Jesus

I lay my cares and expectations at the cross.

Jesus Christ Crucifix

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Lord, help me to be a good husband. I fully realize that I don’t have what it takes to be a good  husband without your help. Take my selfishness, impatience, and irritability and turn them into kindness, long-suffering, and the willingness to bear all things. Take my old emotional habits, mindset, automatic reactions, rude assumptions and self protective stance, and make me patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle and self-controlled. Take the hardness of my heart and break down the walls with your revelation. Give me a new heart and work in me your love, peace and joy (Galatians 5 : 22, 23). I am not able to rise above who I am at this moment . Only you can help me.

Show me where there is sin in my heart, especially with regard to my wife. I confess the times I’ve been unloving, critical, resentful, disrespectful, or unforgiving toward her. Help me to put aside any hurt, anger or disappointment I feel and forgive her the way you do–totally and completely, no looking back. Make me a tool of reconciliation, peace, and healing in this marriage, Enable us to communicate well and rescue us from the fangs of separation.

Make me my wife’s helpmate, companion, champion, friend, and support. Help me to create a peaceful, restful, safe place for her to come home to. Teach me how to take care of myself and stay attractive to her. Grow me into a creative and confident person who is rich in mind, soul and spirit. Make me the kind of man she can be proud to say is her husband.

I lay all my expectations at your cross. help me to accept her the way she is and not try to change her. I realize that in some ways she may never change, but at the same time, I release her to change in ways I never thought she could. I leave any changing that needs to be done in Your hands, fulling accepting that neither of us is perfect and never will be. Only you, Lord, are perfect and I look to you to perfect us

Teach me how to pray for my wife and make my prayers a true language of love. Where love has died, create new love between us. show me what unconditional love really is and how to communicate in a way she can clearly understand. Bring unity between us so that we can be in agreement about everything (Amos 3 : 3). May the God of patience and comfort grant us to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus (Romans 15: 5).

Integrity is what you are in the dark

Integrity is not what you seem to be when all eyes are on you. It’s who you are when no one is looking. (character is what you are in the dark). It’s a level of morality below which you never fall, no matter what’s happening around you. It’s a high standard of honesty, truthfulness, decency, and honor that is never breached. It’s doing for others the way you would want them to do for you.

A man of integrity says something and means it. He doesn’t play verbal games so you never really know where he stands. He knows to let his “Yes” be “Yes” and his “No” be “No.” “For whatever is more than these is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). He will not play both sides of the fence to please everyone. his goal is to please God and do what is right. A man can be highly esteemed among men but an abomination to God (Luke 16:15).

A man of integrity “swears to his own hurt and does not change” (Psalm 15:4). He will keep his word even if it costs him something to do so. When placed in a possible compromising situation, he will continue to stand strong in what he believes. (The three Hebrew boys stood strong and never bow to the golden image or worship Nebuchadnezzar‘s god. They were later thrown into a fiery furnace). Above all, he is a man of truth; you can depend on his solid honesty. A man “who walks with integrity walks securely” (Proverbs 10:9), because his integrity guides him and bring him into the presence of God (Psalm 41:12).

Integrity happens in the heart. Therefore, being a man of integrity is something  a man must choose to do on his own. But loved ones can prayerfully help him fight the enemy that seeks to snare him, blind him, and keep him from making that decision. Even when he makes the right choice, there will be a negative reaction to it in the realm of evil. Your prayers can help shield him from anything that causes him to doubt and waver, and give him strength to do what’s right–even when no one is looking. The Bible says “The righteous man walks in his integrity; his children are blessed after him” (Proverbs 20:7).

God Cannot Lie, His Word is Truth

portrait of Matthew Evangelist and the first p...

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There is much talk and false prediction about when our Lord and Savior shall return for His people. But as Matthew 24:36 tells us, no man knows the hour. “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only (Matthew 24:36). God cannot lie. Therefore, those who pretend to know the hour the Son of Man shall appear are, in essence, challenging the validity of Scripture. “And The Lord said to me: The prophets are prophesying lies in My Name; I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them. They are prophesying to you a lying vision, worthless divination, and the deceit of their own minds” (Jeremiah 14:14 RSV).

