A Christian Cowboy Perspective - Thoughts For Today:
By Carlos C. Brown
Good Morning my Peeps, how are you and yours doing this morning, good I hope? Are you having a good week so far, I sure hope so? Have a good and very Blessed Tuesday today and rest of the week too! - May God Bless You and Yours In 2019 and Beyond!!! And AMEN goes right here….
#SalvationIsOnlyThruJesusChrist
“This is the day that the Lord has made! I will rejoice and be glad in it!”
***Remember, if you haven’t purchased it already, my newly published book “The Third Eye Perspective” book of Devotionals is available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and Xulon Press in Paperback, Hardback, also on EBook. and also in the December 2018 edition of the Christian Book Buyers Guide Catalog on page #7! You can also follow me on Twitter (CCBrown67) and Instagram (Doubletuff99) for additional inspirational Devotionals! Thank you!
A Christian Cowboy Perspective:
Thoughts For Today – “Living On A Prayer…”
By a show of virtual hands, how many of you when you read the subject line immediately had the lyrics to the great Bon Jovi rock group hit song “Livin On A Prayer” pop into your head? Some of ya’ll I bet even broke out and sang a few verses of the song didn’t you? I might be dating myself in making this next statement, but I used to love that song for some reason LOL! Now at first I wasn’t sure where God wanted me to go with this one. But in true Godly fashion, He slowly but surely started to unfold this message in my heart. There are so many people right now who are just one disaster away from totally throwing in the towel and giving up on life itself. They have had one blow after the other to their moral and maybe even their Spiritual foundation, and it has taken a huge toll on them. Nothing they have tried has rendered them any relief from the storm that is raging in their life right now, and the only hope they have is for God to intervene and answer their Prayers. Being that God doesn’t always work on our timetable, that can appear or come across at times as if He doesn’t care, or is “too busy” to recognize what’s going on in our lives. And that is exactly what the enemy wants us to think. We are playing right into his hands when we start to think like that. It is with this train of thought, or line of thinking, that it was placed on MY heart this morning to talk about, “Living On A Prayer.” And AMEN goes right here! This subject title came to me this past Sunday when I was sitting in Church service at New Life Church and the guest visiting pastor (Randy Bezet brother of NLC founder Pastor Rick Bezet- Conway campus) who was visiting from Florida and was preaching on “The Purpose of Pain.” Why that particular subject title popped into my head I have no idea. It seems totally random being that Pastor Bezet’s message didn’t seem to correlate with this one, but I jotted it down anyways because as I have said many times before, “I never know where or when I will be given a subject title for my next devotional message. But then, just like that a light bulb went off in my mind and this thought popped into my head…. “So many people who are in pain from things that they have no control over or see no immediate end to their pain, more times than not will choose Prayer as a last resort or line of defense against the pain causing element.” Technically, it should be the other way around, that we go straight to the Lord God in Heaven through our Savior Jesus Christ on the FRONT END to help us deal with whatever it is causing us pain. To many of us feel we can handle it all by ourselves and I have to think that at least for myself, it is because I don’t think God will answer my Prayers quickly enough, and or exactly how I asked Him to answer them. I know I’m not the only one, can I get an AMEN???
