Secret Place

2016-03-24T13:10:00.003-07:00

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts." Isaiah 55:8-9

I wonder what Jesus is thinking?

Why is it that He seems silent and all we can hear is the noise of war and hatred? The problem is that our focus is not on what He is thinking. We’vetraded the mind of Christ for minding the things of this world. It's so hard to turn our attention from the ongoing bickering and corruption that we see because we are so agitated by the things this world has to offer now. But has God's mind changed? Does he want us so infiltrated and caught up in the fight for equality and “human rights”? Do we feel like we are doing God service if we've laid down our spiritual sword to pick up a fleshly fight? We need to ask ourselves if what we are spending our time watching and listening to is causing us to respond in the spirit or in the flesh. You see there is no problem with being concerned with our country or the things in it, but there is a point that the enemy is getting Christiansto. To lay down prayer and intercession and use our anger to react in the flesh instead of concerning ourselves with what Jesus is doing.In these times more than ever, we need to be reminded to look at this world through His eyes, with His mind. And for that we need to be seeking the mind of the Spirit.I know He has not changed, He is still seeking out the helpless, He is still seeing through the eyes of compassion and still longing to bring people to salvation. He still wants the christian that is suffering to get victory, He still fights for the widow and homeless. He still rejects the proud and gives grace to the humble. We must be careful of the plot to secretly get us to react in the flesh, tofollow out of anger and let it blind us to not be lead bythe Spirit. As Christians, be reminded to look up to Jesus daily. Don't grow weary from looking at the things that will drain you of spiritual life. We must walk in the Spirit, we cannotbe effective now if we are seen as the angry bitter person that we want to be. God still changed our hearts and gaveus new minds IN Christ Jesus. We can't throw that aside just because its time to take action. We cannot begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh just because it is what we want in our hearts. We must remember who has bought us with His redeeming blood, who Christ is, and that He is longing for one of His own to look up and draw near to his heart and mind.

“Now the works of the flesh are made manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, sedition, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like. Of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, Let us also walk in the Spirit.” Galatians 5:19-25

Maybe we don't see a change because we react more like the former in this verse than the latter. We all need to be careful of what comes in and out of us. As Christians THAT is our first responsibility, to still be like Christ regardless of what the world is like now.

2015-12-26T18:22:00.001-08:00

Jesus In Your Suffering

Its amazing that Jesus even came to this earth. Perfect and all knowing, He was God just as much as He was man. It says in Hebrews 2:17 that He wanted to come in the flesh to be made like His brethren, so that He might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.So that He may feel what we feel. In being God He is all knowing.He knows what we feel, He knows what we think when we are going through things. But I believe He wanted such a close relationship with His creation that He wanted to actually be in that place of knowing what we feel; in temptations, in heartaches, in the joys of life for He was at all points tempted as we are.When the Fathers Son came off His throne He lived like we do, yet without sin. It says in the Word that we do not have an high priest that is not touched with the feeling of our infirmities.That the very feelings of these hardships of life Jesus took time to walk through, not because of any other reason but to be near us in our suffering and to say with that tender voice, what you're feeling I know, I've walked there. It's a comforting thought knowing that the God we serve is on His throne and in power and at the same time is able to come down to our our need and identify with it. The wonderful thing about Jesus is that He not only identifies with our suffering but shows us the path to victory through that suffering because of walking on this earth in obedience to the Father.Suffering in the eyes of the believer is never something welcomed or asked for. It is rigid, awful, and confusing. But something of Christ is born out of it. An obedience to lay down the flesh and pick up the Spirit.To identify with Christ rather than your sufferings and hurts and to be molded into someone that you would never picture or think you could achieve being. We have that high priest that does this, He allows this work of suffering and wants us to know that the way isn't figuring it all out, it's finding another part of yourself identified in Him. He identifies with us then calls us back to being identified with Him. He wants to show us how He triumphed over this life. Remember He was perfect in His sufferings and trials, we are far from that. He can identify with our suffering much easier than we can His.Only Christ is able to show us that we are not alone and that He understands, then show us how to triumph in those things because He won that victory for us. As Jesus identifies with our suffering let it comfort you and cause you to turn your eyes onto how you, through Him, can overcome and draw strength from His side.

