Arise! Be Healed!

Can you remember when you first gave your heart to Jesus?  How everything just had a different look to you?  Tonight I was reminded of that....

It was as if I was seeing things through someone else's eyes.  The whole world seemed brighter.  I remember when I looked at the mountains....the trees and flowers....thinking how beautiful they were.  Hearing birds singing and just being captured by the sound!  Never before in my life do I remember thinking things like that.  I also remember how I just couldn't seem to get enough of reading the Bible and looking things up.  And questions....WOW....did I have questions!  It's been six years now and somewhere along the line I stopped looking at things with those new eyes.  I stopped hearing things with that same perception. Eventually I stopped feeling....experiencing....things with the same overwhelming sense of awe that I did. 

Tonight I heard a sermon about death.  The death of me....you....because of circumstances in life.  Because of loss of something in your life.  It could be because you really did experience loss through death....maybe loss because of bad health....loss of job....loss of income....whatever the loss....it has set you back.  One thing after another may be happening and you have been down.  Maybe you even thought about giving up on living your life for the Lord.  Well, here's something you may have forgotten....

Who is the master of keeping you down when nothing seems to be going right in life?  Who gives you thoughts of giving up when problems seem to abound....pile up....and keep you thinking when is life going to get easier?  You guessed it....satan himself.  He has come to do nothing good.  His goal is to steal....kill....and destroy all of us.  The children of the LORD.  That's right.  Satan wants to destroy your hope....your peace....your dreams....your whole life.  In effect....you!   He wants to keep dragging you down until you are ineffective as a Child of GOD.  He doesn't want you to be able to help yourself, let alone help and encourage anyone else.  The flip side of that is....

The Lord has come that we might have a life overflowing with good things! John 10:10 says it this way....

"The thief does not come except to steel, and to kill, and to destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."

The Lord wants us to experience life His way all the time.  He wants to give us new life.  Satan....the thief....says, "Come on down here with me.  Live even lower....in the pit of defeat....than the valley that you are finding yourself in."  But, Jesus says, "Arise!  Be healed!"  He doesn't want us in that valley living a defeated life!  He wants to take us to the mountain top with Him to live in victory!  Will we live on the mountain top all the time....No.  But we can certainly stay out of the devils pit of defeat!  We have to decide which voice we are going to listen to.  The voice of satan....deception and defeat.  Or the voice of our Savior.  Filled with....

Love....hope....peace....forgiveness....refreshing....grace....abundance....overwhelming times of full and complete happiness!  

It's a daily choice we all have to make for ourselves.  Which will you choose?