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Selfless Voice

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I read Christmas advent books into January and Valentine’s Day. This year, there’s one I’ve gotten stuck on . . . in a good way. It’s Pastor Rick Warren’s The Purpose of Christmas.

About midway through, there’s a brief chapter titled, Jesus Came to Save You from Sin and Yourself. 

For me, this says it all. At least right now. 

You see, God has been highlighting selfishness to me lately. And, if you’ve known Jesus for any measure of time, you know that we have to give up to go up. 

We’re always a work in progress. The transformation never ends. Just when we feel like we’ve overcome some major area of resistance, Holy Spirit shows us something else. I feel like I live in daily repentance. And that’s a good thing. 

Before I even began reading this book, right around Christmastime, Holy Spirit had me write a devotion titled, New Order, with “Order” being my key prophetic Word from Him for 2023. So now, as I walk out this physical transformation, I’m realizing, even more, the transformation He’s doing in me. 

And so, it goes, as I work to bring my house into a new order, He’s working in me as His house, His temple. And just like a piece of furniture that needs to be pulled out and cleaned behind, He’s exposing another area and layer of selfishness that has to go. 

I’ve had to discipline myself to not neglect His house as I’ve tended to my own. Holy Spirit spoke to me clearly, several months ago, saying, “Don’t put your house before Me.” I sensed in my spirit that something was coming up ahead, where I needed to have my mind set on what was most important to Him. He knows it’s easy for us to let priorities get messy during transformations, especially for those of us who tend to be task focused.

We know surrendering to Him means that we have to lay down our own ways. 

So, now when surfaces and spaces are made messier in the midst of establishing new order, I’ve had to block out the mess long enough to focus on Him; and make myself sit and be quiet right in the middle of the mess. It has been seriously slowing my natural, hurried pace, but it’s obvious to me that He’s bringing me into a greater Martha-Mary balance and, ultimately, peace.

Holy Spirit confirmed all of this in His Word:

First, in John 14:15 TPT, He says, “Loving me empowers you to obey my commands.”

And secondly, in Matthew 16:24 TPT, which says, “Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways.'”

Recently, I wrote in my journal that “I need to please God above what pleases me.” Sometimes, we need to be reminded of this and realize what following Him looks like for where we are now. This leads to a key element, which is discernment.

The verse Holy Spirit highlighted to me in this regard is Romans 12:2 TPT, which says, “Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.”

For me, this means to stop occupying myself with activities that focus my mind on anything less important, especially social media and news briefs during work breaks. Some of the images and stories I see there have proved to be distractions in my mind in the sense that they shift my focus off of God and onto pop culture. And since we know that we become what we focus on, this kind of “little thing” has the power to shift us off course over time. So, it’s really not a small thing when we give it too much influence in our minds.

But when God’s selfless voice is the loudest in our heads, He transforms our thinking to align with His. Only in this place of His Presence and Word can we rightly discern what pleases Him most. It’s how we’ll be able to walk with Him, obey Him, follow Him, and live for Him in this new order of life.

He promises it will prove to be more beautiful and satisfying than we could ever do our way. His way is and will always be superior to ours and, graciously, for our benefit. 

So, pray with me if you will . . . 

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for the new life You have for me. I know that remaining close to You is everything. Therefore, let Your voice be the dominant one in my life, so that I remain aligned with You and speak Your true Words for Your greater purposes. Help me to quickly respond to You. And keep me under Your protection. 

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, 

Amen. 

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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Ascend & Dwell

Very recently, I had a dream early in the morning. It was a nightmare, actually, that was so vivid, I knew God was speaking to me through it. The short of it is that I was out on a vessel in the ocean with someone I knew from my past. It was dark everywhere. At one point, I realized I was in danger and tried to escape. So, I ran up a staircase that appeared out of nowhere. But when I got almost to the top, I ran face-to-face into a demon that stood between me and the door to freedom. Then, suddenly, I woke up and looked at the clock. It was just after 4 a.m. 

