GOOD NEWS DAILY – NOVEMBER 21

Did you know followers of the Lord Jesus Christ have been given authority over the devil in Jesus’ name? We’ve been given authority by the Lord to cast the devil and his demons out of people who don’t yet believe in Jesus as Lord. We’ve been given authority to resist the devil in Jesus’ name.

But as exciting as this is, and as vitally important as it is to put this into practice in line with what we learn in the Bible, this is NOTHING compared with how exciting, thrilling, wonderful, and marvelous it is that those of us who turn from our sins, believe in Christ as Lord who died on the cross to pay our sin punishment and was raised from the dead, genuinely turning to God and His ways with a life-long commitment of living for Christ rather than for ourselves any longer ARE FORGIVEN AND GIVEN EVERLASTING LIFE WITH JESUS! WE ARE WRITTEN IN WHAT IS CALLED THE LAMB’S BOOK OF LIFE! OF EVERLASTING LIFE!

No matter the trials we may face each day, let those of us who have committed our lives to Jesus and received Him as Lord and Savior REJOICE that we belong to Him forevermore! And in our time on this earth, let us most assuredly take authority over the devil in Jesus’ name and live the fullness of the abundant lives the Lord has for us here & forevermore! AMEN!

“And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”” Luke 10:18-20

“Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.” James 4:7-10

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” John 10:10

love & blessings,

lara

“Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Luke 9:23

I started dialing a telephone number when clear as day the Spirit of God who lives inside His followers spoke to my heart these words:

“This is not my will,” He said.

The Lord God almighty manifests Himself in three forms. God the Father. Jesus Christ the Son. The Holy Spirit. They are all one, and yet each has His role as He manifests Himself. The Holy Spirit is a He. He speaks to His followers’ hearts always in line with His Word!

He was not done. “It is yours.”

Meaning? I was calling someone the Lord didn’t want me to call right then. I was following my flesh instead of the Spirit of God. Living in the flesh. I was acting on MY will. Not HIS will!

Some time ago, I wouldn’t have cared. I would have gone off on my merry way anyway to satisfy my flesh. To fulfill my will. Now I understand a Christ follower is to DENY SELF and? Take up one’s cross! And? FOLLOW JESUS!

I hung up the phone. If you’re tempted to do something that you know will grieve the heart of God because it’s not His will, DON’T DO IT. If you’ve already done it, repent and turn back to Him!

I turned back to the Lord. So I could follow Him instead. Please do the same. Follow Jesus, my friend! Now and forevermore!

“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”” Isaiah 6:8

“Father, I’m in the middle of something!” I told the Lord.

Seriously? Yes! I actually in my pride had the audacity to tell the Lord I didn’t want to do something He had placed on my heart He wanted me to do because I was busy with something else.

Obedience? Not. I needed to stop what I was doing and follow Him instead. I needed to humble myself before Him and obey Him.

Anything you’ve been avoiding doing the Lord has placed on your heart to do? Please obey. On His timetable. Not yours.

p.s. Just minutes later, I called the person the Lord wanted me to call. I spoke and prayed what He placed on my heart. A man who had been weighed down terribly by something very painful for years was by God’s grace for God’s glory set free. Amazing what the Lord will do when we humble ourselves and obey. No glory for me. ALL GLORY to the Lord!

Look at the willingness in the verse above of Isaiah the prophet to serve and obey the Lord. May we have the same. May we say, “Here Am I” – and OBEY! AMEN.

365 BLESSINGS is a devotional book I wrote that is available in print by contacting me at 843-338-2219 or via lara@GoodNews.love.  

BLESSING 208

“Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,” Ephesians 3:20

Does this verse say the Lord will ALWAYS do “exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think”? No! Does it say He promises to do so if we pray hard enough? No! Does it say we deserve for Him to do so? No! But it does say the Lord CAN do so! And, if we reflect on our lives, how often has He done just that? Oh, could we ever count the ways in which the Lord has been so very wonderfully good to us? No, absolutely not! He is so, so, so, so infinitely wonderfully fantastically good! He is good! He is God! He is Lord! He will reign forevermore! The Lord God almighty, creator of all the universe, CAN do unfathomably more than we can possibly ask or think. More than we can possibly pray. He can do so very, very, very much more than we can imagine or ask for.

