Change Someone's Life

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

~Matthew 5:14-16

The above verse from the Sermon on the Mount is to all believers both then and now. We are to be a light that shines the glory of what Christ has done for us to the rest of the world. Our light is the love of Christ within us. It is there to draw others to us so we can share the joy of the Lord and tell them the Good News of Jesus Christ. We live in a world that is quite literally going to hell—a world without love, hope, or help. But as followers of Jesus, we have love, hope, joy, and peace—all the things this world longs for and can’t seem to hold on to for more than a few seconds at a time.

“Again, Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows Me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life’ (John 8:12).” 

The world around us is darkness, but in Christ, we have light. His light brings us peace and life free of the worries of this world. We don’t have to fear the future because ours is secure in Him. His light frees us from fear and worry of what might happen because our peace and security lie within the light of His glory. And once we are filled with the glory of Christ, we can’t help but shine like a beacon in the night. That light attracts others and gives us the opportunity to share what Christ has done for us. In a hurting world, you can be the light that changes someone’s life.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? (Psalm 27:1).”

Read 2 Peter 1-3

©2018 Marie McGaha

Everlasting Life

“I will give to the Lord the thanks due to His righteousness, and I will sing praise to the Name of the Lord, the Most High.”

~Psalm 7:17

Whether we live in a mansion or apartment, city or country, have everything we could dream of, or just dream of everything we could someday have, we all have a reason to give thanks to the Lord and sing His praises. While we all have “stuff” that we are thankful for, it should not be the main reason why we give thanks or sing praises to the Lord. Our “stuff” is meaningless in the long run and will all be left here when we leave this planet. Like the psalmist, our thanks and praise is for the Lord alone, for who He is, because of His righteousness.

“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything (Acts 17:24-25).” 

The Lord is worthy of our praise and thanksgiving for no other reason than who He is, but each of us have many reasons for being thankful—salvation and everlasting life being at the top of the list. That alone is worthy of our gratitude, but He does so much more for us. As you get ready for Thanksgiving, look around at the family coming to visit, the food being prepared, the people who are working so hard to prepare that food, the home that keeps you warm, and give thanks for those things. But as you bow your head, remember what the Lord has done, His sacrifice for our salvation and the love He has given each of us by bringing us from where we were in the darkness into His marvelous light.

“You turned my mourning into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.  So my soul will sing to You and not be silent. Oh Lord my God, I will praise You forever (Psalm 30:12-13).”

Read 1 Peter 3-5

© 2018 Marie McGaha

No Matter What

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

~1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

I call these verses God’s marching orders for each of us. The will of God in Christ is for us to rejoice, pray and give thanks always and without ceasing. How many of us actually do that? From the shape of things, not many, at least not always and without ceasing. We tend to look at our circumstances and pray when we need God to lend a hand. We tend to rejoice and give thanks when God answers that prayer or handles that need. But that isn’t the way God wants us to do things. He wants us to look to Him and not our circumstances. He wants us to rejoice in every situation, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in every circumstance, which includes those we’d rather not be in.

“Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving (Colossians 2:6-7).”

When we accept Christ as our Savior, we are given an unimaginable gift of everlasting life, eternal and full of glory. As we live our lives rooted in Christ, that is, to accept the fullness of the Word of God and practice it in our daily lives, we become rooted in what Jesus teaches. From that we abound in thanksgiving that flows from our hearts onto everything else in our lives. So we can be thankful in every situation knowing that our present circumstances are of no real concern. We are subject to life’s ups and downs, just like everyone else but because of who we are in Christ Jesus, we can rejoice in all things, pray without ceasing, and give thanks no matter what our circumstances look like.

“Therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:17-21).”

Read 1 Peter 1-2

© 2018 Marie McGaha

Give Thanks

“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the Lord, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name! For the Lord is good; His steadfast love endures forever, and His faithfulness to all generations.”

~Psalm 100

In 1621 the Pilgrims and Wampanoa Indians held the first feast that our modern-day Thanksgiving is drawn from. The Pilgrims gave thanks in prayer as part of their religious service on a daily basis, but it wasn’t until that first harvest and abundance of food that the first feast was held. Our Thanksgiving Day has evolved over the years, and we don’t necessarily celebrate Thanksgiving for the same reasons the Pilgrims did. Most of us don’t have to till the land for food, or hope we kill an animal so our kids don’t starve—we go to the grocery store where food is abundant. Most of us celebrate Thanksgiving because it’s what we do every year, and we don’t give much thought to why or for what we have to be thankful for.

“Let them thank the Lord for His steadfast love, for His wondrous works to the children of man! For He satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul He fills with good things (Psalm 107:8-9).”

