Freedom for the journey...

I remember when I was a kid, summer was the best time! There was no school and our days were filled with outside adventures, friends, and fun. We might go to summer camp or look forward to Vacation Bible School and the annual church picnic. In most cases, even if you had a rough upbringing, summer still offered a break from all that came with the school year. It was a carefree time, wasn’t it?! Today, I want everyone to think about that feeling. It was relaxing and fun and healing from a long year. It was freedom! I believe God wants us to enjoy our lives like that today.

Too often, we let the cares of this world and the business of life drain us of that joyful freedom we naturally had as children.  It’s time to take it back and walk in it! And there’s only one source for that freedom – the Lord. God wants us to be free but a lot of times, we walk around struggling in bondage when all we have to do is ask for it! Psalm 118:5 says “In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set me free.” Is anybody tired of being tired? Aren’t you ready to wake up in the morning with a joy in your spirit and a smile on your face? Ask God to set you free and He will do it!

A couple of months ago, I got so overwhelmed with life. I was tired, frustrated and a little bitter about some of the curveballs that life had thrown at me. Some of it was the devil and some of it was of my own causing. You may remember because my blog entries were a little rough during that period. (Sorry!) But I went away by myself – no children, no husband, no friends and I got in God’s face. I didn’t want to come back the same! I wanted my joy back. But it was my responsibility to meet God and acknowledge where I got off track so I could get it together. That’s why I love Psalm 51. It speaks to facing yourself and your issues.  It was written by David after he had committed adultery with Bathsheba but you can easily insert your issue whether it’s lack of obedience, a bad attitude, selfishness or whatever.  “Oh give me back my joy again; you have broken me – now let me rejoice. Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my guilt. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me…Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and make me willing to obey you.”  (Psalm 51: 7-10, 12 NLT)

Sometimes circumstances and experiences have accumulated and taken our joy and freedom but a lot of times, we have given it away. I encourage you today to lay all of your burdens and weights down and ask God to set you free again. Don’t allow all the lists and responsibilities you have to overwhelm you to the point that you lose your joy. This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it! You are alive where many others are not. Even more, you serve a God that is willing and able to restore you! Imagine those that don’t know Him! Don’t allow anything to keep you from that. Get in God’s presence and you will find fullness of joy. You will find rest and refreshing! You will find freedom.

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. AMEN (Jude 1:24-25, NKJV)

Limitless Love

I just finished reading The Shack by William P. Young and I was forever changed. I don’t think I have ever read a book that opened my mind more to who God is outside of the Bible. It challenged me to rethink how I define God and my relationship with Him. I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit was at the center of the writing. As I came away from the book, I realized how much I limit God. I think we all do. We tend to categorize Him based on what we think He can do for us in a certain situation. If it’s just me, please ignore what I’m saying. But I think we have put God in a box. This isn’t a new concept but one that bears examination.

 I’m not going to tell the plot of the book but as I read, I looked at my life and saw the key to experiencing all that God wants to show us. We can’t look at God as an experience that’s based on the right song or preacher. It’s all about relationship. Think back to your early childhood and the person that you were the closest to that raised you, maybe it was your mama or daddy, and maybe it was your grandmother. We trusted them to take care of us and could often see that they would sacrifice everything to get us what we needed. We loved them with a pure love that wasn’t tainted by the world’s influence and expectations as we often are as adults. I believe that kind of love and relationship is what God is calling us back to. Just think about it, didn’t you think that person could do anything? Imagine if you gave God that type of love…I mean, after all He made the ultimate sacrifice.

I really needed a scripture that could capture what how our relationship with God can be if we will take the limits off. I found it in Ephesians 3. Paul is writing to the Ephesian church from jail and he is telling them about God’s plan for His people and Jesus’s role. His words say it all.

“My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you'll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ's love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Glory to God in the church!
Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus!
Glory down all the generations!
Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!” (Ephesians 3: 14-21 MSG)

If you are at a point in your life where you seem to be standing still, stuck in a hard place or situation, I encourage you to look at your relationship with God. Are you still in love with Him? Have you let the cares of the world and your circumstances, dull your zeal for Him? God is a big God and nothing is impossible with Him but above all that He is love. Everything that He does comes back to His love for us. Allow His love to wash over you and cleanse you. Go before Him and ask that He refresh you and give you a fresh fire! Take Him out of the box of our human limitations. He is willing and able go beyond your wildest dreams.

It's all about the process!

