the truth is.......... any service we give to God... any changes we make in actions or lifestyle.. they are not earning us anything other than possibly acceptance from people who don't matter any ways... what we do claiming that it is for God is to be done because we love Him and we want to please Him.. just like any other relationship we have only bigger...

 

think of how we have changed our whole lives around in the past to please a man because we thought we loved him... for most of us.. that man is long gone... none of our actions make someone love us if you ask me.. they either accept us and love us.. or they don't... the same is truth of God... we cannot 'earn' salvation or love either one from Him... we should be living to please Him because we love Him.. not to make Him love us... because He has loved us all along... it is more about us accepting His love than us earning it... 

close your eyes... imagine yourself at the feet of Jesus... reach up.. put your arms around Him... hug Him... accept Him hugging you back... accept His love for you that is unchanging and never ending... allow yourself to be loved... 

Mark 5: 35While he was still speaking to her, messengers arrived from the home of Jairus, the leader of the synagogue. They told him, “Your daughter is dead. There’s no use troubling the Teacher now.” 36But Jesus overheard them and said to Jairus, “Don’t be afraid. Just have faith.”

I don't remember Jesus telling him not to be afraid as part of the story.. but it made me think... how many times in our own lives have we had to deal with people who were negative and told us that our situation will never get any better.. that we will always be the same as we were at that point... but something inside of us would whisper and tell us to just have faith... 

in my own life.. I would have long since given up this life lived for God.. I would have gone back to the old ways.. the comfortable ways.. if it had not been for the small voice within whispering to me to just have faith... 

thank you Father for the voice within of your Holy Spirit giving us the belief to just keep going forward in our faith walk... even if it was only enough faith for a day or two... until we received a little more.. slowly making us stronger and more able to stand on Your word... thank you! amen.

1 Chronicles 21: 18Then the angel of the Lord told Gad to instruct David to go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. 19So David went up to do what the Lord had commanded him through Gad. 20Araunah, who was busy threshing wheat at the time, turned and saw the angel there. His four sons, who were with him, ran away and hid.21When Araunah saw David approaching, he left his threshing floor and bowed before David with his face to the ground. 22David said to Araunah, “Let me buy this threshing floor from you at its full price. Then I will build an altar to the Lord there, so that he will stop the plague.” 23“Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,” Araunah said to David. “I will give the oxen for the burnt offerings, and the threshing boards for wood to build a fire on the altar, and the wheat for the grain offering. I will give it all to you.” 24But King David replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on buying it for the full price. I will not take what is yours and give it to the Lord. I will not present burnt offerings that have cost me nothing!” 25So David gave Araunah 600 pieces of gold in payment for the threshing floor. 26David built an altar there to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings. And when David prayed, the Lord answered him by sending fire from heaven to burn up the offering on the altar.

God told David where to go to offer the sacrifice... makes you wonder.. if we are to sacrifice something for God... possibly.. He would be telling us whatever it is... rather than the things we choose of our own mind.. I know for myself.. I want to choose a sacrifice I know I can complete.. I don't want to tell God I will do something I am unsure I can do.. while still making sure it is a struggle too... 

David didn't try to give God something that didn't cost him anything.. how often do we try to give God what is easy for us? I am guilty of this sometimes...

God consumed the sacrifice... I wonder if God accepts/consumes our sacrifices.. I would say if we have been obedient to Him that He does.. I guess the evidence of that is in whether or not our fasting time has been fruitful... I pray God will honor the fast that I lift up to Him... sometimes I feel He has.. there are other times that I don't feel I have been so faithful and I don't feel I have done anything more than just starve myself... I read something a few days ago that said "a fast without prayer is just starvation"... 

we are all called to fast regularly.. just like reading the bible.. amazing how we find time or purpose for everything under the sun.. yet God's disciplines are sometimes pushed to the wayside... 

Father help me be more faithful to You than I am to myself... 

