Hope and Encouragement (Spiritual Reflection)

In all situations thank God and praise his name, because his love covers all pain and sadness as we look to him for all our needs!

Let my mind be controlled by the love of God in me, not by my uncontrolled emotions. Deep in my heart I know that when I react without God I say and fall back to my human default settings of anger and giving back as good as I get from others. Retaliation causes further separation and destruction of relationships.

Be alive in praising God and expect that God is for you and with you and is lifting you up. He is creating a new heart in you and bringing you to life in him!

God leads us; we need that because we do not know how to lead ourselves. Our heart is damaged by sin and our natural inclination is to serve ourselves. This is our first love and takes us away from God.

We can call on God to take our side and honour the promises that that he has made that we are not defeated by the wicked and their evil ways! Jesus won the victory over sin on the cross; we need to claim his victory as our own because he won it for us!

We need to be about our Heavenly Father’s business . That means living in faith and love, sharing the good news of Jesus’ victory over sin, death and the power of the devil, and looking forward to the day of the Lord’s coming!

God is our refuge and strength! Faith and trust are our daily actions as we walk through life for, we are on firm ground when we listen to him!

Ask for God’s help first just as Jesus did.

God has proclaimed our forgiveness. We need to live in the Spirit and not continue to walk in sin. This means being willing to give up those things which we know are wrong and seek to follow the word and teaching of Jesus. He is the way, the truth and the life. There is no other way. I pray that I may do better by the power of the Holy Spirit.

See how Jesus Christ loves the church! He washes her clean with the water of the word.

When we are suffering, God is at work restoring our body to health, but not only that! He also ministers to our soul; as we recall all the goodness that he gives to us. In times of illness we have time to rest in him and other things are put aside.

Jesus believed the events and words of the Old Testament! He believed that the stories of Adam and Eve, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are true, and that Jonah was swallowed by a big fish! He knew that King David was his ancestor and Elijah did all the things written about him. That is what Jesus tells us when Jesus says that all that is written in the Bible is true.

God is awesome and his love, compassion, forgiveness and power are so far beyond our imagination that we cannot express or grasp his beauty or regal might. He is the fullness of life and eternity is his heavenly kingdom which he is inviting us to share. There we will praise him in all we do and say and think. Heaven will be the best place we have ever been, and we will be happier that we have ever been, and all the perfect beauty of creation restored will be perfect and so will we. There will be no illness, no bad stuff will happen, people will never be mean, and everyone will pull together to achieve great things according to the gifts they possess, and we will enjoy the best music and see the most wonderful entertainment ever. God will rule over a perfect kingdom. It is beyond our imagination what heaven is going to be like. When St John in Revelations wrote about heaven, he described it in the best way he could in earthly terms. He saw streets that shone as if they were paved with gold and a river alongside which grew amazing fruit tress which fruited all year around. If you have never checked out what the Bible says about heaven, you will be surprised when you check it out. It will not be about people sitting around singing all day, and there will be animals there too and we will no longer need to fear them!