Don’t Miss Your Blessings

Posted on December 18, 2018 by daaorg1214

In the New Testament Book of Acts, chapter 10, the Apostle Peter was the first person employed by God to break down a barrier that once existed. In Old Testament times, God was looking for a people that would welcome a relationship with Him, and we can learn much about His unyielding faithfulness, love, and power through those He chose. They were not a perfect people and made a ton of mistakes. He didn’t destroy them, but loved them beyond their faults, just as He does with us. In the Old Testament, God’s people were the Israelites and they were called His ‘chosen ones.’ Again, it wasn’t because they were particularly special. He chose the Israelites because they recognized Him as their Almighty God, but He didn’t stop there. Expanding His family was always the plan.

1John 4:8 tells us that God is love. Love is who He is. Through Jesus Christ, God has demonstrated how His love behaves. One of its truths is that it expands. Love grows! It is the nature of what it does. God, being a God of supreme love, wanted to expand His family to include you and me. He chose Peter to break new ground, and to welcome others into His fold by showing them how to follow Christ. For the longest while, Peter and others saw things only one way, and it took quite a nudging for Peter to expand his heart for God’s purpose.

Philippians 4:19 (ESV) says, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” Heavenly Father promises to supply our need. In 2Corinthians 9:8(NLT), He also tells us that He will “generously provide all you need. Then you will always have everything you need and plenty left over to share with others.” And Jesus Christ said in Matthew 7:11 that if sinful people know how to give good gifts to their children, how much more will our Heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him. We’re His kids, and He wants to see us happy and blessed all the time. But we must be mindful that the blessings He gives are not always based on what we want, but on what He knows we need. He tailors them for our lives, and sometimes we need a little nudging to see this.

Our Heavenly Father gives us good gifts, but we can be so preoccupied with the packaging that we don’t see the gift God is presenting. We’ve been burned before, and we’ve taught ourselves to only accept something if it looks as though it will meet our expectations. We miss a lot of blessings this way. Our need to control outcomes causes us to set up barriers so thick and high that nothing penetrates them.

These barriers are a form of fear, and fear is the enemy of love. Not only do the two not run in the same circles, they can’t survive in the same space. One of them will destroy the other. So, fear has got to go if we want God’s good quality love entering our lives and bringing with it all the yumminess He offers. For operating in the world day to day, a healthy fear reflex is one that warns us of impending danger, but it has no place in our relationship with God.

Many of us are complaining that He hasn’t answered our prayers, when truthfully, we’ve blockaded ourselves with such fear and negative thinking that we’re not even thankful for the air we breathe or the sun that shines every day. If our hearts are not overjoyed with blessings like these, the small stuff we want doesn’t stand a chance. Don’t miss your blessings. It’s a conscious choice to break down barriers around our hearts, and no one can do it for you, except you. Start by giving God some quality time. Talk with Him often so you’ll learn to recognize His voice. He’ll speak to your heart, and you’ll have confidence in ALL the gifts He gives, regardless of how they’re packaged. ■

A Love that Lasts

Posted on December 11, 2018 by daaorg1214

Everyone loves those romantic movies where a relationship that seems irreparably broken years prior, suddenly has a second chance. I’m a sucker for these types of movies and will watch them over and over. Of course, I know how the story ends, but we never get enough of seeing two people come together when so much has been stacked against them. Even vicariously, it’s an emotional high to witness a rekindled romance, because let’s face it, we all want to believe in happily ever after. Unlike the movies, real-life relationships are much more challenging, because the story doesn’t end when two people finally commit to one another. In real life, this is where the grunt work begins.

Again, relationships are often the most challenging work of our lives. They are even more difficult when we come to the table not having done some soul-searching and soul-work. It isn’t the best idea to look for a soul-mate, or a mate for your soul, when you don’t have a good grasp of who you are on a soul level.

