Author: debo

If we are really sincere about growing in the Lord this year, and being a God pleaser as it says in Col 1:10, we have to keep using our faith muscles! Faith is what pleases God! The just shall live by faith! Without faith it is impossible to please God. We need to be faith filled believers. It means that we are learning to walk in faith, live by faith and exercise our faith on a daily basis. Living by faith isn’t an option for the believer. We are faith people. We believe. That’s who we are and that is what we do! So how can we strengthen our faith this year to be people that God would say have taken a measure of faith and developed it to the place where we are people of great faith? When we look in Matt 8 where Jesus actually said such great faith he had never seen in all of Israel, we see that the centurion said with his mouth, speak the word only and my servant will be healed. He understood the principle of authority and submission. Jesus even offered to go to the servant, but the centurion knew the power of God was available even through the word just being spoken. The revelation we can receive from this powerful message of living by faith is that there is power in the Word, but more specifically in the Word being spoken. We know there is the power of life and death in our words. Let’s be people of faith who speak life words that bring health and healing to people and situations and circumstances. What an awesome way to live!

If we plan on growing spiritually this year, it is important to develop our prayer life day by day. To live well and excel, we need to make prayer more of a priority. Prayer really does change things. We live in a fallen world and on an earth with a curse, and to see God’s will be done on the earth as it is in heaven, we have to pray! To see things change, we make our requests made known unto God, and then thank Him that He hears us and is working on our behalf. If we have a habit of taking time to talk to God all throughout the day, we can live in the place where we actually do pray without ceasing. It can happen as we involve God in our every thought and action. We can have a spirit of prayer that prevails moment by moment. Prayer is really communicating with God. It is back and forth conversation. God doesn’t speak audibly very often, but he whispers revelation and insight of His will to us as we read His Word and listen to His Spirit. Our spirit is our “knower”, and God lets us know on the inside what we need to know. James 5 says that the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man or woman makes great power available, effective in its working. To live as believers with the effective power of God available to see things change on this earth, our prayer life needs to be fervent. The word fervent actually means enthusiastic, passionate and zealous. My prayer for your prayer life is that you would makes time with God in prayer a priority and that it would be enthusiastic, passionate and zealous, which would make great power available, effective in its working!

Are you planning on growing spiritually this year? To live up to our ultimate potential as believers, we should be growing spiritually day by day. So as we start the New Year, why not put some habits in place that can change your year, from the very first month. Let’s begin with the daily habit of spending time in the presence of God. So many people think this only happens when you go to church, but spending time with the Lord, really means just taking time to be still. It means worshipping Him on your own, in your home, in your car, or wherever. During your time with God, you tell him of your love and appreciation, you talk to Him like He is your friend, which He is! You still your heart and you listen for His heart. I love the thought that if you want to hear someone’s heartbeat, you have to put your head to their chest. What a beautiful picture of our relationship with God. He wants to be our ABBA Father, which means our Daddy God. Young children need to sit often in their daddy’s laps. Sometimes they fall asleep on their papa’s chest. There they snuggle up and are comforted. There they feel loved. That can happen to us as children of our daddy God. When we take time to just be still, our relationship with God can be strengthened and we can be comforted and feel loved in His presence. So I encourage you, spend time quietly in God’s presence. Make it a daily habit. It has benefits that are out of this world! This habit is one to get addicted to!

How dependent are you on God for everything? We all know that God can transform your life, but do we really give Him the opportunity to do that? Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with an encouraging word for your day. Let’s depend on the Spirit of God fully, 24/7/365 days of this year by being fully immersed in the Word of God, and living fully in tune with the Holy Spirit. Do you know that God has MORE for us than we could think, dream or imagine? Why not start today believing for more in every area of your life. You were made for more, so I encourage you go for it, and live the life that God has for you. Here is yourdailyeword.

