Become known by God.

May 15, 2021 Gaspar Anastasi

Finding significance in life, Success & victory

There is only one thing more important in life than knowing God, and that is God knowing you.

Matthew 7:21-23 records Jesus’ response to one of His self-proclaimed servants who said he had healed the sick, prophesied and cast out devils in His name. However, this person obviously never opened himself up to be known by God; because Jesus said, “I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!“

How scary is that! Yet, how many of us still have walls and barriers up in our lives that keep God from knowing us?

We put on our religious garb and act as though God and us are one, but in reality we never become transparent before Him. We never fully let the Lord into our inner world (our thoughts, feelings, disappointments, our fears, etc.). We have asked Him to be Savior, but we still haven’t given Him the freedom to be Lord in our lives. The problem is that we can’t have one without the other.

Take a moment out of your busy schedule and invite the Lord into your inner world today. Intentionally invite Him to invade your heart and all the secret places of your inner world. Then you will begin to experience true freedom. No longer keep God at arm’s distance. You can trust Him! He will never disappoint you. His love in you will change your whole outlook on life.

Make the choice to let Jesus know you. You will never regret it; but you will regret it if He doesn’t.

If this blog has been a blessing to you, please take a moment to comment below.

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The key to our nation’s greatness

April 24, 2021 Gaspar Anastasi

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Making positive change, Success & victory

The key to our nation’s greatness has been and always will be the strength and health of the family! I truly believe that the family is the cornerstone in the foundation of America’s preeminence.

The vision

I envision a time when once again we will see fathers and mothers who are committed to providing a healthy and loving atmosphere for their children—families where children are valued as gifts from God instead of excess baggage! The Lord’s heart aches (and so does mine) when I think about the 57 million babies we have aborted since 1973.

I envision a time when once again the dinner table will be a place where families bond with one another nightly, sharing their hearts; a place where godly values are passed down. The dinner table used to be the place where parents could connect with their kids, look into their eyes and discern how they were doing.

As the family goes…. so goes our nation!

Steps forward

Never before have the families of this nation been more under siege. The proof is seen in the number of broken marriages and fatherless or single-parent homes. There has been a redefining of marriage and many in our society mock and belittle family and marriage values. Children are being raised without the influence of Godly role models in their home or the media.

All of these factors and much more have led to a society overtaken by lawlessness, immorality and violence, especially in our younger generation.

WE MUST once again commit ourselves to action. Let’s put feet to our prayers and our rhetoric. Bring restoration to our families. We need to restore family values in our nation, one family at a time!

How to fight for our families:

Elect officials that stand for Judeo-Christian values.
Put your focus and attention on the needs of the precious gifts God has entrusted to you, your children. As mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, we must stop being selfish, thinking only about our own needs.
Turn to God, the Creator of all things. It’s time. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14)

As we rebuild the walls of protection and fight for our families, let’s remember Nehemiah. He had to confront a lot of opposition and distractions as he rebuilt the walls of the families of Jerusalem. But, he refused to be taken off his mission. In Nehemiah 6:3b he tells the enemy, “…..I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”

That should be the battle cry in our fight to rebuild our families, restoring this nation back to greatness once again: “We are putting family first. We are doing a great work and we can’t come down!”

If this blog has been a blessing to you, please take a moment to comment below.…

Time to put your foot on it

April 17, 2021 Gaspar Anastasi

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Getting past the past, Success & victory

If you think about it, you have probably experienced things through the years that actually reveal a pattern. Not only were these events similar, but they have impacted your life on a very deep level. They may have even gained some control over you.

These past events and circumstances create boundaries that limit our ability to serve God the way that He has called us to. We may not be happy about it, but as time goes on, many of us get used to the limitations. Sadly, we have come to just accept mediocrity as a way of life. I call it “living in the land of good enough”.

Good enough just isn’t

God has plans for your life that are beyond imagination (I Cor. 2:9). I’m here to tell you: It’s time to get out of the land of good enough! And the only way to do that is to put your foot on it! Take authority over the areas of your life that have hindered you from going any further in your walk with God.

Ephesians 1:22 & 23 put it this way: “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

Before we can take the first step of that journey, however, we need to identify the problem. It takes an awakening and stirring of our spirits to want to come out of the land of good enough. Desire to push past where you are today and make the maximum impact in life.