We live in one of the most prosperous times in history in one of the most prosperous countries, but as Christians, we have much more to be thankful for than material belongings. We still must be thankful for the home we have, the job, car, and all of the things the world puts so much value on but being thankful for our place in Christ is the most valuable part of our who we are. Holding on to our faith, salvation, and our love for the Lord must always be more important than anything else in our lives. And what Christ did for us on the Cross at Calvary is not just worthy of our thanks on a certain day of the year, He is worthy of our praise and thanksgiving every single day of the year.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for His steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, for His steadfast love endures forever; to Him who alone does great wonders, for His steadfast love endures forever; to Him who by understanding made the heavens, for His steadfast love endures forever; to Him who spread out the earth above the waters, for His steadfast love endures forever; to Him who made the great lights, for His steadfast love endures forever; the sun to rule over the day, for His steadfast love endures forever; the moon and stars to rule over the night, for His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 136:1-9).”

Read James 1-4

©2018 Marie McGaha

Be Determined

“For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

~Romans 7: 22-25

There is a legend attributed to one of the Indian tribes that says every man has two wolves inside him. One is good and the other, evil. A young man asked the wise old man how to know which one was the strongest, and the wise old man answered, “The one you feed the most.” The same is true if we apply the story biblically. We have two natures, one that strives to do good, and the other that wants to slap the skin off someone’s face if they look at us sideways. Our old nature feeds the sin that dwells within us, and even when we are saved by accepting Christ as our Savior, that old nature can haunt us. Like Paul, our minds might determine to serve the Lord, but we still battle our fleshly desires.

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness (Romans 6:12-13).”

Just as we are what we eat, we are spiritually what we practice, and if we aren’t practicing righteousness, we are practicing unrighteousness. Practicing righteousness is more than reading a few chapters of the Bible, a devotion, and offering up a quick prayer in the morning. Practicing righteousness is something we do all day long in everything we say and everything we do. Like eating food, what we put into our bodies determines how healthy we are. Eat junk food and sugar all day and your body is going to reflect that. Put junk into your mind and you’re going to reflect that in what you do and say. What you read, the music you listen to, and the TV shows you watch have an impact on your mind. The people you hang with do too. The jokes they tell, the conversations they have, the things they do, also have an effect.

Practicing righteousness does not come naturally, it is something we decide to do. We set our minds on things above (Colossians 3:2-17) and determine to practice those things which bring life—compassion, kindness, humility, and patience.

“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:20-23).”

Read Hebrews 10-13

© 2018 Marie McGaha

Wallowing With The Pigs

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will.”

~Ephesians 1:3-5

Do you consider yourself “chosen” by God? It’s an overwhelming idea that the God of all Creation would look down at the billions of people on earth and choose me! But that’s what He did for each of us who follow Christ. The Lord of All hand picks each one of us no matter what our circumstances may be. No matter what kind of trouble we’ve been into, what sins we’ve committed, or what kind of blubbering mess we appear to be—we were hand-picked by the Lord. For me, that’s an awesome, awe-inspiring revelation.

“Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony (Colossians 3:12-14).”

We are all chosen to be part of God’s grand plan, however, we still have a choice just like Adam and Eve in the Garden. God gave us free will because He wants us to give ourselves freely to Him, to His plan, and above all, to love Him in return. God loves us in our worst moments but it’s only in our best moments that we love Him. Once we accept that Christ is the only answer for our lives, we return God’s love, but it doesn’t end there. He expects us to not only love Him, but to love others—and not just other Christians. No, God expects us to love others in their worst moments, the way He loves us. It’s easy to love someone who loves us, but loving the unlovable, those still living in their sins, wallowing in the filth of this world—it gets a little more difficult.

I am reminded of the prodigal son who spent his inheritance on gambling, drinking, and wild living and then wound up wallowing with the pigs trying to feed himself on their slop. No matter what kind of life we’ve lived, until we accept Christ as our Savior, we are all wallowing with the pigs. Not one of us is better than another, the difference is, like the prodigal son, we came to our senses and took the hand Christ offers. It is then up to us to offer a hand to others. Love one another!

“And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate (Luke 15:21-24).”

Read Hebrews 7-9

©2018 Marie McGaha

Use Your Sword

“And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, He was hungry. The devil said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.’ And Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”

~Luke 4:1-4

We have all been tempted at one time or another. I’m tempted every Thanksgiving to eat more pumpkin pie than I should! We talk about temptation without giving it a lot of thought but when Jesus was tempted in the desert, the entire future of mankind was at stake. But Jesus had an answer—the Word of God. No matter what the devil offered, Jesus never offered an opinion, He simply used God’s Word and defeated the devil. What might our lives look like if we approached temptation the same way Jesus did?

“And when Jesus was baptized, immediately He went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on Him; and behold, a Voice from Heaven said, ‘This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:16-17).”

I find it interesting that it wasn’t until after Jesus was baptized in water and by the Holy Spirit, that He heard the voice of God, and only then did the devil try to divert Christ’s attention away from His God-given purpose. But no matter what the devil said, Jesus answered by using God’s Word. The Word of God is powerful. The Bible says it’s living and active, sharp enough to divide the soul and judge the heart (Hebrews 4:12). God’s Word is called the sword of the Spirit and is part of the armor of God (Ephesians 6:17), but like any weapon, we must know how to use it.

“We exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, Who calls you into His own kingdom and glory. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the Word of God, which is at work in you believers (1 Thessalonians 2:12-13).”

Read Hebrews 4-6

© 2018 Marie McGaha