relationships

Romans 15:23-33 – Be Blessed as You Bless

August 4, 2017 By Eva Conner Leave a Comment

Let’s lift one another up to our Father in prayer – today.

23 But now I have finished my work in these regions, and after all these long years of waiting, I am eager to visit you. 24 I am planning to go to Spain, and when I do, I will stop off in Rome. And after I have enjoyed your fellowship for a little while, you can provide for my journey.

25 But before I come, I must go to Jerusalem to take a gift to the believers there. 26 For you see, the believers in Macedonia and Achaia have eagerly taken up an offering for the poor among the believers in Jerusalem. 27 They were glad to do this because they feel they owe a real debt to them. Since the Gentiles received the spiritual blessings of the Good News from the believers in Jerusalem, they feel the least they can do in return is to help them financially. 28 As soon as I have delivered this money and completed this good deed of theirs, I will come to see you on my way to Spain. 29 And I am sure that when I come, Christ will richly bless our time together.

30 Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to join in my struggle by praying to God for me. Do this because of your love for me, given to you by the Holy Spirit. 31 Pray that I will be rescued from those in Judea who refuse to obey God. Pray also that the believers there will be willing to accept the donation I am taking to Jerusalem. 32 Then, by the will of God, I will be able to come to you with a joyful heart, and we will be an encouragement to each other.
33 And now may God, who gives us his peace, be with you all. Amen.

Romans 15:23-33

Paul is continually showing us how we can be a blessing to others while being blessed ourselves – all at the same time.

We cannot out-bless God. We often naively think that He is showing us a need to meet so that we can bless another and it always turns back to where we end up blessed! I can’t explain it. His ways are so much higher than our ways. And I praise Him for that truth!

Challenge: Pray for one week asking God to show you a need that you can meet.

It doesn’t have to be grand and it doesn’t have to involve money, although it could. God may reveal to you a person who needs prayer. He might show you a financial need to meet. Or He might show you a need that you can meet with your time like babysitting for a young couple with a new baby so they can have a date night. Pray diligently for one week and He will bring something to you. But be warned, it can be contagious and you may not want to stop!

Ask for prayers.

In the Scripture above, we see Paul asking for prayer for numerous things, including for himself. Here is a list of the prayer requests that are contained in these 11 verses:

Prayer for himself;
Prayer that he will be rescued from those in Judea who refuse to obey God;
Prayer that the believers in Jerusalem will be willing to accept the donation he is taking to them; and,
Prayer that God, who gives us His peace, be with all of the people he is writing to in this letter.

Notice that in the verses above Paul did not apologize before he asked for prayer. In our society, we tiptoe around others because we don’t want to bother them. I’m guilty of this myself. We don’t always ask for prayers even though the Word clearly shows us that we should. We need to be bold about our requests. It should not be a burden to ask a friend for prayer. It is a privilege to be able to pray for others. It is a blessing to be able to lift another to our good and loving Father.

Challenge: Initiate a prayer chain today.

This is easy on Facebook. You create a post that says something like this:

Let’s start a prayer chain. I will start. In the comments, I am going to list my prayer request. The first friend who reads it is to pray for this request for me and note that you did so in a reply comment. Then in a new comment, you list your prayer request. The next friend (even if they don’t know you) is to pray for you and note that they did so. They then create a new comment with their prayer request and on and on it goes. There is such power in the knowledge that another person, possibly even a stranger, is lifting your prayer to our Father. I hope you take this challenge and put it in action today. You’ll be blessed when you do so.

Paul’s missionary trips and his passion for those who did not know Jesus should be inspiration for all of us.

I’ll close with some aspects of Paul’s life that we should try to imitate. Paul spoke boldly. He spoke directly and with conviction. His heart was for all those in darkness. And he also had a soft spot for all the young, new believers. He was always encouraging and lifting them up to be the best they could be. Let’s do that in our lives. It’s contagious. Others will see it in you and want to know your secret allowing you to share Jesus. He opens doors for us to minister. Be bold for Christ!

Stay in the Light and the Love Always,

Eva

Romans 9:25-33 All People Are God’s People

June 30, 2017 By Eva Conner Leave a Comment

All People are God’s People

25 Concerning the Gentiles, God says in the prophecy of Hosea,
“Those who were not my people, I will now call my people.
And I will love those whom I did not love before.”
26 And, “Then, at the place where they were told,
‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’”
27 And concerning Israel, Isaiah the prophet cried out,
“Though the people of Israel are as numerous as the sand of the seashore, only a remnant will be saved.
28 For the Lord will carry out his sentence upon the earth quickly and with finality.”
29 And Isaiah said the same thing in another place:
“If the Lord of Heaven’s Armies had not spared a few of our children,
we would have been wiped out like Sodom, destroyed like Gomorrah.”

