slow to speak

"My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you" (James 1: 19-21, NIV).

We are all guilty of becoming quick to anger. Different things get people angry very quick. Driving for example, I am quick to anger when I'm cut off by another driver or when someone accuses me of something I did not do: I get angry real fast. When this happens, I am also quick to speak my mind, as controlled by the emotional anger I feel at the moment. I may cuss at the other driver, or snap at my coworkers or supervisor if I feel cornered.  But this is not what God wants from us.

Jesus wants us to be slow to speak and slow to be angry, and quick to listen. When I'm angry, it takes effort to slow my anger down and bite my lip so that I don't say something that I know I will regret. This is because when you are angry and are quick to speak in your anger, the words you end up using are usually hurtful or hateful and don't reflect the love the Jesus wants you to project to others.

Anger is an avenue in which the devil can sneak into your heart and try to take control of you. Don't hold on to anger because of this. Let your anger go and you are released from the grip of satan. If you don't he can get a foothold in your heart and will lead you away from Jesus.  I find that holding on to anger takes a lot of energy and separates me from my relationship with the Lord. If you hold on to anger, your relationship with Jesus can be compromised and you will begin to slip in your walk with him. 

This leads to the second part of the quoted verse above. With anger and holding on to anger, you become susceptible to the world's moral filth and evil that is as prevalent today as it was when this verse was written.  Instead of being angry and opening yourself to evil thoughts, which lead to evil desires, let that anger go. Be humble in Christ and your anger will dissipate and will turn to understanding and love. You will be able to let that anger go and approach the person or situation that you were angry with in a different manner (love) that will reflect that which the Lord wants: Love towards one another. Hold on to anger and you can't emulate love to others.

Be aware when you feel anger percolating up inside of you and quickly pray and ask for that anger to be turned into understanding and love. With love, you can overcome anything. With anger you are caught in the snare of satan.  The Lord, once saved, has planted His word in your heart and you need to hold on to that seed of love and compassion to overcome your anger.

Don't let anger rule you life. Let Jesus and His Word rule your heart, mind, and sole. How do you wrap yourself in Jesus and His Word? You do this by daily speaking to Jesus, studying His Word, and keeping him in the forefront of your mind at all times. Do this and anger will subside or dissipate completely from you when a situation arises when you can be angry. 

Be slow to speak. Especially if you are caught up in anger. You can't take words back and when you speak out of anger, the words coming out of your mouth are usually not of love or compassion or understanding. By biting your lip if you are angry, you will avoid saying those things that you will regret the moment you say them. Before you speak, let the anger go and when you speak, you will be speaking in a way that emulates the love and compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ.  If you speak before you overcome your anger, you are speaking words pushed out by satan and will end up hurting others and not portraying yourself as a child of the Lord, but as a worker of the devil. 

Be the bigger person and avoid being angry and speaking in anger. This is pleasing to the Lord and will bring you closer to the Lord by having self control over your emotions and your tongue.

Being Humble

Romans, Chapter 12: 3-8 (NIV)
For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. ⁴ For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. ⁶ We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

I find that being humble makes me more receptive to the word of God and His guidance for me. I have also been at a point when I was snobbish in my walk with Jesus, thinking I was better than others and higher in my knowledge than others about the word of God and what he has given me as gifts.  When my pride is high, God will always present to me a word or a though, or us others to put me in my place and bring me back to being humble in my spirit, mind, and heart.  

To me, the devil wants me to be prideful, because he uses my pride to distance myself away from Christ and His teachings. He wants me to think that I'm good at what I do and the knowledge I have so that I don't pray or study the Word in the Bible.  I'm human, and I've fallen into this trap of thinking before. Yet God in His Grace finds ways to remind me that I need to be humble in my ways and my walk with Jesus.  I'm reminded by Christ that I am lowly and sinful and that I can't rely on myself to walk with the Lord but must rely on His Grace. This includes the gifts the Lord has bestowed on me.

As far as I can determine, as proclaimed to me by other brothers and sisters in the Lord and my pastor, I have the gifts of discernment and hospitality. 

