it creates incredible energy…

one of the great promises you want to hold on to when you’re overwhelmed is isaiah 4.2 (tev), when you pass through deep waters, I will be with you.  your troubles will not overwhelm you.  when you pass through the fire you will not be burned.  the hard trials that come will not hurt you.  in your own strength you may drown, when that flood comes.  but not in GOD’s strength.

where do you get that kind of strength?  where do you find strength when you’re overwhelmed?

well for one, you find it by praising GOD for HIS goodness.  there is enormous power in praise.  it creates incredible energy.  get your eyes off the problem and on to the solution.  off the circumstance and on to the SAVIOR.

try this.  it works, when you’re overwhelmed.  in the middle of an overwhelming feeling, stop and praise GOD for HIS goodness to you.

mary, JESUS mother did that.  in luke  1.46-47 (nlt) she said, oh, how i praise the LORD.  how i rejoice in GOD my SAVIOR.

just a thought from the front porch…

let GOD give you strength…

some things you need to do when you’re overwhelmed is you let go of control, you let other people help you and you let GOD give you strength.  you let GOD give you strength.

some of you know GOD will give you strength but you won’t let HIM.  you act as if it all depends on you.  you keep saying, “if it’s to be it’s up to me.”  or “GOD helps those who helps themselves.”  GOD didn’t say that!  ben franklin said that.  neither of those statements are in the bible.  in fact, GOD says the exact opposite.  it’s not up to you.  it’s up to GOD.  GOD says, “let ME help you.  why won’t you let ME help you?”  there are over 7000 promises in the bible.  there are hundreds of them where GOD says, “I’ll help you if you let ME.”  you need to plug in to the promises of GOD. 

the reason why mary, this young little thirteen, fourteen-year-old peasant girl was not blown away by the overwhelming fact that she was going to become the mother of the SON of GOD is  because she was a woman of the word.  she claimed the promises of GOD.  she knew them and she claimed them.

the bible says this in luke 1.45 (gw), talking about mary, you are blessed for believing that the LORD will keep HIS promise to you.  she was calm and composed because she had the promises of GOD in her heart.  that gave her strength.

just a thought from the front porch…

strengthened and refined…

if the dream is GOD given, satan doesn’t want you to have it.  if it’s GOD given, GOD wants to test it so it can be strengthened and refined.  from both sides you’re going to get testing of the dream.  dreams will always face tests.  and joseph's faced them.

one is the test of denial.  you’ll face that.  you’ll have people who say, “that’s not GOD’s dream for your life.  where do you get that?”  the test of denial.  someone who just says, “that’s not true.” 

so why do people deny your dreams? 

for one, because they don’t have any dreams of their own.  there are some people who don’t have any dreams and people who do have dreams frighten them.  that’s why joseph’s brothers were so frightened.  they had no GOD given dreams and here’s somebody who did and they realized what that dream meant.  there are some people, when you share a GOD given dream, it scares them to death because they don’t have any dreams of their own. 

a second reason is there are some people who don’t want a GOD given dream.  it’s not that they don’t have a GOD given dream.  it’s that they don’t want a GOD given dream of their own.  the number one reason for this is disappointment. 

when you and i have been disappointed in a dream that we have and someone else comes along and shares a dream, our natural reaction to them is to put down their dream.  why?  because we’ve been hurt.  we’ve been disappointed.  it’s a natural feeling we have in our lives.  we’ve got to watch out for that. 

let’s say you are married and you really want a child but for some reason you can’t have one and you hear that someone else, their GOD given dream for a child had come into their lives, the natural reaction, honestly, is not to rejoice with them.  no. the natural reaction is, “they obviously aren’t as SPIRITual as we are, don’t pray as much as i do.  so why is GOD giving them this dream?”  this happens all the time.  so you and i need to be careful not to quench others dreams when this happens.  and we need to realize that other people who have been disappointed in life will try to quench our GOD given dream. 

that’s why denial comes in.  so often when you share a dream, instead of people being excited about it like you’d expect, they’ll try to quench it.  that’s test number one.

just a thought from the front porch…