The Matador

Spirit controls mind. Mind controls emotion. Emotion controls life.

Inspiration sometimes come in as blocks of knowing that are hard to condense into a single post.  I wrestled with the words that would be right for this insight, my mind was diligently putting bits and pieces together and creating several possible interpretations.  I asked Spirit to help.

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.*

I received only the closing words of this hymn, I played it and was struck by the profound implications of every word.  I invite you to just sit with the words of this hymn ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’ and let Spirit minister to you.

Let sense be dumb, meaning get your mind out of the way.  Today’s lesson was not meant to be translated by my mind, there was a higher voice I needed to hear.  The voice of Spirit.  In my eagerness to understand, I had allowed my own mind to drown out that higher voice.

Hands down that is probably the biggest failing in our journey of communion with our God.  Spirit speaks, we run that through our processors and the interpretations are as far from what Spirit intends as Alaska is from the Sahara.

Today's lesson is actually about submission to the Holy Spirit.

There are some things you cannot DO, you must Simply ALLOW.

Dear Christian friends, as you are in the trenches, struggling through your fire, understanding today’s lesson is going to be crucial to your survival.  Not just your survival, your breakthrough.

There are some issues in your life that cannot be fixed on the physical plane of existence.  There are some battles that must be spiritually fought and won, for your breakthroughs to come. 

Let sense be dumb, put away your concordance, shut down the internet, set aside your Wall Street Journal.  There are some things you're not going to figure out because the spiritual dynamics are way beyond your mind's ability to comprehend.   Your battle may not be one you can fight with your mind,   you don’t win by being smart.  You win by allowing yourself to be inspired by the Spirit of the living God.

“This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: 'Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit,' says the Lord of hosts.”  - Zechariah 4:6

Let flesh retire.  You don’t take the victory through hard work, not even the hard work of fasting, or hours of fervid prayer.  Physical power is but a faint reflection of true power.  The bible says ‘the Spirit of the Lord came upon David and…’.  The Spirit came upon Gideon and Samson and Isaiah and upon the gathering at Pentecost.  When the Spirit came, wondrous events followed.

To surrender our flesh to the power of the Holy Spirit takes immense faith.  I’m not talking about praying for a healing, or to resist temptation.  I mean something as simple as raising your hands in prayer, instead of raising your hands to fix the problem.  To surrender our flesh is to stop trying to wrestle things into place through our own power, and acceding to the power of the Holy Spirit to move in our situation.

Faith is not a state of ACTION it is a state of EMOTION.

Speak through the earthquake wind and fire, O still small voice of calm.  We try to listen for that still small voice but we often don’t hear it because of the noise of the tempest.  I love the words this writer chose.  Our tempests are earthquakes that break apart our physical existence, they are howling winds that deafen us with their noise and fires that blister, scorch and consume us.

The still small voice can speak through all of this, if we allow it.  Allowing it is so important.  God may not want to move a mountain for us, He may want to move the mountain through us.

Today I was so intent on hearing the message I could not still my mind, so I started to pray in tongues.  I am not from a tongues praying belief system but Holy Spirit gave me the gift.

One of the most profound lessons in my experience with the practice,  is that when I pray in tongues a portal opens.  Inspiration comes in a flood, solutions become clear, realizations light up in technicolor and spiritual energy amplifies exponentially.

You see, the still small voice is not so still or so small after all.  We are talking about the Spirit of the living God, the same Spirit that hovered upon the waters at creation.  We get excited by the power of the Holy Spirit to move on earth, with miraculous healings, deliverance and breakthroughs, yet we fail to comprehend the level of authority and power that this same Holy Spirit holds in the spiritual realm.

"For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God." - 1 Corinthians 2:11

The Spirit works tirelessly on our behalf, defending us, representing us, protecting us, guiding us, fighting for us.  The Spirit knows God’s heart toward us and works diligently to bring it into fruition in our lives.

We plead the blood of Jesus in prayer, we don’t understand that actually it is the Spirit pleading the blood on our behalf.  Spirit is constantly working on our behalf.  This work is only hampered by the extent of our ability to allow.  Holy Spirit just needs us to consciously come into alignment with whatever Spirit needs to do on our behalf, and that is often not the thing we are praying for.

The work of the Holy Spirit is only hampered by the extent of our ability to allow it to move.

There are some battles of Spirit that cannot be won without us, they must be won through us.  Our free will, our conscious choice has to be part of the process.  That is the purpose of faith.

As we allow sense to still, as we back away from the power of flesh to move and will and do, as we simply decide to allow the Holy Spirit to speak through the turbulence of our emotions, Spirt can then impact matter on our behalf.

Spirit controls mind. Mind controls emotion.  Emotion controls life. Therefore, Spirit controls life.

“Jesus gave them this answer: Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.” - John 5:19-20

The Spirit came upon Jesus at his baptism.  The scriptures say after that, the Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness.  After that Jesus started moving in miracles.

Jesus’ entire ministry was lived from a place of surrender to the Holy Spirit.  Jesus knew who he was even as a child.  Jesus knew the scriptures backward and forward, yet we have no record that Jesus moved in miracles until the Holy Spirit came upon him.

Our submission to the Spirit of God is that final piece that allows Spirit to work marvels and wonders in our lives.

Fellow Christians,  we want to see change in our lives.  We want radical change,  we want lasting results, we want matter to move in response to our prayers.  Let sense be still, let flesh retire.  Give the Holy Spirit your consent to speak through the maelstrom.

You may be prompted to attend a church conference you never heard of and when you get there you receive your healing.  You may just be scanning your cable and you stop on a particular channel, someone offers a prayer and your breakthrough breaks through.  You may have an inspired business idea, you may have a divinely orchestrated encounter with the right person at precisely the right time.

