God's Mercy Through Me***

The Spirit calls me to just ponder God's love. When I quote, "God's mercies (compassions) are new every morning" (Lamentations 3:23), I tend to place this quote in the context of encouragement for myself or others going through trials. I have seen it for the "righteous ones", those called according to His purposes, clinging to the hope that all will go well for those of "The"faith.

But today, the Spirit took me into the back room, where I can look at His mercies without the qualifying filter of my "exalted" self worth.

What I see astounds me. It makes me stand in humble awe of the God I serve.

The Spirit showed me how His great mercies extend to all flesh especially to those we classify as "unlovables" There are those people in our lives or who touch our world for a brief moment, who can be defined as "unlovable". Those people whose personalities or character repel us. We avoid them, dismiss them, guard against them and judge them.

Upon greater meditation of His mercies, I see how God continually acts in mercy. God IS mercy. His Spirit is abounding in mercy and not just for the "good guys".

Jesus said, "I did not come to judge the world but to save it." (John 12:47)

As His ambassador, it is my responsibility to act according to His character and commands. If He plainly states that He did not come to judge the world, why do I? If His mercies are new every morning then why do I not extend those mercies?

The Spirit has shown me that the "world" is a prison camp of the enemy. Those of us who know Christ have been rescued and set free. We are called to assist in the rescue of those who are still incarcerated. But if we refuse to be merciful, we are no better than the devils who are guarding them and beating them down.

Since I am a vessel who is to carry the life of Christ into the world around me, I am convicted and compelled to repent and pray: "Abba, forgive me for stopping the flow of your mercy. Open the channel of your mercies, not for me to hold only for myself but to share with the world around me. May I flow with Your great Mercy and Love for the unlovables. May all your ambassadors flow with your great Mercy and Love for the unlovables".

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

In The Silence

Sometimes the Spirit gives me time to ponder what He has previously spoken. These are the days of silence from the blog.

Not that the Spirit is disengaged or inactive, but rather that His wisdom needs to be processed, applied and tested. Psalm 139:23, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts."

It's on these days when the excitement of the journey gives way to the monotony; the visual of the same landscape we seem to have passed by before. And it is here where we cannot help but wonder if we are making any progress at all.

While we would love to live on the mountaintop like Peter. We get the vision there, but at some point in time we must come to realize that the vision was given on the mountain top only to be brought into the valley to be worked and shared.

Will I be willing to come down into the valley to share what I saw? Will I get fearful, distracted, hopeless, anxious? Or will I be faithful to the Lord who gave me the vision?

"These are the days that try men's souls". (Thomas Paine)

The Spirit is calling. Do you hear Him?

They Will Soar on Wings like Eagles!

The Spirit has a method of teaching me that involves pictures in my mind. I have always said, that, as a student, I am too dull to understand some things and I need the Lord to just draw me a picture.


God is faithful and will provide whatever we need to learn and go deeper into the Truth.


Much is going on in my life that, when viewed through the grid of self pity, almost looks like a punishment. So today the Spirit calls me to look at Hebrews 12:7, "endure hardship as discipline. God is treating you like sons" (and daughters).


That seems pretty clear and unequivocal but the Spirit knows the degree of guilt and self pity that can well up inside of me, taking a truth and tweaking it around. So He takes this opportunity to draw me a picture.


The visual I got is that of a fledgling eagle. Eagles are designed and meant to soar. But first their wings must become strong. The Spirit showed me that to strengthen my wings, the Lord has hung some rocks around my ankles, and if I keep trying to fly against the weight of the rocks, my wings will become strong.


"Endure hardship as discipline". Now I see that the "discipline" is not a punishment word due to anything I am doing wrong, but rather a training word:


Training an athlete goes through, training a scholar goes through, and training an eagle might go through. Training under weights designed to strengthen..the body, the mind, or the wings. In order for me soar to greater heights, the Lord has hung some rocks around my ankles.


Isaiah 40:31 says it best, "but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."


I confess my focus and attention has been on removing the rocks rather than trying to fly. Hebrews 12 exhorts me to forget the "rocks" and work on the "wings"


The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

The Battlefield Of The Mind

Life as a Christian is a battle. We were born into a world at war. Good vs evil, light vs dark..the battle rages all the time.

I have fought many battles and learned some things about spiritual warfare. I know that the enemy uses deception and lies as his primary weapon in this war. I know that the real battlefield is the mind where we seem to be constantly assailed by the lies of evil. I know that the extent and degree to which we believe those lies is the extent and degree to which we live defeated lives.

Sin cycles and failure accompany the unbelief which really translates to the belief in a lie or in a twisting of the Truth.

Seeking wisdom and wondering why I have seen such limited victories in certain areas of my life, the Spirit revealed something I really needed to know: He said, "you know and believe that the battle belongs to the Lord, but you fail to realize that the "battlefield" belongs to Him as well." The battlefield of my mind IS His and He will give victory from this battlefield.

This is called the "renewing" of the mind. The world tells us to "educate" our minds, but the Lord tells us to "renew" our minds. The more we try to fight the battle from the human vantage points and human intelligence, the more the enemy will be able to over power us and defeat us.

In my life, I have to call this idolatry...the worship of knowledge. Romans 12:2, "do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is...His good and perfect will.

