Real-life God Gold

God Gold of the Day

“Many people say, “Who will show us better times?” Let your face smile on us, Lord. You have given me greater joy than those who have abundant harvests of grain and new wine. In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, O Lord, will keep me safe.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭4:6-8‬ ‭

Saw this awesome picture God created when I was on the road today. His face literally shining on us! Stinkin crazy!

Think on this today:

The One who makes that picture happen, is the One who loves us, cares for us, fights for us, and fulfills our every need.

I could write all day about how awesome, capable and powerful God is but just think on that and live in the peace, comfort and confidence that comes in knowing God, having full access to God, and having this same God who created that, love you!

Shortest Gold ever because what else can be said about Him that He isn’t already showing us!?!?!!!

I love you but God loves you way more!!! Happy Friyay everyone!

Power Source 2

God Gold of the Day

“20 My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 

21I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.”

– Galatians 2:20-21

Hope everybody had a super cool Tuesday! Going right off of yesterday’s God Gold, this lesson of God being our ONLY source of power for us to live this life has been huge for me! Not because I’ve learned it and lived it because it’s been real daggum hard to humble myself enough to put me to the side long enough to receive this truth in the fullest. I pray this power source lesson sequel can be a big blessing to you and hey, if you’re in a power struggle between using what you got and stepping aside to live in what God has, I’m right there with ya! But it’s alright! God is teaching us, growing us and molding us to be better by doing less and trusting Him more!

It’s been a constant battle for me in this life following Christ, after years of playing sports and living in this world, my mindset is so wrapped around the “I just have to work harder to overcome, please God and be better. It’s on me and the work I put in.” It’s what we can so easily lean on since we’ve attacked life and our problems this way for so long and the world around us tells us these lies to attack life in this way. But it’s just not true at all. The past few days, I’ve realized more than ever that to come to God as the source of my power, I must first remember the Gospel. The truth about my desperate need for Him in all areas of life. Without need for God and His power in our lives, then we usually don’t ask for help right? Because we’ve got this under control, right??? NOOOO!!!!!

The Gospel speaks the life-giving and life-changing truth so clearly to us, the whole purpose for Jesus sacrificing Himself on the cross for us was the fact that we were so wrapped up in sin and death, there’s nothing we could do to change that no matter how hard we work. Jesus saved us and by faith, He gives us the opportunity to live as one with Him, living in His power, drawing our strength from Jesus Christ, the perfect and righteous Son of God!!! So what’s the point of trying so hard to be strong and courageous. to be better? With our faith and dependence set on Christ and Christ alone, He gives us everything we need to live strong and courageous lives!!!!

It’s this awesome view of the truth that in this relationship with Christ, “My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

You see that? Your old self, the one that used to have to work and “do enough” to gain acceptance and worth in this world. your old self is dead dude. Seriously, coming to faith in Christ means you have died to your former life and ways of living and now you live with Christ in you!!! Yeah you heard that right!!! The I mentality, “I can do this, I just need to work harder, do more.” Christ loved you so much that He died for you because it’s the only way for us to ever experience life in the fullest and have access to God and His awesome power. We can try all we want but the “I” will never be enough! That’s the Good News, you’re not enough but you don’t have to be because Christ was perfect, Christ made the sacrifice died the death so we could die to our old life of slavery of weakness. Then Christ rose from the grave so we can rise into new life with Him, full and real LIFE!!! The “I” is washed away and now you live by faith in Christ who is one with you! How awesome is that?!?!?

I read verse 21 here and couldn’t help but think of this scene from Christmas vacation. Clark Griswold spends all day putting up Christmas lights, hitting every spot of the house, working like a wild man to make his house as beautiful and awesome as possible for his family to enjoy. He does all this work, everything is just perfect, then he goes to plug in the lights and what?!?! No power!!!

Watching Him run around clueless and so upset that after all that work he did it still wasn’t enough reminded me of me, or us really. We do all this work, dedicate ourselves to be better, to make our lights shine brighter than anything the world has ever seen so others can see God’s light shining through us. But just like Clark, we so often do all this work with no result. Just lights with no power.

In verse 21, it states clearly how completely wrong this legalistic, “do enough” mentality, leaning on the power we have zero of. It’s a waste of time. it’s like saying all this God did for us to send His Son to die on the cross for us, to give us new life, new strength and a new source of power is meaningless. The more we run off our power and trust in what we got, we are saying that the Gospel wasn’t enough, what Jesus did wasn’t enough. We forget so easily that without Christ, we have no power, we can do nothing. We can set the lights up all day but we can’t make them shine. Even though we are undeserving God made a way to have access to Him when there way no other way. He gives us complete access to His power to lean on and trust in because He knows we are lacking. If we could obey God, please Him by what we can do then what’s the point of Christ doing what He did? Zero.

So we can see that there is nothing, I mean NOTHING that we can do, but that’s okay. The Good News is even though we are undeserving of what Christ has done for us, although we are undeserving of having access to God’s power, He has given His Son up so that we can put our helpless striving behind and go directly to the source of the power. God’s awesome grace allows us to experience life in ways we could never do alone, it’s His power!!!