Spirit will move in a million different ways.  So many times on our journey Spirit opens up our breakthrough and we miss it because we are lost in the noise, we are busy doing, or trying to figure it out.  Peace.  Be still.

Drop thy still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease;  take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace.

Let the Spirit of God govern your mind.  Let your mind govern our emotions.  Whether we believe it or not, our emotions govern or lives.  If we understand this divinely orchestrated cascade, we are empowered to align ourselves with the divine flow.  

That Spirit may control our lives.  

We want God to move in our lives.  Well, we have to give Him the wheel.  Today's lesson is about the power of surrender, to change our minds, our hearts, our lives.

Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, O still small voice of calm.

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” - Matthew 6:10

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Song Credit : John Greenleaf Whittier (1872), "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind"

Author: Max Patrick @VibranceMinistries

Author's note:  Our cover graphic is inspired by one of my early visions, The Matador.

Your emotions are a wild bull, a massive bulging mass of muscles and sinews, snorting fire, heels shattering the earth, untethered and often uncontrollable.  Relative to the power of your emotions, the power of your mind is tiny.  Matadors, like jockeys tend to be tiny lightweight men.  In the vision, the matador was so small he was seated between the horns of the bull.  Yet he was controlling the massive beast.

It was a lesson in the ways of spiritual power.  Our spiritual power is contained in our emotions.  We are often unaware of the scope and impact of our emotions on every aspect of our lives, every day of our lives.  Even those who invest their lives in rationality, impassiveness and control are demonstrating this. Emotions can express hot or cold, either way it is emotion.

Across many other visions Spirit taught me that you can't really control emotions but you can learn to redirect the energy constructively.  If you learn to direct the pure raw power of your emotions spiritually, there is nothing in this life that is impossible for you.  

Today, many years after that initial vision, Spirit completed the picture for me.  It is not really our mind that controls our emotions because, as many spiritual practitioners know,  there is something within our mind which is beyond our own mind.  I call this Spirit.  

If we allow it, Spirit controls and directs our rational mind, so that we can appropriately direct and align our emotions.  By doing so we come into a state of alignment with God's heart for us.  Faith is not an act, it is an emotional state.

When we are in that state that is receptive to the Holy Spirit, we give the Spirit room to move in our lives in very physical and tangible ways.  Thus the circle is complete.

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If you were blessed, uplifted or inspired by this message please let us know on YouTube.  It blesses our heart to be a blessing to yours.

In The Trenches Through The Fire

@VibranceMinistries 

The Matador

©Spirit Speaks by Vibrance Ministries 2025, all rights reserved. 

Perspicacious pecuniary pejorative. Let’s talk about WEALTH.

Perspicacious pecuniary pejorative.  Say whuuut?!?  Let’s talk about WEALTH.  Actually this conversation is about your expectations, expectancy, hang-ups, limits and glass ceilings. 

Perspicacious pecuniary pejorative.  Lol.  Holy Spirit is a wordsmith that cracks me up daily.  Translation: insight into your hang-ups around wealth.  Where are the areas where you are desiring wealth, yet disapproving of it or even actively resisting it?  What is the level of your expectation, what is the extent of your limitation?

I find that overwhelmingly, our preachers are speaking to financial lack, sickness and relationships.  These seem to be the big three challenges in Christianity and wealth seems to be top ticket.

We work so hard.  We say ‘faith without works is dead’ so we work our fingers to the bone, we pray ourselves into exhaustion, we tithe, we offer, we sow seeds.  And week after week we return to church to pray for God to bless us financially.

What if He won’t?  What if He can’t?  

"Jesus said to him, ‘If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.’” - Mark 9:23

Dear Christian, what really is your expectation?  Of yourself, of your life, of your God?  I am not asking what you want, need or desire, I am asking what do you expect?

"And if you believe in me, you will receive whatever you ask in prayer." - Matthew 21:22

The bible tells us over and over of the power of belief.  We wring our hands with tears streaming down our faces and cry out ‘Father, I believe!’.  Yet the miracles do not come.  What is missing?

Perhaps the missing thing is not about the level of your faith, conviction or belief.  Perhaps the clog in the wheel is your expectation.  Of course we believe that God can, but do we expect that He will?

More importantly, do we expect that we will.

Our beliefs inform our expectation, which is the hope or conviction that something will happen.  Expectancy is the joyous anticipation of the fulfillment of your expectation.

Beware the Not-Knots!

What can I say, Spirit loves wordplay.  There are two things that may drive expectation.  One is pure joy and the other is pain.  A singer may say 'I have known that God created me to do this with my life for all my life'.  There are many who are blessed with the gift of singing but only a very small percentage of these will make music their life.  Even fewer will succeed at it.  

There are many who will be hugely commercially successful because of the not-knots.  I must become a superstar because I was bullied, rejected and ignored.  I’ll show them.  And they do. I must be wildly exorbitantly rich because I know poverty and I never want to pass this way again.  

Michael Jackson’s story always made me sad.  One so gifted, creative, productive, famous, adored by millions, wealthy at a young age with enough to sustain generations.  Yet he died a broken man, isolated, so uncomfortable in his own skin and hundreds of millions in debt.  How does an MJ happen?  How does a Whitney happen?

Success earned in the mad race to outrun the not-knots does not lead to happiness.  It creates people who have everything, and yet inside they are empty, broken and bankrupt.

Joyous expectancy opens the door to true wealth.    This is not just about financial wealth, but wealth in every area of your life.

This is how it works.  Experience fuels expectation.  Expectation can be a very positive thing if it comes from a place of joy.  But it can also be a state riddled with not-knots.  Both states are compelling, both can lead to tremendous success but only one leads to true happiness.