Many people haven’t begun to grapple with the reality of being a spiritual being with an earth suit made of dust. They haven’t considered that spiritually, they are required by God to learn to navigate earth’s terrain by being the most loving, humble, compassionate, yet powerful individual they can be. The only way to accomplish this is to walk in the love of Christ. He showed us how it’s supposed to be done. It is the most delicate balance imaginable, because spiritual love very often has little to do with the human version of it—and this human version is the one most are hooked on. Human love comes with entanglements and confusion, and many of us haven’t learned to step out of it so that we can go higher.

Spiritual love is love on a whole other level. It’s God’s love and it embodies everything about His nature. Jesus Christ told us a little bit about it in John 15:13(NLT). He said, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” This is what Christ did for humanity. We’re the ‘friends’ he’s talking about. He gave his life because we were in total darkness. We were playing around in satan’s cesspool of death, and Jesus rescued us from it. Colossians 1:13 says that through Christ, God delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into His Kingdom. This was a spiritual transaction, and the only way to cash in on it is to dive into love by faith. You have to rely on what you can’t see, because the things we can’t see are more real than the things we CAN see.

This love of Christ is a selfless kind of love for sure. Accepting it means that we understand there were barriers separating us from God’s love, and Jesus Christ removed them. Our work is to keep ourselves from setting them up again. In movies, wounded people fall in and out of love very easily. It’s a love that may make us feel good in the moment, but it doesn’t last. That’s not the kind of love that comes from God. His love is eternal, and it sticks with an ever-lasting bond. The amazing truth about His love is that you and I are capable of living in it, and we are capable of giving it as well.

Galatians 5:6(MSG) tells us, “For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.” You and I are on this earth but a moment. We’re here today, gone tomorrow. God is forever; He has no beginning, and He has no end. He’s loved us that long. It is too extraordinary to fathom, but it is our belief in His extraordinary love that fuels our own. This is what matters most. That’s why it is so important to believe in what we cannot see—to have faith in God’s love. It’s incomparable, and when we give it to others, we are giving them something that will last forever. ■

You Can’t Fake Self-Esteem

Posted on December 4, 2018 by daaorg1214

I once heard a very prominent person say that feeling good is everything. At the time it came across my ears, I truly felt it was one of the most striking statements I’d ever heard. I felt this way because I had spent a good deal of my life feeling bad, and I never looked upon the notion of feeling good as a right. It also occurred to me that I had not viewed it as a possibility. Years ago, I wasn’t enlightened enough to say that I had low self-esteem. I knew that I wanted others to like me and respond to me positively. I thought the way to accomplish this was to minimize myself in a way that made others comfortable and less likely to criticize me. As the years progressed, it became apparent that my desire to make others comfortable around me was making me uncomfortable in my own skin. That had to change.

Low self-esteem is generally characterized by a lack of confidence and feeling badly about oneself. As the prevalence of self-awareness has grown, the term has become very widely used. It’s a sad predicament when the symptoms of low self-esteem—feeling unlovable, incompetent, and less-than—are so common that millions of us have diagnosed ourselves with it. We accept ‘feeling bad’ as part of the human experience, but when it becomes a way of life, there is a real danger. We make ‘feeling bad’ part of our identities, and we do this because we don’t believe there’s a viable alternative. For some people, treatment is necessary and feeling better has to come from a prescription, but this isn’t true for everyone.

For some of us, feeling bad is rooted in feeding our souls the wrong food, and we’d rather fake it than accept this truth. But no matter how you try to fake it, feeling crummy at such a deep level effects your core. Those feelings camp-out and make themselves comfortable when we believe the wrong information about who we really are. God tells us in Ephesians 2:10 that we are His masterpieces, created brand new in Christ so that we can do all the good things He’s planned for us. Low self-esteem will tell us the exact opposite. This is a spiritual problem, and the fix requires spiritual surgery.

Wires get crossed by believing the wrong things, and when those wires become deeply imbedded, we don’t know how to uncross them. We run the risk of being conformed to what society says, when God tells us in Romans 12:2 to be transformed by renewing our minds to what He says about us. Only God knows us through and through. He’s our Creator, and He knows us as intimately as we can be known. The wonderful thing is that He desires us to feel good way more than we could ever desire it for ourselves. He’ll shine a light in our dark places if we’ll let Him.

