Want to live with real courage? Choose Love instead of Hate. To hate takes little effort. To Love takes remembering you are no better than the person next to you. Seek to build one another. Pastor Daniella

The Power of Surrender As a kid, did you ever try taking on a task that was larger than you were? You decided to carry milk from the refrigerator to the table, never mind that the milk weighed more than you did. Did you jump from a height that in all reality was much taller than you thought it at first? What about deciding that you would get dressed without the aid of an adult, and upon presenting yourself you quickly learned that your shirt was inside out and backward, and your shoes were on the wrong feet? All of these are simple feats that we tried to surmount on our own, but have you ever thought how many tasks you take on as a believer that you should have offered to Jesus first? I know I am acutely aware of this very fact. Why? I don't enjoy it when life seems out of control. Okay, overstatement...but in desperation for normality and stability in my life, I have often taken on tasks that far outreach my ability to surmount them. Although John 15:5 tells me that if I try to live a life without Jesus I am nothing, I have still tried to somehow prove that I am the exception to this statement. In every attempt, my self-made solution has crumbled beneath my feet. Through this, I am learning a life lesson. We are to offer Jesus not only every situation in our life, but allow ourselves to be stretched even further by offering Him the first thought on every situation in our life. Have you ever found yourself about nine steps into trying to solve something, meeting up with a dead end, and thinking, "Well, I guess I could pray about it." I know I have. I am trying to allow myself to stop my natural thinking and instead heed what Jesus is warning me about...my efforts are not going to produce fruit if I don't first offer my initial thinking on the matter to Him. Not the easiest for a driven person to consider, but none-the-less, a lesson I am better off for learning. "Be still and know that I am God", another time in the Bible that I am told that it is better to have just waited, let God be the Lord of my situation, and then allow Him to guide me. When I first tried to start implementing this into my life, I honestly thought I was going to go stir crazy. I kept thinking, "What good does it do to wait upon the Lord, there are things that need to be done." But, as I started to see the fruit of this sacrifice I was offering Him in my life, I started to see why it is that He requests this of us. Jesus is not an egomaniac. He does not make a request of us that is somehow self-serving, instead it serves to deliver something to us. We are shown peace through surrender of every situation in our lives. We are allowed in surrender, to taste what it is that He had here on Earth with His Father in Heaven. Jesus tells us in John 5:19 that He does nothing without the Father. If we are hoping to have peace here on Earth, where evil runs rampant, then we must finally come to a position of understanding that there is power in our surrender to the Lord, not impotence. Pastor Daniella

Aren’t there times in your life when you wish you could see the entire staircase prior to taking the first step? I know that I have often wished this of life. Yet in this lifetime, we are called to start seeing with the “eyes” of the Lord long before we start seeing with our eyes. My daughter was given an acting instruction recently in her drama class. They asked her to see if she could quickly familiarize herself with a particular room and then once blindfolded be able to perform a couple of simple tasks within that space. At the completion of the exercise she said that she was taken back at how quickly her other senses had become the master control of her mind, rather than her site. I would like to use this exercise to as life application for us. We are being challenge in life to learn how to live more out of what the Bible shows us to be more trustworthy senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises to us, His Love for us…than we do the situational evidence that all is going to work out for the betterment of us. I have spoken many times of the difficulties that anxiety has inflicted in my life. When difficulties present themselves I used to go pieces over the matter. I am learning, through the Grace of God, that I don’t have to lose Peace just because I can’t SEE how a situation will in fact work out. Instead, I am learning to ignore what my sight tells me and instead trust my other senses: Faith, Hope, His Promises, His Love. Trusting well before there is evidence to the matter---not the easiest thing I have worked on in life, but I continue to strive to apply it better daily. I am learning that the less I feed my fears and anxieties, their reign within my heart dwindles. I am a work in progress, but aren’t we all. God be praised for all He does for each of us! I pray this message is anointed to help you this evening. Pastor Daniella

Yesterday I shared something that I have been learning in life concerning Peace. I spoke of the fact that so many of us have grown up believing that Peace is more situational than it is a state of allowing Christ to work in us.  

My life growing up was so utterly filled with anxiety. Anxiety was as close to me as my skin, oddly enough…almost a “trusted friend” at points.  As long as I was feeling anxiety over a matter I felt I was somehow “prepared” for what life would throw my way.  But anxiety is a leach and after a while I became mentally anemic.  I had nothing more to give to anxiety. The slightest trouble would enter into my temporary peaceful state and I would fall to pieces over it.  I became desperate for a change within me.  Broken hearted, fear filled, and uncertain where Peace would take me I decided I afford nothing less but to step out and see where it led me.

