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Matthew 26:38 Then he said to them, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.’
Maybe you are beginning to think ‘but I am different, I always get angry or sad or depressed’…
Well, guess what, you are not alone. When I say ‘we all do’ it may sound like hollow words, so don’t take my word, take the words of Jesus Christ!
Jesus was so overwhelmed that He felt like He was at the point of death. What did He do? He took time out and went to have a quiet word with God, just Him and God, alone. We do need to take time out and just be with God to listen to Him and pour our hearts out to Him because He is always there for us!
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Jonah 4:9 But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?’ ‘It is,’ he said. ‘And I’m so angry I wish I were dead.’
Sounds a bit stupid when you hear someone else say something like that doesn’t it? But I’m sure we have all been there at some stage, being so angry that nothing else mattered… even being angry at things instead of people!
God’s Word shows us things like this so that we don’t have to go there; we don’t have to get so angry that it hurts, we don’t have to get so angry that we do stupid things…
We know what can happen, so stop and think before it gets out of hand.
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Ecclesiastes 7:9 Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.
How many times have you said something in anger only to look back and think about how stupid you were to say what you said. Be honest! We have all been there and we will probably go there again before the week is out, never mind the year…
God wants us to be patient in our actions and in our words because He knows that if we spend a few seconds thinking about what we are going to say before we speak, we may not end up saying things which we later regret.
Don’t look back and regret, wait and say it right the first time!
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James 1:19 My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry,
It’s so easy to tell everyone that they should be listening properly, slow to answer back and slow to get angry; but actually doing that all while under fire is hard!
We cannot do this on our own because we are not disciplined enough, but if we are willing to ask God for help, He will give us the strength to slow down and concentrate on what should be done.
God has given us our bibles so that we can learn from His Word, His instructions, and receive His encouragement. Let it guide you…
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Ephesians 4:26 “In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,
One of the easiest things to do is to let it rip when you are angry and one of the hardest things to do is to stop after you have let rip!
God knows how we work and how we lose track when we lose control; so He does not want us to go there in the first place. Setting limits and not going near them will help you to stop before you lose control.
Sitting on your anger will only make it boil faster and make you even more angry; making your peace with others will take your anger off the boil and allow you to avoid losing control in the first place.
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James 4:7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
How do you get rid of the air in a bottle that is half full? Easy, you fill up the rest of the bottle leaving no room for air!
That is like having evil in our lives. If we fill our lives with God and His ways, then there is not going to be any room left for the devil and his ways.
Evil fills the gaps we leave in our lives and it will surprise you just how much evil you can let in by leaving a small gap. Don’t leave room for evil because you will not see it coming…
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John 15:19 If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
One of the things you get to learn pretty quickly is how many people have something bad to say about Christians; and then you have to ask why… aren’t we supposed to be the good guys?
The answer is surprisingly easy to understand when you hear it. When we stand up to being the good guys others will start to hate us because we start to make them look worse just because we look good.
God wants us to stand out as being different for a good reason so stand up and be counted!
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Luke 18:11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people – robbers, evildoers, adulterers – or even like this tax collector.
There is only one way to say that you are sorry and that is to tell the truth and accept blame on yourself. If you try to shift the blame onto someone else then you are not saying sorry, you are blaming someone else!
God does not want us to compare ourselves to others or justify ourselves by other people’s standards; God wants us to compare what we do with His rules and see that we have done it wrong – according to His rules and His rules alone.
Look at your own actions, not others actions…
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Psalm 123:3 Have mercy upon us, O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
Sometimes we just have to admit it – we have done it wrong and we have to apologise! When we apologise we ask for forgiveness so that we can move on and aim for good works again.
If we don’t stop and say we’re sorry we continue to have our hearts filled with those bad things, evil things, hateful things; and we find it harder to then say we are sorry.
We need to break the cycle and stop and admit we did it wrong. That is the only way we can move forward again with God.
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Genesis 4:7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.’
How many times have you thought something like “I’m not that bad. I do good to people. I help others.”? Well if you do then I commend you that you have found good in your heart.
When you do those good things does it not encourage you to do more? We do like helping and encouraging others because it makes us feel good as well.
But if we turn away those opportunities we open ourselves to hate, resentfulness and other horrible things. We then have to work harder at not being horrible to others…
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Psalm 32:5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the Lord.’ And you forgave the guilt of my sin.
This is no small thing that God is in the business of forgiving sins. He has been forgiving man of his sins from the very beginning because we have been doing things wrong from the beginning.
Just because we get into trouble for doing things wrong does not mean that God is going to stop forgiving us. His promise to us is that He will continue to forgive us as we admit our sins with all honesty and an open heart.
