Christ Will Rescue You: July 2021

Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Give Faith Room to Move

Matthew 6:26(NLT)

“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?”

There are some of us that have been in circumstances where we’ve worried so much about a situation that faith had no room to move at all. When we worry or have fear about an issue or situation, it’s a red flag that we’re not trusting God enough. No matter how big or small our problems are, Heavenly Father expects us to look to Him, because there is no problem that is too big for Him to handle. Jesus Christ tells us in Mark 11:24 that when we pray, we must believe that God will answer our prayers, and He will come to our rescue. We must also remember that we can’t have faith and fear at the same time. Both of them are huge and take up an enormous amount of space in our hearts and minds.

In his teaching in Matthew 6:26, Jesus Christ points our attention towards the birds. They live very simply, not worrying about where their next meal is coming from. They don’t worry about other birds or anything else that might hinder them from getting food. Heavenly Father has provided for them in nature. If He does this for birds, imagine what He will do for us. We are His children, and He loves us very much. This is very plainly taught by our Lord and Master, but we humans have a way of complicating even the simplest thing.

We become so wrapped up in our problems and issues that we forget who we are and whose we are. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NLT) tells us, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” Our bodies are God’s sacred shine because they house His Holy Spirit. His Spirit is continually communicating God’s thoughts to our human-spirit. The Holy Spirit and our human-spirit are in perpetual communion, reminding us of our union with God through Jesus Christ. So, our bodies have never belonged to us. Every aspect of who we are belongs to our all-powerful and all-knowing, One True God. God’s commandment to us is to live every day as if we understand that we belong to Him and He belongs to us!

Can life be challenging? Indeed, it can be, but we must not let panicking in fear put the practice of trusting God in faith in second place. Trusting God should be our first go-to in every circumstance. Our tribulations might look very big to us, but they are infinitesimal compared to the love and power of our Heavenly Father. He can handle them in less time than a blink of an eye, but the resolutions to our issues and problems take time because God wants us to exercise our faith. We can’t bring Him down to our level, through faith, we must step up to His level. We must change our focus from seeing the problem as big to seeing our God’s love for us and His power as the greatest force in all eternity.

You have to ask yourself if you believe you are worthy and lovable? God says you are, and this should always be enough. Philippians 4:19(ESV) tells us, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” There is no end to God’s riches, just as there is no end to His love. In this same Chapter, verse 6, Heavenly Father tells us not to worry about anything, but to pray about everything. And after we pray, we are to give Him thanks for all that He’s done for us and will do in the future. Anxiety and worry move us to distraction. Through our devotion and trust in God, we can turn those moments of anxiety and worry into moments of worship and praise. We can allow our faith to cover our problems and issues with gratitude. When we do this, we please our Heavenly Father and give our faith in Him room to move.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Keep God First in Your Life

Matthew 6:30-33 The Message(MSG)

30-33 “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”

We can learn a tremendous from the record of Adam and Eve in God’s Word. One of the most important lessons is about the kind of relationship that God desires with people. It is a relationship based on mutual respect. He is our Creator, and it is crucial that we understand that the creation cannot be greater than the Creator. God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He has all power in His hands, and He is sovereign. He’s the Ruler of everything, and everything in the entire universe belongs to Him. He is the One that created the earth and then furnished it with all good things so that all our needs would be met. He did this even before He created human beings. So, the order He has established is that He provides and we enjoy His provision.

He set everything up this way because He is love and He loves us. He has also shown us through Adam and Eve that He will not force us to love Him back. They decided that they no longer wanted to be under God’s sovereignty, but wanted to be independent of it. They disobeyed Him, turned their backs on His love, and chose to do their own thing. Most human beings are still doing this. They turn their backs on God’s Word, will not follow it, and refuse to have faith in our Creator.

When people make this decision, they are not walking in love. 1John 4:16(NLT) tells us, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” God is love. It is not only who He is, it is what He does. It is impossible to love truly if we refuse to love through Him. 1John 4:8(NLT) says, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Knowing God, understanding what pleases Him and understanding who He is, this is how we learn to love. He commands us to love through Him by following the example of Jesus Christ, because through his life, ministry, and sacrifice, Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of God.