2015-08-11T23:56:00.001-07:00

Following In His Steps

"We measure our identity of who God is in us by what we feel He's called us to. Lord You're are making this clear to me that this could be dangerous. As where I am now, you are showing me something. Something that I am trying to grasp. Your thoughts and ways are so much higher, so different than ours. You paint a picture of Christ walking this earth as a servant, no title, no church, no home. You used what You had inside of you to show Gods power not by building or being a part of something but creating something in our hearts that cannot be exchanged" (part of my journal).

This is so odd to the common teaching that we amount to something as Christians only if we are a part of something “christian”, a leader, a movement maker, something that makes a name for yourself. This is in our hearts. God is showing me that this is so opposite to His design. We hold ourselves of worth because of what we are called to, not our identity in Him alone. Because of this, we will get caught up in the church to-do's and get so blindsided to who is truly calling our hearts. This is not to negate the ministry, no, but rather to bring light to a very selfish viewpoint in Christians.Our calling is very important and it is what burdens us to reach the world with the gospel, but when things fall through, or for a while you end up in your eyes "just living" this perspective seems to creep in and cause us to compare our christian accomplishments to others. I don’t want to be conformed to the ways Christianity has become accustomed to, faithless and careless when our dreams of ministry or self promotions seem to be stomped upon. This is a hard thing, for we hope to be led by Christ but not realize that our biggest testimony is simply walking with Him before others. We measure our worth by what we are doing rather than who we are being before the Lord.Our first priority and calling is to minister to the Lord with all of our hearts. So many times in ministry this creeps to the back of our minds as we are so busy about the work of ministering to others. When this is backwards we can fall into a fleshly rhythm of of life inside the church. I'm definitely not saying that ministering to others is not also ministering to the Lord. But seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness never should come second to our personal calling, rather it should lead us in a natural flow of that calling inside us. There will be times in every Christians life that we simply live. When we don't do anything “amazing for God' and struggle to find out why. If we have this mindset of coming before the Lord and ministering to Him first we are fulfilling what we are called to even when sometimes we feel like that's not enough. We don't like that in the flesh, to just live before the Lord. I believe God brings us those times to re-establish His placement in us and give a stillness to be reminded everything is in His timing and not ours.Are we content to be that nobody that rejects praise of others and still feed the needy heart? Are we interested in taking time to listen and minister to a hungry soul when no one is watching? We need to humble ourselves to that perspective again and in doing so we see that this is who Jesus was and is, are we still trying to be like Him?

2015-07-27T11:57:00.002-07:00

Casting our Cares Daily

Psalms 55:22 " Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain you. He will never suffer the righteous to be moved."

The peace of God is an inner knowing that someone greater than my troubles and fears holds the answers and is able to quiet the deepest sorrows.The peace of God conquers the thoughts that say I don't deserve this, I want a way out. It holds such power to stay us in times of suffering and confusion.The Lord says He will give perfect peace who's mind is stayed on Him, because he trusts in Him (Isaiah 26:3). But what does this mean? it is an active process that when the things in your mind and heart come up and the situations that could overtake you want to take control, you are constantly giving that over to trusting and relying on Christ to handle it. It's very much about control. We most times don't even want to cast our cares on Jesus for fear of what He might do with those cares. So we keep it, hold onto it so that we can control the outcome of our struggle. Daily learning to trust in Him will cause you to yield the smallest things and see Him prevail.So many things are worked in and out of us during struggles that are so precious in your heavenly fight. We cannot control our situations because it does take our peace and trust away from the one we say we gave our lives to. In EVERY situation, this is how we should walk with the Lord. He does give us the tools we need to get victory in the midst of the struggles we face, and to become more like Jesus is to walk in peace, casting those cares at His feet and trusting that He knows the way even if we cant see it. I believe now, so many things seem fuzzy to us and we cant see clearly because we've forgotten how to trust and rely on Christ for our vision, for our help. His word says the peace of God passes all understanding and it will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phillipians 4:7). When we choose to give up that control and fear in our lives and choose to cast our cares and worries on Jesus, He comes with that peace that puts up a guard in and around us that can keep us from trying to do things in our own power. This is where that peace can reign in your mind and calm every doubt and question that tries to be heard, if we submit to it. We've got to choose to shut the lies of the enemy out and fight to keep that peace. Everything in the kingdom of God is an active fight of faith, once you have peace you will have to fight to keep it that way. This is the good fight of faith to lay hold on eternal life now, a faith that doesn't fade away but we need to keep our minds sharp and continue to walk in the ways that the Lord teaches. We cannot trick ourselves into thinking that we can make it without this peace now more than ever, we cannot grow comfortable enough in our situations to not even realize our peace is gone. we must stay in the fight."these things have I spoken unto you, that in Me you might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation: but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

