Receive 40 powerful promises from God with this new spirit-filled devotional from Joel! You’ll experience a fresh start and joy every day as you speak God’s Word over your life. This new resource will help you receive favor, healing, freedom, and blessing in your relationships. You were created to flourish in every area of your life!
Today's Word: Jan 20, 2021
When we have an attitude of faith--we're positive, hopeful, expecting good things--that pure eye is letting sunshine into our life. But when we go around stressed out, worried, or thinking the clouds over our health or finances are never going to change, that's stopping the sun. It's causing more clouds to roll in, more defeat, and more mediocrity. We have to start letting some sunshine into our life. It doesn't start with God; it starts with us.
Instead of being discouraged by the dark clouds, our attitude should be, "Any moment this can change. Healing is coming, promotion is coming, the right person is coming, breakthroughs are coming." If you want to see the clouds open up, you have to have this expectancy. Shake off the negativity, quit talking about what's not working out, and turn it around. "God, I know You're in control of these clouds. They will pass. I believe at any moment I'm going to see that unexpected sunshine."
Friend, no matter how big the obstacle, no matter what limitations have slowed you down in the past—know that your tomorrow is good and in God’s hands! No matter what your story has been, God is writing for your future.
Sometimes it's as though we're carrying around all these heavy emotional bags and wondering why life is a struggle. I know a divorced woman who met a very nice man, and she was excited about the possibilities. But when she went into the relationship, all she talked about was her past hurts and pains. She was so stuck in her past that she couldn't move forward. The man finally decided to stop seeing her because he couldn't make a connection with her in the present. She missed an opportunity for her future.
It's easy to get so weighed down with emotional baggage that's full of pain and heartache that we lose our passion and excitement for living. It might be a bag of guilt, or a bag of mistakes, or a bag of regrets. We weren't designed to carry around bitterness, resentment, and disappointments, yet sometimes we just keep refilling those same bags. We open those old bags and just see all that dirty stuff from way back when and keep carrying them. When you are weighed down with all that junk, it's hard to see where you're going or how you'll ever get there. That's why the Scripture tells us to "lay aside the weights that can easily entangle us" (Hebrews 12:1).
The Scripture says God wants to give you beauty for ashes, but you can't receive the beauty if you don't give God your ashes (Isaiah 61:3). Give God your hurts and pains, and then open up wide so that you can receive the beauty He has in store for you. Give Him your past. Forgive the people who offended you. Release them. Forgive yourself. Let it go. It's better in the hands of God. Don't worry and fret. Don't let that negative emotional baggage define your life. God doesn't allow it to define you, and neither should you.
Are you carrying weights of guilt? Weights of shame? Weights of regret? You can't do anything about what happened in your past--it's over with. But you can do something about today. That's why you need to refresh your emotional baggage every morning. You need to learn to travel light, because where you're going is far more important than where you've been. You're not going to be able to walk through open doors until you drop the negative baggage you're carrying. Decide that it's time to put your foot down and say, "I'm letting go of the past and moving forward with my life." Put it in the past, drop the weights, and travel light into your future. God has great things in store for you.
You don’t have to spend another minute being infected by wrong thinking. I have the exact prescription, and it doesn’t cost anything. If you start renewing your mind with what God says about you, it will clear up all the places that are infected, and it will heal all the places that are hurting.
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