An arrogant person is one who refuses wisdom, neglects the Source of it, and foolishly believes they don’t need to seek it. It is the one thing that a person with low self-esteem can never afford to be. Feeling bad about yourself is akin to feeling small—of devaluing your ability, potential, and worthiness. It is a level of feeling that is so low, we forget to look up. To look up is to look to God for what we need. In Luke 11:9(NLT), Jesus Christ said, “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” The Master has informed us that asking, seeking, and knocking are actions that must be persistent. They are habits required to replace repression, backwardness, and apathy.

Most people will say that low self-esteem can be turned into high self-esteem when we become confident solely in our own ability. Well, history has proven that all of us are pretty fragile, so I don’t know how far being confident only in ourselves can really take us. God tells us that He is our sufficiency and that we should place our confidence solely in Him. Philippians 4:13 says that we can do ALL things through Jesus Christ who gives us strength. He’s our Source, and if we’ll learn about him and seek him when we’re feeling bad, his love will deliver strength to our cores. He’ll plug us into God, so that our wires make sense, and feeling good will be a way of life.

Making Good Choices

Posted on November 20, 2018 by daaorg1214

If we give ourselves a chance to really think about life, we would find that it is built by a series of choices and decisions we make. Some of these are very difficult, and if we ultimately make the wrong choice or decision, the consequences could be disastrous. It is important to know that God only wants the best for us, and to help us make our lives the best they can be. In Psalm 32:8(NIV), He tells us “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.” God will give us directions through His written Word, through the Spirit that indwells us, and also through people that can help us when it isn’t clear what we should do.

Wise and Unwise Counsel
When it comes to counsel and advice from people, not all of it is good, and we have to be careful. There are those that are well-intentioned, but unwise; and there are those who are wise, but not well-intentioned. Unwise counselors are very often individuals that want to be right more than they want to deliver counsel that is right for you. A telling sign is that their advice will not mention God or the wisdom of His Word. God’s agenda for us is always going to be covered in truth and love, and we are well-served to place the counsel we receive from others through the scrutiny of His Word. If our choices and decisions are filtered through His truth and love; the outcomes will please Him. They will also satisfy us and benefit all concerned.

Jeremiah 17:7 (NIV) says, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.” Wise counselors will point to God. They will not be on a power trip and try to get you to develop a dependency on them, but will encourage you to place your trust in Him. At the very least, they will recommend the practice of prayer and be willing to guide you through it. Prayer is a powerful instrument of change, and as a spiritual person in Christ, it is always best to receive counsel from a person who prays and is intimately acquainted with faith.

The Counsel of God’s Word and Spirit
You’re a spiritual being with a soul, housed in a body. It is an extreme blessing from God to have this magnificent gift of physical embodiment, but we are not be defined by our flesh and blood vessels. The human body is a temporary structure. Once it is no longer alive, our legal right to live on earth is terminated. Our bodies return to dust, and our souls vacate the premises. We’re outta here! God doesn’t want us leaving earth before our time. He wants us to live long and prosperous lives. Earth is our only chance to become the greatest version of ourselves. It extends the greatest opportunities to learn the lessons we are destined to learn; these are lessons we desperately need.

The graveyards are full of individuals that died prematurely because they missed the chance to walk with Christ through life as long as possible; therefore, they weren’t able to live to their fullest potential. God doesn’t want this. It’s one of the greatest reasons He’s given us the gift of the indwelling Holy Spirit. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NIV) says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” God wanted the Spirit to live inside our body-temples because this allows the most intimate connection to Him. And the inside of us just happens to be where we all need the greatest amount of help.

Jesus said in John 16:13 that the Spirit will guide us into ALL truth. God knows the best decisions we should make. He knows the choice that is going to benefit the lives of all involved, and through the Holy Spirit, God will guide us. But this is only IF we want to be guided. Jesus Christ instructed us in Matthew 6:33 to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first. Our choice to be guided by God is evidenced through our decision to seek His Word. As we read it, the Holy Spirit will work within to give us revelation and insight in the decision-making process. Let’s be committed to making better decisions and choices. When we seek God’s wisdom in all we do, our futures will be brighter, because they will be aligned with His plan and purpose for our lives.

