What's on the inside?

As I was reading in my morning devotions I came upon a scripture in Titus that caught my eye since we have been talking about pure hearts this past week or so. Titus 1:15&16 "To the pure in heart all things are pure but to the defiled nothing is pure; their very minds and consciences are defiled and polluted. 16. They profess to know God but deny, disown and renounce Him by what they do; they are detestable, unbelieving and disobedient, disloyal and rebellious, unfit for good work of any kind."
Whew! Kinda strong. As I was pondering this I thought of what Jesus said to the Pharisees---He called them white washed tombs that looked great on the outside but inside were full of deadness. It goes back to what I said a couple of days ago---God is looking for transformed hearts so what we do and say spring forth from that, instead of people who may do the right things and say the right words, but inside they are not really transformed—they are full of deadness. I think the scripture that says we will know true Christians by their fruit is backed up by this one in Titus. We can call ourselves Christians, but it is what we do that really tells who we are and who we belong to. Do we screw up and make mistakes? Absolutely. That is why God's mercies are new every morning---He knew we needed that cushion. The issue is the condition of the heart and what is ruling our lives. When the Holy Spirit is in control, and we are walking accordingly, scripture tells us we will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. When we are the ones in control just the opposite is true—we give in to the lusts of the flesh. Galatians 5 gives quite a listing of what that includes. It's not just sexual issues, but also includes---impurity, immorality, strife, anger, selfishness, and division. So if we see ourselves giving into the flesh we need to take a hard look at ourselves, own that we have placed our will on the throne of our lives, repent of it, and go forward in the mercy that is new each day. If we want to be the ones that have hearts propelling us to do and say the right things, a lifestyle of repentance is the ticket. So how do we know what is an outward show and what springs from a transformed heart? Scripture says that anything hidden will eventually be exposed. We might get fooled for a while, or even fool ourselves, but who we are has to eventually show itself. Fruit is the best way to know if we are what we profess. This doesn't mean we expect every time in every situation that 'real Christians' will act accordingly. We have to give room for learning and growth. It all goes back to the heart and its deepest desires and our will to act out our choices. Our free will that God gave us can get us into heavenly places or into lots of trouble! Where our will is, our fruit will be, so if our fruit has a pattern of disobedience, disloyalty, rebellion, or anything mentioned in Gal. 5, we need to go before God, repent, and ask Him to purify our hearts. The decontamination process of purification is sometimes unpleasant, but if we are really serious about our relationship with God, we will submit to it. And submit is the right word to use here, because it is a most definite surrender of our will to His. We come back to 'nevertheless' once again. A heart wanting a deeper walk, a heart not satisfied with settling for just what is acceptable, but one that strains toward what is desirable will always find its way back to 'nevertheless'.

Love, the greatest weapon!

The weapons of our warfare are mighty. They will always win! It may not look like a win if you hold it up to the standards of the world around us----humility can appear like weakness to the less discerning, but it is one of the most powerful of our weapons---but the most powerful of all our weapons is love. This is because God Himself is love, and if we allow His love to flow through us, battles are already won before they are even begun. If we look at love as the arsenal, and all the particulars of love as the many weapons we can take from that arsenal, we can see that real love is indeed the most powerful of forces on this earth. In 1Cor 13, we are shown a variety of weaponry at our disposal. The chapter begins with telling us that no matter what we do or how gifted we are if we don't have love it is all nothing. This is how powerful love is. Everything amounts to nothing without love. If we want to win the battles of our lives then we've got to make acquiring love our greatest aim. In order for love to work for us as a weapon, we must learn to wield it like a sword. The swords back in the day were heavy and very difficult to pick up, never mind trying to use them as a weapon with any skill. It would take day after day, week after week of constant training to build the skill level and muscles to a point which would make the swordsman useful in a battle. Love sounds easy because this world has watered it down to just a feeling we experience, but real love is not as easy to walk out as we might think. It is indeed a powerful weapon that wins every battle all the time, and because of this, it can be very difficult to wield properly. It takes day after day and week after week of choosing to love when people have given us no reason to. When someone speaks hurtful things to us, love must cover in order to nullify the sting of the blade the enemy has just thrust at our hearts. That blade has the poison of bitterness and unforgiveness on it, and the only remedy is love that can wash away all that poison. Kindness in the face of cruelty, forgiveness in the face of brutality are powerful weapons for they nullify the results of the wounds the enemy inflicts on us. This battle to love is first waged in our mind and will. We must choose to will ourselves into agreement with God's will no matter how it may go against our nature. When we decide to do what God says to do and act upon it, then we are training our spiritual muscles to react and become strong in love. What happens next is the ability to wield the weapon of love with precision and balance. We begin to recognize what real love is and is not. Clarity comes, spiritual advantage is gained, and strongholds in our lives are destroyed!
Love wins. Always! more later…….