I didn’t have to pray for an interpretation, because God revealed the meaning to me as I experienced the dream. I believe it’s not solely for me but for others for whom it may apply. This is the interpretation:

The enemy has stood at the door, between you and Jesus in a certain area, using your flesh against you in terms of you wanting your way, your lack of knowing a better way, your distrust of God, and your fear of letting go. But the enemy at the door cannot stand in your way when your way is Yahweh’s and Jesus is your Door. It’s time for the strongholds of old tethers and coping vices to go. These compromises, these false compensations can limit God from bringing forth His true recompense. They have been causing anxiety, because they have held you in bondage (Pr 1:32 NLT).

But Holy Spirit is now shinning His light on the root to set you free. 

Where you were submerged in deep darkness in this area of your life and the enemy’s “sub-version” has tried to play out, he has now been exposed! I AM is here for the repentant. I AM is The Door of your escape. You can be set free from this falsehood that I AM never intended you to bear. One prayer and the enemy has to go! Where he tried to come between you, as the bride of Christ, and Jesus this cannot remain. I AM is greater. I AM is stronger. I AM is your defender. I AM is your Avenger. I AM is The Living God of Justice, who offers the only true way.

So, friends, our Lord is dealing with a final issue that has prevented some of us from entering into our promised land. He is delivering His beloved from lingering root-level issues, especially ones we’ve held onto out of deep grief for so long that they became part of our normal. These are the underlying enemy operations that have brought a slow despair and delay. 

But God is saying, “Trust My way.”

He is bringing breakthrough once and for all for His beloved ones who awaken to His truth, choose repentance and follow Him up and out of darkness into His marvelous light to dwell with Him in this area. His way will require full submission, nothing withheld, like Caleb, who had a different spirit and a whole heart. 

His invitation is to His higher holiness. His scripture is Psalm 24:7 TPT, which says, “So wake up, you living gateways! Lift up your heads, you doorways of eternity! Welcome the King of Glory, for he is about to come through you.”

Holy Spirit is inviting us to trust Him with our most precious losses and move forward with Him. It’s time to hand them over fully so we can be set free and move into all God has for us. It’s time for the limitations we brought upon ourselves to go because grace has lifted from them.

God has bigger and better fruit forward. It’s time for grapes so big that men have to carry them on poles (Nu 13:23). “How much evidence do you need?” asks The Lord of Hosts. “Shift your eyes and heart onto Me. Trust Me and I will provide more than enough.” 

God will make things right when we surrender our “hold-outs” to His will. We can do what He says, knowing He’ll take care of it all. 

Some call this passing the test. I like to think of it as finding Jesus in the midst to help us get past bondages and rise above limitations. When we choose to go “past and above,” it’ll manifest in our lives, according to God’s timing.

I love the Words of Psalm 118:17-20 MSG that reveal a beautiful new beginning. They say, “I didn’t die. I lived! And now I’m telling the world what GOD did. GOD tested me, he pushed me hard, but he didn’t hand me over to Death. Swing wide the city gates—the righteous gates! I’ll walk right through and thank GOD! This Temple Gate belongs to GOD, so the victors can enter and praise.”

Pray with me if you will . . . 

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for saving me from myself, from the pain and lies that limited Your will in my life. Where I have chosen selfishness and refused You, I repent and choose to submit to You. I lay my sin at the foot of Your cross, Jesus. And I renounce all agreement with darkness and command it to go now, in Jesus’ Name. I choose to receive Your light of life deep into every fiber of my being. 

I ask You, Lord, to infuse me with Your loving-kindness to the extent that all false things will seem as though they never were. Thank You for faithfully forgiving me. Thank You for leading me back to life again to ascend and dwell with You. Thank You for filling me afresh with Your Spirit. 

Help me to trust and obey You for Your glory.

In Jesus’ Mighty Name,

Amen.

