Ray Bentley

So as you begin to walk with the Holy Spirit, and even if you are stubborn and slow to yield to him, God has beautiful ways of leading us and guiding us and wooing us. He won't force you to do anything, but he has a way of awakening your conscience and drawing you to him.

God's will. We want to be right in the center of his plan. . .How does God reveal his will to me by the desires that he places within my heart? And he not only gives me the desire, but then in and as well with the desire, he gives me the power to accomplish, to do what he has asked me to do.

Believers are to be servants of all. Do you need some inspiration? Look to Christ himself. Jesus is God and yet he is willing to be your servant. If anybody could have used their position to demand to be served, it was Jesus. But instead he said, I didn't come to be ministered to. I came to ministry spread.

Want to know the key, the secret to living a joyful life. . . live the opposite of what the world tells you. The world teaches you that you are the center of the universe. It's all about you, but you end up being extremely long. And what Paul is saying here is within the family, if you want to be great in God's kingdom, learn to be the servant of all.

He who dies with the most toys wins. . . think again. If you live for other things and then you die, you don't have those things anymore. And that's why so many people in the world are not following the Lord, don't want to think about death and are afraid of dying and the most horrible thing in the world.

Sometimes it isn't a better process. Okay, so you're telling me that the path of being a Christian and being a disciple, it's going to be painful. It's going to hurt. So what is the reward? What are the fruits that I'm going to get out of this? The fruits of righteousness are this love.

our highest attainment is not being able to just receive all of God's gifts and blessings and love. Your highest attainment, yes, is to receive that. But to find that there is also this opening through you so that you almost become really a channel through which, like a river, the love of God flows through you and touches the lives of those around you.

Can you imagine yourself as perfect in love as Jesus Christ? Then you imagine that we're all going to be like that. We'll all be mature. We'll all be perfected in love. That's what's going to make heaven. Heaven. So Paul says, I'm confident of this very thing, that he who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion.

God's view of joy through the pen of a prisoner. We'll see. The Apostle Paul had much to say about joy while he was sitting in a damp, dark prison cell.

Wesley described the Christian in the phrase without ceasing. His heart is ever lifted up to God at all times and in all places. In this he is never hindered. God is in all of his thoughts. He walks with God continually, having the loving eye of his mind still fixed upon him and everywhere in all places, seeing him who is invisible, spreading, who sees all of his people coming down before the king.