When I stepped out, I started a very slow process of adapting my thinking to coincide with Peace filled thoughts rather than anxiety driven fear.  When trouble presented itself I started to question myself if I was viewing the difficulty through Perspective or through Fear.  This questions many times allowed me the moments I needed to collect myself and in order to remind myself that I wanted Peace more than I wanted anxiety.  Once I was calmer I would literally say out loud, “Perspective, Daniella, Perspective.  What is actually going on here? See the situation for what it is rather than what your anxiety wants to build it in to.”  Perspective rendered many situations powerfulness, and prompted me to see that the more that I started to see Peace for what it is, a doorway to the love that Jesus had for me, the more found that my stability is based in Jesus and all the power that He holds, not in situations.

I found that I needed to find ways to overcome the anxiety that sought to capture the first few minutes or hour prior to a difficulty presenting itself to me. 

It was here that I started learning to apply a series of small quotes. Scriptures from the Bible that reassured me that I was never beyond the Love of Christ. Quotes that empowered me to remember nothing is beyond the Lord’s control. Because many times, when difficult times present themselves to us, we lose start letting our trust that Jesus does honestly love us, or that God isn’t really going to hold up His statement that He never gives us more than we can handle.  Finding ways to quickly harness those insecure thoughts helps greatly in the battle to against anxiety.  We can control what we allow ourselves to “digest” as valid information and when we are start to feel the onset of thoughts that tells us that God stops loving us, we need to see those for the lie they are. But the longer you allow Peace to reign within your thoughts, the more you will find it is a trusted friend like none other.  The Lord Jesus Christ seeks to lift our heads.  It is in His eyes that we see the love that we’ve all been desperate to find and it is through his love that we will finally find a Peace so utterly irresistible that anything less becomes powerless against us.

I continue in my journey with the Lord daily. His love is slowly piecing together a heart that had never truly tasted Peace, but due to His patience with me…. I can’t imagine life without Peace now. It is a daily fight to keep my eyes more focused on the Peace of Christ than anything else presenting itself in my life, but I never again want to return to the grips of anxiety.   “He that has been set Free is Free indeed” (John 8:36)  May this be of a blessing to you, my friends.  Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Peace seems an allusive friend throughout most of life, doesn’t it? What seemingly sets out to be a peaceful day seems to quickly unravel at the onset of frustrating circumstances. For years, I would live in such temporary peace. I felt as if I were on a roller coaster. As long as life’s circumstances were meeting my expectations, I felt at Peace, but the moment that a situation presented itself less than ideal, I would feel my Peace take a down turn. It took me many years to start seeing that I was living with a mindset that Peace was circumstantially based. When I first came to this reality, I almost argued with myself on the matter. I honestly didn’t see why circumstantial peace was such a bad idea. After all, when frustrating circumstances are taking place in life, aren’t we supposed to react to them? I mean, this is all that I had ever seen emulated, so to think anything less than that was a foreign thought. I then started to be led by God to see what His Peace looks like. I started to understand that Peace from Jesus wasn’t anchored in anything to do with my circumstances meeting up with my expectations, but more rather it was anchored in the love that He has for me. Tomorrow, I will speak on how I started learning to apply the Peace of Christ to the difficult situations of my life. Until then, I pray you have a blessed evening. Pastor Daniella

I feel that so many of us are faced with daily obstacles that seemingly create such an utter impasse in their presence that we start to feel the fabric of our dreams unraveling. I know even in my own life, daily bombardments of discouragement can feel an ever present stumbling block. Yet I have seen how imperative it is to fight back against these discouragements. I think that often, our inner being starts to convince us that IF we would just get in to agreement with the discouragement more than we are in agreement with our dreams that life would become easier. While this thought might give a temporary, at best, reprieve to the fight you feel within to stay positive, do you realize what you are giving up when you agree with discouragement? You leave in your wake your dreams. To live in belief that your dreams will in fact come to fruition is not easy. Honestly, it’s not. Each of us that have dreams deeply imbedded with our hearts are in a constant battle to look more at the trust that God will bring them about than our current realities. But really, when you allow yourself to step back from this struggle long enough to assess if you are truly willing to GIVE UP… I think most of us would objectively answer---“NO!” Every one of us is afforded the chance to refuse discouragement entry into our thinking. The next time you are facing discouragement, please take a minute to ask yourself if you truly want to allow the words spoken or the actions taken entry in to your thinking. Ask yourself if the statement the person made, or the action done towards you has warrant in your life or not. Ask yourself if you are honestly willing to give up on a dream that has meant so much to you in life… all for the sake of another person’s opinion over you. I think that when we allow ourselves permission to see question the true weight of the discouragement in our lives, we start understanding that we in fact aren’t willing to give up. We start seeing that we are in fact more determined to move forward. We being to give more validity to the dream than we do the discouragement. I pray this is a blessing to you in your life this evening. Pastor Daniella

