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.
Let’s drop the mic of our opinions, feelings, desires, and self-righteousness and begin to be led by God’s Spirit in all that we think, say, and do. The redemption that came by Christ Jesus gives us supernatural inner power to do that. Miracles happen when Christians lay down the mic of self-righteousness.
Righteousness (both right standing with God and the power to demonstrate right/holy living) is given to people who continually rely on the living Jesus by courageously stepping out and walking in faith rather than exerting mere human effort. They become people who believe in the risen Jesus so much that they trust in and obey His inner guidance (instead of their own understanding, emotions, and desires) moment by moment. The Bible calls that lifestyle one that is “led by the Spirit” and declares that the people who live that way are “the children of God.” See Romans 8:14.
No matter where you go, you’re always mic’d up to God. He hears it all!
I’m continually aware that many invisible things are happening within me that have nothing to do with my body or with physicality — spiritual things like consciousness, comprehension, thought, conscience, temptation, discouragement, fear, worry, guilt, torment, inner peace, joy, hope, love, wisdom, compassion, and on and on! Some of those things are deceptive and destructive and are prompted by forces of evil. Some are helpful and wise and are prompted by goodness. It’s vital that I learn to resist the destructive and to align with the helpful.
Awareness is not confined to our ordinary senses. There’s a deep inner awareness that people are often completely unaware of.
Your feelings, desires, and opinions don’t identify you. You are not them. You are the human being who observes them.
Pride makes us unaware of the lies we believe. Humility makes us aware of the truth.
Lies are invented but truth is discovered. Lies can be made to fit our desires and plans but truth disrupts them. We need the awareness to notice the difference.
Guilt crushes happiness! Become aware of your conscience and let it steer you to the joy of being guilt free.
Learn to be aware That life is more Than what you wear Or the burdens you bear.
When you’re unaware That Jesus is everywhere You live your life As if He’s only up there In Heaven.
You’ll never follow God’s inner voice Until you’re aware That it’s there Inside you.
It’s hard to worship God if you’re unaware of His presence. Worship without conscious awareness of God’s presence is empty.
God’s Law is the great appetizer that makes us realize our spiritual bankruptcy and causes us to hunger and thirst for awareness of His righteousness and forgiveness. Trying to keep His Law makes us aware of our tremendous need to surrender to the living Jesus and to be continually led by His Spirit. When we ignore God’s Law we falsely believe that we are good people and have no need to repent. Thus we have little interest in or belief in Christ’s power and presence working daily within us.
Thinking or talking about Jesus isn’t the same thing as being aware of Him living and working in your heart. Gathering with Christians to hear a Sunday sermon has never done much for me, but connecting heart-to-heart with other believers throughout the day to pray and testify revolutionizes my life. Church too often uses nice words about God to make people comfortable instead of introducing them to the awareness of the presence of the living Jesus.
I discovered the Jesus Prayer years ago when I found the book, “The Way of the Pilgrim.” It’s about a Russian man who roams from Ukraine to the Russian far east. As he wanders, he tries to “pray without ceasing” by constantly repeating the Jesus Prayer in his mind. He has many amazing encounters with God. His prize possession is a copy of the 5 volumes of the “Philokalia,” a collection of writings by ancient Orthodox monks who lived at various times during the 4th through the 19th centuries, which he reads along the way.
“The Way of the Pilgrim” inspired me to begin praying the Jesus Prayer and to find a copy of the “Philokalia.” I’ve read it through 3 times and frequently read different parts of it. It’s the most powerful Christian book I’ve ever read after the Bible.
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.” The Philokalia and the Jesus Prayer continue to touch me deeply, to open my heart more fully to God, and to help me to rely on God’s mercy rather than on my effort. When I can’t sleep at night, I repeat the Jesus Prayer over and over in my mind. Often, I will repeat it during the day.
The Philokalia is about how to hear God’s voice and submit to His will. Monks share practical ideas as well as their own experiences. Their testimonies are powerful and often match what God is doing in my heart. I’ve never been much into formalized religion and liturgical prayers, but God has used those Orthodox monks and their Jesus Prayer greatly in my life!
Stationary was once popular, but it’s now becoming rare. It wasn’t stationary.
