Draw near to God today, with praise and thanksgiving, and the Bible promises that He will draw near to you. 

We can check all the boxes, do all the steps in Psalm 51, and say all the right words, but if in the back of our minds we are planning to sin in the same way again–then God’s grace isn’t really taking root and we aren’t really repenting and turning to God’s path.  What God desires is that we have a true repentance and change in our heart.  

“I think many of us don’t process our emotions, and especially our wrong emotions with God.  We hold on to those feelings or we simply don’t pray at all when we sense God would not be pleased with what we are feeling.”

When fear comes, remind yourself who God is.

Joy is a great word.  It is different from happiness.  Different from “I want to be happy.”  Joy in Psalm 126 is attached to tears.  Happiness is not.  We are to take our struggles, hurt, pain and tears, and take them all to God.  Say: “God, I’m giving You this hurt.  I give this grief to You.”

You have a choice: To live life covered up or to confess before God.  

When we experience pain, sorrow or suffering, it is easy to forget what God is doing right now in our lives, and what ways He has worked and blessed in the past.

Nobody likes pain and sometimes we try to avoid the pain without finding our the source of our pain.  We ignore it, numb it, we sweep it under the rug instead of bringing it to God and asking ourselves: Why is this happening?  

Psalm 73 is a Psalm of doubt.  The writer is a guy named Asaph.  He faces something that everyone of us faces in life, when a situation causes us to ask questions like: Is that fair?  Why did that happen?  But they say what I believe is not true.  

Do you have a battle between fear and faith that goes on in your mind?  I do. I want to trust God AND I want to control situations.  Maybe that’s you too. 

Prayer is not just getting what you want from Dad, it’s about having a relationship with Dad.  Knowing Him, loving your Dad, and trusting your Dad.  Doing what your Dad has for you–caring for people, forgiving people.

All of the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in the Bible, tell us the women who were followers of Jesus went to the tomb early on Sunday morning.  They found the tomb empty and heard a message from the angel.