Be Encouraged Today!

Idols of the Heart Idols of the Heart In Ezekiel 14 , the elders of Israel came to Ezekiel asking for prayer, but they had set up idols in their hearts. An idol of the heart can be anything we put before God—anything that takes precedence over, or replaces, our loyalty and devotion to Him. In our minds, we often think God is first—but is He really? Sometimes we have idols set up in our hearts without even realizing it. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal if you have any idols in your heart as you examine yourself. Sidebar: A Personal Example I love to work out. Years ago, I heard the Holy Spirit say, “It’s easy for you to miss praying or reading the Word of God—you say you’ll do it later, and sometimes later never comes—but you don’t miss your workouts.” Ouch—hallelujah! It hurt my feelings a little, but it was true. So, I started getting up early to study, read, and go on my prayer walks. My workouts had become an idol of the hea...

Have you ever, as a child of God, sat back and wondered "Why am I here again?!" or "Why am I going through this again?!" Have you ever had something that kept reoccurring in your life and not know why? You love God, you want and have a desire to do His Word and Will, and you know His Word — and yet you find yourself at the same crossroads (or similar) over and over again. We pray, we repent, we seek God's face, we stay in His Word, and yet the same thing — or something similar — keeps popping its head up; it keeps coming back again. The problem is we often repent and truly mean it in our hearts, but we only address the symptom. We deal with the outward sins committed through the members of our bodies — our words, actions, or thoughts — without addressing the root cause that produced them. Where is our faith placed? The real problem is that we have our faith, our hope, and our trust in the wrong thing. We look to something other than where our faith s...

We All Need Jesus! We all need Jesus! Before the Fall of Lucifer, he was perfect, beautiful, and full of wisdom! There was no other angel or creature wiser than he. And please understand, he still has that wisdom but it's perverted, and NONE of us mere mortals can outsmart him. We, within ourselves, are easily manipulated and persuaded by him, blown to and fro by the winds of change, doctrines, ideas, and opinions. With this wisdom, though perverted, he has corrupted our world and the lives of untold billions of people who are and will be eternally lost. In his wisdom of manipulation and persuasion, he is artfully cunning and dishonest. We don't even realize it - we're deceived. It evades even some who say they name the Name of the Lord. This is the reason sin is so subtle; it is elusive to us mere mortals. This is why we all need Jesus . This is why we must have our Faith rooted in the Cross of Calvary. The Holy Spirit can then help us to see a...

What is the Grace of God? The Grace of God is the goodness of God that has been freely given to us by what Jesus has accomplished on the Cross of Calvary. As believers, we can fall from grace. But what does that mean? Many people think that falling from the Grace of God means that one has simply sinned. No. In Galatians , Paul was addressing the demand that Gentile believers be circumcised. The Judaizers were teaching that circumcision (and the Law) was a requirement for salvation. Paul responded that if you add circumcision as a requirement for salvation, then what Jesus did on the Cross is rendered ineffective for you. Galatians 5:1-6 (AMP) 1 It was for this freedom that Christ set us free [completely liberating us]; therefore, keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery (sin) [which you once removed]. 2 Notice, it is I, Paul, who tells you that if you receive circumcis...

Faith in the Cross Before I start, I want to say that EVERYTHING that Jesus did and said is of the utmost importance! He did everything that the Father told Him to do. He was obedient even unto death for the remission of our sins. What He accomplished on the Cross reconciled us unto our Father God and made us His children. So why isn’t Jesus’ dying on the Cross of Calvary our source of Faith? Why isn’t our faith in that which took our sin away and set us free? Now, I can hear you saying “My faith is in the Word of God. Jesus is God and in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word is God”. In the beginning before the foundation of the world, The Plan to redeem mankind was formulated; that plan is Jesus dying on the Cross of Calvary. God put in place the Sacrificial System as His way, but the sacrifices of bulls, lambs and/or rams only covered sin so that man could commune with God. All the “types and shadows” were examples of He who...

Everything from God Comes to Us Because of the Cross Everything from God Comes to Us Because of the Cross I know the title is long—it reminds me of some of those long anime titles—but it’s true: everything we receive from God comes to us because of the Cross of Christ. It doesn’t come because we attend church every time the doors are open. It doesn’t come because we read our Bibles and pray every day. That’s not why we receive anything from God. The reason we, as Christians and true children of God, receive anything is because of the Cross. I want to look at this truth from a couple of scriptures: Hebrews 13:20–21 and Ephesians 2:13–18 . These two, among many other scriptures in the Bible, tell us this very thing—everything we receive from God comes to us because of the Cross, because of Jesus’ great sacrifice on Calvary. Hebrews 13:20–21 20 Now may the God of peace [the source of serenity and spiritual well-being] who brought up from the dead ...