Sunday, February 26, 2012

Praise God!

God has lately been putting it on my heart that as Christians we need to do a few things.

The first thing we need to do is believe that God is who he says he is!

The Second thing we need to do is act like we believe that God is who he says he is!

God wants us to ask him for the things that we desire, more than that he wants our desires to line up with his desires, but he wants us to ask him for things. James 4:2 says: You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. I think that God wants us to believe that he is who he says he is, and that he does what he says he'll do, so that we'll ask for crazy things. So that we will be bold in doing what his Spirit asks of us, because he craves our obedience. The more we obey his Spirit, the more of his character he'll show us.

Some testimonies of God's crazy power that I've experienced personally:

I used to wear glasses. From age 2 to 8 I needed to wear glasses because I was cross-eyed and far-sighted. In Grade 3 I went to the optometrist, with whom my parents had been discussing surgery to try and help me see better, but this visit was different than the rest. We did some tests, and afterwards, the doctor told my mom that I didn't need to have surgery after all, and that I didn't even need to wear my glasses anymore!! God healed my eyes! Praise be to his name!

One day in November this year, I was driving in Winkler and thought to pray for a friend of mine whom I hadn't seen in a while. Later that day he texted me and thanked me for praying for him...I didn't tell anybody I was praying for him. The Holy Spirit told him!!! God is alive and works! Praise be to his name forever!

I've been trying to listen to God lately, and allow him to ask me to do things, and be obedient to his voice. So at work the other day I was praying about what he wanted me to do. It's a pretty generic thing to pray, he could go any direction with that. He's been trying to teach me to trust him with my finances for a while now, and I continue to worry about them, even though I know I need to trust that he'll provide what I need when I need it. He told me that I should ask a friend of mine for $2000! I struggled with this for a while. $2000 is a lot of money!!! I still felt I needed to do it. I thought a lot about why he would ask me to do this, and what could happen if I did ask, and the friend did indeed give me the money. What would I do with it? What would make for a cool story? What was his will for the money? I'm going on a missions trip with a team of youth from my Church this spring break. I have the time off from work, but I'm not being paid that week. What was I going to do with my missing finances? God said..."Trust me, Gerry. Trust me. I'm bigger than you think." (Not audibly, but that's the feeling I got.) So, I asked my friend for the money. I told him to pray about it, because that's a big deal. Guess what happened? He gave me the money. I am blown away! I praise God for my friend's faithfulness in listening to his voice! I praise God for providing finances for me! I prayed about what to do with the money for a while, and finally felt God telling me that it would be foolish to refuse his help and try to do it on my own if I would just turn around and give the money away to someone else. Kind of like the story of the people in their house during a flood. the water kept getting higher, and boats kept coming by, but every time the people in the boats would offer help they would refuse it saying that God was going to provide, so they would wait. God has provided finances for me, so I don't have to be stressed out. Thank you Father! Praise God. So I'll tithe on it, and try my best to use the rest of it in a way that is honoring and pleasing to him!

Jesus is everything. God's word is true, and reveals his character to us. How can we be like Jesus if we neglect to seek to know who he is/was/and will continue to be? Read the word, Seek God, and Love God and others more!

God is real and at work today!!!!