All posts tagged: Yeshua

Your Inheritance is Secure

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“The Lord assigned my portion and my cup. You maintain my lot secure.” ~PSALM 16:5 WMB In our journeys in our creativity, the pursuits of our dreams and just in life in general, I can’t think of a Word that brings more peace than Psalm 16:5. Stepping out in faith to take hold of what Christ Jesus has purposed in our hearts is an adventure, but it can also be a point of stress if we aren’t secure in the promises of His Word. First, let’s be reminded that the Word is Christ (JOHN 1: 1,14), that He is the Truth (JOHN 14:6) and there is no falsehood in Him (I PETER 2:22). So when we read a promise, all of which are yes and amen in Him (II COR. 1:20) and in the Word, we are reading or seeing into the Perfect Person of Who He is. We can count it as ours for He is ours just as we are His (SONG OF SONGS 6:3)! Another translation of Psalm 16:5 says, “O Lord, You are the …

Dressed for the Appointment: Hope for the Promises to Come

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*Revised from December 26th, 2012 Six years ago I was led to write a short message reminding many of my friends on Facebook to keep holding on to the Word of Faith and promise that Christ Jesus had given unto them. Now, six years later, I am urged to do it again. The Lord laid this question upon my heart that only you can answer for yourself, really, and here it is. “Are you dressed and are you ready for the open door?” It is easy to be given a dream and a prophetic vision for your future/destiny/purpose, but it is a whole other thing to not only hold on to it but to be prepared for it at all times. With many of the trails that we face within the monotony of life, it is easy to lose hope in the dream, allowing it to be transformed into the elusive ‘carrot on a stick’ dangling just out of your reach. “Then Pharaoh sent and called Joseph, and they brought him quickly out of the dungeon; and …

Waiting Like Bamboo: Learning to Progress One Step at a Time

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Over the years, I’ve been asked by several people I know, like I know you have been too, ‘what is your plan?’ They ask because they know my dreams. They ask because they have seen my struggle, and from their vantage point and sometimes even my own, it seems like nothing fruitful is happening. That seeming reality couldn’t be further from the truth. I once heard Joyce Meyer talking about growth and waiting on God. She talked about how she’d learned bamboo shoots, once planted, will spend up to five years growing deep roots before actually breaking through the surface. But once they break through they can grow a foot in a matter of hours. “Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.” ~PSALM 119:105 That teaching was so encouraging but the reality is, nobody really wants to wait like bamboo. We want the deep roots TODAY and the foot-by-the-hour growth TODAY. All of this makes me think about the deceiving phrase of ‘overnight success.’ Again, one sees bamboo stretching …

Handful of Hope: A Short Story & Encouragement

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She wanted to see if they could float so with faith she tossed them across the sackcloth that would be the sky and watched as her handful of hope like diamonds suspended themselves and twinkled as stars. She wasn’t the King Creator, nor His Glorious Son, but she was born of His Spirit, and thusly imbued with the authority and call to create. She was learning how to do so with a voice and song uniquely her own, a song she longed to sing to please only His ears. So she tossed up another handful of hope and watched it twinkle and grow in light until the inky darkness bled away yielding to the brilliance of life. The cold uncertainty that had once made her limbs stiff with immobility began to retreat as her being grew warm with the fire of expectation and joy. Handful after handful of hope and dreams and faith jettisoned from her vibrant fingertips and ate away at the dreadful nothing that sought to blanket her with fear. Laughter erupted from her …

His Mercies New, His Grace Abundant: Basking In the Faithfulness of God

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Have you seen the sky today? I don’t know where in the world you might call home, but here, in my neck of the woods, the sky is breathtaking. Just typing these words, peering out the window at the glorious display that the Lord Jesus has put on outside puts such joy in my heart and a smile on my face. The Word says that “The heavens declare the glory of God,” and I have to agree. Seeing this evidence enables me to say it is truly well within my soul. “God is so mighty, and so big and so awesome, that HE sustains His creation with the DUST that falls from His feet.” Clouds. They are such marvelous things. The sky is a gorgeous aquamarine blue and is perfectly dotted with fluffy white clouds, framed with even whiter halos of light! Some of you may be thinking, “So what. They are clouds.” But do you know what the Word of God says about clouds? “The LORD is slow to anger but great in power; …

