Greetings in the Name of Jesus and welcome to the PLN Sunday Night Bible Fellowship!

 

Tonight's message deals with the importance of maintaining an attitude of THANKSGIVING as a means of staying close to God based on the biblical principle that victory in life is largely about the quality of our personal relationship with Him.

 

To start with, most Christians face their trials in life with a lot LESS confidence and peace than they ought to. The empowerment to overcome any difficulty has ALREADY been made available to us by GRACE (God's unmerited FAVOR) through FAITH but for various causes we delay connecting to it. For example, instead of connecting to His GRACE at the onset of a new challenge, we often spend all our time trying to figure out how to get out of the related trial in our own strength like the World does. Connecting to GRACE is an afterthought.

 

Or instead ofpursuing His GRACE, we may spend our time murmuring and complaining about how God is either the cause of our problem or at the least "allowed" it to happen to us. Maybe He's trying to teach us something we can't otherwise learn. Or we get mad because it's taking so long for Him to come to the rescue. And sometimes we may even get to the point of accepting that the problem we're experiencing has become God's irreversible long-term plan for our lives that He's given us because of some past sin He's punishing us for, or because of some resistant character flaw He's trying to change.

 

Now I've discussed many times in this newsletter that I don't agree with the traditional SOVEREIGN-God way of looking at this. It's been traditional for a long time, centuries in fact, to say that God controls everything that happens on the earth. But it's obvious to anyone who will look outside the box of tradition that even though He could control everything if He wanted to, He's chosen NOT to. Indeed, He's given us the same attribute that He has of being able to CHOOSE among alternatives and options. We're free to make our own choices and decisions even if they turn out to be outside the will and plan of God. God has foreknowledge of what we're going to chose so His plans already contemplate our actual choices. And by the way, while God is certainly SOVEREIGN the concept of SOVEREIGNTY by definition does NOT include the idea of CONTROL. Neither does the synonym LORD. Please look them up for yourself.

 

If we eliminate our Almighty Father as a Source of our trials and tribulations, then according to Scripture where do they actually come from; and how are we supposed to overcome them?

 

Here's where they come from:

The devil

The world system

Other people

Our own choices and decisions

 

Here is how we overcome them:

By having a close relationship with the Lord so we can be easily led

By developing and emphasizing an attitude of THANKSGIVING

By becoming experienced in the Word

By giving our problems over to God in exchange for His solutions

By resisting the devil by using the Word and the weapons of spiritual warfare

By staying out of the world and avoiding its ways of doing things  

 

In sum, under the New Covenant God is simply not the CAUSE of our problems. He's the LIBERATOR, the DELIVERER. He didn't send Jesus to redeem us from the Curse only to turn that Curse back on His own children. And anyway, He has the POWER, indeed the objective to turn the mostly self-caused problems of loving believers into something good (Romans 8:28). His best is for us to HEAR the Holy Spirit and be Spirit-led to avoid as many problems as possible (Romans 8:14). But when we mess up, make the wrong choices and go in the wrong direction, once that has ALREADY happened, He WILL use the resulting trial to teach us something and make the most of it. He didn't need for you to have a tragedy so you could be a better teacher and the God who IS LOVE (1 John 4:8) didn't cause it. No, the Holy Spirit is present in the Believer to teach us ALL things (John 14:26), but once trials and tragedies happen He will turn them into something useful for the Kingdom of God. And also, God is not punishing us for sin (Romans 5:13) because He ALREADY punished Jesus for them, all of them forever. This is the way the New Covenant actually works and it will always work effectively if we can refrain from mixing it up with the Old Covenants that are NO longer operating.    

 

Spirit Led Sons of God

 

Now learning to be Spirit-led is something in this New Covenant that's vitally important. Born again Christians are supposed to be Spirit-led (Romans 8:14) which is one of the potential benefits of having the Holy Spirit present within every Believer. He's with the sons of God all the time and He'll never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). But we have to be willing and able to hear His communication in order to be led. The question is: how do we do that?

 

The answer is that we perceive Him in the part of us that's spirit. In other words, He communicates to us Spirit to spirit. Remember, we're three-part beings: spirit, soul and body (1 Thessalonians 5:23) but so far only the spirit part of us has been REDEEMED, reborn and reconnected to the presence of God. The soul part (mind, will, emotions, conscience, intellect, personality, etc.) is in the process of being redeemed and the physical part will eventually have to be replaced with a "glorious" body in order for its REDEMPTION to take place. So, the Holy Spirit speaks to the only part of us that's already REDEEMED, the spirit part. And as we grow in the knowledge of the Word and in our personal relationship with God, we become increasingly able to connect our awareness in the natural to the communications of the Holy Spirit in the supernatural.

 

We make that connection by FAITH. Even on occasion when the Holy Spirit manifests some communication to us in the natural, we have to perceive the source and receive it by FAITH. And if we believe it came from Him, we have to then use our FAITH to take action and implement what we've heard or seen. We have to ALWAYS connect to God's GRACE by FAITH and that's why it's so important that we focus on increasing our knowledge and understanding of the Word: FAITH comes by hearing the Word with understanding (Romans 10:17).

