In addition to feeding on the word of God, another key to good spiritual health is to remember where God has brought us from.

Remember the former things of old, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, Isaiah 46:9

The act of remembrance is very important especially for those of us who have been walking with the Lord for decades. It is easy to take the stability of our lives for granted or forget the struggles we used to have. We all have had different issues such as anger, resentment, lust, fear, arrogance, unforgiveness, financial debt, and addictions, which kept us in bondage. Remembering where we have come from, keeps us humble and immune from self-righteousness that can so easily entangle us!

Generally, people don’t like to be around self-righteous Christians because they seem harsh, critical, and unsympathetic. When we remember where God has brought us from, it gives us greater compassion towards those who are struggling with serious issues.

Remembering the kindness of God which led us to repentance, can help us to be gentle and kind with those who need the Lord. This doesn’t negate the times when individuals require tough love to challenge them to growth and maturity. However, our approach will not stem from a self-righteous attitude, but it will be spirit led to help the person to come to a higher place in their spiritual walk.

During the Last Supper with His disciples, Jesus instituted the Communion as an act of remembrance. He desired for us to continually remember what He did for us. It is important to remember Jesus’ work on the cross on our behalf. His body was beaten and His blood was shed for us to wash us clean from all our past sins. He healed us, gave us a new nature, and a new chance in life!

Today, let’s take a moment and remember the work of Jesus on the cross, and where God has brought us from. Thank Him for all that He has done in your life to bring you to this point. He is awesome and worthy of all our praise!

A Christian life is a dynamic and organic life. It is one which necessitates growth because life is full of change and challenges. What we knew yesterday or experienced a year ago does not meet the demands of today. Our roles change and our relationships are in continual flux. We not only grow in knowledge over time, but we grow in experience, discernment, and sophistication. Nevertheless spiritual growth is not automatic. We can grow old without growing in maturity. We can be a Christian for decades but spiritually speaking have a maturity of a baby!

In the past year, I reconnected on Facebook with a friend after 25 years. He sent me a note telling me how much he enjoys my posts on my Facebook page (Know His Ways). He was glad that I have remained in faith while many he knew have fallen away from faith. It was a kind gesture concerning my life. However, it made me sad that so many people whom he knew do not follow the Lord in a living and personal way. I wonder if his friends would perceive themselves that way! This caused me to think, “What can we do to ensure we maintain a healthy spiritual life?”  This will be the subject of the next few devotionals.

And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. John 6:35

The first and foremost importance in having a healthy spiritual life is a regular intake of the “bread of Life” and the “living waters”. Studying the Word of God, listening to the Holy Spirit, and praying are ways that we can nurture our spirit man. This is essential to every believer; no church attendance or ministry involvement can take the place of a personal interaction with God. Christians can sometimes be so busy doing the work of the ministry that they forget about the source of ministry and the reason we are here in the first place.

The challenge with lack of spiritual food & drink is that malnourishment is gradual and cannot measured objectively. Spiritual malnourishment can go on for months and years undetected but subtly affecting the life of the believer and causing their faith to crumble.

The best indicator of a healthy spiritual life is the hunger for the Word of God and the desire to pray. If the hunger goes away, then there is a great likelihood that we are losing our spiritual health.

I will continue with this subject in the next devotional. 

This is a continuation of pondering Samson’s life. His life was marked by series of outbursts, battles, victories, and some defeats. Surprisingly despite his lack of self-control, he was able to keep his Nazirite vow. He did not cut his hair nor did he touch wine as far as we know. However, he did pollute himself with dead animals which would have been a violation of Leviticus laws. He also joined himself with a prostitute (See Judges 16:1-3); later he went after a woman called Delilah who seduced him to tell her the secret of his strength.

We need to pause for a moment and think about Samson as a leader and a judge of Israelites. This man served God for twenty years! That’s a long time. If you were a fellow Jewish person during his era, would you have respected him? Would you have considered him a leader and a judge?

In today’s Christianity, we can so easily get disenchanted with Christian leadership, and we don’t usually stop there. Eventually the disenchantment leads to being disappointed with God for allowing faulty leadership to continue to have a negative impact on others. People walk away from church and from faith because some leaders failed them. If I lived in that era, I would have had a very hard time believing that Samson was doing God’s will in spite of his indiscretions and lack of self-Control!

