SMS Magazine, Spring 2022

Glory to God in the highest, in the name of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

GODSundie Morning Sistas Magazine

A New Beginning in Jesus Christ

Copyright ©2022. All rights reserved. No part or portion of this publication may be reproduced without the express, written permission of Sundie Morning Sistas.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are taken from The Authorized Version or King James Version (KJV), 1611, 1769. Outside of the United Kingdom, the KJV is in the public domain. Within the United Kingdom, the rights to the KJV are vested in the Crown.

Scripture quotations marked "NKJV™" are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Sundie Morning Sistas Magazine, Copyright © 2022 Web sites: www.sundiemorningsistas.org www.smsmemberservices.com www.sundiemorningsistas.com

SMS Magazine

We hope the SMS Magazine has been a blessing to you. If you would like to receive an annual subscription of this magazine, please complete the form below:

YOUR NAME:

(Please print)

Address Apt. City State Zip E-Mail Address

Your donation of $12.00 with this 1 YEAR subscription will support our efforts to continue to minister through this publication. Please mail to:

Subscriptions for U.S.A. only. Foreign orders upon request. Orders will start within 4 to 6 weeks from receipt of subscription form. Your subscription will continue unless you ask us to stop OR an issue is returned for insufficient address.

SMS Subscriptions P.O. Box 202 West Springfield, MA 01090-0202

REQUEST THE SMS MAGAZINE

for your Ministry or Organization

If you would like more copies of this publication to share with your ministry, organization, church, or business, please contact Sundie Morning Sistas Publications at the address below. Requests are considered and orders are filled solely at the discretion of Sundie Morning Sistas. All orders are filled based on quantities available.

Sundie Morning Sistas Publications is a inter-denominational Christian communications ministry dedicated to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ. SMS P.O. Box 202 West Springfield, MA 01090-0202 anyone@sundiemorningsistas.org

The

ministers to the very heart of your reality with life-changing articles that encourage and uplift your spirit through the Word of God!

e are spiritual beings having an earthly experience. The world is so full of distractions that we sometimes forget this. We forget that our supernatural gifts and abilities in Christ far exceed any enrichment and benefit of anything else. We make the mistake of focusing on what society or the world has to offer instead of focusing on the newness that Jesus Christ offers. This will cause us to live beneath our privilege as children of the King. Our Heavenly Father has made it clear that in order to live powerfully with the authority of Christ, we must renew our minds to His Word. This is His commandment to every living person. To renew is to make new again. It’s to change the way we think. A logical person might then ask, “Well, what do I change my thoughts to? The answer to this question is that God requires us to change our thoughts to the mind of Christ, so that our faith is increased, we please God, and we live the abundant life that Christ has made available. Our precious Lord and Savior always had pleasing God on His mind. He said in John 6:38(NLT), “For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will.” This is our example, but somehow, many of us will not hold ourselves to this standard. We have been tempted to believe that the world and all its fleshly pleasures will add more than what following God’s Word will add to our lives. This is not the truth. It is wrong believing, and wrong believing will always cause us to miss our call. It causes us to walk outside our purpose, and abdicate the authority and power of Jesus Christ that God has given us.

None of us should want to miss out on any of God’s bountiful blessings. His Word is life to us, and make no mistake, Jesus Christ is the living Word of God. We need Christ desperately, and now more than any other time, our focus should be on accepting the newness he gave his life on the cross to give us. Our new issue, “A New Beginning in Jesus Christ”, is a series of teachings written to help us live each day fully embraced in the newness of Christ.

From a very early age, we are taught to look for our treasures outside ourselves. We seek remedies from those who are smokescreens. They want us to focus on them and on their quest for power and influence. They are deceptive, and they are trying to steal our focus away from our Heavenly Father. This leads to selfishness, idolatry, arrogance, and a false dependency on self-effort. God has placed His treasure, the Holy Spirit, within us. We can be confident that everything we need for successful living is contained within Christ. We pray that as you study with us in “A New Beginning in Jesus Christ”, you will become more aware of the treasure abiding within you, and you’ll learn to bask in the newness of life in Christ more and more each day.

Lovingly In Christ, Reverend Fran Mack, President and Founder, SMS

s we look at how stressful life has become and how perilous the times are, some of us are finding it very challenging to make it through the day. Many of us don’t even want to get out of bed, but we don’t have that option. We have children or elderly parents to take care of, financial obligations to meet, and other personal responsibilities that overwhelm us at times. And on top of those things, some of us are also dealing with our own health issues. “It’s always

something!” is a recurring mantra on many of our lips. With everything going on in our lives and with the condition of the world, mental and emotional exhaustion has many in its grip. When all the space in our minds and hearts is consumed with worry and anxiety, it impacts every aspect of our beings, and God doesn’t want this for anyone. We owe it to ourselves to trust that through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, God has given us a better way to approach our lives.

Corinthians 5:17 (NLT) declares, “This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!” Every day presents an opportunity to bask in the newness that Jesus Christ has given us. We have a new chance to put off the old and put on more of the example of Christ so that we can enjoy the privilege and blessings of his love and power. To do this, we must pray and be committed to learn to think, speak, and operate differently than we have in the past.

In John 14:1(NKJV), our blessed Lord wonderfully encourages us. He said, “Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.” Jesus Christ knows the interworking of all our hearts. He is intimately acquainted with our secret sorrows, and he knows the wounds that we have suffered through all our lives. He knows the root cause of our struggles, yet he tells us not to be troubled, to not allow our minds to be consumed with thoughts and our hearts consumed with emotions that turn our attention away from him. With crystal clarity, he let it be known that the antidote for a troubled mind and heart is to believe in God and to believe in him.

