You Can Change Your Attitude!

You can’t change some things. You can’t change some decisions that you have made in the past, just like you cannot control what has happened beyond your control. You CAN control what you do from this moment forward, you can change your attitude towards your circumstances.

When I was growing up, I made some stupid choices. I still do some stupid things – make stupid statements and really put my foot in it some times.

The thing is, we can regret the things that we have done and said, or we can learn from them. Everything about your past has created your character – the person that you are right now. You can’t change your past there’s no reason why it should dictate your future!

Our attitude is so important. What really gets you going? What are you passionate about? What are you focusing on?

Are you looking backwards? How about looking forwards to the place that you CAN get to, rather than concentrating on your mistakes, on your regrets? Nothing happens without a purpose. It makes us who we are.

Lately I’ve had to focus on the way that I react to circumstances, especially those circumstances or situations that make me feel really uncomfortable such as confrontation. Sometimes you need to know when to back off, or stand your ground.

I’ve also had to learn that sometimes its better to not get wound up about the little things, they are so minor but they play on your mind! That’s just the devil trying to steal your destiny, don’t even contemplate it for one second! Why bother getting jealous or uptight about something that isn’t significant? Just chill 🙂

Spend some time praying in tongues. In the presence of the Father there is freedom, grace, peace and liberty.  He is the King that broke my chains, he set me free so that I can live a life of abundance. Times are getting short and to be honest, it’s driving me to be the man who God called me to be, rather than the man that the world shaped me to be. Fear has no place, shame has no place, it was all done for you on a cross over 2000 years ago so just live it out. Live the life that God has called you to live, a life without worry or fear!

 

 

Who Would You Die For?

We can often struggle to cry out to God when we are hurting so much, because unless we have had the revelation that God wants to take away our pain and that he loves you so much, why would you bother? We can go through situations such as:

Our life situations/reflection stories: rumors of illegitimacy, taunts of insanity from our family and friends, rejection, betrayal by friends, people turning against you, being mocked and slandered, facing temptation and letting our past put chains around us so that we cannot move forward.

We can fail to realize that we can have a direct connection to God – who knows exactly what you are going through and wants to take away all of your suffering! We can fail to realize that Jesus came to earth as God incarnate to suffer through some of the same things that we suffer through, and he died on a cross to take all of our baggage on himself!

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine dying for someone you love? Think about the person that you love the most in the world, you would die for them right? Well think about an absolute stranger… would you die for them? Most of us would like to say that we would but the reality is that we would struggle to put our lives on the line unless we loved and valued a person.  I can personally relate – Sure I would die to save my family or my best friends, but if you were to straight up ask me if I would die in the place of someone I had never met before – the answer would unfortunately be a NO.

How do you know God personally? The answer is shockingly simple.  You know him the same way that you get to know anybody.  You introduce yourself, you might shake hands, strike up a conversation, inquire about their life and what they do, and with best friends you would even delve deeper into your most intimate secrets.  Because of Jesus we never need to doubt God’s desire for intimacy for us.  Does God really want a close relationship with us? … Jesus gave up HEAVEN for it.  He came to reestablish the original link between God and human beings, between the seen and unseen worlds.

When Jesus came down from Heaven, in the process he made us more comprehensible to God, and now not only do we understand God better because of Jesus, but God understands us better.  God senses our human condition in a different way, because Jesus came to earth as a human, he was made perfect through the suffering.  Because God is a spirit being, he never felt physical pain, but through Jesus he learned about pain.  He accepted that by coming to earth he would suffer physical suffering – which Jesus learnt in the most painful way. He was quite literally dying to be with us.

Restore those BROKEN dreams

God wants to restore relationships, he wants to restore health to peoples bodies, he wants to restore your finances, emotions and he wants to restore his church!

Has God given you a dream or a vision in your infancy as a Christian and for whatever reason, that vision has just been put on the back burner? Maybe you’ve forgotten it, maybe its been stolen away from you, or maybe you feel like that dream or that vision that you had was never going to be possible so you simply gave up.

The DEVIL aims to steal, kill and destroy – he will use EVERYTHING he can to get you to give up on the dream, the vision that God has for your life. But the good thing here is that God is into restoring those broken dreams. It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, or what you have done – nothing can separate you from His love and his mercies which are new every morning.

We might fight for material things – perhaps the bank has ripped us off by overcharging us with fees, or a phone gets stolen or something of the sort. Those sort of things really get our backs up… But God wants to tell you today that the dream that he gave you – He wants to see your life restored and your vision come to fruition. We need to fight for it. Instead of just letting it go, we need to scrap, we need to put the devil in his place and claim back what is rightfully ours.

God’s favour is on YOU. Always.

You cannot look to man to help restore your life, or your broken/stolen dreams or visions. Only Jesus can fully restore you! He has already been restored by laying down his life for us, he was restored from death to life. He can do this for you right now, right here in the place where you’re at!

What makes it think that anything could be too hard for him to restore?

God restores every bleak situation that you face

God is into history making moments. God desires that you would let him create history defining moments through YOU.

