Author: lamkhanh

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.” John 6:5-6 (NIV)

Do you remember the story of Jesus feeding 5,000 people with only five loaves of bread and two fish? I think it’s amazing that, out of 5,000 people, it seems only one person brought a lunch. I’m thinking a lot of people were hiding picnic baskets under their robes because they didn’t want to share with anybody else.

But one little boy offered the bread and fish he packed for his lunch. He gave Jesus what little he had, and God used it to not just feed a lot of people but also to show them how much he cares and how powerful he is.

God always starts with what you have. You may not have much time. Your assets may not be worth much. You may not think you have much talent.

But you can give God everything in your life. Give him your heart. Give him your attention. Give him your past, present, and future. Give him your offering. It may not be much, but you can give him your five loaves and two fish.

In John 6:5-6 Jesus asks, “‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’ He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do” (NIV).

Jesus wasn’t worried about how to feed 5,000 people. He already had in mind what he was going to do. He saw the need long before the disciples did—and he had a plan.

You need to understand this truth today: God always has the answer before you even know the problem. God is not worried about your unsolvable problem. It’s not too late in the day for Jesus. He saw your problem long before you did. He knew it was coming, and he already had a plan for it. God knows the solution to your problem before you even recognize it’s a problem!

So why are you worrying? Just admit you have a problem you can’t solve on your own, and then give God everything you have. Watch him take your loaves and fish and turn them into a feast.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.”  Colossians 2:7 (NLT)

God wants you to focus on growing, sowing, and going in faith.

First, God wants you to grow in faith. He doesn’t want you to be a spiritual baby. The Bible says in Colossians 2:7: “Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness” (NLT).

God also wants you to sow in faith. He wants you to learn to become generous—because you cannot become like Christ without becoming generous. The Bible says, “Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously” (2 Corinthians 9:6 NIV).

This is the law of sowing and reaping, and it’s true in every area of life. If you sow criticism, you’re going to reap criticism. If you sow love, you’ll reap love. If you sow kindness, you will reap kindness. And you always reap more than you sow. When you plant one corn kernel in the ground, you don’t get one kernel back. You get a whole stalk. You always get back more—positive or negative—of what you put out in life.

Then, God wants you to go in faith.

Hebrews 11:8 says, “It was by faith Abraham obeyed God’s call to go to another place God promised to give him. He left his own country, not knowing where he was to go” (NCV).

Would you do that? Abraham was in his retirement phase, just about to hang it up and settle down. Then God told him to dust himself off and get ready for the greatest journey of Abraham’s life. When you live by faith, it often involves going to places you were never planning to go.

Why is it so important for you to develop your faith? The Bible explains it over and over again:

“Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Hebrews 11:6 NIV).

“Let it be done for you according to your faith” (Matthew 9:29 CSB).

“Anything that is not done in faith is sin” (Romans 14:23 GW).

Everything God does in your life is done by his grace and through your faith.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.”  2 Corinthians 4:8-9 (NLT)

Faith is a powerful force. It unlocks the promises of God. It shows us the power of God. It turns dreams into reality. And it gives us the power to hold on in tough times.

God doesn’t always take you out of the problem. He stretches your faith by taking you through the problem. He doesn’t always take away the pain. He gives you faith-filled ability to handle the pain. And God doesn’t always take you out of the storm, because he wants you to trust him in the middle of the storm.

I remember reading the stories of Corrie ten Boom, a young Dutch Christian who helped many Jews escape the Holocaust before being sent to Nazi concentration camps. After World War II ended, she said that the people who lived through those camps were those who had the deepest faith. Why? Because faith gives you the power to hold on in tough times. It produces persistence.

Study after study has shown that probably the most important characteristic you could teach a child (and that you need in your own life) is resilience. It’s the ability to bounce back and keep going.

Nobody goes through life with an unbroken chain of successes. Everybody has failures and mistakes. We all embarrass ourselves. We all have pain. We all have problems. We all have pressures. The people who make it in life have resilience.

Where do you get the resilience to keep going? Faith. It’s believing God could do something at any moment that could change the direction of your life—and you don’t want to miss it, so you keep moving forward. It’s believing that God will give you exactly what you need when you need it as you learn to rely on him to accomplish his purpose in you.

This is the testimony of Paul, a great man of faith: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NLT).