Do you ever sit and just think about who God is? I mean, He is the great I AM so he can be all things to all people but do you ever think about who He is to you. He has been different things to me at different times in my life. He’s been a keeper, a deliverer, a healer. He’s been a provider and a redeemer and the best kind of comforter and friend. He’s quite simply God. He’s whatever you need Him to be. I think one of the greatest aspects of God that often goes unnoticed is that of teacher which He exhibited beautifully through Jesus. If we can catch on to what He's trying to teach us in life, the journey will become much smoother.

Sometimes I think we get so caught up in the emotions of our life that we fail to see the lessons. It’s hard when you’re in a valley situation to see the set of stairs that will lead you out. Sometimes all you can see are the walls. God has been showing me a lot lately about recognizing the process in the midst of the circumstance. Think about this…maybe you’ve been praying and praying for a job and you can’t seem to get one. However, you’ve been on lots of interviews and your resume is tight. You’ve networked and made lots of contacts. Then after a year of searching, the perfect job comes your way with everything that you’ve been looking for and you get it after what seems to be the best interview of your life. Is it possible that all of those interviews that you went on,  the many hours of finetuning your resume, and meeting all of those contacts were preparation for the blessing? It's all about the process!

When we read 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17, it’s usually when someone asks us what scripture is. But when I looked at it this morning in the NLT, it spoke to me about using the Word of God to recognize the process in the valley. “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” If that isn’t a process, I don’t know what is. Instead of getting stuck in your hard place, use the Word to start climbing out of it. Look at the situation that you might be in and see what God could be trying to teach you and search the Word for your next step. It's all about the process!

We’ve all read or heard of Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8…”For everything there is a season…” They are beautiful and meaningful verses that remind us that there is a time and place for everything. One of the verses probably applies to just about any situation that we can ever face. However,  I encourage you to read the entire chapter. There is one verse that stood out to me when thinking about this journey that we are on. “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” (Ecc. 3:11, NLT)  Don’t get caught up in where you are, trying to figure out why you are there. You can’t see God’s entire thought process for your life. The Bible says in more than one place that His thoughts are higher than ours.  God has a plan and it’s for your good.  Instead of worrying about what’s next, look for the good in the present. Instead of crying about the past, rejoice that God has given you a future. Instead of seeing the dry bones in your valley, ask God to breathe new life into them.  Instead of seeing the pain, I encourage you to look for the lesson. There’s gold at the end of the fire!

Be blessed.

Promise Keeper

On Sunday morning I sang a song that asked some key questions. Is there anybody here looking for a word from God? Is there anybody looking for a miracle? Is there anybody waiting on their breakthrough? It was a powerful song for me because I could answer all of those questions with a resounding “YES!” I’m sure there are many of you whose answers would be the same.  The circumstances vary but the essential idea of wanting to hear from the Lord is the common theme. After prayer this morning, I was led to 2 Peter 3:9. “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”  The context of the scripture is talking about the promise that Jesus Christ will come back as He said He would which is powerful in itself but it led me down a different path. A question popped in my mind. Do you really believe what God has promised you?

We can sound really super spiritual and declare that we have always patiently waited for God to do what He said He would do without question. Maybe you have but I haven’t. I’ve had moments where I asked God point blank what was taking Him so long! Let’s be real! When you’re in the midst of a valley or struggle, you want the end to come quickly and patience isn’t always the name of the game. But as 2 Peter 3:9 said, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise…” If He said He would do something for you. He’s going to do it!  Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, so He does not lie. He is not human, so He does not change His mind. Has He ever spoken and failed to act? Has He ever promised and not carried it through?” (NLT) Wooooooo! Does it get much plainer than that?! If there ever was a Word to stand on, that would be it! Do you believe what God has promised you?

Soooo...you want to see God's promises fulfilled in your life, right? The key is trusting Him and learning how to wait. I know, that sounds good but how do you do that? It’s all about the Word! There is no place that you can go that will hold you up like the Word of God. He gives you access to how to interact with Him and how to get what you need from Him. Doesn’t mean there isn’t a process, because scripture is full of people that had to go through a process to get to their promised land, healing or revelation!  Are you willing to go through the process? If so, God will keep you through it. Isaiah 40:29 -31 says “He gives power to the weak and to those who have no might, He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”  Isn’t it awesome that God will give you promises while you’re waiting on other promises to be fulfilled?! Do you believe what God has promised you?