Lay hands on the sick and they will be healed. Be a witness and see families and communities come to Christ.

Have a life defining moment right now and get before God and He WILL see you set free, He will see those dreams restored! 🙂

 

Thanks for reading! If you like what I have to say then please check out my best friends page – jkalmighty.wordpress.com he’s a pretty epic dude with some awesome thoughts

That Empty Feeling

Do you ever feel like things are going alright for you in life, but somehow you feel spiritually empty? Perhaps you are finding that you’re time with God is at a minimum and although things are going ‘okay’, they could be a lot better. 

That empty feeling sucks.

We might read the bible but do we really make an effort to apply it to our lives?

Do you spend a bit of time with God regularly? Do you listen to Him? Do you just sit in his presence and chill out with Him? This are some of the things that are INCREDIBLY refreshing, and to be honest I wish I could chill with God more often, and for longer periods of time. Life just seems to get big on you a lot of the time, and there is way too much to do!

Why don’t we seek God more? Do we get caught up in our own lives too much? Why don’t we pray? Or do we find that praying seems pointless? Maybe you feel like you have nothing to pray for? I know that is the case for me sometimes. I feel greedy for even asking God to help me out with something, and it’s easy to find yourself in that ‘where can I fit God in’ situation, and ‘my life is pretty sweet at the moment, I would feel awkward to ask God for more’.

I tell you this my friends. Jesus came to give you life and to give you life in the full. That means He wants you to live abundantly. He wants you to live in freedom, in liberty and in grace.

There’s always something to pray for, but praying isn’t just about asking God to meet a need, its about thanking Him for what He has done, what He is doing and what He is going to do in advance.

Relationships require effort, they require time to become strong. Think of your relationship with your husband or wife, girlfriend or boyfriend, or perhaps your best friend – all relationships take time to establish, trust is gained and then you might spend a lot of time together. But you need to spend that time.

Let’s go back to our roots, lets go back to that moment when we first encountered God… it was an exciting time, we were young Christians, we were on fire for the Lord. We felt that NO obstacle was too great for OUR GOD to overcome. Just think about that for a minute, and make it your current reality. 

A Work in Progress

Is it not the desire of every person who knows God to be more like Him? To live in that constant grace… to do away with the things of this world and our fleshly nature and just seek Him?

It can be a frustrating time as a Christian when God imparts a vision and we get into the ‘lag’ time before that vision comes to fruition.

But God knows that by imparting vision, its the journey that you have to go through to get to that end goal that creates character within you.

‘…will ignite the kingdom life within you, a fire within you, the Holy Spirit within you, changing you from the inside out… He’ll place everything true in its proper place before God; everything false he’ll put out with the trash to be burned.’ Matt 3:11-12 (MSG)

You see my friends, He will put everything in its proper place, he will throw out all of the bad stuff – whether thats a selfish trait that we have or a crippling addiction. In time He will see to it. But the lag time or the journey to get to that end goal is what makes us, its what shapes us into that man or woman that God had planned for us from the very beginning.

He has given us such an amazing tool – an amazing Spirit that dwells within every believer which means that we don’t have to do it alone, and if we have a growing relationship with God – if we love Him and spend time with him, then He is going to change those things whether we like it or not. As you fall more deeply in love with God – your desire to take part in that addiction or selfish desire will diminish.

‘The moment that Jesus came up out of his baptismal waters, the skies opened up and he saw God’s Spirit – it looked like a dove – descending and landing on him. And along with the Spirit, a voice: ‘This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life.’ Matt 3:16-17

When Jesus was crucified, the life that he sacrificed on the cross ensured that every believer would inherit the Kingdom of God – they would receive the Holy Spirit which is the SAME POWER that saw Jesus resurrected from the dead. It’s the same power that saw miraculous healing of the blind, the deaf, the DEAD!

It doesn’t matter where you are at on your journey with God, you just need to know that as your journey with Him, as you spend time with Him and get to know Him more and more – He’s just going to pour out more and more of His love and grace upon you. You are Blessed and Highly Favoured to Him. He loves YOU.

Where is Your Focus?

A lot of people tend to wander, they might have great dreams that they have always wanted to see achieved in their lives but something always stops them. It is easy to take the lazy mans way out and just be content with what they’ve got, to just do life as they always have.

But what if, you stepped out in faith and trusted God… He is the one that has given you those dreams, He is the one that has given you the things to fulfill that epic vision or dream that you have always had.

A lot of the time the focus we can have is on building up material things because thats what the world does – they have to work to provide food on the table, and a house over their heads. But what if, we just followed God?

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19-21 NKJV

You see my friends, if what we treasure is having a heart for God and going all out for Him, He will ensure that those dreams come to pass – especially when those dreams have Him at the centre.

So the question I ask you today is this. Are we doing all that we can to see those people in our sphere of influence won to Jesus? It’s not the role of the evangelist or the pastor to simply get people into church, thats YOUR job too 🙂

What is that dream or that vision that you have always had, but you’re too busy sitting comfortable to step out and have faith in God to see it come to pass?

