Wisdom

One of my personal prayers is that as I gain knowledge about people and God I would allow the Holy Spirit to transform that into Wisdom.  Well, I was just chatting with a friend on a social network, where I have friends that I never knew where my friends and still somehow ended up on my friends list, site.  This person I was chatting with I do consider a friend, and as we were chatting she shared with me something that the Holy Spirit was stirring on her heart.  She ” spilled her guts” as she says, but totally trusted in God and without realizing it, chose His Wisdom.  She made a decision for her life that God placed on her heart.  Now, that decision, if she shares with others, will seem to them to be overboard.  However, I know from first hand knowledge that we are all wired differently and God calls us to face our trials based on our brokenness.  He is in the habit of helping us through the grind and once we know what puts us in the grind, the easier it becomes to realize he is first and everyone else, well He loves them too! 🙂

There is no doubt The Holy Spirit is radical and when we choose to follow him by ” walking blind” even to other Christians we will look like a Jesus Freak!  I pray for myself that I would have the courage that my friend had to make the choice she made for God and her walk with him.  The new church thing is people claiming that are the church where they attend.  I want to say this clearly… I AM A JESUS FREAK!!!!!!!

The Shema

” Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, The Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.”  This is the most central prayer in Judaism and should be a significant prayer for us as Christians.  When God calls out to Israel, we are apart of that call, though we are not considered the elect, we are adopted in his royal family.  Therefore, we understand that our God is one and he is three that are also one.  The Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit.  He loves us so much that his desire is that we would surrender all of who we are to him.  He will daily bear our burdens with us and for us if we let him.  When we step into life we will face many fierce lions, obstacles we would rather run from than face and God says NO, do not run, trust me and Love me with all of your heart… Give up on your feelings and allow His hands to guide your way.. Love me with all your soul… Know that though you are born with inherited sin and you carry many burdens and have seen darkness, your soul is mine as you confess that I am your Lord, all of your stains will be cleaned, Your soul will be set free by me… Finally, Love me with all your Strength… I will meet you in the worse of times, when you have nothing left and feel as if all you can manage is one more breath, that is with all your strength and I, Your Lord, will make you strong in your weakness.  The Shema is a prayer for us to meditate on daily and know that our lives in Christ are moment by moment.  Tattoo this prayer onto your hearts my friends, so that people can and will see Jesus shine through us..  SO BE IT!

The flesh

I have been spending a lot of time with God on this topic and it has been an amazing time of revelation.  As a christian I know that my everyday life will be bombarded with routines, attacks, temptations and so much more.  The fact is that I have conquered all of this in Christ.  Now, the subject at hand is the flesh and it is very important that we understand its role in this spiritual war.  Our flesh becomes familiar with being fed a certain way and this starts when we are very young.  It has a hunger that is all its own and we must be aware of this, especially when we choose to live our life for Christ.  Basically, we understand the less you feed something or better yet when you starve something from what it wants it does not go silently into the night.  It fights to survive and it needs to survive.  This is the life of our flesh, it is constantly wanting to fill its hunger, however when we begin to follow after Christ we have to starve it in order to pursue that path.  We must be aware of it in our prayers and ask Jesus to muzzle it and allow us to draw near to him.  We have to be alert to how it acts and know that it is violent in its attacks.  Our flesh is much like the devil in the sense that it prowls and waits for the moments to devour its next meal, if you will.  As Christians we must allow the Holy Spirit to alert us to our weaknesses in the flesh and then follow up with an offensive of our own.  The excuses are not good enough anymore and the truth lies in scripture.  We must surrender and trust ourselves to feed the Lion and not the monster.  The monster simply only wants to devour everything in its path, as where the Lion wants to devour all that is unrighteous in His eyes.  The closer we draw to Christ, the louder the monster gets, however its grasp on our lives is no longer a tight grip, but rather clinging on for its life.  We have the power in Christ to lay our flesh and sinful nature to rest and allow our Minds to focus on the Holy Spirit and Jesus in our Life… Scripture says in James 4: 7-8 ” Submit yourselves, then to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.” Amen and Amen