New International Version (NIV)
Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

You Can Be A Conduit of Healing for Others

Posted on November 13, 2018 by daaorg1214

I always thought of the town where I grew up as a little slice of heaven. Individuals that I counted on in my faith community were always there for me. I’m sure they had imperfections, but I never saw them. I have many fond memories of hayrides and festivals in the fall, and fireworks and bike rides in the summer. But behind this backdrop of loveliness were pockets of dysfunction and abuse. They were utterly astounding given the size of our small community. Growing up, I looked upon my neighbor’s daughter as an older sister. She was my ‘big sis‘. She braided my hair and taught me how to paint my nails. We got on like normal small-town girls, but there was a familiarity between us that was comforting and tragic. We were keepers of the secret. The unspoken had robbed us both. We should have used our voices to scream to the roof tops, but instead we suffered in silence like the good girls we were taught to be. The lives of my pretend big sister and I took very different turns. I went off to college and she tried to carve out a life for herself in the town where we grew up. No matter how much you love a place, sometimes you must move away to reclaim your destiny or stay on its path. Proof of this is found in God’s instruction to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-2(NLT), “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others.” Abraham lived among a close-knit community of family and friends, like many of us. These are the people who love and want the best for you, but often their words, attitudes, and behaviors make us comfortable being the person we’ve always been. This will prevent us from growing into the person God has destined us to become. There’s a saying that no matter what you’re going through, there’s always someone out there that has it worse. I think of this saying when I’m reminded of the horrible abuse my ‘big sis’ endured. I was clueless about the extent of it until I came home from college during a break one year. My old neighbors had relocated to another area in town, and the parents had been separated for quite some time, but I had always been fond of my big sister’s mother. I paid them a visit. We started to talk about faith, and out of the blue, sis became very angry. She accused her mother of being a hypocrite. She said, “How can you call yourself a Christian when you knew what Dad was doing to me all along.” Her father was notoriously abusive to her mother, and many people were fearful of him because he looked as mean as we all thought he was. Her mother was constantly in the hospital or doctor’s office with broken bones and bruises. Sis grew up way before her time and took care of her mother and four brothers. She had no real childhood to speak of. Only God knows if her mother knew about what she alleged was going on and did nothing, but I know firsthand that when pain is severe, it can blind us to the truth. We can become so consumed with licking our own wounds that we can’t see the wounds of others, even our own children. For many years, her soul was screaming, but no one heard my sister’s voice. As an adult, she would not reach out for help, and her mental health declined very rapidly after our last meeting. She never recovered to the point of having meaningful dialogue. 1Corinthians 6:19(NLT) says, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” The Holy Spirit quickens us. This means that when we receive the gift of Holy Spirit through the Lord Jesus Christ, we become alive to Heavenly Father, because our connection to Him is restored. The more we grow in Christ, the more heightened our awareness and sensitivity mirrors that of our precious Lord and Savior. We see and feel things we haven’t seen and felt before. Not only do we have greater empathy for people’s pain, but the Holy Spirit will help us aid and pray for them. We all have people in our lives that look just fine but are in great distress. They desperately need us, if for nothing else, to pray for them. In Matthew 25:45 (NLT), Jesus Christ said, “I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.” As God’s beloved sons and daughters, we need to wake up before it’s too late. Our destiny is to be whole and complete in Christ. We can’t do this work on our own. The Holy Spirit will help us, and we have a responsibility to let God heal our pain. Invite the Spirit to do the work in you that God wants, so that you can become spiritually strong, and prayerfully one day, you can be a conduit of healing for others. Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. “You Can Be A Conduit of Healing for Others” written by Fran, edited by PMB for DomesticAbuseAwareness.Org ©2018. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!