For tonight, I wanted to share a scripture that I enjoy taking comfort in. I pray your evening is blessed. Pastor Daniella Here’s the scripture… Psalm 34 (New Living Translation) I will praise the Lord at all times. I will constantly speak his praises. I will boast only in the Lord; let all who are helpless take heart. Come, let us tell of the Lord’s greatness; let us exalt his name together. I prayed to the Lord, and he answered me. He freed me from all my fears. Those who look to him for help will be radiant with joy; no shadow of shame will darken their faces. In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; he saved me from all my troubles. For the angel of the Lord is a guard; he surrounds and defends all who fear him.

Fear sees the obstacles that block the path before you. Faith sees the Lord that makes straight your paths.

Many times in life, we are greatly tempted to focus more on the reasons why something can’t happen than why the can happen.  God is GOOD and if the dream that lives within you has been placed there by Jesus, then it is His utter desire to bring this dream about in your life.

Often times, we are easily distracted by the frustrations that arise within the journey to our dreams.  We start out in the journey towards the coming true, with a belly full of hope. Commitment, assurance, and trust seem in ample supply, but before too long, we come across our first seemingly impassable and it is here, that many a dreamer abandons their belief.  The times when we should be digging deep within the Lord’s strength, we instead become fixated on the difficulty or discouragement. 

My conviction here is not to point fingers at you, more rather encourage you.  I too have felt victim to such a thought.  I too abandoned a dream long ago.  I know how convincing the obstacles and discouragement can seem.  I write this blog tonight and offer the encouragement with you that I wish someone had given me when I was struggling to keep my eyes more on the Lord than the obstacles that stood in my way. 

The obstacles before you is merely a distraction, no more.  Please be willing to stay focused in your Faith.  If you are currently feeling your Faith waiver, please do not be ashamed to offer that to Jesus. He desires so greatly to offer encouragement and strengthening to you in your struggle. After you’ve made such a prayer, please be willing to find a way to allow yourself some peaceful time to receive what Jesus will offer you. The Holy Spirit connects with us daily, but we have to calm our Spirit enough to be witnessed to.  If your schedule looks as many people do…busy, busy… I offer this suggestion.  Right before you go to bed at night, stand or sit at your bedside and just allow quiet to wash over you.  Give those minutes to God. Don’t allow a recapping of all that is wrong with that day, but instead, just allow yourself to live present in the moment knowing that you are loved by God and His utter desire is to see the dreams that He’s planted within you come about. 

I have picked up my abandoned dream that I spoke of, and I am more committed to it now than I was before.  The suggestions I just made are ones that I implemented in to my life in order that I started learning to feed my FAITH more than I did my FEAR.  I pray this is of benefit to your lives this evening.  I wish each of you the best in your journey with our Loving Lord Jesus.

 Pastor Daniella https://twitter.com/PastorDaniella  http://pastordaniellaministries.weebly.com

   

Life's pains will always strive to talk louder than your Faith does, but we are called to walk by FAITH, not Pain. May God be the strength you are seeking in this time of trouble. We truly do serve a God who seeks to empower you daily. Never let the pain in your life blind you to just how amazing His love truly is. Pastor Daniella https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