Pessimism is rampant in our times. People will not allow

themselves to trust the Good News of Jesus Christ, and 2Corinthians 4:4(NLT) tells us why. It says, “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. They don’t understand this message about the glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God.” Some of us have groomed ourselves to only see the dark and negative side of life. Because of this, our thoughts and attitudes have become dark and negative, and this is all we talk about. Why is this so dangerous? It is dangerous because dark and negative thoughts and conversations draw to us the situations, circumstances, and people that keep the darkness and negativity going.

They will not remind us of the new beginning we have in Christ, instead these situations, circumstances, and people will try to keep us trapped in who we used to be before Christ came into our lives. Once our minds and hearts head down the path of living, thinking, and behaving beneath our privilege, the devil will continue to blindfold us to God’s goodness. Heavenly Father commands us in Ephesians 4:23 to change our thoughts so that they line up with the mind of Christ. Our refusal to do this gives the devil permission to keep us blinded to the truth.

We become so doubtful of God’s goodness that we won’t give ourselves the gift of trusting in Him. We haven’t taken the time to learn how much He loves us. He loves us infinitely more than we could love ourselves, and He wants us to know this. He wants us to learn about Him so that our confidence and faith in Him grows continually.

Through Christ, we are brought into covenant with God. This is our new beginning! And every day presents a chance to walk in it in a greater way. We are made righteous because of what Jesus Christ accomplished through his sacrifice and resurrection. Before Christ came, we didn’t know the way, and we didn’t have access to it. We were lost in darkness and sin, but because of Christ, all this has changed.

Our Redeemer proclaimed in John 14:6 (NKJV), “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Not only does he want us to know this with every ounce of our being, but he wants us to live this reality every moment of each day. He wants us to know the joy of loving God through him, but many of us are so weighted down by our struggles, fears, and pain that we feel we’ve lost the path to joy, and we don’t believe we can find it. We absolutely can, and it begins with having more faith in the love of God. Throughout our lives, we’ve learned to mourn, hold grudges, and hold on to regrets, anger, fears, and the sting of disappointment and past mistakes. We’ve learned to never live in the present, but to always stay focused on the past or on the future. This means that our arms are always either reaching back or trying to reach forward, but not reaching up to the Source of our strength, love, and power. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus Christ said no one can serve

two masters. To serve is to give attention to, and our Master Jesus is letting us know that we’re not built for duality. We can’t focus on two things at the same time, and this is a tremendous lesson for our faith walk.

Faith demands that our focus and attention is always on God as we follow the example of Christ. Just as we learned to devote our focus on pain, sadness, disappointment, and fear, we must learn to focus our entire being on the joy, victory, peace, and faith of Jesus Christ. By changing our focus, we allow God to wash away the trauma of hurts, anxieties, and insecurities. We must be willing to open the door of new beginnings and to welcome it in our lives. God will not force us to do this, because love never forces its own way. He stands at the door of our hearts knocking, and we must trust that allowing Him to come in is the greatest thing we will ever do for our lives.

GOD IS FOR US!

n Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV), Heavenly Father told His people living during Old Testament times, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” This verse allows us to know that people living during those times lacked faith and needed assurance of God’s provision, grace, and love. They were not convinced that God is mindful of us, and that He cares about every detail of our existences. Like many living today, they might have assumed that God was going to leave them to fend for themselves or that He didn’t have a purpose and plan for their lives. He sets the record straight in Jeremiah 29:11 and does so in a way that reinforces His ab-

solute sovereignty and authority. He needs no help to be who He is. His thoughts are infinitely higher than our thoughts, and His plan for us is drenched in His goodness, perfection, and love.

During Old Testament times, God’s people were servants. They were not sons and daughters the way that you and I are. Jesus Christ had not yet come to the earth; therefore, it wasn’t possible for them to be born again. To become born again through Jesus Christ is to accept the finished work of Christ in our hearts. This means that when we have faith that Jesus Christ gave his life on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins, and when we believe that God resurrected Jesus Christ from the dead, Jesus Christ comes to live inside us through God’s Holy Spirit

Before we accept Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we are not spiritually alive to God, because His Spirit does not dwell in us. Ephesians 2:1-2 (NLT) informs us, “1 Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins. 2 You used to live in sin, just like the rest of the world, obeying the devil—the commander of the powers in the unseen world. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God.” This was a very terrible state we were in, but God always had a plan to rescue us. John 3:16 says that He loved us so much that He gave the world His only begotten Son, so that we wouldn’t perish in our sinful state, but through Christ, we would have access to eternal life.

The work that God completed through Jesus Christ shows

“Yes, God is for us! But He is against sin, and we cannot in any way deny this truth. Through Jesus Christ, God invites us into Himself, but He is holy and can have no part in sin. To take care of this, He has given us a way through Christ to have new life!”

“A New Beginning in Jesus Christ”

us His great love for everyone. God has no respect of persons. He doesn’t love one person more than He loves another. Romans 2:11 (NLT) says, “For God does not show favoritism.” He is a God of love and He loves everyone. He sent His Son to save us when we were at our worst, when humanity was utterly sinful and disobedient. No person can say, “God saved me because I am so good and devoted.” We were all lost in sin, and God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ is for anyone and everyone that will accept it. Ephesians 2:8(NLT) says about salvation, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can't take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” We are saved through our faith in what God accomplished through Jesus Christ, not because of our effort or works.

God is for us, and He wants everyone to be saved, but it is indeed our choice. We choose whether we will give our lives to God and become His child through His beloved and precious Son, Jesus Christ. He hopes we will make this choice, but sadly many don’t. We are transferred from death to life by our faith in Him, and our Heavenly Father doesn’t compromise on the faith requirement. If we do not believe in what He’s done for us through Christ, then we are refusing to believe that He loves us that much. “Well, what’s the big deal about that?” you might ask. Why do we have to believe that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son in order to live an eternity with Him?