The weapons that Win!

We are in the middle of the battle of our lives for our lives. 2Cor.10:3-5 tells us our weapons are not physical but mighty for the overthrow and destruction of strongholds. What strongholds? The strongholds found in our lives. God has given us weapons to use that will guarantee our victory in every battle of our lives if we will just use them. Just what are these weapons? Humility, love, forgiveness, purity, peace, mercy, grace, patience, kindness, self-control, truth, unity, gentleness, joy, goodness, faith -----everything God is. So often we come up against pride in people and we try to fight it with control, or judgment---which are the weapons of our enemy. Even more often we have opportunity to become offended and instead of using our weapons of forgiveness, love, and unity, we wield the enemy's weapons of offense, fault finding and division. Whenever we pick up the enemy's weapons, they will always be turned back against us to tear us to shreds. It is not safe to use his weapons---it may feel good because it appeases our sin nature, but it will come back one way or another to hurt us. Satan's job is to try and take out as many Christians as he can with the weapons of his warfare. Every time we give into reactions of the flesh, we grab onto one of the devils weapons and use it for the furtherance of satan's kingdom. The devil actually has us fighting along side his army---and we don't even see it! Any unpurified heart response acted upon will cause us to pick up the enemy's weapons and help him win the battle. This is why it is so important to have a pure heart---because the weapons of our warfare that will actually tear down strongholds in our lives are found in the allowing of God to purify us. Each stony part of our heart that we give to God to be transformed allows more of God's weapons to be used to tear down these strongholds in our lives. We cannot fight fire with fire---all that does is make the fire bigger and stronger. No, we fight fire with water---it's opposite. We cannot fight pride with pride, anger with anger, frustration with frustration, meanness with meanness---all it does is further the devils kingdom. Yet far too often, that is what seems to happen---we use the enemy's weapons, and fight from a losing position. All this does is reinforce the strongholds living out their existence through our lives. These strongholds were meant to be destroyed, yet with every choice to wield the enemy's weaponry we strengthen their grip on our hearts and breathe life into them. The moment we pick up the enemy's weapons of annoyance, anger, disrespect, dishonor, irritation, sharp responses, impatience, wanting our own way---and the list goes on----we automatically put ourselves in a losing position. Only the weapons of God's warfare can win. God gives the victory to us and all we have to do is use His weapons! In order to use them He must increase and we must decrease. We must empty ourselves so God has room to fill up the empty places with Himself. You see, a heart contaminated with fear cannot pick up the weapon of faith---a heart contaminated with lies cannot pick up the weapon of truth, and here lies the problem with many believers. We become discouraged and defeated simply because we do not allow the process of purification to put us in a position to take up our weapons that will win the battles of our lives. The pure heart, the uncontaminated heart is the heart that can see the weapons God has placed before us so we can win every fight and say with the apostle Paul---Thanks be to God who always leads us in victory. More later……....