In Mark 12:30. Jesus Christ commanded us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to love God with all that we are, and loving others is birthed out of our love for Heavenly Father. As women, we must be very cautious and guard our hearts, because many of us put our love for the men in our lives above our love for God through Jesus Christ. Many of us are not concerned with doing God’s Will, but instead, we become slaves to our affection for the other person. This isn’t God’s love. It is obsession, and obsession is based on fear.

Any time that we depend on a person or thing more than God, we are walking away from love’s path. And many of us think that when we are doing this, we are doing the right thing. It’s not what pleases God, and if it doesn’t please Him, it’s not right. Our faith in Him pleases God, and obedience to His Word is the action that backs up our faith. Our Heavenly Father told His people in Deuteronomy 30:20(NLT), “You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the LORD, you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Many of us are selfless caretakers of all those we love and care for. Whether it’s our children, parents, siblings or spouse, we desire to nurture them, but this doesn’t mean that we make them our world. I’ve heard some of the strongest and fiercest women of God declare they’d never depend on a man for their happiness. Then something happens and they discover they’ve done exactly that. They’ve made the man the center of their universe and the object of all their happiness.

Only God is worthy to be our ‘everything’. He alone is worthy to be our world. Everything we have comes from Him, and we should never make the mistake of putting His gifts before our appreciation for all that He is. Our relationships can go horribly wrong when our focus veers away from loving God the way He requires. Loving Him through Jesus Christ is what gives us strength, confidence, and endurance. This is fuel for all our relationships. So when and if we’ve discovered that we let our love and devotion to God slip to second place, we need to seek His forgiveness and renew our commitment to keep Him first in all we do. ■

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Make a Change for the Better

1 Corinthians 13:4-7(NLT)

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

Many years ago, my mother asked me a pivotal question that changed the trajectory of how I viewed myself and relationships. I had been dating a man for a couple of years and my mom said she noticed a difference in me. She asked me, “Kim, do you like him?” I thought it was an odd question since my mom knew I had been in a long-term relationship with this man for a while. I said, “I love him, Mom.” She replied, “That’s not what I asked you. There’s a difference between loving someone and liking them.” It was such a simple question she had posed, but her clarification of what it meant was very deep, and I had never thought about the answer. I had never confronted the reality that there is a difference between the two, like and love; I thought they went hand in hand.

1Corinthians 13 is known to many as the love chapter, because in this chapter, God tells us what love is. He defines how love behaves and what it should look like. God’s definition of love is different from that ooey gooey, sappy stuff we sometimes associate with romance. Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting to experience those feelings, but real love is more than feelings. Real love is the love of God that is expressed through a person who knows, honors, and practices God’s Word. Real love is God’s love, and it must always be our barometer for judging if someone can love us the way God wants us to be loved.

How can you say you love someone if you’re physically attacking them and belittling them in the most heinous way? I asked myself this question while I was in an abusive relationship, but I ignored the answer. Sure, we had a lot of good times, but the bad times began to far out-weigh the good.

As I continued in my relationship, the answer to the question my mom asked me began to make so much sense. I realized that I didn’t like this man at all. He was mean. He was sometimes disrespectful to his mother, and he was disrespectful to me. He didn’t even like himself, so I never stood a chance. If he was in a bad mood, everything and everyone around him experienced the wrath of it. I’m thankful that Heavenly Father gave me a revelation of what real love is, and if you ask Him, He’ll give you one too.

Love is patient, kind, gentle, not irritable or resentful and doesn’t rejoice in wrongdoing…huh – I didn’t have any of these. I wanted a relationship that embodies God’s love, so I made a change.

If you’re dating someone or currently in a relationship, take the time to evaluate how he treats others; people in his family and even strangers. This can be a yardstick for how he will treat you. Is he quick to get upset? Does he treat his parents well? Has he demonstrated that he places your well-being above his own? Because if he does, he will never put his hands on you in a violent way.

2Timothy 1:7(NKJV) says, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” A sound mind is a mind that is capable of making good judgments and right decisions. If you’re reading this, you have one. You must know that a person with a sound mind can’t like someone that hurts them, but it may take a revelation from God to realize this. Heavenly Father loves us, and He will show us that love doesn’t hurt. It protects, is patient and kind, and it is not irritable. This is the kind of love you deserve.

