Author: watchstandpray

323 – Stop Everything and Ask God for Breakthrough

Facing challenges drives us to test our priorities and rearrange them when they are out of order. This relates to the adage, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

When hard times come, some people “self-medicate” as a means of escape from having to face reality, either through substance abuse, immorality, or recreation. Other people start working hard and diligently. Hard work is less irresponsible than escapism. The mature response must prioritize prayer above diligence.

We know that God must watch the city for the watchmen to be able to keep it safe. God must establish a building for the construction crew to complete it successfully. Your own work needs God’s breath, as well as your hard work to solve whatever situation you are in.

Your challenge of the day may be that you don’t have enough challenges or that you feel dry and need to grasp hold of some sense of direction and vision for your life. You may need to learn something, you might even have the luxury of knowing what you need to learn. Or, you may have the usual financial, professional, and social conflicts. Whatever challenges you face, pray for God to break through.

Never fret and worry—never! Every situation has elements beyond our control, sometimes we even know what those things are. You will always need to trust God, sometimes you even know it. If you struggle to find the property to build a house, then finally buy the property, you will struggle to build the house. Once the house is built, you will struggle to maintain it. Once you are comfortable maintaining it you will struggle with the relationships that develop under its roof. Once your relationships are in order, your business will bring challenges that risk financial loss, take time from your family, and often both.

We never get past the place of needing God to enter into our circumstances and turn them all the way around. He loves to delay His deliverance for the end, so don’t be surprised if He adds a little suspense like so. Just keep praying for breakthrough. If you don’t think you need breakthrough today, then pray for tomorrow’s.

322 – Affluenza

Affluenza is the informal “street talk” term for the uncaring laziness that gets us when we have just enough money to be comfortable. The social status is often called “affluent”. But, money has its way of infecting its hosts with a diseased mentality that squanderously throwing money is the best say to solve any problem. The sad news about money is that it never solves any problems. The problems get distracted by eating the money—making the problem seem to go away for a short time—but then the problem returns with a vengeance, having fed on all the money just thrown at it.

Affluenza lurks behind the self-destructing CEO who doesn’t know how to rejuvenate a company’s vision. Money is earned by staying lean, reducing waste to a minimum, and working with the same energy as when you’re driving to make an important date. Money and security are eternal for no one. Even Jesus worked to die on the Cross and we can always count on him to carry his own load. That’s why he is a worthy king. Once a celebrity, company, or country presumes that money and security will “just be there” forever, the waste begins, the drive diminishes, and the said-to-be unsinkable flounders.

…it happens every time. That’s how—and why—every world superpower eventually falls. When leadership stops working hard and takes for granted what must be earned, everything starts to unravel.

The idea that wealth is bestowed—rather than earned through wasteless work—is the idea that keeps poor people poor. Affluenza is this same root of “poverty thinking” visited upon people with money. They may have money today, but when hard times come, those with affluenza will eat pistols and jump out of buildings because they had money without understanding it.

Symptoms show up in the form of canceling appointments because “we can always reschedule”. The notion of a missed opportunity doesn’t occur, even if the missed opportunity is both real and missed. When you’re hungry, every morsel counts. If you can spare extra morsels, it’s chivalrous to let morsels fall for the poor, but you’ll be poor again if you don’t treasure every morsel you let fall.

321 – Stop Everything and Befriend God Just as You Are

Wherever you are in your life, God love you just as you are. You will always have things to learn and sin to repent of. Learn what you need, repent of sin you know about, but even before those things, know that God does love you. Repenting of sin and learning more opens up more room for friendship with God. Growing your friendship with God comes both before, during, and after learning and repentance.

Friendship with God is part of every step of the Christian life because God stays with us through everything, all the way.

Put the business of life on pause and think about your friendship with God. Think about how much you love Him because of how much He loves you and how much you enjoy thinking about enjoying thinking about Him as your friend. Take a moment, right now while reading and think about it.

Every day, all day long, steal any time you can to fix your thoughts on the God above who love you just as you are.

Growing up is one of God’s expressions to us, explaining His own love for us. Children are adorable, yet dirty, immature, yet lovable, and naughty, yet full of potential. The tender understanding and wise patience that a grandparent has toward grandchildren—having seen the growing process all the way through its cycle—shows us a glimpse of how and why God looks at us at any stage of our growth and loves us just the same.

Never outgrow your childlike ability to need God’s love through the patient eyes of parenting. You will always have things to learn, improve, and outgrow. Even the greatest theologians over a hundred years old understand that God looks at them like snot-faced children just starting out. The more we grow, the more we can work along side God in bringing beauty and justice to the universe. Learning about God always includes knowing that He is the best friend you can ever and will ever have.

Even after the first ten thousand years of Eternity in the next life, friendship with God will be just as relevant. So, think about God as your best friend today.

320 – Law of the Flesh

Flesh is where our eternal, sentient states of being occur in the natural plane of the multiverse. In the flesh, we work, move, hunger, and tire. While flesh is our main place of consciousness and holds the primary eyes through which we see, flesh is not the seat of our eternal existence. Flesh can be killed and remade, but our lives live on.

Flesh is weak and limited. This serves to teach our eternally transcendent hearts eternal values, such as patience and priority. When we must choose between telling a hurtful lie or going hungry, the source of such questions comes in our flesh, but it is the eternal virtue of the heart at the crossroads of those moral questions. Without the flesh, we would not have these dilemmas to grow our hearts.

The flesh being a temporary existence, separate from yet linked to our eternal consciousness, gives us a way to have one foot in the world of physical work and another foot in the moral realm. The concept of a patriot—who, according to Thomas Paine, must protect his country from its government—is rooted in this dilemma of the flesh. A martyr is willing to lay down his life in the flesh for an eternal cause of principles, freedom, and truth.

