To serve the Lord with gladness takes the joy of the Lord which is your strength. Sometimes we don’t feel like serving the Lord at all, yet alone with gladness. Even doing service for the Lord reluctantly doesn’t cut it. The intentions and motivations of our hearts can clearly be seen by God. It is a worship to the Lord to serve with gladness. Anything we do should come from the heart when it comes to serving. Our servitude to the Lord is our worship to Him. How we do things in life should always be done as if we’re doing it for the Lord. On our jobs, we’re working for the man but we’ll have a much better witness for God doing things in excellence. As we have quiet time with the Lord, we are building our relationship with Him. Out of that relationship comes a boldness for the Lord which carries over into our everyday living. The stronger our fellowship with God is the easier it is to serve the Lord with gladness. Our fleshy appetites can be an issue from time to time. Because it has a mind of its own, it must be kept in check. The battle between our human spirit and our flesh (our bodies), will not stop until we pass on to the next life. Learning how to keep your body’s inordinate appetites suppressed, goes a long way in dealing with life on planet earth the way things are today. Worship the Lord with gladness, and serve Him with true conviction in excellence.

Our hearts can rejoice as we seek the Lord knowing He’s a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). The Lord is to be sought after because of His love for us. Imagine having someone who loves you so much they’ll do everything necessary to be sure you are successful in life. All you have to do is love Him back. We love Him back through obedience to His word and by fulfilling the assignment He has given us. We have every reason to rejoice in the Lord simply because of His word. He has promised us peace in the midst of a crisis. He has given us all that pertains to life and godliness in His word. He has continually made ways of escape for us from many close calls of danger. He has exalted you to that higher position and you know it wasn’t because of your great skill or personality. He has given us a foundation in Christ that cannot be shaken. We can have stability in the storms of life and all power to get through anything and everything that comes. We glory in His Holy name because we know who we are in Christ Jesus. If you don’t know who you are in Christ (your authority), then begin to love Him more and learn of Him. The ways of God, and ultimately the Kingdom rules for life on planet earth, will cause us to live above the evil in this world. Victorious living has a price to pay. Because of our stinking thinking and body appetites, we must follow the rules of the kingdom so that our spirit, soul, and body are under the leadership of the Kingdom rules of God.

The voice of triumph can be shouted out as a declaration of what we’re expecting to come to pass. Don’t wait until the battle is over, shout now! Our posture during a battle should be that of surety and confidence because of the Greater One with us. As we fight the good fight of faith in our everyday lives, we stay in front of the victory. As Israel marched around the walls of Jericho they continued for 7 days declaring, ” For the Lord is good and His mercy endures forever”. The confession of their faith had to be in agreement with the desired end result. A voice of triumph and songs of praise should always be inserted during those times of uncertainty in crisis, or storms of life. We have such an advantage through praising and worshipping our God. It gets His attention quick and in a hurry. The Lord responds to confident praise and worship towards Him. When we shout out in a joyful style, our victory over a situation before we’re actually delivered from it, it’s the greatest expression of faith before God than anything. The Lord will climb over a million people to get to you because of your faith in Him. He likes being God for us. Without faith it is impossible to please Him (Hebrews 11:6) but with it, we can shout for joy and sing praises of victory before the victory is ours.

David speaking here of his tried, and tested relationship with the Lord. God has brought David through many a battle successfully. He knows the Lord is his strength and his shield. David’s heart can truly trust in the Lord after so many victories. We must gain our own track record of victories because of God’s help. We are more than conquerors through Christ, and have been given all power through our Lord Jesus Christ. David did not have the born again experience under his belt as we do. We have the helper, teacher, strengthener, and power of the Godhead backing us in today’s world. David was engaged through fellowship with the Lord on a regular basis without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God came upon men before Jesus walked the earth. Today God’s Spirit lives in us when we become Christians, it’s the only way to receive clear instructions for victory. There was great trust between David and God earned over the years, and the Lord had become his ultimate place of refuge, strength, and a shield against the enemies best attacks. The Lord is our strength and our shield. Let your heart trust in Him like David did. As we confidently, and continually lean on the Lord, we will be helped.

As we trust God, He will fill us with all joy and peace. We can overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. We can trust and believe in the overflow of hope. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that we experience the holiness of the Lord. The overflow of hope is a faith driven energy directed at resolving an impossible situation, or dyer needs to be met, fired up by a strong confident favorable expectation. The Lord has given us the seeds of joy and peace in our newly recreated human spirits. We have everything we need to live a life of joy and peace, but there’s always work involved with God. We are laborers together with God, He won’t do it all for us when there are certain things we can do for ourselves. He’s not going to supernaturally download a program in our hearts to instantly make us have what takes years of growth. We must go through whatever it takes to have the firm foundation of stability here and now on planet earth. He’s the God of hope, and Jesus is the Prince of peace. We have all we need for life and godliness, but we must do the work of finding out what’s ours in Christ and our authority through Him. As our confidence in the Lord grows, so does our joy and peace. As we trust in Him, we will overflow with hope, because we know He’s Always got our backs no matter how bad things look.

