For the devil to steal life from our soul, we simply have to respond to a self-seeking thought or to take a well-dressed thought around a life we still cherish outside the Faith (Christ). Anxiety is an unarmed robber!
It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.— Lamentations 3:22-23
Short readings from the Word — written to comfort, to instruct, and to draw you nearer.
So, many delays and denials to our prayers are actually in our best interest; they preserve our future in God. Our consolation during seasons of seeming delays about God’s promise concerning our natural life should always be that He had already done more than what we can ever expect from Him;
As long as we are deficient in faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and Charity found in Christ, living in fear and anxiety would remain inevitable. Anxiety is always born when we bear burdens that are meant to be laid at the Lord’s feet.
Submission at all levels remains a vital prescription for weeding out or overcoming hidden natures in us; especially priestly sins like guile, envy, malice, hypocrisies, and evil speaking. The shortcut to this is by delighting in the demands of submission, even until we can both see this world and iniquity within, in its true colors.
We need to add contentment to our godly formation, to subdue all thoughts that can come from unrighteous mammon; to overcome all the pull that can come from what money can do. Christ would then become our life-dominant thought and source of contentment.
And what the gospel of God (or of life everlasting and eternal) is now doing is to perfect our victory over mammon, so we can walk in love with God. A believer who attains the joy of the Father that enables him to consistently despise the god of this world (mammon) is divinely wiser than a believer who hasn’t.
Some words are worth hearing twice. We are bringing this one back from the early letters because its call is as needed this week as the day it was first written — read it slowly, and let it search you again.
Read it again
"Beloved — every word here points to Him. Every page is written so that you might draw nearer. You are not late, you are not behind. You belong here."
Read the full pastor's note