My house is always open to others and we hold church activities at my house. I've been told on many occassions that my home feels like a home and people feel real comfortable with us in our home and the hospitality we show to others is very clear. To me and my wife (one of her gifts also), this is just a natural thing to do: have our hosue open to others and always welcoming to our brothers and sisters in Christ. 

My other gift is discernment. I can usually look at someone and/or after a short converstation can feel in my heart things about them that others cannot. This helps me greatly in praying for others and helping them work through issues and concerns they have about life in general or with their spiritual standing.  I find that the more I learn about people, the more discerning I am based on my initial insights. I feel Jesus uses me in this way to help people and to bring them closer to Him.

I feel very humbled that God has given me these gifts. I'm humbled that people feel comfortable in my home and I feel humbled that I can discern aspects of peoples lives and needs with little digging and questions to them to help them in their walk with Christ and can give them advice and directions to help them.

Thank you for my gifts Jesus. Without You and the Holy Spirit, I am nothing. With You and the Holy Spirit, I am able to work for your kingdom and I pray that I am always humble in my walk with you and that I am humble in my gifts of hospitality and discernment and that you use me and my gifts to introduce others to You and your plan of Salvation. I also pray that my gifts help bring those sitting on the fence of salvation over to you. I pray that my gifts help those that are saved to be stronger in their walk with you and they become stronger in faith as You use me through my gifts. All praise and glory to my Lord Jesus.

Be Brave

"The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged” (Deuteronomy 31:8 NIV)

I am not a leader in my faith. I am a follower of Jesus Christ. This verse says that the Lord himself goes before me and will be with me and I should not be afraid or discouraged.  If I let Jesus lead me, I find that my life much more easy and enriching. I find that when I put my faith in the Lord, I am not afraid, and when the Lord brings someone to me to discuss my faith, I don't get discouraged or scared.

I used to be scared and afraid of a lot of things, but as I grow in my relationship with Jesus, I find my fears and apprehensions are null and void and I'm more bold in my statement of faith and my witnessing to people.  This comes from putting my faith in Jesus and letting him lead, to go before me. 

In my office, we received a new worker and I felt compelled to ask him if he found a church to go to yet. He said he wasn't really a church kind of guy. That was my opening. I began to talk to him about what I believed and we had some pretty in depth conversations about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

I was able to witness and give my testimony to him and he began to discuss how he thought God had worked in his life and that he had a void in his heart that he felt needed to be filled. I told him that void was the lack of Jesus in his life. We continued to talk for weeks about Jesus and faith in general. He now regularly attends a church and has told me he is learning more and more about Jesus and the Christian faith. 

This is proof to me that God provides the opportunities to us to witness and to give people the opportunity to find out more about Jesus.  I feel very humbled by the experience and am thankful I played a hand in bringing someone to Jesus. Has he accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior yet? No, but he is closer than he was before we talked. If we never talked about faith, he would probably not be going to church and learning more about Jesus. I can only pray and hope he will accept Christ.

When God crosses your path with an opportunity to talk to someone about Him and Jesus, you have two choices: you can not talk about Jesus or you can talk about Jesus. When these opportunities arise, you will feel it in your heart to start the discussions. If the person is receptive, you can testify and witness. If they are not interested, at least you tried and have at least planted a seed that hopefully will sprout in that person's mind and they will later bring up faith again to you. If they don't want to talk, don't despair or be discouraged, for you did what you were called to do: proclaim Jesus.

Be bold and not discouraged in your witnessing and testimony to others: your words and actions may just save a soul!   

Don't Worry

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? (Matthew 6:24, NIV)

God takes care of us. Always. It may not seem like it sometimes, but He is there, 100% of the time to meet our needs.  He tells us not to worry about the little things of life because he will take care of them.

Have you ever been a spot where it was seemingly hopeless? Maybe you lost your job, or the bills are more than your income, or your house burnt down, or some other event happened to you when it seems like there is no hope.  Have hope. Have hope in the Lord and know that He is with you, even in your troubles and will make the means possible to take care of you.

