Daily Devotional Day & Night

HAPPY TUESDAY!

I pray all is well with everyone, and you're enjoying your day. I'm doing well; glad to be back to work (somewhat). I had an awesome holiday weekend, and yesterday's rest topped it off. The dinner at the National Pastimes Sports Bar was awesome, as well as the festivities at the National Harbor. The Harbor is setup like an entire little city all by itself, tucked in the corner of the world, very nice. Food, food, and more food, which will send me running to the gym tonight, and the rest of the week, it's time to get back in gear. I love the summertime, and I'm looking forward to a real vacation, please pray for me. My Grandmother is home and resting well, thanks for all of your continued prayers, keep them coming. Have a wonderful day!
Today's scriptures are about God's understanding of our Temptation. God came to earth to experience life as a human. Him, being all-powerful, knows our heart, but He wanted to walk in our shoes. He needed to better understand why we do some of the things we do. As Jesus, He experienced love, hate, fear, anger, pain, and grief while on this earth, just as we do on a daily basis. This in turn heightened His compassion for us, because He had a first hand understanding of our plight. Nevertheless, Jesus’ death gives us supernatural strength, as well as saves us from the penalties of sin, and allows us to overcome the wiles of the devil, just as He did. I believe I mentioned this quote before: "You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only option". When I read this for the first time it stuck with me, because I live it everyday. Our testimonies come from temptations, failures, and triumph over adversity. Ordinary people like you and I wrote about these things in every book of the bible. The difference between Moses, and us is that we have the Power of Jesus, and the help of the Holy Spirit. God spoke to Moses personally, as He does us, but I think we have a bit more of an advantage. However, in my opinion, our society doesn't respect, nor fear God, and we loss sight of tradition and order. God is in control, and He allows certain things to happen in our lives to get our attention, teach us lessons, or touch someone close to us. He has dominion over all things in Heaven and on Earth. We can read about that in the story of Job, where God allowed Job to be tested by the devil, to prove his loyalty to Him, but He never put more on Job than he could handle. God allowed Jesus to be tempted by the devil several times, but He still kept Jesus in His protection. He handpicked the disciples, because He knew the hearts of these men. He understood their struggles, and knew that that they would forever stay loyal to Him. We're showing a huge amount of faith just by confessing our love for Him, and accepting Jesus as our Savior, that's why we will forever be His children, and have our rewards waiting for us in Heaven. However, while on earth we must take the bitter with the sweet. We must understand that "this too shall pass", and each hurdle we face are specifically designed for our greater good. We must continually praise God in the good and bad, because we know that, as long we believe He's bringing us through it much stronger and wiser. We blame God for a lot of things, while often taking little or no responsibility for our own decisions. We have a choice in life, just as Jesus and the other people we read about in the bible. The devil knows that, and he will never stop trying to get us out of the will of God, so it's up to us to be ye ready (Luke 12:40), and stay sober and wait on the Lord. It's written in 1 Peter 5:8-11: Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. But may the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. To Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Wow, this pretty much sums it up for me. I was speaking to a friend yesterday that is going through some trials, and she said that one of the things that comfort’s her is knowing that she's not the only one going through something. We all have our time of suffering, temptations, etc. but God has a reason for each of them. If we look around, no one's life is "perfect", even those people who seemingly have it all. As long as we're on earth, we're going to be refined, and temptation is inevitable. On the other hand, what we could control is choosing God. In everything we do, we should truly ask ourselves "What would Jesus Do?” and honestly answer and follow that. With our Holy Spirit, we're warned when temptation arises, and our relationship with God will determine if we'll heed those warnings. Our Faith walk is like one long marathon, and when we make a conscious decision to follow Jesus, we must take our time to train. We must build up strength and endurance, through the Word of God. In our Faith walk, we'll experience hurdles, and we must strengthen ourselves enough to be able to jump them, and keep moving through life. We have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, all working together to ensure each believer's victory. Or life starts when we're born again, by accepting the love of Jesus. He's only a prayer away, and He's the key to over coming adversity, because He had to do it Himself. My favorite verse today is: There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

ENJOY! http://www.bible.com/scripture-detail.php?juli=2455020&dtype=Scripture
http://www.intouch.org/site/pp.aspx?c=cnKBIPNuEoG&b=4943197
http://www.intouch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=cnKBIPNuEoG&b=5283727&ct=7162445

I love you!