Places of the Heart

A pure heart is not something for the faint of heart to try and obtain. When God does His purifying, He has got to use fire to get our hard spots the right consistency to be cleaned and then poured out. Consistency matters in everything from making batters for cakes to how thick our oil is in our cars……wrong consistency, wrong outcome. What we are made of and how we are put together needs overhauling by the Holy Spirit. Most of us have a history, some worse than others, but we all have portions of our hearts that need remolding, renewing, and realignment. Underneath the umbrella of our heart is our mind and emotions. These are two huge areas that need continual work so the fruit from them lines up with and agrees with God. When God begins the work of decontamination of our heart, He is reaching into our minds touching all that we think about, choices we make, and memories we have. All these places of the heart need to be addressed one at a time. God has to work line upon line and precept upon precept b/c---for all you builders out there---you know unless the foundation is laid properly, the house will not be stable. God has to take what we give Him to work with. He is not going to cross our will—He is going to wait until we give the 'places of our heart' to Him to deal with. This enables Him to build the house properly so it is safe and useful. Our heart is His home. That means our thoughts are where He resides, our emotions are where He lives----so this begs the question, what kind of a house are we giving the Lord to live in? Are we telling Him, hey this is how I am, this is my personality, and You can come in, but don't change anything around in here. I am comfortable with the way all the furniture of my thoughts and feelings are arranged, so You adapt to me and my ways. If this is the case, we won't see God. Not clearly, anyhow. Maybe through the Word, or others, but seeing His heart and reacting to it at a moments notice will be out of our reach to us unless we allow Him to come into the places of our heart and make it to His liking. Where we can see Him and be available to say what He wants said in the middle of an argument, and reach out with a hug when your entire being wants to punch someone's lights out! When we see Him, we are able to observe in the spiritual plane what His reactions to each and every situation would be, and then do what He wants done in that situation. That is seeing Him, and that is impossible with a contaminated heart. A contaminated heart wants its ways over God's ways. It is a heart that may say with its lips—I love You Lord, all I want is You God and Your will for me, but it is far from Him. Jesus complained of this while here on earth. He said---"These people praise me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me". God is not looking for our mouths to say the right things; He is looking for a heart that is surrendered, piece by piece to Him, and out of the abundance of that surrender the heart will speak the right things. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. We've got it backwards, people. We try to speak things into existence when God wants to change our hearts so we can see Him and then speak out what we have seen!
More later…..

Purity

Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Why is that? I was searching the scriptures and came upon a passage in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-8. I am going to zero in on verse 7 & 8 which are---"For God has not called us to impurity, but to consecration, [dedicating ourselves to the most thorough purity]. Therefore whoever disregards this disregards not man but God whose very Spirit He gives to you is holy chaste and pure."
I think that if I wanted to pour water in a glass, I would make sure it was clean. Its not that is would be unusable as a glass—even if it were lined with excrement it would still be a glass that could be utilized as a glass. Is it desirable? No way. Do I want the nasty bacteria in my body that could make me sick---or the nasty flavor in my mouth as I drink it? Nope. But it is still a glass and can be used as such. We are like that glass. God calls us to purity b/c it keeps us clean so when He pours the water of His Holy Spirit in us, we can pour it out uncontaminated upon others for their refreshment. If we are contaminated, we contaminate others. No getting around that one. This is why it is so very important for us to dedicate ourselves to a thorough purity. God wants a clean vessel so He is represented properly. The word pure means not mixed with anything especially that which is dirty or less valuable. It means free from anything contaminating. Our nature itself is contaminated by sin, handed down to us by Adam and Eve, but when Jesus came as the second Adam, He put things back spiritually the way they were before the fall. We then became able to identify the contamination of sin, confess it, repent of it, and become free from its power and influence. Purity is attainable through the blood of Jesus or God would not have called us to it. We have free will and can decide if we are going to put any effort towards purifying and cleansing our mind, heart and soul, but the scripture is clear when it says if we disregard this mandate of personal purity that we are going directly against God. Disregard simply means to ignore or neglect. We can ignore God's calling of purity by simply not paying attention to it in such a way that there isn't much of a difference in how we live our lives from the way those in the world do. There should be a noticeable difference in us, people! Not in a self-righteous way, but in a righteous way----a way that allows us to be in the world without being of the world. I think we get way to comfortable with this short life we have here on earth thinking it is everything there is, but that is a lie sent to seduce us from the best life God has waiting for us. Eternity is forever. This life is but a moment, and we live it like it is all there is. I don't know about you, but I want to SEE God. That takes a pure heart and means I have to be proactive and actually dedicate myself to keeping my mind, soul and heart CLEAN. It's not just gonna happen to us. I never saw a dish in my sink wash itself…..we have to do something. You don't get paid at work if you don't work. We cannot expect God's purity to suddenly overtake us. No, we have to commit, devote and set ourselves apart---that's what the word dedicate means. When we devote ourselves to a task, we are all consumed by it---it has our full attention. We need to give the call to purity by Almighty God Himself our full attention.
more later……….V

Times of Refreshing!