Pray for relief and give thanks to the Lord for what he has given you. We live in a country that even our poorest families are considered rich to those in some countries.  We should be thankful for what we have and not worry about our life or the things we need for He will provide.

God, is the God of the universe, and if he knows each animal, and the count of each hair on your head, then we should trust that he will take care of us in the menial and simple things of life. If you don't feel that God is with you, He is. He may not answer your prayers right away but he does care for you enough to make sure you are taken care of.

He may not fill your fridge with food, but He provides food banks through churches. He may not give you a gift card for the mall to get clothes, but he provides those things through the church or other charities. Don't expect God to give you the world, but you can bet on it that you will be taken care of. 

This isn't regulated to just your physical and material needs, for you are more than what you eat or what you drink, or what you wear. You are His child and he will take care of you in a much more meaningful way: your soul and spirit. Jesus fills you with love and peace, in all situations, if you seek Him in those needs. 

If you are having hard times, or good times, Jesus is our Lord and will take care of our needs. Give thanks for what you have and pray for those things which you need.  Just the other day, our church didn't have enough money to pay their payroll and some bills. God took care of that. A member of the Church was moved to give a large amount of money and the prayer of the Church was answered: the check they recieved covered the bills and payroll to exactly what they needed plus a little more. This is proof that God takes care of us and the church family.

Have faith in the Lord, pray to Him always, and give thanks for what you have.

Heaven Our Home

Heaven our Home

 

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20 NIV).

 

If you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, that he died for your sins and rose from the grave and ascended to heaven, then you are a Christian, a follower of Christ.  This also means that this world we live in is not our home. Our home is in heaven because by believing in Christ, we are citizens of heaven. 

We followers of Christ eagerly wait to meet Jesus. We wait expectantly and patiently to that day when we get to meet our Maker face-face.  What a glorious time this will be. I know that I eagerly await my time to leave this fallen world to journey to heaven to be with my Creator.

While we wait though, we must survive the current world we live in and this takes great effort on our part to not fall to the ways of this world but to keep our eyes focused on our final prize: to be with Jesus in heaven for all eternity. 

The world we live in is ruled by Satan and he will try to do his best to encourage us to stray from Christ’s teachings and stop believing in His promises of eternal glory with Him in heaven. Hold tight my friends to Christ and His ways, always praying for strength and guidance as we run the marathon of Christian living to the finish line and cross over into heaven to meet our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Joy

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” (John 15:11-12, NIV).

The Lord’s joy is in my soul always. No matter what happens during the day, the troubles and tribulations that I face, I am assured of His joy. Why? My joy is not of this world but of the Kingdom of God and heaven which I will ascend to someday. My joy is in my future relationship with Jesus and to meet him face to face in joy and love.

Part of the joy I have is in his commandment to love others as He has loved me. What choice do I have but to love? God loved us so much that he sent His only Son to us, in this fallen world, to sacrifice Himself for our Salvation.

To not love one another is by default to hate others. Not having love for one another takes effort and takes energy away from furthering the kingdom of God.  Love is easy, for all you have to do is to let Jesus shine through you and your actions and your interactions with people. Do this and love will radiate from within you to others.

To love one another can be difficult at times but to put the effort forth to choose to love even those who seemingly do not deserve love, gives you a sense of peace, regardless of other’s response to your love. You see, it isn’t about bending to others to make them happy, it is about obeying the one true God of this universe: To emulate His love to others.

You never know, your loving attitude and emulation may just bring some lost soul Jesus.

Anxious

Anxious

By

John Lysaught

 

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philipians 4:6-7)

I have trouble with this verse. I’m anxious by the nature due to my chemical imbalance in my brain (bipolar, major depression and anxiety disorder). I struggle because since I’m always anxious, I’m a worry-wart of sorts about everything. Just sitting here, I’m anxious for no apparent reason, it’s just me and today I feel extremely anxious about everything.

