For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
[Jeremiah 29:11 NIV]
Jason Morales of the Imperials tells how he was distracted in high school by drugs and alcohol and didn’t want God to be in control. When he started running sound for the Imperials he began to see what the real Christian life looked like. Jeremiah 29:11-12 got his attention and brough him back to the Lord and off drugs. And he hasn’t looked back since.
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MALE VOICE: God has been speaking to me a lot this year specifically about just getting more serious with Him about, you know, sometimes we go over the same thing over and over in our life. You know God wants to give us victory in a certain area of our life and we’ll just kind of just keep going. I remember in the Old Testament when Moses was leading the people to the Promised Land. At one point God said, okay, you’ve traveled around this mountain long enough, let’s get moving. And I feel like God has been saying that in my life in some particular areas.
And so one of the things he led me to do was take several passages of scripture and put it on little business cards. And I carry them with me pretty much everywhere I go. And just have them at my disposal to meditate on, maybe memorize, but I’m not really working terribly hard to memorize them as much as I am just to read them when I have a few free moments. You know one of them, for example, is Galatians 5 verse 16, really a good bit of that chapter, but a couple of highlights. Paul says, I advise you to live according to your new life in the Holy Spirit. And then he talks about the fruit of the spirit. He talks about the way the flesh and the spirit war against each other. And then at the end of the chapter he says if we’re living by the Holy Spirit let us follow the Holy Spirit’s leading in every part of our life.
And what that says to me is, if I’m depending on the Holy Spirit for my very life, you know if in other words, this new life that He’s given me is sustained by the Holy Spirit, I can’t take another breath, especially spiritually speaking, without the Holy Spirit giving me that life. Then I need to follow Him in all of the other areas of my life as well. Kind of a slap in the face to the spirit of God to say I’m relying on You to give me life and to keep me righteous before the Father. But then not rely on Him for following Him in the daily details of my life. And so that’s just one of the things that God’s speaking to me about right now, letting the Holy Spirit control all the aspects of my life.