So we come back full circle to 2 Peter 3:9. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise. He is coming back but He hasn’t yet because He wants everyone to be saved. He doesn’t want anyone to be lost without repenting and getting things right. Hmmmmm…revelation! Maybe that same premise applies to what you're waiting on. Could it be that He hasn’t brought your promise to pass yet because you aren’t quite ready to walk in it?  He wants you to be whole and open to the awesomeness that He has for you. So the reality is He is being patient for your sake!(2 Peter 3:9 NLT) Jeremiah 29:11 says “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” (NLT) Despite what it looks like, I challenge you to wait on what God has promised you! His result is always exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ask or imagine!

AMEN

The Road Less Traveled

This morning I began to think about the different paths that we take in life. We make choices every day that determine where our lives will go. God gives us guidance through His Word, about what to do but in a lot of cases we don’t follow His direction. We want what we want, even if it’s not the best thing for us.  I mean, as I have grown in my relationship with God, I try harder to not react without hearing from Him first, but I still fall short sometimes and get caught up in what my flesh wants. But it’s time to make a choice. It’s time to do a spot check on our lives. Where are we headed and is it the right path?

Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the bible with 176 verses and 22 stanzas of 8 verses each, one stanza for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It’s an amazing chapter and teaches us so much about engaging the Lord and following His commandments. Through various scenarios, it always comes back to how much better our lives can be if we follow God’s rules and regulations for our lives. “Lord, you are mine! I promise to obey your words! With all my heart I want your blessings. Be merciful as you promised.  I pondered the direction of my life, and I turned to follow your laws.”(verses 57-59, NLT)

I believe that brings us to a choice…a crossroads of sorts. Your crossroads may not be like mine. Your choice may not be mine. Maybe it’s choosing to forgive that person and move forward. Maybe it’s deciding that you can’t fix that situation by yourself. Maybe it’s saying that how you’ve been living your life is not satisfying you anymore and you need a change. Whatever it is, the opportunity is here! So, let’s do it together! Get up, shake that weight off! Stop trying to figure things out on your own. Stop trying to make your choice the right one when God has told you something else in very clear terms. “Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the instructions of the Lord.  Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts.  They do not compromise with evil, and they walk only in his paths.” (verses 1-3, NLT)

Now, I don’t want to set you up! Sometimes going God’s way doesn’t bring immediate results. It may feel like you’ve been waiting for a long time but I encourage you to hold on. Remind God of what He has told you “Remember your promise to me; it is my only hope. Your promise revives me; it comforts me in all my troubles.” (verses 49-50, NLT) We don’t always understand why God leads us in a particular path, but isn’t it funny how when we follow what He says, it makes sense in the end? God’s ways are higher than ours and His thoughts are higher but know that He always has a plan! Even when you feel like you’re holding on by your fingernails, keep holding on. He won’t let you fall!

God wants us to live fulfilling lives and that always comes down to what paths we take. “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matthew 7: 13-14 NIV) My hope and prayer is that we all find the road to life! I promise you that it’s worth the price of admission!

Be blessed…AMEN!

It's Not Over!

Often times we find ourselves in a holding pattern. We’re waiting for God to move in some area of our lives and He isn’t moving as fast as we want Him to or how we want Him to. We wonder how much longer. Some of us are like Jacob and crying out that we won’t let go until He blesses us. Some of us are fasters and trying to show God that we are serious about our petitions. Some of us are just quietly lying before the Lord and some are travailing. This morning as I waited for a Word, I heard God say “It’s not over.” I started to put an exclamation point just now but it wasn’t like that. It was a statement. It was like when someone looks you in your eye and gives you their word and you believe it. So I asked Him to give me a scripture and immediately Romans 8:18 dropped in my spirit. “Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.”(NLT)  Wooooooooooo! Now you can break out the exclamation points!

Romans 8 is my “go to” chapter in the Bible. I find so much encouragement, promise, and strength in this chapter. I encourage you if you haven’t read it, lately or ever, to read and study it. My uncle taught me to read it whenever I needed to remind myself who I am in Christ. What a blessing! So after God gave me that Word, I came back to it and sure enough I got what I needed. It’s human nature to be emotional and responsive to what happens in our lives. When things don’t go our way, we might cry or get angry or even want to give up but God is telling us today that it’s not over. Finances are a mess, marriage going awry, children acting crazy but God has said that this is nothing compared to what is to come! There is a future glory that we can look forward to!