Learning to Love God’s Way

Posted on October 30, 2018 by daaorg1214

The term ‘self-government’ is used to define the rights that God has given every individual. None of us have the capacity to look into another person’s heart and know what or how they’re feeling. We don’t have the ability to know exactly what another individual is thinking. Only God knows this. Psalm 94:11 tells us that He knows our thoughts, and Psalm 139:4 reminds us that He knows what we’re going to say before the thought of it is formed in our minds. Jeremiah 17:10(NLT) states, “But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” Heavenly Father knows us intimately. Even though we speak negative words that do not please Him, we think bad thoughts, and harbor feelings of resentment, anger, and all kinds of toxicity in our hearts; He will not prevent us from doing these harmful things. He will never violate our free-will choices to feel, think, speak, and do as we choose.

Jesus Christ tells us in John 14:6 that he is the way, the truth, and the life. His example provides access to God and to life everlasting. 1 Peter 2:21(MSG) says, “This is the kind of life you’ve been invited into, the kind of life Christ lived. He suffered everything that came his way so you would know that it could be done, and also know how to do it, step-by-step.” Jesus taught us that choosing a life of love isn’t always going to be the easiest choice, but it will forever be the best choice.

Every day, life presents us with choices to help us learn how to love through our Master Jesus. He demonstrated to the tee everything that God would do as a human being. He said, “The Father is in me, and I am in the Father”(John 10:38), and in John 5:19, he said that he doesn’t independently do a thing, but only does what he sees the Father doing. This is precisely how God wants us to live love, so that we will have victory and triumph in our own lives. We don’t have to know someone’s thoughts or see into their hearts, we just have to love with the wisdom, strength, and courage of God’s love.

When God chose the planet earth for our habitation and then created humanity, it was His intention that we would live in fellowship and harmony with Him. We should notice that He would not force this harmony on us, because forcing is not love’s way. He gave us freedom, and our choices could not be exempt from it. He has shown us by example that the way to govern wholeheartedly is through love. It is not a sappy emotion with no backbone. Loving God’s way is the epitome of strength and authority.

Isaiah 9:6(NLT) states, “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Before the birth of Christ, humanity had taken God’s plan for harmony and love and we spoiled it. In many respects, instead of benefiting from God’s great love, we found incredibly destructive ways to brake the rules. Jesus Christ was sent to earth on a special mission. He came to wake us up and reveal the Father’s heart to us. The government rested on the shoulders of Christ. This means that the highest blessing, benefit, and righteousness that could be extracted from God’s plan rested on Christ. He did not let God down, and he didn’t let us down either. He accomplished all that God required and desired him to do. Love won!

Government is control exercised over actions. Again, God didn’t give us government over others. He gave us the ability to govern ourselves, and to do it so expertly through the love of Christ that all things will work together for our greatest good. This is God’s promise. We live in an environment where many allow their emotions to govern them instead of governing their emotions. This is not the way of Christ, and it is not the way to walk in faith. God created us to reign and have authority in our own lives. Studying His Word and learning to love His way, day by day, will bring us in alignment with His purpose. It will cause us to bask in the liberty and joy that Jesus Christ made available.■

Kick Ambiguity to the Curb!

Posted on October 23, 2018 by daaorg1214

Growing up, the elders in my community would rarely commit to the success of anything before its completion, and even then, they were careful not to let the slightest hint of arrogance interfere with their assumptions. They would only speculate about their ability to be victorious over any challenge or task by making the statement “If it be God’s Will”. They had tremendous reverence for God’s omnipotence, and from them I, too, learned to honor His Will; but as I got older, I realized there was a pivotal piece of knowledge that I had missed. Because of this, I looked at everything from the perspective of disappointment waiting to happen, and not success.

This was especially the case with romantic relationships. My tactic was to try to overwhelm the throne of God with my sobbing pleas, asking for tons of assurances that the person I was with was indeed the ‘one’. I’d be terrified that he would do something to hurt me the way others had done, or that I would do something to mess things up. In my erroneous thinking, God was pulling all the strings, and could cause, if He so chose, the person to respect, neglect, or mishandle my heart. So I begged Heavenly Father constantly to please let everything work out the way I wanted…‘this time.’

