Tag: Jesus

Barefoot Devotions

Blooming In Off Seasons

Hannah B.

This winter season has been unusual to say the least.  I have heard stories of flowers blooming this month because of the much warmer temperatures that are not expected in a cold January.   It’s supposed to be snowing, frigid cold, and signs of plant life are supposed to be anything but blooming.  Expectations for winter seasons are already set for us.  When things happen out of season, we tend to get confused, scratch our head, and ask, “why?” We often get stuck on thinking it’s not supposed to be this way.

Perhaps there is a lesson we can learn from the blooming flower in the off season.  Naturally, we think the flowers are confused because this is happening against the season.  The flowers did not question the season they were in, but they bloomed as they were created to.  They know the conditions needed to produce blooms and they spring forth into action.

Like the flower blooming in the off season, we may find ourselves in seasons we do not understand but we must find a way to spring forth into action.

The Word of Truth is needed in a believer’s life to produce fruitfulness, steadfastness, and new life.   When we are in relationship with God by engaging in His word, prayer, fasting, and worship we are then in right balance with the creator.  When the word is implanted in us, it is deeply woven in every part of us.   We won’t be able to stop the growth and we will want to live a life pure and undefiled.  This kind of life leads us to be doers and hearers of The Word as James instructs Christians to be. 

James teaches us that every believer will experience trials in life, but trials are a blessing.  They are opportunities for growth and to see the Father of Lights who created the light that rule the days and seasons.  His nature is unchanging, and His promises are secure.  Through creation, we can see exactly how faithful and unchanging God is.   Therefore, it is so important as believers to be deeply rooted in Christ so that when these off seasons do come, we will not be swayed but we will spring into action as we were created to.  Off seasons are opportunities to truly learn where our faith stands when resources have dried up, time is against us, and there isn’t any light at the end of the tunnel.   These seasons are where we meet opposition, lack, frustration, and maybe even wonder if we had faith at all?

But we were created for this.

It’s the place where we find out who we truly are, what our character is made of, and the condition of our heart.  In this place, we see God, place our trust in Him, and surrender. 

We must find a way to stay focused on God and our relationship with Him in every season of our journey so that when these off seasons do come, we will not find ourselves stuck or wavering.

 God is at work in all of our seasons, spiritual growth is a process and growth happens most in the seasons that seem out of balance. 

He is there and we can trust that He has a great purpose.

Qualities Needed In Off Seasons

Be swift to hear

Slow to speak

Slow to wrath

Be a doer of The Word

Read James 1 here:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+1&version=NIV

With all of my love and encouragement,

Hannah B.

Barefoot Devotions

What’s Brewing In Your Heart? Lesson Seven | Envy

Hannah B.

What is envy and how does it affect your life?

Definition of Envy:
1: painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another joined with a desire to possess the same advantage
2: an object of envious notice or feeling

Similar Words: envious, grudge, begrudge, jealous

Examples of Envy:
• Having a want for a job, house, car, or other processions that someone else has
• Being envious of someone else’s life in general
• Be envious of someone else’s spouse or significant other
• Feeling discontent with what you have and desiring a different life, job, or materials
• Wanting something that you do not have access to or resources for

What The Bible Says About The Sin of Envy:

Proverbs 14:30

A tranquil heart gives life to the flesh, but envy makes the bones rot.

James 3:14-15
But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

James 3:16
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.

James 4:2-3
You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

1 Corinthians 3:3
For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

1 John 2:16
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world.

James 1:14
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Proverbs 4:23
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.

Take Away

1 John 2:15:17 tells us to not love anything in the world and that if anyone loves the world then the love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life comes not from the Father but from the world. Just like Eve lusted after the fruit on the tree God told her not to touch, this problem continues for us today. It’s so easy of us to lust after the next meal that we will temporarily enjoy, the new shiny car, iPhone, and materials that twinkle to our eyes. Envy begins with a desire for something we do not have, and it is so important that we be aware of our surroundings so that when our eyes notice these things, we can quickly squash these desires. If we let these desires take root, the consequences can be catastrophic! Each day we must be aware of what is happening around us and be on guard so that we can be vigilant about the things of this world we are seeing. Seek God daily and walk in the Spirit as you overcome these lustful desires. God is faithful to provide for us daily. When we start thanking Him for the things we have in life – our health, family, a place over our head, a bed, and all the things that we take for granted something in our heart begins to change and we see things in light of who God is and what He has done for us.

Heavenly Father,
I confess the sins of envy in my heart and I pray that you will cleanse me from my sinful desires, wants, and pride. I invite you into my heart to invade my life and free me from these desires. It’s my heart to serve you wholly and fully. Thank you for what the life you have given me and teach me to serve you with what you trusted me with. Teach me to walk in the spirit and not by the flesh.
Jesus’ mighty name I pray, Amen!

