Frank Damazio @ Tuesday’s 4:30pm Rally (Photo credit: James Kirsop)
God’s blessings for us are limited only by ourselves – not by His resources, power, or willingness to give. Refuse any obstacle, person, or opinion that restricts your expectations for our future. There are great, God-given opportunities before you, great open doors, and great rewards lying within your reach. Stretch. Expect. Believe. Persist. Possess.
Frank Damazio
(from The Attitude of Faith)
Words (Photo credit: sirwiseowl)
By faith, call those things that are divine truth in the spiritual realm into being in the natural realm. It is not a magic formula or wishful thinking. It is operating within the laws of God’s Word……………Do not use your words to confirm or mold negative situations in your life. Use your words and God’s Word to change those situations. Jesus confirmed the power of the spoken word in John 6:63: “Every word I’ve spoken to you is a Spirit-word, and so it is life-making.” (Message)………Spirit-words – God’s words coming out of your mouth because they are in your heart – are life-making…..God’s Word out of your mouth is filled with the same power it had coming out of His mouth. God’s Word never goes out without producing an effect. It is never powerless (see Isaiah 55:11). When you speak His Word, His power is behind it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .And do not fall for the devil’s lie that it is too late for you. If you are alive and still talking, it is not too late! Use your voice to cry out and prepare the way God says is yours, and watch Him release the full force of his favor toward you as you walk out, and speak out, His Word.
Duane Vander Klok
(from Unleashing the Force of Favor)
English: Scroll of the Book of Proverbs (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
God has a purpose for each of us, a role to play in His cosmic drama of redemption for a lost world. Your role will be different from mine and, indeed, from that of anyone else. We are each unique. God has ordained a part for you that you alone can play. The tragedy is that so many people never discover their part until after the curtain call. God calls us to turn to Him for guidance. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Prov. 3:5-6). Another way to render that last phrase is “He will direct your paths.”………..If we trust God and obey His will, He will bring us “onstage” at just the right time to play the “role of a lifetime” – a role He has been preparing us for all along.
Dr. Myles Munroe
English: Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, Bjelovar, Croatia Hrvatski: Kip Presvetog Srca Isusova u crkvi sv. Terezije Avilske u Bjelovaru (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From beginning to end, we will be called to make courageous decisions even while we find ourselves gripped with fear. There are no exemptions. Any claims that you should be exempt from having to walk this path are rejected. Any attempt to create an elitist category for those who live heroic lives while placing yourself outside of it is unacceptable. If your argument is that you just aren’t cut out for this kind of adventure, you can rest in the comfort that you are absolutely right, which is exactly why Jesus is calling you out. He calls you to begin a quest for honor. Courage is not an issue of birth. It is an expression of the heart. To be courageous is literally to be strong of heart. Both fear and courage are heart conditions. If you are weak of heart, fear not. Everyone who chooses to follow Jesus Christ receives a heart transplant. This new heart comes fully equipped with the spirit and courage of God ready to be pumped right into your timid soul.
To follow Jesus is to choose to live in His adventure. How in the world could you ever imagine a life of faith that does not require risk? Faith and risk are inseparable. It should not come as a surprise to us then that a life of faith is a life of courage. ….You cannot walk by faith and live in fear. You cannot walk with God and not face your fears. God calls you to dream great dreams and to have the courage to live them. Great dreams require great courage.
Erwin Raphael McManus
Andrew Wommack in Schiphol-Rijk (Photo credit: Johan Koolwaaij)
God has already moved and blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Everything we’ll ever need – joy, peace, wisdom, revelation knowledge, etc. – has already been provided. But it’s all in the spirit realm….If you can’t understand that everything God has already provided for you is in the spirit realm, then you’ll lose this truth I am communicating. Why? Faith acts like a bridge to bring what is true and real in the spiritual world into the physical world. The truth is, very few believers allow their faith to be that bridge for what God has already done to cross over into the natural realm. We just don’t see very much manifestation of it.