30 What does all this mean? Even though the Gentiles were not trying to follow God’s standards, they were made right with God. And it was by faith that this took place. 31 But the people of Israel, who tried so hard to get right with God by keeping the law, never succeeded. 32 Why not? Because they were trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of by trusting in him. They stumbled over the great rock in their path. 33 God warned them of this in the Scriptures when he said,

“I am placing a stone in Jerusalem that makes people stumble, a rock that makes them fall.
But anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.”

Romans 9:25-33

Us Against Them?

The Israelites are God’s chosen people. His plan was for the Israelites to ALL be priests (Exodus 19:6). The Gentiles are God’s chosen people. His plan is for us to ALL be priests (1 Peter 2:9).

Then Peter replied, “I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right. This is the message of Good News for the people of Israel – that there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.

Acts 10:34-36

The fact that He does not show favoritism shows that He desires for ALL people from all walks of life to be His children. God loves each person He created! We are the children of the living God (Romans 9:26).

In verse 28 above, we see what God starts, He finishes. We all have been given free will to make our own decisions and choices in life. The main reason for our free will is so that we can choose to live life in fellowship with God. We were created in God’s image to be friends with God. He wants our friendship out of the pureness of our hearts, not out of obligation.

So many people are going to be eternally lost because they are unable to see clearly. Their ears are not open to hear clearly either. There are too many people right this minute who think they need to work for their salvation. They think they need to go to church, volunteer and serve and do the “right” things to earn God’s love.

He loves us as we are.

He loves us so much, He did all the work for us. He knew that we could not ever get right with Him as long as we were still sinners. So He gave us His only Son to be sin for us. That’s love. Why would we now have to work for His love and for salvation when Jesus did it all on the cross? If there is still work for us to do for our salvation then we are crucifying Him all over again.

In this world, we create sides in just about everything.

We create a “them and us” lifestyle. There’s always those over there who don’t have the same views as we do. Instead of accepting and showing the love of Christ, we judge and draw lines. Jesus taught us that love is the answer for everything. When we are loving, it’s hard to condemn. When we are loving, it’s hard to judge. When we are loving, it’s hard to hurt another person.

God calls each of us to love as He loved.

To do this, we simply must have a close relationship with Him and allow His Spirit to lead. On our own, we are incapable of having and sharing the kind of love that Jesus has. But with Jesus, we are FULLY capable of having and sharing that whole, pure love. We need to strive to get closer to God. It needs to be our number one priority in life. As we draw closer to God, He will use us to draw others around us closer to Him as well.

We need to embrace love and embrace all people. Especially those who are unloveable. Oftentimes, the ones who are the most unloveable are the ones who need love the most. These verses in Romans above show us that God is fair and just. God is patient. But there will come a time when there will be no more time.

We need to be watchful for unbelief.

We see in the final verses in chapter 9 that the Israelites tried so hard to be God’s people by keeping the law and through their works when all He ever wanted was relationship. He turned to us and gave us relationship. He is the same God today that He was yesterday and the same that He will be tomorrow. In the Garden of Eden, we see that He walked with Adam and Eve. He talked with them and fellowshipped with them. It was a relationship. That is His desire for all of us.

The Jews had one goal – to honor God. But because of their unbelief, they could not see Jesus Christ was their Messiah. The One that they longed would come, came and they could not recognize Him. Jesus became their stumbling block because they were trying so hard to honor God through their obedience and their works, they didn’t have a relationship with Him. They did not believe Jesus was their Messiah because He didn’t look like they thought He should look. They had very narrow vision with what they thought He should look like. And Jesus didn’t cut the mustard.

We need to take a lesson from the Jewish people and not allow our views to become so limited that we cannot see God in our lives – so limited that we cannot hear God speak to us.

God is limitless.

Let’s stop limiting God in our lives. We need to allow Him full access to our hearts, our minds, our homes, and our families. Let’s ask Him to open up our hearts to receive all of Him in all of us.

Stay in the Light and the Love Always,

Eva

Marriage – The Roads We Travel

June 23, 2017 By Eva Conner Leave a Comment

Don't let Satan in your marriage

God desires to work through each of us.

When we allow God to work in us and through us, He uses us to lift and encourage others. Fellowship and sharing are very important to God and should be to us as well. It’s when we share a word we’re given with others that we encourage and build one another up.

In the wee hours of the night I was thinking about marriage and images of roads kept popping in my head. Marriage, done God’s way, is wonderful. God wants us to put our spouse before ourselves, even before our children.

This is a tough one for moms. Especially today’s moms!

In my lifetime, I’ve seen a shift in who controls the family unit. When I was young, parents did not live their lives for their children. But now I see the complete opposite. Children rule the house. Children dictate what the parents are going to do and when they are going to do it.