Our Heavenly Father is holy and pure, and everything He does is perfect and true. His mysterious plan is to unite us all in Christ and to bring all things under the authority and power of our Redeemer. Colossians 1:26-27(NLT) cosigns this spectacular truth by telling us, “26 This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. 27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret: Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.” God hopes that we will share in the glory of Christ, and we should do everything we possibly can in this life to ensure that we do. Yes, God is for us! But He is against sin, and we cannot in any way deny this truth. Through Jesus Christ, God invites us into Himself, but He is holy and can have no part in sin. To take care of this, He has given us a way through Christ to have new life! 2Corinthians 5:17(NIV) declares, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Through believing in the accomplishment of Christ, we shed the old and embrace the new, but if we refuse to believe and have faith in the accomplishment of Christ, we are refusing God, and this is a sin. Our faith gives God permission to transform us from the inside out, but we cannot dwell with Him in Christ if we refuse to have faith.

A mind and heart that harbors sin and makes excuses for it is indeed the sinful nature. Romans 8:7 (NLT) tells us, “For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will.” It is important to understand that Jesus Christ has given us a new nature, but many of us choose to obey the sinful nature and not the nature of Christ, which is a nature that seeks only to please God. In Colossians 3:10(NLT), God commands, “Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him.” This verse very clearly tells us that it is our choice to do this. We can put on our new nature, which is the nature of Christ, or we can choose to operate in the old nature of sin that Christ delivered us from. It’s up to us.

God wants us to allow our lives to be governed by our new nature, because His blessings are contained

within it. Romans 8:31(NLT) declares, “What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us?” This is tremendous assurance for our lives. His plan is that we will share in His glory. He is such a loving Father that He wants to drench us in His delight and goodness, and just as He freely shares with us, He wants us to freely share with others, because this is what love does. Love shares! But we can’t share it if we don’t believe and have faith in it.

In order to share in God’s glory, He has empowered us in Christ to love on His level. We can’t accomplish this by our own merits, it can only be accomplished by loving others through Christ. God tells us in Galatians 5:6(NLT), “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” This is why it is so awesomely important to believe that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Romans 8:39 declares that nothing can separate us from God’s love, and we must comprehend the extent to which He has demonstrated His love. He sent His most precious treasure to risk everything for our sakes. Believing this truth in the depths of our hearts gives us ability to love others through Christ, and this is God’s plan for us.

Loving through Jesus Christ is the testimony of our faith in what God accomplished for us through him. It bears witness that we are God’s children of light, and that we are chosen by God to become like Jesus Christ who is our Big Brother, as it says in Romans 8:29. We are destined to walk by faith and not by sight. We can call those things which are not as though they were, and we can always count on God’s faithfulness, because He chose us to be His very own. Each choice that we make to decrease in the flesh and increase in God’s Spirit affirms our belief that God is for us. He is transforming us through His love, as He works in us to will and do of His good pleasure.

BECOMING A MAGNET FOR BLESSINGS

Learn to Welcome Newness

ccountability and responsibility are trademarks of the spiritually mature. This is the exact opposite of what the world teaches. It teaches us to make excuses and to run and hide from blame and accountability at all costs. This isn’t the way of Christ. Our Lord and Savior was fully transparent from the very beginning. When he came to earth to do the Father’s Will, he put it on blast, out in the open for everyone to see and hear. Through the example of his life, Christ demonstrated what it means to live holy, and with tremendous power and authority. He has given us this same authority, and by this, we must understand that accountability and responsibility are power-andauthority’s running partners.

What this means for us is extraordinary, and we must not allow any negativity to enter our attitudes about it. Living according to our new nature in Christ is putting the goodness of God into the universe, and as we do, His blessings are magnetized to our existences. So, we must continually remind ourselves that we are accountable for what we allow into our lives, and we are responsible for kicking it to the curb if it doesn’t line up with the example of Christ. God tells us how to safeguard ourselves. In Proverbs 4:23(NLT), He commands, “Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.” In like manner, God warns us in Proverbs 18:21(NLT), “The tongue can bring death or life; those who love to talk will reap the consequences.” In Matthew 15:18(NLT), Jesus Christ also commands us, “But the words you speak come from the heart—that’s what defiles you.” Heavenly Father has made it very plain that we

demonstrate outwardly what we are inwardly. What we do, think, feel, and say determines the life we create. If what we put out there adds up to being opposite to how God commands us to act, think, feel, and speak, we’re going to be a magnet for trouble. In Luke 6:38, our Lord and Master tells us that we must be very careful about what we put into God’s universe, because Heavenly Father has designed the universe in such a way that it will return to us what we give it, and when it boomerangs back around, it will do so with greater force and plurality than our initial investment. In other words, what goes around comes around, and does so with a vengeance if it’s a wrong investment, but it intensifies with God’s goodness if it is a right investment.

When our eyes are open to this law, our lives change. Once we recognize the power that God has placed in our hands to create, to bind, and to loose, we become ever so conscious about our choices and decisions, and this is the way God desires it. He intended us to become conscious creators or wise master builders as Paul said in 1Corinthians 3:10. God holds us responsible for putting His love in continuous and constant rotation in the exact same way that Christ did. Jesus Christ is perfect, and he never sinned. He only put the goodness, love, and power of God into action when he walked upon the earth. Again, Jesus Christ never sinned, so according to God’s Laws, he should never have faced the consequence of sin, but he allowed himself to take it on. He did this for us, to pay for our sins through his sacrifice on the cross.

In Matthew 16:19(NKJV), Jesus Christ said, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” With the keys that our Master Jesus has given us, we can unlock any door. Through the Words of our Master in Matthew 16:19, we can see very clearly that God has given us authority and dominion in the earth. Adam and Eve lost this because of the sin of their disobedience, but our Redeemer restored our authority and dominion, and won the victory over sin and death. We know from Genesis 1:26 that God intended us to reign. In other words, you and I cannot control another individual, but we can certainly control ourselves, and we can do this masterfully through Jesus Christ. We can behave in such a way that blessings will chase us down, and this should be the goal of every living person.