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive". - Matthew 21:22

Paraphrasing, all that you ask from a place of joyous expectancy you will receive.  It doesn't matter how long it takes, you shall have it.  While it is unfolding, the energy of expectancy will be a very different experience than the energy of need, avoidance or desperation.  

Picture if you will your beautiful five year old daughter who has gotten it into her head that she will be getting the newest barbie for Christmas.   She is gleefully running from store to store ogling the latest barbies and picking out the one she wants.  She is discussing it with her friends, she is overflowing with excitement and anticipation.  You know you can’t afford it but you will move the earth to get that one for your baby.  You could not bear to be the one to break her heart.

You make something happen that probably would not have happened, because of the power of her expectancy.

That is how our Abba feels about us.  His delight is to fulfil the delight of our hearts.  Trouble is, most of the time our hearts are far from delighted because of our expectations.  We really want it, but we don’t really believe it for ourselves.  Our expectations can become shackles on our feet, that prevent us from moving into the fulfillment of our dreams.

But sometimes, our not-knots are potent enough that they fuel a level of motivation that pushes us into realization of our dreams.  We have our moment and we relish it.  Then our 15 minutes of fame passes and we fade once more into bitter obscurity.

Have you noticed some cyclic patterns in your life?  You’re doing the thing you love, you are putting all your heart into it and every now and then life opens for you.  The success comes, the recognition comes, the respect comes, the money comes, but then it slips away again.

Over and over doors open and then close.  You seize the gold ring and then it slips from your fingers.  Life becomes a cycle of exhilarating victories and devastating defeats.

It doesn’t have to be like this.  Dear friend examine your cycles and you will see your glass ceilings.

The SIZE of your miracle is constrained by your CAPACITY to receive it. 

Life performs to the level of your expectancy, but life is also limited by your unconscious glass ceilings. These define the limit of your capacity to receive that which you desire.  We may allow ourselves to have, but we limit the extent of it.  Over and over we reach, grasp, lose. We find we are coming back to the same level of success or failure over and over, fluctuating up and down within the same range of experience.   It’s actually about our comfort level.

Your hunger will drive you to a level that satisfies the need, but when you push beyond your comfort zone you unconsciously begin to push against the very thing you desire, until it breaks.  You plummet and then build back up to the level of your comfort,  but even if life takes you well beyond anything you could have imagined, somehow, again, it falls apart.  And you're usually a big part of the falling apart.

This shows up a lot in relationships.  One who is so desperate for love may actually connect with the one who has the perfect love for them.  For a while it is so good but after a while it starts to get uncomfortable.  He is too loving, too sweet, too attentive, too kind.  The things that attracted you start to repel you.  He’s so good he’s boring.

You’re likely to attach to the first loser and guaranteed heart-breaker who passes by.  It doesn’t make you a bad person.  You simply were not capable of receiving a love that was greater than your limit.

The key to true wealth in life lies in understanding yourself.  What are your beliefs in general.  What are your specific expectations? Are your expectations joyous expectancy, or are they tangled up in not-knots?

Either way, strong expectation of positive outcomes for yourself will bring those outcomes into your life.  But you may not be able to hold onto them.  Because of free-will, God will only give you that which you allow for yourself.

Be aware of what you are allowing.  Be aware of what you are resisting.  Be aware of what you are limiting.

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”. - Matthew 7:7-11

Ask.  Expect.  Allow.  Work with God and He will work with you.  It is His heart for your dreams to come true.

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Author: Max Patrick @VibranceMinistries

If you were blessed, uplifted or inspired by this message please let us know on YouTube.  It blesses our heart to be a blessing to yours.

In The Trenches Through The Fire

@VibranceMinistries 

Perspicacious

©Spirit Speaks by Vibrance Ministries 2025, all rights reserved. 

To Have and To Hold.

 I do (I do), love you (love you), with all my heart.  Ah, love and romance, what is sweeter?

“And Jesus answered and spake unto them again by parables, and said. the kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son." - Matthew 22:1-2

Jesus seemed to love weddings.  He performed his first miracle at one, and in his ministry he offered multiple parables comparing the kingdom of heaven to marriage feasts.  Even his second coming is represented as a marriage feast.

Remember how God loved Solomon?  Solomon loved love.  A man with seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines really loved love.  Did you know that the kind of love Solomon expressed toward his queen and she toward him is the same kind of love that Jesus has towards us?

Powerful, passionate, protective, compulsive, ardent, hungry, giddy.  If you’ve been in love a time or two you know what I am talking about.  We were created in God’s image and there is no part of our lives where that is more true than in our emotions.  All that we are emotionally, God is.

Man is wired to be a reflection of his God.  All of his God.  There is nothing within us that did not exist first in our God.  The love that God has for us is the fulness of all love - eros, agape, every other classification we can find.  God’s love is as full and rich,  giving and demanding, devastating and exhilarating, as any love mankind has ever expressed.

To HAVE and to HOLD

As I was praying today, I asked what does it really mean to have Jesus?  I heard ‘to have and to hold’.  It comes from one of the oldest Christian marriage vows. 

"I, [name], take thee, [name], to be my wedded wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part, according to God's holy ordinance.”

Churches differ in their baptismal practices but this should be the vow used to consecrate every heart to Christ.  This is not a wedding vow, this is a Bride of Christ vow. 

When we undergo the rite of baptism we do not understand that we are entering into a binding commitment with a very real ‘person’.  We call him Jesus.

He may not exist in body, but he is even more real that those who do.  When we say we have Jesus, it means to have and to hold.  And it is a two-way commitment, he pledges to have and to hold us in abundance and in drought, in health and in sickness, through all the ups and downs of life until death once more reunites us in the fulness of spiritual restoration.

