Daily book quote;

    God has given us great disciplines in which our new created spiritual nature may grow in the grace and the knowledge of God. Staying in His Word, prayer, fellowship, worship, service with a heart consistently filled with praise and thankfulness--- will see the presence, power and peace of our Lord enlarged and magnified within the believer’s mind and heart. The more time we spend seeking the Holy Spirit’s leading and direction, the more the Holy Spirit will occupy the desires, the reasoning, and the choices one makes, as the will seeks to please God.

    I guess the word for this lesson on change would be “focus”. What is the real focus of your life? If you were to keep a spiritual journal, how much time do you spend seeking and feeding and following your spiritual nature? An hour on Sunday? – Ten minutes a day? Real change means always having the right focus.

Daily book quote;

Growth is about improving who we are; change is about becoming someone different. Growth usually concerns addition – “Make every effort to add to your faith…goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love.” ( 2 Peter 1:5 ) Change is more about elimination of things that are damaging; “put off” - “put to death” – “crucify” – “rid yourselves of” – such things as; and then the list goes on…most of which are an act of our will.
Yes, God will help us to change, but He never forces himself upon us…He will only do what we allow and ask Him to do. He does it by the power within us, but we must work “with” Him. “With God nothing is impossible!”

Daily book quote;

    There are those who think if they BELIEVE the right thing that makes them okay with God. However, if what we believe (which is what we think or what is in our heads) never reaches our hearts, it is useless. The Pharisees believed a lot of right things, but Jesus had a problem with them!

    There are also some who think that if they DO the right things, they are o.k. with God. “I attend church; give tithes and offerings; read my Bible now and then…” Just doing right things won’t do it either - “any who say to me Lord, Lord”, didn’t we do this or didn’t we do that… and Jesus said to them “Depart from me, I never knew you.” (Matthew 7:23)

    There are also those who think because they DON’T do certain things, they are right with God. “Well, I don’t cuss, drink, smoke, or chew and I don’t go with girls that do!” There were a lot of things the Pharisees didn’t do, they were very righteous, but Jesus called them “white washed tombs.” What God says in His Word is “They honor me with their lips, but their HEARTS are far from me.”

    Does God care about what we believe? ( Yes) Does he care about the things we DO? ( Yes ) Does he care about the things we DON”T do? Of course! But, all of those things must stem from a heart that loves God because it’s that love that will influence every aspect of our lives. “Man sees the outside, but God sees the heart!” (see Mathew 23:28)