Most mornings I wake up with a word in my mind that I get up and write about. Today my mind was empty, so I asked Jesus to give me a word to write about. Suddenly out of nowhere, the word “stationary” appeared in my mind. I didn’t think I could write anything about stationary, so I resisted a bit, but then I heard Him say, “Just trust Me.” So, I’m writing about stationary today.
To treat life like a stationary bike is to stay stuck in one place. No matter how hard you pedal you don’t move forward.
When Christians are spiritually stationary and not moving forward with the risen Jesus, they’re refusing to let the Lord write on their heart.Christ-followers don’t stay put. They follow and obey the risen Jesus wherever He leads them.Faith that follows and obeys the risen Jesus is offensive to people who want to remain stationary.
Jesus objects to you being a stationary object. He calls out, “Follow Me!” Make your heart “stationary” that God can write on, not “stationary” so that it hardens and seldom moves to follow God’s Spirit. Fill your texts, emails, posts, and stationary with encouragement and kindness, not with despair and rudeness.
My relationship with the risen Jesus is a daily voyage of discovery that is never stationary but always grows and moves forward. For me following Jesus is like riding a mountain bike to glorious heights, not sitting on a stationary religious bike and going nowhere.
To dance with the living Jesus, you can’t remain stationary. You must move as He leads you from within. True love isn’t stationary. It always grows stronger.
Rule-based Christianity is like a stationary bike — no matter how hard you pedal your hard work won’t take you forward. True Christianity is about ever moving forward as a follower and disciple of the living Jesus, not about a stationary place to weekly sit through religious rituals. It’s about being Christ’s stationary and allowing Him to continually write His word on your heart.
Jesus, You be the pen and let me be Your stationary. Write Your will on my heart.
Discipleship is not A drydocked boat That stays stationary And refuses to float With the current Of God’s Spirit.
Since Jesus doesn’t like lukewarm religion, should we? See Revelation 3:16.I’m desperate for more of Jesus. I long to see the body of Christ wake up, shake off lukewarmness, and get on fire for God.
It’s sad When religion That’s lukewarm Is seen as the norm For Christianity.
Jesus is everywhere But lukewarm religion Meets to follow a program As if He isn’t there.
Neither lukewarm coffee Nor lukewarm religion Is very effective At waking people up.
It’s hard to lose Lukewarm religion If all you want Is to spiritually snooze.
To be lukewarm Is to be asleep To the thrill And glorious appeal Of the living Jesus.
Lukewarm religion Likes to scold People who are ice cold And to stop Those whose heart Is burning with red hot Love for Jesus.
A cold-hearted culture Won’t be inspired By lukewarm religion. A Jesus revolution Is required.
Lukewarm religion Rarely makes room For people Whose heart is hot With a whole lot Of passion for Jesus.
Religious lukewarmness Will persist Until Christians Learn to resist The religious Status quo And begin To freely flow With God’s Spirit.
Religious words Are like birds That fly across The mind But leave the heart Behind Unchanged. Religious reflection Is not the same as Direct connection With the risen Jesus.
When presented With no thrill Lukewarm sermons Can easily conceal That Jesus is present And real.
If we wouldn’t serve Jesus lukewarm coffee, we probably shouldn’t serve Him lukewarm religion.Revival occurs when Christians have the courage to let the living Jesus be unscripted and uncontrolled.
Invisible things matter. What’s unseen is very significant!Too many Christians have been trained to overthink religion and to overlook the invisible Jesus.
Invisible things work inside people day and night — a churning collage of confusing thoughts, emotions, desires and fears — producing the storm of human angst that attacks our hope and disrupts our mental health. The invisible Jesus will calm your invisible inner storm with His invisible presence and peace if you will let Him.
The truth can set you free: 1) Honesty admit your sins to God and to yourself. 2) Ask for and humbly receive His forgiveness. 3) Surrender control of your life to the living Jesus as you daily obey His promptings.
Since Jesus lives within me, cleanses me with His blood, transforms me with His glorious presence, and empowers me with His righteousness, I am no longer trapped in the up and down storm of self-approval and condemnation. Jesus is an ongoing daybreak ever enlightening my heart–a never ending sunrise within me.
As humans we like to pretend that we can make bad and/or wrongful choices and have no negative consequences. Reality disagrees!
