Annagail Lynes' Blog

2006/10/29

As Our Souls Prosper...

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@ 11:16 AM (21 months, 4 days ago)


Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. - Isaiah 43:19 (KJV)

God is doing a new thing throughout the earth. And He wants to do a new thing in our lives too. He wants to take all those places that have been barren. All those places that haven’t produced much fruit. All those places where we have been broken and abused. He wants to flood those areas with restoration, with healing. He wants to heal us.

God tells us in Isaiah 61:1, "The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;"

He wants to heal us. Not in heaven. Not in the someday. Not in the sweet by and by but here on Earth, in the land of the living.

"Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven," (Matthew 6:10).

As it is in heaven. If there is no sickness in heaven, there shouldn’t be any here on earth. If there is healing in heaven, there should be healing here on earth.

It is always God’s will to heal.

David wrote in Psalm 103:2-3, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases;"

Healeth all. Not some. All. It is not God who is preventing us from being healed. It is our religious, limited beliefs that keep us brokenhearted and keep us bound to sickness and disease.

If we want God to do a new thing in our lives, we are going to have to challenge what we belief in areas, such as healing, finances and prosperity. Is what we believe what the Word of God says? Or is it just what we’ve heard the pastors teach growing up?

We have to dust off our Bibles. We have to dig through the Scriptures. We need to get a clear picture of what God wants for our lives.

God says in III John 2, "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth."

In order for us to be in health and wealth, our souls must prosper. The amount of wealth and health in our lives directly correlates to how much our souls are prospering.

The soul is our mind, will and emotions. How much are we prospering in our minds? In our wills? In our emotions? Are these things controlling us? Or are we controlling them?

We have to bring them under our control otherwise we allow the devil to play in the playground of our minds. We permit him to feed us lies, such as "You are a failure" and "God doesn’t love you." Then he jumps on our emotions and makes us feel insecure and worthless. And finally he manipulates our will, listing all the injustices that have been done to us.

God wants to heal what is broken in our lives, the damage that the devil has done to us. But we have to let Him.

We have to ask Him to heal us, to help us prosper in our souls. When we do, God comes in and does a new thing in our lives, just like He promised in Isaiah 43:19! He not only heals us, but He restores to us what the devil has stolen.

Remember what He promised in Joel 2:25: "And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you."

He will restore to us what has been stolen! He doesn’t just heal. He restores. Isn’t that wonderful?


About The Author:  Annagail Lynes, an ordained minister, is an independent publisher of three Christian publications and has written countless articles and ebooks on topics such as feeling rejected, struggling with addictions, dealing with bullies, fear, being mad at God, how to pick a good mate and many more.  Her articles have been published in many online and offline publications, including Christian Home and School, You!, Writer's Digest, Teens For Jesus

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2006/10/25

Calling All Water-Walkers...

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@ 10:52 AM (21 months, 8 days ago)

How many times has God impressed you to do something, and you didn't do it?  How many times has He told you to talk to a person about Him or lay hands on someone, and you let the opportunity slip through your fingers?  How many times has He told you to give something to a certain individual, and you kept it?

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2006/10/24

From Barrenness To Brokenness

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@ 11:32 AM (21 months, 9 days ago)


Call up on the Lord.  Cry out to God.  Seek Him with all your heart. What do these terms mean?

They simply mean to pour your heart out before God.  They mean to be honest with Him and to speak what's in your heart.  Good or bad.  You don't have to protect God from what you are feeling.  He is not delicate.  He can take it!  Your anger.  Your fears.  Your complaints.  He can handle it all.

When we pour out our hearts, when we come to the end of ourselves and what we can do about the situation, that God can speak to us.  It is in that time when we are empty, and we have no more to give, no more to complain about and are in a state of brokenness that God has an opportunity to swoop in and heal the broken areas of our lives.

Remember Hannah?  She couldn't have any children for the man that she loved.  He loved her in spite of her barrenness.

Hannah wanted a child.  She had probably dreamed of being a mother since she was a little girl.  She probably felt it was her duty to her husband to carry on his name and lineage.

Hannah became desperate.  So desperate that she went to the temple and  poured her heart out before God.  She prayed to Him so fervently that the priest on duty believed she was drunk.

God heard her prayer, and when she had relations with her husband, she conceived a son. 

Don't miss this part.  Not only did Hannah cry out to the Lord.  Not only did she promise to give God her firstborn son, she acted on what she believed.  She believed God heard her.  She lay with her husband because she believed God would answer her prayer. 

She had to come to the end of herself.  Then she had to put action behind her faith.  If she didn't, God wouldn't have had anything to work with.  He wouldn't have been able to give her the miracle she was seeking.

Pour out your heart to God.  Believe He hears you.  Act on your faith.

When you start a miracle in the natural through these few steps, God will meet you and finish it.  You + God = Your Miracle.


About The Author:  Annagail Lynes, an ordained minister, is an independent publisher of three Christian publications and has written countless articles and ebooks on topics such as feeling rejected, struggling with addictions, dealing with bullies, fear, being mad at God, how to pick a good mate and many more.  Her articles have been published in many online and offline publications, including Christian Home and School, You!, Writer's Digest, Teens For Jesus

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2006/10/22

How To Win At Waiting

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@ 12:52 PM (21 months, 11 days ago)

Waiting on God. How scary is that? And are we really waiting on God? Or is God waiting on us? Is it really a matter of God's timing? Or are we blocking our own progress by not doing what God told us to do in the first place?

