missin' it

Don't miss what God is doing in you, because you are looking for God to do something around you.

Isn't that a crazy thought? That we are so busy looking for God to do something around us that we miss what God is doing in us. We are continually praying for God to heal, provide, show, guide, direct, answer, give, change or reveal. While God is certainly a God of all these things, He is more interested in doing something IN us than just doing something around us. But those are things that we rarely focus on. Why? because it is easier to ask God and focus upon what God is doing around us, than to be consumed by what God is doing IN us.
Isn't it time that we become a people that are obsessed by what God is doing IN us and to stop focussing on what God is doing around us? I want to stop looking for His hand at work around me all the time and begin to focus on His heart at work inside of me. I want to be overwhelmed by what He is doing in me, how He is changing me, conforming me. I love to see Him work around me, but what is going to forever transform me is what He is doing IN me, not just what He does around me.

So the question of the day: What is God doing IN you today?
Not how have you seen Him working around you....but what is God doing IN you? How is He transforming you? That is the work that He is longing to do. And if we can't answer that and say what God is changing, moving, doing inside of us....then we are not walking with Him as we think that we are. We are fooling ourselves. Don't be fooled....God wants IN you...not around you.ALL FOR YOU

fire hydrant

the above picture effectively describes my life most days. Let me explain why. Anyone who spends any amount of time with me will eventually describe me as a fire hydrant. My relationship with Jesus is not a casual relationship, a stroll or even a fresh breath of air. It is intense, intentional and often a force to be reckoned with. And for a lot of people...it is too intense, too intentional and a force they would rather avoid. Spending time with me, can often feel like you are drinking from a fire hydrant. And for many, that is an experience they can do without. People need to drink from a water hose, not a fire hydrant.
For years, I have worked on capping that fire hydrant off, controlling it and meeting people where they are. And I have gotten better...although there are moments when the cap pops off and there she blows.
However, in recent days, this picture has come to illustrate something different in me. Yes, I am still the fire hydrant, learning to be controlled by the Spirit so that I don't hose people down. But the more important picture for me now is that I am the one drinking from the fire hydrant.
The Father is lavishing His love, grace, mercy and relationship on me. It is overwhelming and astonishing, challenging and changing, fulfilling and satisfying. But what I have discovered is the closer I come the more powerful it becomes. The drink from Him is no longer a sip, a gulp, or a hose down. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly {places} in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
He is longing to lavish Himself on us....He wants us to drink from the fire hyrdrant of His mercy, love, grace and kindness. He is not holding back, merely giving us a taste or a sip. He is waiting for us to step up and to allow the down pour to begin. Who He is, is not just a taste and see God...for once we have tasted we will want to be drenched with, lavished by, poured out on by the greatness of who He is.
I may be a fire hydrant, but that is because I am drinking from one...and loving every minute of it. For I will never thirst again!


ALL FOR YOU

Delight

Have you ever stopped and just thought about what pleases the Father? We spend a lot of time talking about and focussing on what pleases us, but the ultimate question...the question of LIFE...is what pleases Him?
There are a list of Scriptures that could define what that looks like. But tonight, there is one that has topped the charts for me. Jeremiah 9:23-24 says let him who glories, glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on the earth; for I delight in these things.
The Father delights, takes pleasure in the man who glories in, boasts of KNOWING and UNDERSTANDING Him. That He is a God of Covenant mercy, judgement and rightness. God delights when we YADA Him, KNOW Him, Experience Him....this is a word that denotes intimacy. Not just understands, but has KNOWN and still KNOWS and loves.
We can be delighted...when He is delighted, for our delight should be in HIM and HIM alone. I crave time with Him. I long for time to talk about Him. I so want to share Him with others. It is why I live and breathe. Everything else is small in light of the joy of breathing Jesus. He is the air I breathe. I can boast in these things, for that is what delights Him. He is honored and thrilled when we sit with our friends and talk of Him, to Him, for Him, about Him. He smiles with delight when we surround ourselves with His presence and bring others into it. He is LONGING for us to GLORY in HIM.
So how could we choose to live any other way...than for His name and His renown. That is what the word to glory means...to live for His renown. To hold it as the highest worth. To make shine. But it also means to act like a madman, to act clamourishly foolish, to be given in marriage. Pretty cool...that to glory in means to enter into Covenant and to act in such away that you are considered a madman because you so shine the light and renown on the Father.
Makes me want to GLORY!
ALL FOR YOU

EXPRESS YOURSELF

I am not one that typically has a problem expressing myself. In fact, I am quite the opposite. And yet, the past several days I have found myself inexplicably without words. Unable to accurately express or describe what I felt, where I was, where I was going and why I felt so overwhelmed-in both a good and a bad way. But today, the Lord has allowed me freedom to KNOW and EXPRESS His heart.
I have longed for and desired for many months now freedom which has lead me on a new journey with the Father. I have cried out that He might be awakened in me and that He would take my breath away and breathe in me His words, His life, His ways. It is in that moment that He dwells in me and I in Him-that I can KNOW that the Lord has chosen and sent me, that He possesses me. In the arousing of the Father, to set His love on me and I on Him, I have found myself speechless. And yet at the same time, wanting more than ever to express the Love that resounds within my soul-not a passive, casual relationship, but an intensely passionate and emotional consuming that leaves you breathless.

Zech 2:11-13
11 "And many nations will join themselves to the LORD in that day and will become My people. Then I will dwell in your midst, and you will know that the LORD of hosts has sent Me to you.
12 "And the LORD will possess Judah as His portion in the holy land, and will again choose Jerusalem.
13 "Be silent, all flesh, before the LORD; for He is aroused from His holy habitation."

ALL FOR YOU

inside out

It is getting colder, which honestly, is making running harder. It is harder to get out of bed, harder to make myself get motivated to go outside and harder to make myself run. Cold environments are just HARD.
However, I am learning to discipline my heart to run despite the environment. Truly, that is a discipline-to run in spite of the hardness is only something that comes through the training and subjecting of one's heart. As I run, I am conditioning my breathing as well. Increasing my breathing capacity by pushing myself to run further, harder and longer.
I am running, telling myself these things when I suddenly realize that I am not cold any longer. In fact, I have broken a sweat. I can see my breath as I breathe, but my body is no longer effected by the outside environment. I am startled by this revelation and begin to wonder why the outside environment and the cold is no longer effecting me when I am struck by the truth that as I am running I am producing heat. So much heat that the cold from the outside has no effect.
Wow, what a cool thought. We live in a cold world that would like to press it's effect on us as believers, making it hard to run after the things of the Lord. But as we discipline our hearts to chase after Him, we begin to put off heat from the inside out, counteracting the outside elements so much that they don't effect us. The cold is no longer hard for there is heat that is being put off from the inside out.
Wouldn't it be cool if we effected all of life this way....running after the Father in such a way that the world does not effect us because the heat from within, the passion from within, the journey itself counteracts what the world wants to try to stop. The outside elements have no effect on one who is running hard and fast to the Father.

ALL FOR YOU