Why are we so dull to the spiritual blessings of Jesus?  We hear that His Spirit is in us at the point we accept His gift of salvation but we let the light grow dim in the day to day cloud of life’s difficulties.   

We are instructed in the following verses to pay careful attention to our hearts.  This clearly means we must focus on the voice of the Spirit to live in the light of truth.   Just like that lamp we must stay connected to the source of fuel for our light to really shine.   Our goal is to stay in close contact with the Spirit, listening intently to His still small voice no matter what the thunderous noise of the world is screaming in our ears. 

We have the revelation light of Jesus in us. That search light of the Spirit which burns so bright.  We must cling to that lighthouse no matter how thick the fog of darkness comes at us.  Because that fog is a lie and the truth is that we are to be the light of revelation to the world. 

“No one lights a lamp and then hides it, covering it over or putting it where no one sees its light. No, he places the lamp on a lampstand so others benefit from its brightness. Because this revelation lamp now shines within you, nothing will be hidden from you—it will all be revealed. Every secret of the kingdom will be unveiled and out in the open, made known by the revelation-light. So pay careful attention to your hearts as you listen to my teaching, for to those who have open hearts, even more revelation will be given to them until it overflows. And for those who do not listen with open hearts, what little light they imagine themselves to have will be taken away.”

Luke 8:16–18 TPT

Ever since the fall in the garden, death has reigned over mankind.   The literal keys to the planet had been given to satan and he enforce the rule of death and  destruction.

But, Jesus, turned it all on its head, Life is swallowing death.

Yes, the gates of hell; sin, disease and death shall not withstand the ecclesia. We the governmental body of the Kingdom, His called out ones, are to enforce that Kingdom on the earth.   Jesus already secured victory over the enemy but He also restored to man all the authority over the earth.

The problem is we do not enforce that authority properly, instead we surrender the rightful place Jesus gave us, to the enemy.  We do this because he, satan lies to us and we believe his deceptions!   We do not take Jesus at His word and see His miraculous deeds as absolute proof that we are to be like Him in this world. We allow the kingdom of darkness to penetrate the very walls of our kingdom here on earth.

Sharing the good news of salvation.  Healing the sick, lifting up the downtrodden, interceding for others, fellowshipping together are the ways we rebuild the breaches in the walls and force back the darkness. 

Many times I find you in the morning, in the garden, sitting on our bench, listening to your creation sing its song of the dawn.  Worshipping your beauty and holiness resting in your presence.  There is none like you, no one else can touch my heart like you do.  My master my lover my friend the one who sustains my every breath.

Such peace and joy envelopes me as we sit drinking in the beauty of your creation.  Knowing you have life in your hands quiets the storm of fear raging in the world of men.  Here in your quiet place I know there is nothing which can pull me out of your loving arms. Let this be our daily meeting place from now on. 

Are you a son of the slave woman or the free woman?  Ishmael was the son of a slave woman, born out of disobedience and lack of faith.  He was not the son of promise but the son of disobedience.   Issac on the other hand was the son of promise, the fulfillment of  long standing prophecy.   The product of unwavering faith in the truth spoken to Abraham.

Is your mother the one of the flesh or the spirit?  What’s your spiritual family line?

We all start as sons and daughters of the slave woman.  Bound into that slavery by our spiritual lineage of disobedience, selfishness and pride.   We live as though we know what’s best for us, which path is the correct one, who we are.    But it isn’t till we come face to face with our inadequacies and failures that we see we need salvation.   

Our spiritual mother is crying out to us all along to awaken to the Spirit’s call and come home to faith in the Son.  It is only by stepping into the faith in Jesus’s finished work that we will go from being a son of the slave woman to a son of the free woman.

Embrace Jesus, the Son, fully.  Step into your true identity!

“Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me: Then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.”

Psalm 19:12-14 KJV

This walk we have can be arduous when we stray from the narrow path into the swamps of sin.  It is so confusing that we still stumble or even brazenly walk into those swamps.   Aren’t we supposed to be sanctified, effectively free from sin?

Our only hope is the impossible grace of Jesus, that inexhaustible river of forgiveness which flows from the very throne in Heaven.  He demonstrated it so vividly when he poured out his very life for us from the Cross.   As proof, we can’t stray too far away from Him that His arm is too short to lovingly reign us into His bosom.

I grew up hearing the last part of this verse as a benediction every Sunday but never caught the deep significance of it in context.  It was just part of a bigger weekly ceremony I was supposed to take part in.  In reality, it was David’s cry to the Lord for help, to stay on the path of righteousness no matter how many times he strayed away.

May it be our cry today as well. 

In the beginning Papa gave mankind authority over the earth, period.  Through the fall Adam and Eve handed that authority over to the serpent.  Since then satan got very comfortable using that usurped authority to build his kingdom of death and destruction on earth.   We as subjects fell into a slave mindset, like the Stockholm syndrome we just accepted the “fact” that life sucked and then you die.  So for millennia our master was the devil cloaked in all sorts of region.

Then, Jesus!

He began breaking the chains of the enemy as soon as he came up out of the waters of Jordan.  Demons shrieked in disbelief as he cast them out.  Sickness and death bowed the knee to the Lord of All.  But, people rejected Him because they could not comprehend who He truly was.  He didn’t fit their religious mindset of savior.