Questions to Ponder and Life Application Thoughts:

  1. In what areas of your life are you currently envious after? Confess these to God, repent, and surrender this to Him.
  2. Acknowledge any area in your life that you may abhor any discontentment and diligently make a mindful decision to turn from this daily.
  3. Ask God if there is any area in your life that you need to fully surrender to Him.
  4. Ask God to teach you to walk in the Spirit so that you can overcome the flesh by His strength.
Barefoot Devotions

What’s Brewing In Your Heart? Lesson One | Pride

Hannah B.

What Is pride and how does it affect your life?

Definition of Pride in the bible:

An inordinate self-esteem; an unreasonable feeling of superiority as to one’s talents, beauty, wealth, rank, and so forth; disdainful behavior or treatment; insolence or arrogance of demeanor; haughty bearing.

Other words for pride: Vanity, conceited, narcissism, self-importance, swell-headedness, self-exaltation, egotistical.

Examples of Pride:

• Looking down on people that are less fortunate than you. Maybe they made bad decisions in life or different decisions than you made.

• Co-worker gets promoted but you feel like you are a harder worker and you deserve it more than they do.

• Putting all your hope in your wealth. Relying on money and stature to make it in this world, therefore you hold onto it and refuse to give to those in need for fear of losing it.

• Overworking and neglecting everything else because making more money is more important to you.

• Refusing to recognize your sin for what it is because you are comfortable and would rather make excuses for it and question God on why you can’t do it.

• Thinking you know better than God and deserve more than he has given you. You get angry with God when you don’t get what you think you deserve.

• Refusing to hear wisdom because you think you already know it all and know more than someone else. You put yourself up on a pedestal.

• Refusing to own up to sin because if others can get away with it then I should too.

• Sinning because you deserve it and are willing to get it anyway you can even if that means breaking morals or laws.

What can pride lead to?
• Separation from God.
• Distrust from people – Death, Fights.
• A harsher punishment.

Bible verses regarding pride to ponder and study:
Proverbs 11:2 – When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

Proverbs 8:13 – To Fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.

Romans 12:16 – Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

2 Corinthians 10:17-18 – But, Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. 18 For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

Ezekiel 28:17 – Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth; I made a spectacle of you before kings.

Takeaway:

Humility is the opposite of pride. When we are humble, people trust us. When we practice humility we earn respect. Nobody wants to be around someone who only thinks of themselves all the time. Operating in pride causes a life of problems. People will disassociate with you because they think you are selfish so why should they grace you with their presence? Maybe pride caused you to steal and the person or persons you stole from will never trust you again. You lose out on opportunities because of it or worse, end up in prison. Pride can break up a good opportunity to have a friend. If your friend got promoted and you didn’t and you felt that you deserved it more than they did, this can cause there to be a rift there and instead of trusting in the Lord and His timing and celebrating with that friend, you sulk and lose a friendship and miss out on what God had for you. Practicing humility and serving others on a daily basis helps to crowd out humility. Humility and pride cannot co-exist together.

Final Thoughts:

Pride is a signature trait of the devil himself. He wanted to rise above the creator. He thought he deserved to rule the universe. This got him thrown out of heaven. There is no room in the Kingdom for a prideful heart. When we operate out of pride, we grieve the Lord God. He created us. He gives us food and clothing and water. He deserves ALL credit. We have done nothing apart from Him. We have to be mindful when Pride sneaks in and comes out through our actions. We can pray and ask God to deal with our pride and help us to see where it is in our lives and help us to deal with it and kick it out. There is no room for pride to be in our hearts.

Dear Heavenly Father, I come to you now asking for you to reveal any pride that I have brewing in my heart. Help me to see how it is affecting my relationship with you. Please help me to deal with it and kick it out. In Jesus’ Holy name I pray, Amen.

Questions to ponder:

• Can you identify areas of pride in your life?

• Can you identify situations where pride cost you an opportunity or a friendship?

• Has God dealt with you on pride? If so, what did you learn from it?

Barefoot Devotions

What’s Brewing In Your Heart? Lesson Two | Wrath

Hannah B.

What does it mean to brew wrath in your heart?
The sin of wrath is a fit of very strong anger or an uncontrolled hatred towards another person.

Other words for wrath: Rage, Fury, Outrage, Indignation, Vexation, Hot Temper, Short fuse

Examples of Wrath:

• Road Rage

• Screaming, shouting and telling someone what you really think of them by putting them down.

