Day 10: Glorify God

Ephesians 1:3
3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.

Here in Ephesians Paul is explaining to the church at Ephesus just how blessed they are because of their ability to commune with God the Father, through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross.

We were all once sinners. We were all once in a place that was far from God. Yet, the moment that we call on the name of Jesus, we are immediately yanked from our old life, our old way of thinking, our old habits, and recreated as a new creature. (2 Corinthians 5:17). The funny part about being in the world and living in sin, is that sin feels fun and it feels like you’re doing life right when you’re living in it.

When you come to God, through Christ Jesus, you are not condemned for anything that you have done, (Romans 8:1) but you are convicted through the love of the Father to turn from your ways. You realize through this revelation that you were wrong for living like that. You were wrong for however long it was that you were living away from God, even though it felt so right. The thought even makes you question when you come into God if what you’re doing in those moments is even right.

It makes you question if you really are hearing from God. If you really are making the right decisions. If you really are being a good steward over your finances, because they seem to just not be growing. If you really are living in purity, because you continuously are attacked by lustful thoughts. You begin to lose your confidence on whether you were even saved by the blood of Jesus Christ at all, or if it was just a weird moment that the biscuits and gravy you ate before church were settling inappropriately.

That may have been far fetched, to say the least, but I know that’s how it started for me, and how it manifested for a man in the Bible named Job.

Job had given his life to the Lord. Made good on all of his sacrifices and even honored the Lord with his time in worship to him, yet in a moments notice, he lost everything. He had servant after servant come and deliver news to him that his children had all just died, all of his livestock had been stolen, all of his money had been lost, and so on and so forth. His entire life went down the tubes. Then later on, to make matters worse, He ended up with a horrible skin ailment that caused him to have boils all over his body! It was horrible. He was wondering where God was, what he had done to deserve the treatment that he had received, and why God hadn’t saved all of his assets. For a brief moment in Job’s life while sitting in his mess, he doubted whether he had enough confidence to believe God was going to deliver him from the hell he was living in. He knew God could do it. He believed that He was a waymaker, miracle worker, promise keeper, and a light in the darkness, but Job couldn’t muster up enough confidence within himself to see that God would do all of those things for him too.

His friends took a horrible wack at trying to cheer him up. All they did was try to convince him that there must have been some sort of sin that he committed to cause God to curse him in the manner that He did. I won’t call his friends the devil or anything, but the enemy will come to torment your thoughts while you are going through what seems like a tragic loss. He will come to plague you with thoughts of deceit on your salvation. He will try to plant seeds of traps and deceptive fowls in order to get you to renounce your declaration that you were saved through Christ.

You know what you can do at that moment? Give God all the glory. The enemies plan is to steal all of the worship he can from God. If you play into his devices, and lean into his lies, you are allowing him to do just that. Nope. He can’t have it. You need to give God the glory for your salvation. Give God the glory because you believe that He has given you all spiritual blessings. Give God the glory because you have the power to fight the enemy on any hand.

In the process towards gaining your confidence back, whenever you begin to feel defeated because of the things going on in your life, you can always hold fast to the hope that Jesus Christ won EVERY battle that we will ever fight from here to eternity. That you can have confidence in. You don’t have to be strong enough, perfect enough, rich enough, or even wise enough. The battles that Christ won for you are exponential, all you must do is remember how to keep your confidence in HIM, and not in yourself, so he may get all of the glory.

Read these scriptures and use them as an anchor for your day today.
Decree these declarations to yourself so that you may speak life into your spirit.

1 Corinthians 2: 16
“I decree and declare that Satan is not smarter than me because I have the mind of christ.”

Ephesians 1:18
“I decree and declare that I have a confident hope because of my salvation through Jesus Christ.”

Psalm 93:1
“I decree and declare that the Lord, my God, is clothed in splendor and majesty.”

Exodus 15:11
“I decree and declare that there is none like you Lord. You are majestic in holiness and righteousness. Lord you are awesome.”

Isaiah 60: 2
“I decree and declare that the glory of the Lord will rise upon me today and I will show His good deeds in the earth.”

1 Chronicles 16:24
“I decree and declare that I will constantly be telling of God’s glory among the nations today. His wonderful deeds shall continually be in my mouth.”