Many of us have had very difficult situations to overcome in life. If each of you were to write to me about some of the most painful events in your life, I would receive an array of utter devastation that each that you have faced. Yet underlying to each would be the footprints of pain that now walk the halls of your heart. Pain meant to tie your every thought to the worst of life. I understand pain linked to difficult events. The footsteps of my painful past ran a regular pathway through my thinking. I became imprisoned by the pains of what life had offered. Then the Lord started opening my heart to see how I had allowed my thinking to become altered by the pain. Where faith had been the strongest emotion in my life, I had allowed pain to become dominate. Where hope had readily sprang from my heart, I had allowed fear of being hurt again to reign. It starts slowly, these changes…I had allowed Fear to start speaking louder than my Faith was…and I had started listening to it more than I was the comforting love of my Lord Jesus Christ. Many of us fall into this cycle of thinking. We don’t mean to allow this to take place, but it does. God started helping me to understand that the Fear is a natural temptation of life, but it didn’t have to be something that I gave in to. But if I started spending more time staring at Him than I did my past pains, I would start gaining an inner strength that I would be able to use to fight against those temptations of fear. God was right. Honestly, I have to fight down painful thoughts over my past, but I do live now in a freedom that I had not been experiencing prior. The painful things of my past happened, there is nothing I can do to change that fact, but what I can do, and am doing in the STRENGTH of Christ, is learning that His love in my life is far greater than that pain ever was. I will never truly be able to express to the Lord how grateful I am for this experience with Him, but I will do my BEST in life to continue to share with you all the utter love that is available in Jesus Christ for those of us that have been broken in life due to any number of reasons. For each of you, I wish only that your journey with Christ can become one that starts touching the freedoms that are available in the Love of Jesus. Pastor Daniella

Fear Devours, Faith Empowers. Each of us is waiting for amazing things to take place in our lives. Yet at many a corner it seems that Fear and anxiety are the only thing that awaits us. We aren’t going to be able to see the path that leads ALL the way to the day that our dreams take place, but what we can do is KNOW that our dreams are in fact going to come true and work greatly to stay in Faith. The Faith that it takes to stay positive that dreams are coming, even when all you seem to be faced is a reality that would tell you that you are the fool to be dreaming as you are, is faith that is exercised by CHOICE. Pray daily for the Holy Spirits empowerment of your Faith. Fear Devours your hopes, but Faith…will empower your dreams. May your dreams be empowered tonight! Pastor Daniella.

Never allow the words of the doubters in your life take residence within your heart. You will encounter many people in life that will not share the same dream for you as what has been placed in your heart. I think that many of us can easily be discouraged from our dreams when we look for other people’s opinions to give validity to the dreams housed within us. The trouble with this thinking lies in the fact that it is only God that we are to look to for validation in life. God is the author of your dreams. They reside inside your heart because He placed them there. He believes in you more than you do your own self. When you look to God for validation of your dreams, you are looking for the very ONE who authored them to be written across your heart. Allowing Him to be the fuel by which you set fire to your dreams, is to tap in to an endless well of support. May God be the fuel you are seeking for your dreams this evening. I wish you the very best. Pastor Daniella.

There are so many times in life where it feels that our human will and the will of the Lord Jesus Christ have come to an impasse. The will we were born with seeks to rush forward in order that quick resolution is made of any difficulty we are facing. The will of Jesus, doesn’t always align itself with us. It is in these times that many of us have to cling to the belief that when we yield our will to the Lord we are actually opening up doors for Him to further in our lives. One of the worst parts of this yielding is the waiting period. That period of time where you are yielding and yet you seem not to be seeing any results from your actions. When you are feeling yourself begin to question the Lord’s commitment to resolve situations in your life…when you are feeling yourself begin to worry more than trust...please keep your head up and involve Jesus. Don’t feel that you have to place a false face of bravery on for Him. Involving Jesus means that you share with him all the troubles you are facing, where you are beginning to feel yourself fail, and how you need Him. We are loved more than we truly understand, by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the lifter of our heads. Allow Him in. Pastor Daniella.

 I know that it is a daily struggle to believe for the best. 

Each of us is living with circumstances in our lives that can, if focused on long enough, steal our sense of Hope so quickly. I cannot encourage you more to please, hold on tight to hope.  

I grew up in a home that was being such dry of hope daily.  A loss of hope is one of the most astoundingly large black holes.  Many times in life, hope is not a product of your current circumstances.  In fact, many times in life...Hope is a result of a deliberate decision that you fill yourself with.  I often say that hope is what we choose because we have decided that nothing less with do.

If you are someone struggling with great difficulty to hold on to hope, please first of all do not feel you are the one this happens to.  Secondly, know that holding on to you hope is very important.  Getting in to agreement with doubt is not the answer.  Doubt is not a merciful thought.  Doubt will seek to break not only your hope but to utterly deplete your life of anything that you could use as fuel to start hoping again.  

What steps can you take to hold on to the of hope that you do have right now? Above all, involve Jesus Christ...ask him for the help you need and that he would bless the steps you are taking in order to keep your hope alive. 

