Rick Stedman's Spiritual Tips

Psalm 121:1-3 – “I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip— he who watches over you will not slumber.”

He was a strong man facing an enemy beyond his strength. His young wife had become gravely ill, then suddenly passed away, leaving the big man alone with a wide-eyed, flaxen-haired girl, not quite five years old. The service in the village chapel was simple, and heavy with grief. After the burial at the small cemetery, the man’s neighbors gathered around him. “Please, bring your little girl and stay with us for several days,” someone said. “You shouldn’t go back home just yet.” Broken-hearted though he was, the man answered, “Thank you, friends, for the kind offer. But we need to go back home–where she was. My baby and I must face this.”

So they returned, the big man and his little girl, to what now seemed an empty, lifeless house. The man brought his daughter’s little bed into his room, so they could face the first dark night together. As the minutes slipped by that night, the young girl was having a dreadful time trying to sleep…and so was her father. What could pierce a man’s heart deeper than a child sobbing for a mother who would never come back? Long into the night the little one continued to weep. The big man reached down into her bed and tried to comfort her as best he could. After a while, the little girl managed to stop crying–but only out of sorrow for her father. Thinking his daughter was asleep, the father looked up and said brokenly, “I trust You, Father, but…it’s as dark as midnight!”

Hearing her dad’s prayer, the little girl began to cry again. “I thought you were asleep, baby,” he said. “Papa, I did try. I was sorry for you. I did try. But–I couldn’t go to sleep. Papa, did you ever know it could be so dark? Why Papa? I can’t even see you, it’s so dark.” Then, through her tears, the little girl whispered, “But you love me even if it’s dark–don’t you, Papa? You love me even if I don’t see you, don’t you, Papa?” For an answer, the big man reached across with his massive hands, lifted his little girl out of her bed, brought her over onto his chest, and held her, until at last she fell asleep.
When she was finally quiet, he began to pray. He took his little daughter’s cry to him, and passed it up to God. “Father, it’s dark as midnight. I can’t see You at all. But You love me, even when it’s dark and I can’t see, don’t You?” From that blackest of hours, the Lord touched him with new strength, enabling him to carry on. He knew that God went on loving him, even in the dark.
—– Ron Mehl, God Works the Night Shift

Hebrews 13:5b-6a - “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.’ ”

Prayer – Dear Heavenly Father, help us to know that you are always with us, even when it is dark, that you do not slumber, but forever hold us in Your loving arms. May we rest in you and know that you will never leave us or forsake us, that you are always here for us and we need not be afraid. We love you and praise you Lord. In Jesus name, Amen.

Mark 9:23 - “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

The most fantastic things happen to people who believe. No less of an authority than Jesus Christ himself says you do not have to be defeated. You can overcome illness, you can overcome weakness, you can overcome sin, you can overcome heartbreak, you can overcome failure. There is nothing or no situation you cannot overcome if you will believe.

Belief can change what appears to be an impossible situation. Belief unlocks the door to power beyond our own imagination. All things are possible—only believe….

All things are possible if you believe in God. Believing in the New Testament means receiving Jesus Christ into your life as Savior and Lord. Everything good starts with a decision to believe Jesus Christ and invite him to come into your heart.

You want an unbeatable life? Believe in Jesus.
You want to be a child of God? Believe in Jesus.
You want to overcome defeat? Believe in Jesus.
You want to have a better life Believe in Jesus.
You want to beat defeating selfishness? Believe in Jesus.
You want to eventually win? Believe and totally dedicate yourself to Jesus.

God has a plan for your life. Finding and following God’s plan for your life is the soundest, surest way to self-confidence. There is no greater feeling than to be in right relationship with God. IF you are not in right relationship, you can be—starting now.

Believe wholeheartedly in God—and for you life will become unbeatable. Make this the dominating thought of your mind—God and I together are undefeatable.

—— Dale Galloway, Rebuild Your Life

Prayer – Dear God, may our hearts and lives be forever changed because of our faith in You. We know that all things are possible when we believe, and we trust our lives into Your hands. We want a right relationship with you. We pray for those who do not believe, or who have strayed that they would come to know You or return to You and ask you to come into their heart and guide them. God, we love you and we give you our hearts and our lives.

1 John 5:14-15 – “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”

Everything about the Christian life is based on faith. You love by faith just as you received Christ by faith, just as you are filled with the Holy Spirit by faith, and just as you walk by faith.

But if the fruit of the Spirit is love, you may logically ask, “Isn’t it not enough to be filled with the Spirit?” That’s true from God’s point of view, but it will not always be true in your actual experience.

Many Christians have loved with God’s love without consciously or specifically claiming it by faith. Yet, without being aware of the fact, they were indeed loving by faith; therefore, they did not find it necessary to claim God’s love by faith as a specific act. Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that “without faith it is impossible to please God.” Clearly, then, there is no demonstration of God’s love where there is no faith.

How then do we love by faith in a practical way? It works like this: We know God has commanded us to love. We also know He promised in 1 John 5:14-15 that if we ask according to His command (His will), then we receive His love by faith according to His promise, knowing His promises are always true. Let me illustrate how this happens.

In one case, I was having trouble loving a fellow staff member. I wanted to love him, and I knew that I was commanded to do so. But because of certain areas of inconsistency and personality differences, I found it difficult. Then the Lord reminded me of 1 Peter 5:7, “Let him have all your worries and cares, for He is always thinking about you and watching everything that concerns you.” (TLB). So I decided to give the problem to Him and love this man by faith—to act lovingly toward him regardless of my feelings, depending on God’s love and strength within.

An hour later, I received a letter from that very man, who had no possible way of knowing what I had just decided. In fact, his letter had been written the day before. The Lord has foreseen the change in me. This friend and I met together that afternoon and had the most wonderful time of prayer and fellowship we had ever experienced together….

I encourage you to make a list of everyone whom you do not like and begin today to love them by faith. Include those people who have hurt you in the past. Pray for them. Ask for eyes to see them as Christ sees them. Act lovingly toward them no matter how you feel. We don’t love people because they deserve to be loved—we love them because Christ commands it and empowers us to do so. your relationships will change as God’s love in you overflows to others. Further, you will be a channel of God’s own life and power into the needy world, and loving by faith, you will please your loving Master. The greatest force in the world is love!
———- Bill Bright, Seven Promises of a Promise Keeper – Promise 7: A Man and His World

Prayer – Dear God, may we have confidence in approaching you, and know that you hear our prayers. May we be filled with love for others, even those who are difficult or have hurt us. Even though it sometimes difficult give us the strength, regardless of our feelings to love as you commanded. May we see others as you see them, and may our relationships change because we have obeyed your commands and reached out to others. Lord, we love you, please guide us today. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Psalm 63:4 – “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands.”

David lifted his hands to God. The lifted hand is symbolic of surrender or submission. David stated that his life was surrendered to God. What is it to surrender to someone? It means we become their captive. They own us. We are subject to their whims. To become captive to mere man could be quite devastating. However, you always dwell in places of safety when you are a captive of God.

David was a bondservant of God. A bondservant places himself in a position wherein the Lord has complete mastery over him. A bondservant is one who has the freedom of choice but chooses to continue to serve out of love. In Luke 2:29 we read of Simeon who said, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.” The word Lord in this verse is not the typical word for Lord. It literally means authoritarian or dictator. Simeon looked upon himself as the servant of the Lord under His absolute mastery. The Lord was his complete master. Simeon was a mastered, subdued, and subjugated man.

To think of the Lord as a dictator becomes negative only when we do not want to be controlled. David loved his God. He did not view being a bondservant as a negative thing because his desire was to be controlled by God. He submitted himself to God. He lifted his hands in surrender to his God. This is what separated David from most others. Today we don’t often understand such devotion. We tend to live for ourselves and to use God to get our way. We don’t see Him as the One who has complete mastery over us, yet we are quick to call Him Lord. Luke 6:46 says, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” ——- Ron Auch, The Heart of the King

Prayer – Dear God, we praise your name and lift our hands high in surrender and submission to you. We place our lives in your hands as long as we life, and will give all glory and honor to you. We love you Lord. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Psalm 139:13-14 – “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

The first question we ask someone after learning his name is, “What do you do?” In getting to know God, then, we must ask that question. He may hide his face, but he has not hidden his work.

What does God do? He makes flowers and mountains and starry nights, the severity of the desert and the lushness of the forest meadow. In these he reveals himself as an artist of incomparable imagination. I have sometimes wondered: What if we had never seen a tree until, one day, someone presented one in the Museum of Modern Art? Would it not be a work of sculpture so splendid that all the other sculptors would put down their tools and come to stare? But that is only the beginning of the exhibition; next comes a whale, and after that a stone, and after that a star, and after that a seed, and after that…

But God’s work is more than nature. He barely began there. People generally conceded that you can know something about God through the universe he has made. “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” But to know someone through his work you ought to concentrate on the work he loves best. God does not love stars as he loves me. The heavens, for all their splendor, will outlive their usefulness; they will be rolled up and taken away. So will the world we live in, for all its sensual glory and intricate ecology. They are like the scaffolding that Michelangelo designed for painting the Sistine Chapel—marvelous in its own right, but dismantled at the proper time so that the great work could be more clearly seen. When God had created everything else he went on to man and woman, creatures who sat up and talked to each other, who talked to him. He has been working to complete these creatures ever since. He even became one. His people are God’s great work, to be displayed in an entirely new setting—a new heaven and a new earth.

To marvel at yourself is not far from marveling at God. This is the logic of the familiar Psalm 139: “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful.” (13-14). And then, three verses later, the psalmist lightly leaps to this: “How precious to me are your thoughts; O God! How vast is the sum of them!” From my own wonderful nature as a human being to the wonderful nature of God’s thoughts—it is not a great leap, for the latter made the former. In this way, at least, a Christian is obliged to be a humanist. We are made in the image of God. As we observe ourselves, individually and socially, talking and singing, admiring babies and playing baseball, we strengthen our personal knowledge of God. This is not an abstract study. It is personal. It is personal because he made me and is working on me still. His hands are on me; I see the prints. —– Tim Stafford, Knowing the Face of God

Prayer – Dear Heavenly Father, we are your creation, your beloved children, and we thank you for being our Father in Heaven, for creating us to be who we are, in your image. We are fearfully and wonderfully made – because you love us so much. We give all the praise to you, and may our lives glorify you in all that we do. We love you Heavenly Father. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.

John 1:17 – “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

The word grace means more than just God’s kindness or gentleness toward us, or even His mercy. It means His undeserved favor. It means God owes nothing to us, and we deserve nothing from Him. When the Bible says, “by grace you have been saved” (Eph 2:5), it means our salvation was totally unmerited. It came solely because of God’s grace.

The motive of grace is the infinite, compassionate love of a merciful God, but the work of grace was Christ’s death on the Cross. When I imagine Christ hanging from the Cross, the spikes in His hands, the crown of thorns on His brow, His blood draining from His body, the soldiers mocking Him—then I begin to see the depth of God’s grace. Then I know that nothing can equal the infinite love of God for a sinful world.

But God’s grace is also exhibited when we humbly bow before Christ in repentance and faith, for then we find forgiveness. Thank God for His grace, for without it we would have no hope! —– Billy Graham, Hope for Each Day

Prayer – Dear God, may we humbly bow before you in repentance and grace, asking your forgiveness for our sins. Thank you for Your grace in our lives, which gives us hope each day. We give thanks in all things. We love you God. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Luke 2:11 – “Today your Savior was born in the town of David. He is Christ, the Lord.”

An ordinary night with ordinary sheep and ordinary shepherds. And were it not for a God who loves to hook an “extra” on the front of the ordinary, the night would have gone unnoticed. the sheep would have forgotten, and the shepherds would have slept the night away.

But God dances amidst the common. and that night He did a waltz.

The black sky exploded with brightness. Trees that had been shadows jumped into clarity. Trees that had been shadows jumped into clarity. Sheep that had been silent became a chorus of curiosity. One minute the shepherd was dead asleep, the next he was rubbing his eyes and staring into the face of an alien.

That night was ordinary no more.

The angel came in the night because that is when lights are best seen and that is when they are most needed. God comes into the common for the same reason. His most powerful tools are the simplest. —- Max Lucado, The Applause of Heaven

Prayer – Dear God, thank you for sending the EXTRAordinary on such an ordinary night.Thank you for your Son and for His birth that we celebrate on CHRISTmas day. Thank you for the light of Jesus that shines in the darkness. May we be lights that shine brightly as we study your Word and share about Jesus with others. We honor you and thank you God for sending your Son. Happy Birthday, Jesus! In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

Isaiah 7:14 - “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”

I never come to Christmas without thinking of the thousands of people who are lonely and troubled at this time of year. I have had psychiatrists tell me their schedules are overloaded with people who find the Christmas season almost more than they can bear because of their loneliness and isolation.

