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I encourage you to read all of Proverbs 13 today, but especially read verse 10 which says that if we avoid pride, we will avoid contention. As believers, we want to overcome the flesh, and put it to death every day, which is requires putting pride aside. If we overcome pride, we give ourselves a much better chance at living in unity and harmony, and avoiding contention. If you live in the real world, like we all do, we see contentious people everywhere. There are angry drivers, angry parents, angry people all around us. You see their angry actions, and you hear their angry words. It is interesting to see that according to Prov 13:10, if we put aside pride, we will live a life with so much less stress! How wonderful it is to live a life without contention. A life without arguments and quarrels and fights, can be peaceful, calm and serene! We can live this way, if we put pride aside. Verse 10 also says that with the well advised comes wisdom. When we live the spirit filled life, we give ourselves the opportunity to daily glean from the wisdom of the Lord. When we don’t see the big picture, we know that God does! We can live a life of wisdom and live in the peace of God, on a daily basis. Sounds pretty wonderful to me!

Ps 133 is a beautiful psalm that is only 3 verses long, It talks about the power of unity, and how good and pleasant it is for people to dwell together in agreement. Unity, it says in my paraphrase, is like the oil and dew of heaven moisturizing the soul. What a beautiful word picture that paints for us. There probably is nothing more enjoyable to me than having a massage. Having muscles in your back oiled and massaged by a skilled massage therapist is just about as close to heaven as you can get! Peace and unity are so valuable in the home. To decide to walk in unity and agreement, we don’t say that we get walked over, we just choose which things are important. Getting the last word is not important. Always having your way is not important. Being combative, or insulting is not appropriate. To have unity, we must learn to compromise. We learn to listen. We learn to negotiate. We learn to cooperate. We learn to put our flesh aside, or put it under as the Bible says. We learn to walk in the Spirit, and listen to the Holy Spirit. In John it says that we, as believers, are God’s sheep and we know His voice. As spirit filled and spirit led believers, we are held to a high standard. We are listeners. We obey not only the written word, but the specific directives that we hear from the Holy Spirit. Our behavior should be just like Jesus would act. That is who we choose to become like.
You may say, unity is easier if everyone is a believer. What do you do when you are dealing with unbelievers? Great question. We get to be even more Christ like! Choose to show God’s love through your words and actions. Unity is a beautiful thing!

Do you know how blessed we are as believers to be living in the time we live? As Christians, probably most of us have more than one Bible, we have access to Bible resources in abundance online, and we can listen to Christian radio, and Christian TV to hear the Word of God preached and taught, 24 hours of the day, any time we want. We have churches who preach the Word of God and broadcast each of their services. Our own church does that does it online and on radio and on our local secular CBS channel. Thank God for that amazing technology. In Hebrews 10, we are encouraged not just to do Christianity by ourselves, but to do church life with others. We are encouraged to assemble together. Every time the church doors are open, we should find our way there! Because it is so easy to “do church” on our own, and because of distractions and busyness of daily life, we have to make assembling together in church a priority. What a wonderful model we can show our children by going to church regularly. In our own nation, the national average of people who say they attend church is once every 5 weeks. There are even people who say they are church attenders who go only at Christmas and on Easter. As thankful that we are that they come just those few times, they and their families are missing out on the beauty of community in a church body. Leaders and Pastors prayer each time we have a service is that people come! Show up in support, but also, show up to worship and assemble together to worship Jesus. It’s wonderful to do on your own, but even more wonderful with other believers! Why not go to church this Sunday!

