FAITH CAPSULE: Distance from God is taking place not to meet the need. 

Psalm 150

Challenging needs is never above the power of God to meet needs.
With challenging needs, do not worry, avoid careless sleep, and keep seeking God.
Do not worry:
Jesus specifically warned against worrying in Matthew 6:25-27, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?  Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?” 
Are you with the burden of meeting challenging needs?
Are you worrying about not worshipping God?
Worrying will prompt one to question God wrongly instead of worshiping God.  
God is a good God to meet the need.
Avoid careless sleep:
One who is asleep will miscalculate the meeting of challenging needs.
Spiritually, to not sleep before God.
One that is asleep before God keeps self at a distance from God.
Psalm 13:3-4 mentions the danger of sleeping, “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God; enlighten my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed against him”; lest those who trouble me rejoice when I am moved.” 
Are you sleeping spiritually or physically? Be awake before God and not become a victim of lack.
Keep seeking God: 
Are your challenging needs keeping you far from God or close to God? 
In your time of challenges, keep close and not far from God by seeking God. Matthew 6:33-34 encourages, “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” 
Are you giving up on seeking God in your challenges? 
Seek God diligently.
Deuteronomy 4:29 records, “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.”  
Seeking God with all heart and soul keeps the focus on God regardless of challenging needs.
The Lost Son was far from God but discovered the need to return to God like the prodigal Son. 
Luke 15:17 states, “When the prodigal son came to himself…” 
The Lost son recognized his distance from his father to repent and return to his father.
Why don’t you rise and begin to cry for the mercy of God to draw you to Himself and not be a victim of wandering into the far from God?
To be far from God is a position to be missing of meeting needs before God. 

Prayer for today: Give thanks for what He has done, what He is doing, and what He will do.

FAITH CAPSULE: Seek God diligently in His way to find Him.

Isaiah 51

Living life is to seek God diligently.
Matthew 6:33 states, “…But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” 
In this wicked world, seek God by serving God to dwell and abide in God. 
Psalm 91:1-3 buttressed, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Highest Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.” Surely, He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and the perilous pestilence.” 
Seek God diligently in His way to find Him. 
Serving God is living life for God.
Seek God diligently by following righteousness. 
Isaiah 51:1 states, “Listen to Me, you who follow after righteousness, you who seek the Lord…” 
The world of wickedness demands giving oneself to the word of God. 
One who is not giving ear to hear will not gain an understanding of Him. Jeremiah 16:12 testified, “Each one follows the dictates of his own evil heart so that no one listens to Me.”
Seek God diligently by serving Him. 
Serving God is following Him with no hidden agenda because He knows all man. The word of God demands and declares what it means to follow Him. 
John 12:26, “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.” 
Give self to seeking God diligently to find God. 
Believe and know that if it is not possible to seek God diligently to find Him, He would not have asked all to seek Him diligently. 
One that follows God cannot walk in darkness  John 8:12 records, “He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life.” 
God is true. 
Seek God diligently to find Him. 
David was a man like us and a sought-after God. 
1 Kings 14:8 testifies, “…My servant David, who kept My commandments and who followed Me with all his heart, to do only what was right in My eyes.” 
Is it your desire to seek God diligently, following His righteousness in His word? 
Unchanging changer God, yesterday, today, and forever once warned against not seeking to follow Him in 1 Kings 9:6-7, “But if you or your sons at all turn from following Me, and do not keep My commandments and My statutes which I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them; and this house which I have consecrated for My name I will cast out of My sight. Israel will be a proverb and a byword among all peoples.” 
Think and search who or what you have set before your way of living life outside of living life, following God. 

Prayer for today:Ask God to move you to seek Him diligently in the life He has given you.

FAITH CAPSULE: Give yourself to the word of God to become mindful of God. 

Psalm 8

Be MINDFUL of God, living life by the word of God.
The word of God is God. (John 1:1) 
One full of God (Word) will be MINDFUL of God.
Are you MINDFUL of God or MINDFUL of the world?
How can one who is not of God, the creator, be mindful of a  neighbor or family? 
Psalm 8:4 records the question of David before God, “What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him?” God is mindful of man, while man is mindful of the world.
Give yourself to the word of God to be mindful of God, not to become a victim of this wicked world.
Jeremiah 12:1-2 identifies one with a mouthful of the word of God with empty of God in the mind, “Righteous are You, O Lord when I plead with You; Yet let me talk with You about Your judgments. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why are those happy who deal so treacherously? You have planted them, yes, they have taken root; They grow, yes, they bear fruit. You are near in their mouth But far from their mind.” 
One with a mindless place for God will be living life as a wicked one before God.
There is nothing that goes under heaven that God does not see. 
God sees and will judge all at His appointed time.
Genesis 6:5-7 records that God recognized the wickedness of all, “Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. So the Lord said, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”
Are you mindful of God or mindful of the world?
Consider that it is time to come out of the world by giving yourself to the word of God.
Give oneself to the word of God to gain entrance into the reality of Christ.
Today, be responsible before God.
Responsibility is the price of greatness. It is for all to know the truth of God. 
John 8:32 records, “…And YOU shall know the truth, and the truth shall make YOU free.”  
It is the responsibility of all to study, search for His word, and know the truth of God.
Responsibility before God is not making the noise of the name of God without living for God.
Responsibility before God will not tell lies to deceive and manipulate others in the name of God. 
Responsibility is for one to become MINDFUL of God, living life by the word of God.