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2006/10/15

Who's Driving Your Life?

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@ 01:49 PM (21 months, 18 days ago)


In the past week, God has been talking to me about trust, about relinquishing control of my life to Him.  He told me that when I try to be in control of every detail of my existence, I tie His hands from working in my circumstances.

Control comes from fear.  Fear that something will go wrong.  Fear is having more faith in bad things happening in your life than good.

For a long time, I believed if I just did enough that everything would be okay.  If I prayed hard enough and confessed enough, my grandmother wouldn't die. 

If I forgot my prayers one night and my cousin died, I didn’t see that as a coincidence.  Instead I blamed myself because I should have remembered to pray. 

I set up certain routines.  I believed that if I didn't complete those routines in the prescribed manner that something bad would occur.  Can you say obsessive-compulsive?

I took on a lot of false guilt and burdens that were not mine to carry.  I felt as if the weight of the world was on my shoulders, that I was responsible for what happened in my world.

I felt I was being a responsible person by worrying and going through my routines to keep everything and everyone in my world safe like a juggler in the circus.  But I wasn't being responsible.  Instead I was full of pride. 

I played god in my life.  I did all the work and didn’t allow God to help me.  And then, I turned around and accuse God of not doing anything for me.   I became angry with Him because I didn't see Him working in my life.

God never does anything against our will.  As long as my hands are on the wheel of my life, God will patiently wait until I remove them, until I give control over to Him.  If I don't, the car of my life might reach its destination, but the trip will be a lot slower and harder than if I had just let God drive.

I challenge you (and me too!) to lose control, to give God the steering wheel of your life.  With God in control of your life, He will make something extraordinary out of your ordinary, make a miracle out of your mess.  Lose control and let Him.


About The Author:  Annagail Lynes, an ordained minister, is an independent publisher of three Christian publications and has written countless articles and ebooks on topics such as feeling rejected, struggling with addictions, dealing with bullies, fear, being mad at God, how to pick a good mate and many more.  Her articles have been published in many online and offline publications, including Christian Home and School, You!, Writer's Digest, Teens For Jesus

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2006/10/11

Never Give Up!

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@ 11:35 AM (21 months, 22 days ago)
Never give up!  Those are the words that resonate in my spirit this morning.

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2006/10/5

All Things Through Christ

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@ 10:22 AM (21 months, 28 days ago)
Through Christ.  You can do all things only through Christ.  Not in your own strength but in God's strength.  It is only Christ living in you, being in you, that causes you to have the ability to do all things.  

Think about that for a moment, Christ lives in you, if you  have accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Saviour.  Christ came to live inside of you the day, the hour, the moment you surrendered your life to Him.  When you move, He moves because He  lives inside of you.

And it is His strength that gives you strength.  He is like a  power source on the inside of you.  A well of living water  from which you can drink whenever you need strength.  

It is through Him that you can do all things.  But there are some things you shouldn't do because He is living inside of you.  Things that we are all guilty of, such as polluting our bodies, Christ's home, with smoking, excess drinking, etc.  Or lying--fibbing, exaggerating.  Or neglecting the strength and power of God within us.

But with Christ's strength within you, you can accomplish the only thing that really matters--the plan of God for your life.  You can be the person God created you to be.  Any more or less is a step out of God's will.  

It takes Christ's strength combined with yours to accomplish His Will in your life.  All you have to do is be a willing vessel and let God do the rest.

Let Christ do through you what you cannot do through yourself.  That's the definition of grace.  And who can't use a little more of that?

 
 

2006/10/4

Do You Want To Change?

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@ 09:58 AM (21 months, 29 days ago)

Do you want to change?  To really change?  Or are you happy, content, with the status quo?

I am not a status quo person. I want to do whatever is necessary to get me to my destination of where God wants me to be.  

But most of us don't want to endure the process it takes to get to where God has called us to be. Most of us find the stepping stones between Point A and Point B too difficult and too long.  

We would rather sit in our armchair, watching television all night (I am guilty of it too!), watching soap operas and  gossiping about who did what with whom with our friends on the telephone.

We would rather be comfortable at home, letting the clock run out on our lives, than to do anything that might hurt a little, that might be uncomfortable  to further the Kingdom of God.  

Do you think Peter felt comfortable when he walked on the water?  Or when Jesus went to the cross to save us?  Or when David slew Goliath?  No, no and no!  

Being used by God requires us to change little by little until we are like the Father.  It requires us to let go of  some of the things that are hindering us, such as watching too much television, reading too much of the wrong types of material, being critical toward others.   

In exchange, it requires us to replace those bad habits with good ones--reading the Bible, praying, declaring the Word over our lives.  

Change is never comfortable, but it is only when we begin to change that we can live up to our full potential for Christ.  

I ask you again: do you want to change?  If you do, ask God to help you.   In your own strength, you can do nothing, but when you team up with God and His  Strength, nothing becomes impossible to you.  Even change.  Hallelujah!


2006/10/3

What Are You Meditating On?

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@ 11:04 AM (22 months, 6 hours ago)


“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” - Hebrews 1:1 (NIV). 

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