Words…Use Them Wisely

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Life is more than words, but words do make up our lives. Have you ever considered how the simplest of words can change a person’s attitude either for the good or bad? Even the words spoken without verbalization have such great power. Consider a person who feels utterly alone, ignored and unseen. Let a stranger smile at them, genuinely smile at them, and that non-verbal interaction, those ‘words’ spelled out without sound, can push away the dark clouds in the recipient’s day. “Life is more than words, but words do make up our lives.”   God created the whole of creation with just His Words (Genesis 1). He spoke and it came to be. Our Lord Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1). He, too spoke and things happened. He spoke to the fig tree and it died (Mark 11:12-25). He spoke to Lazarus and he was resurrected from the dead, (John 11: 38-44). Being a person of faith I am compelled not to take language and words lightly even though I often stumble, …

Future Planning & Godly Direction

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“I had big plans for the future, but the future had bigger plans for me.” ~CANDICE COATES The book of Proverbs tells us that man makes plans but God’s purpose is what stands (PROVERBS 19:21). In the book of Jeremiah, the Lord states that He knows the thoughts and plans He has for our future, thoughts to prosper us and give us hope and a good end (JEREMIAH 29:11). Knowing these things it’s easy to take your stance on one of two sides of a coin; either to plan without including God or to make no plan at all and expect Him to do all the work. What Proverbs and Jeremiah are saying together is that yes, we should make plans but we have to leave room for God to do His thing in us too. We have to let Him lead and edit our steps for the best results. Isaiah even says that His Spirit will instruct us in the way to walk in (ISAIAH 30:21). Ephesians agrees with this notion, that when we share our plans …

Made Wonder Full: Faith Filled Encouragment for Creatives

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For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. ~PSALM 139:13-14 NKJV You are fearfully and wonderfully made! Some translations of verse 13 say, not that God ‘covered us in our mother’s wombs’ but that He knit us together in our mother’s wombs. When scripture uses the word ‘fearful,’ it doesn’t mean to be afraid, for what exactly did our Heavenly Father have to fear when He created you? What the word ‘fearful’ means here is that He created you with awe, care, and absolute reverence. Not only did the God of all Creation create you fearfully, but He knit you together, which means He got personal when He formed you! You mean so much that He made you from scratch with His own hands. Christ wouldn’t have created you if He had plans to erase your unique qualities and individual voice. On the contrary, He has plans to plant and cultivate you, to multiply the ‘wonder‘ that He …

Pausing in the Moment: Faith for Creatives

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 Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He (Jesus) went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed. ~MARK 1:35 Our Savior and God, Jesus Christ, did not just come to the world to save us from our sins, but He also came to give us life to the fullest, and in so doing, be our example for how to live our best life. As our example, He shows us how to be in the ‘moment’ with others, to be available to their needs, to do our work in delight, but He also shows us when to pause…and to surrender our hearts to Him in quiet seclusion, just as He did with the Father. Whenever our Savior did this, even with great multitudes at His heels, He was able to return to them empowered, enriched, and able to give of Himself. Being Creatives, we often struggle with the idea of being still especially when we want to keep going. But we have to realize that ‘burnout’ is real and when there …

This One Thing: Faith for Creatives

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I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind…The end of the matter, all having been heard: fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole man.”~ECCLESIASTES 1:14;12:13 The book of Ecclesiastes was inspired by the Living Spirit of God and written by not only the wisest man to ever live, besides our Savior, Jesus Christ, but the wealthiest man of all creation; King Solomon. In his lifetime, he had tasted of every indulgence he could, wealth was in abundance, of women he did not lack. There was nothing under the sun that was denied him. And yet, after running around the mountain of indulgence and want, whether of Godly pursuit or in the attempt to appease the longings of his own flesh and desires; he came to the simple and yet profound conclusion, that nothing, NOTHING else was of true value, all was as chasing the wind, except loving God. The word “fear” used in the scripture in regard to …