Acts 3:19 "so repent that your sins might be erased, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord."

Times of refreshing---times of recovery and being revived, impartations of new energy and strength, times where we are filled up again, restored, and renewed. We all want this---rain when we're dry, money when there's need, rest when we're weary, strength when we're weak. Sometimes I dream of a place where it is all about refreshment of my body, soul and spirit, a place where all the cares are left behind and all at hand is focused on restoring and renewing. But you know what? That place is a Person---the place of His Presence. It's awesome how His Presence is a real place we can get to and hang out. And the cool thing is we can do it anywhere at anytime.
This scripture says that having our sins erased through repenting is the way to the refreshment our souls need. Repentance is the road to a pure heart and Jesus said blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God. They will see Him in the place of His presence, they will see Him in their brothers and sisters in Christ, and they will see Him in circumstance and situations. Purity keeps our eyesight clear to see God, but purity can only be maintained by an act of our will. Remember our will puts our decisions into action. Making a choice is impotent unless the will causes the working out of the choice to actually produce something. We can think we are repenting b/c our words say so, but unless our will kicks in with the fruit of an action that is noticeable, true repentance must be called into question. True repentance will produce fruit and it is this fruit that the enemy wants to stop. If he can get us to make decisions without any backup of action, he can get us to convince ourselves we are doing something productive when all we are doing is spinning our wheels. Being a doer of the Word and not merely a hearer is an instruction given to us for a reason. Satan uses our fallen nature along with whatever demonic strongholds that have attached themselves to our bad attitudes’, or woundings’. He then entices us to just do enough to make us feel like we are making progress when in fact we are not. The enemy doesn't mind if we think we are doing something, just as long as he keeps us ineffective. The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man/woman wields much power and it is this power the devil is afraid of. So what happens? The enemy lulls us into a false sense of security because we say the right words the right way, but all the time our actions tell the real truth of where our hearts are. God calls us to a lifestyle of repentance to maintain a purity that can see God and bear the fruit of His Spirit. If you wonder if you have really repented of something, just look at the results---fruit never lies. Where there is fruit, there is a root, and if you have repented of an issue, you change your mind and turn away from it, so the fruit will be evident to all. If you are just saying the words of repentance and still do the same things over and over, then true repentance has not been attained. What do we do, condemn ourselves, or just say forget it, this is just too hard? No, we fight the good fight of faith. We FIGHT! What makes us think it's gonna be easy to serve God and kill our flesh? it is a fight to the death---our death! The refreshment, restoration, and all the feel good stuff God wants to give us He will give to us, but we need to remember that repentance precedes refreshment. God is a wonderfully generous God and He has great joy in bringing restoration and reviving His children! He wants to do this for us---but His hands are tied if we cannot repent of the things He has revealed to us that need weeding out. Repenting is basically that----weeding the gardens of our lives. You can fertilize all you want with positive things, but if you do not couple that with weeding out the things that hinder us, then we become like the parable of the sower--and the weeds grew up and choked out the good seed and produced nothing. Let’s allow God to show us the weeds in our lives, and then use our wills to walk out the repentance that will lead us to the refreshment of His presence! V