I get what this verse means, and understand what it is saying, yet I’m always anxious about even the prayers I present to the Lord.  I’m always asking the Lord to take my anxiety and worries away and do so with thanksgiving, but for some reason, that the Lord only knows, I am stuck in the rut of anxiety, which brings fear and worry. I really want the peace of God that comes from not being anxious about everything.

I can say that I have felt that peace before on many occasions and when that peace of God is present, I savior it and try to hold on to it for as long as I can. When I feel peace, I’m so much calmer in my mind and heart that I feel reassured in the Lord. For me, it’s a tug of war between my anxiety and the promises of the Lord. I just can’t get over the anxiety I feel.

I get most anxious when I read the news, when I read articles on Rapture Ready about the Rapture, and when I think of my own salvation. I worry about the things going on in the world and I worry that I am doing what Jesus wants me to do. I worry a lot of my own salvation. I just worry. 

I do my best to turn my anxiety into a positive direction in my quest for a better relationship with Jesus and to listen to the Holy Spirit.  I use my anxiety to pursue the Lord with greater zeal and humbleness to his Power and Glory. What Peter says helps calm me and reminds me that God is there for me and loves me: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).

I sometimes feel overwhelmed with anxiety and cry out to the Lord to take some of that anxiety away. My greatest anxiety is, as I think a lot of us feel, is the coming Rapture of the Church. I get so worried about myself and more so my family. I just have this feeling something is going to happen soon. Is that a real anxiety or is it just my anxious nature? I don’t know but I pray for relief all the time. I believe that the Lord has allowed me to feel anxious all the time because He doesn’t want me to get lax in my studies and seeking of Him always. I feel that if I weren’t so anxious all the time, then I wouldn’t study and pray as much as I do now.

I find that expressing my thoughts in this forum is very therapeutic and I believe others feel the same as I do and my writing helps them as much as it helps me. I find that by researching verses on anxiety helps me be less anxious and gives me more hope that how I feel is not a minor concern, but is addressed throughout the Scriptures. 

“Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?’” (Luke 12:22-26).

That Jesus addresses worry and anxiety it seems to me it is not an anomaly that I have anxiety and worry in my life as well and that Jesus consoles us by letting us know that we are cared for and watched over by the Lord Himself.  This brings me comfort to my anxieties.

“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).

I need not to worry about things of this life or what will happen to me, for the Lord will meet all my needs. I may not get what I need right away, but in looking back in retrospect, I can attest that all my needs that I had worried about in the past were addressed and taken care of by my Lord and Savior. Yet here I am, still anxious about trivial and major things going on in my life and the world.

“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work” (2 Thes. 2:16-17).

“Consolation and good hope by grace” is very reassuring to me and consoles my heart when it comes to my anxiety of everything I worry about. This is a promise from the Lord that I am going to print out and have in front of me so that when I get stressed and anxious, I can be reminded that the Lord is at work in me and I have nothing to fear of worry about. 

If you feel as I do, know you are not alone. There are others like me out there. Use your anxiety and worry to bring you closer to Jesus, not to separate you.  I believe the enemy tries to use anxiety to separate me from my Lord Jesus, but I thwart his efforts by turning my anxiety into a tool to grow in my relationship with Jesus. 

If I allowed Satan to use my anxiety to separate me from the Lord, I know I would be lost and in a worse spot. I know that if I allowed my anxiety to move me away from the Lord, I will fall to the side and be on the wrong path to righteousness. This is why I turn my anxiety to lead me to grow with Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I know the Holy Spirit is working in me and uses my anxiety and worries to good, not bad. I have faith in this and hold on to the promises as stated in the verses cited in this essay.

“An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up” (Proverbs 12:25).

 

“I sought the LORD, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears” (Psalm 34:4).

 

Well my friends, I feel a lot better about my anxieties, fears, and worries now that I have put them into words. I hope that this short commentary my sharing with you my thoughts on this have been a help for some of you out there feeling the same way I do. God bless.

 

All versus are from the NIV.

John Lysaught