I didn’t understand that God never violates His Word. So, my approach was not one of believing the right things about what God wanted for me. Even though I thought I was headed in the right direction, what I believed wasn’t the truth. I believed what I had been taught, and it wasn’t yielding the results I wanted for myself. God was not orchestrating the details of my demise. He was not trying to teach me a lesson by punishing me, nor would He alter someone’s mind or heart to make them love me. God offers liberty, but I was so accustomed to living in fear that it was difficult for me to see it.

The lessons I learned as a youth were very beneficial on one side. I was correctly taught to honor God’s sovereignty and holiness because He is all good, all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere present. But many of those who taught me believed Him to also be a punishing God, waiting to really give it to you if you did something wrong. They believed that you could never know what He wanted, that you could never know in advance whether His Will would provide for your success or failure. It was a dance of reverence and ambiguity that ultimately left me confused about what God desires for our lives.

I asked the Lord Jesus Christ to straighten me out, and as he did, I became a lover of faith! He taught me that fear doesn’t ask much of us, and we’re very comfortable with it, but in order to walk by faith, fear must be released. Ephesians 4:22 tells us to put off the former conversations we had with our old selves. You know, those chitchats we had with our souls about not being—looking—loving good enough; and don’t forget those feelings we had that made us wonder whether God truly loves us and wants the best for us. All of that stuff has to go. It doesn’t create a cozy place for faith to feel at home, and God isn’t pleased with that.

James 1:8 tells us that a doubled-minded person is unstable in all their ways. We can’t be wishy-washy when it comes to believing with all our hearts that God wants the absolute best for our lives. Faith requires us to kick ambiguity to the curb! 1John 1:5(NLT) declares, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” What a magnificent truth! God is light, and He has made us children of His light through Jesus Christ, His Son! In my life, I knew darkness. I was in it long enough to know how miserable it makes you feel. I wanted God’s light and took the leap of faith to get it. This meant that I had to abandon some of the things I believed and had been taught by people I love very much. They did their best, but we all will face a point in life where we must go higher, and leave behind things, beliefs, relationships or situations that hinder our journey forward and upward.

We can’t have both faith and fear at the same time. That’s a doubleminded person, and James 1:8 says only unstable folks operate that way. 1John 4:18(NIV) tells us, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.” God’s plan is to help us to grow in love and grow in the knowledge of His Will. Approaching life as if it is an accident waiting to happen is not the mentality of someone who walks in the light. God is waiting to bless us in ways we’ve never imagined. Open the door of your heart, kick out fear, then, let God’s love drive you to the infinite possibilities His goodness holds for you.

Feeling Invisible

Posted on October 16, 2018 by daaorg1214

The first time I heard the phrase, “Complete in Christ”, I didn’t quite understand it, but I was desperate for the truth it holds. I had made the decision at a young age to become a follower of Christ, but like many people who have been abused, my brokenness was deep. Understanding the reality of being totally complete and whole presented a vision for which I had no blueprints to construct. I didn’t see it among those that I loved and had done my best to honor. They couldn’t protect themselves from injury, and in my mind, they certainly couldn’t and didn’t protect me from it. My cherished ones were silent in their pain, and I learned to be as well. I made myself invisible that way.

Often, I felt left out at social gatherings and functions, as if no one thought enough of me to pay attention, or to be interested in my opinions and what I had to say. It took years before I understood that people were simply responding to my tendency to hide. Also at work within me was my need to be validated by others. All the self-help gurus tell us to avoid letting our choices be ruled by other’s opinions. We’re led to believe that seeking validation from others will harm our self-worth. “Be happy with yourself…” they say, but this is much easier said than done.

I didn’t want to be self-indulgent to the point of fooling myself that external pleasures would satisfy an internal hunger. Call it a keen instinct or a gift from God, but I’ve always been able to discern a surface reality from that of something deeply rooted. I wanted the latter for myself. So, on my journey towards accepting the wholeness that Christ offers, one of the greatest lessons I learned is that a physical fix will not take care of a spiritual problem. This level of awareness opens a person’s eyes to what may be buried beneath years of struggling for self-appreciation.

