Silently Screaming

In my quiet time with the Lord last night I felt like he was pouring this message into me.

When I enter my day and I give it to the Lord making his will above mine, he will many times make Divine appointments. He will have a certain person cross my path and I always thought it was because I needed to tell them about the Lord. However, he has been showing me that we have to be very sensitive to not what we WANT to say but to THEIR emotional needs.

The Lord has been teaching me that these Divine appointments are usually because someone needs to be seen or heard. Inside they are silently screaming for someone to see them, hear them or care about them. When we come across these people during our day we need to silently ask the Lord, "You know what this person needs. I am asking you to use my mouth to speak to them or my ears to listen to them or my arms to help them. Let your will and your purpose be done right now." 

My first instinct was always to jump in to their emotions and immediately share a story of mine to let them know that I empathize with them and they're not alone. That might be something that you can share later but I've come to learn that it's more important just to focus on their need in the beginning.

I once read that " Hurt people, hurt people." Romans 12:15 also says, "weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who are rejoicing." Most people that I come across just need someone to see them. They want to be heard and acknowledged.  However, there are times when a person is hurting and they may not be acting very nice. I would have to say though that most times I can break through that with love and get them to smile, talk or accept a compliment. There are very few people that are hard as Stone but I still say something nice to them and I know that God will send someone else to keep trying to make them feel loved. Sometimes it's simply just not our job that day. The Lord may only want us to start the softening process and leave the rest to someone else.

As you reach out to people you start to sense what God wants in the situation. Sometimes I come across people that are broken. They are emotionally distraught about something and they just need someone to listen or be on their side. They need to not feel alone, abandoned or deserted. They simply need someone to care. 

I've come across angry people, wounded people, joyful people and apathetic people. I just make sure that I make them feel loved and heard. I don't let their attitude trigger me to become defensive anymore because the Lord has made it very clear that he wants me to go out there and love people the way that he loves. Every situation is different. There will be times where I will just listen and other times where I will pray with them, or put my hand on their arm and comfort them or hug them if they give me permission. I always leave them with a scripture of Hope. I look with sincere love deep into their eyes and I tell them that I heard them and I see their pain. I'll ask their name and I put it in my prayer list on my phone right in front of them and tell them that I will be praying for them. 

I'm just a person that has a lot of empathy and thanks to God I have good boundaries also. I finally understand that it's not about going out there and giving what I think people need but just doing for others what he did for me.  He sees me, he hears me, he comforts me, he changes me and then he asks me to go out and love people that same way. I know people that could never go out and talk to people the way that I do. But they serve in their own quiet way by helping others through acts of service.

We have to stop being so busy that we don't see the needs that are all around us. Make someone feel seen today.

The Triune God

I've often wondered how this Triune God is to be looked at. How the three function in our lives. How is God present as we go through this life? I asked him and I asked for Grace to write and this is what came out. 

God the Holy Spirit enables us to press on through life and it's trials. God appoints his angels to fight spiritual battles around us! His Son Jesus is interceding with prayer on our behalf. And Father God is working all things together for the good! That is the God that is for us!!! And all he asks from us is to believe and have faith that he is in control. He also loves when we throw in some praise even when we're in the thick of it all.

Now you know how God is for you, so, will you trust him? Will you speak his name in authority to strike down doubt and fear? Will you finally put on the armor of God and know that Satan is the one responsible for everything bad and stop blaming God? If you believe this then, now is the time to turn our complaining into prayers! Because there will be no better feeling than crossing that finish line and running into his arms and he tells you, "Great job my good and faithful servant!" Life is not easy, it's not fair but we have a God who loves us and who is sovereign and wants the best for us. When life gets tough the tough get going in Jesus name 👍💞

Broken Mirror

I was reading my daily devotional on the Bible app this morning and it said something I found to be striking. It said that self-deprecation is pride also. I never thought about it like that. When we talk negative about ourselves whether it be about our weight or saying things like,  "I'm such an idiot."... It's still focusing on self. Both angles put the focus on ourselves and not on God. Whether it's puffing ourselves up OR self- deprecation we are focused solely on self. I didn't understand it fully but it hit me hard. So I laid my head down and just started to meditate on it. You just lay there sometimes begging God to heal you but it feels like your prayers are hitting the ceiling. You actually stop asking and believing. You start to think he's going to do what he wants to do anyway so why bother. All of that creeps in so slowly. That's when we unknowingly start focusing on OUR FEELINGS and not on HIS PROMISES AND POWER. 

I just started to have this vision,  there was a mirror and it was all smashed. I looked into it and I was all distorted so I picked up all the pieces and put them in this basket and I lifted them up to God but even all of the little tiny glass mirror fragments rose up at the same time and it was all sparkly. He took all of the pieces even the little micro broken pieces and next thing I knew he lowered it down and he had put the mirror all back together but all the cracks were filled with gold and he had put this pure gold frame around it that was beautiful. But here's what I learned, when I looked in the mirror and focused on me I was all distorted and it was disturbing and nothing made sense. But when I looked at the mirror and focused on the beauty of what he did there was a sense of elation, joy and completeness! And it goes back to what I said in the beginning if we're focused on our performance OR lack of, if it has anything to do with self, if it's about what a great job we did on our own or how we failed and put the focus on us as what a failure we are, we will feel distorted and not complete. But if we focus on the work that he does and the work that he's doing in us and in our situations, like how he filled all the broken places with gold. Then, we see him and his majesty, his power and his love instead of our failures, brokenness OR our self-worth. We can do nothing apart from the Vine. All glory is his.

Don't focus on your brokenness OR self-help.  Focus on what he does. We so often think that we figured our way through something but it was him who got us through. Other times we beat ourselves up because of our weakness and see ourselves as failures. Both are pride. Our brokenness is Holy and sacred ground where God sits with us as he teaches us, restores us and redeems us. It's where he fills all of our cracks with gold and turn us into his image. It's all about him. 

After thinking about all of this I realized that he has the wisdom and the power to orchestrate a much larger picture then we could ever imagine. So many times we activate our need to control and that also is pride. We have to learn how to trust, rest and be still, knowing just one thing, that he is God and we are his sheep that he loves.