Paul learned resilience through troubles that could have crushed him. His faith helped him to get up when he got knocked down—and your faith can do that for you too.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes.”  Ephesians 3:20 (TLB)

Through faith, God-given dreams become reality. Nothing happens until dreams and faith start working together!

The Bible is full of people who had God-given dreams. Abraham dreamed of being the father of a great nation. Moses dreamed of setting God’s people free. Joseph dreamed of saving a nation and his own family. Throughout Scripture, all kinds of people were inspiring dreamers, including Daniel, Esther, and Paul.

Ephesians 3:20 says, “Glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes” (TLB).

Now, if there were ever a “blank check” verse in the Bible, that’s it. God is able to do far more than you would dare to ask. What are you afraid to ask God for? He can do so much more than you can even dream of.

I don’t know about you, but I’m a pretty big dreamer. However, dreams are nothing compared to what God has planned for my life. It’s as if God says, “Rick, think of the greatest thing you could ever dream of, the greatest thing you think I could do in your life. Guess what? I can top that.”

If you were to cry when you arrived in heaven, those tears would simply be for all the things you could have done if you had just believed God a little bit more. To me that would be hell—being shown everything I could have accomplished and become as a husband, father, and pastor if I had just believed God a little bit more.

But there aren’t any tears in heaven, and God gives you everything you need right now to accomplish what he has planned for you. So dream big about your relationships, marriage, family, and career. Your faith can turn those dreams into reality.

God is able to do far more than you would dare to ask or even dream of.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith.”  Mark 11:22-24 (CEV)

Faith opens the door to miracles. If you study the Bible and history, you’ll find that every time God moves on earth and does a miracle, it’s because somebody believes.

Jesus said in Mark 11:22-24, “Have faith in God! If you have faith in God and don’t doubt, you can tell this mountain to get up and jump into the sea, and it will. Everything you ask for in prayer will be yours, if you only have faith” (CEV).

Faith can move mountains!

God has set up the universe in a hierarchy of laws. The law of faith is actually higher than the laws of nature. That’s where miracles come in. When someone has faith, the law of faith goes into practice and can actually do more than the laws of nature. The law of faith makes miracles happen.

Does God still perform miracles today? Of course he does. Every time you stretch your faith, God does miracles—every single time.

You might think that, of all the places Jesus went, the people in his hometown would be most open to him and his power. But Matthew 13:58 says, “[Jesus] did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith” (NIV). Jesus may have wanted to do the most amazing things there. But because they were offended, not moved to faith, they didn’t get to see the miracle.

What mountain in your life needs to be moved? What’s the thing that seems like it can never change? Maybe God wants your faith to supersede the laws of nature to move that mountain.

God is in the mountain-moving business. He has moved them in the past. He is moving them today all around the world. Do not doubt or underestimate what he wants to do in your life too.

You might say, “I don’t see many miracles in my life.” Are you looking with eyes of fear, or are you looking with eyes of faith?

Let this be the year when you see faith open the door to miracles.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Lord, take notice of the threats they have made, and allow us, your servants, to speak your message with all boldness.”  Acts 4:29 (GNT)

We all have fears. Too often, though, we let them rule over our lives; we let them stop us from taking a stand for what we know God wants us to do.

Like Daniel standing in the lion’s den, we face people and situations that threaten to destroy us and our witness for Christ. But we have a choice: Will we succumb to our fears, or will we stand up for God in spite of those fears?

If you want to overcome the fears that are dragging you down, you need to clearly understand the benefits of choosing to stand up for what God wants.

Most importantly, you need to see that doing what God wants you to do is a clear victory over the fear in your life.

Because fear grows. Every time you give in to a fear, it becomes more intense.

Fear grows every time you refuse to do what God wants you to do. Eventually, you’ll feel cornered.

So what do you do?

Follow the lead of early Christians. We’re certainly not the first generation of Christians to face fear. Early believers faced all kinds of persecution. The book of Acts shows us a bit about how they stood up to fear. As Peter and John proclaimed Jesus boldly in Acts 4, they came up against fierce opposition.

So they prayed, “Lord, take notice of the threats they have made, and allow us, your servants, to speak your message with all boldness” (Acts 4:29 GNT).

The answer to your fear isn’t to give in to it. It’s to move forward boldly in spite of it. You stand up to the fear. Fear doesn’t respond to logic, so your only chance to get rid of a fear is to trust God and face the fear.