 

Staying Close to God

 

The bottom line is that the CLOSER we are to God, the more likely it is that we're going to be able to PERCEIVE His communication. That's why it's at the top of the above list of requirements to overcome our trials and tribulations. Indeed, the Bible says "the NEARNESS of God is my good" (Psalm 73:28). So I need to be looking for ways to stay CLOSE to the Holy Spirit. If I find myself distanced from Him at some point, it's not because He went somewhere; remember: He'll never leave me or forsake me (Hebrews 13:5). No, the Holy Spirit is always in the right place, the correct spot and it's my responsibility to find and come over to the place where He's hanging out. God is not going to come over to me; I have to go to where He is if I want His best for my life. And, the further I'm away from Him, the harder it is to hear His still small voice. So, I have to discern where He is and then make the effort to go there and be close to Him in order for things to work out for my good.

 

So the question now is: how do I stay close to God? Having an active prayer life and continually studying the Word are obvious answers. They're both essential for producing a close personal relationship with the Lord. But even if you're faithfully pursuing those things, their effectiveness can be compromised if you're spending most of your time, even your prayer time, focused on your problems. If you're worrying about them and looking for a way out all the time, you're going to cancel a lot of the good things you've done to cultivate a closer relationship. So as we've discussed in previous articles, an essential element for staying close to God is to cultivate sincere increasing GRATITUDE in your life in order to move your focus off your problems and over to all the good things He's doing in your life that you haven't been noticing. And you do that in two main ways:

 

1.  By remembering and honoring and GIVING THANKS to God for all the great things He's already done in your life in the past and,

 

2.  By GIVING THANKS for all the great things He's in the process of doing according to the promises you've been able to find in His Word which of course requires that you exercise your FAITH.

 

Developing a lifestyle of GIVING THANKS and being GRATEFUL instead of worrying and complaining and having wrong focus is guaranteed to produce NEARNESS to God. It's unavoidable. Every time the devil comes to try to make you worry or complain, RESIST him with the Word, turn the concern over to the Lord and start THANKING Him for everything you can think of. Stop worrying about what you don't have or you don't know and refocus. Our lives have been full of great things the Lord has done but we routinely forget about them if we're focused all the time on our current problems.

 

Friend, if He showed up in your past to rescue you from some trial it's absolutely CERTAIN He'll show up again. He's faithful and He LOVES you beyond your understanding. He didn't cause your problems but He WILL show up at the right time to deliver you and make the most of it. GOD ONLY DOES GOOD TO THOSE WHO ARE PURE IN HEART (Psalm 73:1 Tehillim) and ALL good things come only from God (James 1:17). And so, your sincere and honest THANKSGIVING will cause you to be one of those blessed Believers that stays NEAR to Christ and ALWAYS triumphs over EVERY adversity (2 Corinthians 2:14).

 

Thanks for stopping by tonight. We'll be looking for you again NEXT Sunday night on May 4. In the meantime may the Lord bless you with every spiritual blessing, compelling you to PROSPER in every area of life!

 

Sinners' Prayer

 

If you've never invited Jesus to be the Lord of your life, you need to and you can do it today just by saying out loud the following simple prayer:

 

Jesus I declare today with all my heart that I believe in you and that God raised you from the dead. I acknowledge that my sins have been forgiven and I ask you to come into my life today and be my Lord and Savior. Thank you for salvation and eternal life.

 

If you were sincere as you prayed this prayer, God has already come into your life and you are a new creation, a totally new species recreated in His image. Now ask the Lord to lead you to a good faith-based, bible-teaching church where you can be equipped to fulfill your potential in the Kingdom of God.

 

And, when you get a chance have someone help you look up the following scriptures because they confirm what you've done by saying this prayer today and believing what you said:

 

Romans 10:9

2 Corinthians 5:17

Ephesians 2:8

 

Prayer Requests

 

If you have a Prayer Request, please connect to the Link below and follow the promptings. The PLN staff members pray over Prayer Requests every Tuesday morning at 10:00 AM eastern time. Agree with us for God to answer your petition.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/prayer-request.aspx

 

Donations

 

If you've been edified by Prosperous Life Newsletter, you may want to consider making a SEED FAITH offering to support the Ministry (Galatians 6:6-7). God has instructed us to simply provide folks with an opportunity to sow seed into good ground so in due season you'll be eligible to reap a harvest and the rest is up to you as the Spirit leads. For your information PLN is a nonprofit gift to the Body of Christ so your financial offerings will usually be tax deductible (consult your tax advisor). Just go to the secure Shopping Cart on the Cornerstone web site by connecting through the following link. We appreciate your support and generosity.

 

http://www.creditcounseling.net/shop/item.aspx?itemid=1

 

About Prosperous Life Newsletter

 

PLN is an outreach ministry of Make A Way Ministries domiciled in Miami, Florida. It is in its 17th year of distribution and has been published continuously since January 1998. It's an e-publication primarily about finances in the Kingdom of God and is sent ONLY to our email list of MINISTRY MEMBERS. If you're reading this and aren't yet on our growing email list, please let us know and we'll be so very happy to add you to the list.

 

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