It is a proven fact that some people view the severity of their problems way differently than other people might and especially even God. What we consider to be a major life or death, and or even just a “peace of mind” threatening problem, someone else might think we are overreacting. And God would more than likely even be disappointed that we were stressing over something of that nature. A good prime example of this would be the Israelites, you know “God’s Chosen people?” In the book of Numbers after they had been freed from the enslavement of Pharaoh and escaped his Egyptian army as they pursued them into the Red Sea before being consumed by the waters when they receded, they completely forgot God’s promise that He would provide for them, because their food was gone and they were hungry, and became angry at Moses. I don’t think you would argue with me that while they were in the wilderness waiting on the 12 spies to return from the city of Canaan that they at that moment were “Living On A Prayer” don’t you think? Their perception of how bad their situation got even worse when the twelve spies returned with only two of them having confidence that they could overtake the then current inhabitants of their promised land. To give you an idea of just how our “perception” of how bad our problem is can cause us even more pain, their unwillingness to believe God’s promise to them, resulted in them being cursed to wander around in the wilderness for 40 long years. That’s 40 more years of enslavement if you ask me, because they couldn’t go anywhere until that curse that was placed over them had passed. Another example of how they made it even worse on themselves by just their perception, some of them felt it might be better to go BACK to Egypt and back into slavery, at least then they would at least know what to expect. That is a pretty powerful perception deficit if you ask me. However, that is just how bad viewing the unknown BEFORE us can be TO us, we would rather suffer even worse consequences by going back to what we are comfortable with, than strike out on Faith that God is going to lead us and guide us right where we need to be and everything be just fine during the course of the process being played out. And AMEN goes right here too!
Another Biblical example that comes to mind of someone during those times who was “Living On A Prayer,” would be the prodigals son (read Luke 15: 11-32 verses). If you are not familiar with the story, there was a wealthy businessman that had two sons. The younger one decided one day that he wanted to see the world. Without hesitation one day, he asked his father for that which would falleth unto him per his inheritance. His father agree, and gave him his share of his wealth and off into the world his son went. The Bible states that it wasn’t long until he had squandered (partied until his resources had run dry) all of his inheritance and was left broke and destitute. His situation got so bad, that he took a job feeding swine (aka pigs or hogs) for someone. At one point, he was so hungry that he even considered eating the very same “slop” as it is called, that the swine were eating. If this doesn’t qualify as a “Living On A Prayer” moment, then I don’t know what would. As the story would go, at that very moment the young man picked himself up and dusted himself off and decided to go back to his father’s house and ask for forgiveness and ask to work as one of his father’s servants. His logic was, that even his father’s servants were treated better than the conditions that he was in currently. His father saw him coming down the road from a distance and immediately celebrated his son’s return and acted as though he never left, treating him like royalty, new robes, and shoes for his feet, and his father ordered his servants to kill the fattest calf for the celebration. There are many other instances of “Living On A Prayer” that I could mention, the woman with the issue of blood for twelve long years (Luke 8:43-48), the blind man named Bartimaeus (John 9), the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4: 1-42 verses), the man possessed by the Legion of demons (read Mark 5: 1-20 verses). Each example would qualify as a “Living On A Prayer” type of situation. None of these people had any hope until they met Jesus Christ. Pause……this is a good place to make a powerful statement that I feel is very relevant right now; Those of you who are in a “Living On A Prayer” situation right now, if you would just be willing to take a chance and give ALL your cares to the Lord Jesus Christ, just like all of the people mentioned above who had an encounter with Him, you won’t, you can’t, it is not possible, to leave that meeting the same as you were before! You will be changed (for the good) just like all of the people above were! However, the key is to be willing to totally and completely unload EVERYTHING that is causing you to be in that type of situation unto Him and leave it with Him for good. You can’t give it to Him and then continue to stress and worry yourself about it. That is just like taking it back from Him. Once you give your issues and cares to Jesus Christ and LEAVE THEM WITH HIM, that is a HUGE sign of Faith. But when you try to take them back by continuing to worry, or even trying to resolve them yourself, that is a show of NO Faith and God will let you deal with them if that is what you choose to do. You have to give them to Him and walk away from them as if He has already handled them for you! And AMEN goes right here! Can I leave you with a question to ponder today if I may?
“Do you want your “Living On A Prayer” situation(s) to be resolved without worry or stress? I am assuming the answer is a resounding YES? If so, then are you willing to give it ALL to Jesus Christ to resolve it/them for you? That is the only way if you know you have tried everything else!
Let the Christian folks say…AMEN!
“Today, choose to “Ride or Die” with Jesus Christ 110%! Afterall, isn’t that EXACTLY what HE did for US on the Cross?”
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