Proverbs 18:21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.
We have a Christian friend who constantly talks about her problems. Every single time we talk to her she tells us how bad things are going in her life and how much she is lacking. Interestingly, in all the years we've known her and prayed for her, things have only gotten worse. Though she has come to believe in the God of victory, she is not living a victorious life. How many of us are in this boat?
We have another friend who has experienced many hard things in her life. But ever since this friend gave her life to the Lord some years ago, her attitude has changed completely. She is grateful, so very grateful for God's salvation and goodness toward her. Though she began her walk with the Lord with nothing, she has been excited at what God has in store for her life and has often spoken in great faith for her future. This girl has come so far. We have watched her blossom as God has done amazing things in her life. She is now part of a thriving ministry and the Lord is using her mightily. He has blessed her with a home, a car and finances and she reaches out to many with all that she has. It's beautiful.
It seems clear, yet took us some time to realize that the thoughts we think and the things we say are so much more powerful than we can imagine. They are life or death to our ministry, our relationships, our finances and everything else.
Are you struggling with something today? It's time to start looking up! Stop complaining! Start speaking in faith! Watch how the Lord turns things around!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]F.B. Meyer once said, “The education of our faith is incomplete [till] we learn that God’s providence works through loss…that there’s a ministry to us through the failure and fading of things. The dwindling brook where Elijah sat is a picture of our lives.
Most people reading this passage tend to focus in on the fruit that is produced. Okay…But a closer look will reveal that the Lord is really focusing on the tree. The fruit merely demonstrates the quality of the tree. We have all encountered this: there are trees whose fruit is healthy and delicious, and there are trees whose fruit is scarcely edible, or even useless.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on in every person. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’. One is evil — it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good…
There’s an interesting story about the great English actor, Macready. A respected preacher once asked him, “I wish you would explain something to me.”
We live in a day and age that everywhere we turn, there’s a “self-help” theory. Books, videos and dvds, websites, world-renown speakers, you name it — all dedicated to helping us “feel good about ourselves”. Yet somehow, still many of us struggle with self-consciousness, even as Christians!
Early in the last century, sculptor Gutzon Borglum gazed at the cliffs of South Dakota’s Black Hills. As any great artist would, He saw what no one else could the sculpted faces of US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. After 14 years, he finally completed his project — Mount Rushmore.
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