When Clark was out there freaking out because he couldn’t get the house to light up, have you been there? Feels like no matter how hard you try you just can’t get your lights to shine? Well preach the Gospel to yourself, stop striving and working, go straight to the source of your power, which is God and God alone!!! Then grab the extension chords of your life, the struggles, the problems you can’t seem to get past and go to the source. Bringing life’s hard times together with God as the source of your power, SHAZZAM!!!! LITTT!!!!!!! Preach the Gospel to yourself and go to the source!!!! Let’s light the world up guys!!! He’s given us plenty to do it!!!!!

 

Power Source

God Gold of the Day

“Then Moses summoned Joshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, “Be strong and courageous, for you shall go with this people into the land that the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall put them in possession of it. It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” –Deuteronomy 31:7-8

The gold today is an old gold that I had sent out awhile back! It’s from the time that these messages were being sent out just through text messages so if you see some “lol’s” then that’s why. It blows my mind how God uses lessons we learned with Him in the past to teach us today! Blows my mind too that these messages are being shared on such a bigger platform to many more people, proves so true that no matter how much things feel like we’ve “made it.” There is still so much room to learn and be taught by God through His Word because we never truly arrive or “make it” in this life, we just continue to grow and learn each day with God in this process of being made more like Christ. Pretty humbling for the reminder that these messages, the God Gold or anything I do in life isn’t because of me but it’s all God!!!!! I’ll let you read what 22 year old Jordan has to say before I mention anything else.

“I’ve always done this thing where I see verses like this, I see “be strong and courageous”, then I get all hype cause as the manly man I am I got that covered right? Nah not so much lol. I see that then try to attack life and all the struggles that come with it and for some reason it doesn’t always work. I wonder why it doesn’t and it’s really pretty simple. “I” try to be strong and courageous without HIM! That’s where verse 8 comes in, Moses didn’t just tell Joshua to be strong and courageous, pat him on the back and ride off into the sunset. He made sure Joshua knew where and who the source of his spiritual strength comes from. I notice I live out my life and try to overcome things majority of the time just off verse 7. I forget to keep reading, or reminding myself that my strength and courage come from the Lord. So when living life with both these verses in mind, things change, we overcome, we are capable of so much more! It’s super easy to draw off our own strength but what’s the point? We have a God that goes before us, that never leaves or forsakes us, a God of deliverance, a God that makes being strong and courageous so much easier than we can on our own! Idk bout you guys but my verse 7 only lifestyle usually doesn’t work out too well so let’s be strong, be courageous, and know that everything we have comes from a much higher power, a God that changes lives.”

Pretty awesome seeing not just verse 7, what sounds cool to us but seeing the verses together in the fullness of what God is saying to us. Like I said, I wrote that when I was 22 and I’m 24 now, geez I’m getting old. It’s crazy, learning this truth then doesn’t mean that I’ve lived strong and courageous, knowing my power comes from God not me for the last two years. I still seriously struggle with depending on God, letting go of what I have (which is nothing) and giving every piece of myself and life to God, depending on His strength over my own or anything of this world. I thank God for teaching me through some failures lately that no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I work and give my best effort to be better or overcome tough situations, the prime time truth here is that I CAN’T!!!! The source of our power to be strong and courageous or do anything in life comes from God and God alone!!!

It’s so awesome to see how Moses doesn’t just tell Joshua to go be strong and courageous but then he lays the out the source of the power to live this strong and courageous life. Moses points to God, the source of their power then and the same God who is the source of our power now. God is showing us that He wouldn’t tell us to do something, be strong and courageous without also showing us that He has already given us everything we need and equipped us to do so by giving us a relationship with Him where at anytime we have access to draw from His power!

It’s this powerful truth right here, “ It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” You may say, well God says be strong and courageous but doesn’t show us how, He just shows us some stuff about Him, EXACTLY! To live strong and courageous lives in whatever tough circumstances we may face, the how comes through WHO and the WHO is God! It’s not something we do like, “Try this 10-step plan to be courageous and strong immediately today.” It’s not anything about us or what we do, this whole life is about God and what He can do, which is literally anything!!! Once we see these awesome promises about God, Who He is, and how He works before us, We realize we don’t need to keep trying with what we got and failing, living weak, insecure, fearful lives. We can put ourselves aside and place total dependence on God, move our faith from us and all these things, and place it in the God who is with us, who will never leave us but go before us, fighting our battles before we even know there’s a battle, who will never fail us but always so faithfully be there to supply our every need, allowing us to draw from His power, the source of power that brings change to lives. Changes the weak to strong, the fearful to courageous! Why would we ever look for power in other sources? The source of our power comes from the God who is right there with us ready to supply!

It’s not in “being” strong and courageous, it’s looking to the source of our power, God, the only One who can give us the power to live strong and courageous lives! Instead of ‘being” something you can’t be alone, BELIEVE, have faith in who God is and the power you have access to, He changes everything!