God has a word for you today to persevere in the field He’s placed you in. He wants you to reach the people in it for His glory. Be assured today, you’re right where you should be as you yield your ambitions because of the Father’s love for the field. He would say to you, ‘know My love and you WILL produce My glory in this, your field!’ God has you right where He has you to be effective! Without His glory your crops will fail and there is no harvest. God desires to see the glory of His field in full bloom because it is His desire that you be fruitful and multiply. Jesus says, ‘lift your eyes on the fields white unto harvest’. My heart was reassured recently, that if I’d just live for Him and not resist, I’d get the love of His heart and He would allow me a window into what He sees and how His heart breaks because of how He loves. I looked up to see a child and thought of my own and my love for them and began to understand the Father’s love for others. The love of God and relationship with Him produces glory. It’s not so much what you do, but it’s who you become. My son can’t really do anything to be my son, he IS my son and everything he does is a reflection of me. Put into perspective, God says you are to be a reflection of Me, so where is your glory? You are like a mirror reflecting what you are looking at, so what are you looking at? God says, ‘know my love and behold the man Christ Jesus the son of my love, then you will be a reflection of My love for others.’ When you see Him, you’ll weep for your foolishness because it robbed you from people in danger with no one to sound the alarm…no one to show forth the glory. He lovingly says to you again and again, ‘I’m your glory, I am all you need and in my unfailing love, I will have you to be the bold light of the field.’ Our prayer today…‘God give us the beat of your loving heart and show us the field of glory!’
Tag Archives: love
A Father’s Prayer
“My prayer for you this morning is that above all else you will be given strength to be a man/woman who loves what is good and right and abhors being intoxicated with evil, so you might be such a man/woman who is able and fit–divinely empowered to make His glory known like a light shining in a dark place. I pray your faith increases in might and power and you receive the extra-ordinary Spirit of Christ to accomplish God’s will above your own and you live your life standing in the stream of victory knowing; “You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you”. I pray for a fresh approach to what you know by the power of the Holy Spirit which causes you to rise above yesterday and find His glory today…. praying this knowledge inspires a love that endures all things for His sake and for the sake of His call.
Redeem Us For Your Glory
Man wishes a change he can believe in, which usually means something he can see and have on his own terms. God says believe in Me because only I can redeem what men would reject. He says, ‘I have the power to redeem the discarded, the broken, the warped; and on My terms will I turn it to a thing of beauty….’ Redeem our waste places Lord to become a testimony that You live there. Change our dry, cracked land to receive the Good seed well watered by an understanding of Your love so deep, that we should yet bring You glory!
Beyond the Baggage
Remember the word given to Saul? Namely this, that he would would be changed into another man and would be numbered among the prophets. There was however with Saul an uncertainty that left him timid and restrained from doing God’s will. With all of us, God seeks to do a new thing, but the timid of spirit can’t see it–its view is clouded by all the baggage. Get it! God says ‘you will be endued with mighty power and with the mind to receive what I would do on your behalf; you will be changed by a heart touched by my love and declare My word to men.’ The word says as much in 2 Timothy 1:7 when it says, ‘God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity but one of power and love and sound judgement.’ Samuel declared of the Lord’s chosen, ‘see there is none like him in all the land’. The New Testament says we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood and yet we too easily miss His mighty acts because we all too often dwell with the timid and not the humble. Saul’s royal life was haunted by that timid spirit, and he never got rid of the baggage he was hiding behind. Timidity will keep you in “Yourself” while humility will take you beyond yourself to behold what God will do just because He said so. Humility will give you a front row seat to God’s glory, but timidity leaves you blocked off with a very realistic view of yourself and no faith to see beyond the strength of your own hand. I recently found myself frustrated and angry because I could not change a particular situation that I was facing. God revealed my frustration was borne of a timid spirit causing me a place of grief instead of seeing the way of victory. The timid never go past the frustration, but continue with a passive approach that leaves them disappointed and missing the full plan of God. He showed my need to dwell with the broken not the timid. In that moment of anxiety God revealed this: the timid fail to see His move because of many reasons all driven by fear, but the broken humbly take a seat of rest by a window of recovery to behold what God says and moreover what He would do. Saul became King, but failed to possess all God had intended because he was slave to his own thinking. It left him angry and disappointed not full–timid but not broken. And the end of his life was spent still trying to change the situation by His own methods missing God by a half a step. What about you…want to be angry for the way things are turning out? The timid spirit will keep you there–mad but unable to really do anything about it. That is why it is so frustrating because there is really nothing “you” can do there behind all that baggage hiding from God’s favor. God says, ‘why don’t you look to the word that I’ve given to you as sons?’ ‘I have not given you a spirit of fear and slavery, but I give a Spirit of love so your heart becomes mine. I give a Spirit of power–an unction moving your life from uncertainty to possess the things I have said on your behalf, because son, there is to be none like you, so that I might declare my life through yours. I have given you a Spirit of discipline to think with sound judgement so you can work my plan not your own with the unlimited ability of my resources to accomplish the word I will send before you. I offer you today sound judgment enabling you to think like sons not slaves. Today, which will you be?’ He further says, ‘kindle afresh the gift of God by the Spirit I have given to you, which is powerfully appointed to enable you to focus and to act as sons.’
