God is Faithful

“For we are the temple of the living God.  As God has said, “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people”” (2 Corinthians 6:16, NIV).

When the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, manifested on the Day of Pentecost, He rested on and empowered the disciples to do things that were needed in the moment, things they in themselves could not do.  They spoke with new tongues and about 3,000 people were saved that day.  They took up the charge to continue the work of Jesus and were transformed from terrified, huddling lumps of clay to world-changing evangelists.  The Holy Spirit changed things.  Suddenly, we became the Lord’s temple.  We have direct access to God because He comes to live inside us when we choose Jesus as Lord.

“My eyes and my heart will always be there” (1 Kings 9:3, NLT). 

The Lord stated this to Solomon when He consecrated the temple.  The Lord made a promise that is as solid and immutable today as the moment it was first spoken.  And while the temple no longer stands in Jerusalem, we as His children are His temples.  Therefore, His eyes are on us, and His heart is with us.  He is here.  He is present.  And He is always faithful.

“Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you” (Hebrew 13:5 based on Deut 31:6,8 and Joshua 1:5,9).

I love the fact that God will never leave, never forsake me, even when I fail in little or gargantuan ways.  I can’t lose His love, and He will never take His eyes off me because He lives in me.  He is here.  He is present, and He is faithful.  One day, the Lord and I were having a conversation, and He asked me, “Why am I faithful?”  I had no answer and asked Him why He was.  I will never forget His response:

“Because I am who I am.  I am forever.  I am constant.  I the Lord do not change (Malachi 3:6).  I rejoice over my children with singing (Zephaniah 3:17).  I renew you.  I sustain you.  I give you good gifts.  I am faithful” (emphasis His).

We proceeded to talk about His constancy and the fact that He is forever.

“I the Lord do not change” (Malachi 3:6, NIV). 

“I am the Alpha, the Omega, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 21:6, NIV)

He renews us, sustains us.  He gives good gifts, and He is faithful.

               Reading the book of Lamentations is a one-way trip into a country song. The circumstances are grim and depressing, leaving one with a serious need for a soul boost afterward. It somewhat reflects the past few months where our world plunged into uncertainty, fear and turmoil. However, even in the midst of melancholy, destruction and devastation, Jeremiah remembers who God is:

“Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.  They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.  “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!” (Lamentations 3:22-24, NKJV).

May we, too, remember that we can trust in the Lord always, even when everything around us is shouting otherwise.

I pray blessing over you and your family today, wherever you are and in whatever circumstance you find yourself.

(From July 14, 2020)

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New Adventures Are Just Around the Corner

Sometimes the greatest adventures in life come when you least expect them.  Perhaps that’s part of what makes them so great.  Last year, I was hit with a 3½ month period of dizziness and vertigo that confined me significantly.  I was barely able to get out of bed from late spring through the summer.  I tried a few things to help the condition abate but was without success.  This led to frustration and a crying out to the Lord: “This is not my destiny.  Help me.”  As I lay in bed, I began to pray in tongues.  Lo and behold, it was four hours later, and I was still praying.  Then, I heard something break in the spirit realm.  The Lord told me to listen to a Sid Roth program on YouTube with these fiery women who were anointed for healing and prayer.  Over the next several days and weeks, the Lord continued to lead me to many more teachings that impacted me greatly.  The summer became a time of incredibly sweet communion with the Lord. 

I also was fortunate to have a cousin, who’s a naturopath, visit for two weeks and help get me on the road to health.  By the end of the summer, I was able to drive the hour to church, where I met an amazing woman with an anointing for seeing and healing.  She prayed for me to be released from trauma, and I could feel all these things shifting in my head.  Within the next couple of weeks, the Lord led me to a teaching by Joan Hunter.  It was a session from one of her teaching schools.  I prayed the prayers with them, things about asking for forgiveness for the bloodline, commanding trauma to go, etc.  What followed was nothing short of miraculous.  I had been in an accident 6½ years before and sustained a brain injury.  Due to the trauma, I was unable to read more than a few pages at a time, a major challenge for a once avid reader.  After praying the prayers, I read an entire book within two days.  I was astonished and delighted at this miracle and life-altering change.  I am so grateful to God for the revelation and teaching through Joan and her ministry.

This led to more teachings about trauma and the courts of heaven.  As I pursued these things on my own with the Lord and then with two fabulous friends, my brain and body healed from so much that I was able to do things and think in ways that I had not been for nearly seven years.  Then, when we met to pray and prophesy over one another, one had a vision of me in a sports jersey with the word “Warrior” on the back.  Two days later, the Lord gave me the idea for the Warrior t-shirts. 

The Lord is putting things together still, and I don’t know where this will go.  But this is a great adventure, one that I hope lasts a lifetime.

To Dare Greatly

Since I was small, I always have had this incredible sense of destiny, serving the greater good.  Because of that, I have spent my life looking for the things that I can do, places where I can serve and truly give to mankind.  Many times I thought I knew what this meant and how it would translate in my life, work and calling.  But somehow, many of the things that I thought would come to pass have not.