Unfortunately, there are no simple answers to flawed leadership. It is clear that Samson was called into ministry before he was conceived, so there is no doubt that God had a call on him. The issue is, “Did his disobedience make him ineffective? According to below scripture, the answer is, “No.” .

And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. Hebrews 11:32-34

In the book of Hebrews, Samson is named among the “Hall of Faith” people who did mighty exploits for God. We can conclude that in spite of all his issues because Samson had faith in God, the Lord chose to use him. His story continues with his eyes being gauged by the enemy because they were able to take away his strength temporarily by cutting his hair. However, at the end, as his hair grew longer, he pulled down walls and killed every Philistine in sight and killing himself (See Judges 16).

Samson fulfilled God’s purpose while his sins led him to get killed as well. Sin always works against us not for us, and destroys the very one who passionately holds on to sin! Sadly, while God’s plans were accomplished, Samson did not appear to have experienced much peace in his life!

The most important lesson we can learn from Samson is that obedience has a greater priority than being used by God! Being effective for God is not necessarily the measure of our spiritual maturity or obedience. God can use anyone. If we are not obedient, we may fulfill God’s purpose, but not have a fulfilling life on the  journey!

God’s ways are truly higher than our ways! God chose and called Samson to serve Him in His Kingdom. This man was flawed and at times out of control!

Again the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines for forty years. Now there was a certain man from Zorah, of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah; and his wife was barren and had no children. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to the woman and said to her, “Indeed now, you are barren and have borne no children, but you shall conceive and bear a son.  Now therefore, please be careful not to drink wine or similar drink, and not to eat anything unclean.  For behold, you shall conceive and bear a son. And no razor shall come upon his head, for the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb; and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.” Judges 13:1-5

A prophetic word came to Manoah and his wife through the angel of the Lord prophesying of the upcoming conception and the birth of a baby boy. He was going to be consecrated to the Lord as a Nazirite. The angel told the mother to abstain from wine, and she was told that the child was to abstain from wine all the days of his life as well. The child was also never to shave his head. The parents did what they were told to do (See Judges 14). The boy was born, and they named him Samson.

A Nizirite vow was nothing new to the Israelites. This vow is explained and specified in the book of Numbers in chapter 6 for those who desired to consecrate themselves to God. Generally this vow was for a period of time for a person to abstain from certain things until such a time that they went to the temple to offer their sacrifices. However, in the case of Samson, God called him to become a lifelong Nazirite for the specific purpose that God had for him.

As for Samson, his parents did everything God asked them to do, but unfortunately good parents did not guarantee a right character on the part of Samson.  Nowadays blaming someone’s bad behavior on his/her childhood is the norm. However, Not all ungodly or marginal behavior is due to bad childrearing. We all have choices to make.  We can exercise our choice for good or for evil. We can move in the direction of following God or moving away from Him. Samson could not have blamed his lifestyle on his parents’ failure to raise him right.

Samson became a judge to help deliver the people of Israel from the hands of their enemies and specifically the Philistines. Samson did not have a military as some of the other judges did. God had given him strength to fight these people single-handedly. Unfortunately, the very people he was supposed to overcome, became his Achilles heel. 

I will continue with this subject in the next devotional.

Sometimes making major plans can seem overwhelming and even feel paralyzing, but God gives us ways in which we can navigate through them the right way and be successful in our endeavors. Goal setting doesn’t have to be a fearful process when we have taken the time to prayerfully consider our plans and receive Godly counsel to accomplish the goal.

Plans are established by counsel; By wise counsel wage war. Proverbs 20:18

Generally, if people are intent on going in a certain direction, they shy away from getting counsel because they don’t want anyone to slow them down or say “no” to them. I would rather have someone share a nugget of truth to cause me to slow down than move fast with my half-baked idea in a problematic direction!

Sometimes, pride gets in the way of asking for counsel. Some people think asking for counsel is for the weak or the immature believers. The truth is none of us have experienced everything in life, and it would be better to glean from someone else’s insight or experience than to reinvent the wheel. The beauty of receiving counsel is that we are not obligated to follow it. However, we now have a responsibility to weigh all the information gathered and prayerfully make a decision that is based on wisdom rather than ignorance.

Getting Godly counsel gives us a greater confidence about being on the right path. When difficulties come, we are less likely to back down or quit because we are not wishy washy about the  decision. The above scripture tells us that we will wage war with wise counsel, which implies there will be resistance on our path. Wise counsel will allow us to fight the self-defeating thoughts, the enemy’s accusations, and the nay sayers’ voice because we have done our due diligence to be sure we are moving in the right direction.