If you plant something it will grow consequences. Be wise about what you plant (or allow to be planted) in your mind and heart. Choose what makes you smile with a wholesome heart!
If your life is in a place that you don’t want it to be, your decisions helped direct it there.Much misfortune and mental/emotional anguish is self-manufactured.
Catastrophic consequences often begin with tiny bad choices that gradually become compulsive habits and then tormenting addictions. When you make choices (even small ones), you cause consequences that cultivate and create your circumstances.
Negative consequences are wake-up calls trying to notify you about bad choices you are making so that you can begin to choose better. You are free to make choices that cultivate peace of mind rather than choices that cause guilt and inner torment.
Negative thinking will mess with your emotions and your rationality and produce negative consequences in your mind and heart. To blame anyone or anything for the consequences of your thoughts and decisions is to deny the truth.
Instead of making choices based on feelings, desires, or compulsions, it’s more effective to think about the future consequences and to choose based on wisdom. If you’re unwilling to speak the truth in love and to do the what’s right regardless of the circumstances, you’re following your own desires instead of the Holy Spirit.
One of the most destructive consequences of wrongdoing is guilt. Stopping the wrongdoing, making amends where possible, and seeking forgiveness will stop the guilt.
People have a right to pretend to be the opposite gender. I have a right to kindly believe that they aren’t.
Many people disagree with my belief that Jesus transforms me and guides me from within, but that doesn’t mean that they hate me. I disagree with people who believe that they can change their gender, but I definitely don’t hate them.
The purpose of your conscience isn’t to make you feel guilty but to guide you to a lifestyle that is free from the chains of corruption. Fear hardens a human heart so that it can’t hear the conscience, but faith tenderizes it.
A hardened heart ignores and resists the conscience. A tender heart listens to and obeys it.
People with a hardened heart think, say, and do heartless things. Having a hard heart isn’t healthy. A hardened heart can’t see beyond the cataracts that engulf it. It’s out of touch with reality.
A hardened heart is weak and fearful. People who keep their heart tender are strong and courageous. A hardened heart causes dry eyes that are afraid to cry. The living Jesus wants to give you a heart that never hardens.
A hard heart beats like the slow bass drum in a funeral dirge. A tender heart dances to the joy of the Lord.
When the human heart is tenderized and sensitized by the Holy Spirit’s inner surgery and attuned to ongoing awareness of presence of the living Jesus, tears are no longer quenched, but easily flow. The pain and prison of pride and embarrassment pass away. Streams of repentance and forgiveness, rivers of love and compassion, and floods of joy and peace endlessly overflow from the circumcised heart.
A culture that promotes self-focus winds its way to confusion, conflict, and chaos. Hardened human desires, feelings, and opinions don’t create or alter reality, no matter how loudly people claim they do. No one has a right to mistreat another person, but everyone has the right to disagree with other people’s behavior.
Many hardhearted people want to be separated from God. He respects their freedom so much that He’s not going to force them to love and obey Him.
If faith as a tiny grain of mustard seed can move a mountain, surely you have the faith to cast tormenting and tempting thoughts, desires, and feelings out of your heart and mind! Do it every day.
Self-focus makes it easy to decorate our desires, feelings, and opinions with fancy justifications and elaborate excuses in order to create an outward appearance of goodness while hiding and denying the reality of the pain, confusion, and corruption that is going on deep inside of us. Three warnings systems try to alert us to our self-deception.
Our God-given conscience sounds out within us and attempts to guide us to truth, but we too often override it and eventually learn not to hear it. The Spirit of God, speaking to our heart, tries to draw us near to the living Jesus and to empower us with His active presence, yet even if we appear outwardly close to Him with religious words and a mask of righteousness, our heart can be far from Him. The Scriptures give us supernatural revelation by showing us the way that Spirit-led people learned to set aside their desires, feelings, and opinions and to experience and obey the living God instead.
Life would drastically improve both for us and for our society if we would begin to focus our heart on following the God-given warning systems rather than on satisfying our self-focused whims. To do that: 1) Continually cooperate with your conscience. 2) Be ever led by God’s Spirit. 3) Daily read the Bible with an open heart and apply it to yourself first.
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