DON’T TRY TO CONTROL OTHERS

Timothy 1:7(NKJV) informs us,

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” Fear doesn’t come from God, it comes from the devil, and this is very important to know. This verse isn’t referring to the natural tendency to self-preserve and self-protect, it’s referring to the emotions, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors that reflect a lack of faith in

God. Our Heavenly Father instructs us in Philippians 4:6(NLT), “Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” Worry and anxiety are birthed from fear. They keep us from enjoying life, and they signal the heavens and everything beneath them that we are not allowing faith to rule but instead, we are allowing our emotions of fear to run the show.

Often, we’re not conscious of the many ways in which fear is governing our actions and behaviors. One of the ways it shows up is in our need to try to control others. To embrace the newness that Jesus Christ has given us, this is one of the areas we must confront, acknowledge, repent from and release.

The new life that Christ offers us is a dynamic reality, and it should be no surprise that with it comes our need to change. And not only will we need to change for the better, but some of our relationships will change as well. Our Heavenly Father desires to see us blessed way more than we desire it for ourselves. You might ask, “Well, why am I not feeling and experiencing the kind of blessings I desire for my life? “ The answer to this question is never that our Heavenly Father is withholding blessings. That’s not it. Psalm 84:11(NLT) tells us, “For the LORD God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.” God gave His only begotten Son to die for our sins, so if He offered up His most precious treasure for our sakes, we can be confident that He will freely give us all things. So, the problem isn’t God not blessing us, the problem is in what you and I may be binding in heaven and on earth.

God offers us a peace that passes all understanding, and it is available to each of us every moment of every day, but sometimes we abdicate a peaceful path by making choices that lead us away from it. Some of us have an incessant need to control everything, including the people we love. This is almost always motivated out of fear. We either fear for their safety and well-being, or we want them to behave a certain way because we fear they may do something to make us experience emotions we don’t want to. We must come into consciousness about how this is translated spiritually, because it demonstrates a lack of faith.

It is often motivated from a fear that God isn’t safely holding us or our loved ones in His hands, and whatever is happening in the moment, Romans 8:28(NLT) declares, “And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” God is in control, not us. The only reason that any of us exist is because He has allowed our existences. Acts 17:28(NLT)

tells us, “For in him we live and move and exist.” We must remind ourselves of this continually and stop ourselves from trying to control our loved ones and others.

We must accept people where they are. You and I are still growing, and we have lots more growing to do. Just as God is being patient with us as we grow and mature in Christ, He is being equally patient with others. He is the One in charge of their spiritual journeys, not us. Our responsibility is to help where we can and not injure anyone along the way. Many believers have not broken the negative habit of trying to love others using the toxicity of condemnation, shame, and blame. That isn’t a Godly strategy, and we must catch ourselves and stop this before we do damage. This is especially true when it comes to children.

In Matthew 18, Jesus Christ teaches us about the requirement of humility. The disciples came to him and asked “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” In Matthew 18:2-5(NLT), he taught, “2 Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. 3 Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. 4 So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. 5 “And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.” Regardless of our age, we must have the humility of a little child before our Heavenly Father, because we are all children in His eyes.

Not only does our Master Jesus instruct us about being humble, but under no uncertain terms should we underestimate how precious children are to him. He warns us to be extremely careful of our treatment of them. In Hebrews 18:6-7(NLT), he warns, “6 But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. 7 “What sorrow awaits the world, because it tempts people to sin. Temptations are inevitable, but what sorrow awaits the person who does the tempting.” Children that are treated badly through abuse and neglect sometimes grow up to be adults that are wounded and repeat these cycles of abuse. This was not their destiny. They might have grown to be a very loving and kind believer in Christ were it not for the adults who caused them to fall into sin later in life.

And what about the men and women that many of us have tempted to sin in our adult relationships? Have we repented from tempting someone we were involved with in a past relationship to engage in sexual sin? During the time, we may not have considered the offense we caused them to make against God and His Word. When we’re immature in Christ, we may not think on this level, but spiritual maturity demands we think this way.

It’s easy to allow ourselves to become boxed in by sin. We behave a certain way in our families because we believe it’s necessary for us to protect those we love. We do the same in our relationships with men. We allow fear to run the show and believe we can’t have a successful relationship with a man without it beginning with sexual intimacy. Unconsciously, we are trying to control a situation without the discipline of con-

trolling ourselves. We’re giving away our power by not addressing the issues that prompt us to yield to temptation and operate in reverse. Our tendency is to look outwardly for solutions and validation to make us feel better. We try to get people to behave a certain way towards us so that we feel empowered and validated, but the reason many of us do not repent and heal is because we have refused to look inwardly. We need to examine how we are responding to people and situations. Again, we cannot control them, we can only control ourselves, and controlling ourselves means we are allowing our newness in Christ to run the show. Our goal should always be to live and behave in such a way that people, as well as the situations that effect our lives, are continually responding not to fear, but to our confidence in God through the Lord Jesus Christ.

PAIN IS A CALLING CARD FOR CHANGE

roverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. If we have a pessimistic mindset, we may not be as excited about this verse as we should. In truth, we should be over the moon about it, because our Heavenly Father is teaching us the potential of something that we all have, our mouths. What we speak and how we speak have tremendous impact, because it is a determining factor as to whether we are walking in the newness of Christ or still stuck in old patterns that do not serve us well. Romans 10:10 makes it clear and plain that confessing the truth regarding the accomplishment of Christ through his sacrifice and resurrection transfers us from eternal death to eternal life. Our confession ushers us into new life! This is huge! It demonstrates how powerful our words are. It also demonstrates that heaven, and everything beneath it, pay attention to the words we speak.