Getting together to share a meal was very common during the book of Acts. They liked hanging out together. They had all experienced the same wonderful out pouring, and all were filled with the Holy Spirit. They had resurrection power working in them, and had the power of the Holy Spirit to change their world. They were bold and courageous, and out of their belly flowed the promised living water. There was a lot of unified prayer going on, there were people sharing the love of Jesus, and thousands getting saved. Their lives were permanently altered. The Holy Spirit was alive individually on the inside of each of them. They knew their life had been impacted in a very positive way! After the Holy Spirit has been poured out, dramatic changes were taking place in the lives of those who were there. They would never be the same. They joyfully hung around together. They were excited to see what would happen next. They had positive expectation and continued learning the Word together, eating together, and praying together. This pattern still works today! Get involved in your church! Find a way to eat with other believers, pray together, spend time expecting God to do something amazing in your city. You have the power of the Holy Spirit on the inside of you. Great things can happen right where you are!

During this season of Pentecost, we are talking about how the Holy Spirit can impact our lives, every single day. Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your dailyeword. The Holy Spirit is our helper, comforter and guide, and He is with us to empower us to do great things on the earth. My prayer would be that each day you would recognize the power of the Holy Spirit more and more in your life. Each dailyeword has a specific scripture attached, make sure to read the specific scripture, but why not add the whole chapter to your study if you can make time. Let’s see how the Holy Spirit works with us in prayer, in fellowship and living our best life for God. Here is your daily eword.

In the book of Acts, something spectacular happened in chapter two that was a result of what the people in the upper room were doing in chapter one. In verses 12-14 of Acts chapter 1, 120 of Jesus follower went up into the upper room and were waiting for the promised baptism of the Holy Spirit. While they were there, they began to pray together in unity. Unified prayer produces results. People praying corporately together touching heaven, can make a difference on earth. It is hard to get 120 people to be unified. Sometimes its hard to get two people unified! Think of you and yor spouse! We each have opinions, and ideas, and each one of us think ours are right. And all of us have tried to change our mates, and we know how that works, not very successfully! Imagine that with a large group! But once you get 120 people to pray together in unity, amazing things can happen. With the same purpose and the same goal, great things can happen. The amazing thing that happened was that the Holy Spirit was poured out. It was the right time and the right place. The people in the upper room were praying in unity, and the power of the Holy Spiirt was released on the earth. From that day forward, after praying together in agreement , God heard and answered! I encourage you to pray everyday on your own, but also find a prayer partner to pray with, and then join others together to pray corporately as a group. God can and will do great things, when we come tougher in prayer, in unity.

I love talking about the unity that the 120 believers had on the day of Pentecost. What an amazing event happened because of each person laying down their will for the will of God. Imagine what could happen if we as believers did that everyday of our lives! Our homes would be more peaceful, and our world would be very aware that the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives can make things not only different, but better! Eph 4 reminds us to endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. he Message Bible reads like this:
“In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences. You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness.
I love that! We are to stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. We all know the picture of the little boy standing in the corner for disciple, that says, I may be standing up on the outside, but I’m sitting down on the inside. He is complying, but doing it unwillingly. God wants us to comply to His will, willingly! Let’s be the ones who let our heart and our actions and our words match. We can be unified to bring peace!

In the book of Acts, we begin to see what the power of the Holy Spirit can accomplish through the lives of believers who yield to Him. In Acts chapter 1 we see the 120 believers waiting around to see what was going to happen. They were waiting to receive the power that was promised them when the Holy Spirit would come upon them. They continued in one accord which means unity and prayer, and then Peter got up and spoke. They prayed and asked God which one should replace Judas, and then they cast lots, and chose Matthias. He became the 12th disciple. Then in Acts chapter 2 we read that the day for the Holy Spirit to be poured out had arrived. There was some wind and a sound, and they knew something amazing was happening. This was the moment they were waiting for. They were unified and ready. Jesus didn’t want them to feel helpless without His presence, so He sent the Holy Spirit to be with them forever. Spectacular welcome to the spirit filled life! People began speaking in other tongues, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in other tongues as the Holy Spirit gave them the words. Unity is a power thing. We know that we can come to agreement in prayer, as it talks about in Matt 18:19 that if two will agree, it will be done for them. When 120 came into unity, a powerful, world altering event took place. The Holy Spirit came to the earth to live and abide and dwell in the lives of believers forever. We do not only get the opportunity to be baptized in water, we can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and can receive power from on high. The power of unity is amazing. When husbands and wives come into unity, an amazing relationship can result. When believers in a church body come into agreement, great things can be accomplished for the kingdom of God. Let’s get into agreement with the plan of God, and change our world!