Children are involved in so many activities, they need a personal assistant (MOM!) to manage their schedule. You know what happens to Dad… he takes a backseat to the children in Mom’s life. This happened in my own life. I can attest to the hurt and damage that spouses can inflict on each other because of neglect – whether it is intentional or unintentional. Thankfully this was many years ago in our marriage and we’ve done a lot of healing and growing since those years. But we are called to share our experience and our past heartache to help others avoid the same. We are all called to share our testimony and it is Biblical:

Through Christ, God has given us the privilege and authority as apostles to tell Gentiles everywhere what God has done for them, so that they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name.

Romans 1:5

I’m sharing this word that God gave me to encourage you.

If your life is a little crazy and hectic because of your children’s activities, maybe you need to cut back so that you have more family time. More time with your spouse. More time around the dinner table without having to eat in the car on your way to the next activity. More time to just sit on the porch and listen to the rain with your spouse.

Your marriage is worth a thorough evaluation of your priorities. Marriages are being attacked by Satan more now than ever. Satan knows if he can attack a marriage, he can keep a powerful duo from charging after the lost and sharing Christ. When we’re caught in his snare, we are useless in avancing God’s kingdom.

What is the answer? Bring Jesus into your marriage and keep Him there.

Easier said than done, right? To have a marriage the way that God intended, we need to be intentional. We can’t take our eyes off of Jesus for one second. He needs to be involved in our marriage – and in every aspect. When both husband and wife are focused on Jesus, He ties our hearts together. Did you catch these words? Keep your gaze on Jesus – not on each other.

When our gaze is on one another instead of Jesus, we put our spouse above where God should be in our lives. This is not fair to anyone – us, our spouse and especially not our children. No one, not even our spouse, can take the place of God in our lives. God and God alone is to be above all others.

What road is your marriage on?

I mentioned earlier that I saw roads reflecting where we are in our marriage. The first vision was two people – husband and wife – standing back to back walking away from each other as in a duel. The only time they turned around to see each other was when they were taking a shot at one another. They were going opposite ways on the road.

The second vision was two roads that ran parallel to each other but they never intersected. The husband was on one road and the wife on the other. This reflects a husband and wife (or maybe it’s better to say a man and a woman) living two separate lives.

The last vision was two people on the same road, going in the same direction and travelling at the same speed. This is the Godly marriage. It’s not always easy to keep in sync but if you have a prayerful life, it is possible. Will you have the occasional bumps causing you to get out of sync? Absolutely! But when you pray regularly for your spouse and with your spouse, God will see that you get back in sync.

If your marriage is on the first or second road, don’t despair.

Get quiet before God and ask Him to change your hearts. Ask Him to put you on the same road as your spouse, going the same direction at the same speed.

Without God, a good marriage is impossible.

But with God’s presence and His love and grace, a good marriage is possible.

He replied, “What is impossible for people is possible with God.”

Luke 18:27

If you don’t already pray for your spouse, start doing so today. Pray for your spouse often. Pray with your spouse every day. It’s amazing how God will work in a person’s life through another person’s prayer and even more amazing how God will work in a marriage through united prayer.

Here’s a prayer for each of our marriages:

Dear Father,

Thank You for Your Word. You are so faithful to show us how to live every area of our lives if we will just take a minute to look in Your Word. Help each of us get more intentional about praying for our marriage and our spouses. Father, we ask that You create in each of us pure hearts and renew steadfast spirits. We ask that You turn our vision toward Jesus. Each day, Father, we commit our love and our marriage to You. Lord, protect our eyes from looking at anything that would detract our attention from our spouse. Help us to be pleasing and honoring to You.

Fill our hearts with Your love so that we can love one another as You do. Keep the enemy from our homes, from our marriage and from our children. We plead the blood of Jesus over our homes, our our relationships, over each of our lives and over the covenant of marriage that we made as one with You.

We ask that You guide our prayers. And we thank You and give You all the honor, praise and glory.

In Jesus name we pray.

Amen♥

Stay in the Light and the Love Always,

Eva

Romans 8:10-17 – Children of God

June 13, 2017 By Eva Conner Leave a Comment

5 thiings Holy Spirit does for us - makes us children of God.

We are children of God. This is Good News.

10 And Christ lives within you, so even though your body will die because of sin, the Spirit gives you life because you have been made right with God. 11 The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you.

12 Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. 13 For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

15 So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.” 16 For his Spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God’s children. 17 And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

Romans 8:10-17

Christ lives in us.

The Holy Spirit gives us life because of our right standing with God. Remember from our lesson in Romans 3, we are made right with God when we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. Our righteousness is imputed to us because we are grafted in to the Body of Christ when we believe in Him.

