Encouraged by God's Word

Archive for March, 2010

Hello Family,

On Sunday, March 21^st I celebrated the 3^rd anniversary of my 40^th birthday. For those who are a little confused, I turned 43.

A friend of mine sent me an email to tell me happy birthday and I replied to her that I thanked God for another year instead of complaining about getting older like most people do.

She was right in tune with me because she also thanks God everyday she wakes up. My friend is now a 6 year breast cancer survivor but in spite of her past victories, she got some news 2 weeks ago that they detected cancer on her brain.

This was on a Saturday. On Sunday, she went to the alter and “LEFT IT THERE”. By that Wednesday, and three doctors later, she was told “We’re baffled because there is no apparent evidence of cancer and we have to run more tests and refer you somewhere else.” 

Although my friend had a lot to deal with, she wasn’t going to let it burden her down. She knew that there was very little she could do so she turned it over to our God who is more than able.

There’s more, she just lost a friend to pancreatic cancer on February 28^th of this year but in spite of all that she has gone through and is going through, her head is still held high and she emailed me that she is “so happy to be a child of God, covered in His blood!!”

Psalm 55:22 says Cast your burden on the LORD, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved.

My friend is not worried about the outcome because she’s not carrying that load around. She left it for God to handle and she knows that He is more than able to heal her body. Why, because He has done it before.

She knows that God will sustain her. She knows that He will give her support and relief when she needs it.

God has shown Himself strong and has sustained her in the past because she didn’t try to solve the problem. She let it go and let God do His thing.

You see you can’t be heavy laden when there is no heavy stuff weighing you down. You must travel light and leave all of that baggage behind for God to deal with. His arms are much stronger than yours and more than capable of handling the load.

Be Encouraged and Have a Great Weekend!

Hello Friends,

There is a saying people use when trying to tackle a task that is humongous. It goes, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

It basically means that you have to break down your major task into smaller, manageable ones in order to accomplish the big one.

Here’s another one for you, “How do you overcome sin? One day at a time.” Yes, there are some sins that we deal with that are big and we need to break it down and deal with it on a daily basis.

How many times have you said, “I’m not going to EVER do that again” and before you know it, you did it again? It’s not that you didn’t want to sustain from sin, you just went about it the wrong way.

Sometimes we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to overcome sins that we have been dealing with for years. We think that if we say we’re done with it, that’s it. No more struggles. No more temptations. No more lures.

But if we’ve been doing something for the past 30 years, don’t you think it may be a little difficult to overcome it immediately? Now there are some instances where God completely removes the desire to sin from our hearts but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we have to work hard to overcome the sin.

Sometimes we need to really assess our struggles and take on the challenge of overcoming them one day at a time. We need to break it down into “bite size” portions in order to beat it.

2 Timothy 2:22 says Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

When overcoming sin, sometimes we just need to escape those foolish, childish things that tempt us. We need to get up and run from the things that make us weak.

Whatever we desire that causes us to sin, we need to consciously tell ourselves everyday to leave it alone and stay away from it.

And as we’re fleeing sin, we need to pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace; the things that God adores. If we do that on a consistent basis, we won’t have the mindset to do the things that cause us to sin.

So the next time you struggle with a sin that is major in your life, don’t worry about trying to overcome it for the rest of your life, just try to tackle it one day at a time.

It’s a cinch by the inch but hard by the yard.

Be Encouraged and Have a Great Day!