"Make a Change for the Better"

Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Overcoming the Hurt of Betrayal

Hebrews 4:15 (NLT) tells us, "This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin."

Difficulties and painful circumstances are facts of life for everyone, but as a wife coping with the pain of your husband’s infidelity, it can seem unbearable. The effects of betrayal can leave you so traumatized that you can barely get out of bed or make it through the day. I’ve had both the privilege and the responsibility to be a compassionate ear, confidant, and prayer partner for many women that are dealing with this kind of pain. No one can deny that this is a situation that cuts to the core of who we are, but there are other very important discoveries that God would like to reveal through this level of pain, and we cannot afford to dismiss any of them.

Pain is not a natural state. It was introduced into the earth’s realm through disobedience to God’s Word. The enemy is the architect of pain, and he will try to use the things that are most precious to us as darts; he aims to pierce us in our most venerable places. We are sometimes so afflicted from the sting that it paralyzes us in ways we couldn’t have imagined. It can be a very nauseating and gnawing burden, and it is not uncommon for us to question why God allows us to be wounded to this magnitude. The answer to this question is that there is no pain that we experience that God’s love cannot heal.

Pain is not the best teacher, because its lessons are harsh. However, as difficult and hurtful as life can be at times, it is nothing like the pain and hurt that our Lord and Savior endured on the cross for our sakes. This is a very important truth that our pain reveals. It allows us to have confidence that Jesus Christ understands our broken-hearts, because not only do we have a Savior and Lord who understands our pain, he tells us to bring it to him, and he will bear the load of it.

God doesn’t cause the problems that tear relationships apart. 1Corinthians 14:33 tells us that He is not the author of confusion, but of peace. He wants us to be happy in our relationships, and this is why He has set His very own standard for the way we should care for and support one another in a marriage. In His Word, Heavenly Father tells us that the husband should love his wife as Christ loves the church, and the woman should honor her husband out of her love for Christ. This is God’s standard. It guarantees to preserve a marriage through any challenges. So, neither God or His Word has failed us in any respect, but all of us must admit that do not always put on His standard of love in our marriages, and we need to seek God’s forgiveness.

God’s heart is not for us to wallow in self-condemnation. We ask for forgiveness because it demonstrates our humility and desire to put God first; and to recognize that His Word cannot fail. Forgiveness puts us in right standing, and it opens us to receive more of God’s instruction in righteousness.

The standard of love that God has set is personified in Christ. We are the bride of Christ, and he is our bridegroom. He loves us so much, and his passion is to care for us and support us in every way. We make mistakes and we get hurt, but even in the middle of our disappointment we have to remember that we are the light of Christ. The pain we may experience feels very dark and heavy, but we outshine it through the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us.

A woman said to me that when she first dating her husband, something on the inside of her felt wrong every time they met, but he treated her so well. She fell in love with him a few years ago, and they were married. He has betrayed the marriage through infidelity, and she feels that she is now experiencing such loss because she ignored her instincts. The truth is that most of us are willing to take such risks on love because deep down we know that when love is right it’s totally worth it. We shouldn’t condemn ourselves for taking the leap. We should, however, put ourselves in the arms of the Father and ask Him to teach us how to better guard our hearts, so that we’re in a prime position to both give and receive love His way.

If you have been betrayed by your husband or the person you love, know that you are more than a conqueror through Christ. You will overcome through his strength. We know that we will experience tribulations in life, but God has told us to persist and endure through them. We might get knocked down, but we get back up. God is developing in each of us such a posture that we will run this race with endurance, always looking ahead to victory in Christ and never looking back; no matter how bad or hurtful things may appear. Our hope, our confidence, must always be in Christ.

The bottom line is that in whatever form it is that we are broken, and no matter how it is that we have come to be that way, God will heal us. We will breakthrough our storms, tribulations, and wilderness experiences through Christ, our Lord. And one day, we will come to see that God’s deliverance has given us greater authority in Christ, and through it we will help someone else come into healing as we have.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.