The Application of the Cross
Sometimes I am wanting to find the application of this word into my life, but I’ve got no aptitude for it. To that I would say, “God give me a mind for what you think, so I could be effective as your disciple.” I came across this scripture the other day taken from Isaiah 50 which says; “The Lord has given Me the tongue of disciples, that I may know how to sustain the weary one with a word. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear to listen as a disciple.” Often, we look for ways to apply this word in our lives only to find the simple truth is not merely conveyed with great oration or vivid illustration. The truth however is best understood by what Jesus said in Luke 14, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.” While men often go here and there to find great preaching looking for that one great illustration, nothing connects me to Jesus like the cross. Jesus is affirming the cross as a means of application but more importantly as a means of identity. When by taking up our cross we deny ourselves, we are saying no our thinking and to our own reasoning and even our own cause. When we do that, we are identifying with the thinking that had Him at the cross for us in the first place. Taking up my cross aligns my life with the cause and thinking of Christ. Presently, most Christians know more about God than they are able to apply for lack of the cross. All of us have a cross to be sure, but is yours currently out for repairs? Paul said in Galatians 2:20; “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” Paul saw himself as crucified with Christ because He’d taken up His cross. There was with Paul a death to this world and its thinking, but also the applied ability to actually live as Christ would because he had nothing else to live for. Full faith in Jesus had taken over his mind to actually comprehend the height and depth of Christ’s love for him. That is ultimately what Jesus is saying in Luke 14, namely this: that as long as you have something else your living for, you won’t carry your cross. Jesus is saying, ‘nothing can come ahead of me, so get square with me and I will order your thoughts aright and connect your head with your heart and you will live and speak as my disciple.’
The Anointing of God
1 Jn 2:27 says, ‘You have an anointing you have received from the Father which abides in you.’ Think with me…this is the single most powerful concept that John reminds us of to combat the work of deception which daily presents itself to you. Just think, an anointing that instructs, promotes, and supports the work of your salvation in this present hour. What are you doing with the anointing? How are you treating it? Recently someone gave me an article entitled, “The Man God Uses” (He most surely has an anointing). You have an anointing, I urge you draw near to its application by the power of the Holy Spirit in your life and find a balm which can sooth, heal and restore your life exchanging your weakness for His strength. To every true believer there is given this anointing. It is an anointing that activates truth by informing me of His thoughts toward me. It elevates my relationship with the Father by seeing myself as a son with a rightful place at His table. It covers my life with His power to conform me to His image and enables me to practice victory rather than defeat. It is an anointing that actuates love in my life identifying me as His disciple. The Word says, by this love all men will come to understand that you are identifiably changed and uniquely His. I don’t know about you, but I need such an anointing that can take my feeble “want to” and make it a living reality for His glory to the restoration of others. You want the anointing? Ask for it and don’t stop asking until He gives what He has promised to every son who believes.
