Category: Encourage

Undefeatable

The power of God is within us as long as we desire that power to be within.

Meditation Thought: “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

“Power, love, self-control.” Nothing can defeat the person who views themselves as having these attributes. And how are the attributes obtained? They are obtained by receiving a new heart of flesh and God’s spirit within (see Ezekiel 36:26). The heart of flesh is the compassionate, forgiving heart of Jesus replacing the selfish heart of stone, and God’s spirit is placed within as we acknowledge Jesus as Savior, Jesus as Lord, and seek to know our Triune God intimately.

The power of God is within us as long as we desire that power to be within, as long as we are willing for this power to energize us. This power is the power that is in harmony with the power that is also energizing the worlds of the spirit and the world – for this reason, all works better for us if we are willing to yield to this power our own power of self-will.

Daylight After the Darkness of Night

A poem of hope.

Meditation Thought: “For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.  I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.  Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.  Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:17-20)

Know ye not
That I am the
Way, the Truth, the Life?
Forbid me not:
Open the door of your heart
That I may enter in.
A more welcome guest
You could not entertain.
For I come not to take,
But to give:
I am your daylight after the darkness of the night.
I give you joy after tears.
I give you victory from defeat.
I give you a depth of knowledge
That confounds the wise.
I give you love that never ends
And life that is ever sweet.
The glory of God
Shall surround you:
It is without, waiting to pour in
Through the opening of the door of your heart unto me.

Beginning, Middle, End

Is this your desire? Is this your desire for your family? for your friends? for strangers? For ‘enemies’?

Meditation Thought: “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)

” ‘In the beginning was the Word’ – and in the middle is the Word, and in the end shall be the Word. To you is given knowledge of the Word that you may have life and have it abundantly.

Recall the Word: the history of the Word; the history of the Word and the living Word; all words which are true are words of Mine intended to prompt My beloved children to seek to know Me, to love Me, and to do My will.

And My purpose in encouraging My children to know Me, to love Me, and to do My will is to bring them to abundant, fulfilling life.

Is this your desire? Is this your desire for your family? for your friends? for strangers? For ‘enemies’?

If this has become your desire, then shall you fulfill the promise of John 14 through Him who stated: ‘I am the Way, the Truth, the Life’: you shall also do the works that He does because your belief in Him causes Him to do His works through you. It appears as if you are doing the works because your body is visible, your words hearable, and your actions seeable, but the power that is doing the works is not yours: the power is of the Father, transmitted by the Son, and manifested in you.”

Pest Repellent

Those who have already started to grow serve as inspiration and encouragement for those who are considering growth.

Meditation Thought: “The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor…you are God’s field, God gives the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:8,6)

Plant the seed of faith by your witness to My love. Everyone has been given a measure of faith as the growth potential contained in the seed. But the seed must be planted in the nourishing soul of willingness to grow, and nurtured in the acts of obedience to My Word and Spirit, that the fruits may be made manifest.

Those who have already started to grow serve as inspiration and encouragement for those who are considering growth.

If you act at all times as my faithful child, then at all times you are both growing and encouraging others’ growth.

Think of the potential harvest as you endure storms, drought and weeds and pests. Seek to concentrate on the sun (Son), on the parching of your thirst by the Living Water, on the strength of the natural repellent against pests as given you by your Creator: the repellent of the Word standing against the spirit-pest of evil, including the evils of self-will and selfishness and self-pity.

Goodness, righteousness and mercy shall be the fruits in My fields, flavored by love, savored by all.

Determine Validity

If I, who am altogether righteous, am able to forgive you, how is it possible that you should hesitate to forgive yourself?

Meditation Thought: “And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.” (Mark 11:25

“Forgive anyone: any one includes yourself. Jesus came that I may might forgive you. If I, who am altogether righteous, am able to forgive you, how is it possible that you should hesitate to forgive yourself?

To burden yourself with guilt is to carry extra weight which slows down your doing My works.

Do not look to any one’s expectations of you but My expectations to judge whether your thoughts, your words, your actions are sin and therefore guilt needs to be forgiven, or whether they are compatible with My righteousness and the individuality with which I blessed you, and therefore not sin in My sight.

Distinguish between the influences which should be a factor in your decisions, and those which are not of validity because they originate from a source other than My principles which I seek to teach you.

You must be able to determine if your advisor is speaking to you as an emissary for Me, or as a sinful human advisor at that moment, for the source of the advice determines if you are to give it value in your decision. If you pray about the revelation of truth, you shall know the truth.”

Growing Season: Seed to Fruit

Faith in Me shall allow you to bend gracefully through the storm.

Meditation Thought: “Blessed is the man
    whose… delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law he meditates day and night.
He is like a tree
    planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season,
    and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers.” (Psalm 1: 1,3)

You cannot look at the seed and call it fruit. Yet within the seed is all that is needed for the fruit if the proper environment for sprouting, for growing, for maturing is provided.

The environment has been provided. Now you choose to sprout, to grow, to mature. And do not give up when storms rage, and drought comes: your obedience to My law waters your deep roots in the righteous water of My Spirit, and faith in Me as Loving Father, Powerful Father, Grace-filled Father, shall allow you to bend gracefully through the storm, and not rigidly oppose the force of the wind by your insistence upon doing things your way.