Never, ever forget this: God won’t part the water in front of you until you take your first step (see how God did this for Elijah and Elisha in 2 Kings 2:8). You take a step of faith, and then God shows you the path. That won’t happen if you stand wrapped up in your fear.

Take a step in faith today, and watch fear crumble in the process as God guides your steps.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.” Matthew 6:15 (GNT)

If you are unwilling to forgive someone and you don’t want God to forgive them either, that reveals bitterness and resentment in your life.

If you want someone else to be punished but you expect forgiveness for the bad things you’ve done, you’ll just make yourself miserable. You’re not hurting them; you’re only hurting yourself.

Jesus said, “If you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done” (Matthew 6:15 GNT).

Forgiveness involves your past, present, and future:

• God has forgiven you multiple times in the past.
• Lack of forgiveness will make you miserable today.
• You will need God’s forgiveness in the future.

Consider Jonah. After he warned the people of Nineveh about God’s judgment, they repented, so God forgave them and didn’t punish them. This disappointed Jonah and made him bitter.

But remember how Jonah originally turned away from God? He wanted God’s forgiveness for his own sin of disobeying. Yet he didn’t want God to forgive the Ninevites.

So Jonah prayed, “I knew that you are a loving and merciful God, always patient, always kind, and always ready to change your mind and not punish. Now then, LORD, let me die. I am better off dead than alive” (Jonah 4:2-3 GNT).

Jonah’s resentment was only hurting himself. The Ninevites were enjoying the grace of God while Jonah was wallowing in self-pity.

It’s critical that you forgive anyone from your past who has hurt you—and that you forgive anyone who wrongs you today. Why? Because God has forgiven you for your past sins, and he has promised to forgive you in the future.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 NIV).

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“The Lord . . . is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.”  2 Peter 3:9 (NLT)

God only uses imperfect, broken people. If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done because perfect people don’t exist!

If you’re willing to be used by God, he will use you. No matter what you’ve done in the past, your mission hasn’t changed.

Jonah was an ordinary guy who didn’t want to do what God told him to do. Yet God gave him another chance, and he eventually did what he’d been called to do. But even as he obeyed God, Jonah carried out his assignment with a bad attitude. Yet God still used him.

God gave Jonah a seven-word sermon: “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed!” (Jonah 3:4 GNT). That simple message led to one of the largest spiritual revivals in history. A huge city humbly turned to God. It’s really a bigger miracle than getting Jonah out of the belly of a big fish.

God used this imperfect, reluctant prophet to lead an incredible revival.

God was patient with Jonah and never gave up on him. God won’t give up on you either.

The Bible says, “The Lord . . . is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent” (2 Peter 3:9 NLT).

If you wake up tomorrow morning, it means God is giving you one more day—another opportunity—to fulfill your mission.

Expect God to use you. And he will.

By Rick Warren – Source: nhulieuthanhkinh.com

“Jonah obeyed the LORD and went to Nineveh. The city was so big that it took three days just to walk through it. After walking for a day, Jonah warned the people, ‘Forty days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed!’”  Jonah 3:3-4 (CEV)

When God sent Jonah to Nineveh, his mission was to warn the people about the severe consequences for their disobedience. God wanted them to know that his judgment was near, but that they still had a chance to repent and obey him.

God wanted to give the people of Nineveh a second chance.

But he had to give Jonah a second chance, too, because the prophet ended up fleeing from God’s mission and sitting in a big fish. Once God rescued him, the Bible says, “Jonah obeyed the Lord and went to Nineveh. The city was so big that it took three days just to walk through it. After walking for a day, Jonah warned the people, ‘Forty days from now, Nineveh will be destroyed!’” (Jonah 3:3-4 CEV).

A warning is cautionary advice about a danger, trap, or problem. And God sometimes brings people into our lives to warn us because we’re not listening to God’s warning.

More than 100 verses in the New Testament tell us to warn others. It’s part of our responsibility as followers of Jesus.

In Acts 20:31, Paul writes: “Remember that for three years I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears” (NIV).

Notice that Paul says he warned the Ephesians “with tears.” Why did he cry as he warned them? Because he loved them!

God gives all believers the ministry of warning others. When you warn someone, it shows that you love God and love that person. For instance, if you knew a bridge was out and you saw someone driving toward it at 50 miles per hour, the loving thing to do would be to warn them.

If you love the people in your life, you will warn them of the consequences of their unwise actions or decisions—because a godly warning is an act of love.