Cross Transformed to Crown

This is the tool which transforms the shape of the cross into the shape of a crown.

Meditation Thought: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come…. You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being.” (Revelation 4:8,11)

“You are my child and I am your Father. Know that by humble obedience and gracious respect for my power and authority, you shall exchange the cross for the crown. If you learn to love the crosses in your life because you recognize them as My works to perfect you in My image (character, thoughts, words and deeds), you will live your life simultaneously in the world and in the Kingdom.

As a prisoner can serve concurrent sentences, so you can serve concurrent lives in the two dimensions. I am the flowing stream which connects one body of water to the other: the physical body and your spiritual ‘body’.

As an indoor swimming pool may have water flowing into a connected outdoor pool, so I remove the barrier of sin that would separate the interchange. You were created to span the inside (spiritual) and outside (physical). If sin divides the two, then the physical is confined to retaining all of the debris that lights on its surface as it is the ‘outside’ part of the water. But if through prayer and obedience you seek Me to remove that sin barrier, then the pure water of the protected spirit-water rushes in, flinging the debris over the edge of the pool, removing it from the whole body of water.

Neither pool should be isolated, but always interconnected as one pool so that both areas may be refreshing to all who come in contact with the water. Although this analogy is not perfectly clear to you at this point, trust that your searching for the truth in both your spiritual and physical life will result in greater understanding, which in turn is the tool which transforms the shape of the cross into the shape of a crown.”

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.”

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)

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!

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.

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.