Scheming

Genesis 26-30: Cultivating an attitude of thankfulness produces faith in God's everyday blessings and provisions; shortcut scheming fights against faith.

Reputation

Jonah 4- Is witnessing sometimes more difficult because we value our reputation more in certain circumstances; work, friends, or family. Pride and reputation hinder Kingdom work.

Sin Tendencies

Gen 20: Abraham lied about his wife a second time!
Every saint must guard against old sin tendencies.
Accountability partners help, pride enables sin.
(from Twitter)

Time For God's Prayer

“We do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groaning which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26).

“He,” the Holy Spirit in you, “makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (8:27). And God searches your heart, not to know what your conscious prayers are, but to find out what the prayer of the Holy Spirit is.

The Spirit of God uses the nature of the believer as a temple in which to offer His prayers of intercession. “… your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit …” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

• In all types of media, satan has changed our framework of thinking about spiritual work to evil.

• The Holy Spirit desires a clean place to do His business inside you. We are saved by grace to be a temple of God. Unclean temple = bad relationship.

• We know from biblical examples that extended time alone is the time frame needed for the Holy Spirit to do His business within; convicting, teaching, and praying for you and me.

The challenge of this blogvotion is; do you allow time for the Holy Spirit to do His thing. It’s probably not a 5 minute process or on your way to work.

Would you ever NOT want the Holy Spirit of the world to be crowded out of praying time for your best interests or God’s will in your life? Perhaps the Spirit’s first prayer is for God to slow you down; and we wonder why some things happen.

1 Peter 1:5-11 How to Grow

2nd Peter 1:5-11 tells us how to grow as a Christian:

Growth demands diligence, stay at it. Each step builds on the next. Growth is not automatic!

Add to saving faith a life of moral excellence or virtue. Keep your mind clean!

Build knowledge onto moral excellence. Learn how to know God from His Bible.

Knowing God and what pleases Him will build self control. This means controling yourself.

Onto self control build patient endurance which means to control yourself a long time.

This endurance is like staying power; people can count on you to represent Christ all the time.

To endurance we add Godliness which God enables through His Holy Spirit inside us. The Holy Spirit is our power for all of this, get to know Him. He's ready any time you make time to get serious.

FInally, Godliness leads to a ginune love for all people, espedially other Christians. To be like God is to love people sacrificially like Christ.

Spiritual growth is not hard. We just have to stay focused.
It also helps to bring people along with you in the journey.

On a journey, it's much more profitable to focus on where you are going than
take a wrong exit and wind up in the wrong place. Preparation and focus!

Looking into a Mirror

James 1:22 gives an illustration on how Introspective GOd's view of us is.

Here is what Wiersby has to say: "The Word of God reveals what we are on the inside, just as a mirror reveals how we appear on the outside. When Christians look into the Word, they see themselves as God sees them and thus are able to examine their hearts and confess their sins.

But it is not enough merely to look into the Word and read it; we must obey what we read. A person who merely hears the Word but does not obey it is like a man who glances casually into the mirror, sees that his face is dirty, and goes on his way without doing anything about it.

Such a man thinks he has bettered himself spiritually when he has actually harmed himself."

The Miracle Of FIRE

The Holy Spirit wrote all the books of the Bible. Each time a future child of God or present child reads the Bible the same author helps us turn on the light bulb called spiritual enlightenment (2 Tim. 3:15-16). I define spiritual enlightenment as anything the Holy Spirit compels us to incorporate into the presentation of our daily lives that gives God glory (v16).

Depending on His purpose in our lives, the Holy Spirit may rebuke, encourage, or simply teach. Again, we learn when we subject ourselves to His teaching in His Holy Scriptures that He wrote.

There is literally a miracle every time we choose to combine three things that make FIRE for the child that wants to grow spiritually.
• The Holy Scriptures.
• A devoted, receptive heart to the Holy Spirit’s instruction.
• Time to listen and pray what you learned.

The second commandment tells us that God is jealous of our time and attention. Take time to make FIRE with God.

PS. The results of other people’s fire will make more since and bless you properly if we give God His time to lay His custom foundation for our lives at His FIRE first.