My parents were so confident in who God is and what God has said through His Word that it genuinely never crossed my mind, nor to my knowledge the minds of my siblings, to doubt God! When I was a child, I told my mother I wanted to know God personally for myself, and she lovingly gave me the instructions about how to approach Him. So I followed her instructions and went to the designated place at Calvary, to an altar of wood called the cross, and took my sacrificial Lamb. The knife of my sin and guilt was responsible for His death, and His shed blood made atonement for me. When I walked away from that altar, not only had I been reminded of my sinful condition, but I had the deep peace and assurance that my sins were forgiven! I was no longer separated from God but accepted by Him, because my sacrifice was the Lamb of God who is my Creator who became my Savior!
What a blessing to have had parents who were people of confident faith. What a blessing to be a parent with confident faith like that!
Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.
It is the Spirit who gives life. § The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. § [Pray] always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance.
I will never forget Your precepts, for by them You have given me life. § The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. § The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. § If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. § This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
No one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
Ps. 80:18; John 6:63; Rom. 8:26–27; Eph. 6:18;
Ps. 119:93; John 6:63; 2 Cor. 3:6; John 15:7; 1 John 5:14; 1 Cor. 12:3
Have no fellowship with the unfruitful
works of darkness, but rather expose them.
Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? There- fore purge out the old leaven … I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. § Become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.
In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.
Eph. 5:11; 1 Cor. 15:33; 5:6–7, 9–11; Phil. 2:15; 2 Tim. 2:20
When the Holy Spirit comes into you at your invitation, you receive as much of Him as you will ever have. You do not get a little bit of Him then and a little bit more at later experiences. Since He is a Person, you cannot get Him in pieces. You either have all of the Holy Spirit or you have none of the Holy Spirit. Why is it, then, that He seems to get us in pieces? He comes to us unconditionally, while we surrender to Him conditionally.
We give Him our Sundays but not our Mondays.
We give Him our actions but not our attitudes.
We give Him our relationships but not our reputations.
We give Him our time but not our thoughts.
We give Him our burdens but not our bodies.
We give Him our prayers but not our pleasures.
We give Him our crises but not our children.
We give Him our health but not our hearts.
Would you drop the conditions and give Him all of you?
Having loved His own who were in
the world, He loved them to the end.
I pray for them. I do not pray for the world but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours. And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. § A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. § Christ … loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word.
John 13:1; 17:9–10, 15–16; 15:9,
15:13–14; 13:34; Phil. 1:6; Eph. 5:25–26
The deep things of God.
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. § It has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man … that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
1 Cor. 2:10; John 15:15; Matt. 13:11;
1 Cor. 2:12; Eph. 3:14–19
I have prayed without ceasing for my children throughout the years. One of the promises I believe God gave me for them, and a promise I have claimed again and again in prayer, is Exodus 15:1-2. This passage is the song of Moses as he exults in God’s deliverance of the Hebrew children when the Red Sea was parted and they crossed over on dry ground. As Pharaoh’s army pursued and sought to keep God’s children from getting safely to the Promised Land of His blessing, the sea’s walls collapsed, the enemy was supernaturally destroyed, and God’s people rejoiced: I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.
The promise God seemed to give me from this ancient hymn of joy was that He would supernaturally overthrow anything or anyone seeking to hinder my children from being in His place of blessing for their lives. God has a promise in His Word for your children, too. Ask Him to give it to you so that you can claim it in prayer.