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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Faith Believing

It seems quite a few icons have passed into eternity recently. At least some we felt like we knew, if even at a distance. We could see their famous lives play out, beautifully at times. 

The one I’m most inspired by is Pastor Jack Hayford. He was a father figure to me from afar. I began listening to his radio broadcasts in 1979 on my drivetime to work. I was captured by the truths he spoke and impressed by the conviction with which he spoke them. He was someone I wanted to know better. Someone from whom I wanted to hear more. 

And then there was Franco Harris and Lisa Marie Presley. I didn’t know either of them personally, but I did serve Mr. Harris once when I worked as a flight attendant decades ago. I remember him as strong, kind and well-mannered. Ms. Presley, I had never met but I admired her beauty, her voice and her musical legacy. I prayed for her and her family.

I fought sadness in my heart when these people passed. It’s times like this, when our world changes as we know it, that I’m reminded we serve a faithful God. He is gracious beyond what we can comprehend, rich in mercy and reaches people and places we cannot. He is our only hope.

Holy Spirit always leads me when I pass through grief, encouraging my heart along the way. He often reveals to me when a loved one—or even a public figure—needs prayer or is about to pass into eternity. But this was not the case with these three people.

However, a few years back, when a relative was about to pass, Holy Spirit showed me a vision of their face late one night. I didn’t know exactly what was wrong. It just felt urgent. So, I immediately began to pray. 

When this person passed, I wondered if they knew Jesus; because I never knew their testimony. I never saw them attend church. So, in my quest for peace, I sought an answer from God. 

Holy Spirit showed me a vision of a simple, narrow cross lying flat on the ground. Then, in an instant, the cross stood up straight. My heart felt overwhelmed with gratitude, because I understood that God raised up a cross for my beloved relative. 

In time, Holy Spirit confirmed this to me with His Word in Ephesians 2:6 AMP, which says, “And He raised us up together with Him [when we believed], and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, [because we are] in Christ Jesus.”

I was reminded that all that is required of us to enter into Heaven with God is our belief by faith in His grace through Messiah Jesus. 

We don’t often know what people hold in their hearts or say in their final moments. We don’t often hear their most intimate prayers or their deepest cries for help. But we can know God who does. And He can settle our souls with one revelation.

Lately, a few have come to me for private prayer in their profound losses. They’ve sought God to help their hearts along. Sometimes, He works over time. Sometimes, He works in a moment. But through it all, we can know that our best place with Him is up and forward. 

God has more life ahead for His grieving ones and the saints that have gone before us. Thankfully, He offers us an invitation to keep looking up, not behind. Yes, we have cherished memories. But divine restoration awaits us. First, in our hearts with Him. Then with others up ahead. This gives us hope.

We don’t have to get trapped in pain. We can grieve through someone’s passing and not camp there too long. 

When I consider Lisa Marie Presley, I remember myself, having lost a loved one at an early age and not knowing how to process through it God’s way.

I didn’t experience peace in this regard until years later, when I came to know God more and finally decided to trust Him enough to give Him all the pain and loss. Only then, did God begin to heal my heart. 

It has been decades since then, and I can honestly say that I can remember the loss but the pain has no effect now. It doesn’t hold me back from being and doing what God has for me in my life. 

He is the only One who can heal a soul this well. There is no honor in the unwillingness to release painful loss to the One who gives and takes away. We can choose to see and live as He wills—in the scope of eternity with so much more around us and forward. In this place of hope, it can be made well with our souls. 

So, pray with me if you will . . . 

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for Your sacrifice to heal my heart. Thank You for Your promise of restoration. I willingly give You all the grief of my loss. I willingly lay, at the foot of the cross, my way of coping. I willingly trust You with my loved ones who have gone before me. I ask You to remove all the pain from my heart and make it whole again. 

