GOOD NEWS DAILY – October 16

Today is my birthday. I have no plans other than to go to Bible study this evening. Oh, how times have changed. Truth is I don’t have a social life by choice because I live and breathe to love and glorify the Lord and to tell the world about Him.

My dreams have changed. My desires are different. My wants are not the same. My greatest desire this very day – my birthday – is to love the Lord with all my heart, to love others as myself, and to tell the world about Jesus in writing and out on the streets as the Lord leads me forth.

My family is far away but near and dear in heart. I am not given the opportunity to spend my birthday with them this time around. Would I love to spend my birthday with a precious friend loving and worshiping and talking about Jesus together and telling the world about Him? Oh, sure, absolutely yes.

But this is my highest desire for my birthday. To be wholly the Lord’s. To be pleasing in His sight. To make Him joyful, to bring Him pleasure, to make Him proud and to smile, to bring happiness to His heart, to glorify Him in all that I say, do, and think, and to repent when I fall short.

Birthday presents? I have all that I need today. If anyone gave to me a gift, I wish it would be this. To become a sponsor of my ministry to help me tell the world about the Lord!

This once utterly self-consumed woman is being transformed in the hands of the Lord. He is making me more and more into the woman He created me to be. HIS.

Please would you pray for me, this ministry, my handicapped streets ministry doggies, and all those the Lord reaches through the ministry.

Thank you!

IF YOU NEED HELP BEGINNING OR PRESSING ON IN A FOREVER RELATIONSHIP WITH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO REACH OUT AT 843-338-2219 OR lara@GoodNews.love

love & blessings,

lara

“I’m going to pack it up and go somewhere warm,” I told the Lord.

“If you do that, you will go against me. Is that what you want?” the Spirit of God spoke swiftly to my heart.

Honestly? That’s exactly what my flesh wants. I’m so sensitive to cold that I can get goose bumps from head to toe at 72 degrees. I’ve fought for weeks to get the management of where I stay in New York City in my latest season of being on the road for Jesus full-time to fix the heat and turn it on. The temperature has dropped at night significantly, the apartment gets cold, I wake up cold, and I hate using my little portable heater because of the cost compared with the heat the landlord is supposed to provide for free. I’m an outdoors person and love streets ministry and taking long walks to spend time with the Lord and get exercise and fresh air.

Is that what I want? To pack it up and run somewhere warm for winter? Flesh? YES!

Truth? I love the Lord Jesus Christ more than anyone and anything and hunger and thirst to live and breathe to love and glorify Him. I put my trust in Him day by day and believe He will take care of me and my sweet streets ministry doggies so long as I’m in His will. If He wants to move me south for winter, He will. If He doesn’t, He will take care of me right where I am.

Friend, following Jesus is about loving Jesus. About serving Him. About honoring Him. About praising Him. Worshiping Him. Trusting Him. Believing in Him. Obeying Him. Adoring Him. Magnifying Him. Telling the world about Him. And on and on. Most of all, LIVING FOR HIM!

No matter what your flesh cries out to do, will you turn from your sins, believe in Christ as Lord who died on the cross to pay your sin penalty and was raised from the dead, truly devoting your heart and life to the Lord and His ways no matter the cost?

Please live for the Lord! This very day, if you have not already, make the commitment! And follow through day in and day out with keeping it!

Hallelujah, AMEN!

“and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again.” 2 Corinthians 5:15

love & blessings,

lara

The Lord has given me an assignment in life and ministry that I would have given just about anything to avoid. But He is Lord, He gave it to me, and I need in my love for Him to obey Him and press on. The assignment comes with great risk. Risk to my comfort, to my mind, to my peace, to my heart, to what is familiar and feels safe and secure. I am used to taking risks for the Lord Jesus Christ by now because I am learning to die to myself daily, to take up my cross daily, and to follow Jesus daily. No matter the cost.

What does my flesh want to do? RUN and HIDE and NOT RETURN and GO SOMEWHERE EASY AND SAFE AND COMFORTABLE. But I don’t live by my flesh today. I live by the Spirit of God who lives inside His followers. And He who leads me gives the love, grace, strength, mercy, and absolutely everything I need to fulfill the will of the Lord. No matter the cost. No matter the risks.

There is a reward in all of this, you know. When we die to self, we live for Christ. When we live for Christ, we grow in relationship with Him. We get to spend forever with Him. We receive the indescribably amazing reward of being His forevermore.

Please don’t hold back taking risks for Jesus. Please give Him your all. Each and every day. For the glory of Christ, AMEN!

365 BLESSINGS is a devotional book I recently wrote that will soon be available in print by the grace of the Lord for the glory of the Lord! 

Blessing #155

“So David did as God commanded him, and they drove back the army of the Philistines from Gibeon as far as Gezer. Then the fame of David went out into all lands, and the Lord brought the fear of him upon all nations.” 1 Chron. 14:16-17

What happened when David obeyed God? He and his people won the battle, their victory was known, and God made it so countless people feared them. David’s obedience led to all this, and the glory belonged to the Lord. We are so blessed the Lord not only calls us to obedience – but also that He rewards us for it in whatever way(s) He desires. And what a blessing it is when He uses us to bring glory to His holy most precious blessed everlasting glorious name – the name above every other name, oh yes!

Sometimes tears fall down our cheeks. Sometimes they simply fall in our hearts. I have done my fair share of both. Crying in my heart. Crying down my face. Even on this very day, on my birthday in fact, I have a great sorrow in my heart. For several reasons in fact. But the reasons don’t matter. The message does.

Whether the tears are falling down our faces or falling in our hearts, the very best thing we can do I have long since learned is to pour out our hearts before the Lord who has for us love that never fails (1 Cor. 13:8), mercy that goes on forever (Psalm 118:1), and comfort that surpasses any comfort we can possibly receive on this earth (2 Cor. 1:3-4).

Oh, sure, it’s good to go to our loved ones, to our friends, etc. when the Lord leads us to do so to share with them our sorrows, but there is no greater shelter when the tears are falling, no greater refuge, no greater hiding place, than the one we find when we come running into the everlasting arms of the Lord Jesus Christ. The shelter of Christ!

Need to come into His refuge? Into His shelter? Come to Christ, my friend, come before the Lord – tears and all.

I have a sister in Christ whom I’ve only known a short while who is as I write getting on the New York City subway going totally out of her way with a huge bunch of devotionals I just wrote and published that she has folded to prepare them for distribution over the next few weeks for Halloween.

In the grand scheme of things, what a little thing she’s doing, don’t you think? A few hours of folding. A not altogether too long commute on the subway. Not so big in the context of ministry work, is it?

Or, is it? Only the Lord knows the degree to which she in her faithfulness is helping me. Only the Lord knows how exhausted I am. Only He knows how much I’ve been in need of help. And only He knows how the “little things” in ministry matter so exceedingly much because they are all part of the same whole of Christ’s Body of followers working together to love and serve Him forevermore.

Please don’t underestimate what you may be called to do for Christ. And please don’t turn away from your opportunities. Please serve however He calls you to serve, with a humble heart, and be thankful He will both call and equip you to serve Him however He desires. AMEN!