As believers, we have renewed minds in Christ, not we’re supposed to, but WE DO HAVE the very mind of Christ. It is our responsibility to enforce the Kingdom.  To do that we must completely embrace the change of mind which opens our eyes to the reality of the world.

We as believers in Messiah, followers of His way, are the rightful rulers of this world.   

Stand up in that authority brothers and sisters!!   

Declare Jesus is Lord of All to the mountain tops.

Before Jesus there were idols everywhere, on every doorstep, in every house there was a shrine to some god or even a whole pantheon of gods.  Jesus turned all that on its head and replaced all the idols with His name asserting His total authority over the cosmos.   The former system of offerings and sacrifices was perpetuated on humanity as a way to reach out to the god/gods and appease his/their anger and wrath.   In some cases the gods were much like us with all the same passions and proclivities, so mankind came up with many variations on that theme.  This religion permeated ancient societies across the board under various names but all essentially the same raw deal for man, to reach them one must perform some penance or sacrifice.  Continual striving to appease the angry deity with burdensome and even gruesome acts.

Jesus split time in two with His birth, ministry, death and resurrection.  Christianity caused the societies it touched to turn from their idols (paganism) and believe the truth He revealed. The truth that Love conquers all evil not some twisted system of sacrifice.  As a result there was time before, ruled by paganism and time after, where Jesus’ actions on earth cancelled out the old systems of death and blood by proving to mankind that the perfect man was more than willing to take our place in our own evil system of death and bring it to a final close.

Unfortunately the church became a system essentially like the religious systems before it.  Man still had many rules to make his own path to god.  So, over time Christianity was watered down to the point where it looked much the same as the old system and we were faced with the insidious return of paganism.

However, the ascendancy of the true believers with the unveiling of the full gospel brought about the church standing in the way of this downward spiral.  We are now walking into the Kingdom age, ushering in heaven on earth, taking back our rightful dominion over the enemy and all his evil pagan plans.  Becoming the beautiful bride Jesus is coming back to marry.

There is now no more need for sacrifice and striving to reach the gods.  Jesus was sent here by Papa God to reconcile us to Papa by His abolishing the religious systems we built to stand  between us and our loving Father.  He did not just fulfill the written Law of Moses, He effectively overturned it, abolished the need for any type of sacrificial system by showing how utterly useless it was to achieve fellowship with Papa.  Papa/Jesus reached out with the kind of power only a creator could, the absolute power of Grace and Love, cancelling all guilt and accusation leveled against us.

Let’s rejoice in the fact that religion is dead Love conquered all.

Jesus said to Peter “Keep alert and pray that you will be spared from this time of testing.  For your spirit is eager enough, but your humanity is feeble. ” Mark 14:38 Passion

We are subject to a divided existence while we walk the earth in this body.   Our spirit is capable of meeting Holy Spirit and walking in full victory and revelation just Like Peter did when he confessed that Jesus was the Messiah or when he stepped out on the water.   However we are wearing this suit of flesh which is weak on its best days and downright obstinate when it falls away.   We tend to be just like Peter, afraid of being identified as one of Jesus’ disciples.  Afraid of being too diferent from the rest of the world….

I love brother Peter, he was ultimately used mightily by Papa God in spite of his failings.  Jesus even went out of His way to reconcile with Peter after the resurrection.  We can look to his example as well as Paul’s as patterns of living a redeemed life no matter where we came from or what darkness we walked in formerly.   It is the hope of our salvation and the endless forgiveness of God’s amazing grace that empowers a victorious life. 

Let us live by the Spirit of God who dwells within.

We come to Jesus, broken and beaten down by the weight of our sin and shame.  It is a moment of total humility and utter despair when we come to the realization that we are wandering through life, lost without Him and separated from the God of the universe by our own actions and will. 

But glorious peace and joy come as we surrender our will to His plan for our lives.  It is out of total failure to make our own way that we come to salvation through Jesus.  Life as a believer is a path through ecstatic joys and deepest tragedies we walk in daily victories and failures because we are not perfect as Jesus is.  

The key to a successful life is to stay on the narrow road, to keep getting back up when we fall and forge ahead when we stumble.  Because the Spirit of grace is always there giving us the strength for the next step and the cloud of witnesses is cheering us on to reach our goal.   

Jesus will never leave us or forsake us!!

We fail our way into the kingdom of God. It starts with grace, and it ends with grace. Like the Word says, grace is not an excuse to fail or to sin.  It is there to cover us, put our feet back on the straight and narrow, and mold us into sons and daughters. He is looking for availability and a teachable, sincere heart. Remember, it’s “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord!””  Lonnie Frisbee

As the fields and trees begin their day early with worship lifting up

We see the mists of the morning arise in glorious praise to the King of Kings

Ascending up in heavenly whisps we sense the pleasing aroma of life and shear joy of the creation

Up off the surface of the lakes we see evidence of the spirit moving over the waters

Sometimes barely perceptible other time a cloud of glory rising up.

But everyday a new bounty of praise and worship from His creation

Let us join in the symphony of praise which rises up with the Sun as every creature lifts their voice in songs of praise to our Lord.

For to Him belongs all our wonder, worship and glory