And when it comes to the words we speak, there isn’t one in the English language that can express the enormity of speaking life into your own existence. Whether you believe it or not, your own voice carries more weight with you than any other person’s voice. Your conscious mind will believe your own confessions over the confessions of another person. So, when you make a habit of telling yourself the truth, your heart will believe it and your mind will accept it. And ultimately your life will manifest the truth of your confessions, because this is the authority and power of Christ that God has placed in your hands. By the same token, if you confess a lie, it will diminish the value you place on your own life. If you speak words that underestimate your worth to God and convey that you doubt His love and empowerment, your life will manifest circumstances that match the lie you have confessed.

Pain, heartache, and hurt are often the byproducts of false confessions. These false confessions are echoed from wrong beliefs. Pain is a calling card that signals its time to change your confessions and beliefs. We must believe ourselves worthy of investing in our own minds and hearts to this degree. Patterns are entrenched and they have a voice. They bring up all kinds of excuses to keep us stuck in our comfort zones, but we must break out of them and the Holy Spirit will help us. He abides in us, and He is our Comforter, Teacher, Friend, and Guide.

Jesus Christ said of him in John 16:13 (NLT), “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future.” The Holy Spirit lives within the born-again believer, and he will guide us to God’s truth, but we have a responsibility to allow ourselves to be led. We must partner with God through His Holy Spirit and begin to speak the words of truth that Jesus Christ taught us in God’s Word. Negative people are negative because they speak negatively, and they think negative thoughts. This should not be said about a born-again believer. We’ve been redeemed by the blood of the lamb, and we must rise up in our thoughts and confessions to the level of what we have received. Again, you’re not in control of anyone else but you. When you begin to speak and think like Christ, people, situations, and circumstances must line up with the truth of your confessions and thoughts. Failing to do this causes life to feel like we’re going around in circles. This is not what God intended for us. He commands us to depend on Him alone, because He is our Source and Sufficiency. The psalmist wrote in Psalm 139:5-6 The Message (MSG) “I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too—your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful—I can’t take it all in!” This verse communicates the wonder of God’s unspeakable, never-

ending grace and overwhelming love for us. His love is a consuming fire as it says Hebrews 12:29. This is the path of love and goodness that God wants us to remain on continually, and to do this we must wake up and come into consciousness about our words and thoughts. Some may think that their plate is too full to be bothered with the process of change, and others may not value the importance of the transformation God requires, but He is the orchestrator of our original design. He knows everything there is to know about us, and He has set the path that we should walk. He knows where we need to be, when we need to be there, and He knows how to get us to the place that He has destined us to be. In heaven, there’s a complete book written about your life on earth, and it was written long before you entered your mother’s womb. Our Heavenly Father has included all the good things He planned for you, but He will not force you to walk the path that He's laid for your life. He will not force us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds to His Word if we do not want to be committed to Him the way He requires. This is our choice. We must wake up and recognize that the continuation of wrong beliefs and confessions keep us from the plan God has for our lives.

Your voice has a vibration. When you use it to speak #1 what God says about you, #2 what God says you can do, and #3 what God says you can have in Christ, you come into agreement with His goodness and truth. Whenever we do this, His Word accomplishes that for which He purposed it. Use the conviction of your faith and the sound of your voice to align your life with the newness Christ has made available to you. Speak life into your existence and refuse to allow doubt and darkness any place in your mind and heart. When you take your rightful place of power and authority by being responsible and aligning what you do, think, feel, and say with the example of Christ, God will transform your life.

alvation is a gift that God freely offers us through His beloved and powerful Son, Jesus Christ. We can’t do anything to earn it. He’s given this overwhelming gift to us because He loves us so much. Ephesians 2:8(NLT) says, “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.” Jesus Christ gave his life on Calvary as a sacrifice for our sins. He died an agonizing death on the cross and after three days in the grave, Heavenly Father resurrected him from the dead. By this we can be sure that everything needed to secure our victory over sin and death, Jesus Christ has perfectly completed. He left no ‘i’ undotted and no ‘t’ uncrossed. The only thing left for you and me to do is to accept what our Master Jesus has accomplished for us and to believe and trust it in the depths of our hearts. It is our great privilege to do this, and it must be done to become born again and receive God’s salvation. Many of us that have accepted him as our Lord and Savior, and made him the head of our lives are not trusting in his love as we should. We are building our faith in our victory in Christ at a snail’s pace. Know this resolutely, it’s time to accelerate the pace. Through Christ, God has redeemed us from the curse of the law. Once we become born-again, our lives are saved! We have the awesome opportunity to bring our hearts and minds in alignment with our new reality and new nature, and this requires us to renew our minds

to God’s Word. All of us are born into a sinful world with sin in our bodies. Up until the point that we accept God’s love into our hearts, we were trained in part by the world and its systems. After becoming a new creature in Christ, our human spirits come alive to God, and we need to be trained spiritually. We must learn to walk in God’s Holy Spirit, and as we do this, our hearts and minds must be transformed. God tells us in Romans 12:2 (NKJV), “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

We are spiritual beings having an earth experience. 1Thessalonians 5:23 tells us that we are threepart beings, spirit, soul, and body. The salvation that God freely offers us is a spiritual transformation, but He tells us in Philippians 2:12 that you and I must work out the salvation of our souls. This is because the soul is governed by us, whereas our human spirits are governed by the Holy Spirit once they are made brand new. So, it is very important that we understand the free-will agency God has given us, because He will not force us to change how we act, think, speak, and feel. Once the Father gives us a spiritual gift, Romans 11:29 affirms that He will never withdraw it. This means that

He will not overstep our free-will. We are the ones to govern what we do, think, feel, and say. Our Heavenly Father knows that if we truly love and honor Him, we will line up our actions, thoughts, feelings, and confessions to mirror the example

of Jesus Christ.