Andrew Wommack
(from You’ve Already Got It)
English: Map of The Christian World, with the largest Christian populations. Made from File:Muslim world map.png (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Success in God’s kingdom does not come just by finding your promised land, educating yourself, and
becoming kingdom minded. It comes by putting those principles into practice
with great effort and diligence. One of the most neglected ingredients in many
Christians’ lives is plain hard work. There is no shortcut around it. I am
convinced that hard work is the missing element in many people’s lives and that
many spheres of society today are suffering at the hands of the devil because
righteous people have not learned to work hard.
Sunday Adelaja
(from Church Shift)
Before a man accomplish anything of an enduring nature in the world he must first of all acquire some measure of success in the management of his own mind. This is as mathematical a truism as that two and two are four, for, “out of the heart are the issues of life.” (Here Allen is referring to Proverbs 4:23). If a man cannot govern the forces within himself, he cannot hold a firm hand upon the outer activities which form his visible life. On the other hand, as a man succeeds, in governing himself he rises to higher and higher levels of power and usefulness and success in the world.
James Allen
Confidence (Photo credit: wherefishsing)
I am confident that God has called you – and has promised to strengthen you – to do this work. So don’t waste any more days. God will do something special with your life if you will exercise faith in living out your purpose. If you discover how he has gifted you and where he’s calling you, and if you glimpse what he’s up to, your confidence will grow with deep roots, roots that will see you through the droughts of doubt and the winters of wondering why you’re here on this earth. Move boldly into your future, my friend, infused with confidence that the Creator of the universe made you unlike anyone else for a special purpose that is yours alone.
Jim Graff
Barnabas curing the poor by Paolo Veronese, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mick Turner
Although rarely covered in articles on spiritual laws and principles, one of the most beneficial and useful principles is “The Law of Encouragement.” Briefly stated, the Law of Encouragement implies that those behaviors that a person performs that receive positive encouragement from important people are likely to increase in frequency. This is just basic common sense if you think about it.
The problem often arises, however, when a person does the right thing but rarely gets positive feedback for his or her actions. No, this doesn’t mean we need to be praised each time we do something good. However, it does imply that we at least like to have our efforts recognized from time to time. The point is that encouragement is a vital component of spiritual development. Without positive encouragement our dedication to the process of becoming the best that we can be is likely to wane.
The fact that we need encouragement highlights the importance of surrounding ourselves with positive people that are also on the path of spiritual formation. It is from such a cadre of spiritual friends that we can find the encouragement that we need.
In the early days of the Christian movement Barnabas was recognized as such a person. From scripture we know that Barnabas was often a companion to Paul and others and, although there was a rift of some sort between Paul and Barnabas later on, the Apostle still recognized Barnabas’ talents. Everyone needs a Barnabas in their Christian life, including you. Jim Graff, in his excellent book A Significant Life discusses the importance of encouragement in relation to the realization of potential:
First, potential watered by encouragement grows and blooms into purposeful passion. The passion to work is then natural and not forced. Second, as our “passion fruit” becomes focused on God’s goals, we develop the priorities necessary to accomplish those objectives. This process then continues as we grow stronger and more confident in God’s character as well as in who he’s created us to be….The goal is to see that living significant lives requires the development of our potential. And in order to blossom, that potential needs praise, the kind of positive reinforcement that God usually provides through others. As our potential – recognized and reinforced by others – matures, we develop passion for who we are and what God calls us to accomplish.
It is imperative to keep in mind our overriding goal in this process. What we are trying to do here is appropriate our true identity in Christ and bring the blessings associated with that identity down from the spiritual world and into manifestation in our daily lives. Thus, when Jim Graff talks about developing “a passion for who we are and what God calls us to accomplish,” he is addressing our primary goal. We develop a passion for who we are, a passion for our reborn identity in Christ. In Christ, we are, indeed, new creations and we have a lot more power than we think we do.
I know that in my own life, once I came to a deeper understanding of the true nature of this being we call Jesus Christ and from that understanding realized the extent of what he accomplished by leaving his celestial home and incarnating in this broken world, everything changed. This knowledge and new understanding was more than just dry intellectual information. Instead, this revelatory insight was more akin to a transformational wisdom that penetrated every cell of my being, altering how I viewed and experienced the world.
It was, in short, life changing.
