Living Light

Stirring The Deep

Tag Archives: Spirit Life


by 4 Comments

Rejoice Always

Rejoice Always

Rejoice

Rejoice

This morning during my quiet time I read 1 Thessalonians 5 . . . verse 16 says rejoice always. Isn’t it amazing that our God desires us to rejoice always? How much that declaration says about His heart for us. How much it says about the life He desires for us.

The other day, my husband and I saw a child jumping around, smiling, and having a great time for no apparent reason. Just enjoying life and feeling good to be alive. Completely in the moment, not trapped in the past or concerned about the future. She was one happy kid.

My husband said, “That is what it is like to be in the spirit.” And it is so true. Children don’t worry about what others think, they aren’t judgmental, they accept others’ differences, they openly love, they are affectionate, full of happiness, trust, don’t worry, and don’t carry their past around like a ton of bricks.

God calls us to be children in His arms, trusting, resting, in the moment, full of joy, and embraced in His love. This is the life He calls us to – what a God, what a gift. Yet, we so often exchange the life and freedom He gives by getting distracted trying to do His job – fixing ourselves, fixing others, trying to control our future, healing ourselves, proving our worthiness, providing and so on.

God came to simplify our lives and give us abundant life. If we truly believe and follow Him then our lives would be simplified hundred-fold and entail those things we truly desire.

God said, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” All these things are the things that pertain to life. The things this world chases after we no longer have to because God is providing them for us. He takes care of us so we can focus on abiding with Him as His bride so that His power and glory may be shown through our lives.

A couple of years ago, I started to take this verse to heart. I worked at not working and instead at seeking and abiding. Though I still have a long way to go to be at a child-like status, I’ve let go of a lot in my life and I find I’m slowly moving to a life of trust and dependence. As a result, the changes in my life and true progress in me has been beyond what I thought possible. Once I trusted Him, then His work started to abound in me and in my life. I am fully convinced of the truth of this verse.

Most of us try to make it more complicated most of the time. We are busier than ever trying to live up to the extreme expectations this world places on us to be better, stronger and smarter. God says stop, I’ll take care of all that, just seek and abide. It isn’t giving up life; it is gaining it in abundance with freedom, rest and joy.

True, there are times we are brokenhearted like seeing the vastness of deception and death (physical and spiritual). And these heavy emotions bring us to the feet of God to cry out to Him from the depth of our souls. But He is the one to redeem, heal, and deliver. It isn’t about our strength and power but His. And His love and faithfulness infuses hope into all things. Because of Him and who He is to us we can rejoice always.

When you look at all His promises to us, there isn’t an area of our lives they don’t cover and our part in obtaining these promises is to trust and believe. Believe is our work John 6:29. And in a world that contradicts the ways of God it is indeed work. Our efforts and works have overtaken many of our beliefs. But the Christian faith is established on grace and God’s work in our lives – not ours. It is His performance, not ours.

In addition, becoming a child not only benefits our lives, but others. When we are a child, then He can truly “use” us. Because His love, power and truth move through us into the lives of others and we stop trying to force it by living out a weak copy-cat instead of the real deal. When we abide, in time His presence becomes a natural outward flow from our lives to the lives of others.

A child-like life comes from a new heart born of His Spirit. Our actions are the fruit of living with a new heart. This heart doesn’t come instantly. It starts small. It is cultivated over time as we grow in grace, knowledge and trust. If we trust Him, He will mold a child-like nature in us. He does it all. His Word is full of promises of what He will do for us. May we work to believe in them, live out the freedom they bring, and rejoice always.


by 2 Comments

The Power of Confession

 The Power of Confession

 

A while ago, my mom and I had a heart to heart discussing some of our deepest wounds. It wasn’t meant to be a confession, though that is exactly what it was. We were simply being honest and open about issues we face and how they impacted each other and sometimes still do.

Recently, my husband and I had a similar conversation. Again, it wasn’t meant to be a confession, we were just being transparent about pains and weaknesses and how they affect each other. Like the conversation with my mom, our talk was liberating on many levels. We had confessed our shortcomings to God many times, and told each other sorry for things we had done, but when we exposed the depths of our souls and our own pain that caused pain in each other; it took healing to a new level and brought us closer. Through our words, love abounded and pain receded.

The freedom and restoration I experienced from these two encounters got me thinking about the power of confession. Both conversations encompassed deep wounds and I am discovering the deeper the pain the more restorative the confession. Usually we are scratching the surface when we tell someone we are sorry, but when we pour out our souls to another in love it is truly powerful.

