Transform my Mind - Please!

As we submit ourselves to Christ he renews our mind. God has a purpose for our lives. Our job is to submit to it. God wants to take our mind and give it an infusion of Holy Spirit breathed transformation. A transformed mind is a real danger to Satan. It doesn't fall for those old lies anymore. It believes and does not doubt so prayers get answered and mountains move. It is a mind patterning with the Spirit of Christ.; a transformed mind understands God's ways and sees them as the normal mode of Christian living. It is repented which means to have a changed mind.

In Romans 12:2, Paul says, " Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will."

When we submit to God, the Father starts shaping us into who he created us to be. In His mind's eye, we were created for a beautiful purpose, and He has dreams for what we will do.  When we enter a world full of evil, the battle begins. The enemy lurks around us waiting to steal, kill and destroy, but Jesus is calling us to abundant life, the life that is lived when our minds are transformed. God wants us to see things through His eyes. That is how we become the salt and the light. When our mind is transformed by the Holy Spirit we begin to show the world that God's plan works and we become an example that brings Him glory.

Lord,

Take my mind and conform it. Take my will and transform it. Be my inspiration and increase my dedication. Let me see your vision and pray Your will be done. Over all the doubts that plague me, shine the light of truth. Shield me from the messages of my enemy - your enemy so that my life may show how you do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ever ask or imagine. Let me be a messenger of hope and the hands that bring it. Let you love make my life a manifestation of Your glory. I want to be your testimony. There is nothing better to be had. I live to glorify you!

Tonight I ask you to remind me that I need to confront the enemy in order to free those who are held prisoner by the enemy's lies. I can't stand outside the prison and shout in how good it is to be free. I need to take the hand of the captive and take him into the light. No one can see the truth until the truth sets Him free. Father, don't let me miss an opportunity to bring people into the light. Remind me that they are held captive and they can't see. Give me wisdom and boldness and knowledge through the Holy Spirit. Use me and teach me in Your ways.

Thank you, Lord, for victory.

How do I get out of this pit?

My husband and I are weather amnesty volunteers for our area's unsheltered homeless. Many nights we go home with cares on our hearts that are heavy. Broken hearts break God's heart. I hate the lies the enemy plants in us and in them. Their cares grip our hearts and we offer them up to God for help. I know our God is bigger than it all, so we continue to pray with them and seek the Lord as we encourage each other every week. 


After a conversation with a man who was walking through the deepest pit of life, I thought about some of his comments. Did He know God? I asked Him. 

"Yes, I do love God," he said.

What does loving God look like? It came to mind that we can't love someone we don't really know. We can't be a servant of one whose commands we don't follow. Can we know God but not choose to trust Him with our whole lives? We can definitely know OF God and even know the entire Bible without choosing to give up the stuff that is NOT God - the stuff that we choose to soothe us in our sorrows. There are things we cling to to make us feel better, Band-Aids that don't heal. They are part of the lie. Our goal in ministry is to free the captives. No man is beyond redemption, but not every man who says he loves God truly knows what it means or serves God as master. 

Who is God? He is holy, just and intolerant of sin. If a person lives for years in sin it leaves scars on His life. Sin is such a big, wide thing. It's not just the 10 commandments, it's anything that exalts itself above God in our lives. When God tells us we can call Him Father, it means He loves us as His own children and is jealous when other things take His place in our lives. He grieves because sin opens the door to destruction in our lives and gives strongholds to the enemy. Sometimes we don't listen to the good advice in the Bible, "Don't give the devil a foothold." 

Sometimes we want to get out of the mess we've created in our lives, but we still love the stuff that pacifies us so we really don't bow before God where the healing begins. It's like we bow our head, but won't bend our knees. We call out for help, but we hide stuff in our pockets that we hope God won't ask us to give up. I grieve when I know that while some of us want change, we still believe the lie and we have to call upon Jesus to set us free from it. 

Being sorry isn't repentance. I have kids and we've been talking about that. Repentance is confessing and acknowledging what you are doing wrong, turning180 degrees away from . When we repent, we accept a new way of thinking and trust a new way. True repentance means we turn away from our old life and follow a new one. Old things pass away, all things become new. We are "transformed by the renewing of our minds" (Romans 12:2). Submission to God and the giving up of our own life allows God to work with a clean slate. He can't compete with your old ways. He chooses not to. We have been given free will and He wants us to love him by our own choice, fully surrendered. You can't have one foot in the world and one in the Kingdom. Revelation says, "15 I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! 16 So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." Jesus wants ALL of us.

Let the Holy Spirit guide us into truth. We need to renounce, meaning repent and turn, from all things that we have done that have given authority to Satan in our lives. Psalm 66:18 says, "If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear." To regard means to pay attention to or to hold dear. Jesus said His sheep hear His voice. Our first question should be, "Am I one of Jesus' sheep?" He says that for every temptation He provides a way of escape, but we have to choose to take it. These choices point to truth. If we are not His sheep, then we follow a different master and we don't have salvation.