Trample the enemy

I pray that every one of us would recognize that it’s time to begin to step on the thing that once stepped on us. It’s time to exercise the dominion and authority that God has given to us. After all, He is the head and we are the body. And He has put all things under our feet. I repeat: It’s time to start walking on things that once walked on you!

“Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” (Luke 10:19)

In Joshua chapter 10, we read that Joshua sealed the cave where five enemy kings were hiding. He then brought out the kings and instructed his captains to put their foot on their necks. In other words, take dominion over them. “So it was, when they brought out those kings to Joshua, that Joshua called for all the men of Israel, and said to the captains of the men of war who went with him, ‘Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings.’ And they drew near and put their feet on their necks.” (Joshua 10:24)

This act is symbolic of God bringing the things that once controlled us to the forefront of our hearts and minds. He is delivering to us the enemy of our soul so that we can take authority over them.

Awaken your spirit

It’s time for us in the body of Christ to put past fears and defeats under our feet and walk in victory! We must go further in our walk with God than we have in the past. But it starts with an awakening of our spirit.

Secondly, we need an understanding of the authority and headship that God has given us.

Lastly, we must remember that Jesus already defeated the enemy. All we are doing is re-presenting Jesus and defeating our enemy in the power of His might. Today, I encourage you to put your foot on it! Don’t back down. Go forward!

If this blog has been a blessing to you, please take a moment to comment below.…

There’s no victory without a battle.

April 10, 2021 Gaspar Anastasi

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God's love, Relationship with God, Success & victory

Who doesn’t like to be comfortable? Nobody. While most of us believe God will comfort us, the question is “How?” I have noticed that most of us have a misconception about that. We think that God’s comfort means that we can totally avoid uncomfortable issues we face. Or that He will remove us when we find ourselves in trouble.

The God of comfort

Second Corinthians 1:3 & 4 says:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

The root of the word for comfort (parakaleo) in this New Testament scripture means “to call to one’s side; to encourage and to strengthen.” It never means to make it easy, take care of things for us or remove us from the struggle.

When we read “God of all comfort”, it means that God wants to see a number of things accomplished in our life. He is committed to walk with us. And He encourages us in and through tests just like He did for Meshach, Shadrach, and Abed-Nego. When they went into the fiery furnace, they didn’t get burned. But they did get a greater revelation of who God is!

The goal of trials

1. God wants us to know Him better and trust Him more. He uses the struggles we go through to accomplish that. Can you relate to that? I certainly can.

2. Godly character is developed in our lives to increase our influence in the world we live in….many more people would be drawn to Jesus because of us. John 12:32, “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”

3. When we go through our fiery furnaces with God, we will be prepared to glorify Him as overcomers and be equipped to face our future struggles and battles…leading to future greater victories.

So we need to settle in our hearts that something great will be accomplished in and through the daily struggles we face. It’s time to stop asking God to comfort us according to our misconceived notion of comfort. Instead of asking Him to take us out of our struggles we will pray that He comfort us by being with us in the struggles.

Oh yes. I almost forgot to mention another thing.

4. One way God promotes us in His kingdom is through the victories we win in battle.

Promotion on the way!

In other words, the struggle you face is proof that God is getting ready to promote you in His kingdom! The greater the struggle, the greater the promotion. Wow! That means some of us are on the verge of great promotions in God’s kingdom!

David proves my point. After he faced and killed his Goliath, he was promoted from shepherd boy to king over God’s people.

In conclusion, the struggle you face today is about the destiny of tomorrow. The bigger the struggle the more that’s at stake. The next time you ask God to comfort you, remember there’s no victory without a battle. Don’t circumvent your destiny by giving in to comfort.…

Believing is seen.

April 3, 2021 Gaspar Anastasi

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Success & victory

A paralyzed man had four friends who carried him on a mattress and let him down through the roof of a house where Jesus was preaching. Mark 2:5 makes an amazing statement: Jesus saw their faith. What did He see? The men took an extreme measure because they saw in their spirits healing for their sick friend—healing that did not yet exist in the natural.

Seeable faith

Jesus said: “…when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? (Luke 18:8)” Faith that can be seen is the kind of faith for which Jesus is returning.

Can I tell you that most believers do not operate in faith? They confess what they see, what they feel and what they hear; they complain and doubt. But they never step out into the unknown and show that they believe what God says is true.