James 5:16 Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.

When and why is confession between two people so powerful that it heals years of pain? When it is grounded and flows from love. As for the why, there are many reasons it is powerful, but here are three.

1. Vulnerability in confession communicates the extent of our love for someone. A heart of confession is open, honest, contrite, humble, and doesn’t care just about itself but also others. When we are willing to be naked, vulnerable, weak and to set our pride aside it reveals our love for the other person. If we didn’t love them we wouldn’t be willing to be so open and exposed. Our willingness to unveil our souls is powerful because it infuses truth and love into the relationship

2. Words have power. Created in God’s image our words have tremendous power. They can heal or damage. Openly stating that we have caused hurt, though often unintentionally, frees and heals the hearer. Confessions are words of love, which are more potent than words of pain.

3. Truth manifests love. The more we see and know about ourselves and others in the light of God’s truth, the more we can truly love. Knowledge brings understanding which fosters love, which sets us free.

We are made to love and for that reason most of what we do involves others including our healing and theirs. Philippians 2:4 Confession is just as much about the other person as it is about us. God may know, we may know but they don’t know our heart until we speak it. When we put our pride aside, acknowledge the pain we feel and caused we love. The reward is two-fold; we are more fully freed and healed from our brokenness and so are they. Even if others aren’t ready to confess their part in creating pain, the love we show will help heal their brokenness and put them on a path of being able to face their own pain and the pain they caused.

Confession doesn’t promise something similar won’t happen again. It expresses our hearts that we don’t desire to hurt. We are human and putting off our old self and living in the new life is a process. Letting others see into our hearts to know that we desire to give love not pain covers a multitude of sins.


by 4 Comments

Space Suit: In God’s Presence

Space Suit: In God’s Presence

 

Have you ever had the feeling of being consumed by the presence of God? A while ago I got a strange but clarifying image that it is like being in a space suit. In a suit your life is preserved, protected, you see the world a little differently, and it goes wherever you do. Wearing it changes how you interact with your environment. If provides oxygen, the breath of life. If you take it off you lose life.

Before this unusual analogy, God’s presence seemed ethereal and hard to touch. But this image helped me to grasp how real it is and it established the solidarity of His presence in my life. It seemed a strange image but it worked. It helped me to see what it means to dwell in God’s presence, and what it means for our lives. In His presence we have protection, provision, love, mercy, grace, counsel, comfort, truth, favor, and life, everything we need. All He is surrounds us and fills us. When God consumes us, our role becomes one of rest. He does the work through us and our focus shifts from doing to being. We don’t push through life, but let God flow and work through us.

These verses give a peek into what it is like to dwell in His presence, in this space suit:

2 Corinthians 9:8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.

2 Corinthians 12:9 And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

Psalm 37:3-5 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. 4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart. 5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.

Joshua 1:9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Philippians 4:19 And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.

Abiding in His presence is beyond amazing, wouldn’t you agree? Who wouldn’t want this life?

How do we put on this space suit and keep it on? By staying connected to the source. We stay connected by trusting and acting on our knowledge of Him, which is faith.

It all starts with what we know. We bring all that we are to our relationships. Now, a friend may not know a certain side of us, but that is just a lack of knowledge. It is the same with God. He is always there, but our experience of the various aspects of Him comes from knowing Him. This is why abiding in His Word is the foundation of experiencing His presence.

If we don’t know God, His promises and His ways then how do we know what to trust in? Without knowledge we end up trusting in our own image of Him, a false image, that is powerless, or we trust in ourselves that is just as helpless.

Abiding in the truth not only gives us knowledge but cultivates trust in that knowledge. Trust, acting on our knowledge, is how we dwell in the space suit.

How many times do we read in the Word, trust and such and such will happen? Trust manifests His presence in our lives. It makes what we learn about Him a reality. Without trust the knowledge we have would be lifeless.

We come to know and trust God like other relationships. We spend time talking, listening, learning, asking, seeking and experiencing and in the process we know and trust, trust and know. God made this dynamic to be a process that requires time and experiences that give us a deep understanding of Him, therefore His truth always coincides with mercy for His kids.

As we approach the next phase of manifesting His presence in our lives, increasing trust, it is critical to embrace this truth – ALL His paths are truth and mercy. Psalm 25:10 We are on the path of knowing and trusting we aren’t there yet. Our experience of Him isn’t dependent only on our trust, but also on His mercy. We know that we should trust, but we don’t. But as long as we are seeking Him, His mercy is more than enough to cover our lack.

