Category: Goodness, Beauty & Truth

Temptation

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The temptation for the believer is to look without instead of within. Biographies of great saints are great. Sermons are great. They become a problem when we take what is said and try to apply it to our life like plugging in numbers to a formula in order to solve a physics equation. Life in the Spirit is not like this.

I am not you, and you are not me. I have a different daily routine, different responsibilities, different human relationships, different resources all specific to me, and so do you.

We can go after God trying to make Him do for us as we would like. Or we can sit and wait for Him to come to us. Pursue us. Lead us. Guide us.

This takes trust. And I have to admit, I am not there–yet. I want to be there. Sometimes I think I am, but sometimes I fall back into the religious mindset of cause and effect–sowing and reaping. But if that is religion, then what does life in the Spirit look like?

I think it looks more like Sonship. It looks like resting in the knowledge that I am a Son, that I am loved unconditionally. My only responsibilities are to do as I see my Father doing and speak only as my Father speaks. My privilege is His provision for all my needs, for all that belongs to the Father is mine.

Prodigal, Come Home

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You are a new creation, He has made you brand new. You are who He says you are. And to Him you are beloved, you are precious, you are holy, you are righteous, you are blameless, you are enough. You don’t need to do anything to gain approval from Abba. He approved of you from the foundation of the world. You are the apple of His eye. You are the child He always wanted. You are beautiful, compassionate, tender-hearted, faithful, and kind. You are all these things because He made you so. He made you to be like Him, in His image and likeness. He declared that you are very good from the beginning. He is well pleased with you.

The Father is well pleased with you, and requires nothing of you but to rest in His love. You could never write another word, you could not give another penny, you could never keep another feast day, and He would love you just the same. He loves you, not because of the things you do or don’t do, but because He loves. Love does not live at the expense of others. Love is not self-serving. This is the premise from which we must read everything from Scripture, especially the words of Jesus. Jesus came to show us the Father’s love.

The Father much like the father in the prodigal son parable has been misunderstood. The Father of fathers, the best one of all, has been rejected by His sons. They have not seen His goodness, His unconditional love, His mercy, His generosity. Humanity has either gone away from Him and lived a hedonistic lifestyle or we’ve placed burdens on ourselves that He never required of us–seeing ourselves as no better than servants, when He has always loved us and seen us as sons. “My son you have always been with me and all I have is yours.”

This is a Father who loves and does not pick favorites. He has never withheld anything from the eldest son; the eldest son never considered himself worthy enough to ask. Do you see? It’s not how God perceives us, it’s how we’ve perceived ourselves–that was the dysfunction we got from Adam, a dysfunction that Jesus came to correct.

You are to die for! You are worth laying down His own life in order to show you the extent of His love. He has placed no other burden, no command but to Shema! Hear with your heart all the love He has for you; believe and be transformed in the renewing of your mind by this truth that He has said about you! Then you will be free to love as you have been loved–not the love that expects love in return, but love for its own sake.

He is With You

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You do not have to do anything special to have an encounter with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Just being open to hearing from Him and to seeing Him is enough for Him to show up in the simplest and sweetest of ways.

Most often He comes to me when I am with my children and holds me as I hold them. He speaks to me as I speak to them. He is loving me as I am loving others.

He is everywhere and in everything if we will let Him be. There is no greater place we can dwell than in the eternal today with the Lover of our Soul.

The Kingdom Within

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“The revolution will not be televised.”

Gil Scott-Heron


The Kingdom of Heaven is within you and the energy of the new creation must be expressed through you! The Kingdom can only be seen when you come into alignment with God’s will and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit that dwells in you. Then you will do the works of Our Father as Jesus did. For He only did what He saw the Father doing.

Noah Found Grace

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“But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.” Gen. 6:8

Genesis 6:8

“But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”

Matthew 13:16-17

What do you see when you look into another’s eyes? If you are farther away, you might see their emotion. As it has been said, ‘the eyes are the window to the soul.” And if you are close enough, you will see a reflection of yourself. When Noah looked into the eyes of the LORD, He found grace there–grace for him, grace for his family, and grace for the whole of humanity.

He had a revelation of the grace of God. It had nothing to do with what Noah had done or had not done, nothing to with whether he had a corrupted lineage. God looks at the heart, and Noah saw the righteousness and purity of himself through the eyes of the LORD.

After he had this revelation, he walked with God. He acted in accordance with God’s will and vision and built an ark that would preserve and protect LIFE. This is what a revelation of the LORD does for us. It brings LIFE. He shows us who we really are. He shows us the grace He has poured out on us, the love He has for us. He shows us that He never thought less of us, though we thought less of ourselves.