Child of God you are no longer fully human, you are a hybrid.  You are part man and part god.  You had many paths you could have chosen but you chose Christ.  This means the God part of you belongs to him.  Well, actually all of you belongs to him.

That is supposed to mean something.

“I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” - 2 Corinthians 11: 2-3

Child of God, Christian, I am here to tell you that your commitment to Christ means something.  To have and to hold speaks to lifelong commitment, unconditional acceptance, physical and emotional support and a promise to nurture, cherish and protect.

If you’ve been in the trenches for a while this may sound like a bunch of poppycock.  When life is on an even keel it is easy to gush about Jesus.  It’s easy to attribute every good thing to him and call on him when tough stuff comes along.  But when that tough stuff digs in and takes up residence it is a whole different matter. 

Then we feel neglected, abandoned, rejected, unseen, unheard, unknown and unclaimed by our God.  Then we go to church and walk out at testimony time.  We don’t want to hear it because we are not living it.

He’s there.  I promise you he’s there hunkered down in the trenches right beside you, covering you when a missile heads straight for your head.  He’s there picking you up when you take a hit, tending you, carrying you when you are too weary to carry yourself.  He is there walking through hell with you. 

To have and to hold means that he is there with you through everything.  Then why doesn’t he fix it? The answer is so simple it hurts.

He doesn’t fix it because our heavenly Father ordained it.  Don’t blame the devil, the devil ain’t the boss of you.  God is.

Jesus doesn’t fix it because there is grace in all of it.  There are lessons to be learned.  There are habits to break and idols to cast down.  There are parts of you that are so deeply buried and repressed that life has to scorch you to the bone to open you up to yourself.

There is not one moment of anything that you go through that is not for your highest good.  So Jesus doesn’t fix it.  He walks with you through all of it.

“O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.  I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be”*

Jesus is the love that will not let you go.  When you want to let go, give up, abort and quit, Jesus is the gentle unction in your heart that says ‘give it one more day, one more hour, one more breath’.

Sometimes in the midst of your devastation you gasp in surprise and look around.  How have I survived?  How did I make it through, how did I get this far?  There is something within you that is more than you.  That is Jesus.

That faintest glimmer of light in your darkness is Jesus.  The frailty of hope that refuses to die no matter how weak it may feel, that is Jesus.  The strength to get back up after you’ve been knocked down so many times you’re not sure where to find your feet.  That is Jesus.

The thing about Jesus is. he is an all day, every day, integral part of who you are.  He is the best of who you are.  He is the rest of who you are.  He is not separate from you.  He is you.

We cry out to an external God and look for external miracles to prove His existence.  Jesus doesn’t have to prove himself, but if you ask, he will reveal himself.  He will allow you to see that he has always been there and always will be.

That’s how Jesus is, he is loyal, he is consistent and he is present. If you are prepared to believe this with all your heart, you will open yourself to the experience of it.

“And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own, and the joy we share as we tarry there none other has ever known”.**

We are the bride of Christ.  That means he is responsible for our wellbeing and he takes that very seriously.  But he doesn’t give us everything we want or demand.  He gives us what we need, when and as we need it.  He also gives it as and when we are capable of receiving it.

I need a healing now!  No you don’t.  I need a roof, I need a car, I need food!  No you don’t.  Perhaps what you need most in this moment,  is to heal that part of your heart that was broken by the experience of not having food.  You think that abundance of food now will heal it.  It won’t.

So perhaps Jesus walks with you through that experience of lack over and over until one day you recognize that there is no food and you’re ok.  Maybe when you get to that place you start to see that somehow your last dollar keeps stretching.  You have no idea how, but somehow you’re no longer hungry even though you have no more than you had before. You may not even notice when you get to  the place where you can never be hungry again.

Do not fear lack, do not fear heartbreak, do not fear loss, do not fear defeat.  As we heal our fears we simultaneously heal our ability to have and to hold all that we desire.  Jesus does not need to fix it, he holds space for you to heal it.

“O joy that seekest me through pain.  I cannot close my heart to thee. I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain, that morn shall tearless be.”

This is how faith works.  You’ve got to believe and you’ve got to be clear on what you believe.  Believe this.  When you became a Christian you made a lifetime commitment to Christ.  That means something.

On your part it means that you daily submit your heart to him.  You commit to believing in him even when you can’t see him.  You commit to nurturing him in your heart, making space for him, listening for him, yearning for him.  It is through your desire for him that he will make himself known to you.

On his part he commits to nurturing you, protecting you, taking care of you and providing for you.  That’s his job and you don’t get to judge how he does it.  You don’t get to compare yourself to others, grade his performance and find him wanting. You get to trust him.  No matter what it looks like.

It is only when you trust him that he will step up and prove himself to you.

To have and to hold means that your relationship with Christ is for life.  He’s got you and he’s holding on to you.  All he needs is for you to hold on to him.  Trust him to be all that your heart needs for him to be and more.  And let your heart be all that he needs for you to be, and more.

May this divine union be eternally blessed, joyous and fruitful.  Amen.

"Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honor to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready .. blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. " - Revelation 19:7-9 (excerpt)

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Author: Max Patrick @VibranceMinistries

Song credits:

* George Matheson (1882),  “O love that will not let me go”

** Charles A. Miles (1913), “In the Garden”

If you were blessed, uplifted or inspired by this message please let us know on YouTube.  It blesses our heart to be a blessing to yours.

In The Trenches Through The Fire

@VibranceMinistries 

To Have and To Hold

©Spirit Speaks by Vibrance Ministries 2025, all rights reserved. 

Forget The Facts, God Is My Reality

 Forget the FACTS, God is my REALITY.  What's yours?

