The closer I would be the further away I seem

Evil for evil.

This is something we do all the time, isn't it? You hurt me, I hurt you. Or, you hurt me and I wanna hurt you.  Evil for evil. And the evil only multiplies, it is fed and continuously growing. Evil is an invisible creature with it's invisible tentacles wrapped tightly around each one of us. We pray to be kept from evil, but that doesn't mean evil won't stop trying to kill us spiritually every second of our lives.  God alone can keep us from evil, and it's to Him we need to constantly turn. Evil for evil.

We are NOT to combat evil with evil. In fact we are told the following-

1Th 5:15  See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves, and to all men.

A Christ follower is to NEVER render evil for evil unto anyone!

A Christ follower is to EVER follow that which is GOOD among ALL.

That 'all men' includes EVERYONE WITHOUT EXCEPTION.  And if all men includes everyone then that means all men includes the evildoers.  We are to render GOOD, we are to FOLLOW  good to even the evildoers.  NOT render evil for evil.

The next time someone irritates you about anything how are you going to react, with our gut which is being squeeze by the invisible evil forces urging us to render evil for evil? That instant gut reaction is to do just that, get irritated back.

Right now, unfortunately, I'm struggling, I'm in the fires of spiritual affliction. I'm KNOWING to do good and not doing it, I'm rendering evil for evil all the time and it's driving me crazy! I don't want to be this way, I hate this evil in me. I need prayers, many prayers..

Please, Father, please keep me from evil! Bless me, help me, I am so incredibly helpless without You. Forgive me! Cleanse me! Fix me! Make me YOURS.

In the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior!

Unfairness

Mat 20:1  For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard.

Mat 20:2  And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard.

Mat 20:3  And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace,

Mat 20:4  And said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.

Mat 20:5  Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise.

Mat 20:6  And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

Mat 20:7  They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

Mat 20:8  So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.

Mat 20:9  And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny.

Mat 20:10  But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.

Mat 20:11  And when they had received it, they murmured against the goodman of the house,

Mat 20:12  Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.

Mat 20:13  But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?

Mat 20:14  Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.

Mat 20:15  Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?

Mat 20:16  So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

Unfairness.

How often in life do we lament the unfairness of many situations?  Seriously, how often?  We judge situations and often we find a sympathetic ear to agree with our assessment.  Once we find that sympathetic ear we reinforce our idea of being treated unfairly.  Then again there are universal ideas of what if fair and what isn't.  We realize that LIFE isn't fair. All too often things happen that make this clear.  In the above parable the householder hired several people at different times and then paid them all the same, the one who worked eight hours and the one who worked a half an hour, same paid.  Clearly the ones who worked all day valued their hard work, their time, and felt  cheated.  Wouldn't we ALL feel the same way? Seriously, wouldn't we? Yet our idea of fairness and God's are not the same, that cannot be, He is everything.  A person who spends their entire life in Him, fighting the spiritual warfare all the time, failing, repenting, over and over again- and the person who accepts Christ at the end of their life after living a life of blatant sin, are given the same reward of eternal life in Christ.  Do we resent ANY who come to Christ and gain eternal life? We shouldn't.  And by God's grace we won't. 

In our lives we have to comprehend that what is unfair to us could in fact be a special blessing by God molding us, refining us.  It's not going to feel good, it's not going to be pleasant. The molding and refining all of it, the chastising is unpleasant and will make us feel anything but fairness is going on in our life's walk.

We have to holdfast to the promises, not the present, the future hope, not the hard here and now.  The future.  We have to get through the long journey, the very long arduous journey we call life- all by HIS GRACE, HIS LOVE, HIS MERCY, HIS KINDNESS!

In the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior, our all in all.

Conquer, overcome, prevail, get the victory, subdue

Overcoming.

Rev 3:5  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

Overcoming.

G3528

νικάω

nikaō

nik-ah'-o

From G3529; to subdue (literally or figuratively): - conquer, overcome, prevail, get the victory.

Rev 3:1  And unto the angel of the church in Sardis write; These things saith he that hath the seven Spirits of God, and the seven stars; I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead.

Rev 3:2  Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die: for I have not found thy works perfect before God.

Rev 3:3  Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.

