Newness of Life

 (I'm doing some quick notes on my morning time and the nuggets He gives me.) Hear and Live! The past few days the Lord is speaking to me about the necessity of getting quiet in order to hear Him. There is a war for our attention; not just for the focus of our attention, but our attention itself. Our minds. Our ability to get still and to live in a place that is still enough to hear His faintest nudge. Psalm 32:7-10 Thou art my hiding-place: thou wilt preserve me from trouble; Thou wilt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will counsel thee with mine eye upon thee. Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding; Whose trappings must be bit and bridle to hold them in, else they will not come near unto thee. Many sorrows shall be to the wicked; But he that trusteth in Jehovah, lovingkindness shall compass him about. This passage fills me with a sweetness and a peace that is...

  My Children, Are you awake? Are you not able to discern the hour in which you live? Will you be full of faith, believing the word of the Lord, or will you be unfaithful in this most crucial hour?   “ Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat,and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.” Mark 16:14 Unbelief: ognate: 570   apistía  (the negated form of  4103   /pistós , "faithful") – properly, without(divine persuasion, "no-faithfulness" (unfaithfulness); "want of faith" (betraying a trust)" Will you believe the scriptures and discern the hour and expect the return of the Lord, just as scriptures have prophesied, or will you have a hard heart of unbelief? The Anna’s and Simeon’s (intelligent hearer) who live in the secret place with Me will discern the hour, and the religious who may know the word well but who lean unto their own under...

Our current culture is designed to prevent the people of God from entering into the promises of God by keeping our minds so preoccupied with other things that we cannot enter into greater revelation, and the revelation that we do have grows old and fades away! We are too distracted for revelation. When the Spirit opens our eyes, the deep eyes of the heart, then we know the truth and we are set free from the dominion of sin in that particular area: the Israelites took the promised land one town at a time, and so do we. We need quiet to enter into revelation. We need bible study to enter into revelation. We need regular times of fasting to drown out other voice and to sensitize our spirits to the voice of God. His voice always brings new life, breakthrough, healing, and deliverance, and it is heard in the place of stillness, quiet, and a mind that is undistracted.

  " "And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall make him of quick understanding in the fear of the Lord; and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears…” Isaiah 11:2 “The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary; he wakened morning by morning, he wakened mine ear to hear as the learned.” Isaiah 52:4 This morning I was again thinking about the two different ways of knowing. The first way is through the fallen mind that reasons and concludes based on our five senses-this type of thinking is also rooted in doubt of God’s word. Eve looked at the fruit and decided it was good to eat because it “seemed” to be good, no mind what the Lord God had said about it. The second way that we learn and know is the same w...

“But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us and example, that you should follow His steps: Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth; who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree that, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness-by whose stripes you were healed.”  1 Peter 2:20-24 The highest calling of God in Christ is to love those who hate and persecute us. Loving our enemies with His power glorifies God’s radical sacrificial love as nothing else can do. I was praying for the Christians in Afghanistan when I experienced God’s heart and purpose in allowing us to experience persecution. It was powerful, poignant, beautiful and painful all at the same time. I believe Paul saw a re...

  Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him—even those who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be! Amen. Revelation 1:17 All the people of the earth are on a collision course with the heart of God. The end-time wickedness seducing the people of the earth into murderous rage is on a crash course with the heart of God that knows no bounds. Many waters cannot quench this love, for is stronger than death, stronger than the strongest hatred. Fallen man knows nothing of this love, for it is holy, for it is God. And those who follow the Lamb will follow him into this radical love. It is the love that Saul beheld in the face of Stephen. It is without guile. It is without thought for self, it is without vengeance. It is heart wrenching. It is Joseph holding out his arms to his brothers who betrayed and sold him into slavery-and it broke them. It is the Father's love in Christ that mends as it tears us asunder, for in his...

 This morning I happened upon this commentary about the underlying heart motives that caused the people to choose Barrabus over Jesus. The bloodlust for their nation, prosperity, and political power led to their rejection of their Messiah, and reading this commentary made me think about our own rejection of the gospel. In times of prayer I have felt the Lord's passion and desire to correct our idolatry and  misdirected allegiances to cause us to return to our first love. Why? Because the sacrificial love of God is the only revelation that leads to our salvation-and this is our highest calling. How can we prepare to love our enemies when we are fighting them? Of course we can get out and vote, that is not what I am saying. We all know that anything, anything at all can be an idol, even our "ministries" can become the love of our lives. Satan is cunning, sly, and infinitely subtle.  Can our own nation and sense of nationalism become as important as our love for Christ and H...