Now
for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral
excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge,
self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance,
godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly
kindness, love. For if these qualities
are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in
the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Peter 1:5-8
For He says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.
Romans 9:15-16
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence
And do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
And sustain me with a willing spirit.
Psalm 51:10-13
And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted to him. Therefore, I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.”
Mark 11:22-24
I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one’s lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor—it is the gift of God.
Ecclesiastes 3:12-13
A few years ago, my daughter wanted to go to lunch. I was not having the best day, but I said alright. We met up at the restaurant and my daughter had brought along a friend’s twelve year old daughter. We ate and chattered. We talked about junior high school and our favorite television shows. To me it was a regular lunch.
Later, my daughter called and said when they got in the car, the girl started crying. When she asked her what was wrong, she said, “Your mother. She is so happy.”
I think about that and I think about how important it is for us to put forward our best Christian behavior. All around us people are suffering and discouraged and we never know who we will bless by being kind and smiling.
Happiness is serving the Lord. He delivers it to us and we can deliver it to the world.
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven or on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, and that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all fullness of God.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to His be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generation forever and ever. Amen
Ephesians 3:14-21