Our hearts and minds are a part of our souls and they are indeed the gateways into the soul; the heart and mind let information in and they let information out. The soul is the innermost part of our beings, and we interact with other people and situations based on what is in it. Both our emotions and thoughts come from the soul, and these get expressed through our actions. In other words, a person can know a lot about us by how we choose to express our emotions and thoughts outwardly. If we smile and do good deeds, people assume that goodness is on the inside of us. By the same token, if we’re angry all the time, and we speak and behave in a way that causes harm to ourselves or other people, they assume there’s evil in us. Jesus Christ put it best in Luke 6:45 by teaching us, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.”

A person can be saved by the blood of the Lamb, and still walk around with a bad treasury in their hearts and minds. No doubt you have come across many people like this. They profess to be Christians, but they do not have the heart of Christ. God wants them to be transformed, but they will not give Him permission, because they have refused to renew their minds and line up their thoughts and behaviors with those of Christ.

Colossians 2:10(NLT)

“So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.”

Ephesians 1:3(NLT)

“All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.”

1Corinthians 1:30(NLT)

God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; he made us pure and holy, and he freed us from sin.

1Corinthains 6:11(NLT)

Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

1Thessalonians 5:5(NLT)

For you are all children of the light and of the day; we don't belong to darkness and night.

Ephesians 5:8 (NLT)

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light

Romans 8:16(NLT)

For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children.

John 1:12(NLT)

But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.

1Thessalonians 5:9(NLT)

For God chose to save us through our Lord Jesus Christ, not to pour out his anger on us.

Romans 12:21 (NLT)

21 Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good.

1Peter 2:24(NLT)

He personally carried our sins in his body on the cross so that we can be dead to sin and live for what is right. By his wounds you are healed.

Psalm 147:3(NLT)

He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.

Acts 5:30(NLT)

The God of our ancestors raised Jesus from the dead after you killed him by hanging him on a cross.

Romans 6:11(NLT)

So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.

Romans 7:6(NLT)

But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

Isaiah 41:10(NLT)

Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.

Mark 11:23-24(NLT)

“23 For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. 24

“Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

Jeremiah 33:6 (NLT)

6 “Nevertheless, the time will come when I will heal Jerusalem’s wounds and give it prosperity and true peace.

John 16:33 (NLT)

33 I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

n Ephesians 4:32(NLT), God gives us

His standard for how we must treat one another. He tells us, “Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.” As women, we might find tenderheartedness a little bit easier to demonstrate than men. We are taught to be nurturers, and some would argue that nurturing is in our DNA, but even women are losing ground towards this standard. The reality is that the world can be a very cruel place, and although God commands us to be different from the world, not all Christians are nurturing, tenderhearted, and kind. It’s important that we know this, because as women desiring marriage, some of the men we meet haven’t been taught about God’s love, and many of us are not prepared to teach them about it.

This doesn’t mean that they aren’t nice, some are quite nice enough, but it’s possible to

meet a man that doesn’t know how to be tender and giving, and he has never placed anyone’s wellbeing above his own. I think many women are quite shocked by the number of eligible bachelors who behave this way. There are large numbers of both men and women who are too entrenched in their ways to make room for another person. We must consider the reality that most people in society do not hold God’s Word as the authoritative revelation, and they have their own views on marriage, love, and physical intimacy. They are sadly misguided and need to seek God’s intention for relationships and for their lives.

Because the world has moved so far away from God’s standard, as Godly women, acquainting a new person with God’s Word and love may be part of our assignment. This will require a tremendous amount of patience, discipline, and prayer.

The man you meet may not be eager to hear the Gospel, but with the passage of time, he may in fact develop eagerness according to God’s destiny for him. This is why it is very wise for a woman not to jump to conclusions when she meets someone new. God must confirm all things, and we must wait on Him and not get ahead of His guidance.

Some of us are desperate to claim the spouse we’ve been praying to receive. When it looks like the new man’s interest is mutual, some of us take the reins and move very quickly to solidify the relationship. We don’t want to take the time to walk through the “friendship” stage as we hear from God about exactly what we’re dealing with. Instead, we go instantly into the monogamy of boyfriend-girlfriend in hopes of being spouses in the future. We don’t give God the time to work through us to be a Christkind of tenderhearted and kind. Instead, we place expectations on the man to demonstrate qualities he hasn’t yet cultivated. It’s possible that God will teach him through us, but we often make the mistake of moving so quickly from one stage to the next that we mess things up. And it’s all because we didn’t have a clue about God’s plan. It’s not old fashioned to wait on God, it’s wise. It’s obeying His commandment to seek Him first in all things and not lean on our own understanding.

The teachings of Jesus Christ reveal that an abundant life is cultivated by sharing God’s love, and we’ll find that life is meaningless without this. God’s love never fails. It is generous, patient, and kind. God’s love promotes justice and righteousness, and it is a love that will last forever. Modern society’s viewpoint is that anything goes. They want us to accept that people can do whatever they want and call it love, but that’s not God’s love; far from it. God’s love is the standard by which we are called to live a life of service to others and to Him. This isn’t some farfetched ideal. It is God’s commandment, and His blessings hang upon it. If neither person in a relationship knows this and is willing to be obedient, how can they have a marriage

truly held together by the love of Christ?

Philippians 4:6(NLT) tells us, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” Prayer is always the precursor to good choices and decisions, especially when it comes to significant relationships. Some women will say, “But I’ve been praying so long, and I still haven’t met my husband.” The amount of time and frequency that we spend praying about marriage before we meet the future spouse gives us an indication of how much prayer is required to make sure the marriage will last. Again, it’s about developing patience, discipline, and a hearty prayer life.