My purpose in sharing this experience is to illustrate the importance of encouragement in the spiritual journey. You see, had I not had a small cadre of deep spiritual friends, I doubt I would have had the fortitude, discipline, and guidance to have persevered in my quest for wisdom and understanding. From this group of spiritual brothers and sisters I received much encouragement and it was this very encouragement that carried me forward, especially when times were difficult and other duties and responsibilities competed for my time and energy.
As stated earlier, my perspective on life was reshaped as I became more experientially aware of who and what Christ was, as well as what he accomplished in his mission to this world, his death, his resurrection, and his ascension. Flowing out of these revelations I also came to appreciate another seemingly insignificant passage of scripture and more importantly, the truth that it revealed:
…….And the same one who descended is the one who ascended higher than the highest heaven so that he might fill the entire universe with himself. (Eph. 4:10 NLT)
The implications of this passage are mindboggling – truly staggering when one reflects on the practical reality of Paul’s words. Space does not permit a detailed description of this passage in this essay, but suffice to say that by filling the entire universe with himself, Christ altered the very fabric of the everyday reality in which we live, move, and have our being. My point in mentioning this to further illustrate the magnificence and the incredible blessings brought by Christ as he completed that phase of his work.
This life-enhancing revelations gave birth to an unquenchable desire to respond to Christ’s benevolence and sacrifice in the deepest way possible. I came to understand that the most appropriate response would be to do all that I could to fulfill the following personal life goal:
To become the optimal version of myself for the glory of God and the benefit of others.
Further, I increasingly became aware that a significant part of my life’s calling involved encouraging others to do the same. Whatever our station in life, we can make things better by striving to be all that we can be. When we live up to our God-given potential, amazing things begin to happen. When we begin to manifest the optimal version of ourselves, the whole world benefits in ways both great and small. Science has firmly established that we live in an interdependent, interconnected universe and, as a result, everything we do has an impact whether we are aware of it or not.
I am convinced that as the church moves forward in these challenging yet exciting times one of its most vital needs is for a plethora of called and committed encouragers. Throughout history, especially at times of revival and spiritual awakening, the faith saw a wide array of encouragers and exhorters rise up and provide much needed motivational enthusiasm when the Body of Christ needed it most. Glenn McDonald, in his excellent book entitled The Disciple Making Church speaks wisely to this issue:
God sends special teachers into our lives – men and women who by one means or another are called to demonstrate, proclaim, interpret, and model the various essentials of the disciple life. To climb a few feet higher on the spiritual slope we need to receive encouragement and the extended hands of those who are at least a feet ahead of us.
The pages of scripture, both Old and New Testaments, are filled with examples of timely encouragers and mentors who provided guidance and encouragement to biblical heroes in their time of testing. McDonald continues:
“Solo flight” is not a value celebrated in the Bible. Spirituality is imparted and received through relationships. Joshua’s leadership lessons arrived via his association with Moses. Ruth looked to her mother-in-law Naomi. Elisha became the protégé of Elijah. Mary found “problem pregnancy” encouragement from her older relative Elizabeth. Many of the second generation Christian missionaries, including Titus, Epaphras, and Tychicus, looked to Paul. Apollos received mentoring from Priscilla and Aquila.
Although it is a value cherished by American culture, rugged individualism is foreign to the Christian walk of faith. Christianity was born in community, grew in community, and thrives in community. In the current age, when the faith is facing monumental challenges that threaten its very survival, this need for community is even more critical. And within the Christian community, encouragement is sorely needed. As a collective force, the Christian church needs to stop its petty infighting, especially over trivial matters and spend more of its energy in a positive direction.
Raising up a vital, committed force of encouragers is central to this goal.
© L.D. Turner 2012/All Rights Reserved
English: folio 11 recto of the codex with the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The church described in the book of Acts was a self-sacrificing church where believers were selling their private possessions and property and bringing them to the apostles to distribute to those in need. We don’t see a lot of that happening today. The people who had sacrificed personal comforts for the good of community were not focused on having nice buildings or fancy lights or comfortable chairs; they just wanted to take care of people’s needs.
Tyler Edwards
(from Zombie Church)
