Make Up Your Mind in the New Year!

Happy New Year!!!

So why do I start the new year with a picture of a brain lifting weights?! So glad you asked!

Ok, so another year is upon us and the usual recriminations about our failings last year or contemplations of potential new year’s resolutions flood our mind as we consider how we ought to live in the new year. Will we be able to live our life the way we want to?

First off, let’s just pause on this amazing truth: we are alive! We get to live! We don’t know our end, but God does. And as we face another year, we get to choose how we face each day. When bad stuff happens. When we encounter hardship and blessing. At all times, we can choose the mindset we carry as we walk through this life.

Sometimes we can feel powerless to affect our outlook, like a victim of our circumstances, But all of the mindset battles are distractions from the enemy of our souls to distract us from our true purpose here on earth. This is why we need to guard our minds and strengthen them. But how?

SD#51 Preparing our Hearts for a New Year

Are you ready for 2020? The beginning of a new year prompts self-evaluation as we consider the past year and wonder if we just might be able to do better in the coming year. And the most important preparation we need is in our heart and mind. The word of God will change our lives if we read it. Listen in to this podcast episode and join me in reading the Bible this year. Free Bible Reading Download!

A Secret Worth Telling

Deuteronomy 29:29

“The LORD our God has secrets known to no one. We are not accountable for them, but we and our children are accountable forever for all that he has revealed to us, so that we may obey all the terms of these instructions.”

Pssst! God’s got a secret! And when you know it, you will be accountable to live it out. Wanna know the secret now?

Growing up, I could always tell when someone had a secret. It was usually made very obvious. Hands covering mouths and voices in a hushed tone. Not so secretive, ironically. And when the secret was about you, all eyes would gaze at you with a less-than-complimentary stare. No, we don’t like to be the object of secrets.

But there is something about that hidden knowledge that is delicious to our flesh—especially if the spotlight is not on us. Bad news, though—gossip and secrets can do some damage. “A fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. A gossip’s words are like choice morsels, and they sink into the inmost being” (Proverbs 18:7-8).

Those people talking about you? They will reap what they sow and their secrets are not worth repeating.

Shame Off Your Gifts

Shame RX: The measure of a gift is the heart of the giver, not the gift itself.

1 Peter 4:10

“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” 

My kids like to tease me about some of the gifts I give them. They know my heart is to bless them, and I seek to know them well enough to get what they desire, but sometimes this bargain hunting momma can’t help it and can’t pass up a good deal. Let’s just say that some of the gifts I have given *might* not have been appreciated. Like the “momma jeans” I bought one of my precious girls. Designated as momma jeans because they um, lacked style.

Have you ever felt the pressure building as the time comes for the gift you have given to be opened—you wonder . . . will it be enough?

Enough for what?!

Enough for the recipient? Enough for the bystanders watching? Enough for the giver? And who determines whether a gift is “enough” and how is a gift is rated?

Shame. Again. Goodness. Just the act of giving is an act of grace and kindness. There should be no shame there. But shame lurks wherever there is an audience . . . unless we have stopped giving the audience that power to hold shame over our heads.

The measure of a gift is the heart of the giver, not the gift itself. When we give, we don’t do it for the audience, or at least I hope we don’t. We do it from a motivation of love, generosity, and thoughtfulness. We can let go of man’s opinion of our gift when we keep in focus our intention in the giving of the gift.

It is so sweet to remember that we are merely stewards. Everything we have was given to us and we get to take what we have been given and share it with others. How cool is that? May we do so without shame. How people respond to a gift does not determine its value. In all we do, may we give for the glory of God!

Shame Off You this Christmas, friends!

Kindling A Joy-Filled Christmas

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy!” —Psalm 126:5

Ever been so filled with joy that you shouted? Maybe you felt a bit conspicuous after having done so, but oh, it felt good. This sweet release of proclaiming pure joy is like the rocks crying out in praise of God. If we don’t express joy, it will burst out at some point.

But it is likely that we do not all live in that place of continual joy. Not to sound jaded, but reality snuffs out joy if we focus on the waves instead of the Maker of the waves. We can easily fake smiles and put up a good front, but our hearts are not convinced of this inner joy we claim to have.

