Thank God I'm Forgiven Friday and it's the month focused on thanksgiving. Tell God how thankful you are for salvation, new life, His purposes, His patient and refining love, and for wanting to be with you always! At least start there and allow that to overflow into much thanksgiving an praise!
Good Morning Thankful Children of God! Come you thankful people come! Raise the song of harvest home! We begin our time with our Abba (Daddy) as Jesus taught us as we hallow (honor) His name. And as we ask for His Kingdom to come and will to be done, He informs our prayers and directs our steps as we unleash the power of heaven! He has great plans for you to discover today as you prayerfully stay connected and watch to join what He is doing around you. We have neighbors, family, friends, co-workers that we are sent to love like Jesus and as we pray, He prepares them and us. I love how easy this all is and how He works and uses us just as He created us to go love like Him! Praise God for our volunteers and pray God would be seen in the ministry of our Clothing Closet tomorrow. Pray we connect to the harvest He is sending and thank Him for new faces at worship and new opportunities we are experiencing to go and love like Jesus. He is definitely on the move! PTL! Unleash His power and purposes in prayer! Start praying for those God is sending and those He has for you to invite to our Thanksgiving Eve Eve or Christmas Eve services. Many are open this time of year. Pray hard into that with childlike faith and willingness to do your custom made part. Thank God for that and for His ever-present help and overflowing love. May we have His heart and mind as we go live and love more like Jesus. More in '24! More of Him and less of me as we live Christ earnestly today!
Check out the flow through my devotionals for today. Pray into what God is revealing and offer yourself as a living sacrifice to go as his Living Water. Our Daily Bread reminded me of the Christmas Giving challenge. (Opps I read tomorrow's. Use today's to start engaging prayerfully) You have two Sundays to sign up to join what God has planned to do through us this Christmas season to go be a blessing and connect to some neighbors. The Upper Room continues this line of thinking with a reminder of how simple it is to love like Jesus and share the simple gift of faith and His easy yoke. Charles Stanley reminds us of God's promises and purposes that come to life as we seek Him with open hearts and minds and willing feet. Joyce Meyer reminds us to approach life and our prayers with childlike faith and trust. And Chuck Swindoll reminds us to keep looking and watching in expectation for God to move. We are to be like a child expecting that most desired Christmas present. Yes Come, Jesus Come! Give us your heart and mind and willing, childlike feet that follow you in deep faith and trust. May we see you as the gift and open your presence and presents and use them well for your glory today and always. Thank You! May many praises and thanksgivings be lifted as we see you working all things together. Amen!
ODB:
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Nathan grew up in a Christ-believing household, but he started to stray from his childhood faith as a college student into things like drinking and partying. “God brought me back to Himself when I didn’t deserve it,” he said. In time, Nathan spent a summer sharing Jesus with strangers on the streets of major US cities, and is now completing a residency in youth ministry at his church. Nathan’s goal is to help young people avoid wasting time not living for Christ.
Like Nathan, the Israelite leader Moses had a heart for the next generation. Knowing he would soon relinquish leadership, Moses delivered God’s good regulations to the people and then lists the results of either obedience or disobedience: blessing and life for obedience, cursing and death for disobedience. “Now choose life, so that you and your children may live,” he told them, “for the Lord is your life” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). Moses urged them to love God, “listen to His voice, and hold fast to Him” (v. 20).
Choosing sin brings consequences. But when we surrender our lives to God again, He’ll surely have mercy (vv. 2-3) and restore us (v. 4). This promise was fulfilled throughout the people of Israel’s history, but also by Jesus’ final work on the cross to bring us into fellowship with God. We too have a choice today and are free to choose life.
By Karen Pimpo
REFLECT & PRAY
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In what area of your life is it most difficult to follow God’s way? How can you encourage the next generation to choose life?
Dear Jesus, thank You for making a way to bring me back into fellowship with You.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
The generation that stood on the threshold of the promised land wasn’t present at Mount Sinai when the mountain shook and God called Israel to be His covenant people. The giving of the law, which showed how the Israelites were to relate to God and one another, had been given to an earlier generation (Exodus 19-20). So before entering the land, Moses repeated the law so that the new generation could likewise learn what God had revealed. That second giving of the law is the book of Deuteronomy, which means “second law.”
Bill Crowder |
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UR> A Simple Gift
Jesus said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” - John 15:12 (NIV)
One afternoon I was walking through a park when I saw a woman sitting on a bench. Her hair was in disarray, her face bore a sad expression, and her eyes were downcast. In the center of the park stood an hibiscus tree overflowing with large red flowers. Some of the flowers had fallen on the pavement, so I decided to gather a few and give them to the woman. I saw an immediate change in her demeanor. She said to me: “Thank you, kind lady; it has been quite a while since someone gave me flowers.” She got up from the bench with a smile on her face as she smelled the flowers and walked away.
After this experience, I could not help but think of the powerful message in John 15:12. Jesus was the greatest example of love, and he invites us to love one another in words and actions. Simple gestures like a gift of flowers, a kind word, a helping hand, or breaking bread with someone can brighten others’ spirits. May we never hesitate to be messengers of God’s powerful love.
Today's Prayer
Thank you, God, for your extraordinary love for us. Inspire us to love our neighbors as you have loved us. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
CS:
JM:
C. Swindoll
Harvest Prayer
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November 15 - Devoting Ourselves to Prayer
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These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers (Acts 1:14 NASB, 1995).
Our life begins with prayer and is developed and sustained by prayer. If Christ is the Head of the church, how can we possibly say that we are a church if we do not let Him speak to us and spend large amounts of time communing with Him?
The early church understood this. In Acts 1:14, you find them doing exactly what Christ told them to do in order to bring about all the results for which they longed. They were learning, just as they had seen for three years as they walked with Jesus, that the primary means of advancing the Kingdom was to commune with the Father. Notice each phrase:
- “These all” (No one was absent, for this was the highest priority.)
- “with one mind” (Prayer led them to unity. In prayer, selfish ideas were melted away and God’s ideas became important for everyone.)
- “were continually” (There was no thought of anything else—it was their habitual practice.)
- “devoting themselves” (To be devoted means to “be strong towards” and they were, individually, making the choice to pray together.)
- “to prayer” (The primary, foundational means of getting God’s work done.)
Sovereign Lord, prayer began in Your heart and is Your chosen way of communicating with Your people! I lift up my church to You and ask that we would all see prayer as our highest priority – because it is Yours. May we come to You continually in unity of mind and heart! Moment by moment and day by day may we devote ourselves to seeing Your purposes accomplished through the corporate, unified prayers offered up within our church community!
---Adapted from Prayer with No Intermission by Bill Elliff. This book is available at prayershop.org.
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- Praise God for choosing the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and the weak things to shame the strong (1 Cor. 1:27).
- Thank God that your salvation does not depend on your wisdom but on his grace alone (Eph. 2:8-9).
- Confess your self-sufficiency (Lk. 16:11-13).
- Commit yourself to doing what the Lord requires of you to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Mic. 6:8).
- Ask God to show you clearly the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God (Rom. 11:33).
- Pray that your church leaders will show God’s wisdom by their godly lives and deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom (Jas. 3:13).
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