I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
The degree to which open-hearted love for and surrender to Jesus is being expressed through your words and your life is indictive of how much He is impacting you day by day. (“By their fruits you shall know them.”)
The neglect of Christ-followers to openly and publicly express and testify to the mighty workings of God in, through, and around them has led to the false belief among many Christians that God no longer (or rarely) does miracles. “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so.” When people daily encounter the risen Jesus and then begin to freely, courageously, and boldly express what He’s doing in them, they spread spiritual fire.
A heart-to-heart encounter with the risen Jesus, a flash of direct revelation in your spirit, can do in an instant what a lifetime of religion can never accomplish! Ask Jesus to express and demonstrate His power, presence, and love in your heart. Then humbly receive what He does!
Faith unfelt
That doesn't melt
The human heart
With daily awareness
Of God's undeserved love
Is a religious sedative
That may settle the nerves
But leaves the soul
Unwhole.It's never been cool
To be a fool
For Christ
And to let Him rule
Your daily life,
But if you let Him
Bring peace
To your inner strife
He will make your
Inner lostness cease!What if God
Simply wants
Your heart
Fully surrendered
To His hands
So He can mold you
Like a potter
Molds his clay
And lead you
By His Spirit
Throughout each day?Let no tormenting thought
Be brought
To your mind
Without having sought
To keep it out
And courageously fought
Against it
Until you've been taught
To never surrender your mind
To any thought
That can bring you
Or others harm.
There are no degrees of rebellion against God. If you’ve ever rebelled against Him in little ways, you’re no better off spiritually than someone who has rebelled against Him in big ways. We all need His mercy, forgiveness, and healing purchased by Jesus on the Cross.
Being a redeemed Christ-follower means that you no longer need to attempt the futile fight of trying to justify or prove yourself to yourself, to other people, or to God. It means that you’ve humbly agreed with God’s diagnosis that you have gone astray and are totally undeserving of HIs love and completely dependent on his mercy, forgiveness, and grace.
The more we believe that we deserve and/or have earned the good things in our life, the less we will be grateful to God for them. Honestly admitting our unworthiness and seeing all the good in and around us as undeserved gifts from God fills us with thanksgiving!
I haven’t earned and don’t deserve anything good. Everything good in my past, present, and future was, is, and will be a completely unmerited gift from God. How merciful He’s been to me!
It’s not wise to be stuck on hindsight when God wants to give you insight. Instead of just looking back look to the risen Jesus now! Unfortunately, Christians tend to focus more on trying to justify themselves through theology instead of learning to rely on and depend on the presence, reality, and mercy of the living Jesus in the present moment.
You can’t go back in time, but you can mend some of the damage you’ve caused in the past and humbly apologize for the rest. Jesus calls that “repentance.” It puts you in the position to receive and live in God’s mercy and forgiveness.
Let any remorse that comes from hindsight be a call to humbly ask for and receive present day forgiveness from God. That’s much more effective than attemping self-forgiveness. Often pray this ancient prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.”
If you'll open your heart
To God's innovation
And let Jesus give you
A complete renovation,
You'll want to give Him
A never-ending
Standing ovation!
In The Chromosomes
By Bob Revealin'
How many surgeries
Must a man go thru
Before you can
Call him a woman?
The answer, my friend,
Is in the chromosomes.
The answer is in the chromosomes!
XY never equals XX.Here's a simple scientific fact:
Your birth chromosomes
Either XX or XY
Will stay with you
Till you die.
In the midst of all your troubles, pain, and suffering you have been given an amazing ability — the power to open or to shut down your heart. Choose to open your heart to love and forgiveness not to anger and bitterness. If we would express more kindness, we’d receive more kindness.
If there’s no real free will then there’s no freedom of expression or freedom of choice — only humanity’s AI mindlessly obeying IT. However when I decide to observe and use my conscious mind I’m confronted with constant choices to make. To proclaim freedom of choice but not believe in human free will is hypocritical. There’s no freedom of expression without free will.
God offers a beautiful destiny to all people — a destiny paid for through the blood of Jesus. He has given people the freedom to choose or to reject that beautiful destiny of an eternal loving relationship with Him. God is eternal and “knows the end from the beginning.” His foreknowledge enables Him to foresee human choices before they are made. “God is love” so He hates the choices that people make that separate them from His eternal presence and love. He seeks to draw all people unto Jesus. He has mercy and compassion on all who will choose to humble themselves to receive His mercy and the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross.
To begin to experience the beauty of the best words beautifully arranged, open your heart to notice the thoughts that God expresses within you. Let Jesus make an eternal impression in your heart, and you will ever overflow with glorious expression. Being natural isn’t what it’s puffed up to be. Let the living Jesus lead, train, and empower you to be supernatural! The most important freedom of expression is the expression of “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Let the risen Jesus freely flow from within you!
Open your heart to the fruit of God’s Spirit. It has no harmful side effects — only an amazing sense of blessing and contentment. All who open their heart in surrender to Jesus and trust Him with their lives are empowered to be led by the Spirit. Will you follow? John 1:12/Romans 8:14.