One such time, I entered into what seemed like a great plan to turn a company around and serve all at the same time.  So many things came together swiftly and smoothly.  I thought that this meant that everything else in this venture would come together in like manner.  However, that wasn’t the case.  I experienced the biggest failure in my career, and it was costly.  I lost my source of income, my reputation, credibility, and an incredible amount of confidence.  My head was spinning in the wake of this demise.  I couldn’t think straight and felt fragile for the first time in my adult life.

Immediately following this final meeting, I stepped into the shower before flying home.  I closed my eyes, and as soon as the water hit me, I saw myself stepping onto the other side of the Red Sea with Jesus, and the walls of water fell and drowned all my enemies.  The Lord assured me that to Him, this was my greatest victory.  I was stunned and then thought, “Okay, He’s going to make everything right.”  And there were all kinds of scenarios swirling through my brain as to how He would do that.  Long story short, none of those scenarios came true.  What I thought would be a quick turnaround was not.  In fact, it has been a long and excruciating road.

Now, I am being called into something new, something that requires an incredible amount of trust in the Lord, vulnerability and a militant tenacity.  In other words, the Lord is calling me to something that evokes an incredible amount of uncertainty and fear.  Then last night, I was reminded that the real triumph is not about the end result.  It is about trusting the Lord and moving forward with boldness, even if in the end, it looks like an incredible failure to the rest of the world.  As Teddy Roosevelt once said, the real credit goes to the person “in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again…who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”

So I am choosing to dare greatly in this pursuit, to be vulnerable and trust the Lord to honor His promises: that He has plans to prosper me, not to harm me, to give me hope and a future.  I don’t want to be one of those “timid souls” about whom Teddy Roosevelt warned, those that neither know victory nor defeat.  Instead, I want to be the valiant warrior on the field who gives all to see the kingdom of God birthed into the earth, into my life and the lives of those around me, who knows the greatest triumphs, and who, when I fail, at least will have done so daring greatly.

Here’s to all the warriors who leave everything on the field of battle. May you be blessed, emboldened and comforted greatly today, that you may stand tall and see the desires of your heart come to fruition in your life for the betterment of us all.

Keys to Freedom: Surrender

Surrender - a word that evokes many thoughts and feelings based on our world views and experiences. It wasn’t something with which I was comfortable for many reasons. But the Father in heaven wanted to step in and redefine this word and through it, my entire life.

I have loved Jesus all my life. Raised in and by the church, I watched faith being lived out in many ways, from bake sales and potlucks, serving and enjoying life, to life-threatening illness, procedures and many, many funerals. Through this, I learned a lot, a lot about doing. While there is nothing wrong with doing, in fact it is absolutely essential to the Christian life, it isn’t the place to begin. Something inside me was missing. And all the doing the right things couldn’t mine it out of me. For that I needed something big, or rather Someone. I needed a Holy Spirit surgical procedure, to bring about radical change and good in my life.

In my college days and early adulthood I heard many people talk about having a quiet time with the Lord. Mind you, I had read my Bible and prayed basically every day since I was 11, but I wanted and, quite frankly, needed more. In this season, I came across a Scripture on the bulletin at the church in which I’d grown up. It struck a chord deep within me, and I began praying a slightly modified version of it fervently:

Teach me Your ways, O LORD, that I would walk in Your truth; give me an undivided heart that I would fear your name alone (Psalm 86:11.)

Hear me as I write this: Be careful of that for which you pray. God is listening, and He will answer. :-)

He began putting things in my path that would lead me closer and closer to Him. I took a book from my grandmother’s library after her passing, one that sat on my shelf for a year and a half. Then one day, it caught my eye, and I devoured it. It’s a little book with a mighty message, Listening Prayer. The author recounted the very things that I was missing and wanted in my time with God. I wanted to hear His voice and experience Him, and that is exactly what happened.

He had my full attention. He began to teach me, discipline me to spend time with Him and release so much of His wisdom that it was almost overwhelming. It wasn’t easy. I had started a company only the year before, and there were significant amounts of work to do. However, He required 4 hours from me before releasing me to start my day. I had purposed in my heart that I was going to be obedient to whatever He told me to do, so I did this, sometimes with reluctance. And in doing so, it set me on a course that remains to this day. He showed me that when I give up my agenda for His, He will show up and do incredible things, one of which is what my siblings and I call “multiplying the time.” Tasks and projects that would take hours or days to complete, would be finished in a short time frame. He proved that when I set aside time for Him, He will move and do things that I could never do on my own. In addition He also healed me physically and emotionally; He made me whole.

God stepped into my life in the most personal way and showed me that in His kingdom, surrender is a thing of beauty, and with it comes discovery, identity, intimacy, power, and ultimately, freedom to be who He created us to be. In this freedom we get to live the life and dreams that He planned for us before the foundations of the world were laid. It’s wonderful to feel comfortable in your own skin, to know who you are, to belong, to be the beloved daughter of a good Father who thinks I’m the best thing ever and tells me so every day. When we begin from this point, belonging to Him and the family, we get to be who we are. And when we are fully ourselves, resting in Him and the identity He has given us as beloved sons and daughters, we get to step out and do the things that He put in our heart to do. Surrender is the key to knowing Him and ourselves, and it opens the door to life abundant.