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” - Hebrews 11:1

Many don’t recognize it but Christianity calls us into a state of madness, a departure from the defined principles of rational thought and decision-making.  Christianity teaches us to find evidence in things we cannot see.  Like our God.

Christianity tells us our God spoke and worlds were created, waters parted, earth and sky and trees came into being.  Christianity tells us God took a rib from man and made woman, parted an ocean, moved in pillars of cloud and fire, He even saved some guys who were thrown into a fire and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out unsinged.

Christianity calls us to believe that the same God who destroyed the world by flood, rained down fire, scattered his people and caused their temple to be destroyed (more than once actually), this same God loved us so much that He came to earth, took on human form, experienced our joys and sorrow and died a horrific death so that we who are gentiles, are heirs to the kingdom of the God of Abraham.

That’s a lot to swallow.  Acceptance of God reality requires absolute departure from rationality.

God-Reality defies rationality

Yet, even as we accept our place in His kingdom, we stubbornly hang on to rationality with everything we’ve got.  We distil the essence of our God into one book, and we insist that this is the absolute infallible and complete authority on our God.  Even though the same book days that God cannot be contained. We need the book so that we can slice and dice, translate and re-translate, break down and process our God. We need to establish the facts.

Forget the facts.  God is your reality.

Do you know what the promise of Christianity is? Many would say the promise of everlasting life.  Others may say the promise of the new Earth.  Others may say He promised that we would tread on scorpions and command demons.

All would be wrong.

The promise of the kingdom is God Himself.  God is the promise.  God is the fulfillment of the promise.  God’s heart is not to give us stuff, His heart is to give us Himself.  The fulness of Himself, the glory of Himself, the power and authority of Himself, the nature of Himself, the love of Himself.

The kingdom of heaven is God reconciled with Himself, recognizing Himself and restored to Himself.

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.  So God created man in his own image..” - Genesis 1:26-27

The kingdom of heaven is us, restored to what we truly are.  God.

“That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.  And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: 

 I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.” - John 17:21-23

To think to claim yourself as God is shocking, delusional, flat out crazy.  Yet that is precisely what your God calls you to be.  One in Christ as Christ is one in God.  Child of God, heir of God, one with God.  God.

You cannot inherit His glory until you accept yourself as His glory.

This doesn’t call you to jump from a ship and try to walk on water.  It calls for a simple acceptance of your place in God that builds absolute trust.  From the place of trust you no longer see the facts of your life, you see beyond them.  You no longer try to see your life or your God through the lens of proof and evidence.  You become receptive to God’s definition of reality and you begin to embrace it.

The extent to which you embrace God-reality determines the extent to which it becomes the manifested reality of your life. 

If you are sick and God tells you that you are well, believe Him.  If you are broke and God tells you that you are wealthy believe Him.  If you are victimized yet God speaks of your power, believe Him. 

It starts with a soft allowing.  Just allow yourself to be receptive to the thought, then to entertain the possibility.  It’s ok to take it in stages.  Softly open to something more hopeful than where you are now and make it your internal reality.  As your reality shifts, new possibilities open for you.  It’s a sliding scale between fact-reality and God-reality.

Your job is to stay receptive to God-reality.  However God speaks to your heart, believe Him.  Rest the entirety of your faith in Him, rest the entirety of your future in Him.  Don’t rush to flesh out the details (more often than not we get that part totally wrong, bless our hearts). 

We are creators when we allow our creator to create through us.  

We are gods when we allow our God to be God through us.

First step,  God has to become the entirety of our reality.  Everything in our reality must exist in submission to God.  His heart for us must dominate, His voice must carry authority beyond every other voice.  The voice of our sickness, our pain, our lack, our loss; the voices of reason, societal norms, culture, our loved ones or even our own voice must fade in submission to Him.  God’s voice must be the voice that defines our reality.

God’s voice must outweigh the facts.

The ‘facts’ as we accept them say that God came as a man, lived for a while and died.  Our faith says He conquered death, rose from the grave and ascended to heaven.  We allow our faith to define that aspect of our reality.  What if we were to allow our faith to define the entirety?  What kind of marvel and wonder would we be? 

Could our lives transcend the facts and actually reflect the reality of our God? 

You have been predestined, preordained and set aside by your God, for the glory of your God.  But you cannot be His glory if you allow the facts to define your identity.  And your identity defines your reality.

Forget the facts.  God is my reality.  What's yours?

"And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."  - Matthew 21:22

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Joy Is A Choice

Joy is a God-given fire that burns so intensely it lights up everything in its path.  The core desire that is common across all humanity is not the pursuit of God, it is the pursuit of joy.

My brother posted an update recently.  In it a gentleman showed some women’s underwear and very seriously explained the cost of the garment.  He said it could cost your home, your car, your marriage, your children, your health, your business, even your life.  He was talking about the cost of sex, but he was actually speaking to the cost of joy.

Lust is simply perversion of the drive for the fulfillment of joy in the human spirit.  Gluttony, licentiousness, addictions of all kind stem from the same source.  Whether it be to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling, adrenaline, workaholism, violence, control, even addiction to religion,  all come from the same source.  The pursuit of joy.

Sorrow is not the opposite of joy.  Pain is the opposite of joy.  Sorrow is just one class of pain and all pain is a response to the absence of joy.  Pain deposits in the human spirit when something occurs which steals our joy.  All addiction stems from the need to escape from pain and reconnect to joy.

Joy is the highest state of satisfaction that the human consciousness can experience.  Do you know that the experience of joy can literally nullify physical pain?  Ask a woman who has given birth.

The human psyche is wired to pursue joy.  The specific pursuits allow us to get a taste of it, but we can’t hold on to it, so addiction becomes the compulsive pursuit of that magic moment when we get to experience even just the shadow of joy.