The leadership, presence, vitality, energy, and expressions of the Holy Spirit are essential to genuine Christianity.Christians need to go beyond quoting preachers or expressing our own opinions. We need to speak words prompted by God’s Spirit.
Institutional religion tends to make Christians robotic — following a party line and being unkind to those who disagree.God’s discipline isn’t comfortable but to refuse to accept it is to cut yourself loose from ultimate reality.
My philosophy I don’t have to express Emotions and desires That cause duress And let them oppress My life with stress And compel me to transgress My conscience. I’m free to resist them And to deny them access To my heart And my free will.
I’ve learned An amazing lesson. I can choose to use My freedom of expression To resist and refute Feelings of depression And to refuse To cooperate with them.
Express kindness through All you say and do. Then you will find That you feel kind And people will be kind To you.
When I choose to make My facial expression Match the way I want to feel Eventually I will Begin to feel That way.
To empty your face Of negative expressions And replace Them with hope Helps you And those who Have to look at you.
It takes courage To resist Bad feelings That persist And to insist That your heart Be a place Of purity. Be courageous.
Pride and blame blur truth. Humility and honesty clear it up. To ignore uncomfortable truth is to resist the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
Unless we let God tune our heart and keep it tuned to His will we’ll easily stray into the discord of self-focus.The more I’m aware of God’s splendorous, majestic, and grandiose identity, the less need I feel to identify myself.
Free will! If you don’t want to see what God wants to show you, He’s not going to force you to exit the darkness. To avoid uncomfortable truth is to distance yourself from God.
The more you focus on yourself, the more you blur your vision of God. Every time you make the decision to close down your heart you blur your inner vision.
When we read the Bible with an open, humble, and receptive heart and let the Holy Spirit speak within us God begins to show us His point of view. When reading the Bible makes you uncomfortable you’re on God’s Light track! Keep reading.
The Bible tells the uncomfortable truth about ancient Israel and about contemporary you. They wouldn’t hear it. Will you? To be sick while ignoring the symptoms and dodging the diagnosis isn’t wise. Let the Bible show you the symptoms and the cure for your sin.
Christ-followers are called to align our thinking and behavior with God’s point of view even when it goes against our own opinions, feelings, and desires. The more I cling to my opinions, feelings, and desires, the farther I stray from God’s.
After decades of observing church, I’ve noticed that Sunday messages prepared and delivered by a studious mind seem to lack the power to transform Christians into powerful and effective men and women of God who continually demonstrate the power and presence of the living Jesus in and through their daily life. It’s time to go beyond church as usual!
Pride, guilt, shame, and blame are symptoms of sin. Medicating, blurring, or boasting about the symptoms won’t cure the disease.
To medicate And blur your pain Is to abdicate The opportunity To receive God’s supernatural comfort In the midst of it.
There's more to come,
More peace, more joy,
More freedom
From things that anoy;
More love from above
Descending like a dove.
God's Spirit
Has so much more
To say and do
Inside of you.
Never quit seeking Jesus.
Never stop surrendering
Your will and ability
And embracing
His presence
With humility.It's hard to stand
And obey Christ's command
In a pleasure-seeking land
If you only hear second-hand
Information about Him
Through a preacher's sermons.
Wholeheartedly seek
To hear Jesus speak
And to always be aware
Of His "still, small voice"
And His glorious presence.
Make Christ the essence
Of your daily life!Dare to say to the living Jesus:
“Wash me, cleanse me.”
Admit you’re not “fine.”
Open your heart
And let God’s Light shine
On the things that you hide
And have often denied.
It’s hard to be healed
Unless you let it be revealed
Where you’re hurting.When Christians
Give up the daily search
To know Jesus better
Their faith becomes
Little more than
Going to church.Although few people
Will admit
That they are
Morality-phobic
It's really quite common.
Christianity without Christ’s presence and power is a dried-up flower. Christianity’s so much more than experiencing a one-time flash in your spiritual pan and then attending a weekly religious talk. Because Jesus is living and working in all of His true followers, He doesn’t need a hierarchy or a go-between to communicate with and direct them.
Morality-phobia makes it hard to hear your conscience. Courageously listen to and obey it anyway!To “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” you have to overcome morality-phobia.
It takes courage To open your heart, Courage to let people See you cry, Courage to trust God When you’re hurting And don’t know why But that courage Produces exuberance That you could never buy.
Exuberant living Requires the inner light Of heart-transforming insight That produces true delight, Not outward attempts To disguise the dark night That’s consuming your soul.
A delinquent culture needs exuberant holiness — not outward rule keeping but inner transformation.True transformation is of the heart. Changing a person’s body without healing their hurting heart is just cosmetic.
Aligning your life to feelings and desires that tell you to deny logic and reason is bondage, not transformation.Unless your heart is transformed, your life may look different, but internally you’ll still be the same.
Self-focus kills exuberance. We need a vision beyond self-interest and self-comfort to make life meaningful and joyous.Boasting about desires that torment and control you and seeking people’s approval of them won’t produce transforming inner peace.