I realize that You, Lord, are full of compassion and no one has suffered more than Your Son. So, please help me to look up to You and receive Your abundant life for me under Your great cloud of witnesses, who are alive with You (He 12:1). 

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, 

Amen. 

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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Heart Filled

A heart of faith-filled promises produces a heart full of gratitude (Ep 3:17). 

As God reveals His ways and purposes to us in the transition of His promises we’ve held in our hearts, we can expect Him to awaken us to a deeper gratitude of His how, what and why. 

I believe many will be astounded as He surprises us with His revealed mysteries of how He will fulfill His promises to us. Herein lies the treasure of deep gratitude.

Luke 8:10 TPT reminds us that we “have been given a teachable heart to perceive the secret, hidden mysteries of God’s kingdom realm.”

As our souls are impacted by His methods, we must keep giving every opposition to Him—all heaviness of fear, loss and false responsibility. As we submit to His ways and delight in Him, our souls will awaken to more of His rich, abiding love (Ep 3:18).

We can come into agreement with His truth of Psalm 119:24 TPT, which says, “Your commandments are my counselors; your Word is my light and delight!”

Recently, I saw “Light is might” in a Word-vision. The sense I had in my spirit was that God is bringing about life-changing lift as His light of promise is fulfilled in ways that only He can (Ep 3:16). And His mighty ways will not fit into anyone’s box (Ep 3:20). 

Our strength in the midst of transition is the focused mind of Christ, our willing obedience and the joyful delight of His high purpose in His outpouring of greater goodness. Oh, to know Him more in the breakthroughs!

2 Peter 1:3 TLB says, “For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us!”

Isaiah 26:3 TLB says, “He will keep in perfect peace all those who trust in him, whose thoughts turn often to the Lord!”

So, our declaration can be “My heart and soul explode with joy—full of glory! Even my body will rest confident and secure” (Ps 16:9 TPT).

We must receive God’s perspective and hold to His truth as His best for us, even if it means letting go of former things. When we do this, we can receive His new things to operate in His greater abundance forward. 

One of the beauties of John 10:10 is that He leads the ones He made stable into another level of abundant life. 

Right now, God is extending invitations to us daily to come closer to Him and go deeper with Him to receive the revelation understanding we need to remain solid in the transition.

Proverbs 25:3 TPT reminds us that “The heart of a king is full of understanding, like the heavens are high and the ocean is deep.”

We know that we do not walk alone in deep places and that He is with us and will reveal Himself to us. It can also help to know that others will be transitioning too and that many on the side of where we’re heading have an anointing to pray us through. 

So, we can ask God to order our steps to receive through them. But our best, most fitting counsel will come directly from Holy Spirit to us. Because, when it comes directly from Him, we don’t have to strain to understand and we tend not to doubt. 

His revelations are lightbulb moments that surpass our own thinking. He makes our testimonies unique as He brings us into more of what’s new to us. 

As we seek Him and find Him in the midst, He’ll be there to lift our heads and hearts to see and know as He does. He will help us continue to follow Him with childlike faith that accesses miracles of new life along our Divine destinies. 

Much will happen as He shifts our perspectives to see His workings His way—both old and new. Our knowledge of things past will ascend to a higher viewpoint to cause us to be open to the changes He’ll bring in our lives. What we thought we knew before, we will now begin to see as Divinely purposed. And it will make sense to us.

Proverbs 23:15 TPT says, “My beloved child, when your heart is full of wisdom, my heart is full of gladness.” 

And isn’t this what we desire most? To please Him. To honor Him. To remain steadfast and make wise decisions that reflect His Heavenly nature on the earth.

Pray with me if you will . . . 

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for the light of life You’ve given me and for restoring my appreciation of the journey. Help me to continue to fight “an excellent fight” and keep “my heart full of faith” (2 Tim 4:7 TPT). Help me to continue to receive Your truth that produces freedom and deep gratitude toward You for who You are and what You’re doing in my life. May “my heart and soul explode with joy—full of glory” (Ps 16:9 TPT)! Thank You for helping me live in Your abundance.