Look into the eyes of Your Saviour; there is grace to be found there for you too!

Walk with the Lamb

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Pick the thing you would want to learn to do the most. The thing that makes your heart soar, that thing that when you do it you lose all track of time. Now imagine the person you admire the most in the world and aspire to be like offers to teach you everything they know. Would you turn them down? Would you instead buy the book he or she wrote and try to work out all the diagrams, directions, and terminology all on your own?

But so often, this is what we do to God. He came in the flesh. He died on the cross. He rose from the dead, and He sent His Spirit to come and dwell inside of us. But what do we do? Instead we read histories, anthropology, theology, and commentaries. We listen to teachers and biblical scholars to help us understand how to do everything better, to figure out the formula to be right with God. We keep diets, and feast days, and fast days. We try so hard to not get angry, to not sin, and to not hate others. And so often we fail. These are all works of the flesh.

We have direct access to the King of Kings, His Spirit is coursing through our bodies giving us Life, but we ignore Him, because we are still caught in shame and guilt; we are still believing the lie that we can do something to earn God’s love.

He’s done it all. He has gone before us. He has finished the work necessary for our salvation. He has opened the doors to Paradise. He is calling us into Freedom. All we have to do is say, “YES!”

Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.

Rev. 14:1-5

Fruit of the Spirit

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Does the fruit tree have to do anything in order to bear fruit? I mean, does it, in itself, have any power to produce fruit? Can it produce fruit faster than its appointed season? Can it produce whatever kind of fruit it wants to produce? Why then, do we try to do anything apart from the Spirit of God? Is it not the fruit of the Spirit we are meant to bear? Then why do we strive to do good works apart from Him? The Spirit is the one who does the work, we just have to go along for the journey. We just have to surrender to the truth of who we are, who we abide in, and then we will bear much fruit!

For further reading: John 15:1-17, James 3:12, Matthew 7:15-20, Luke 6:43-45, Matthew 12:33-37, Mark 8:24, Galatians 5:22,23

You Are God’s Delight

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You are God’s delight! He loves you. You are the reason He has done all that He has done through Christ. It was and is for you, to know the depth of His desire for you. This is truly GOOD NEWS!

Since the LORD delights in us, he has brought us into this land and given it to us, a land that flows with milk and honey. Num 14:8The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who saves; he rejoices over you with gladness; he quiets you by his love; he exults over you with loud singing.

Zephaniah 3:17

He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me.

Psalm 18:19

I know that You are pleased with me, for my enemy does not triumph over me.

Psalm 41:11

We love because he first loved us. I John 4:19

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 4:14-20

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

1 Peter 2:9,10

Is Your Eye Filled with Light?

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Real questions to ponder: If the book of Revelation is concerning the revealing of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:1), then why do we try to make it about the anti-christ? If it says there is a blessing for those who keep the words of the prophecy (Rev. 22:7), then why do we read about tribulation in its pages and become fearful of the future? Maybe we’ve been reading it wrong. Maybe we’ve been listening to teachers who have been reading it wrong. To see into the spiritual, we must use spiritual eyes.

I don’t know about you, but I am determined to see my Saviour’s love and goodness in every page of the Bible and get to know who He is and who I am in Him without any darkness or negativity; one could call it a second naivete.

My prayer for about a year now has been to see the way my Father sees. I promise He hears those prayers. He wants to show us who He is and who we are and who our family and friends are. He gives sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, He makes the lame to walk and heals the leper. He is alive, and He is waiting for us to seek Him.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Matthew 6:22-23

The Bible is about Jesus

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The Bible is about Jesus from cover to cover. It is about Our Father’s love for all humanity, and His desire to come and dwell among us, live in us–be in a relationship with us. Everything in the Old Testament points to Him, and everything in the New is meant to unveil our spiritual eyes to see Him and accept His gift of eternal life and the robe of righteousness He offers. It is all grace from beginning to end.

In sacrifice and offering, you have not delighted,
but you have given me an open ear.
Burnt offering and sin offering
you have not required.
Then I said, “Behold, I have come;
in the scroll of the book it is written of me:
I delight to do your will, O my God;
your law is within my heart.”

Psalm 40:6-7

“And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent. You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.“

John 5:37-40

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?” And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And he said to them, “What things?” And they said to him, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.” And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.

Luke 24:13-31

If we read the Book and find anything in it other than Jesus and His love for humanity, then we are not reading with the eyes of the Spirit. Ask God to open your eyes to see the beauty of His Word and show you Who He is.