• Set in your mind that you will not allow loss of hope to be an option. Decide that nothing less than Hope will be something that you will accept from yourself.
• Try your best to listen to that quiet voice within you telling you that you are right to keep hope for better things to come.
• Each time you start to feel the urge to doubt remind yourself that you have the power to choose what you thoughts you entertain.  
• Find inspirational things that breed hope within you.  

ideas: 

Read scriptures that give you cause to believe that God is more than in control of your life and loves you.

Find music that moves you to believe in the good that is to come to your life.

Read books about astonishing things that people have overcome.

Place words around your house that inspire you.

Find a need that is not being filled in your community and try to fill that need. (volunteer work is very empowering to the soul)

Please remember, hope often times is a choice.  Yet to live with hope is one of the greatest gifts we have as believers.  Jesus Christ is so merciful to give us the ability to hope. 

I pray blessings in to your life. 

Pastor Daniella 

Follow me on Twitter: https://Twitter.com/PastorDaniella

http://pastordaniellaministries.blogspot.com

                       

Jesus Christ knows where your heart is at tonight. He is such powerful love. He knows if you are struggling to place faith before fear. He knows if one is winning the battle over the other. Please, if fear is winning this evening, don’t allow it to be what keeps you from praying to Him tonight. Not sure where to start talking to Him tonight? Maybe just start by asking Him to help you start seeing all the ways that He loves you. Try maybe asking Him to be the sustainer of your Faith as you stumble your way in to His arms of Grace. No matter where you are in life, you are NEVER beyond the Love of Jesus Christ….NEVER! I know life can be a struggle, but the struggle does not have to be fought alone. Please allow yourself to start involving Jesus Christ—He honestly does love you and seek to Lift you, not harm you. Pastor Daniella.

So many of us can easily be misled in to thinking that we must FEEL something in order for validity to be assigned. This thinking does serve its purpose at points. I know as a performer, my choices as to what songs to do were often based upon whether I “FELT” them or not. I don’t just want to sing a song, I want feel an emotional journey with it and in turn perform it. Yet early on in life, I started applying the this need to “feel” everything. At first, you might think this idea of mine wasn’t faulted, yet let me purpose a question for you. Have your feelings ever mislead you? Relationships turned sour that you never felt would end, impulsive purchases, off the cuff comments birthed out of feelings of frustration that in turn ended a friendship…each of these and more could be a prompting for your memory to conjure up examples of why feelings can mislead us. I remember early in my walk with Jesus, I started to understand that Jesus Christ knew how fleeting, misleading, and volatile feelings of a human can be. When I saw this, I began to comprehend that Jesus wouldn’t want to use such a temporary medium as feelings in order to paint his presence in our lives. If Jesus’ love, faithfulness, comfort, mercy…. were dependent upon my “feeling” them…my relationship with Jesus would be very tumultuous, a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Jesus Christ is offering stability to our lives. Something that many of us have thirsted after for years. Through his stability, we are offered permanent love. Not love based on whether Jesus Christ “feels” something, but instead based on the FACT that HE IS LOVE--His very nature can be nothing less. The validity of Christ’s presences in our lives has nothing to do with our feelings and EVERTHING to do with His promise to never leave us—His Faithfulness—His devotion—His Life Giving Love. Our Feelings cannot be the fuel we seek in our relationship with Jesus Christ, due the fact of the frail nature. Instead, we must remember that it is He that is He who has given the validity to His love for us…Not our feelings. May God be the blessing you are seeking this evening. Pastor Daniella.

It is Jesus Christ, alone that gives our dreams wings. Instead of thinking that our dreams don't matter to Him, realize that He is actually the author of the belief that you hold within you for amazing things to take place in your life. He does care. In fact, He is impassioned with an absolute love for you and your life.

I know at times there can be such Fear that rises up within us towards the idea of continuing to place Faith in the idea that Jesus is in fact working in our life. With a feverish pace, this Fear can quickly overtake our Faith. I was thinking this evening though just WHO it is that we are placing our Faith in. When we are placing Faith in Jesus Christ, we are placing Faith in the One who….healed this sick, turned WATER to Wine, Saved the LIVES of everyone who has ever Lived, Is Living, or Will Live, the One Who spoke the World and the Universe in to existence…. I think that we quickly lose our sense of AWE in life, and in turn we can quickly forget just WHO it is that we are placing our Faith in. Tonight is a quick blog. I guess this idea has just been on my heart a bit today. We truly are blessed beyond all we could ever ask for, to be allowed to place Faith in such a Perfect Life Giving Jesus Christ. I pray your evening is full of Jesus’ comfort. In Christ, Pastor Daniella.