To You, Lord, be all glory, honor and praise. 

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, 

Amen. 

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.

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Beginning Anew

Recently, as I awakened one morning and looked out the window, I saw a clear sky over treetops in a way I never had before. This continued over the next few days. 

From the very first sunrise, our Lord began to speak to my heart. He revealed that these sunrises of new days are for those with child-like faith and wonder—those who have awakened to Holy Spirit’s revelations over the years. 

These beloved ones are beginning to come into the manifestations of their hearts desires, even greater than they imagined as a child. God has made their futures bright and is leading them now to continue to show them the way. They will see that the wilderness they once found themselves in has become the stepping stone to their expansive freedom.

God has come in with a consuming fire to burn up obstacles that once came against them—the same obstacles He didn’t cause but purposed and used to bring them higher in Him. “They have served their purpose,” says The Lord of Hosts. What used to plague them no longer will. They are free from what was sent to hold them back. They have been made strong in Him for such a time as this, beyond what they could see back then.

God’s fire will also help these beloved ones not look back. He has set them on a clear path at a new altitude and range with eagle clarity and focus, heading straight into His promises. Nothing below them concerns them, as God has broken them through into a beautiful new life that will honor Him in a new way. These beloved ones will experience His beauty of a new day and in a new area to them. 

Our Lord reminded me of a key scripture that He highlighted to me and that I clung to ten years ago, which is Song of Songs 2:13. It asks us, “Can you not discern this new day of destiny breaking forth around you? The early signs of my purposes and plans are bursting forth. The budding vines of new life are now blooming everywhere. The fragrance of their flowers whispers, ‘There is change in the air.’ Arise, my love, my beautiful companion, and run with me to the higher place. For now is the time to arise and come away with me” (TPT version).

In this passage, the “signs” of His purpose and plans are described as “early.” The “vines of new life” are described as “budding.” But now, the day of destiny is right in front us. It’s in clear sight from a higher perspective. 

In this passage, the early signs have given way to the latter signs of right now, just before big-shift promises are made complete. Do you see these latter signs? Do you also realize that you still need to continue to come away with Him as you navigate the soar? For only in Him do we live and move and have our being.

In addition to this key scripture, Holy Spirit also highlighted Matthew 11:30 to me four times, confirming that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. He’s revealing that much has been lifted off of His beloved ones to live and move again as He intended in Acts 17:28, which is to function forward, knowing our identity in Him. 

“It will be as though it never was,” says The Lord of Hosts regarding the pain of the past, “as you continue to step into My glorious future for you.”

The Lord then took me to Isaiah 35 to remind me of His glorious promises for His redeemed. As I re-read this chapter, He reminded me of specific promises that are about to come on the scene as He brings about big shifts. 

In verse 1, He speaks of the desert blossoming “like a rose” and rejoicing (Is 35:1)! He says in verse 2 that “Every dry and barren place will burst forth with abundant blossoms, dancing and spinning with delight!” He speaks of “magnificent beauty” and “awesome glory.” He cites “the beautiful grandeur” of Himself.

He goes to say in verse 4 that “He is breaking through to give you victory! He comes to avenge your enemies. With divine retribution, He comes to save you!” He says in verse 10 that “Ecstatic joy will overwhelm them; weariness and grief will disappear!”

All of this is for those who walk with God and have allowed Him to do deep work in them. I encourage you to read Isaiah 35 and jot down what Holy Spirit reveals to you, specifically, about His purposes and strategies forward. 

Pray with me if you will . . . 

Dear Lord, 

Thank You for deliver us up out of former places into our futures. Please help us to continue to abide in You to produce as much fruit that pleases You. I trust You to navigate us all the way into Your completed promises. 

In Jesus’ Mighty Name, 

Amen. 

This devo was graciously re-posted by the Salem Web Network, which includes iBelieve.com.