Encouraging Word

You’ve probably heard before that God has great things for you. This time, I want you to hear it….really hear it, and believe it! I know it can seem sometimes like all the good things happen to everyone else but you, but God has a great plan for YOU! In fact He says that He has a blessed future and a hope for you. I want to encourage you to have childlike expectancy about what God has for you. You might be thinking that everyone else is way better off than you. Everyone goes through disappointments in life. Many people never expected to be where they are doing what they are doing now. Life didn’t turn out how they expected. Way too many Christians have lost hope for any good to come to life. Well, I want you to believe….God has good things for you! Can you start believing it? Can you tell your heart to hope again? I know you can. You can wake up tomorrow and believe that God’s favor is shining on you. You can believe that He wants to bless you. He wants to turn things around for you. It is hard to believe that in the midst of turmoil and tough times, but He wants only the best for you. Don’t give up on your dreams, God does have great things for you! What you can believe for can happen in your life. Instead of just expecting that in the negative sense, let’s do that positively. Say this with me, I am blessed to be a blessing. I have God’s favor on my life. God is going to use my life to bring Him glory!

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The next challenge I am taking is a book called 30 days to Love, by Kerry and Chris Shook. That is my next personal challenge. I hope that during the month of February, when much of the world turns to thoughts of love, and with Valentines Day right around the corner, I hope you find ways to express your love to those who are important in your life. That is my personal goal. I hope everyone in my life knows how important they are to me. We think about love during this time of year tied just to romantic love, but God’s love in our hearts gives us the ability through the Holy Spirit to be able to love everyone. Love is the complete fulfillment of the Law of God. Romans 13:8 tells us that we will fulfill the law by loving our fellow man. As we clothe ourselves in Christ, we are fulfilling the law of love, and letting love be perfected in us. Are you letting love have it’s perfect work? Today, you can! Demonstrate the love of God to your family, to your friends, to everyone you meet. You can reflect God’s life-giving, loving nature through your words and actions. You’ve heard it said that faith without works is dead. The same can be said for love, love without corresponding action is empty. We can, through our words and deeds, obey the command of Christ to walk in love. Spread some love today! That’s the best way to live a life of no regrets.
No Limit to God’s Love
No limits and no boundaries, God’s love is everywhere,
No height nor depth, no ending point, and nothing can compare
No matter what the hardship, famine, nakedness or sword
Nothing separates us from the promise in His Word
For we are more than conquerors, through Him whose love we know
In this life, we are like Him, when His love we show. (Feb 6, 2008)

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Our challenge is over, but you know there will be opportunities to use your faith, starting even today! One of my favorite things to do when I am faced with a difficult challenge or circumstance is to immediately go into remembrance mode and begin to rehearse past victories. Once I get past the moment wondering how this will turn out, it is almost automatic for me to just start thanking God for how He has moved heaven and earth for me in the past. The best example of this in the Bible is the story of David and Goliath. The mighty Philistine army was taunting the Israelites and no one was willing to fight the Giant. Up comes a little shepherd boy to bring supplies to his brothers and he decides to accept the challenge. Saul wasn’t so sure that this boy would deliver, but David was the only willing warrior. David rehearsed his past victories to Saul. The Lord has delivered me out of the paw of the lion, and out of the paw of the bear, and he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine…..so Saul said, go for it, may God be with you! When you need courage for the battles you face, why not try doing what David did. It can be as simple as saying, “God you’ve been faithful to me before, you’ve supplied my needs, you’ve healed my body, you comfort me when I need it, you give me peace in the midst of strife, you have proven to be all I need. So this challenge or circumstance is no match for you. You have delivered me before from the paw of many challenges, and you will be my deliverer once again. You are faithful to me, I will be faithful to trust you.” After hearing yourself say words like those, your faith will be encouraged! God stands ready to move on your behalf. The power of remembrance will move you from fear to faith, and the power of God will be activated for you. Giant you are going down! (I Samuel 17:34-37)

