When we learn how to keep our heart like Jesus did, we begin to have a healthy cooperation between what we think, what we feel, what we habitually do, and how we relate to others. We can choose the thoughts that renew us over the thoughts that destroy us. We can engage with our emotions to understand the reason for those emotions. We can re-train our body away from the slavery of engrained, destructive habits. But our will alone can never change a person. We need our will to be empowered by the Spirit, through surrendering to God’s will.
Choice
Kris Vallotton
God desires that everyone would go to heaven. Metaphorically speaking, Jesus basically said, “Over My dead body will you go to hell.” But the truth is that there are people who will step over His “dead” body and choose hell over heaven.
Elizabeth Rice Handford
Look at it this way. If you choose which commands you will obey and which you don’t obey, you aren’t obeying at all. You are doing all the time what you decided to do.
Christine Caine
Think about what you are thinking about today. Our thoughts are like a train, they always take us somewhere. Don’t just jump on board the first train that pulls into the platform of your mind. Check the destination board first. Where will this thought take you?
Julia Loren
Worship moves you into a place of peace where you can receive His love. No matter what is going on in your life, entering into the presence of God through worship will enable you to drop the shield of anxiety, release your pent-up emotions, calm your heart and receive a peace that passes all understanding. Once that peace settles in, God’s loving presence floods in. It shields you from fear of the future and enables you to enjoy His presence in the now. Focus on the face of Jesus—no matter what storm rages around you—and though the storm rages, you will no longer notice because you are captivated by Him.
C.S. Lewis
God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realise what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else – something it never entered your head to conceive – comes crashing in; something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones
Never do anything which you know perfectly well is going to be the means of temptation to you. If you know that certain things, which may not be bad in and of themselves, generally get you down and you are a worse person afterwards than you were before, do not do them; never, as it were, provide yourself with the occasion to sin.
Steve Backlund
Repentance is a change of thinking that leads to a change in actions. It is not a one-time event, but a lifestyle.
Graham Cooke
Because of who God is, you know the answers are going to come. You just want to make sure you hear the right one, not the one that your panic may choose for you.
Christa Elisha
Faith and fear both demand you believe in something you cannot see. Choose Wisely.