Hosanna Restoration Church

It is not difficult to love God! He is easy to love. It does sometimes seem to be easier to fall down than it is to follow; but keep following the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength! He will not make us stand firm, but He will help us.

Remember to turn and return. Be quick to turn to God and even quicker to return to Him. Trust in the Lord with all your strength. Believe Him above everything else. Think about His goodness. He is our greatest need.

He was our greatest need before we knew Him. Remember when you did not know Him. You may have known about Him for most of your life, and then came the day that you met Him. When that day comes, it does something to us. Old things really do not matter, suddenly everything is new.

I know that sometimes people want to keep the old things. People want to think that they were still ok; but deep down we know that something has changed. If we fail to acknowledge and declare that truth, the newness can easily fade away. We can begin to stand firm in our past rather than going with God to His future. Actually, that is why they killed Jesus.

They had been looking for their Messiah forever, but He was not what they wanted. Later when Saul came around after meeting the one he had been persecuting, he was so convincing that they really could not refute what he said about Jesus, but many still refused to believe. (Acts 9:22)

Remember, if you can believe, all things are possible to those that believe. It is not difficult to abide in Christ. It is not too hard to follow Jesus.

It may be hard to admit that we have sinned. It may be hard to admit that we have been missing something. It may seem hard not to conform to the world around us, but that is what the transforming power of God is all about.

If we stand firm in our faith in God, He has no problem making us stand firm against the lies of the devil. That is where those thoughts of failure and giving up come from. The Holy Spirit never tells you to give up. He never tells you what a failure you are. He never says that you will never get it right.

He tells us to stand in the full armor of God. The truth is, many people have no idea that there is armor to put on, or how to put it on.

In my early days of playing football, we played with the padding God gave us. No helmets, shoulder pads or anything like that. When I was finally old enough to play in school, they gave us all the pads. I remember having a good idea of what to do with the helmet, but which way the other pads went was a mystery. Which way did the shoulder pads go on? How do you put the pads in the pants, or what about those girdle pads? It sounds silly now, but it was a big deal then.

In the same way, it is a big deal now to put on the armor and to stay with the simplicity of Christ.