At Christmas, we can feel mocked by the bright sounds and colors surrounding us while inwardly we mourn the loss of the life we thought we had. How do we find this elusive joy in a world filled with hurt?

Bible In a Year

You’ve wanted to read the Bible all the way through, but like that diet you’ve perpetually been on, it feels impossible to follow through.

 

Guys, it’s hard to stay committed but this is one commitment you will be blessed to keep. And some commitments are better when done together. Let’s do this! Join me in 2019 as we read the Bible together. There will be links to help you listen on days when reading will be harder, a verse for each day, and a post reminder on social media each day with the Scripture reading for the day.

 

Sign up to join us and receive a free Bible Reading Plan! Download the free Bible reading plan on my website: https://denisepass.com/bible-reading-plan/

BW#96 Re-gifting at Christmas: Forgiveness

Colossians 3:13 (BSB)

“Bear with each other and forgive any complaint you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Have you ever “re-gifted” a gift you got at Christmas time? While some gifts might not be exactly what we want, the gifts Christ gave us are perfect. The question is, will we share and re-gift what Christ has given to us? Listen in to this episode as Denise and Angela share on regifting the forgiveness Christ has given us.

SD#47 Advent Series: Finding Unfailing Hope in Christ

Matthew 1:21 (NIV)

“She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Christmas can be a hectic time, but we don’t have to let the culture around us dictate how we celebrate Christmas. As we celebrate the Advent season, this week we focus on hope. The hopes of this world die, but our Savior came and lives to give us a hope that never fails. Listen in as we unpack what this hope brings us that was revealed with the birth of Christ.

Order Hope Reinvented today!

Finding Our Identity in the Nativity

Acts 17:27-28 (NLT)

“His purpose was for the nations to seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’”

We were made for another world and have lost our identity. But God has a secret . . . our identities can be found again.

Between 6,000 and 7,000 years ago a decision was made to leave perfection, to leave a God who loved us and to leave an identity in Him. As time went on, God’s people pursued idol after idol trying to fix the desperate need in their souls to find their identity again.

And today people are still on a search for this sense of completeness. Lost in a world with seemingly never-ending options, none of it fulfills us because our Designer made us for Himself, not for temporary things that perish. And the idols and fake identities we choose don’t satisfy. They are merely creations themselves from fallen man.

Two thousand years ago a baby was born, a God-man, to save our souls and restore what had been lost in the Garden. This baby came to give us an identity in Him that we forfeited when we opted for a fallen, broken identity instead.

Those who had ears to hear and eyes to see understood that they could not save themselves and that no identity and nothing in this world could. Still, many did not accept this free gift of salvation and continued the futile search for life in nonliving things, or in people, relationships, achievements, roles, positions to fill this ache in their souls.

And here we are today. Nothing new underneath the sun. Maybe a little more updated, but the struggle is the same. Man searches to be his own God, to find his identity apart from God, and yet he was made in the image of God.

We don’t recognize that the identity theft on the rise today that we bemoan is also happening to our souls. An identity theft that reaches further than our wallet, to our souls. That place where man tries to find that place of peace and fulfillment apart from His Creator.

Still, our Savior came and He is coming again. Will we see what He accomplished in the Nativity? What His birth did for us and how it relates to our identity?

The enemy of our souls is the author of confusion. If he can confuse our identity, we remain preoccupied with self and miss out on a relationship with God and His purposes for our life. Understanding our identity is important. We need to understand who and whose we are to live a fruitful life in Christ. Confusion happens when we don’t have a right understanding of our identity in Christ.

Identity confusion is even causing people to try and choose their identity. Some are confused about their gender, something that truly there is no confusion about. God made two genders. No in between, no confusion:

Genesis 1:27 ESV,

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

While others try to choose an identity from another race or another age. This is foolishness. God made us in His identity, in His image. We are children of God, if we have accepted His free gift:

John 1:12 (ESV)

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”

Made in His image, this image was broken because of the sins of Adam and Eve:

Genesis 5:1-3 (ESV)

“This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth.”

But the birth of Christ restores what sin took away. Christ is the second Adam, sinless, who lived a sinless life so He could pay for our sins and then give us back our rightful identity as a child of God, once again.

1 Corinthians 15:22 (NLT)

“Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life.”