DELIGHT

After Jesus' Baptism He heard:
You are My beloved Son;
I take delight in You! (Holman translation)

When I read this a flood hit my spirit and soul--wonderful God flood.

First I was imagining how Jesus would have felt. Because His father was not his biological father there is a chance He would not have had Bar Mitzvah. This is the time when Jewish boys are validated by thier fathers. Jesus' Father validated Him in an incredible display! Since everything Jesus did on earth was done in His humanity He would have had some kind of emotion about this. From a human standpoint I think it would have been pleasing, exciting, liberating, encouraging and a lot more adjectives besides.

Secondly, it hit me that in this translation they made what was said more PERSONAL. There was something about say, "I delight"...that really spoke to my heart. Then I realized how often we have de-personalized the Gospel. I do not believe this has been intentional but it has happened. Somehow the Gospel was presented to my intellect, not to my heart. The Holy Spirit has been taking it there but when I got saved I repented of my sins and received Jesus as my Savior, even though the words "Come into my heart forever" were part of what I said my intellect was what grew. In fact having an emotional response was taught against. We were not to experience anything spiritual. Yet God wanted to touch me spirit, soul and body. There have been people who prayed for me and I knew deep down that what they were saying came directly from Father to me. Other times I have known the truth of their prayers but the heart of Father was missing.

I have lots of Bible Knowledge but am just getting to know Jesus experientially. Rejection by people and the fear of Father rejecting me caused a fear I was not aware of and it kept Jesus at arm's length. Thankfully that deception has been routed and my relationship with Him is deepening and becoming exciting. I sense Father saying that He's delighting in me too.

Compound National Stronghold: Gossip

A few mornings ago a friend was awakened with this:
Compound national stronghold: GOSSIP.

As I've thought about this The Holy Spirit has been showing me things, how He's worked on me in the past and where this is going.


PROVERBS 18:21 Death and Life are in the power of the tongue and those who love it eat it's fruit. When I realized that this meant I needed to watch my mouth (about 10 years or so ago) God started showing me how often I spoke "death". Not only did I not say loving things to people when I was upset but I gossiped and that is a form of death speaking. There was a time in my life that gossip helped me feel better about myself. If I pointed a finger at someone else then maybe I was better than they were and also maybe someone wouldn't look too closely at me. Root: needed to know God's LOVE for me and others. When I finally got a beginning revelation of that it was easier to have compassion for others. While writing this I heard, "I resist the proud but give grace to the humble". When pointing fingers at someone else pride was there, not humility.
Lately I've been having to be very careful about what I'm saying regarding some people That frustration springs from not liking the way people at my husband's work treat him. For years he and I both spoke "words of death" over them. By that I mean that we talked badly about them, not that we spoke things like I wish they'd die......... BUT GOD has shown us that He's in control, that we need to speak blessings and we don't have a clue what they are rally dealing with in their lives. Most of what I suspect God is showing me right now is my own heart's motives. He's even asking me why I watch so much news and other programs. I'm turning the news off when gossip starts. I always loved reading mysteries and from that came an interesting in the forensic shows, yet there's lot of gossip in them.
In this time of purifying His Body I suspect the core of our thought-life will be challenged and this will have to be implemented: Phil 4: 8Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things. Because out of the abundance of our heart our mouths speak so we have to have His heart in ours.

This is just the beginning of understanding this. There is gossip every where I turn. God says in Romans 1 it is one of the sins worthy of death.

Giving Credit

I just realized I had not given credit in my last two postings for the quotes. They have come from CD's by Graham Cooke. His website is www.grahamcooke.com.

Negative to Positive

A few weeks ago I was in Florida at my DD's house. My 7 year old grandson and I went out walking. During the conversation I noticed, once again, how much negativity was coming out of his mouth. He loves to make-up stories and they had a negative feel and so did his talk about his friends. Later in the day I was "reading" a book to my 2 year old grandson. He kept pointing to pictures of kids crying and kept saying crying. No matter how hard I tried to show him the next page where things were put right, he went back to the crying page. My DGD (dear granddaughter) who lives with us is also 2. She brought a book to me the other night and when it got to the point where the puppies' bones had been stolen she kept pointing out they were crying and like her cousin, just seemed to be stuck on it.

When God created He said, "It is good".

God is Joy along with all His other attributes and that is GOOD. When Satan fell and then caused man to sin he brought us negativity. We read the Word and don't see God's love, we just see what will happen if we don't toe the line. BUT GOD wants us to have His perspective. His view says that He has good plans for us, for good and not for evil. Recently on a teaching CD I heard, "If the thought you have has gotten you to a point you don't want to be -- GET ANOTHER THOUGHT". As we dig into God's Word we are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. If we will allow His Spirit to show us what we are thinking and what to replace it with we will find ourselves in a new place--probably the place God meant for us to be to begin with, the place of good and not evil.

PRESENT-PAST OR PRESENT-FUTURE

Recently I heard a question on a teaching CD -- this question:
"Are you living in your Present-past or your Present-future?"

That began me thinking about where I am now compared to 5 years ago and beyond. For years I was controlled by my past, even though I knew I needed to move past it. Things that had hurt me deeply and caused me to have a wrong idea of who I am and who God is hindered me and I allowed that. It was allowed partly because I didn't know how to rid myself of it.

BUT GOD...most people who know me know that is one of my favorite phrases.

BUT GOD showed up, delivered me of some majorly oppressive spirits and brought people into my life who helped me on a path of inner healing. I no longer had to feel that I was useless, would never measure up or any other negative thing. because God sees me differently and HE LOVES ME! Oh, how He loves me. He's been breaking through all my fears of rejection and helping me experience, feel, rejoice in His Love and that makes all the difference.

One day I told Him that I don't know where I belong. He told me, "You belong to me". What more do I want?

So now I know that I know He's with me, loving me and guiding me. I can live in my Present-future now because no matter what He will be there, see me through it and bring good out of it.