Category: Hope

Transformation: Ignorance to Life

We are delighted, awed – even puzzled.

Meditation Thought: “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:23-24) “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” (John 4:42)

The indwelling Spirit and the indwelling Truth of the Word implanted in the mind are the transforming powers which move us from ignorance of life to knowledge of Life. We know Whom to worship and how to worship. We know Whom to petition and how to petition. We know Whose we are and why we are.

We have discovered a new part of ourselves: our spirit. We are delighted, awed – even puzzled over this piece of us which has been there all along, but we had not yet found it.

We must learn the function of it – we must learn how to integrate it with all of our other parts. The concept is so new, so different: a part of us that is not known by physical sense, or by the mental process, but by the breath of the Spirit which brings life to our spirit. When we are born of the spirit truly we are “new creations”; we can now worship in spirit and in truth. We are no longer deceived by appearances or by the impressions others press upon us, but know the Truth: we see not with blurred eyes, but with x-ray vision. We hear not the clamor of the world, but the harmony of heaven. We taste not the bitterness of envy, but the Bread of Life. We touch not the grasp of Satan, but the tender clasp of the loving Father. We smell not the odor of burning flesh, but the perfumes of the ripened fruit of the spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (See Galatians 5:23)

Heart Transplant

You can have My power working only to the extent that you yield your power to it.

Meditation Thought: “ Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit! ” (Ezekiel 18:31)

“A new heart” means “a new you” – a new you which is formed by a new spirit: the spirit sent by Jesus to dwell within you – my Holy Spirit.

Your belief in Jesus as Savior and Lord, coupled with your yielding to the Holy Spirit as controller of your life (spiritual and temporal) is the process by which you acquire a new heart and a new spirit.

Do not allow yourself to reject this transplanted heart and spirit: they are not foreign to your spirit, mind and body, but are super-strength ‘replacement’ parts: My power being the power that moves them instead of your power. But you can have My power working only to the extent that you yield your power to it. Our two powers cannot work at the same time, as two objects cannot take up the same space at the same time.

You can choose to allow My power to flow – you know the way of clearing your power from blocking it: Praise, Prayer, a humble attitude (not subservient – simply an acknowledgement of My authority over you as Father to child), and the expectation that your loving Father works all thing together to good for you.

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.

Love

Love is not complicated, demanding. Love is…

Perceived as a message from Jesus:

“Life is not designed to be puzzling to you – you do not need to furiously search and worriedly think and frantically act in order to please Me and My Father and My Spirit – all you need do is accept the fact that your Father created you in love, I came for you in love, and the Holy Spirit lives in you in love.

Love is not complicated, demanding. Love is the nurturing, delighting, fulfilling expressions of a parent for a child, or a child’s responses to such a love: a response of delight, enthusiasm and a desire to become as the parent.

Sometimes one is a child – sometimes a parent. It has nothing to do with age: only with the perception, the knowledge, the attitude, the circumstance. But whether one is in the position of child or parent, one is to be expressing love in one form or another. All kinds of expressions of love are needed in order for the whole truth of the Kingdom to be understood and to be expressed in one’s life.”

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.”

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)

Hope? Really? Yes!

God uses all varieties of people, experiences, times and conditions as circumstances for one purpose:

Meditation Thought: “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” (Romans 12:12)

We cannot possibly understand the workings of life, the workings of the universe. But we need not be at the mercy of every passing event, with no recourse, with no influence. For God has created us to work in us, through us, and around us to be a crucial part of His plan for the universe.

We must respond in harmony with His workings, however, if we are to be of great influence in them, and if we are to accomplish His work as He desires as our loving and proud Father.

And so ‘rejoice in your hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer’ is the key to living the resurrected life. We have been shown the way – graphically, as well as in the words of the centuries through God’s chosen people: prophets, kings, shepherds, a carpenter… God uses all varieties of people, experiences, times and conditions as circumstances for one purpose: to reconcile the world to Himself. How?
By hope in Him.
By faith in Him.
By communion with Him.

Praise be to Him!

Choose Every ‘This Moment’

Every moment you choose again. Choose Love. Choose Life. This moment, and every “this moment”.

Meditation Thought: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God… God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:15,16b)

Cast away from your life all that is not love and truth. The knowledge of the Word shall keep you on your proper course: the course where the Father does His works in love through you.

You have been given a choice:
– to choose God,
– ignore God, or
– oppose God.
Every moment you choose again.

Every moment you choose to take the cross in pain and rise in glory, or to plod on and on, discouraged and confused, or even bringing wrath and bitterness to your soul as you oppose Love.

Choose Love. Choose Life. This moment, and every “this moment”. You will have no regrets. The tears of night turn to joy in the morning.

Evidence surrounds you that effort produces results, persistence produces results, that those who choose positions that are based on Truth, and love, beauty and kindness, go down in history as venerated and not hated.

Would eternity not be even more intense in the expression of Truth and Love?

If you have difficulty in doing what you know you ought to do, remember that God is in you and you are in God; therefore you cannot fail when you move to do what you ought to do, and furthermore, your blessings will be great.

Life progresses from tiny to large, from seed to fruit, from labor to rest.

You must look if you are to see, and you must see if you are to understand. If you want to truly understand, move close: move so close that at least your spirit is able to move inside that which you observe: and, consistent with the purpose which you have chosen, namely, doing the Father’s will in love, let your spirit guide your mind, your words, your deeds, and the Spirit which dwells in you, just waiting for your call upon His power, will move heaven and earth to do your bidding.

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.