July 22, 2008

Successful Christian Living brings you monthly information, advice and resources for living a Christ-centered life in every area. If you like this e-zine, please feel free to pass it on.

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1) We are as free as the lies we believe
2) Becoming an intentional Daniel
3) Purity in your walk, relationships and spiritual warfare
4) Interested in a simple life?

A Quick Focus

I invite you to close your eyes for just a few seconds. During that time just allow yourself to know that He is present with you. Let yourself know that He loves you, is there with you because He wants to be, and that He has a plan for not only this day but all your days.

If you find something in the way then clear it up with Him right now. If that leaves no time to read the rest of this then don't read it. Your relationship with Christ is THE most important thing in your life.

When you feel at peace - not that everything in your life is perfect - just that you know He is with you, then I invite you now to the rest of the ezine.

We are as free as the lies we believe

Pleasure lies - these tempt us to take what the Lord provides to degrees which He has not allowed. They are the pride of life and the lust of the flesh and the eyes that pull us away from our focus on God. They say, "you need this, want this, deserve this. It's okay to have it."

Pressure lies - these cause us pain, shame and overwhelm us or they put heat on us to conform to the world and adopt its ways. They say, "fear these emotions, these situations, their disapproval."

Lies keep us focused on this world - what it provides or doesn't, what feels both good and bad, striving for status, power or lack of it, wealth and poverty, looks and peer approval - and the list goes on and on. The commonality is that every lie separates us God.

Our common enemy, the devil, has strategies to assist us in adopting these lies as truth. He may not be able to keep us from an eternity with the Lord but he can work to keep us from experiencing His freedom, power and love today.

But there is good news - the truth sets us free!

I work with people every day dismantling these lies and bringing the freedom Christ died for. I am in the process of putting 30 of these core pressure and pleasure lies into a book to enable more people to be set free.

The book will describe each lie, telling what it sounds like in your thoughts, what if feels like in your emotions and how to recognize them in your behavior. Then, I show the truth and how to have it replace the lies. As an example, I tell the story of an individual I've worked with (name changed, of course) so you can really see each lie's hold on a person and then God's releasing them from it.

My hope is that we will all identify a lie or two that has a hold on us and that we will be set free because of the truth.

Watch for an announcement on the web site. If you are interested in a personal email to let you know when it is available, just use the contact form on the web site.

Becoming an intentional Daniel

In 1:8 it says that Daniel made up his mind that he would not defile himself. The context here has to do with eating foods that were not allowed in the Law. But, as you read through the entire book you see that Daniel's whole life is a commitment to God, His ways and His will regardless of the pressure or pleasure presented to him.

Verse 8 has to come before verse 9. "Now God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the commander.." It was Daniel's intentional relatioship with God that came before God's blessing.

Because of Daniel's unwavering commitment to the Lord even in the face of death, God showed him amazing, life-changing revelations. Daniel was part of historic changes in the world and in the midst of them was always known by his captors as having an extraordinary spirit and great knowledge and wisdom.

I've thought a lot about Daniel. He decided that his life was about God. His relationship with Him determined every thought, every action and made it available for the Lord to use Him well.

We too can be intentional about our life and walk with God. We can make up our minds not to defile ourselves as well.

I came across a resource that I will be using with two others for the next year or so. It is called, Discipleship Essentials - A Guide to Building Your Life in Christ by Greg Ogden. It is about being intentional about becoming a disciple of Christ and it is designed to be worked through with others.

Daniel had his friends, best known as Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, who also were committed to following the ways of the Lord. Together they encouraged one another on the path. I want to encourage all of us to do the same.

Be intentional about being a disciple and find a few others to do it with because your relationship with God will determine your entire life - just like Daniel's.

Your walk, relationships and spiritual warfare

He goes on to show what that looks like in relationships of marriage, parenting, as children and slaves. Then he moves to saying finally we need to be strong in the Lord because of the spiritual warfare that is going on.

So far here is what all this tells us: Purity in our walk and interpresonal relationships is taking place in the context of spiritual warfare.

There is a war going on in your life and the objective is to destroy your walk with God, your relationships and your life. That is why you find a daily struggle at times with those in your life and to live with Christ.

"The forces of spiritual darkness" are at work in our lives every day. It shows itself in "the schemes of the devil" to pleasure and pressure us off our walk and looks as if it is "with flesh and blood" (people in our lives) but really is the forces behind the scenes.

It says that our "struggle" is against evil. That word means "hand to hand combat" in the Greek. This is an up close and personal enemy that is trying to hurt us and those with us.

Every move toward God is opposed. Every days as you desire to live worthy of Christ and love as He did, you have an enemy scheming to keep you from doing so. So, we can we do about it?

We are given our armor: Truth, Righteousness, Peace with God, Faith and Salvation. Then we are given the Word of God, our sword to fight against the schemes of the devil as we walk with God and with others.

It is the Word that we hide in our hearts, that we keep in our minds and through which we view the world that allows us to identify the devil's schemes - his lies

It is the Truth that we know and believe that allows us to walk worthy of our calling - loving sacrificially in all our relationships, being careful and wise, as children of the Light.

It is awareness of the spiritual battle going on around us that helps us to stay vigilant and wise.

We need to walk in Christ, with Christ and for Christ, serving others as He would knowing that we have an enemy, wearing our armor and staying in the Truth.

Interested in a simple life?

I am thinking about adding a members only portion to the site filled with tips, techniques, resources and articles on living simply, frugally and in a way that honors God and uses the resources He gives us well.

Because this would be very time consuming in research, writing and uploading to the web I would need to hire an assistant to help so would charge a fee for this members only section. I would only charge $10 per month with the guarantee of saving you at least 10 times that amount.

The members site would start with around 100 pages of help in every area I can think of that effects us daily and can save us money. More pages would be added daily.

If you are interested, would you please let me know? You can use the contact form to let me know if you like this idea and also with suggestions for this section of the site.