Orgasm, rhapsody, LSD.  Surprisingly, these are words that Holy Spirit has used to describe what the ultimate experience of God feels like.  Literally, there is a state you can enter in prayer that feels like a drug high.  Without the side effects.

It is the state that God desires for each of us.  It’s not a state to live in all day, every day.  Anyone who has ever experienced the intensity of joy knows that a little bit goes a long way.  But it should be a state that is readily available and accessible to each of us.  And it is.

You just have to choose.  Joy is a choice.

Joy is a CHOICE.

Come on now, if this were true the alcohol industry would crash, entertainment wound tank, the oldest profession on earth would be no more.  What kind of world would it be if we did not need alcohol, sex, drugs or any of the other ways that we use to get a taste that we our souls are thirsting for.  What if we could get the high without the risk, hurt and destruction?

What if we could simply choose joy and actually live it?

Well.  Actually.  You can.

I have been permitted glimpses of the Celestial City many times and there are two overwhelming themes that I observe.  One is constant celebration, jubilation and exhilaration.  The atmosphere of heaven is literally pure joy.

The other predominant feature of heaven is heartfelt, joyous worship.  The two are intimately intertwined.  For two decades I attended a church where the hands-down best part of the services were the fifteen minutes in which the choir sang.  Junior choir that is, senior choir was frankly funereal.

We would attend church for hours each week, just for those few minutes of praise.  Praise is for most Christians the foundation of worship.  I learned today that it’s not actually praise which is the foundation, it is joy.

That small distinction makes all the difference.  We can spend decades in church and fail to connect with God entirely.  We offer words of praise and songs of praise and our hearts are touched by it but thirty minutes later we are the same miserable, cantankerous grouches we have always been.

Our time spent in church does not change us because we are quite frankly missing the point.  Worship is not the offering of praise to God, it is the offering of joy.

If you study spiritual traditions, even devil worship, you will notice very interesting trends.  Music, dancing, drumming, chanting, rhythmic engagement.. there is a core of common practices that have one basic intent.  Raising joy.

People may whirl like dervishes, scream and shout or rock back and forth in fervent prayer,  then spirit begins to engage.  Joy opens a super-highway that allows spirit to move between their realm and ours.  Christian praise is simply the intentional selection and focus on JHVH as the one we are inviting to the party.

There is a magical place were the intentionality of praise, combines with the pure energy of joy and then God joins the dance.  Whooo!  

New agers across the world are having the experience.  Most Christians are not.  Pity.

But joy is not about the temporary high.  True joy can become your resting state.  It is a state in which you will experience many energies, such as peace, trust, assurance, hope, optimism, wholeness, balance.

True joy is absolutely and completely independent of your life experiences or circumstances.  It is a state that remains unmoved in the middle of desolation and destruction.  It pulls you back from the abyss of depression.  It is a state that stands calmly in the midst of the storm and speaks softly ‘peace, be still’.

True joy is unruffled by the ups and downs of life, and it does not need life to trigger it.  True joy can establish within your spirit a sense of stability, security, confidence, satisfaction and contentment even in the most adverse conditions.

And here’s the kicker.  True joy is not an emotion or an experience, it is a state.  It is a choice that you get to make.

True joy is not an emotion or an experience, it is A choice!

You get to make that choice all day every day.  It is a choice that does something to you.  As you choose joy, joy chooses you. As you cultivate joy in your inner world, your outer world brings you more reasons to be joyful. 

Joy is so easy to choose. Listen to music and just allow yourself to lose yourself for a while.  Dance,  paint, express yourself creatively.  Sit in a garden,  hug a puppy.  Go to the park, get on the swings and laugh.  Laughter is a joy opener.  Watch funny stuff, do silly stuff, be funny, laugh at yourself and encourage others to laugh too.

Ride a roller-coaster, jump out of a plane, feel the sense of unboundedness and liberation.  Understand it’s not even about the adrenaline rush.  It’s about opening yourself once more to joy.  True joy.  The stuff that heals.  The stuff that sticks.

Remember joy.  Ever notice how a thirty year-old memory can feel as fresh as the day it happened? Allow yourself to remember, even if things did not turn out as planned.  Remember what it felt like to fall in love.  Remember holding your newborn baby in your arms.  Remember when you got that contract or won that prize.  Dig up your best memories and feed on them, memories have no expiration date and they never get stale. 

Reconnect to the joy that you have lost and cultivate joy in your heart.   Finally, look for joy.  Open your eyes, there is so much joy around you every day.  Observe the joy of a butterfly as it flits from flower to flower.  Hear the peals of laughter as children play.  Stand and really observe that one standing on the corner, trying to feed the homeless.  There is so much goodness in the world.  Simply observing it reconnects you to joy.

Observing GOODNESS connects you to JOY.

Live in joy.  Let joy be your resting state.  Life will bring sorrow, losses, setbacks, pain, you are human you will respond.  But if you cultivate joy in your heart, if you patiently plant those seeds, water them and fertilize them, if you diligently pluck up the weeds and tend to the balance of the soil, before you know it you will be tasting of the fruits of true joy.

No addiction is sweeter.

Choose joy.

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” – 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

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Speak it ‘til you believe it. And until you don't.

Holy Spirit has told me this for years, speak it till you believe it.  Spirit is very consistent,  one message is conveyed over and over in a thousand different ways until you get it.  Then Spirit just might add a twist.

Speak it ‘til you believe it.  Speak until you no longer believe.  Huh?!?

Life is duality.  Every blessing has a dark side, every curse has a light.  God plants seeds of desire in our hearts for every good thing He desires for us.  That seed creates a higher level of sensitivity to the words, ideas, concepts and lessons that support us.  We are bombarded by trillions of bits of information each day, our areas of sensitivity determine what sticks.