Through the renewing of the mind, the enemy cannot set foot onto this battlefield and the "battlefield" then becomes a lauch pad for God's great victory over darkness. We take every thought into captivity for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The renewal begins when we commit our minds to the Lord just as we committed our heart and bodies to Him . The Holy Spirit will then take over the battlefied. John 16:13, "But when He, the Spirit of Truth, comes, He will guide you into all Truth."

Will I renew my mind or just educate it?

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

A Walk With The King

My Pastor exhorts us each Sunday before we leave to go out and "Walk with the King". The Holy Spirit enables us and teaches us how to do it.

This is a process and new lessons are provided for me each morning when the Spirit calls.

Today the Spirit has revealed that my "control freak" mentality leads to striving and the striving leads to disobedience. His convicting Presence leads me to the need to repent for the constant striving in my mind, but His gentle persuasion pushes me on to understand the source.

He spoke to my heart and told me that I am continually striving to find resolutions to problems I encounter in life. While the problems are designed to drive us into His arms, finding their resolution is not to become the focus of my time and energy.

To find resolutions to each and every problem that vexes me is not the Godly purpose in each day or week or month or year. The Godly purpose in each new day is to seek and find fellowship with our Creator, Savior, Lord and King. Resolutions will accompany my walk but they are not be the ultimate purpose or goal.

If I can accept and apply this truth then the problems in life will not be the source of striving, frustration or victimization.

Peace follows obedience. It is interesting how I always thought that this principle applied to "doing" rather than "being". To be in continuous surrender and fellowship to the Lord's Holy Spirit is the place where "doing" and "being" come together. ...and there is where I will find peace.

Once I get past the desperate need for "resolution" and find fellowship with the Spirit in the process, I believe I will be free to "walk with the King" and most likely see the desired resolutions flow.

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

IF........

Did I mention that I am a control freak? I guess the Spirit is calling me to come to terms with the problem it causes between Him and me. He has asked me to go to the Word and read the Lord's prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, Matt 26:39-42.

The familiar words that come to my mind when I remember the passage is "not as I will but as You will". In this final momentous act of submission, the Savior constrained His flesh and condemned it to death on the cross and it represents quite a message to all of us.

But today the Spirit led me to the preceding thoughts and prayers from the Son's heart to the Father's Throne. IF...begins the sentence of petition. Vs 39, "If it be possible, may this cup be taken from Me". And again in Vs 42, "If it is not possible for this cup to be taken away".

I suddenly realize how few of my petitions begin with "If". That speaks volumes to me about the degree of "self" in my petitions. Most are "Lord, please do this or send that or don't allow this or that" and the emphasis is on my understanding of the need or to offset the agony of the situation not the emphasis on the Father's will IN the need or the Glory due Him for the resolutions given according to His Will.

It's so hard to even begin to understand how my flesh enters into my prayer life but this revelation by the Holy Spirit confirms that it does and can hinder the effective prayers of a righteous person. This is a sobering reminder that without the Spirit of Christ I can do nothing.

IF, changes the control button. When I start with IF, then I am willing to accept God's will and not push for my own. When I start with IF, the Spirit can truly have His way in the situation and this is a good thing because His perspective is so much higher, wider, and eternal in it's scope than any of our own. Only the Lord knows the end from the beginning and what He is after through the circumstances of our daily lives.

I wonder what wisdom and answers will come today IF in my petitions I start with "IF "?

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?

My Agenda or God's Purpose?

For a long time, I have been pondering the Lord's life of prayer. I wonder, "Lord, when You walked the earth, it is said that you spent such long hours in solitude and prayer, I wonder what you were praying, as God in the flesh?"

The Spirit, I believe, has been revealing some answers to that deep, deep question in my heart and mind.

This morning I woke up to the Spirit saying, "when you finally get to the end of your own agenda, you will find the beginning of My purposes in your life"!

As I process this truth, it occurs to me that I am such a control freak. Looking back over some of my life experiences, the arrows of pain and sorrow sent the message that I need to control life and insulate myself. Legalism pushed me into the place of rigid external controls.

Then, through the next volley of arrows to my heart, my agenda drove me to the opposite pole of libertine rebellion in an effort to find my own fix for the pain. As the complications of my rebellion took over, I sank deeper and deeper into the mire of a self serving agenda.


The Spirit knows and has come to lead me into all truth.


God, the Father has sovereignly orchestrated my life experiences. From an Eternal perspective, each life experience contains opportunities and is designed to perfect me, to groom me, to expose those qualities that are to be surrendered to Him for change so that I can come into the conforming image of Christ Jesus.

Self-reliance, self-defense, self-provision...all those "self" qualities of independence need to be changed in order for me to be the loyal servant and disciple of my Christ.


So, back to my wake-up call.

I believe those long hours of prayer were spent in unifying the Savior, who was contending in a flesh body, with the Father's heart and will. If we can remember the temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness, it was a deliberate attempt by Satan to get Him to depart from His original Divine Purpose; the reason God, the Father sent His only begotten Son into the World.

The enemy has a similar temptation for you and me. He uses our flesh (self) in an effort to cause us to depart from God's intended purpose for our life and follow another course. The Spirit calls me to surrender my self-serving agenda and come into unity with Him.

If I truly desire the Father's will and purpose for my life then all self-serving must end. Am I willing to exchange whatever represents my will and agenda and plan, for the greater plan and purpose that God has for me?

The Spirit is calling. Can you hear Him?