Posts Tagged ‘heart’

The Fruit of Your Lips

Monday, 28 November, 2011 07:05 Written by Pastor Bruce 0 Comments

Your words reveal your heart. A thankful and grateful person will have a continual flow of positive words coming out of their mouth.

Hebrews 13:15 AMP

Through Him, therefore, let us constantly and at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name.

Have you listened to yourself lately? What are you saying?

Are the words that you are using glorifying God and ministering grace to all those that hear you? Or do people run from you because of the negative flow coming from your heart and out of your mouth?

We are to imitate God as dear children imitate their father. God has designed each one of us to be carriers of thanksgiving and gratefulness. We should always have something to thank God about and have control over the thoughts that we allow in our minds.

Because we are recreated spiritually through our confession that Jesus is Lord we should be the most positive people that we know. God has given us the power of His Word to change our attitude from negative to positive and affect the very words that we speak.

As we submit ourselves to Him on a daily basis as we are instructed in Romans 12:1-2 we can expect that we will be changed from the way that the world thinks, speaks and acts to the way that God wants us to think, speak and act. It’s time to check out the fruit of our lips.

Share

Staying in the Love of God

Thursday, 29 September, 2011 11:43 Written by Pastor Bruce 0 Comments

It is the power of the love of God working through us that causes us to win in all that we do!

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. – Jude 1:20-21 NKJV

We can walk in love at all times, with all people and in every situation! Each one of us have the ability to love people that act unlovely and in our opinion may be undeserving of any love.

The way that we “tap in” to the love of God is first to become “born again”! When we become born again and make Jesus the Lord of our lives the love of God resides in our heart. His love can be “shed abroad” (Romans 5:5) increased or expanded in our lives as we yield and submit to the Holy Spirit. God is love according to 1 John 4:7-8 and when we pray in the Holy Spirit we “stir up” or cause His love to grow in our heart. When we pray in the spirit we are exercising and gaining ground spiritually in our ability to love like Jesus loves. We begin to have more compassion on people and see them the way that God sees them. This motivates us to love them the way that God loves them and we become a bigger vessel of His love extended to those around us. We stay in the love of God by continuing to pray in the Holy Spirit consistently. Let the love flow through you!

Share

Head or Heart?

Wednesday, 21 April, 2010 08:05 Written by Pastor Bruce 0 Comments

Is it real faith or just mental assent?

…if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. – Romans 10:9-10 NKJV

Mental assent looks like real faith in that people that mentally assent to the truth of God’s Word agree that the Word of God is true. But the difference in real faith and mental assent is that someone that has real Bible faith believes that the Word of God is true and that what the Word promises is “personally for them”.

God’s Word is true whether you believe it or not, but do you believe that everything that He has promised in His Word is for you personally? This is the most important question.

God wants to bless you but is limited in a sense by your faith (or lack of it). Faith is merely trusting that God is who He says that He is, that He has what He says He has and that He can do what He says that He says that He can do. Find out about God from His Word, begin to know Him at a deeper level and you will begin to trust Him at a deeper level as well!

Share

Locating the Heart by the Mouth

Wednesday, 20 January, 2010 09:48 Written by Pastor Bruce 0 Comments

When you speak you give yourself away.

…How can you speak good things when you are evil (wicked)? For out of the fullness (the overflow, the superabundance) of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man from his inner good treasure flings forth good things, and the evil man out of his inner evil storehouse flings forth evil things. But I tell you, on the day of judgment men will have to give account for every idle (inoperative, nonworking) word they speak. – Matthew 12:34-36 AMP

These were Jesus words to the religious leaders of the day. This was in response to their accusation that He was casting out demons because He had a demon. Their words gave voice to what was in their heart.

All you must do in order to locate people is let them talk for about 5 minutes. If their words are filled with hate, fear, doubt, criticism and pride then it is evident what is in their heart.

(But to hear what someone has to say you must let them talk. This “exercise” also helps us develop the all important skill of listening.) The more that you begin to listen to people the more aware you are of the words that you are speaking, then naturally you begin to judge your heart and words to make sure that they line up to God’s Word.

Your heart and mouth are connected. It is useless to use the excuse, “Yeah, I said that but I really didn’t mean it…” Change what is in our heart and the words that are coming out of our mouths will change.

Share

Cleanse the temple

Friday, 08 January, 2010 08:11 Written by Pastor Bruce 0 Comments

Don’t wait until spring to clean.

And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves. – Matthew 21:12-13 KJV

Jesus completely fulfilled the will of God in all things. When He drove out the money changers He was not doing it out of anger. (and certainly not to make a spectacle of them.) The purpose was to show them and us that the temple was not created for anything but communing and fellow-shipping with our Heavenly Father. In yesterday’s blog entry we saw that the temple was to be a house of prayer. We can relate to and see the importance of this in two ways; our house (physical dwelling place where we live) and His house (our body…if we are born again and in the family of God).

Our bodies were not made to harbor bitterness, covetousness, greed, anger and unforgiveness. Our “temples” (our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit) were made for a relationship with God. Our first responsibility is to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. First things first. As we pray each day and spend time with our Heavenly Father everything that is foreign and not of God begins to leave our “temple”. Romans 12 says that we are responsible to present our bodies a living sacrifice unto God. When we pray consistently we are presenting our bodies to the Lord. We are making time with Him our prime time and His peace and presence will fill our spirit, flow out into our soul and affect our bodies! How powerful!

Cleanse your temple by making your life a “house of prayer”. Fulfill the scripture, “Pray without ceasing” by being constantly in an attitude of prayer. Have an ongoing conversation with the Lord as you walk through your day. Don’t wait until spring.

Share
« Older Entries

Email Sign Up


 

Archives

February 2012
S M T W T F S
« Dec    
 1234
567891011
12131415161718
19202122232425
26272829  

Categories