If we don’t mean it we should not be asking for forgiveness; God can see what is in your heart already!
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Isaiah 65:24 Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.
One of the most amazing things that we get to learn and experience is answered prayers. I still find it amazing that Christ will listen to my personal prayers that I lift up to Him. No matter where I am or what I am doing, when I pray to Him, He listens and hears me!
As we read through our bibles we then begin to learn that when we ask Him for things, He also answers our prayers!
It is nice to ask people and have then answer you. It is even better when they do what you ask. It is even better still when they seem to know what you need and do it before you even get round to asking!
That is what God does for us. He knows what we need and knows what is best for us, giving things to us even before we ask sometimes!
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Luke 23:43 Jesus answered him, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.’
If you think that you have been too terrible for God to forgive you, then take in these words. This was a man who was being crucified next to Jesus, the punishment reserved for the most wicked people, a man who probably could not get much worse than he was…
And yet when he turned to Christ and believed that He was who He is, Jesus forgave him there and then. Jesus invited him to be with Him in heaven.
That same invitation is open to each one of us no matter how far we have already gone; all we need do is to admit we are that bad and turn to Christ asking for His forgiveness.
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John 6:37 All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away.
Jesus is never going to drive anyone away. His aim is to invite all people to follow Him because he wants us all to be saved from the life that we fall into. He knows that we are going to sin and get things wrong, even rejecting Him… But He will never drive us away.
We may run off in the other direction. We may do terrible things like Judas Iscariot did; but He is always ready to forgive and forget so that we can join Him in eternity.
What amazing love He continues to show us every day of our lives, inviting us to come and share His wonderful place called heaven.
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Ephesians 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God
When you see an exclusive offer it is an offer that is not available anywhere else. But when we see offers in shops we can normally hunt around and find someone who is going to offer us something better or close to it.
When it comes to getting to heaven, the offer is most definitely totally exclusive because nobody else can ever get us to heaven. God’s gift to us is that we can get to heaven because it is His personal invitation to us.
Is there a catch? Not a catch, but a requirement. We must trust Him that He will deliver on His promise.
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James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
One thing that I learned last year was that the best gifts don’t necessarily come from the places or people you expect. The best gifts are those that come from the heart, from someone who loves you without reserve.
God’s love for us is without question, without limit and without conditions; so we can expect Him to be able to give us things that we can only dream of – and He does. The gifts He gives us go far beyond earthly riches or wants because He supplies our needs.
God has always been this way and will always be this way because His love never changes.
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Proverbs 16:1 The preparations of the heart belong to man, But the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.
Have you ever wondered why you get into trouble when you just go with your heart? If we base our life on emotional responses we are going to get into all sorts of trouble because our emotions do tend to fill up and spill out a lot quicker than wisdom.
God wants us to be able to enjoy life so He has given us the gift of emotions, and they are important. But He has also given us the ability to stop and think and then to say what is right rather than saying the emotional response we want to say.
Don’t just say something because you feel like it – you may end up saying something you don’t want to say. Be patient and wait for God to sort out your tongue…
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Proverbs 24:26 An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips.
Ok, so I couldn’t resist a kiss on Valentine’s day!
If you want to show someone today just how much they mean to you, then you need to be totally honest with them. Being honest and open will go a whole lot further than a kiss on the lips because it will reach deep down into their hearts.
Yes it can be a scary thing to reach down into someone’s heart, but that is what we need to do in order to be able to live a true life with others. It is not just about a kiss or a hug, love is about sharing your heart, not in part, but in full!
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Psalm 64:9 All people will fear; they will proclaim the works of God and ponder what he has done.
No matter what we get up to, no matter what we believe, no matter what we ignore in life, each of us one day will have to face Jesus Christ in person. If that is the time when we finally get to believe that He is real I guess then we will be a bit late in our belief – but believe we will!
The more that we are able to see how much God has done in the history of the earth, the more we will realise just how awesome He is. What we choose to do that that new-found knowledge is our choice.
We can continue to ignore God, or we can turn and face Him and believe in Him. I would rather do it now than face Him later…
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Galatians 5:23 (fruits of the spirit continued) gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
Yesterday we touched on the sort of life that we would expect in a Christian because that is what God wants us to have. Today we look at it from the worlds point of view. If we have peace, love and joy in our lives the world is going to become jealous of our lives.
We need to display gentleness and self-control to make sure that we show others they can have this too. There is no law against us having a wonderful life; but the world will seem like it is against us because we dare to be different and enjoy what God gives us!
God has given us a wonderful and bountiful life – if we choose to follow Him and trust in Him to give us that life. I have it, you can too!