To keep your heart always open to the risen Jesus is stay plugged in to the experience of exuberant living.If Christ isn’t producing ever-flowing exuberance inside you, there’s a disconnect somewhere. “Rejoice in the Lord always!”
To let Christ continually expose, forgive, and heal your inner dark spots is to experience the exuberance of supernatural transformation. If Christians aren’t trained to open their heart, speak up, and freely express Christ’s exuberance in church, where will they learn how to do it?
In the Bible the first two people choose human analysis and their own initiative instead of trust in and obedience to God. Not much has changed. Unless we begin to notice and follow the initiatives of God’s Spirit we may embrace religion, but we won’t be led by the Spirit. Christ’s initiatives, His sparks in human hearts, are too often ignored.
If Christ is in you be ever conscious of and guided by His presence. Train yourself to be sensitive to and appreciative of the initiative of God’s Spirit. Learn to let the Holy Spirit continually initiate and motivate your thoughts and behaviors. When we lay down our initiative and fully cooperate with Christ’s, we begin to experience the Lord’s prayer–God’s will being done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Many people have never heard that Jesus wants to initiate hope and healing in their heart, so they gravitate away from Him. Instead courageously open your heart to ponder and meditate on the presence of Jesus. Cooperate with Him so He can initiate and establish His will deep within you. Let the initiative of the Spirit (not your own desires) guide and direct you day by day.
Bravely notice the movement of God within your heart. Then be courageous enough to align yourself with and surrender to His will for you. Religion tends to sedate people. Jesus wants to initiate a supernatural way of life in your heart. Be courageous and let Him.
Resist, refute, and reject anything inside you that tries to hinder your ability to be conscious of and cooperative with the initiative of God’s Spirit. Dare to let the living Jesus initiate and navigate your decisions.
Theology presented in a sermon without the theology of directly encountering the living Jesus is empty words. Many people can’t see the living, daily present Jesus because church has blocked their view.
Until Christians are trained to open our heart and be vulnerable, Christianity will be mostly a head religion. Are you aware of what Jesus wants to initiate in your heart today? Why or why not?
Embracing the messy brokenness Of the way of the Cross In your own life Leads to astonishing connection To the power of Christ’s resurrection Working in you To will and to do What you could never do Without Christ living in you.
There’s hope for your soiled heart. Let your soiled heart be good soil for God’s word. To let your heart harden is to distance yourself from both God and people.
An open, tender heart can be gloriously led and shaped by God’s Spirit. A closed, hardened heart stays stuck in a shell of self-protection. It takes no courage to let your heart harden, but great courage to keep it open and tender.
A hard heart tries to be fortified and justified through pride. A tender heart bows down in repentance and humility.
Let your heart become good ground. Receive and nurture the falling seed that the Sower is ever sowing in your heart. Direct it off the path of self-will, away from the stones of spiritual hardness, beyond self-focused desires, consumerism, and worries. Warmly and tenderly embrace the seed of God’s Word with humility, repentance, and brokenness. Let it grow and flourish inside your innermost being and transform the ruins in your heart into a glorious garden overflowing with an abundance of the fruit of the Spirit.
Ruins rising up as the fruit of the Spirit become foundations of supernatural hope. Find the place of tenderness in your heart. Cultivate it and let it grow so you can courageously embrace compassion and caring.
God wants to tenderize Your heart And give you Tender eyes So you can see His love And be comforted In your pain.
At a Christian university
Called Asbury
A few students
Broke with the ordinary.
When chapel ended
They stayed,
Opened their hearts
And prayed.
There soon followed
A two week parade
Of about 70,000
Who came and prayed
And stayed.
Hours seemed
Like minutes
As faces beamed
With God's glory
And the Gospel story
Came roaring to life
In human hearts
Without a program,
Keeping the focus
On the living Jesus
And letting Him
Personally lead us.
What God did
At Asbury
Is a call
For us all
To leave our ordinary
And let Jesus
Do His extraordinary
Anywhere
And everywhere!To be built
On Christ’s immovable rock
Of supernatural revelation
We need to set aside
The pebble of pride
And self-consideration
And surrender our life
To God's transformation.Christ “anamnesis”
Jesus right, here right now:
Remembrance of Jesus
Is not just a memorial
Of bread and wine
That helps to recall
What He did in the past.
It’s the heart-moving awareness
Of personally experiencing
His living presence
Working inside of you
“To will and to do
His good pleasure”
Lest you forget about
“Christ in you,
The hope of glory”
Now!Living people
Don't need to be
Memorialized.
Jesus is alive
And present
Among us.
It's time that
We realized
He's here now
And surrendered
To His presence.To remember Jesus
Without currently experiencing
His supernatural presence
Is to falsely memorialize Him
As someone stuck in the past.Stir up any cooling embers
Of Christ living in you
And let Jesus do
Whatever He wants to
So His flames will last
And not fade into your past.Jesus is here.
You can now steer
Into His presence
And let Him appear
In your heart!If you think Jesus
Is only in the past,
You'll be always
Moving past
His present reality
Yet not noticing
His presence.If your relationship with Jesus
Seems only to be a memory,
Check your heart
For an expiration date
And begin to relate
Deeply and honestly
With Him again.