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You life goes on! Your life is a gift, and each present day is a present from God! Let’s live in the present, and not get stuck in the past. Do you know that if you ask almost anyone about their most vivid memory, most of the time it is a negative memory. I remember as a 6th grader, my teacher did an experiment with the whole class. He asked for each kid to share their most vivid memory. Out of 30 kids, only 2 had positive memories, and I was one of them. I’ve always been a glass half full kind of person, but I remember even as a young girl being surprised that 28 out of 30 remembered something negative. What about you? I hope you have lots of positive memories. If not, let’s turn it around….instead of thinking about the bad of the past, find the good! Good is just God elongated. Let’s find ways to celebrate God’s goodness. It does take capturing thoughts that are contrary and changing them immediately. We can’t focus or dwell on the negative. There are far too many positives, let’s count and recount our blessings. We have so many blessing as believers, not only a great life here on earth, living in the peace of God, but a home in heaven that with which nothing can compare. If you need some help turning things around in your life, think of this. Jesus is our perfect example – his pain and agony in the Garden of Gethsemane became the garden of victory as He submitted His will to the will of the Father. How about the cross of Calvary? It too was a place of pain and agony, but it has become a banner of victory for us, death, hell and the grave were defeated! Even with communion, as we remember what Jesus went through for us, we can have sadness, but it turns to joy in the victory the enemies defeat. What will you remember? Let’s remember God’s faithfulness.

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Heaven is a win for the believer! And heaven is all about who you know! Know for sure that’s where you’re going. As Christians, when we live a life with no regrets, we get to experience a little bit of heaven on earth. What does heaven manifested on earth it look like? When I think of what heaven is like, I think of wonderful communion with the Father, a place of rest and peace, joy that is too amazing to explain, worship around the throne all the time, and beautiful ways of communicating our love for God all around, with absolutely no need for anything else. Wow, if heaven is even half of that, it will be abundantly above all we could ever ask or think. So what should heaven on earth look like? Probably a lot of the same things! There would be:
Divine relationships, Supernatural peace, Joy overflowing, Glorious Worship, Open and loving communication, Every need supplied

Amazing, those are all things that we have access here on the earth if we are connected to God! We get a relationship with God that tops all earthy relationships. We even get divine connections to other believers who encourage us, and help us grow in our walk with the Lord. We have the peace that passes all understanding…no need for worry or fear. We choose not to worry, because God’s hand is on us, and besides, Jesus told us not to worry, so why go against his will for us? Joy bubbles up from inside of our spirit that is filled up and overflowing with the Spirit of God. We get to praise God will all that we are, with our voices, with instruments, with dancing, and even shouts of victory. We get to communicate from the heart of a servant, demonstrating love through our words and actions. We get to experience the abundant life that Jesus came to give because our God supplies all of our needs. That sounds like heaven on earth! Of course life on earth will have challenges, but you already know that! There will be things that we can’t control or fully comprehend, but when we put it all in perspective, earth for the believer can be a little taste of heaven, and make us even more hungry for our eternal home. Let’s let the world know what heaven will be like…by giving them a taste of what we have experienced. Let’s live a no regrets life!

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Blessings to you today! Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your dailyeword. I hope you have accepted the challenge to join our church staff and many of our body to live a life without regrets. Thanks for joining us on this month long journey. This is our last week! I love hearing the testimonies of how life changing this has been for so many. After this great start to our new year, let’s keep it up. Always choose a no regrets life. This can be the beginning of living your best life ever. Here is your dailyeword.
Monday (28)
Have you found it easy to live a contented life, in a world that is full of yearning for more and trying to find satisfaction in things? It really is easy to get caught up in wanting more stuff and thinking that stuff will fill any emptiness inside of us. Before we met Christ, there was a God shaped vacuum in our life, that could only be filled by God. Jesus came to fill us to overflowing, and for us to be totally satisfied in Him. An “unearthly” longing we as Christians have is for our home in heaven. As wonderful as earth can be, and as much as we can experience of heaven on earth in our Christian walk, nothing compares to the complete bliss and joy of heaven. We have a longing within for our heavenly home, and for the joy of seeing our Savior face to face. That longing is a blessed hope that will be met when we pass from this life to the next. In the mean time, we can be like Paul who said that he has learned the secret of contentment. In Philippians chapter 4, verses 12 and 13 he stresses the fact that he has faced both abundance and lack, that he has been well fed, and been hungry. I’m sure he liked a full tummy and abundance better than lack! In spite of these circumstances he learned what we quote so often in Phil 4:13, that I can do all things through Christ. I love the Amplified version which says, “I have strength for all things in Christ, who empowers me, I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses inner strength into me. I am self sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.” Now those are some encouraging Words!