In Mark 11, Jesus enters Jerusalem on a colt and proceeds to go into the temple. Because of the late hour, he leaves and comes out of Bethany the next day. He is hungry and is looking for fruit on a fig tree. He found no fruit, and so he spoke that this tree would never bear fruit again. He again goes into the temple and He is not happy by the unfair practices of the merchants, and begins throwing over the money tables. The house of God is a place for prayer, not a “den of thieves.” He upset the scribe and priest, because people were hanging on Jesus’ words. He then went outside of the city, and came by the same fig tree the next day. It was dried up from the roots. Jesus took this moment as a time to teach. Some of the lessons might be that 1) Words have power. 2) Trees should produce fruit. Or 3) What we believe is important. But he went on to talk about having the God kind of faith. Faith he said believes and speaks. When we ask, we believe that we receive, and then we have them. So we can say please and thank you in the same prayer! And then the most important part of the lesson was this; if you don’t forgive, you will not be forgiven. So in the words of Jesus, the God kind of faith believes and speaks, asks in faith, and believes that we do receive, and knows the power of forgiveness. Sounds like things we can do daily, if we want our faith to grow

The Bible talks so often about water; the water of the Word, the well of salvation, and the river of life flowing out of us by the Holy Spirit. There is no room for drought for the believer! I’m not sure where this saying comes from but you’ve heard it before. “Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” Sometimes as Christians, I feel like we live this way. There is more than enough water in us and around us for us to be totally hydrated, but we are thirsty and dry because we don’t take advantage of the water that is available to us. One way we can water our faith is to continually meditate on the Word of God. God’s Word is full of living water that we can drink from daily. We don’t ever have to thirst again, because living water flows abundantly. Drink up daily! Joshua 1:8 is a good reminder of having the Word of God in the midst of us. It says that “This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do all that is written within. Then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have good success.” We often are very good at meditating on our doubts. That is actually called worry. Meditate means to mull over and think about for an expected end. Jesus told us not to do that! We are to do the opposite, meditate on the Word, which builds our faith. When we continually mull over and think about the Word, we are keeping ourselves hydrated. Anything that has life needs water, and we need the water of the Word in our lives to be able to live the successful, prosperous life that God has called us to. We can live mediocre lives, average, barely keep our nose above the water lives, but why? Let’s God for God’s best, by watering our faith as we meditate on God’s Word, day and night, and believe it and speak it! Then we will prosper wherever we go! (Josh 1:7)

Chapter 10 of Romans is the perfect place to read if you are sharing the gospel with someone. It gives a clear and easy pathway to salvation, by believing in our heart and confessing with our mouth that Jesus is Lord in verses 8, 9, and 10. Verse 17 is one we probably all quote when we ask, “How does faith come?” “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. If we want to have faith growing in us, we have to be growing in the Word. It sounds really simple, but active hearing makes all the difference. Do we have ears to hear? Are we listening with our natural ears only, or do we hear it with our spirit? That may sound super spiritual, but to get the Word in us, it is not just processing words across the screen of our mind, it is letting them penetrate our heart/spirit. We have all read a book, and laid it down after maybe even reading a chapter and can’t remember a word we read. The same thing can happen with the Bible. One really great way to get the Word in is to do the five r’s as you read the Bible. They are Relax, Read, Reflect, Respond, and (W)rite. Take a few moment before reading the word to set your mind on God. Then actually read the Word thoughtfully and slowly. Reflect after you have read a portion. How does it speak to you? Respond by seeing how it can apply to your life, and the last R is really a W!!! Write down insights, concerns, thoughts and even questions about what you have read. Become a daily disciple by reading the Word daily. Faith will grow as you read and hear the Word.