Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

Jesus deserves our wholehearted devotion because He is Lord.   When we follow and obey Jesus wholeheartedly, we may stand out from the rest, seem odd, or even fanatical to some.  But to please man before we please God leads to disaster.  If we regard our reputation more than the Lord, we are not wholehearted toward Him.  God looks at our hearts.  We may lose some friends along the way, maybe even some family.  But God is worthy of our absolute devotion, wholeheartedly, no matter what the outer circumstances. There is always a cost to following Jesus wholeheartedly, whether it be giving up something or someone that we want.  Or it could mean the death of our idea of what our life "should" look like.  But I don't think our outer, short-term reality matters as much to Jesus as our hearts do. We may think we are giving up too much, at a loss, if we give Jesus our absolute all.  But what we gain is so much more valuable, and it is eternal. We gain the very attributes of Christ

Did you ever wonder why certain thoughts pop into your mind?  Are you aware of the enemy's tactics in this realm? You may have heard that the battlefield is in the mind.  Our thoughts steer our actions, our lives. So as a Christian, it is crucial to know when a thought is a spiritual attack.  The enemy wants us to believe thoughts that mess with our identity.  But remember, he is crafty!  So it's not always so easy to discern.  He may even disguise himself as an angel of light (one of his guises) so that your thought may even seem "good." He takes God-given desires and needs and twists them so that we want to get them met outside of God's will.  That road leads to disaster and our destruction and the devil knows it! Now I much prefer focusing on the beauty of the Lord, and wish I could just ignore that the devil even exists.  But exist he does!  And once we are in Christ, he is truly our total enemy.   He wants to get us so caught up in the attack that we are alwa