The norm in this world is every man for himself, that selfish mentality we all grew up in from childhood. The sin nature dominated our life driving us further away from God. It has become uncommon for people to show acts of love, and caring gestures. By this everyone will know that we are the Lord’s disciples, showing love to one another. As Christians our nature has been changed. We have been reborn with a heart of flesh, not a stony heart of stubbornness held in bondage to sin. We are love children born of a love God. The only issue is we still think the way we did before our conversion. The renewing of our minds is vitally important to know what happened to us at the point of being saved. We still have the propensity to mess up but are no longer stuck in the unbreakable habit of wrong doings. What makes us different from a sinner is first of all our destination is the opposite of an unsaved person. They die and go to hell, we die and go to heaven with the Lord. While still here on planet earth, we must show love towards each other. It is the only major difference between us and the world. It doesn’t just happen for us, we must invoke our wills to stay in step with love’s way. Sacrifice on our part is a part of showing that agape love to others. If we can give up responding to an offense against us especially because of our faith, then we’re on the right track.

Using the name of Jesus with faith in the name, brings power to the scene of our difficulties to help us through them. All we do and say should be with respect to the Lord Jesus Christ. Taking captive every word that would come out of our mouths, and bringing them into submission to the word of God. Thinking before we release our thoughts with negative words. The things we do in life whether in thought, purpose, or deed, we want to be recognized as God’s ambassadors of excellence. The Bible speaks of not letting our good be evil spoken of. We must be careful of the appearance our good deed may present. Doing things in decency and in order is the Lord’s way to proceed. Our dependency on Christ is necessary and desired by God. For us to be all we can be, we must allow the leaning of our entire personality to be on Him. Learning of how Jesus dealt with people when He walked the earth. How He treated different situations and circumstances. Keeping Jesus in our thoughts and actions daily is the goal. For those who are sons of God are truly led by the Spirit of God (Romans 7:14). We can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengthens us, and we have the mind of Christ, to be exercised wherever we go, and in whatever we do.

Jesus says He will make Himself real to us, and that He will reveal, manifest Himself before us. Before that can happen there are some prerequisites that must be followed. It’s one thing to know of the commandments of God, but another to practice them in everyday life. With the moral conflicts and agitating spirits constantly at work against us, there’s a good fight to fight everyday. Things are geared in this world to be mostly against God’s way of living. So we fight the good fight of faith, believing in spite of the opposition. Keeping the commandments takes practice, no one’s perfect and expect to mess up from time to time. We demonstrate our love for God through obedience to His word. Slow obedience is disobedience. Keep in step with the Lord’s assignments given to you. Many times revelation knowledge will come through obedience to His plan for our lives. Our God given purpose is only executed successfully, and fully because of that still small voice of God in our inner man. By yielding to that voice of God in real time, it is the most valuable asset a christian can have in their arsenal against spiritual warfare. It is also the highest expression of our love for God, because He’s able to deal with us as with the saints of old that heard God’s voice and promptly obeyed it. Show your love, obey Him now!

“O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker [in reverent praise and supplication].” Physical posture is as important as our spiritual posture before the Lord. We are naturally on the go most of the time. To connect with our spiritual side, busyness must be put at bay. Getting quiet, and settling down is necessary before worshipping God in that very Holy place. I like making sure my surroundings are clean, and orderly before I spend time with the Lord. We enter His gates with thanksgiving in our hearts, and into His courts with praise. The Holy of holies is only entered into after our flesh, our bodies have been totally calmed down to a relaxed position. We give God high praises by singing along with music, or simply declaring His great works aloud. There will be times when we must persevere in praise and worship making ourselves do what’s necessary even though we don’t feel like it. The spirit is always willing, but the unredeemed flesh we carry around (our bodies), isn’t. We physically bow down in reference to the Lord because It’s a sign of submission to Him. We may bow down spiritually speaking, in our hearts because you can’t physically get on your knees. It’s about humbling ourselves before God, spirit, soul, body, and mind. He requires all of our make-up to be able to grace us with His Devine help for victorious living.

We are one in Christ Jesus with the Lord God Almighty. As we abide in Him and He in us, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Our heartbeats can become one with the Master in thought purpose and action. We live, move, and have our being in Him. Because of the life of Jesus in His born again believers, (us) we can do all things through Him who strengthens us. So anyone who confesses, acknowledges, and owns, that Jesus is the Son of God abides in Him, and we share the same physical body. Our bodies have become the temple of the living God (1Corinthians 6:19-20). We are the body of Christ collectively (the church), and are also called the bride of Christ. He’s the head and we are the body, the moving parts still here on earth carrying out the Father’s commands. Anyone acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God shall be saved. Saved from eternal punishment in hell alongside the accuser of the brethren, Satan, who will eventually wind up there with his followers. As the Lord’s living word abides in us we become empowered to do mighty exploits for God. Knowing His word keeps us on the straight and narrow of avoiding unnecessary troubles. Since He was worthy to become our living sacrifice, we should be faithful to carry our daily cross and spread the gospel.