2015-07-20T11:03:00.005-07:00

Stay at His Feet

In times of waiting and stillness is when the Lord moves mightily. There are many reasons for silence. Sin can separate when your ear isn’t tuned to Gods voice and our minds become clouded with the worries and cares of this world. Him moving more than u can see and doing things you can’t, times of preparation, and to create desperation. In those times though we can get discouraged, even depressed, angry, sorrowful, feeling let down, hopeless. Even if we are simply waiting for just something to happen, spiritual laziness is a killer against faith. In the gaps when we know to rest and hide in Him is when the enemy attacks most, not to lose faith, but to get distracted. When we know to seek and stand, we find ourselves looking around for action. We are so mentally and physically attracted to action and things going on that they catch our attention. The devil hates a still soul before the Lord. He doesn’t want a heart that waits upon the Lord day and night just resting and serving Him. After a while, it wears on us and we become weak and frail, a perfect target for the enemies’ deception, distraction, and temptation. We start to, without knowing it, look for things to occupy our time, even if they are good we must be keen to observe the motive of the enemy behind it. We start to get busy with things and try to do everything we can to keep our minds occupied. Even though the action is right we can overstep so easily.The enemy uses it to get us up and running around like Martha was instead of sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary. When you’re running around you’re doing everything in your own power, by experience, by knowledge, but that soon wears out when u find you’re not drawing from the only One that can give you life; you’re acting independently from it. It drains you of spiritual life for you to continue and then you become weak and vulnerable to the devils attacks. Falling into that trap results in no peace, anxious for things to go wrong, needing to be in control, etc. We have to remember to be still and stay at Christ’s feet. There we find peace, rest, and trust. Those are the things we suddenly find are lost. We must get back to His feet; he will take care of all of what needs to be done. He promises to supply, He promises to fulfill. He asks for you to simply stay at His feet.

2015-07-12T23:06:00.004-07:00

Falling from a Steadfastness in Christ

2 Peter 3:17 "Ye therefore beloved, seeing you know this before, beware lest you also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness."

Many things have happened in our lives over the years as Christians. Throughout the past years I’ve noticed something taking place in the hearts and minds of solid Christians. The people we looked up to, the people we ran to for advice or a picture in our minds of what the standard of Christ is. That’s who I am writing to. Slowly but surely through the hurt and weariness of this world, the enemy has stolen something precious and very useful in the kingdom of God, our steadfastness in Christ. It’s like watching a snake slowly squeeze the life out of its prey and hoping that it’s not going to die. We’ve seen the works of God in our lives, seen His power come through time and again, but now there is a killing silence, the absence of God is seems in the daily life of a Christian when most often you would find that same person on their knees praying for salvation and restoration. Why? There is a point that I believe we have come to that we suddenly find what God is asking us to do is simply too hard. We’ve been through too much pain already following Christ, can’t feel another hurt or failure for fear we might just crumble. We have a fear of crumbling and fear of hurting if we did. Not to say that we haven’t lived a victorious life, oh no, it’s the weariness of the thought of going through another trial that causes us to turn ever so slightly to the right or to the left. Months, years down the road you suddenly see your thoughts and responses in a place that you’ve always so often recognized in the ones you ministered to. Suddenly everything is an uphill battle. Fears, doubts, anger seem to be released through us from time to time when things happen instead of trusting the Lord completely and following his Word in those situations. I must tell you that the enemy never comes in for a fast defeat otherwise you’d notice it. The lies of the devil are very deceitful and whisper sweet things when our hearts are bitter from this world. If we listen it causes our hearts to fluctuate towards the Lord. Even if we have been healed of things and are new, as humans we still guard our heart against hurt and pain. The enemy knows this. He will keep pushing for whatever is in your life that doesn’t cause pain, even if it dishonors Christ and leads you to disobedience. Whatever the reason for defeat, I urge you to get back on the path of full righteousness. The one that’s narrow and single. It starts with simple obedience. Not trying to fix what went wrong, just start obeying Him like you used to. Oh it’s so hard to hear that I know, but the Lord says if your eye be single it will fill your whole body with light. We must be single in our minds, in our decisions, in our actions; always bringing everything to the Word and through the Holy Spirit. It is our protection so that we can walk before Christ honorably until His coming.