Living but dead.   Without Christ we truly are living but dead.  We have a WORK to do, a DUTY to perform, an ACTION to take. Being a Christian is not a deadness, it is not a living sleep.  To be a Christian is to be CHRIST-LIKE and if a person believes they can ignore all of God's word and make their own plan up and live according to their own wishes and still be a Christian, they are going to be shocked when they realize they were among the living dead.  We are TOLD how to be Christ-like. We are TOLD who we turn to for all things in a REAL LIVING way, not in some metaphorical mystical sense.  We are to be CHRIST-LIKE in our REAL every day life! And once we do all we can do to be Christ-like and fall far short, only then do we have to believe that our Savior covers us with HIS righteousness making up for our lack of true righteousness.  We don't wallow in our filth and revel in it then expect our God to cover us. We have to repent of the filth, we have to WATCH and we have to STRENGTHEN the things that remain, things that are on the verge of dying, we must strengthen not abandon.  We must REMEMBER how we received and heard of our Savior, we must HOLD FAST and REPENT.

If we do NOT hold fast and repent we are told what will happen- our Savior will come on as a thief in the night, and we will NOT know when the coming of Christ is near at hand. This is truth.

Rev 3:4  Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.

Rev 3:5  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.

There are FEW who do not defile their garments, the righteousness that our Savior clothes us in.  FEW that are worthy in Christ.  WE MUST OVERCOME, and what we are overcoming is our inability to trust fully in Christ for all things. Our inability to live for Christ in favor of living for ourselves. 

We are told HE THAT OVERCOMETH, and to think that there is NOTHING to overcome and read these words, then we are lost! We must OVERCOME in Christ! Not accept sin in our lives. Not accept our bad self as if it's something not even God can alter, but believe that Christ can and will change what we cannot change! We MUST believe this and desire this! Because this is believing and desiring our SAVIOR, the Author of our Salvation!

Please, Father, please let us overcome in Christ! Let us never accept what is unacceptable to You, not ever! Teach us! Live in US! Let Your Spirit, let the HOLY SPIRIT live in us, let CHRIST live in us!

All in the name of our SAVIOR, Jesus Christ our LORD!

Amen.

Neither poverty, nor riches

Lest I be full, Lest I be poor.

Pro 30:7  Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:

Pro 30:8  Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:

Pro 30:9  Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

Please, Lord, give me neither poverty nor riches.

Truth! And such a blessing! Neither rich nor poor.  There are dangers in each. To be rich is to want for nothing and feel no need of the LORD. To be poor is to succumb to stealing and taking God's name in vain as if He doesn't exist, as if His laws, His commandments of love mean nothing.

Just as we talked about yesterday a bit- we are in danger when we give in to the acceptable form of lying.  On the same vein as that, we are in danger when we give into the belief 'God will understand if I steal, He knows I'm hungry and would want me to steal.'    A lie.

Yes, we tell ourselves these things so we don't have face the reality of our failings, our DELIBERATE failings!  Our sins that are NOT of ignorance but deliberate intentional sinning we try to tell our conscience is acceptable. We throw up examples from the Bible of the men and women of God sinning in acceptable ways, yet truthfully we don't know how acceptable it was because we don't know the repentance of any of their hearts that alone is between them and God.

We know that God would not have us in pain, yet many of God's chosen have suffered extreme pain all in order NOT to sin. They did NOT renounce God so they could live.  Yet we tell ourselves it's okay to do so because God knows the truth that the renunciation is false, and our heart is God's.   Is it okay? Honestly, it is probably decided on an individual basis, because our God is NOT a God who lacks compassion. As much as He is a consuming fire, He is also the God who sent His Son, He is the God who sent the Holy Spirit to us and the Holy Spirit speaks for us because we cannot speak as we need to before God. 

This is TRUTH.

We must place all our hope in Christ our Savior to save us from all we need saving from.

Please, Lord, again we ask for neither poverty nor riches.

Feed us Lord, feed us with food convenient for us- in all things.  Not too much, not too little, but that which keeps us in YOU in all ways! Spiritually, physically, in every way there is, feed us with food convenient for us.

All by Your grace, Your mercy, Your forgiveness, Your love, Your power, Your glory, Your honor,  Your righteousness!

Amen.

Remove from me lies

Pro 30:7  Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:

Pro 30:8  Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:

Pro 30:9  Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

*******

Remove from me lies.

Lies.