I am praying that you live life well this year. I encourage you excel in everything you set your hand to do. I’m praying this year you will be filled with MORE of God’s best for you. As we embark on this New Year, my desire is that you experience MORE of God. God has so much MORE for us than we can even imagine, in fact exceedingly, abundantly, MORE than all we could ask, think or imagine. I pray for you and me to BE more too, MORE…. authentic, generous, helpful, compassionate, available, committed, disciplined, faithful, etc! One of the greatest ways to experience more, is to serve others more. So along with encouraging you to become equipped, healthy, growing, low maintenance Christians (!!), my desire is that you find a place to serve. One of the greatest joys in life comes from serving others. We are blessed to be a blessing. How can you be a blessing to your church family this New Year? We encourage those in our church to find a place to serve where they are already gifted and use their gifts within the body. And we also encourage them to find other places to be benevolent. In their community, on missions trips, by sending offerings to other ministries, find a way to serve by giving. Serving should be a natural outflow of our overflow! Living life from the overflow takes the discipline of continuing to be filled up. We are filled up as we spend time in the presence of God; reading His Word, praying in the spirit, building up ourselves in our most holy faith, worshipping Jesus. When we live full, and give from the overflow, in fact it often just spills out, and as we find an avenue to serve others, we will live well AND excel! And it is most definitely a wonderful way to live.

It is such a great thing to know that as Christians we have our own personal coach. In I John 2:20:27 –it says that you have received an anointing from the Holy One. He will teach you. That is very personal. We have a personal teacher, or a coach if you prefer. We have received an anointing and that anointing is like oil on a machine. It makes everything flow easier. We have an advantage over those who don’t know God! There are times when even in the natural realm, just having someone tell you it is all going to be ok, or that you can make it can keep us going through rough patches in life. Even though we want MORE of all God has for us, we still live in a fallen world, and on an earth with a curse. That means that bad things still happen to good people. We could just get discouraged and give up, or we could listen to our personal coach who keeps telling us, “KEEP GOING. I have anointed you. I have appointed you for such a time as this. You can make it. You are well equipped to stand against the forces of evil, and with the Name of Jesus and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, be able to overcome. You are not defeated, you are an over comer.” When all of life pours on you, Jesus still REIGNS! So listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit. He is there encouraging you to live your best life. Receive all of the MORE God has for you today, and this week, and this year. You are a good student and the very best teacher is teaching you….the Holy Spirit of God. How awesome is that!

Ps 32:8 says I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with my eye. Did your mom ever give you the look? My kids know the look. Most of them are grown up, but when they were small, if they were misbehaving in public, all I had to do what shoot them the look, and they would straighten up. Often when they were just having fun in public, I could shoot them another kind of look that would be one of approval. Isn’t it interesting in this scripture, that God wants to guide us with His eye. That means we are paying attention to Him and are looking at His face! We can’t really see Him eye to eye, but what we can do, is “know” on the inside, because our spirit is connected to His Spirit. I call our spirit our “knower”, and because our spirit is alive to God, we can know right from wrong. We can know that God is whispering something for us to do, and then we can be obedient and do it. One of the best ways to practice that is to ask God to let you know when you are to give something away. God is a giver, and he wants us to have his giving heart. Maybe you have something that someone else needs. Ask God to let you know so that you can bless someone else. Then you will be guided by His eye and can be a blessing to someone else in the process. Isn’t that what we are called to do? We are blessed to be a blessing. That is living in the realm of MORE! And that is a great place to be.

One amazing way to experience MORE in our Christian walk is to be led by the Spirit of God. Romans 8:14,16 tell us just exactly that. If we are God’s sons and daughters, we will be led by His Spirit. That is easy to understand if we look at a father /son or a father/daughter relationship in the natural realm. Parents like it when their kids obey. Good parents give guidance to their kids. They set boundaries. They give them opportunities to spread their wings in little ways before they give the big assignment of life on their own. Kids are looking to be led. With some exceptions, they usually do what they have seen in their own home. If we are God’s sons and daughters, He wants us to be willingly led. It is a pleasure to be around kids who are obedient and respectful and bring joy where ever they go. We should be that kind of Child of God! We are obedient, we follow God’s Word, live by His precepts, and are led by His Spirit. We don’t have to be drug! We follow willingly. We are training our little puppy and he doesn’t like going into the kennel at night. He gets drug in there. It is not willing at this point. He will be obedient, but the willingness is not there yet. I don’t want to be that kind of Christian. Let’s be easy keepers, low maintenance Christians. Let’s be the ones who do listen to the voice of our Shepherd and follow with a willing heart, and quick obedience. That is the path to experiencing MORE in our spiritual life, in our emotional life and in our physical bodies. That is spirit, soul and body experiencing MORE!

