Last night, my daughter Beth called me outside to see the 'tic tac toe board' in the sky.
Looking at it, a blank tic tac toe board of clouds, put into mind a lesson I thought I would blog here.
God works in our life in amazing ways. However, sometimes we have to 'go first' with an action or proclamation of faith before he does. Looking at these clouds was like God telling me, "It's your move, Carrie".
Asking for & believing in Faith, claiming and speaking God's promises for our lives is essential to His working miracles.
How many times do we ask for certain things and then leave our 'prayer closet' with the same defeated attitude that we entered it? We ask, unbelieving, and we are not surprised when we don't see any results. But, then we say that we did everything we were supposed to in order to get our prayers answered. Guess we were just meant to be poor, unhappy, stressed, bummed-out and miserable, right? NOT!
God says, that if we ask, believing, we will recieve.
"Therefore I say to you, [Matt 7:7] all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you."
That's our move.... the believing part. However, we must also ask with the right motives:
[Job 22:26; Matt 7:7; 21:22; John 9:31] whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we [1 John 2:3] keep His commandments and do [John 8:29; Heb 13:21] the things that are pleasing in His sight.
&
You ask and [1 John 3:22; 5:14] do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Our move may involve several different things... confession, repentance, faith, an action that puts us out of our comfort zone... It all depends on our situation and our personal relationship with God.
But, without faith, thanksgiving and right motives, we might as well be praying to a wall.
The more 'moves' we make towards God, the more moves He will make in our lives. A personal relationship with God is just like any other relationship. It takes two. Both parties must be actively involved to make it successful. We can't just sit back and think God is just going to do a bunch of amazing, wonderful things in our lives when we are doing nothing to help our own situation or show God that we are actively participating with Him, even if it just in constant prayer and thanksgiving when there is nothing physical we can do.
Do you want a closer walk with God? Ask Him for it, Thank Him for it, then Anticipate it and Do Your Part! Get in His Word, pray, worship, go to church...
Do you want to be blessed financially? Pray about it, Ask Him for it, Thank Him for it, Aticipate it and Do Your Part! Search your heart and be sure your motives are correct. Tithe what you are blessed with now, Ask Him to show you how to manage your financial blessing..
Are you getting it?
All things are to be done to the glory of God. Make sure your motives are right.
And remember that God does want your joy to be complete. He loves us and wants us to be happy. It gives Him pleasure to answer our prayers. Just as we love to give gifts to our children.
"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, [Ps 84:11; Is 63:7; Rom 8:32; James 1:17] how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!Are you waiting for a prayer to be answered right now? Do you have something that you need?
Make your move!