• Child or spousal abuse

• An offended person decides to resort to physical violence rather than calming discussing and dealing with the situation or walking away. (Seeing red)

What can wrath lead to?

• Murder

• Jail/Prison

• Other people fearing the person with the issue of wrath

• A poor Christian example, leading people away from God based on their actions not modeling Christlike behavior.

• No friends/ Uninvited to gatherings because people are afraid the person cannot control themselves.

• Poor reputation

• Loss of job.

• Loss of family

Bible verses regarding the sin of wrath:

Proverbs 29:11 – Fools give full vent to their rage, but the wise bring calm in the end.
Proverbs 15:1 – A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.
Proverbs 15:18 – A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel.
Proverbs 22:24 – Do not make friends with a hot-tempered person, do not associate with one easily angered.
Psalm37:8-9 – Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret, it leads only to evil. For those who are evil will be destroyed, but those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land.
Ephesians 6:4 – In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.
Proverbs 14:17 – A quick-tempered man acts foolishly, and a man of evil devices is hated.
Colossians 3:8 – but now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips.

Takeaway:
The difference between wrath and Godly anger is that wrath comes from a selfish nature. We are flawed by sin, therefore, our anger does not come from the same place that Godly anger comes from. When we have an issue of wrath, it is an indication that we feel something has happened that is unfair against us or someone close to us and we feel they deserve to be punished for making us feel the way they have. Wrath comes from a feeling of selfishness and revenge. The anger is hair-triggered and violent in nature. This also comes from a place of pride in the heart. When a person has an issue with wrath, they are not making sound decisions. It is not well thought out anger. Since God looks at the heart, we would be very wise to stop and look at what the root cause of the anger is. Is this coming from us feeling as though someone didn’t react to us the way we thought they should? Or that they reacted to us in a way we felt they should not have? Or we didn’t get something we thought we deserved? Did we stop to think about where the other person was coming from? Maybe the other person was in the wrong themselves but does the bible not clearly state Romans 12:19 – Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay, says the Lord”.
Why is it important to allow the Lord to take revenge rather than us handle it ourselves when we feel we have been wronged? It all comes down to the place in which the wrath or anger is coming from. God knows our hearts inside and out and God knows what we need. His wrath is calculated, just, well thought out and God never does or allows anything without an ultimate purpose behind it. We can be assured that God will handle everything appropriately. If we try to handle conflict when we are enraged, we will not be solving anything except blowing off steam. What we are left with after the dust comes off are ruin and broken relationships.
Why is wrath a sin? God knows what is best for us as I said before. The reason there is a line drawn at sin is to give us boundaries. We as humans need boundaries so that we do not completely destroy ourselves.

Questions to ponder:
• Can you identify a time or times where you have allowed wrath to brew in your heart and acted on it?

• Can you identify a situation/s where wrath cost you a relationship, your freedom, your witness as a Christian?

• Has God dealt with you or revealed an issue of
Rage/wrath in your life? If so, what did you take away from it?

Dear heavenly father, I have an anger issue that I know is wrong. I need you to help me learn how to control it and how to give it over to you once and for all. I do not want to live a life where I miss out on opportunities to point people to you because I have a real issue with how to respond to offenses or injustices. Please work in my heart and help me to see people the way you do. In Jesus’ name Amen!

Barefoot Devotions

Transforming Brokenness

Hannah B.

Brokenness. A place where we all hope to never find ourselves.

The reality is that we are all broken. We have broken moments surrounded in immense pain, shame, and despair. There are parts of our life that we so desperately want to take back and even the parts we wonder why this happened to me? How did I get here of all places? It’s really not supposed to be this way.

God’s grace doesn’t leave us in our brokenness. He loves us far too much to do that. His grace has carried me through all of my brokenness, despair, and heartache.

Even when I didn’t deserve it.

Even in the midst of the circumstances I didn’t choose.

When we keep our brokenness cocooned in the protection of our own hands, it’s impossible to see the potential it will morph into when we surrender our brokenness to our Heavenly Father.

We must surrender justifying our brokenness to God. This means fully releasing every thought and emotion you are holding onto so tightly into the hands of JEHOVAH ROPHE.

A beautiful transformation happens in your heart when you allow the Holy Spirit to step in and morph your brokenness into healing.

It begins in complete surrender.

It begins when we stop asking why.

It begins when we realize that God didn’t mean for us to live this way.

It begins when we realize that God’s love is greater and His grace is beyond sufficient.

It ignites when you step into your anointed and set apart position IN Christ.

When we are IN Christ, our brokenness is gracefully broken for meaning and a purpose far greater than you can even imagine.

Be brave and surrender everything to our loving Father for transformation.

With all of my love and encouragement,

Hannah B.