Yet, nothing ever happens in the kingdom of God without you and me acting in faith. It took faith for the men to climb up onto the roof of the house carrying their friend. It took faith for the paralyzed man to believe they would not drop him on the way up. It took faith to risk looking foolish before all the people and to believe that Jesus would make their efforts worthwhile.

Embrace His promises

You need to embrace God’s promises for your personal life. However, you won’t know that you’ve embraced His promises until your faith can be seen, until you step out into the unknown realm. Faith is bringing the (unseen) heavenly realm down here into the (seen) earthly realm. Faith is the believer’s medium of exchange. Faith is the deed that buys you real estate in heaven.

When you have faith, you see with spirit eyes what can’t be seen naturally. But your faith becomes seen when you walk it out. As believers, we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. People who don’t walk in faith do not understand a faith walk. They criticize it; they make fun of it.

Walk, act, speak faith

If you are a believer, yet you base all your decisions on what you see with your eyes, you are deceived. Everything that is not of faith is sin.

You must learn to stand with God alone. As you walk it out, act it out, speak it out, God’s Word will not return void. It will produce fruit in your life.

You can’t expect the truth you receive in a Sunday service to sustain you. You must stay in the Word. Study to show yourself approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed (2 Timothy 2:15). Faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing… the Word of God.

Agree with the Father’s plans

Here’s another important point. Unless your faith is tied to the purposes and plans of God, it will never produce life for you. We may want things for ourselves, but it’s not to further the kingdom of God. Ask yourself: Why am I believing God for such-and-such? …Is this going to fulfill God’s purpose or just mine? He wants to heal you, but so that you can go out and give testimony to others, so they too can be healed.

Faith opens up your spiritual eyes to see, so you’re able to move in a dimension of great power. It’s like Elisha in 2 Kings 6, who saw by faith that the hills were filled with the host of heaven. He did not fear the natural enemies they faced (and neither did his servant once Elisha prayed for his spirit eyes to be opened). Elisha didn’t fear because he had already seen the outcome. If you HAVE faith, it becomes SEEN as you walk it out. If you can see it, you can have it!…

Refuting the 3 BIG LIES

March 27, 2021 Michele Anastasi

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Success & victory

LIE #1: I am what I do.

Every day, our culture fosters the belief that our value is based on what we do. However, the Bible says just the opposite. Our value is based—not on what we do, but—on whose we are!

Before Jesus performed a single miracle or did anything noteworthy, His heavenly Father said of Him: “This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased (Matthew 3:17).” He was well pleased simply because Jesus was His Son.

I’m so grateful that God’s love for me and you isn’t based on our performance. That’s a fact we each need to remind ourselves of several times a day. As children of God, He loves us just the way we are—the good, the bad and the ugly! Yet, churches are filled with people performing religious duties, longing to earn God’s love, acceptance and approval.

LIE #2: I am what others think about me.

People’s opinions can affect our behavior until we lose sight of who we really are. We end up burying the real us, the authentic us created by God, and we live a false identity.

We do everything we can to become who the important people in our lives think we should be. You and I may live a big lie, never truly satisfied and fulfilled. Living life based on other people’s expectations is stressful and sets us up for rejection and failure.

When each of us lives to impress other people, we behave like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. They performed rituals to gain honor among the people and to attract attention to themselves. How empty!

God’s opinion of you is the same as His opinion of His Son. You are His beloved son or daughter and He is well pleased with you. Whether or not you’ve done anything significant, His love for you is unshakeable.

LIE #3: I am what I own.

The American dream says that the more stuff I have, the more valuable and successful I am. In that case, the reverse is also true. If I don’t have the big house, two cars and the latest electronic bells and whistles I am an absolute failure, because our self-worth is based on outward appearances.

How to defeat these three lies:

Admit that you have been influenced by these three lies, but have the courage to resist them. Soak yourself daily in the knowledge that God loves you just the way you are. Throughout the Bible, He expresses who you are in Him. Find some of those scriptures and read them every day until you believe them for yourself and not just believe in them.

To cultivate self-awareness of who you truly are and who God truly is, worship Him for one minute three times a day (without music). You can’t know who God is until you know the authentic you and the depth of His love for you.

Remember the words God said to His Son Jesus in Matthew 3:17. In Jesus, you are His son or daughter too, and He is well pleased with you!…