See the next generation rise up by praying, by relying on God to bring an open heaven over this place and seeing the supernatural become the natural! Go to Him with your hearts desire and He will HONOUR you!

Blessings

If Tomorrow Never Arrived

What if tomorrow never arrived?

How would we live?

Would we be so selfish?

Would money even matter?

What if we got run over by a bus, what if we had a car accident and died at the scene?

What if Jesus were to return tonight?

The bible says we have to give an account to him about how we chose to live.

This is not a ‘What if’ sermon, but considering 29 percent of people in New Zealand die from cancer – that’s nearly 1/3 of people in this country. What if we just continued on living the way that we live, and got diagnosed with cancer tomorrow?

We need to be living for the day, not dwelling on our past, or worrying about tomorrow, because tomorrow may never come.

Instead of being selfish – only concerned with our personal desires, or those big expensive possessions that we covet – we would become selfless.

At the end of the day, what are you living for?

When you die what can you take with you?

It’s about leaving a legacy, its about showing people mercy, its abut stepping in and helping others when they need a hand, when they need someone to stand next to them when they’re going through a rough situation.

Been there done that, I’ve only been concerned about myself, money use to worry me, but when you get an idea of your eternal significance, that disappears.

We don’t have to be perfect, Jesus died for you on that cross – he died for you just as you are right now. And one day when he calls you from this earth, he wants you to be able to spend eternity in his presence, in his warm embrace.

He desires that non shall perish.

Knowledge is Dangerous

We are all unique, we all have our own gifts and abilities. So we are called by GOD to do something with our life. He has set in motion all the things that we require to do it, we just need to say YES.

Having that knowledge – we know what we are called for, we know what we stand for. That is dangerous. It means that we step into that space where we take TERRITORY. We claim what is rightfully ours, and we step into the gap for others so that they can inherit the same eternal destiny.

When we know our creator, we know his character, and we know that when we put ourselves in a position for God to use us… we can speak TRUTH into helpless situations, and see life brought into peoples situations.

Know God, know the truth of His Word. With that, you can step into what He is calling you to do.

Are You A Sunday Christian?

Hebrews 10:25 tells us that we should not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching (return of Jesus).

Lots of pastors talk about this scripture – probably as a way to guilt people into going to church. I’m telling you right now people, God does not just live at church!! He is everywhere, He lives inside every person who believes in Him, all those who have given their heart to Christ.

I’m not saying it isn’t important to go to church and hear the Word of God together, but I’m saying that it isn’t the be all and end all – you shouldn’t be looked down upon or feel guilty for not going to church every week. In fact, it is vitally important that you not only have a few good friends around you, but you NEED to have a sound personal relationship with the Lord.

What you need is at least one good friend (preferably a few really good friends) that are going to encourage you. Really, it is about doing life together. Those friends are the one’s you turn to when your going through some struggles, they can pray for you and stand with you – and if you’re that down and out they can stand in the gap and petition God on your behalf.

These friends need to walk beside you, not ahead of you – so if you’re in a leadership position you would obviously want to be close to other leaders. Whomever it is, needs to be open to talking about the things of God, and give you the opportunity to share what is going on in your world. They are also there to CELEBRATE your achievements with you. It’s the good times and the bad times after all 🙂

As well as going to church and having some close friends that are walking the same walk, you need to have a really good prayer life. That means you give God the time of day in other words! What is it they say…? Your relationship with God is just like your relationship with your best friend or partner – if you put time into that relationship it will flourish, if you don’t put the time in then it will flounder. Spending time thinking about God, praying to God, reading about God and worshipping God is essential. It LIFTS your spirit man, and it sees great things happen when God can use you as his vessel.

Take the time to not only pray, but listen to God. I dunno how God speaks to you – because he speaks to everyone differently, but just WAIT on God and he will come through for you, He will give you answers and He will not let you sink.

Whenever it is that you pray, just make sure you give God some time and don’t only seek Him on a Sunday when you’re at church – and be like the rest of the world come Monday. Strive after God, strive after the things that he has, be that LIGHT to others in your life that don’t yet know Jesus.

When you do these things, you start to get on the right track. Instead of that inner battle that goes on inside of your head (every time you have to make a choice – you will find that you will automatically make a choice that pleases God, because you won’t want to upset Him by your actions.)

It might take some time but it will become second nature to you. Trust me, nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes, we all screw up. But GOD knows this! He knows everything about us and He isn’t going to hate us for messing something up – we just go back to God and get before Him, and let him alter us more and more each day.

Don’t let church become familiar, don’t be a Christian on a Sunday and an alcoholic/druggie/sex addict the rest of the week! Turn to your close friends when you know you need something to shift in your world and start praying that God would do something!

Don’t be a Sunday Christian! Pray lots, make sure you have good friends and give the King of Kings your BEST LIFE.

Healed…

Isaiah 53:5 He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our inequities, the punishment that bought us peace was upon him. By his wounds we are healed