Oh, how good, how lovely, how absolutely tremendous and remarkable and grand is the Lord, yes! Do we deserve any of this? No! We are all sinners hell-bound but for His grace by which we are saved when we repent and believe in Him as Lord. What we truly deserve is hell and the lake of fire forever apart from Him. What He gives His followers instead is His forever love, His forever mercy, His forever grace, His forever goodness, oh, how blessedly awe-inspiring is our Lord!

Some people call it receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. Some people call it the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Some people call it being filled with the Holy Spirit. The Bible describes all three as the same. And the Bible makes clear that though a person who repents and turns to Christ as Lord who died on the cross to pay our sin penalty and was raised from the dead is forgiven, spiritually born again, receives the promise of everlasting life, and is sealed with and indwelt by the Holy Spirit, there is a separate magnificent and miraculous and crucial experience involving the Holy Spirit that may occur at a different point in time. Some do in fact receive the gift, baptism, and filling of the Holy Spirit right at the point of receiving Christ as Lord. But some according to the Bible do not experience this until a later date.

What is this exactly? The Bible shows us that it is the Spirit of God filling us with the power, boldness, courage, words, gifts, absolutely anything and everything we need specifically to go out and tell the world about the Lord Jesus Christ! It is specifically to serve the Lord in helping to build His Kingdom of forever followers!

This is often little taught in churches, and may be even wrongly taught when it is even taught, and this may well be why there is such a great lack in this day and age of Christians going out into the world to spread the Gospel message and to help people follow Jesus day by day.

I have done some serious studying through the years of the Holy Spirit in the Bible, most importantly, as well as studied some of the teaching of well known and well respected missionaries and evangelists of long ago who taught significantly on this subject.

I encourage you to dive deep into God’s Word when it comes to the Holy Spirit, to ask the Lord for the baptism, or gift, or filling of the Holy Spirit, to receive the in-pouring of God’s Spirit by faith, and to go out and serve the Lord as He leads you forth.

Can we then ask for fresh fillings of the Holy Spirit to go out and tell the world about Jesus? Absolutely!

I recently read a teaching from the 1940’s by John Rice called “The Fullness of the Spirit”. I believe I was inspired by brother Rice’s strong preaching on this subject to write this piece. If you’re led to read it, you can do so by doing a Google search or visiting http://articles.ochristian.com/article10546.shtml.

Though I don’t read a large amount outside the Bible these days, I have in the past and periodically return to some of the preaching of the long ago missionaries and evangelists. You might consider reading some of the work of Charles Spurgeon, D L Moody, Hudson the missionary, Torrey, Wesley, David Livingstone, William Carey, Jim Elliot, David Brainerd, George Mueller, and many others of long ago.

Whether or not you read or listen to any of the preaching and autobiographies and biographies of any of them I would encourage you to do based on if and as the Lord so leads you.

Please remember THE VERY MOST IMPORTANT READING WE EVER DO ON THIS EARTH IS OF GOD’S WORD – THE BIBLE! This we should do daily for our lifetime! Not only to read it, but to live by it!

And please remember no matter how great the reputation of any preacher, we are all imperfect human beings. Be sure to measure all you read and hear against the Bible. The Lord will only and always speak in line with His Word. Anything that does not line up with the Bible, we need to let go.

I had the great blessing of a phone call with a precious brother in Christ who is a street preacher in New York City. Oh, what an encouragement he was to me as he poured Bible verses into me, shared his ongoing testimony with me, and told me what he was doing that particular day.

“Whatever He [the Lord]tells me,” He essentially said. “Wherever He tells me to go.”

“He told me to get off here [a certain subway stop],” my brother in Christ explained. “So I preached…”

He preached on the subway when the Lord wanted Him preaching there. He got off the subway and preached at the stops where the Lord wanted him to preach. He simply followed the Spirit of God as He led him to do what He wanted him to do where He wanted him to go. He was utterly surrendered to Jesus in serving Jesus.

This is the way we are to serve Jesus, my friend. Surrendered. As He by His Spirit leads us forth!