Tag Archives: spiritual growth

Spiritual Laundry

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Spiritual Laundry

Spiritual Laundry

Recently, I’ve been reading through a reading plan on my Bible app, called “21 Days in the Gospel of John with Levi Lusko”. One of my latest readings was titled “Clean Often”[1]. A couple of things stood out to me and spoke to me from the day’s reading. The overall message was about cleaning our lives up. I took notes in my journal and labeled my notes for the day “Spiritual Laundry”.

Fish analogy

My first takeaway from the devotion was about how God meets us where we are. God doesn’t need us to get cleaned up before we come to Him. Salvation does that for us. This was not a new concept for me. I’ve heard it and even said it myself before. What was new, however, was the analogy that Pastor Lusko used. If you know me, you know I love analogies!

He said, “…God cleans His fish after He catches them.” 🙂 I love this! It’s an especially fun and fitting analogy considering Jesus calls his disciples (and us) to be fishers of men.

“His partners, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were also amazed. Jesus replied to Simon, “Don’t be afraid! From now on you’ll be fishing for people!” Luke 5:10 (NLT) 

God cleans His fish after He catches them. –Levi Lusko

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Spiritual laundry–God is the laundromat or the dry cleaner

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Prayer for You This Year–2018

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Prayer for You This Year 2018

Photo by Ümit Bulut on Unsplash

Prayer for You This Year–2018

As many people start the year with a fresh start and New Year’s Resolutions, it’s a time to look toward the upcoming year. The same is true for me. I’ll be participating with my church in a 21 day challenge involving 21 days of prayer, discipline and bible study. During the month of January, I will be spending some time in concentrated prayer. As part of my prayer time, I will be spending time praying for my blog, readers, and subscribers. I plan on praying for each person on my subscriber list individually.

There will be some general areas that I will be praying for each of you, which I’ll detail below. However, I’d also like to take this opportunity to reach out to you and see if you have any specific needs or prayer requests that you would like me to pray about. I would love to hear from you!

You can let me know your requests by:

  1. Posting a comment below (at the bottom of this page)
  2. Sending a message through my contact page by clicking here
  3. Sending me an email at tracy at happyhealthyandprosperous dot com (I have to list the email this way to avoid those crazy spam robots! :P)

I will add your specific requests to my list, and I will commit to praying for you and your needs. If you don’t have any specific needs, please know that you are still being prayed for by name anyway!

General areas I’ll be praying for

  • Spiritual growth and relationship with God and for you to also grow in wisdom stature and favor like Jesus did
  • Health, healing and emotional well-being
  • Relationships with others in your life
  • Work
  • Finances and prosperity
  • Gifts, calling and purpose
  • Direction
  • Strength and courage
  • Peace
  • Open doors for you this year and close the wrong ones
  • Experience God’s love this year

My prayer for you this year…

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Pruning: Cutting Out Things to Become Stronger and More Productive

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Pruning: Cutting Out Things to Become Stronger and More Productive

Pruning: Cutting Out Things to Become Stronger and More Productive

I love being and working outside, especially this time of year with planting and gardening. Plants make me happy. I might even describe myself as an amateur gardener. However, I use this “gardener” term very loosely! Over the years I’ve learned a lot about God through the planting process. In fact, the bible is full of gardening and agricultural analogies, being they were so prevalent in that culture.

Because I love gardening so much, it’s easy for God to talk to me and for me to understand in gardening terms. For that reason, it happens a lot. Just this past week in fact I was reading John 15 where Jesus is describing himself and the vine, us as the branches, and God (the Father) as the gardener.

During this particular reading, the pruning process stood out to me. I think this was because of what God has been speaking to me about lately. Specifically, this made sense with regard to removing distractions when spending time with and listening to God. I mentioned last week that I was being “corrected” in this area! Therefore, pruning distractions fit right in the theme of what I was already learning.

John 15:1-8 (NIV)

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

Bearing Fruit=Being Successful

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Tips for Spending Time With God

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Tips for spending time with God

Tips for Spending Time With God

On occasion readers post comments on different blog posts that I feel deserve more attention than just a reply at the bottom of a post. This week is one of those occasions. A reader recently posted a comment with some questions on my post “How to Overcome Feeling Unloved or Unwanted”. I’d like to take some time to answer her questions and provide some additional resources that I think might be helpful for her and others struggling with spending time with God.

This might also be a timely message for others too since the start of the year is a common time to evaluate spiritual growth and set some goals to grow stronger and spend more time with God. You might find some good tips within the post or other resources to help you kick start and/or maintain some of your spiritual New Year’s resolutions.  You can also check out Tips to Start Reading the Bible on a Regular Basis for some extra help and encouragement too.

A comment from Tina

“As great as this article is, I still can’t grasp the concept that “God” loves me…I know partly this is due to me not spending enough time in his word, but for me I never really got much of a true understanding of the Bible and his Word 1. How do I know what to read? 2. What is enough time to spend with God?

I find comfort in being around others… amongst other things, but I want to find comfort in God. 2016 was a very very hard year for me. For the past 4 or 5 months I have felt so UNLOVED, lonely, and rejected…I have prayed countless times for God to just take me away, because the pain I feel on most days has become the norm.

It hurts the most when the one person you love, says one thing but acts different….the same person that I once was all he ever wanted and because I have felt so unloved my entire life, once the triggers started happening it made me become clingy and probably push him away (although he never said it)…My point is not to get advice on the above, but instead I feel the most unloved when things like this happen.

I wish I had the belief, peace, joy, and faith, but honestly it is hard for me to fathom that there is a God…I am very skeptical, logical, and need to be in control and those 3 things are disastrous to truly believing. I get so discouraged about this. I have prayed endless prayers to stop my unbelief and doubt, to prayers about understanding, etc.

I can’t take any more on my own the stress, sadness, and heartache is making me sick. It is so hard to see and understand God when you feel like everything is against you. I truly wish I was stronger, more confidence, and self-esteem. I wish someone (outside of God) would love me like I love. I am so genuine and all that’s brought me is heartache. I sit in my room or in my car with just with tears flowing wondering what I could have done in my life to feel like this. I am hurting and can only hope that I can find happiness and joy inside of me.”

Dear Tina…

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