Unfortunately we have a very real enemy stealing, killing and devouring our dreams and stifling our destinies.  This is accomplished by the negative chatter that diminishes your faith and perverts your beliefs.  Your job dear one, is to make the devil small.

We make the devil small by taking our energy from the things that limit us, and placing that energy into the things that support us.

Every relationship that places limits on who you are or may become, walk away.  That includes your relationship with yourself, which in most cases is the hands-down most toxic and damaging relationship in your life.

You can’t walk away from yourself, so heal your relationship with yourself. 

Make the devil small.  Take note of the voices that you are tuned into.  Hear the vile, putrid lies that limit, oppress and hold you down.  Take note of the beliefs that do not serve you.  Then take your energy back.

Invest your energy wisely.  Make investments in the things that bring joy to your spirit and satisfy your soul.  Don’t go chasing temporary highs, the things that just hold the pain at bay for a bit but never heals it.  Tune in to your heart, to the things that truly make your heart happy.  Follow the breadcrumbs, no matter how faint the trail.  You may find your peace in the most unlikely places. 

Those are the investments that really count.  

Put all your energy into the things that make your soul happy, it does not need to make a dollar, or  attract even one follower.  It does not need to make sense.  It’s not about the external results, the only result that matters is that it makes you happy to do this thing that stimulates and satisfies your soul.

And while you’re at it, talk to yourself constantly.  Do not stop talking.  Talk when you’re working, talk when at play, talk when resting, talk when sleeping, talk when talking.

The voices of your limitations are loud, aggressive and compelling.  Simply speak through them.  In every conversation you have with yourself there is a belief you have about yourself and a belief you have for yourself.  

Speak through your obstacles, speak through your fears, speak through your limitations, speak through your feelings.  Speak until the negative beliefs begin to fade.  Speak until you believe wonderful and amazing things about yourself and for yourself.

Speak your highest good always.  Never speak a negative word over yourself, never entertain a negative idea.  You don’t even need to fight the negative ideas, simply speak your good.

Speak it 'til you believe it.

As you speak good over yourself you will find the volume on the noise auto-adjusts.  Your good frequency grows in bandwidth and signal strength, the negative noise diminshes.  Your beliefs begin to change.

Speak it 'til you believe it.  And until you no longer do.  Speak until you know who your God is. Speak like a child of the kingdom.  Use your tongue.  Speak.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” - Proverbs 18:21

Tune Out The NON-SENSE, Tune In To GOD-SENSE

Child of God, it is time to zip the unnecessary, frustrating and wasteful conversations with your God.  Tune out the NON-SENSE and tune in to GOD-SENSE.

I was having one of those nonsense conversations with Holy spirit, that made a whole lot of sense to me.  I fuss with Spirit all the time on this issue.  You exist out of time and space, you don’t get that if the healing doesn’t come on time doctors start chopping stuff off.  If the money doesn’t come on time the electricity cuts off.  Things fall apart, businesses go down, lives are lost.  On time delivery matters.  Timing is everything! 

I finish my huff-fest with one last frustrated swing.  Why do you not like to talk to me about the real, concrete, temporal matters of my life?  The answer is calm, quiet and immediate, ‘The conversation is unnecessary’.  

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.” - Proverbs 3:5-6

Hmph! Holy Spirit can be infuriating.  But it does remind me of another inspiration I received recently. 

Tune out the non-sense, tune in to God-sense.

Have you ever had one of those evidence based conversations with your God, where you present Him with inarguable and absolutely compelling evidence against what you are believing for?  

Father, my car got repossessed, this is evidence that you are not Jehovah Jireh, where is my provider?  My liver is rotting away and the doctors can’t stop it, where is Jehovah Rapha, my healer?  Lord I am praying and praying don’t you see my condition, don’t you feel my need?  Where is El Roi, the God who sees me?

Have you spent perhaps hours building your case and presenting a mountain of supporting evidence? Well, you wasted your time with God on a whole lot of nonsense.  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Man-sense aka non-sense relies on evidence, God-sense sees beyond the evidence.  Non-sense obssesses about evidence, God-sense pierces through the evidence. 

Man-sense sees a mountain blocking your path.  God-sense sees verdant hills, exhilarating vistas and opportunities to come up higher.  Man sense sees a brick wall, God-sense sees an ocean of possibilities.  Man-sense sees the knock down, God-sense sees the rebound.

Tune out the non-sense, tune into God-sense. 

“Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.

But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness .. Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer.” – 1Corinthians 10:1-5,10

Let your murmurings cease.  Don’t allow yourself to go down in your wilderness.  Hang on to God-sense.

The foundation of God-sense is trust and the hallmark of God-sense is surrender.  A surrendered heart ceases the unnecessary conversations of frustration, and tunes in to the heart of God.  A surrendered heart releases all resistance.  It stops wrestling with the circumstances and demanding solutions.  It stops murmuring, complaining, begging and bargaining.  Instead, it turns its attention to high quality communion.  A surrendered heart goes into prayer with God and the problems are not even on the agenda.  It simply trusts God to get it right, every time.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” - Matthew 6:25-27

Christian friends it is important for us to start seeing our time with God as a sacred privilege.  Yes we can cast our cares upon Him, yes we can lay our burdens at His feet.  Yes He will be our fortress in our time of trouble and under His wings we can find a hiding place.

But do we need to go on about it all day, every day?

If we came to see our time with God as a sacred rendezvous, a time to be in His presence and to simply drink of His essence, perhaps we would toss the evidence.

The evidence is nonsense.