The Mountain of God’s Presence
There is a view behind my house, although it is hidden by the trees, that I’ve often wondered about. I had a sense it was a grand, glorious view, if but one could only rise above the obstacles that blocked the beauty of it. While recently looking at I map, I discovered something I had missed. A very short distance behind where I live was Mt. Sinai; it is one of four recorded summits in the area. My discovery brought so much excitement, I spent the best part of a day just trying to find a way to go up the mount. In my search, I began thinking of Mt. Sinai in the Exodus chapters 3 and 19; it was the place of God’s presence, and a place where he spoke promises. Then this thought occured to me, ‘Mount Sinai, the Mount of God had been there behind my house all along and I didn’t know it’. You know what I suspect? Mount Sinai is there shortly behind the place where you live and you failed to understand its significance. It is a place of glory; Jesus lives there in God’s presence making intercession for you, like Moses, to behold that glory so you might be His witness. He says to you pull off your shoes, for this mount is holy. It represents a place of consecration in your life laying aside some things. Like those trees, blocking the view of His glory, He says to you, ‘rise above to get a view of the mount; make the discovery that it is near to where you live–it is near to your struggle, near to your fears, near your failures, near to you bonds’ saying, ‘come to my glory and remove the obstructions. Come to the mount, it is a place where I reveal my name, my position, my Kingdom, and my Lordship to you.’ After the cross, Jesus resumed His rightful position and is now living at the right hand of God to pray for you to receive God’s power. We are told to come boldly before His throne of grace that we might find mercy and grace in our time of need. It is interesting to note, Moses brought God’s people to the foot of the mountain, but only Jesus fills full the word by bringing us up the mount to a high place with Him. And there near His footstool, He says ask what you will and I will make you to live for me and that more abundantly.
The Rain That Brings Harvest
God says, ‘If you love Me and serve Me with all your heart, I will send the early and late rain bringing the necessary provision to finish the work of harvest in these times’ (Deut. 11:13-14). We live in difficult days, yet glorious days when you consider the Master commands a harvest. He presides as Lord of the harvest urging our service as His followers. In James 5:7-8, He says to you in these days, ‘be patient brethren until the coming of the Lord’. The reference to brethren is a reference to kinship and friendship; if you care to receive it, is a call to discipleship. It is a call to follow the things that drove the ministry of Jesus. In these two verses he says, consider the farmer and be like him. What about the farmer you ask? He is waiting on the precious produce of the soil with a vested interest in the field. These verses remind us the coming of the Lord is at hand, and that we should find ourselves committed to the produce of His field. Like the parable of the talents says about His return, He will be looking for your produce. He is not coming back so you can show Him your stuff. His return will be all about souls and what you’ve done with the seed He gave you. Jesus said, ‘lift your eyes and look on the fields white unto harvest’. Right now, amid perhaps, the greatest mixture of Christianity and darkness the world has ever known, there is a harvest waiting. However, one can only reap by being a friend of Jesus as John 15 states. He is saying, ‘I chose you, I appointed you to bear fruit, I appoint you to a harvest’. ‘Understand the season of my return is near, I’ve given the early rains, but it’s the latter rain that ushers in harvest.’ The body of Christ need remind herself and be encouraged that the rain of God’s blessing for harvest comes to a people–to a whole hearted people– who have lost themselves and yet been found, in a place of prayer. Praying with expectatation, they are looking to be found faithful in their work with a complete dependance upon the Lord who sends the rain that brings harvest. Do you understand the signs of the times? Have you heard His call? Let’s pray for eyes to see His field and for the rain that brings harvest.
In Times Like These
Times like these are days marked by uncertainty. There are pressing fears without and fears within. For the believer, there remains only one constant; it will be the insight you draw from the Word of God that keeps you; it will be this truth that gives you a bearing. When Jesus fed the multitude with one small boy’s offering, He makes a point giving insight into times like these. That day, there was not enough money to feed such a crowd, yet the favor of God at Jesus’ blessing was all that was necessary to transform small things into great. The point is we are living in times when your resources will fail, and it will be more important than ever to understand His ability to take the small things and make great impact, not only in your life, but the lives of many others. In times like these, in the coming days ahead, who are you going to trust? Jesus offers the favor and blessing of God that can unlock the wealth of His kingdom. Like that small boy, He desires to use you and that small gift you possess. What will you do? Times like these require decisive action. What about your gift? It’s greater only in His hand producing the blessing of God–in times like these.
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