Mark 3: 22But the teachers of religious law who had arrived from Jerusalem said, “He’s possessed by Satan, the prince of demons. That’s where he gets the power to cast out demons.” 23Jesus called them over and responded with an illustration.“How can Satan cast out Satan?” he asked. 24“A kingdom divided by civil war will collapse. 25Similarly, a family splintered by feuding will fall apart. 26And if Satan is divided and fights against himself, how can he stand? He would never survive. 27Let me illustrate this further. Who is powerful enough to enter the house of a strong man like Satan and plunder his goods? Only someone even stronger—someone who could tie him up and then plunder his house. 28“I tell you the truth, all sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, 29but anyone who blasphemes the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. This is a sin with eternal consequences.”30He told them this because they were saying, “He’s possessed by an evil spirit.”

this may sound silly.. but I have wondered all my life as to what would be considered blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.. of course wondering if I have done it... then today.. as I read this.. I am thinking... I wonder if doubting the gifts of the Spirit is considered blasphemy... someone doubting the healing of someone had come from God.. someone doubting God's power and presence in whatever miracle we have seen.. and my thought is that we see miracles all the time.. but as we are hardened and calloused by this world.. how often.. after the initial recognition of the Spirit at work.. do we decide it was just coincidence... or it was something ordinary.. because when we can't understand extraordinary things.. we tend to try to make them ordinary so that we can comprehend them.. we often cannot comprehend the things of God.. so we try to bring them down to our level... 

someone recently told me that someone I know does not believe in the gifts of the Spirit being in this age.. that they were only in biblical times... and right away I got the feeling that this person they were talking about is a false prophet... (although not really a prophet at all.. but trying to teach wrong things) I would be very afraid to be in a position of power and not be teaching strictly from the bible... that would be a scary thing.. for surely the Lord will deal with these people... I am so thankful for the true prophets in my own life... moreso.. since the recognition that wrong teaching is out there even now... it makes the truth teachers even more important... 

thank you Father for the teachers of the truth.. 

and I pray you will open the eyes of the false teachers before they are condemned forever... amen.

Psalms 84: 2 I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.

lately I have been battling my 'want to' with God...

sometimes the journey is just too long and tiring.. sometimes I would just rather be doing something other than the 'right thing'... while my outward actions may be right... I may not be physically doing anything sinful or wrong... many times.. the battle is within..

that is my battle.. I WANT to want to long for God with my whole being... but sometimes the desire just is not there... but I pray.. I cry out to God.. I ask Him to restore my desire for Him... 

and in this meanwhile.. while I am waiting to be completely filled and satisfied by God (because truthfully.. I am not there yet...) I try to fill that place with other things... 

it might be sweets... it might be jewelry... it might be shoes or clothes... 

and in honesty... those things give me a small satisfaction.. for a short while... then I look back.. and I have all this jewelry.. beautiful but somewhat useless.. I have all these shoes.. (and I do actually wear almost all of them..) I ate many many things I should not have.. so I have this belly I despise... and still I have this inner longing... 

there was a time that rather than fill this place with these things.. instead I filled it with non committed sex.. or with alcohol... or even just attention from men.. and in my commitment to God.. I have given these things up.. only to have replaced them with the things that I now do... 

what I really need is a change... a change in my spiritual walk.. so that my desires are based on my love for God.. because truly I do love God.. I couldn't imagine ever going backward in my relationship... but I need to move forward.. to stop filling that place within me with something other than Him...

Father I pray that you will reach down and touch.. not only me.. but anyone else that is wanting to desire you more than other things.. reach down and fill us with your Spirit.. fill us with desire to spend time with You.. fill us with the desire to put You above all other things.. fill us with Your Love.. fill us with the capacity to accept You and accept the Love You bring.. give us the insight to know that complete satisfaction and peace can only come from You... heal us from addictive behaviors.. change us completely.. from this day forward.. so that our lives can be used to bring glory to Your Name..  in Jesus name I ask these things..