The Best is Next! This new hope-filled devotional calendar will be a daily inspiration to remind you that God has new and amazing things for you in the coming year and will help you begin each day of 2022 with an attitude of expectation for God’s best for you.
Today's Word: Jan 17, 2022
Sometimes religion tells us that God puts sicknesses on us to teach us something. Granted, you may learn something while you're sick, but God doesn't send sicknesses, afflictions, or addictions to teach you. Jesus said that if earthly fathers give their children good things, "how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask." What loving father would ever say, "I put this sickness on my child to teach them a lesson"?
As long as you think sickness comes from God, you're not going to have faith to get rid of it. You need to see every sickness, every illness, and every addiction as the work of the enemy. Don't say, "My cancer...my diabetes...my arthritis." It's not yours. It doesn't belong to you. Your body is a temple of the Most High God. The Scripture says, "Resist the enemy, and he will flee from you." You have to resist it. Don't accept it as the norm. It may be there now, but it's in the process of leaving.
While you can’t control everything that comes your way, you can control how life’s unexpected setbacks affect your attitude, emotions, thoughts and actions. Don’t settle for surviving when you could be thriving—Rule Your Day!
Friend, no matter how big the obstacle, no matter what limitations have slowed you down in the past—know that your tomorrow is good and in God’s hands! No matter what your story has been, God is writing for your future.
It’s easy to get stuck in life and think that we’ve gone as far as we can, or that we can’t break an addiction or get well. What’s holding us back many times is our own thinking. Jesus says, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins” (Mark 2:22). When a wineskin gets old, the leather hardens. If you put new wine in it, the wine expands and bursts it. Jesus is saying, “You can’t have a new life with old thinking.” If you think you’ve reached your limits, then you have. If you think the problem is too big, then it is. It’s not that God doesn’t have blessings, favor, and increase. It’s that you have to get a new mindset.
You’re not limited by your circumstances, by your boss, by how you were raised. One touch of God’s favor will catapult you ahead. God turned David, a shepherd boy, into a king. He gave Abraham and Sarah a baby when they were almost a hundred years old. He gave us the Compaq Center when all the odds were against us. He has things in your future that will amaze you. The apostle Paul says, “That in the ages to come He might show the surpassing greatness of God’s favor” (Ephesians 2:7). God has “far-and-beyond favor” for you. But is limited thinking keeping God from pouring out the fullness of what He has for you?
In Acts 3, a man who had been crippled since birth was begging for money every day at the temple gate. Occasionally someone would throw a few coins into his outstretched cup, which was how he survived. He was stuck in a negative mindset because of his circumstances, not expecting anything to change, until Peter and John stopped and looked at him. The man expected some coins, but Peter said, “Silver and gold have I none, but…in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). He was saying, “Put down your cup because what God is about to do is not going to fit in that cup.” No one had ever spoken faith over him and told him that he could walk. Then Peter pulled him up, and instantly he was healed.
It’s significant that he had to put down his cup before he could receive his miracle. His mindset was hoping for a few coins, but God had a new set of legs for him that meant he’d never have to use that cup again. Do you see how God wants to show you His far-and-beyond favor? God is saying, “Get rid of your cup. Have a new mindset. Start believing bigger, dreaming bigger, expecting bigger. The blessings I have for you cannot be contained in a cup.”
READ BLOG ENTRYYou may have things coming against you now, you don’t see how you can keep going. You could live worried, upset, but God is saying, “I’m going to carry you. I have you close to My heart.” He knows what you’re going through: the struggles, the lonely nights, the unfair situations. You’re about to feel strength that you’ve never felt, peace when you could be stressed, favor that will make things happen that you couldn’t make happen.
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