Colossians 2:10(NLT) states, “So you also are complete through your union with Christ, who is the head over every ruler and authority.” God tells us exactly what makes us complete. It’s our union with Christ! He also warns us in Colossians 2:8 against listening to folks that’ll have us searching under every rock for a wholeness that can only be found in Christ. He tells us to watch out for people like that. They try to dazzle us with big, intellectual talk. They spread ideas that really amount to fluff, and it doesn’t get at the root of our pain, or what we truly need for our souls to be healed. Everything of God is expressed through Christ, and when we invite and accept him into our hearts, he begins to live there. His love is the magnifying glass that makes the invisible visible.

God has blessed us with a physical body, but the bounty of His blessing rests within us, the part of us that His Holy Spirit calls ‘home’. 1Corinthians 6:19-20(NLT) tells us, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, 20 for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.” When we begin to honor what God honors, to have faith in what He has faith in, and to think and speak what He thinks and speaks, we step into the visible likeness of Christ. Our goals are misplaced if they are to find treasures in the acceptance of others, or in an identity that really isn’t who we are. We need soul surgery by the Master Surgeon. His love is the medicine we desperately need, and we need to open our hearts to our Lord and Savior so he can do for us what no other can.

His love dwells in our hearts through our faith in him. We may feel invisible because we look to things that can be seen to make us feel relevant. Heavenly Father wants us to look to Christ and become rooted and grounded in him. Something spiritual happens when we do this. We will gain a comprehension that defines our true essence, because it brings enlightenment of the width, length, depth, and height of the love of Christ. Our faith in him transforms us, then we’ll see ourselves through the eyes of his love, and that’s what really matters most.■

Understanding the End Game

Posted on October 9, 2018 by daaorg1214

In Hosea 4:6, God says that His people are severely harmed, and indeed many destroyed, because they lack knowledge. The Old Testament is filled with examples of individuals who thought they knew best, but ultimately landed themselves and others in serious trouble. This happened because either they didn’t consult with God or listen to His wisdom. He always knows best and wants the best for us, but we struggle with believing this. We refuse to understand that life is a corkscrew that in many respects can never be straightened.

The one fact that remains constant in life is that the more we think we know, the more we realize that we haven’t even scratched the surface. Solomon, the son of King David, cracked this riddle wide open long before any of us came on the scene. God allowed him this grace to spare us the time and waste of energy. Solomon was the wisest man that has ever lived. In Ecclesiastes 1, he tells us that he assigned himself with the task of carefully looking into everything with scrutiny. His final synopsis; it was a meaningless pursuit, like chasing wind. In Ecclesiastes 1:18, he said, “The greater my wisdom, the greater my grief. To increase knowledge only increases sorrow.”

Some people have interpreted the words of Solomon to mean that it’s useless to gain knowledge, but this isn’t accurate. Solomon was very young when he was called to be King of Jerusalem, and as any of us can imagine, it was a daunting task. He felt overwhelmed by the responsibility and knew that he needed guidance from God. He loved the Lord, and as was the custom of his father, King David, Solomon offered sacrifices and burned incense in what was known as the great high place in Gibeon. 1Kings 3:5 tells us that it was there, at night, that the Lord appeared to him in a dream and asked, “What shall I give you?” Solomon, considering his task, his desire to do it well, and the overall welfare of the people he would oversee, asked for wisdom.

God was pleased with Solomon’s request, because it wasn’t saturated in the selfishness of riches or revenge on his enemies. God’s nature and desire is to always go beyond what we can ask or think. Ephesians 3:20 tells us that He loves to deal in the exceedingly abundant, so he made Solomon’s wisdom unmatched by any human being before or after him.

Knowledge can be a never-ending pursuit. It seeks to uncover, expose, and resolve continually, but wisdom is the crown that few seek to wear. Wisdom will help us apply knowledge well. With Solomon’s request for wisdom came also a ravenous appetite for knowledge and understanding. He wanted to know what was down the rabbit hole of every subject and found it to be an exhausting and unproductive exercise. Solomon’s wise counsel and advice to us is to save ourselves from pursuing knowledge about things that are not aligned with our purpose. If we can’t use it to please God, it is not worth having.