We think the entirety of our lives is about the evidence.  That is the mark of the kingdom of darkness, where our world is comprised entirely of what we can see, touch, hear and experience.  We are fed by our senses and experience determines our perspective.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. .. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” - Hebrews 11:1,3

God-sense changes your perspective radically.  The simple act of releasing resistance to what is going on, and allowing yourself to be receptive to God’s heart can transform your prayer life.  It may even transform your entire life.

Trust God to do the thing that is perfectly right for you in this moment and the next and the next.  God-sense is built on trust.

The enemy binds us up in the nonsense.  He stifles our spiritual evolution and growth, and smothers our temporal realization of the blessedness that our heavenly Father has ordained for us.

God plants the seeds of our greatest blessings in our greatest challenges. Too often those seeds wither and die because we are so caught up in the nonsense that it chokes out the God-sense.  Miracles are called forth through God-sense.  Breakthroughs come through God-sense.  Restoration happens through God-sense. 

All too often we go to our graves consumed by nonsense, never tasting the fruits of God-sense.

Before God moves in your life He tells you about it.  He tells you because He wants you to recognize Him.  He wants you to acknowledge Him.  A little heartfelt appreciation and gratitude goes a long way.  How about adoring Him, without demanding that He prove Himself as God?

In the same way you want to be seen, heard, known and unconditionally loved, He wants that from you.

God wants to be known by you.  He wants to be recognized by you.  He wants to be appreciated by you, not because you want something from Him, but because you have a genuine, two-way, heart-to-heart, symbiotic relationship with Him.

God-sense is one of the most precious fruits of that relationship and one of the hardest-won.  When you truly and unreservedly give God your heart, He gives you His sense.  He allows you to see life through His eyes.  He will guide you through even the most mundane thoughts, decisions, interactions and circumstances.

God is very hands-on and very personal.  This is what the new birth is about, this is regeneration, this is the renewal of our minds.

“Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” - Romans 12:2

This is God-sense.  Let your conversations with God be productive in ways you cannot even begin to consider.  Shut up for a bit.  Tune in to Him. He is the one with the master plan and He executes flawlessly.  If you will allow it, He just might tell you all about it.  What a difference that would make to your experience.

Tune out the non-sense.  Tune in to God-sense. 

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Your Word Is Your Sword

Your WORD is your SWORD.  Speak!

The sword of the spirit is the word of God.  Yes.  Exactly.  But what good is the Word i you don’t make it your own?  YOUR word is your sword.

Take God’s word, make it sweet in your mouth, chew on it, swallow it, digest it, integrate it.  Make it yours.  Then speak.

God speaks in a thousand different ways to each of us each day.  

He speaks in the majesty of creation, He speaks in love and compassion, He speaks in ordinary conversation.  Scripture may leap out at you as you read, you may receive a word from one gifted in prophecy, you may hear God speak through your preacher’s mouth, or through a dear friend.  He may even speak blessing for you through the mouth of your enemy.   However you hear from God, receive it with all your heart and make His word your own.  Speak.

Isaiah 51:16: "I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand—I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, 'You are my people'."

Abba is telling us we are His people.  Even when we feel far from blessed.  Even when it feels like life is determined to cast you down and keep you wallowing on the ground.  Even when it feels like your lot and inheritance is suffering and loss, if you are a Christian you are His.  He speaks for you, He speaks over you.

Attune your ears to hear Him, seek after Him, pursue Him.  You will find Him.  You will hear Him speak and as He speaks, you speak.  There is a purpose to speaking.

He established the worlds by speaking.  He set the heavens in place and laid the foundations of the earth by speaking.  He calls His people to speak even as He spoke.

Jeremiah 1:9-10: "Then the LORD reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, 'I have put my words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant'."

If you feel like you’re hearing nothing have no fear, He is there and whatever you speak He hears.  Trust and believe you are His royal priesthood, authorized to speak your Father’s will into every aspect of your life and affairs.  His will for you is good.  No matter the path He causes you to walk, His will for you is good.

So speak good.  Speak good for yourself.  Speak good for others.  Let every word that proceeds from your mouth be good.  Let every word that settles in your heart and rattles around in your mind be good.  Feed on goodness until it becomes a part of you. Let His word make you bitter waters sweet and the fruits of your spirit good to eat.

It is so easy to see brokenness and bitterness in our situation, the dark of night is so compelling.  But the light of Christ never goes out.  Hold that light in your heart and speak that light into your world.

Speak the compassion of Christ, speak his tolerance, his kindness.  Speak his power and authority.  Speak his sacrifice and his victory.  Speak your victory, it is already foretold.  It just needs you to believe it.

Speak until you believe it.  Tell yourself, until you believe yourself.

And I'll rise up I'll rise like the day, I'll rise up I'll rise unafraid, I'll rise up, and I'll do it a thousand times again.  And I'll rise up, high like the waves, I'll rise up In spite of the ache,  I'll rise up.  And I'll do it a thousand times again*

I invite you to hunker down before your mountain right now and begin to speak.  Let your problems know, let your sickness know, let poverty and lack know, let oppression know, let setbacks know, let hatred know that you will rise.  And you’ll just keep on rising over and over and over again.

You may speak words of scripture, you may speak affirmations, you may speak poems or songs, you may simply open your mouth and speak what comes.  Rise up and speak!

I speak to my problems

I speak to my pain

I speak to my fires

I speak to my rain

I rise up

 

I speak my God given authority

I speak my freedom

I speak my victory

I speak my health, my wealth, my prosperity

I speak my ministry, my purpose, my destiny

I rise up

 

I take the energy of frustration and I call it motivation

The bitterness of defeat now makes my belly sweet

I take my loss and tell it ‘you ain’t the boss’

My victory was written in the stars

My good is my Heavenly Father’s heart

I rise up

 

Heavenly Father for you I rise

For me I rise

For them I rise

I rise despite the fight

And I’ll do it a thousand times again

For You.

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