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Think Big, Believe Big. Make all the difference where you can. There are some big issues that seem overwhelming, but they can be overcome if we work together. It is almost unbelievable that 3 billion people on the planet live on less than $2US a day. That is hard to even put in perspective. There are people in our own communities that are desperately poor who live on way more than $2US each day. There are people in other countries that don’t have clean drinking water, or have raw sewage running down their streets. There are children who get their daily nutrition from a garbage dump. I hope you aren’t getting depressed, but I hope you are beginning to see how very blessed you are! When it comes to leaving a legacy, why not begin to think globally. Most of us would be satisfied to have a handful of people miss us when we are gone, but we really should think bigger and believer bigger than that. Alone we may not be able to do great things, but put a few minds and hands together, and you might be amazed. Even young children can see a need and find a way to begin meeting it. Think creatively, and enlarge your vision. You are made for more! You are made to live beyond yourself. Find someone to help and begin helping them. It can start in your own home, in your own neighborhood, in your own community, in your own state, in our own nation, or around the world. Let God put a dream in your heart that you start to act upon, and begin changing our world for the better, one life at a time. That’s a way to live with no regrets!

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Be in the middle of the will of God. Ps 37:3-5 says to trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust Him and He will do it! Trust and obey! No other way! To be happy in Jesus! Stay right in the middle of the will of God. Doesn’t that sound easy? Just follow Jesus! Well, I wish I could tell you it is really simple, but it does take effort. It takes self control to stay in the passenger seat, and let God be at the wheel! If you’ve ever taught a child to drive, you know the white knuckles, and the clinched teeth, and the pretend brake on the passenger side that you push through the floor boards. It can be hard to let someone else drive. The great thing about God is that He has great driving skills. Most of us don’t like to give up control! We want to get behind the wheel and take over. When we yield to God, we can go where He wants us to go, and begin doing what He wants us to do. Let’s learn to enjoy God, and when we do, the Bible says He will give us the desires of our heart. It takes trusting, delighting, and committing to His plan for your life. With the short amount of time we have on this earth, let’s do our best to trust and obey….that’s the way to true joy and contentment. It’s also the way to a no regrets life!

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Buildings in Europe often have dates on them. It is not unusual to see a building built in the 1600 or 1700’s. It is hard to believe that America wasn’t even a nation then! A good motto for life is, “Build it strong so it stands LONG”! Don’t be like a foolish carpenter who builds his house on a beach. (Matt 7:26) We have the choice everyday to put more mortar in the bricks of our foundation. Each time we decide to walk in truth, we can fill up any cracks that have come over time. We want to build our lives strong so they stand long. We want to build our families strong so they stand long. We want to build our church strong, so it stands long. Building strong takes more work than building weak. It takes following a blueprint, and using good materials, and having good craftsmen doing the work. It takes patience, and integrity. It takes an investment. What are we willing to do so that our lives, our families, our churches all stand strong? It takes conviction for a cause. Are we willing to abide by the principles that God has set forth in His Word so that we can stand strong and last long? Let’s be more than just someone who believes, let’s be people of conviction. A belief is something that you hold to, but a conviction is something that holds on to you. A conviction becomes your anchor. No regrets people are anchored in Christ, living life with conviction, knowing that a lasting legacy happens keep holding on, even when storms blow. Our foundation is firm, built on the Rock of Jesus Christ.

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Planting for the future. When springtime rolls around, all the farmers in our area are prepared to get to work. They know what kind of crop is going in their fields and are prepared to get in the field as soon as it is possible and the weather cooperates. They understand springtime and harvest. You plant, and you reap. You put the seed in the soil, you tend the seed, and you get to reap the benefits. Sometimes it happens in a very short amount of time. Other seeds take longer. Planting an acorn seed is a life- long commitment! Weed seeds can be here today and burned up tomorrow. Matt 13 talks all about farming. As Christians we are farmers for life! We understand that words are seeds, and just like God who spoke the world into existence, words produce things. Good and bad. When we think about living a no regrets life, it is important to know that even if we wish we hadn’t said something, or would like to take words back, or even have asked forgiveness for what we said, those words are out there in the atmosphere. They are seed that have been sown. Some seeds we need to pray for crop failure! But what if we decided to watch everything that we said? What if we decided to put a monitor on our mouth, so that each word was something we would never regret? Then we could know what kind of crop our life is producing. We would be speaking encouraging words. We would be making sure those who we love, heard it from our mouths regularly. We would be dream releasers instead of dream crushers. Let’s plant good seed for the future, and make sure our words line up with living a no regrets life.

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