“Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Mark 11:24 So often we hear people say things like, “I have prayed so desperately, and God has not answered my prayers!” Or maybe you have been praying for something so long that it feels…
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The Lord then answered him and said, “Hypocrite! Does not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his donkey from the stall, and lead it away to water it?” Luke 13:15 While teaching in a synagogue on the Sabbath, Jesus healed a woman who had been infirm for 18 years. The…
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Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established. Proverbs 16:3 I don’t know about you but I am always thinking.  I may be worse than most, but I think we are all like that to a degree.  We are always thinking of stuff, good things, not so good things, or dumb things.  It is…
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Then the men of Israel said to Gideon, “Rule over us, both you and your son, and your grandson also; for you have delivered us from the hand of Midian.” But Gideon said to them, “I will not rule over you, nor shall my son rule over you; the LORD shall rule over you.” Judges…
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Woe to those who seek deep to hide their counsel far from the LORD, And their works are in the dark; They say, “Who sees us?” and, “Who knows us?”  Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; For shall the thing made say of him who made it, “He…
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“Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.”   Matthew 5:7 This is all about giving what we ourselves have received.  God has given us mercy; Jesus calls us to be merciful.  Mercy is not getting what we deserve and God gave us mercy, He did not hold our sin against us. So a merciful person not…
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But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he became angry. Jonah 4:1 Jonah is such an interesting book because are no lessons learned by the protagonist. He was called by the Lord to speak to Ninevah and ask them to repent and instead Jonah ran the other way and boarded a boat heading for Tarshish. God…
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Then the multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. But when His own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is out of His mind.” Mark 3:20-21 Opposition. It’s one of the realities of following Jesus. Sometimes it comes…
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And He said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27 God paints a beautiful illustration of rest when, after He labored for six days, He rested on the seventh. We work hard. We work long days and sometimes forget to take a vacation. I know people who…
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For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Ephesians 2:10 This verse is reminiscent of Isaiah 64:8 where the prophet depicts God’s people as clay and He as the potter and we as the work of His hand.  When we accept Jesus…
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