hand of god

A Missionary Blessing

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May God bless your mind and give it unity of thought and focus, so that you are totally committed to building the Kingdom of God and helping people find freedom and deliverance through Jesus Christ.

May God bless your hands so that your hands become God’s hands and your touch brings healing and restoration and people who’ve been around you will know that they have been touched by the very hand of God.

May God bless your feet so that you walk in His footsteps and every place you go is no longer sin’s domain, but the place where God reigns. So that wherever your foot lands becomes holy ground.

May God bless your eyes so that you see beyond yourself and see lost and hurting people, see the pain in their eyes, see the need all around you, and see that the fields really are white unto harvest.

May God bless your heart so that it feels what God feels and yearns for what God yearns for. May what breaks God’s heart break yours and may His perfect and complete love flow through you to everyone you meet.

May you not only speak Jesus and live Jesus, but be Jesus everywhere you go. May you be the pleasing aroma of Christ in every place and may every breath you take be a prayer and every word you speak be a praise.

Go forth and turn this upside-down world right-side up again. In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Blessed are the pure in heart

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“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8).

Blessed are the pure in heart. You may be like me and think, “Well, that rules me out right there. I am not pure in heart. If you could only see inside my heart and see some of the addictions and lies and crap that I carry around, the last word you would use to describe my heart is ‘pure.'” I have good news for you. If you have trusted Christ for your salvation, He has cleansed your heart. God sees you now as if you had never sinned. You are pure in heart.

The Message puts it this way: “You’re blessed when you get your inside world—your mind and heart—put right. Then you can see God in the outside world.” That’s what being made righteous means– your inside world is put right with God. Then, instead of seeing fate and coincidence and random occurances in the outside world, you see God. You see His hand in everything.

Soren Kierkegaard said, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” To stay pure in heart, it is important to not have divided priorities. Like loving God and money, or God and popularity, or God and success, or God and (you fill in the blanks). If anything competes with God for my attention, that thing must go, whether it be a possession or a relationship or a cherished dream. God is jealous and will not abide anything put alongside of Him as equal importance.

The good news is that the effort to have one focus is not a “strain and try harder”, but a “be filled with the Spirit and transformed by the renewing of your mind” event. Your and my job is to know God. To know what blesses and breaks His heart, to know what His will is for the world, and to know His Word so well that it becomes a part of you. Jesus said, “This is eternal life, that they know the Father and the One He has sent.”

Lord, I long to stay pure in heart and not wear myself out chasing in five different directions things that can only truly come from You. Be my passion, my heart’s overwhelming desire. Be so glorious in my sight that everything else fades away. Show me Your glory, and then I will be satisfied. Thank You that You have promised that one day I will see You clearly and love You perfectly.

As always, I believe. Help my unbelief.