We live lies all the time. Lies roll off our lips and out of our mouth before we even know what we're doing sometimes. Lying has become an acceptable form of life. We think nothing of the 'white lies', the 'lies to spare feelings', the lies  we deem acceptable.  Yet, a lie is a lie, isn't it?

We've had tv shows, movies etc all about lying and the glorifying of doing so.  We've seen the fictional near ruin of a man unable to lie forced to realize just how much his life was spent lying.   When you try NOT to lie, really not to lie at all you realize just how much you do lie.

Two things… remove far from me vanity and LIES.

Remove from me lies.

We need God to remove lies from us, we really do.

This flesh nature of ours is a wicked thing, very wicked thing.  The flesh will consume us with all its lust if we do NOT give our hearts to God. If we do not realize how hopeless we are without Him.

Without God we have NO HOPE.  All the hope we tell ourselves that we have, all the hope we LIE to ourselves and say we have on our own without God is the GREATEST LIE we can ever tell.  There is ONLY hope in God.  We can't trust even ourselves for hope, only GOD.

Please, Father, please remove from us lies! We would NOT lie!  Please, Lord, please, save us from ourselves and the flesh nature within us that would have us follow evil, not good.

Bless us, keep us, help us, love us, save us!

All in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ our Lord.

All is vanity

Pro 30:7  Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:

Pro 30:8  Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me:

Pro 30:9  Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

*******

Vanity-

Psa_94:11  The LORD knoweth the thoughts of man, that they are vanity.

Psa_119:37  Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity; and quicken thou me in thy way.

Ecc_1:2  Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

Ecc_1:14  I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.

Ecc_12:8  Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity.

Rom_8:20  For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope

Eph_4:17  This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind

2Pe_2:18  For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error.

1.excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements,etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit:

Failure to be elected was a great blow to his vanity.

2.

an instance or display of this quality or feeling.

3.

something about which one is vain.

4.

lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness:

the vanity of a selfish life.

5.

something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

6.

vanity case.

Pasted from <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/vanity>

*******

Remove far from me- vanity.  This is our prayer. Vanity is an insidious part of our beings. We can't seem to help the vanity within us, the Bible says as much. Vanity of vanities ALL IS VANITY.   So much of what we are is vanity, isn't it?  Our WORTH is JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.   Therefore our self worth is vanity.  The farthest we can ever be removed from vanity is the closest we move to our Savior.

Please Lord be our worth- remove far from me, vanity.

By Your mercy, Your love, Your grace, always- AMEN!

Those who are God's and those who aren't

Psa 6:6  I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.

The pangs of living.

We started to talk yesterday about these pangs of living.  There are many of them. Who among us hasn't suffered them?  No one  has a perfect life, not one of us. The richest or the poorest each of us suffer. We might think that a rich man has less suffering, and it's true. They have less suffering in things of material comfort. But their money cannot give them emotional, mental, or spiritual comfort. Many of us, in fact most of us would say we don't care we'd rather have emotional, mental and spiritual discomfort as long as we can do it living richly. Why do we say that? We say that because we are in our own emotional, mental, and spiritual discomfort and we are poor, or close to it and it seems as if we have the worse of both worlds, but we don't know if that's true do we? We can't, not really. Sure, some people may have been rich and known pain as a rich person and then become poor and know it that way and prefer the riches. This is most likely true in some instances, but we know for a fact our Savior talks of being rich in material ways as not being good or desirable, that in fact it makes it harder to get to heaven being rich.

Mat_19:24  And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

These pangs of living exist for EVERYONE. No one is exempt.  We might be shocked to realize that the poorness of another worse off than we are can be much more rich in their emotional, mental, and spiritual lives and feel way less of the pangs of living than we feel.

While we whine and cry over our poorness we might be ignoring things so much more important.  In fact there is a very good chance all our pangs of living are geared to overwhelm us, to bring us to despair, yet we know this for truth--

Rom_8:28  And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

Yet the opposite is true as well, right? 

All things work together for bad to them that do not love God.

We know that the pangs of life affect us all - those who are God's and those who aren't. 

Sometimes though it seems as though those who are 'bad' and do not love God have an easier life, right?  That's because Satan will often tempt us with the richness of godlessness.  That richness Satan tempted Christ with, but Christ would have none of it and we too should have none of it because it's a lie meant to steal eternity from us for a heartbeat of a life with sinful pleasure.

More tomorrow by the grace of our LORD and SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN!