Good Fruit

Children grow up and become adults. Like a tree, they will bear good fruit or bad fruit. It depends on the nutrients they are fed while growing up. If they are rooted and grounded in good soil, in a good honest family with strong moral values, they are likely to grow up with the same. ~ DickEvans.org

Tempted

We will all be tempted. There is no way around it. Even Jesus was tempted in the garden by Satan. Being tempted is not a sin. Giving in to the temptation may be. Doing the tempting certainly is and God warns us not to be that person. ~ DickEvans.org

Act on It

We cannot isolate ourselves from the reality of life around us. It will always be there. We have to move through the marketplaces of life each day if we are to do the tasks assigned by God to us, to act on the Great Commission. ~ DickEvans.org

Reflection

If you put me in the same room as my children, no matter how many strangers are in the room, anyone can pick out those that belong to me. As children of God, I hope others can pick out that I belong to Him, that I am a reflection of who He is. ~ DickEvans.org

Serendipity

It is wonderful to see God heal someone; to see their pain leave, their eyesight restored, their back straightened, to have their hearing restored. Especially when it happens to us! The miraculous does not prove the existence of God, it is a serendipity of His presence. ~ DickEvans.org

Specialty

We are each called to lay hands on the sick and Jesus tells us that we will see them recover. Our specialty is not diagnosing the illness, it is using the authority and power within to command the healing. ~ DickEvans.org

Love of Christ

Galatians 2:20 NKJV
I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

As someone who sits in church weekly or more it is easy to declare our love for our Father God and our Lord Jesus. We sing praises to God. We give thanks for what our Lord did for us at the cross. We are filled with thanksgiving and shout out our love for Him.

But do we understand the love He has for us? Do we truly know who we are in Christ?

Do we busy ourselves trying to please God by doing what we think He needs to have done? Bible studies? Feeding the poor? Visiting the sick? Teaching new believers?

All are good and necessary as the Lord leads us. And yet we often create godly work out of our own understanding instead of from the leading of the Holy Spirit.

We hear about returning to our first love and think it has to do with loving God. Does it? Or is it about us returning to being loved by Him?

We live in the age of grace. No longer are we under judgment. No longer are we required to do something to get and maintain His love.

God's love is unmerited. His favor is upon us. Because we are in Christ as Christ is in us. Our Father God sees His son Jesus when He looks at us. He sees perfection. He sees Holy. He sees righteousness.

And the Father's love is unconditional. Nothing we do can ever take it away. His mercies are new every morning and His grace is forever.

Opportunity

We have friends that do not know Jesus. If they never hear about Him, they will never have an opportunity to become a believer. We cannot make them believe. However, if we never tell them, we never give them the opportunity to choose eternal life or death. ~ DickEvans.org

Isolate

If we continue to isolate ourselves and avoid being in the presence of those we consider sinners, we may be missing out. We may never get to tell the story to many that need to hear. ~ DickEvans.org

Call Someone

How often do we reach out to those that we are in a Sunday relationship with? Do we make time for them and show interest in the things they are interested in during the week? Perhaps today is a good time to make that call and say HI. ~ DickEvans.org

Watching

As believers, it is not to God that we have to prove anything. It is those who see us as followers of Jesus. They are watching us for the proof; the proof that we have really changed. ~ DickEvans.org

Temptations

Each day there will be temptations to sin, and we might fall into the traps. God forgives us each time for Jesus died for all our sins. But, woe to those of us that do the tempting. ~ DickEvans.org

Love

God gave us His Son to die for our sins. What greater gift could there be than that? All He asks of us is to love our neighbor as He loves us, with no strings attached. ~ DickEvans.org

Searching

Matthew 7:7 AMP
Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock and keep on knocking and the door will be opened to you.

This is a familiar verse. We have heard it over and over again. The word search could also be used. Search and keep on searching in today's tech world is done by many of us on our computers or even our cell phones.

To search we use what is called a browser. My preference is Google Chrome for a browser and Google Search for my search engine. Yours may be different but no matter which you use the results are the same. Stick with the defaults from Microsoft and you will find yourself using Edge and Bing.

Years ago the only way to search through our Bible was to use the concordance in the back of some Bibles or an actual Bible Concordance and other reference books. Wikipedia tells us that The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, generally known as Strong's Concordance, is a Bible concordance, an index of every word in the King James Version, constructed under the direction of James Strong.

Now we can use a Bible app even on our phone and get the answer right away. All we have to do is type the word or phrase we are looking for ending with "Bible" and in seconds the answer comes on our screen.

This is cool and has its purpose but does not get us closer to God. This is not the relationship He is seeking with us. I believe He wants us to seek Him, to search for Him. He is looking for a relationship with us. He wants us to truly see Him as a friend and wants us to know we are His friend.

This purposeful friendship does not evolve out of a Google search. That search may gain us knowledge about what is written in God's Word but doesn't open a door to be with Him. It is our seeking that results in doors being open. Isn't it time to begin and see what He has for us?

The Path

Our past relationships can be holding us captive. We need to be free of anything that tries to pull us back into our old mindset. There is only one way to the Truth and we already know that the path we were on was not getting us there. ~ DickEvans.org

Prayer

Prayer occurs when we reach out to God. Meditation happens as we listen to what He tells us and think on it and nothing else. We empty our mind of our problems and even our solutions. We seek His guidance and then think deeply and carefully on what He has said. ~ DickEvans.org

Relationship

As believers, we are on a constant quest for a deeper relationship with God. He wants all of us, all the time. He wants a close  relationship with us, honoring Him with our lips and our hearts. ~ DickEvans.org

Share

As we share our lives we develop close bonds. We learn to really love and care for each other. We get to know how the other person thinks and how they react. Together, with Christ’s help, we can overcome any obstacle. ~ DickEvans.org

Traps

We must watch out for the traps some may place in our path. Recall that the enemy comes to lie, cheat, and to steal. We cannot let them distract us from the goal. ~ DickEvans.org

The Fish

The world does not see us as a believer because we have a fish on the back of our car. The sign we wave does not prove who we really are. It just points to who we say we are. ~ DickEvans.org

What do you meditate on?

John 6:29

Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.

Walking somewhere, perhaps in a shopping mall or inside a huge store, you get a pain in your knee. You begin to worry about it wondering what has happened. You try to think back to what you might have done to cause an injury. Nothing comes to mind so you consider that like others you know you may need a replacement knee. As your mind wanders over these thoughts the pain increases almost to the point you think about finding one of those electric carts found in many stores for the handicapped. The pain gets worse. Now you think maybe you need to find an emergency room. They can check you over and get you some meds to relieve the pain. All your thoughts are about fixing that pain. 

Or is this more your story? Same place. Same time. Same pain. This time you recognize it for what it is and you grasp ahold of that knee and speak to it with the authority and power of the Jesus that abides in you. You practice His presence and command that spirit of pain out and for total healing in that knee in the name of Jesus. You then walk forth in the manifestation of the healing Jesus died on the cross to give you. For the word says by His stripes we were healed. As you walk forth in that belief the pain leaves totally. 

What do you meditate on? The pain and what you can do in the natural to make it go or on the truth of what Jesus did for us at the cross? 

The only work for us to do is to believe what He did and walk in it. Believe it and receive it.

Sow Seed

We sow the good news wherever we go. When it is rejected we don’t stick around and give some more. No, we move on to find those that are ready to receive the pearls we have to share. ~ DickEvans.org

Go and Do

Jesus spent many months teaching His disciples. He told them and He showed them. They knew what to do, but even they had to be pushed out. As we go and do, blessings will fall in our path. ~ DickEvans.org

Healing

How many times do we not reach out and ask God for our healing? As believers, we even have the authority and power to command sickness to leave others and even to leave our self. Jesus told us that we would lay hands on the sick and see them recover. ~ DickEvans.org

Never Ending

The journey we are on with Jesus cannot be completed alone. We can never learn all we need to learn. The journey is a never-ending one that leads us to an eternity with Him. ~ DickEvans.org

Prayer

Prayer is not a one-way thing. If we stay alert and listen, God will respond to our prayer in many ways. And in all our prayers we are to be thankful for what He has already provided. ~ DickEvans.org

The Beggar

Ephesians 2:4-5 
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ- by grace you have been saved.

Have you ever passed by a stranger begging for a handout on the side of the road and later wondered who he was? You wonder why he ended up where he is in this life. We think "But for the grace of God that could be me." And yet that person is eligible for the same mercy and grace. God loves him just the same even no less or more than He loves you.

Jesus went to the cross for all people for all time. He took the sins and curses and sicknesses of all. Not just for those that believed in Him.

No one was born again yet. No one had the Holy Spirit. No one had a revelation of God's grace. The age of grace had not begun. They were still living under law.

Then came Pentecost where Holy Spirit was sent to live in every believer. As Jesus told us when he told His disciples the only work we would have is to believe on the one the Father had sent. We believe in Jesus. We are in Him and He is in us.

Galatians 2:20 
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

Holy Spirit and our spirit are one. We live and breath in Him. As we allow Him to work through us, He manifests in authority and power to reach the lost. To heal the sick and remove bondages. To free all He comes in contact with.

All it takes is letting go of our fleshly desires and give God control. Trust Him with everything and He opens up the miraculous in your life. Know who you are in Christ. So the next time you see a beggar, stop and introduce him to He who is in you. Both of your lives will be forever changed.

Step Out

The Bible tells us that faith without works is dead. So take time today to listen for His voice, then step out in faith to do the works He has for you. ~ DickEvans.org

He Shows Up

God wants us to come to Him. He wants to show us His love and compassion. When we push to get our stuff done by doing it all by our self, we may miss hearing His voice. However, as we wait for Holy Spirit to help, He shows up just at the right time. ~ DickEvans.org

Depend On Him

We need to work at depending on God in all that we do, at all times of our lives. He has a plan for us, but it is up to us to listen for Holy Spirit guidance in all that we say and do. ~ DickEvans.org