To the degree that you absorb My principles, to that degree do you find nourishment to shorten the time between seed-planting and fruit-bearing. If the time is shortened, so are some storms avoided during the growing season.

Now do you understand? “He has shown you, O man, what is good.
    And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
    and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Promises Kept: at the Pace We Choose

If we rebel and complain of trials, we keep ourselves from the peace and joy of the Spirit of the Son.

Meditation Thought: “We are setting out for the place of which the Lord said, ‘I will give it to you’.” (Numbers 10:29) “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” (1 John 5:20)

As God sought to lead the Israelites to the good land He promised them, so He seeks to lead us who know of the Son to the Spirit of the Son.

As the land existed, but the Israelites were not yet in it, so the Spirit of the Son exists, and we must make the journey of faith in order to dwell in the place of the Spirit of the Son.

As the Israelites, through ignorance of what significance lay behind the trials, rebelled and complained and thus kept themselves from the Promised Land, so we, too, if we rebel and complain of trials, keep ourselves from the peace and joy of the Spirit of the Son.

If we approach trials calmly, realizing that they are an opportunity for God to reveal new truths to us and to more completely fulfill His purpose through us, then He is able to speed us along through our lessons and move on into more and more possession of the place of the Spirit of the Son.

Grow & Thrive

In giving is the growing; in seeking is the growing; in trusting is the growing.

Meditation Thought: “…let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him.” (1 John 3:18-22)

Sprout, sprout! Only put out a tentative little growth by your own choice, and great movement of growth will take place. Such a little movement of faith is needed on your part, for all of the rest of the maturing process comes naturally.

To the extent you seek to express your faith in deed and truth, to that extent do you grow.

To the extent that you live out the commandments expressed by the Father and more fully and accurately interpreted for you by Jesus, to that extent do you thrive and grow.

As a plant will thrive if it seeks the direction of the sun and seeks the depth of the earth to find moisture, so shall you thrive if you seek truth in the commandments, and seek to fulfill the commandments with your deeds.

Plants do not grow by stagnant inner concentration, but by thrusting both upward and downward, and so it is with you.

Seek to find the Light of God and the depth of love in fellowship with others. Both are necessary for your proper growth: too much neglect of fellowship and you grow top heavy; too much neglect of God and you cannot find enough to nourish the fellowship.

If you are to grow to the maturity of blooming, you must absorb both the Light and the nutrients found in fellowship and ministry to each other.
In giving is the growing.
In seeking is the growing.
In trusting is the growing.
To neglect these is to shrivel and die missing the purpose for which the seed was made, was planted, was given a place where all that was needed for growth was there.

Do not despair when you must seek the Light with pain of difficult turning from your present direction; do not despair when you find hardness and resistance as you seek the depth of loving relationships and ministry.

To make greater effort is to strengthen you – to make you even more the best you can be.

It may not be a pleasant way, nor the way you would choose for proper growth – but it is the only way.

The Light is constant and you must turn to it.

The consistency of the human experience is varied – there is sandy soil and clay as hard as brick. The only way for you to get your roots set firmly where they should be to find the nutrients you need is to persist in pushing through each layer of resistance by your roots of love.

If little plants crack boulders, cannot your love crack the hard ground of resistance of envy, bitterness, jealousy, and apathy? Of course it can – for the strength from the Light pouring into your spiritual ‘tap’, making it strong, thrusts down to your roots of love and causes them to grow: slowly or rapidly, visibly or invisibly, they grow – and in doing so, aerate the soil that others may grow too.

Turning on the Light

To the greater degree that we live out the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, to that degree do we, in essence, by our choices, bathe our own selves in light.

Meditation Thought: “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.” (1 John 2:9-10)

If we do the will of the Father, if we delight the Son, if we make welcome the Holy Spirit, how can we possibly be in the dark? We cannot: to the greater degree that we live out the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves, to that degree do we, in essence, by our choices, bathe our own selves in light.

The light is available, the light is created to dispel darkness: but we must know where the switch is that turns it on, and we must go to turn it on once we know where it is.

Of course, we may stumble on the way, we may lose our sense of direction for a time – but if we persevere, determined to find that switch and to turn it on, we shall have light, as we were intended to have light.

Our error is often believing that we can stay where we are and the switch will be placed in our hand and turned on for us.

Our way is sometimes made easier by the faint light from others’ lights showing us the path more clearly – but in order for this to happen, we must be looking for light in them and not for darkness, for what we seek we shall find.

Climate Change

If we have the choice to love or not love Him, obey or not obey Him, then our choice to please Him is magnified in its significance.

Meditation Thought: “…if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

When we are cleansed from sin we are being images of the Father, Who is
loving,
good,
kind,
forgiving,
righteous,
willing to give free choice.

Furthermore, He respects our individuality and realizes that if we have the choice to love or not love Him, obey or not obey Him, then our choice to please Him is magnified in its significance. We must allow others the same choice – and as the Father does, by our words, principles, and actions, prepare a climate which encourages others to love – to act rightly – to find closer fellowship with God and with all.