Sin and addiction live in the flesh, which we must be forgiven of in the eternal sense and must battle against the temptations of every day. Work we will be rewarded for in Eternity is done through the flesh. Marriage is a union of the flesh, but not the eternal consciousness, hence the marital vow, “…to death do us part.”

Jesus entered the flesh. While morals are eternal and must come from above, we understand, work out the math, and otherwise explain those morals through our flesh. One of the greatest graces given to Humankind and all creation is that Man is given flesh which needs rest, high maintenance, and will one day die on its own. Because of this, the work of devils in our flesh cannot endure nor can our sin. After the first death and resurrection, sin will have no power over our resurrected flesh—it’s the Law.

Romans 7:14-25, 2 Corinthians 7:12, Revelation 20:6

319 – Stop Everything and Praise God for Who He Is

In the midst of the storm, your greatest need can only be given by God. In the peace and quiet, when there are no pressing needs anywhere to be seen, you have the best time to prepare to receive whatever God has to give you later when those storms come. Whether in the quiet or in the raging wind, praise God!

In a manner of speech, praising God “turns on the lights” wherever you are and for whatever you pray for. The lights of praise dry up disease and drive out fear. When hardship and opposition stand in your way, praising God will bring a light so bright that it blinds your enemy and washes him out in pure white—and all you will be able to see is your peaceful path forward.

The praise comes first, before the good results—before the solution to your situation. Praise God for the problems He will solve tomorrow, especially the problems you don’t know about yet. He already knows tomorrows problems and He already has His own solution waiting for you.

God is already worthy to receive praise, that is why He must be praised right now. It is injustice against the existence of every molecule, every human, every angel, and against the Creator God Himself not to praise Him for what He already deserves. He is worthy now, already, so praise Him now, already!

Stop what you’re doing to praise Him as a gift to Him. Don’t stop if it is dangerous, of course, or you might create a terrible situation in which you must repent before praising God. You can’t praise God with conscious, intentional sin continuing on in your life, sin that you either know is wrong, including harming others. Refusing sin and declining temptation are also forms of praise, forms that God loves. Those forms of praise are easier when you praise Him for Who He is already.

No matter what your situation, praise is the solution, both for the problems you face and for the problems you have yet to see. So, praise God now while you have time. Tomorrow, you may need to rely on the praise you gave him today.

318 – The Moral Test: Does This Satisfy?

If we seek things that never work out then we want things that can’t be. If we feel that those wants are natural, then our nature is broken.

We can interpret the Bible to excuse whatever moral definition we want. Proof that an interpretation is correct lies in that moral interpretation producing fruits of the Spirit. Morals always relate to our relationships, whether with God or in conduct with others. If we have inner turmoil about our relationships, somewhere something is wrong, either in our definition of morals or in our pursuit of them or both.

Marriage vows are vital for non-marital progress because family is a structure on which humanity depends more than roads and city water. Satan will attack marriage just as an invading army will attack the electrical grid of a populated area.

Jesus died to free us from oppression via man-made chaos. Is it to much for us to obey a few rules that prevent society from becoming chaotic? Is that really a sacrifice on our behalf, to have delayed gratification to thus have more gratification?

Some “moral” questions are left vague by the Bible. Those are left up to the individual. One can’t know what particular choices other people should make. Diet rules from Moses may or may not be necessary today. So, let your conscience be your guide. Sometimes people “invent rules”, but if they do this for themselves, don’t interfere. God is allowed to lead us moment by moment. God might give someone strange rules to help with a specific situation some day and the rest of us would never know.

Morals govern relationships with all people and all people with their God. Contorting the Bible to rationalize our own self-made morals never satisfies, it only excuses short-lived happiness and serves to appease our own guilty consciences from truth we know we deny.

But, strong belief in morality is no license to boss and bully others.

Accurate understanding of morals, individual choice to obey, resulting happiness, and responsibility are all personal—for each one’s own willingness to acknowledge and accept whatever follows. So, regulating the morality of others is always wrong, whether those morals are self-made or Biblical.

Acts 15:19-29, Romans 14:10-12, 20-23, 1 John 3:19-24

317 – Stop Everything and Think about Who God Is

Whatever you’re doing, whatever your situation, whatever your problem, whatever your celebration—the most relevant truth in your life is God’s character. Of course there are times when we must act and move forward urgently. But, if time permits—and it does more often than we like to recognize—putting everything on pause and thinking only and entirely about Who God is—His nature, His traits—will enhance your current situation like no other.

Whether tempted or needing inspiration for art, pausing to think about God’s character is the best thing to do.

He is the origin of inspiration—that is part of His character. His patience, wisdom, knowledge, creativity, power, love—these traits are echoed throughout all of the created order, both in the natural universe and in the spiritual realm where angels see what we can only pray about and understand through trust. When we dwell on those traits, imagine them, obsess over them, mull over them, ponder them, and daydream about things like how wisdom and patience “look” different to the angels as they actually “see” those different virtues—when we genuinely and imaginatively meditate on the nature of God’s character, those virtues begin to imprint themselves more deeply onto our own minds, strengthening the connection between His nature and our work.

God sends us into urgent situations to grow and test us. Even while you must hasten your work, to drive or write or perform or complete any other task, thinking about God’s character will empower your work. There are times when hard circumstances come our way because God wants to test us in order to help us grow. In those times, the best response hard situations includes due diligence, but it also includes meditating on God’s character as the greater priority.

If God is not your greatest priority in your situation then you will not be God’s greatest priority in dispensing strength onto your situation. The priority about knowing God’s character does not invalidate the need for normal work, but must be the higher priority while all priorities remain present.

It is a secret ingredient to success. Some use drugs, others use immorality to inspire; Christians meditate on God Himself.

Psalm 46:10