I remember when Bennie Hinn announced that he and his wife were divorcing. I watched the statement and thought how sad he looked.  I don’t know him personally, obviously, but it made me sad too. I wondered what happened to break up a 30 year marriage and why couldn’t they call on God to fix it. It’s been a couple of years since then and no matter who or what was to blame, they both had to journey through that period of adjustment and difficulty. Yesterday, I heard that they are reconciling. I was so excited by that news because you don’t hear that often. I imagine that at some point, God whispered to them “It’s not over.”

Remember Hannah? She desperately wanted a child and endured year after year of taunting and waiting. She cried out to the Lord and was truly discouraged. God saw and with my spiritual ear, I can imagine Him whispering in her ear “Peninnah doesn’t have the final say, your husband doesn’t have the final say, even the priest doesn’t have the final say. It’s not over.” And it wasn’t! Along came Samuel. What if she had given up? That’s why Romans 8: 18 – 25 is so important. We must have hope and believe God when He says that it isn’t over. “For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.” (Romans 8:24-25 NKJV)

Don’t give up! There is victory in your perseverance! “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” It may seem that you’ve been holding on for a long time…waiting but God is faithful and He is present. Don’t let the enemy convince you that your story is over. We never know why God does what He does. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. But we can be confident that He has it under control. If God promised you something, He is good for it. What did he tell us in Isaiah 55:11? “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.” Sounds to me like IT’S NOT OVER!  

Be blessed! AMEN

Back to the basics...

I was in the shower yesterday and the chorus of an old hymn just came out of nowhere! Now if anybody knows me, I love a good hymn or old school song but I hadn’t been thinking about this particular song. The chorus says “Lead me, guide me along the way! For if you lead me, I will not stray. Lord, let me walk each day with thee. Lead me, O Lord, lead me!” I just kept singing it over and over. I began to talk to the Lord and asking Him to lead me but also to show me what he wanted me to get out of reminding me about that particular song. I pondered on it most of the day and then I heard my pastor say a key phrase yesterday. He said we are getting back to the basics! That was it! We get so caught up in the books and the music and the sermons of the current day but sometimes we need to go back to where we first began! We need to go back to where we first fell in love with Jesus. We need to go back to prayer. We need to go back to simply asking God to lead and guide us through our day. We need to go back to the Word.

Psalm 11:3 says “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”(NKJV) David was a man after God’s own heart. He didn’t do everything right and he suffered some dire consequences but he always went back to the core plan and that was to seek God’s face. If we don’t have a solid foundation on which to build our relationship with God, how can we go to the next level? If we take the time to learn how to study the Word and pray, we are far more prepared to fight the battles that the enemy puts before us.  We have made a lot of things complicated that don’t need to be. It’s really pretty simple. Seek God’s face. When we do that, we won’t get in our own way because we’ve heard what God had to say on the matter.  We have to get back to the basics.

“But the Lord is in his holy Temple; the Lord still rules from heaven. He watches everyone closely, examining every person on earth. The Lord examines both the righteous and the wicked. He hates those who love violence.  He will rain down blazing coals and burning sulfur on the wicked, punishing them with scorching winds.  For the righteous Lord loves justice. The virtuous will see his face. ” (Psalm 11:4 – 7 NLT) God wants us to know that we have been spending too much time trying to figure out how to fix this and that when He already sees. He has known us since before we were in our mother’s womb. Psalm 139:4 says “you know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord”(NLT) He knows what we are thinking and he knows what we are planning. But He also gave us free will to make decisions and choices and those are often the things that we struggle with the most. So now its time to stop making everything so hard! You know the old saying...KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid!  God still rules the heavens. He is still in control. Let Him handle it!

It’s time for us to return to the foundation of our relationship with God. I look at my girls and they will learn a song and sing it with excitement and enthusiasm. They will jump and dance and sing “My God is AWESOME!” and it is pure because they haven’t gotten to a point where they have let the world dim their praise. They are at the basic point of knowing that God loves them and He is awesome. We need to go back to that place and start fresh. I would be willing to bet that you will start to see things more clearly. Go back to reading your Word for the knowledge and revelation and not just to use for something or against someone. Go back to spending quality time with God through prayer. Go back to the songs of your youth…sometimes a good hymn can bring breakthrough. Go back to the basics and you will see results.

Andre Crouch had a song back in the day that I think is appropriate to close out with. Sing it with me and ask God to do it for you! There’s a healing and release to remembering the early days of your love affair with God.

Take me back, take me back, dear Lord! To the place where I first received you! Take me back, take me back dear Lord where I first believed…

AMEN…