The truth is that some of us are not prepared to make the commitment that is required to maintain our relationship with God, and because we haven’t shown the patience, discipline, and prayer necessary, He knows we will not do it in a marriage. We’re not motivated to grow closer to God, many of us are just interested in the rewards. We must consider that a slight shift in our motivation and thinking may be necessary. God hears our prayers, and He is not withholding the blessing of marriage from anyone who wants it. Heavenly Father has designed blessings in such a way that they manifest when our believing is where it needs to be.

God’s desire is that we become the very image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Romans 8:29(NLT) tells us, “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” Most of us have underestimated the Father’s allegiance to His requirement in Romans 8:29. He is relentless to see us become who He created us to be, and He will not alter His plan for our lives. By this, you must be clear that the crown of matrimony must be worn long before you meet your spouse. You’re not a queen just because the man thinks so, or because you think so. We’re queens in God’s Kingdom when we measure up to the standard of Christ and represent him in all that we do.■

How to Be Content in Life

by Fran Mack

ohn 10:10 is probably on every believer’s list of scripture favorites. It’s the words of our Master Jesus, and he teaches us, “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

In this verse, Jesus Christ tells us exactly why he came to the earth. He came to rescue us and to give us a more than abundant life. Most of us would be fine with just an abundant life, but our Heavenly Father deals in the exceedingly abundantly above anything we can ask or think. So, there you have it. More abundant it is! And this is good news indeed! Our problem is that our world has become bombarded with hate, disappointment, mistrust, lies, cruelty, and cynicism. Sadly, it’s rubbed off on many of us, and we no longer believe or stand on the Words of our beloved Savior. We have to change this and turn it around as quickly as we possibly can.

Very simply put, a worldly mindset is one that is shaped and molded by the world. By this, we know that

when the Bible refers to the ‘world’, it is defining an anti-Christ consciousness that refuses to honor God. When a mind is blinded in this way, faith eludes it. A worldly mindset can only accept and believe what it perceives through sight and other senses, so it only believes what the systems of the world feed it. This kind of mind is dangerous for the believer, because it is a mind that is disobedient to God’s commandment to walk by faith and not by sight.

►The Struggle

As believers, many of us are struggling with John 10:10 because we won’t come to grips with the degree to which we have allowed the world to influence us. We’re not following God’s blueprint, and we want everything on the double. We have refused to put on the Spirit’s fruit of patience, which is God’s requirement. We’re discontent with life because our Heavenly Father doesn’t coddle our refusal to get our heads in the game. He’s committed to our spiritual maturity in Christ, and our excuses will not work. The discontentment really sets in, and in some cases turns to extreme sadness, when we simply won’t take the initiative to turn things around through our faith in God. In 1Corinthians 3:10 (NKJV), the Apostle Paul said, “According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it.” In this

verse, God is teaching us through Paul about His amazing grace. He’s teaching us what we are able to accomplish through His grace and love. Just like Paul, we are master builders who are empowered by God to build on the foundation that our Master Jesus laid for us. We accomplish this by using our entire lives. In other words, our very lives should be the strong, solid layers that we are laying on the foundation of Christ. Jesus laid the initial foundation with his finished work, and our lives should be built on it by following God’s Word.

►Build a life

A foundation is the loadbearing part of a structure or building. This means that it can withstand pressure, and it can support the weight of other hefty material, structures, fixtures or furniture that may be placed on it. A foundation will not collapse when storms come, and strong winds blow. It will continue standing because it is made well. Our lives must be this kind of foundation or else we will not be able to steward God’s blessings in the way He expects, and most importantly, our house will not be in order when our Lord and Savior returns.

We cannot receive spiritual strength from the world. It’s impossible. We must build our lives from God’s Word, and this requires us to use the building material of the present. We can’t try to build a life from our pasts or from the future. Jesus Christ teaches us in Matthew 6:25-27(NLT), “25That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear. Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? 27 Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?”

How to Be Content in Life

Conclusion

We cannot be so dependent on the world’s customs that we’re lost when it comes to living by the light of Christ. But the truth is that some of us don’t have a clue how to build a life. We can change this by doing as Jesus Christ instructs in Matthew 6:31-33 (NLT), “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ 32 These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 33 Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” To lay a foundation of contentment in life, our faith must grow and continually increase in our Heavenly Father. This must come before any other person or thing.

Our Lord is soon to return. We cannot afford to assume we are spiritually prepared in the way God requires. We must be absolutely diligent in praying that He will show us the things that must be released. If we pray this without ceasing, we will show ourselves to be humble before Him, and willing to learn what He desires to teach us.

Surrender Victimhood

The thing we must understand is that we all come to God as we are, but He will not leave us the way we came. We must be transformed, and He has made it abundantly clear that renewing our minds to the mind of Christ is necessary for His process. To embrace the newness that Christ offers, we must recognize that there are lessons we need to learn, and our Heavenly Father is very willing to teach them to us.

►Work with what you have

All we have is right now. If gratitude and thankfulness for this very present moment escapes us, we are in trouble. Sadness, disappointment, insecurity, doubt, and all the other defeating emotions, have their root in fear. They increase because we are not living in the moment as Christ instructs us to do in Matthew 6:31-33. Instead, we’re worried about what happened in the past or in many cases, we’re worried about not having a need fulfilled in the future. We must wake up and recognize that the worry, angst, fear, and doubt that we indulge in this moment is laying the kind of foundation we don’t want for the future. It’s a shaky foundation, and it is not sturdy enough to hold all that God has in store.