Finally, to increase our trust, God brings events into our lives to test and strengthen it. God knows trusting Him is a struggle that is why He places challenges before us, to push us into deeper union with Him, otherwise we would remain at the surface of His presence instead of consumed by every part of it. If we remain as we are we miss out on experiencing all He has to give us. The purpose of these struggles is to become united to Him. 1 Peter 1:6-7

Consequently, these are the situations in which it is hardest to trust. We are experiencing the sovereign hand of God heavy upon us. Not against us though that is how it may feel, but to draw us near. Like Jacob did to become Israel, we wrestle with God through these times to become who we were created to be. These times push us into Him. We cry out to Him from the depth of our soul, ask Him to help with our unbelief and through the process we draw near to Him, our ultimate purpose. John 17:21 He expects us to doubt, struggle, and question through these times. But He wants us to keep Him by our side throughout the process. We are the caterpillar struggling to become a butterfly.

These trials are difficult to the point of breaking us, but their intensity is essential to obtain the trust we need to experience more of Him. We have to set our expectations aside of how we think things should be going, focus on abiding in His truth and trust Him that He is working everything for the purpose of being united to Him. He will give us exactly what we need to get us into a conscious awareness of that space suit, because that gives Him glory.

The secret to abiding in His presence, in the space suit, is knowing Him, so we can trust Him, then working through those tests of trust and when we do we will move deeper into His presence, the fountain of life.


by 1 Comment

Listening to the Spirit

Listening to the Spirit

 

To stop and listen to the rhythms of life beneath all the noise is a lost art in our modern world. The voice of our inner spirit is suppressed by busyness, television, books, magazines, cell phones, pagers, email, competition, idle chatter and all we do to make ourselves feel worthy. Underneath the distractions is our spirit trying to be heard. The ramifications of silencing our guide is broken homes, dysfunctional children, physical aliments, depression, monotonous living, robotic spirituality, addictions, and spiritual blindness to name a few.

This truth has recently come to my attention. I am dealing with the consequences of not listening through various physical aliments. They are minor but it is clear to me the source is years of suppressing my spirit’s voice. I didn’t take time to listen but bulldozed through the years trusting medications and doctors instead of seeking inner counsel. Doctors can’t know the complexity of your emotions, your past experiences and everything that create your current physical state. Our body and soul are connected but yet we often act like they aren’t. God gave us a guide to build truth in the deepest part of our soul if we will listen. Truth that sets us free.

Lately I have been opening my ears and what He is telling me is incredible, I had no idea.

If we could go on the counsel and guidance of others then why would we need the Holy Spirit who was sent to teach us all things? We need to be listening to Him above all others and yet we have forgotten how to listen. Instead of listening to our spirit as our counselor we listen to others. We no longer make our own decisions, take time for inward reflection, and think for ourselves but rely on others to do these for us. Those in our circle of influence; media, family, co-workers, church leaders; tell us what to believe, to think, to trust, to do. These people are ill-equipped to guide anyone because they are just like us.

Matthew 23:8 “But you, do not be called ‘Rabbi’; for One is your Teacher, the Christ, and you are all brethren.”

When we tune into our spirit we tune into Him as well. Our impatience is driving us into the arms of some “Joe’s” philosophies. I don’t care how many initials are after his name or how nice he appears; he isn’t equipped to guide us as the Spirit is. It is the Spirit’s role and no one can fulfill it but Him. God constructed this world, the physical and spiritual elements, to work a certain way. Either we get clued in and do it His way or we miss out altogether and stay bound, blind, and dumb (in hearing and insight).

John 14:26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.”

God uses other people to encourage and help us. But our ears need to be in tune with the Spirit so we can discern what we hear, if it is truth or not and if it applies to us or not. If not, any good is mixed in with the bad and we are still seeing foggy. People are human, they make mistakes and they are learning just like we are. Like a doctor misdiagnosing a patient, others can give us the wrong diagnosis and remedy. We need a stronghold to test what we hear against whether it pertains to doctrine, health, work, relationships or whatever. That stronghold is the Spirit. I have gained more truth from listening to the Spirit than I ever have listening to man. Others add a little here and there crossing a t or dotting an i, but He opens up volumes of truth.

With modernization came isolation from our inner voice. We need to reorient our lives to create an atmosphere so we can hear. We need to be still, abide, and listen to what the Spirit is saying to each one of us. It is a conversation between you and Him, are you listening?