We are God’s sheep and we know his voice! In the 10th chapter of John, the example of the shepherd and the sheep is used to demonstrate the relationship with have with the Father. I love that as His sheep, we know what his voice sounds like. That also means that we know when it isn’t God’s voice. There are a lot of voices out there and it is up to us to be familiar with the voice of our Shepherd, the true Shepherd. There are wolves out there who are out to destroy the sheep. The enemy is the one who comes to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus came that we might have life, and that more abundantly as it says in John 10:10. There is that word MORE again! More abundance, how amazing is our God! Just enough would be enough! But OUR God, our amazing God, gives us more. In the Message Bible it reads this way, I came so they can have real and eternal life, MORE and better life than they ever dreamed of. That reminds me of Eph 3:20 where it speaks of exceedingly abundantly above all we could ever ask or think! It is all because of His power working in us by the Holy Spirit. So as God’s sheep, who know His voice, we know whose voice to listen to. We also know who gives and who takes, who brings life and who kills it, and who blesses and who destroys. We need to keep it that simple. Good is from God, and bad is from the pit. Our shepherd, God our Father, is the giver of life and blessings. The enemy, the devil is the taker who steals and destroys. So know your shepherd’s voice, and be listening and aware when He speaks to you. Be MORE a tune to the Holy Spirit!

I’m sure you are like me and are so thankful for the Holy Spirit’s leading in your life. I’m so glad that when Jesus left the earth he left us the fulfillment of His promise in the Holy Spirit. It is to our advantage that Jesus left us the Holy Spirit. It says in John 14:26 that the helper, the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my Name, will teach you all things, and will bring to your remembrance all things that He said to you. So along with the amazing comfort of the Holy Spirit’s presence, I am thankful for the things the Holy Spirit teaches me as I read the Word, and that when I need to remember a certain concept from the Word, that the Holy Spirit brings it back to my memory. It is such an added benefit to our life to have someone called alongside us to help us. There are times when we don’t know what to do, and if we will listen to our knower, what I call our spirit, we will know on the inside what we should do. We are never left in the dark when we depend on the power of the Holy Spirit within us. When we need to learn a lesson, or when we need to encourage someone else, God’s Spirit can get the message we need to hear , to our knower (aka our spirit)! The more time we spend in communion with the Father, the easier it will be to identify His voice. It works like that in the natural realm. The more time you spend with someone, the more you know how they act and react, and what they like or dislike. Let’s do that with God. Our desire is to please God in every way, and it gives Him pleasure to teach us, comfort us and encourage our inner man. That is living in the MORE God has for us, and what a wonderful way to live.

This year, I want to encourage you more than ever to get more of the Word of God in your life. In Ps 119:11, it says, your Word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin again you. If we really want to live in the MORE God has for us, we must prioritize getting more of God’s Word into our life. That means it needs to penetrate not only our mind, but it needs to do that 18 inch journey from our head to our heart. Head knowledge is superficial, but heart knowledge goes deep. It penetrates our life and really makes God’s Word come alive and turn from words on pages to God’s Word freshly spoken to us, jumping off the pages in HD 3D! It is like fresh dew from heaven. Refreshing, and life changing, it penetrates our life to cause supernatural change – that is lasting. To make the commitment to prioritize daily Bible reading takes discipline. Discipline isn’t a popular word, but it is a GOD word! Discipline is important with eating and exercising, no doubt. But if we want MORE in our spiritual life, we have to give God’s Word the priority it deserves. That discipline affects us in dramatic ways. We have boundaries and make choices in line with what God’s Word says. We see black and white, with no gray area. There are lines we will not cross, and there is a level of holiness and excellence that we rise to. If we want that “MORE” God has for us, we go the extra mile, we step it up a few notches, we rise above average and mediocre and go for excellence. We can do that do as we hide God’s Word in our heart, so that we can live in and be the righteousness of Christ to this world, and in this world. That is an awesome way to live!