The Word of God consistently explains itself. Let us turn to Matthew 7 : 15-23 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits. Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and cast out demons in Your Name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you evildoers.” (Matthew 7:15-23 RSV)

How do you know a false prophet? Anyone who twist, alter or distort the Word of God. For example, a couple of months ago, some professing prophet was on TV predicting the end of the world. That in itself is sacrilegious, and should have raised doubt in any true believer’s mind, because God cannot lie. He tells us in his Word that no man knows the hour when He shall return. “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up’ (2 peter 3 : 10).

Strengthen Your Faith In God, Not Things

Faith Happens

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I always laugh when someone tells me he or she has no faith, because I know it’s probably not true. Everyone lives by faith to a certain extent. When you go to the doctor, you need faith to trust his diagnosis. When the pharmacy fills your prescription, you have faith that you will receive the proper medicine. when you eat at a restaurant, you trust that the people who serve you have not contaminated or poison the food. (Some restaurants need more faith than others.) Everyday is a walk of faith on some level. Everyone believes in something. “God has dealt to each one a measure of faith”” (Romans 12:3).

We choose what we will believe in. Some people choose to believe in themselves, some in government, some in evil, some in science, some in newspapers, some in hard work, some in other people, and some in God. faith is something we cannot live without.

Faith is something we cannot die without either. Our faith determines what happens to us after we leave this world. If you have faith in Jesus, you know that your external future is secure. That’s because “the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead…will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). In others words, if the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the  dead dwells in you, He will raise you up as well.

Having certainty about what happens to us when we die will affect greatly how we live today. Confidence in our external future gives us a perspective on living in the present that is laced with confidence as well.

Here is a scary thought! when healing some blind men Jesus said, “According to your faith let it be to you” (Matthew 9:29). Doesn’t that make you want to reevaluate your trust in God? The good news is that this means we have a certain amount of control over our lives and can, to some extent, decide how things are going to turn out for us. Our lives do not have to left up to chance, or allowed to go flopping in the breeze according to whatever wind is blowing at the moment. Our faith will help decide our outcome.

We all have times of doubt. Even Jesus wondered why God had forsaken Him. It wasn’t that he doubted God’s existence or ability to come to His rescue , He just didn’t expect to feel forsaken. Sometimes we do not doubt God”s existence, or whether He can help us, we just doubt His desire to have any immediate impact on our lives. Surly He is too busy for my problems, we think, But the truth is, He is not.

Heaven is the new Jerusalem. Is it real?

The New Jerusalem

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Many people believe heaven is a wishful fantasy that weak-minded people cling to in order to cope with, or escape from, the tough realities of life here on earth. Some assume that eventually everybody will end up in heaven. But others say very few people will make it there. And nearly all argument about heaven typically generate more heat that light and more controversy than understanding.

So much confusion! So many opinions! But why all these different opinions and theories when the Bible is full of details about heaven? Yes, God wants us to know what heaven is like so that we will want to be there! Heaven is not a place He is trying to keep secret from us.

According to a Harris poll taken in January of 2003, 82 percent of Americans believe that a heaven does exist. But the truth is that these days most people–including Christians spend very little time thinking about heaven. From the moment we wake up in the morning till we collapse  in exhaustion into our beds again at night, we’re running, going, doing, eating working and doing all manner of things.

Meanwhile we Christians believe that somewhere inconceivable in the universe is an unseen place that we’ve been taught about and it’s called heaven. It’s part of the distant future, not the here and now. And though we can see and touch the immediate environment we live in every day, heaven is out of sight and out of reach. Therefore, it hardly seem real. Besides, our lives move so fast and are so full that we can barely keep pace with what’s happening around us, much less stop to contemplate a place to which we’ve never been.

Part of the problem is what many of us typically believe about heaven leaves us considerable  less than impressed. What if, for example, you are just not into playing harps all day? What if fleecy white clouds and halos and singing in heavenly choir leaves you cold? And do you really have to run around in a white robe all the time?

Undoubtedly one reason so many of us have a hard time getting excited about eternity is that we carry around a stunted and juvenile view of heaven as a spectacular setting in which we float around endlessly doing bland things and “being holy.”

But John tell us exactly what heaven will be like. “I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of the heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21:1,2).

This city is not just something that John saw and know about–God’s people have been aware of it throughout the ages. God tells us that all of His holy prophets had spoken about God’s plan to deal with a sin damaged world. Peter told the people of old Jerusalem that God would “send the Christ, who has been appointed for you–even Jesus. He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as He promised long ago through His holy prophets” (Acts 3:20,21)