On the other hand, if we move hastily into a certain direction, in the back of our mind, we are wondering, “Was this me or was this God? Is God trying to speak to me or is this the devil trying to derail me?”. The greater resolve we have at the beginning, the clearer our path is going to be in the middle of the battle.

How do we wage war while making plans? This is the subject of the next devotional.

How do we, as believers, set goals in a Godly way?

I am naturally a goal setter. When I have goals in life, I am much more motivated. However, there was a season in my life when I felt that I had to surrender all my goals and dreams to the Lord and wait for Him to move in my life. I thought not having goals was more spiritual. This ended up being a frustrating experience, which led me to feeling stuck for a long time.

A man’s heart plans his way, But the Lord directs his steps. Proverbs 16:9

After years of waiting, I finally sought counsel from mature believers who told me making plans is not necessarily a bad thing. They told me that if my plan is not against the principles of God, it is not a problem because He gives us the ability to reason and choose. It took me a while to get used to the idea of making plans because I was fearful for being out of the will of God. I had to let go of the idea that making plans was a carnal activity.  

When God called Noah to build the Ark, it must have taken great planning to accomplish such an enormous task (See Genesis 6). God gave him the specifics but Noah would have still needed to do the planning for such an extensive project. It is estimated that it could have taken Noah up to 65 years to complete the Ark. He couldn’t have just woken up every morning and decided to go with the flow. It would have required planning and scheduling for months and years in order to complete this project. God had given Noah an assignment, and he was diligent to do His work, stay on task, and do it in a timely manner. 

My husband and I did an extensive remodel in our house years ago. We picked a construction manager and gave him our specification for the size and the placement of rooms. He along with an architect drew a blueprint to our specifications. After our agreement on the blueprint, we were not involved in the day to day construction. If he didn’t hear from us, it meant he was doing fine, and he should continue doing what we asked him to do. If the construction manager needed some direction, he came to us and asked a clarifying question, but we didn’t micro manage the project.

God’s assignment and our plans have similar partnership. We know what God has spoken, so we move forward with what we know. Sometimes He speaks specifically and sometimes generally, so we go to work planning our lives and activities based on what we know is true and right in His sight and according to the word of God. In situations or places where we are not sure, we ask the Lord clarifying questions to make sure we remain on the right path. 

As a believer, our goals are not to be set in stone. We remain open to God’s leading and changing our direction if/when He chooses to do so. However, in the absence of hearing his voice, we move forward with the plans we have made staying flexible and attentive to His voice for any change of direction.

Do you have goals for your life? If so, do you remain flexible and persevering in the process of achieving them? If you don’t set goals, is fear holding you back?

Our culture deems goal setting crucial to one’s success! Goals are a highly valued commodity; books, commercials, and highly admired people  encourage the masses to set some goals in order to achieve success. People believe that if you want to make progress and reach your desired destination, you must have goals. The voice of our culture implies that people who don’t set goals never reach anything, which leads one to be a loser in life!

Conversely, in some Christian circles, goal setting is synonymous to carnality and man striving to be in control. Some Christians believe that it is up to God to do all the work, and they are just supposed to go along for the ride! The individuals feel that as long as they pray, God will move and direct their path. They are not in charge of their lives because they have surrendered it all to God.

There is truth to both sides of the argument, but finding true balance between the two extreme views is the wisdom provided by God through His word. 

The plans of the diligent lead surely to plenty, But those of everyone who is hasty, surely to poverty. Proverb 21:5

We all need to make some plans in life. When we are young, we need to plan to get an education and develop a career in life. As we get older and have a consistent job, we need to set goals for our finances by saving and putting money aside for our retirement. If we plan to purchase a house, we need to save some money for a down payment.

Lack of planning and goal setting can lead us into a big pitfall by making hasty decisions.  For example, if we just hastily jump into the decision of purchasing a house that we really can’t afford, it can lead us into bondage or into an eventual foreclosure. This can unleash years of emotional, financial, and relational problems. There are a whole host of other situations that require a level of planning in order for us to be successful and avoid major problems in life.

Does our goal setting look different than the world? How does a believer set goals in a Godly way? This is the subject of the next devotional.