Contentment is the choice to clothe ourselves in gratitude to God for the blessings we have right now. He is a faithful God, and He deserves every good thing from us. Paul said in Philippians 4:11 (NLT), “Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have.” We must be committed to learn this golden lesson as well. He said in 1Timothy 6:8(NLT), “So if we have enough food and clothing, let us be content.” Heavenly Father doesn’t mean that we should stop wanting greater blessings. He expects us to understand that this moment is all we have, and we should make the most of it with gratitude and contentment before Him; He deserves this. He’s blessed us wonderfully through Christ, and if we’re not as thankful as we should be, we need to pray that He will open our eyes to His goodness. Contentment isn’t having everything we want, it’s the confidence that we have all we need in Christ, and when we need more, we’ll have that too. ■

Often these lessons are about habit patterns, routines, addictions, fears, and insecurities that must be released in order for us to go higher in Him. The reason it is so important to learn these spiritual lessons is because they will be on repeat continually in our lives if we fail to learn them. Another very important reason we must learn spiritual lessons about God’s Word and about His love is because we can’t spiritually grow in certain areas if we allow the weight of sin and wrong believing to continue weighing us down. They keep us from enjoying the blessings and the life we were meant to have.

Many of us have had our hearts broken through very traumatic situations, and our lives haven’t been the same since. We want those responsible for our pain to pay the price, but how, when, and what they pay will do nothing for the condition of our own souls. We do not have the luxury of wasting time by looking outside ourselves for solutions. The answers we all need are housed in us through the Spirit of Jesus Christ. His love for us is the most beautiful and intense love in all of eternity. So, we may think we need to see a person pay for how they’ve hurt us, but that isn’t what we need. We need to focus all our attention and intention on loving God through Jesus Christ.

For many of us, pain keeps us from embracing newness. To release this pain is to forgive, let go, and grow higher. Your pain, heartache, or disappointment is real. You’ve gone through something that left you wounded, or maybe you just don’t trust that life will be kind to you. Whatever the case, feeling bad, insecure, and doubtful is not a normal state. It isn’t our new nature. When we feel down about ourselves and our situations, we must draw a line in the sand that separates those feelings from the reality of what God says we are and what God says we can do. He is the authority, not us. Our lessons will almost always be about acknowledging our pain but surrendering our victimhood for victory. We can do this through Jesus Christ, and we will be transformed by every step we make to embrace the newness he offers.■

Father God, in the precious name of Jesus Christ we come before You with humbled hearts, thanking You for the work that You’ve accomplished in him for us; that we might be whole and acceptable in Your sight. Thank You for forgiving our sins and clothing us in righteousness. We unite in love and prayer for our sisters and brothers all over the world, and we pray this prayer…

A Closer Walk with Thee

For those requesting prayer for a closer walk with You, Father, we pray that You will bless them with spiritual growth and maturity, that they will be able to see what You will have them to see and hear what You would have them to hear. Please teach them how to listen to Your directives, and guide them according to Your divine purpose for their lives. Renew in them a right spirit, Lord, and give them a greater thirst and hunger after Your righteousness. Draw them ever so close to You, Father, as You teach them how to be pleasing in Your sight, that they may be renewed in their commitment to You and to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Broken Marriages and Relationships

The symbol above represents the many women around the world who have requested prayer. By placing your hand on the prayer cloth, please touch and agree with us in prayer for them.

For those requesting prayer for marital restoration and broken relationships, Father, we pray that You will comfort their hearts and extend to them the peace of Jesus Christ. Enlighten their hearts so that everyone involved can come to a place of forgiveness and compassion. Please teach them to lean solely on Your strength and wisdom, that they will not look to the left nor to the right, but keep their eyes stayed upon Jesus. Thank You for blessing them with a special anointing that destroys the yoke of desperation, resentment, pride, jealousy, anger, obsession, envy, and loneliness. Allow them to see clearer the path that You have set before them. Please help them to be patient and not overreact as You work out all the details of the reconciliation of their marriages, and restoration of relationships with friends and family members.

Partnering in Marriage

For those requesting prayer to meet a good and Godly man, and to partner in marriage, thank You for blessing them to use this preparation time wisely. Help them to understand the holiness of marriage, and that it is a commitment to You to honor and minister to one of Your vessels. Thank You for blessing them to see clearly the thing that blocks their path, and help them to confront it in a way that brings them closer to You. Show them how to truly put You first, and to understand that putting YOU first is the key that opens the door to matrimony. Please help them to have complete and utter faith that You will present them with a spouse, for You are delighted to do so, and You are faithful to Your Word.

For the Unsaved Loved One

For those requesting prayer that an unsaved loved one might come to know Jesus Christ in the pardon of their sins, we too, pray for the unbelieving person, and humbly ask that You save their souls through Christ Jesus, our Lord. Thank You for helping them to cultivate a humbled heart and a willing spirit. Bless them to cross the path of a witness that You have ordained to speak life into their souls, that they might be drawn to the love of Christ and become born again.

Physical Wholeness

For those requesting prayer for wholeness in their physical bodies, we ask Your divine healing upon them through Christ. Thank You for reminding them of the price that Jesus Christ paid for every believer’s healing, and that we are healed through his stripes. Thank You for bringing those who are sick across the path of anointed physicians and care-givers who will treat them with the best care. Thank You for providing them access to the best medications for their conditions. We know that ALL healing comes from You, and we thank You for working through Your many resources to bring the sick and afflicted to total healing and wholeness.

Financial Breakthrough

We know from 3John 1:2 that You desire our prosperity, not only in finances, but in every aspect of life. For those requesting prayer for a financial breakthrough, we thank You for providing them with wisdom to get wealth and for teaching them to use their resources wisely. Show them through Your mercy, Dear Father, the obedience and benefits of tithing; and then help them to be committed to it so that they will witness firsthand the abundance and covering that tithing will bring into their lives. Thank You for giving them peace and promotion in the workplace, manifestation of their ambitions; and for blessing them with the fortitude, courage, and stamina to shine as a beckon of Your light by presenting their best selves every day.

We pray this prayer for every person who has requested prayer in the precious and powerful name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sundie

Sistas