Christmas is God’s reminder that we are not alone. God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus a reconciling love that rescues us from separation and loneliness. We are not alone; God has come down from Heaven to tell us He loves us!

At this Christmas season you can be assured that Jesus Christ is here. He is here to give us hope, to forgive our sins, to give us a new song, to impart faith, and to heal our spiritual wounds if only we will let Him.

The Christmas message has not changed after two thousand years. Christmas still reminds us that God is with us. If you are lonely this Christmas, welcome Christ into your life. Then ask Him to help you reach out to someone else who is lonely, and show that person His love. —— Billy Graham, Hope for Each Day

Prayer – Dear God, may you be with each person who is feeling lonely and isolated this Christmas. May you surround them with your loving arms and help them to know how much they are loved. Help each of us to know we are never alone and that you came down to earth so that we would know how much You love us. May we reach out to others this Christmas and may we find great joy and peace as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We love you Lord. In Jesus Name, Amen.

Galatians 2:20 - “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

“Here is a cup of water and by it a tea bag. the water is not the tea and the tea is not the water. They are two separate items. The water is heated and the tea bag is placed in the water. A strange thing takes place…the water changes color and nature. It becomes indwelt by a new and dominant nature. The rich tea color swirls around in the cup until the fluid is tea, not water. For the water to exist now is for tea to exist. The water could say, “It is no longer I that lives, but tea that lives in me.” Not many people I know drink hot water. There isn’t much demand for it. But if that water, heated in preparation, can be made to become a wholesome and stimulating drink, then it is worthwhile.

So the Christian is just a cup of water, which, when heated with faith and entered by the Savior, becomes something else. The Christ nature comes into him and with his consent dominates. He becomes more and more like Christ and less and less like himself. Just as the “tea in the water is the hope of taste,” Christ in the Christian is the hope of glory!

And thus we have discovered the key to triumphant living…CHRIST IN YOU THE HOPE OF GLORY!” ——- Jack Taylor, The Key to Triumphant Living

Prayer – Dear Heavenly Father, may Christ dominate in us so that we become more and more like Him and less and less like ourselves. May our lives glorify and honor Him, and may our lives change as we allow Christ to live in us. Lord, we love you so much and we want you to be the hope of glory in our lives. In Jesus name, Amen.

11/7/2011

Romans 8:31-32 - “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

I talked to a man who was on the edge of experiencing [the] gift of a heart truly open to God. He had lost his sixteen-year-old son. “I’m really angry at God for doing this!” he said. “How could He take this boy from me? He was a fine boy, believed in God, and had a great future. Now he’s gone.”

The man had three problems: the loss of his beloved son and the grief that was causing, the anger he was feeling that was blocking him from receiving the only source of comfort to endure his pain, and he was belaboring false assumptions that this life is the best of all lives and that his son was being denied a long life here. The man had not allowed himself to consider the blessing of heaven or the peace his son knew with our Lord. He was thinking only of himself and his loss. His plans for his lad would not be accomplished. He had planned to have him take over his business. Most of all, the man was aching over the denial of his enjoyment of his son. Very human reactions. But beneath all the grief was a hardened, self-determining will that had been threatened. Though the man claimed to be a Christian, he had never yielded the core of his heart to the Lord.

The bright side of the story is that the Lord did not leave the man to muddle in his grief forever. I did all that I could to help him to talk and cry out his grief and to gently clarify his thinking about death and eternal life. One day I felt led to say, “My friend, the Lord is going to give you a burning desire to open your heart to Him. He knows your grief. He gave His own Son to deal with the problem of death and to open heaven to us. I promise you that before long you will realize you can’t make it without Him. that will open you to receive what He has been longing to give you. You are angry with God because you think He canceled your plans.”

Some days later the man suddenly felt differently inside. He was gripped by an undeniable desire to surrender his grief, confess how tenaciously he held his own life and those he loved in his control. The Lord broke open the citadel of his heart and flooded it
with His peace. —- Lloyd John Ogilvie, If God Cares, Why Do I Still Have Problems?

Prayer – Dear Heavenly Father, please help us to open our hearts to you, and to surrender our grief, our sorrow, our anger, our hurt to you. Help us to find peace through the storms and to know that you are always with us, you never leave us. Even in the times of pain and deep grief, help us to feel your presence, your strength in our lives, and help us to find comfort and strength in you. We can’t make it without you Lord, and we place our lives and the lives of those we love into your hands today. May our hearts be flooded with Your peace.