We all carve out a niche in life. Satisfying and fulfilling or not, we move forward. We do so assuming we know who we are and what we should be doing. Sometimes the opposite is true, and there must be room in our beings to question this. The end game of this earth experience is to know who we are, whose we are, and why we’re here. Not knowing the answers to those questions is the gap in our knowledge that causes wisdom to escape our choices and allows destruction a foot hole into our existences.

We spend way too much time obsessing about things that take us away from our destiny, and away from our true identity in Christ. We worry about the things that seem crooked, and we try to straighten them out. Solomon told us in Ecclesiastes 7:13(NLT), “Accept the way God does things, for who can straighten what he has made crooked?” Our time and energy are much better served in exploring all the glorious ways in which God has crafted us to share His love. Doing this will guarantee that we win the end game, and receive God’s eternal reward.■

What If No One Believes Me?

Posted on October 2, 2018 by daaorg1214

The time in which we now live is teaching us many lessons about, first, the value of truth; secondly, how the masses can interpret it, and lastly, how detrimental it can be when we don’t recognize it. Without truth, we are utterly lost, and there is no doubt about this. In John 8:31, Jesus Christ said to those listening that if they believed on him, and continued in the Word that he taught them, they were his true disciples. Their discipleship would be judged authentic and solid if they believed the Words of Christ, because Jesus Christ only spoke the truth. He then said in John 8:32(NLT), “And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Knowing and acknowledging the truth ushers in freedom. This is an incredibly important piece of knowledge for any person that is afraid to speak a truth of their own.

The effects of abuse have many tentacles of pain and harm. One of them is its ability to rob a person of their voice. An individual can be articulate and well-versed in a wealth of subjects, but the trauma and violence of abuse will sometimes render its victim speechless; not for a lack of ability, but because the depth, width, and breadth of what has been stolen is inexplicable. It is inarticulable.

Shame is undoubtedly another of its tentacles. Brother Adam and Sister Eve taught us that with shame comes the instinct to hide, to cover up so that truth is never spoken, and the weight of the lie that shame tells is left to fester in our souls. There, it does its greatest harm. The weight of shame becomes heavier as time passes. Meanwhile, the one who has been silenced is split apart, one side managing to look the part of a functioning, sometimes highly functioning, individual. The other side is slowly self-destructing, The other side is slowly self-destructing, starved of the healing medicine of God’s truth and the restoration He offers us through Christ.

The fear of not being believed is the enduring curse from an evil manipulation of power. Generation after generation, this fear is often passed down. It silences our soul’s greatest cry for help, as our ownership of the basic right to be heard is undermined and paralyzed. When it comes to abuse, the ignorant and unsympathetic resolve of lesser and fallen angels has birthed a culture where lies seem to breathe, and truth is suffocated. Let’s pray the tide is turning. Let’s pray that we all rise up with the strength to move with that tide and help it along.

1John 4:18(NLT) tells us, “Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love.” The love of God demonstrated through the life, ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection of Christ, expels ALL fear. In other words, God’s love obliterates fear! This is the liberty blockbuster, and the enemy uses every tactic to keep it from falling upon our ears. We don’t speak the truth of what we’ve been through because we fear the punishment. We’ve seen others punished, and to us the risk seems too great. Exactly the opposite is true. The greatest risk and harm to ourselves is that of not speaking our truth, of not ridding our souls of their burdens and giving our Master Jesus the load.

Our discretion and privacy can be preserved, and even honored to a degree, but not if it is surrounded in the lie that fear tells. There are individuals that cannot bear to hear the truth, because the truth is not in them. This is a quorum we must not join. Truth affords us the undeniable luxury of standing in it with unfeigned dignity, and with an absolute and unrelenting hope for liberty. Ephesians 4:15 encourages us to speak the truth in love—in love of self, and most importantly, love of God and truth. This is the way that we are released from fear’s grip and to be free to grow in the blessed existence that Christ has given us. ■

Domestic Abuse Awareness.Org

Breaking the chains of domestic abuse through the power of Jesus Christ.

Tag Archives: Wisdom