I’d like to point out a reference to the Trinity in verse 11 above. God the Father through the power of God the Holy Spirit raised God the Son from the dead. Do you see it? The Trinity is one of those Heavenly secrets that man will never fully understand. All three in the Trinity are fully God. All are in each other. While they are all their own Person, they do not act independently of each other.

Because of this righteousness that comes from Christ, we no longer are slaves to the sinful nature that we received from Adam. We are new creations and, as such, sin has no hold over us any longer. Paul makes it clear if we live by our sinful nature, we will die. If we live by the Spirit, we will live. And when we are led by the Spirit, we are children of God!

Does this happen overnight?

No, we do not immediately stop doing those sinful things. The Christian life takes discipline. We must train our minds to focus and go to the things of God that we find in Scripture. This is why it is so very important to study the Word and get it in our hearts and our heads. When we have the Word within us, it is easier to battle those sinful desires. The more we battle and win against those sinful desires, the more we are like Christ. This should be our goal.

The Holy Spirit makes us Christ-like when we allow Him to lead.

The Holy Spirit assures us that we are children of God. We are Abba’s children. In Aramaic the word “Abba” is for Father and is an intimate term that we can relate to as “Papa” or “Daddy.” God the Father is our Papa. He wants us to look to Him as our Father. The Holy Spirit makes this possible. The Holy Spirit joins with our spirit to witness that we are the Father’s children.

We are heirs with Christ Jesus of God’s glory.

If you’d like to learn more about the Holy Spirit, read my ebook all about Him. It is available for free when you sign up to receive emails from my blog by visiting www.evaconner.com and entering your email address in the orange bar at the top of the screen. You’ll receive an email asking you to verify that you are not a robot. After you do that, you will receive an email with a link to the free ebook which is a PDF.

Stay in the Light and the Love Always,

Eva

Romans 8:1-9 – External Power Source to Bring Life

June 9, 2017 By Eva Conner Leave a Comment

We need an external power source to restore life where death once ruled.

1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 4 He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.

5 Those who are dominated by the sinful nature think about sinful things, but those who are controlled by the Holy Spirit think about things that please the Spirit. 6 So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. 7 For the sinful nature is always hostile to God. It never did obey God’s laws, and it never will. 8 That’s why those who are still under the control of their sinful nature can never please God.

9 But you are not controlled by your sinful nature. You are controlled by the Spirit if you have the Spirit of God living in you. (And remember that those who do not have the Spirit of Christ living in them do not belong to him at all.)

Romans 8:1-9

There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.

This is good news for all of us. We need to shed the guilt once and for all. Do you see the words in the first verse of chapter 8 above? There is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. The Spirit of life in Christ Jesus set us free. We’ve been talking about the law in the past few lessons. We know the law itself was not bad. In fact, the law was holy and pure because it came directly from God and anything that comes from God has to be holy and pure.

The problem is not with what we do – the problem is with who we are!

We are sons of Adam; therefore, we all have a sinful nature. No amount of works that we do on our own can change our inner nature. The law shows us what is right and what is wrong. But our sinful nature cannot obey the law. We are not capable without help. I heard this analogy and connected with it so I’m sharing it with you:

Think of your inner self as a dead car battery. On your own, you can do nothing to that car battery to restore life. Cleaning the outside with soap and water doesn’t change the inner, dead part of the batttery. The only thing that can change the inner part of the battery is an external power source.

Our inner self is the same as this dead car battery. Nothing we do externally will change our inner self.

We need an external power source to bring new life to our inner man.

That external power source is the Holy Spirit! Paul confirms this in verse 2. “And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death.” When we believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell in us. He is our Comforter and our Guide but it is not instantaneous. Let me clarify. The very minute we accept Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in us – this is instantaneous. What does not happen so quickly is learning to walk in the Spirit.

How do we do this?

Paul tells us in these verses above that we can either let the sinful nature control our minds or we can let the Holy Spirit control our minds. One leads to death and the other to life and peace. The battle is in our minds. In Romans 12:2, Paul tells us:

Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.

Romans 12:2

So knowing that the battle is in our minds, we must let the Holy Spirit control our thinking. We need to turn from the ways of the world toward the ways of God. This raises another question.

How do we let God transform our thinking?

We let God in our minds and our thoughts by developing a close relationship with Him. We develop a close relationship with Him when we spend quiet time with Him and get in His Word. These are the two primary ways that we will know who God is and hear from Him. His Word is His Voice. When we get in the Word – studying, meditating, praying – we will draw closer to God. His Word is alive and breathing. It is Life. The Word is Jesus Christ.

The Word of God will bring about an amazing transformation of our minds, souls and spirits.

Stay in the Light and the Love Always,

Eva