He first requires that we set aside our own will and bow to His. That's why he's called Almighty God and not "the Great Suggestion." He is the ruler and creator of the universe, complete in love and splendor. No evil thing can He tolerate because He is just. His character is pure and unchanging. Mercy is available through Christ, but we must be followers of Christ, not just a people who believe He is the Christ. We have to love Him AND if we truly love Him, we WILL do what He commands. Satan believes Jesus was the Christ, but He is not a follower. Followers learn and imitate the ways of their leader. If we love our old life, we can't follow a new path. The weight of what we carry is to heavy for us to run the race with Jesus. We have to lay it all down at the cross and come stripped of all we hold dear to learn a new way.

I pray you have strength to always take the escape route provided. As you love Jesus more, it becomes so much easier. He replaces the old things that provided temporary comfort with destruction attached. The blessing of obedience is everything! He promises to give us whatever we wish. The Father is your Father - the God of blessing and generosity, of health, of peace and provision. Lay aside the things that hinder you and forgive all who have hurt of forsaken you. Then receive the Father's love as it was meant to be, a gift of grace with the power to change inside.

He is Good All the Time

Matthew 6:33 "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well."

Jesus said that He came so that we might have life and have it to the full, but the devil lurks around us and comes to steal, kill and destroy. There is no likeness between these two powers and no likeness in the way of thinking that they teach us. One gives life and one comes to destroy it. God's truth is that there will always be enough, even when we can't see it. The enemies lie is that what we see is what our situation is. When we pray, if we have faith, we know that God dispatches the angels and puts His plan in action. Sometimes, it takes a while for that to be made manifest in the visual world we live in, like in Daniel 9. 

Life to the full is like grass that keeps growing; we cut some of it down and it becomes fuel and it causes more growth for us and others in the ecosystem. The grass keeps growing. It grows abundantly as long as it has fertilizer. Just like Jesus said that He who drinks His water will never go thirsty. 

Jesus is the nutrient source for the our lives. He has taken us out of a kingdom of defeated thinking and transferred us into a kingdom where there is a different culture. In this kingdom, we seek to find the best fertilizer, the presence of God, because the growth of the our faith depends on it. Where we don't have fertilizer, the grass dies. Where don't have faith, we see only the grass and not the fact that it needs the food to thrive. Where the water that gives life is missing, even what we have is taken away. When we love the grass more than the things that give it, we miss the point of how the grass became abundant. We remain in a life without a transformed mind.

Likewise, when we get in a rut of valuing or trusting something God gave us more than we value or trust God, we can't be trusted with that something. It is for our good that it be taken away, so we can see the source more clearly. God prepares us to find the abundance but sometimes it looks like He's leaving us in want. The Source, God, has more abundance than we can imagine. We can trust God, our Father. Like our earthly father, he doesn't take things away so that we can go hungry, it's so that we can find our way to the source of the food, to the abundance that we lack. If we seek the Kingdom of God first then God said ALL the things we need will be added to us as well. But, our eyes should not be focused on the stuff that will be added. As we look up in worship and praise, in every circumstance, we praise the Giver of the gifts and in His goodness and love for His children, he pours them out. 

God is always there to give good gifts, but sometimes we are so busy admiring the gifts that we doubt, or forget, they were given by God in the first place. Seeking first is a daily business. Remember the disciples who Jesus called? "Follow Me," Jesus said. They quit their job with no promise of better provision, a better house or car and no assurance of even what would be ahead. They trusted the giver of the offer, without even knowing what He had to offer. Because of that, they received more than they could ever imagine. They lived life learning a new mindset and eventually received the ultimate gift - the Spirit of Jesus himself. 

 Like the abundant grass, when we have enough grass, we cut the abundance down so that it can become fertilizer for the rest of the ecosystem, or in Kingdom terms, the body. When God gives us money, we are to share it and steward it wisely. When he gives us revelation, we are to share it and steward it wisely. Both are necessary because we can't just feed the body and not the spirit. If we don't hunger for God, we don't find the source of the water that never dries up. But if we keep our eyes on Him, we are always looking for the greater blessing that is to come. We just need to hold our hands out to receive it. He is good - all the time. 

He Remembers Your Sin No More

Gods' love is bigger than you know. His hands are stretched out toward you and His heart is so full that His emotions can't be expressed fully through me or any one person. It is deep and wide and magnificent. 

The presence of God's love is like the feeling of joy wrapping you like a warm blanket and some good long underwear - and thick socks under warm boots. Except this love seeps inside, where it begins to multiply and push out the things that don't love you like God does. It pushes out hurt, pain, addiction, bitterness and hate. It even changes and heals memories and gives you a power over darkness that feels like the greatest victory you've ever won. God wants you to experience this love He has for you tonight. 

Sometimes people go through their whole life and know who God is, but never really grasp how much He loves. God's love doesn't condemn where you are now, it sees the things that are not as though they were. Jesus is the Savior who really saves you. Call on His name and He always says yes. Then, he separates your sins as far as the east is from the west and remembers them NO MORE. The only person who points at your faults is Satan, because He wants to keep power over you - but He has no right to. He doesn't want you to feel loved because that is the most powerful force in the universe.