Passionate love

Whew! This Deut 4:29 is certainly taking awhile to dissect. We are almost at the end though, people. We are on the soul portion of this scripture, and gonna talk about the passion part of our soul today. We have found that our soul is made up of our self, will, desires, and now our passion. Did you know that the word passion literally means suffering, to endure, a moving of the mind and soul? And it makes sense whether we are talking about sexual passion or passionate love or zeal for something or someone---because if we deny our passions we suffer and endure the hardship of going against our flesh. We endure the difficulty of doing just the opposite our desires may pull us, or we endure not being able to walk out the passion of a calling or gift being used or noticed. Either way, passion goes with suffering and endurance. What marathoner with a passion for running does not endure the pain that accompanies the joy of putting his passion into reality? the passion God has for us is SO big he allowed His child to be tortured, rejected, murdered--all for His passionate love toward us. So many times we love someone only to be rejected, but we are in great company. If that love is of pure origin, it will continue on in the face of all the pain, because love simply cannot help itself---it must do what it is. And this passionate love God poured out on us needs to be reciprocated by His kids so God can feel loved by us. God can feel hurt, and be grieved, and not showing Him love after all He has poured out on us is a very painful thing to Him. This passionate love that propelled God to suffer all He did for us is begging to be returned to Him by us. I’ve said before that Jesus didn't go through what He did so we didn't have to--He went through it to show us how to. This walking out of the 'how to' is the doorway of our passion towards God. God is calling for everything---all we are---He is requiring every single facet of our being if we really want to find Him. God is not looking for a 'cliff notes' type relationship--He is longing for us to be so extravagant in our love for Him that we are willing to endure anything that will bring Him pleasure-----and it PLEASED God to crush Jesus---and even more astounding is the passion Jesus had for the world propelled Him willingly to the most excruciating pain of His life. Passion is not just about sex, it is about intimacy that is boundless in its enthusiasm, and powerful in its execution. God yearns for us to have a passion for Him like He has for us. it is all a matter of laying down all that we are, all that we have, all that we hope for, no matter how hard it is---to just lay it down at His feet because our love is so extravagant, so passionate towards Him, that it is worth anything---just to be able to grasp a hold of it. We want to find God. We need to find God. Passion of heart and soul are necessary to find God. grasp hold of Him and do not let go unless He blesses you, people----you may have to limp the rest of your life like Jacob, but he got a new name out of the deal....... more later...V

Our Will ...

As we dive further into what our soul actually is, we come upon 'the will' facet of it. Our wills are the power behind the choices we make. What this means is that we determine and decide with our minds (which is in the heart realm) what we will do or not do, what we will accept as truth or lies, what we will think about or not---but it is our will that causes' those choices to be acted upon. Our minds can be thinking about something and may have come to a choice or decision on a matter, but until our will gets involved, there is no action or power behind the choice. We can choose and decide we are going to lose weight, or not sin in a certain area, but if our wills do not jump in on board 100% the choice has no strength behind it. Our wills' give us the power to carry out our choices---good or bad. That is why what we dwell on is so important, b/c when we get our minds engaged in thoughts, it activates our entire heart realm, and then either God for good or the enemy for evil will take those thoughts and get our soul realm involved. Our self (see yesterday's blog), if not totally submitted to God will be used to guide our will to do its bidding. It all begins with a thought, and this is why the scripture about taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ is so powerful. Let me take a sec here to underscore the second part of that scripture. We hear it quoted all the time with the last part left out. we are to take our thoughts captive and make these thoughts obey Jesus. That takes an act of our will to accomplish. We choose to take the thoughts prisoner so we can contain them safely, but then we must use our will to make it obey God. Our wills will engage what our minds take a hold of----so it is very important our minds are grounded in what is true. if our mind believes a lie as truth, our will is then going to propel us to do just the opposite of what God's will is for us. the big question is, how do we know what we are believing is true? Jesus said you would know by the fruit. is the fruit in your life good—holy, pure, in line with God's Word, does what you believe cause unity or division, is there confusion or clarity, is love or self being served---these are all fruit to look at. Our fruit will reveal to us if our thoughts are actually dwelling on truth. Life---God's abundant life and truth go together. That is not to say that there is no pain in following what is true. Actually there can be more pain than you could imagine when following what is true. Look at Jesus---He followed truth all the way to the cross. But in following the truth there is always a resurrection, which is why I say life and truth go together. We cannot expect to walk in God's will for our lives unless the basis of our thoughts is founded in what is true. Our will gives the power of carrying out the choices our mind makes possible based on what we believe is true, so we had better make sure we know what is true. Jesus said….and we will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. It's in the knowing of the truth we get set free people!—free to will our will to do His will. More later….