Prayer for today: Ask God to enable you to become full of Him by His word.

FAITH CAPSULES: What kind of a believer are you?

Kings 17

Are you answering as Christian but reduced, not living as Christ-like?
Acts 11:26 records that the DISCIPLES were first called Christians in Antioch.
Are the disciples the same today?
For example, James 5:17 states, “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. “
Elijah was a follower of God indeed, not a follower of God by the mouth.
Kings 17:1 records the character of a follower of God, “And Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, except at my word.”
Elijah lives for God to be qualified to stand and claim before God.
One that cannot stand to claim before God will live to fall, not stand when claiming before God. 
A pretender to stand in the name of God will fall.
Remember, the itinerant Jewish exorcists pretending earnestly in the place of praying (earnestly) fell into the hands of evil spirits.
Elijah prayed with the earnest character of one who stands to claim before God.
What does it mean to pray earnestly?
Pray with sincere and intense conviction.
PRAY WITH SINCERE:
Praying with heart, not just mouth as in empty noise.
PRAY WITH INTENSE CONVICTION:
Pray in trust and hope. For example, trust to come and pray to God but will come after prayer with doubt for the manifestation of prayer request before God. 
Before God, it is trust and hope to provoke the blessing of God, not just trust without hope. (Jeremiah 17:7)
Just like Elijah, Daniel made prayer as is custom and could not become a victim in the lions of the den. (Daniel 6:10)
His life of custom prayer was daily, going down on his knees three times daily.
Elijah demonstrates seeking God with all his heart and soul, which is seeking God diligently.
Deuteronomy 4:29 states, “But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul.” 
There is a difference between seeking God and seeking Him diligently.
Know to seek God diligently.
Romans 2:11 encourages all, “There is no partiality with God.”
Seek God diligently to find God.
PRAYER
Ask to be enabled to live life as His disciple that follows Him.
John 12:26 says, “If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me..”
Ask that you will serve God by following Him.
Ask that the spirit of God to be in prayer earnestly become your portion.
Ask for understanding and strength to pray with a sincere heart and intense conviction in seeking God.
Ask that seeking God in trust and hope becomes your way of life and that the blessing of God be your portion. (Jeremiah 17:7 testifies God blesses when one trust and hope)
Ask that having prayer as a custom becomes your way of life. 

FAITH CAPSULES: Keeping the testimonies of God to experience His blessing.

1Timothy 4

Know that the word of God is His command, His statutes, and is the testimony of God.
Living a God-given life is keeping His testimonies of God that provoke the blessings of God.
Expectation for the blessing of God demands keeping His testimony diligently.
The word of God speaks to all, “You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God, His testimonies, and His statutes which He has commanded you.” (Deuteronomy 6:17)
Let there be desire in you to experience the blessings of God.
Keeping the testimonies of God is seeking Him to receive His blessing.
What you keep in the word of God (testimony of God) is what you have received to become of you and position you for the blessings of God.
Psalm 119:2 encourages, “Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart!”
The promise of God does not return to God void.
Isaiah 55:11 testifies, “So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”
Living a God-given life, be encouraged in the word of God, and keep the word of God that does not return void.
It avoids the word of God not to claim the promise of God.
Keeping the testimonies of God will be meditating on the word of God.
Meditating is communicating with God so as not to miss His presence.
The word of God identifies keeping His testimonies in Joshua 1:8, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.”
Keeping God’s testimonies by meditating on His word is set to gain the blessing of God’s success.
In the life journey, give yourself to testimonies of God by meditating on His word continually.
The Bible identifies when you meditate on the word of God:
Psalm 77:6, “… I meditate within my heart, And my spirit makes diligent search.”
Psalm 77:12, “I will also meditate on all Your work, And talk of Your deeds.”
Psalm 145:5, “I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty, And on Your wondrous works.”
1 Timothy 4:15, “Meditate on these things; give yourself entirely to them, that your progress may be evident to all.”
The word of God is God.
The word of God is His command, His statutes are His testimonies, and one that will live life by keeping the word of God, meditating on the word of God will experience the blessings of God.
Keep the testimonies of God to experience the blessing of God.

Prayer for today: Ask God to enable you to keep His testimonies.