Living under open heaven

It's easy to make a mistake here. ”if God gave it to me, ” we say ”it’s mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of- if we want to find our true selves, it we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory. Mat 10:39 (He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.) It takes many letting go to reach that measure of the fulness of Christ.  An acorn is a marvelous little thing designed for its purpose. It contains the grand glory of an oak tree, and God’s intention when he made the acorn was the oak tree.  The more you look at the oak tree and perceive God’s purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses /dying to self seem.  God’s ultimate plan was as far beyond our imaginings as the oak tree is from the acorn’s imaginings. The acorn does what it was made to do, without perstering the mak...

Clogged with wishes.  I was wishing that my wishes were what God wishes, and if my wishes were not what God wished, I wished that I could wish that my wishes would go away, but the wishes were still there.. “And Judah said, The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish; so that we are not able to build the wall.” ‭‭Nehemiah‬ ‭4:10‬ ‭KJV‬‬ “So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, "Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while...

"No one puts new wine into old wineskins: otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins: but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins" (Mark 2:22). You can't put new ideas into old mind-sets. You can't get new results with old behaviors. The comparison is a very apt one when we think of the properties of wine and wineskins. When wine is new, it is in a state of fermentation. It bubbles and expands as the fermentation gases are released. A fresh, pliable wineskin can absorb such expansion and slowly age-with the wine until the fermentation process is complete. To put fresh wine into an old wineskin, however, is asking for trouble. The old wineskin has assumed a definite shape and is no longer pliable. It is fixed and somewhat brittle. The activity of new wine will stress it beyond its ability to yield. And so both the wine and the skin are lost. This means that old mindsets, even if based on Godly principles, still won...

"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your soul and with all your strength.'  -Matthew 22:37 "I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;'      your works are wonderful,      I know that full well." -Psalm 139 "No one in military service gets entangled in matters of everyday life; otherwise he will not please the one who recruited him." -2 Tim 2:4 Doubt and insecurity come like a giant. When there's a new trigger, be it being passed up for a promotion, fail in a new endeavor, read a negative review, let someone down, disappointed a loved one, being misunderstood, overlooked, criticized, or not living up to someone’s expectations, what is your mind focus on?  Are you living for the world's approval, when knowing you have already gained His verdict?  I now love and serve on the basis of the verdict. Because He loves me and He accepts me, I do n...