God is the Father you have always wanted and the friend who loves you even when you don't say the right thing. God wants you tonight to accept that He has loved you today and will love you every day. The cost is just your believe that Jesus, the Word made flesh, died and rose for you to restore the relationship that was stole when the first sin came into the world. The reward is that you find peace that passes all understanding. 

(This was part of a message to our friends at Project WARM. It's the gospel. We all need it. Thanks for your encouragement Sarge!)

Where's My Next Drink Coming From?

1 Peter 4:7-10 "The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray. Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms."

Last night we were back at the weather amnesty shelter talking to our guests. Over the winter, we've come to know quite a few well, but there seems to always be someone I haven't reached out to yet. I approached a fellow I hadn't talked to before and introduced myself. I offered to take his plate, but could tell there was a need for a message of hope, so I sat down. He began with a little of his frustrations and I asked him if He wanted me to tell Him about Jesus. His non-verbal answer was, "Where is the hope in that? I've heard of that." So, I let him tell me about his family and what happened to it. He has four beautiful children but his drinking addiction destroyed his relationships and he's now on the streets. He told me about his former work and the successful business that he used to run, but the drinking destroyed that too. He began to do his own reflecting,"The sad thing is, that all I am sitting here thinking about tonight is where I'm going to get $1 for a drink in the morning. That's sad, isn't it."

He'd invited me into his thoughts; the door had opened. "Yes, it's sad, but we all made with an empty place inside. The Bible said we're like jars of clay every pot has an empty place inside until its filled with something. It was made to be filled with the presence of God, but when we don't find that, we try people - who disappoint, work - which leads to more work, stuff that just gets old, and sometimes things that bind us and destroy our lives- like alcohol."  He told me that once you are an alcoholic, you are always an alcoholic. I know that's the teaching in AA, but inside I disagreed in the hopelessness of that message, because Jesus said He makes all things new and I'd heard the testimonies from those who have been healed of the desire. Christ gives us a new mind and can take away the cravings for things that master us, if we only choose Him as our new Master. He's the Master of Transformation if we're willing to give Him our whole life. We can't choose to keep part of it and find freedom, but freedom is there - miraculous freedom. I explained that sometimes choosing God looks like you're standing in front of a 9' wall and you can't see what's on the other side when you're blinded by it. When you say yes, the wall comes down and a new way you've never understood becomes available, with power to resist the old things that destroy. When you submit everything you are, He welcomes you in. I asked Him if He would let me pray for him and waited while fear and hesitation held him in a grip. I think it was a fear of breakdown, but he submitted and I prayed blessings and grace upon him. He said, "That was beautiful and wiped a tear."

Over in another area of the room, an argument broke out over some racial issue. I approached another man sitting nearby who overheard the argument and asked him for his thoughts, which led into a great discussion somehow about when we are saved. "Do we just make it in?" one man nearby said. "I mean, when he declares us righteous, that's just barely, isn't it?"

"NO!" I exclaimed. If you're righteous, you're as righteous as Jesus because that's who God looks at to judge your righteousness. He asked about something in Peter. "If you are righteous, it isn't because you make better choices than other people, although that is the evidence that you've truly accepted the saving power of Christ. I held out before Him the sacrifice of Jesus in cupped hands. Jesus offered a sacrifice that no priest had ever offered. As a spotless lamb, He approached the Father and held out in his own hands a cup of his own blood. We are sprinkled with the blood of a sacrifice so powerful that no further sacrifice is needed. It covers past and future sin. That's why Jesus sat down when He was done and said, 'It is finished.' That is why rejecting it and keeping a part of your life in your own control doesn't work. When you understand that every sin you've ever committed and will commit is in that blood, how do you feel? .... Overwhelmed with gratitude and joy, perhaps? If you really understood that this cup has the victory over ever sin and evil power in your life and that you were FREE, you would be filled with such joy that you could't help but tell people. You wouldn't be tempted with the filth you clung to before, because you would receive a new heart and mind and you wouldn't think the same way."

"I can see it! I can see how I would feel that way!" He said. Then he told me he'd gone back to church for the first time last week and began to tell me about his pastor, that he worked in the library as a security guard and that's where he'd run into him again.

A memory came alive in my head. "Wow - I'm sure I just had a conversation with that man this week! Tell me his name!" Sure enough it was the same man who reached out to me and my kids in the library. When we walked out, we'd said, "That man has a mission in there." So God gave us something in common and it was soon time to go.  He asked when I'd be back so we could talk some more. I can't wait.

Sometimes we fear spreading the Gospel because we don't really believe it is good news. Sometimes we don't know where to start or feel that we aren't gifted in that way.  I realized that sharing the gospel comes out of wonder and amazement that comes from seeing that cup of sacrifice in Jesus hand before the Father. It's all good news and it has the power to set the captives free - if only we believe that ourselves.