As I meditate on the future, I refuse to make a plan and then ask God to come and bless it. I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to convince God to come and join me in something that I believe is good. I have learned now, to inquire of the Lord as to what he is doing on the earth so that I can join him. It works so much better that way.

I’ve had to ask God to forgive me for desiring a seat at a table He would have flipped!

I do believe with all my heart that we’re in the most exciting time and God is moving in tremendous ways on our planet. I believe Holy Spirit is drawing the hearts of men and women and we are on the threshold of the third great Awakening.

The sheep are getting sheepier and the goats are getting goatier! And what I realize is, make sure that you are following God completely, and not just trying to fit in with the right group. I am learning more and more that perception is not always reality. And things are not always as they seem to be.

Spend time in your prayer closet. Let his voice be the loudest voice in your ear and you’ll never go wrong.

Meditating this morning on the parable of the Sower and the seed.

“Listen then to what the parable of the sower means: When anyone hears the message about the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what was sown in their heart. This is the seed sown along the path. The seed falling on rocky ground refers to someone who hears the word and at once receives it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful. But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” Matthew 13

I’m understanding the parable isn’t about me identifying with one of the soils. It’s not about my heart being good soil, or hard soil, or stony soil, or thorny soil. It’s about me being one with the sower. It’s about understanding that I have a supernatural supply of seed. It’s not my responsibility to pre-determine where I will sow.

My responsibility to sow everywhere I go.

Whether I’m in a restaurant, grocery store, shopping center, or airport, I’m called to sow the word everywhere I go. It’s not my responsibility to produce the crop. I just sow the seed, and let the dirt do the work.

If we continue to sow, realizing that the seed is good, we can rest assured that God will give the increase.

Keep sowing in Love, and trust God for the results!

In our pursuit of Godliness, there will always be a resistance. We must be relentless in persevering to become more like Jesus!

Our natural inclination is to be selfish and serve our self. But, in being truly born again, we are dead to self, and alive to Christ! Jesus told his followers, the first step to discipleship is to deny yourself! As we examine the life of Jesus, we find he came to serve, not be served.

The world system says you’ve reached the top when you have many people serving you, but true Christlikeness is shown when you are serving many. Our true joy and satisfaction should come when we have had the privilege of being a blessing to others, not just being blessed by others!

If we’re going to be like Jesus today, find someone and be a blessing to them, and in return, you will have a blessed day.

In my time with the Lord this morning, I felt like the Lord was saying “Hope is rising among my people”.

I was very encouraged because hopelessness is a very paralyzing effect in the hearts of many. Your hopelessness about a problem is a bigger problem than the problem itself. If you are hopeless it’s because you are believing a lie about a situation. You won’t get rid of a lie by recognizing it’s a lie. The only way to get rid of a lie is to replace it with truth!

So be strong and courageous, all you who put your hope in the LORD!

Psalm 31:24

Your promise may seem distant, but that’s because you’re in the process to the promise. Sometimes embracing the process can be our biggest challenge, but when you get to the promise I pray that the Lord will give you amnesia about the process!

Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

Psalms 42:11

Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again— my Savior and my God!

I read a story about a man who wanted to be the first man to swim across the English channel. The weather was rough that day but he knew he could do it. He began swimming and he swim 3/4 of the way across the channel, and decided it was too far, so he turned around and swam back! You can do the math! Lol.

Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a dream fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12

My encouragement to you is don’t turn back! Stay the course! Embrace the promise! Embrace hope and know that the Lord is with you. If the Lord says that hope is rising in his people, I can’t encourage you enough to embrace hope and believe for your promise to be fulfilled!

I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13

Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is the substance of things hoped for! If I don’t have hope, then there’s nothing for me to attach my faith to. Hope is essential to the Christian life. Hope gives us a skip in our step, even when things seem to be going haywire! Hope tells me that the future is going to be better than the past was, because change is coming. Hope is rising in God’s people, because we know how this story is going to end. We may not completely understand how it’s going to play out, but ultimately we know, in the end, Jesus is King!

We only reproduce what we become intimate with.

When the Angel told Mary she would conceive a son, her reply was, how can it be? I haven’t been intimate with a man. She couldn’t reproduce a man because she wasn’t intimate with a man, however, she could reproduce God because she was intimate with God! We will always reproduce what we are intimate with!

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!”

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30“Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “for you have found favor with God! 31You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!” Mary asked the angel, “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” Luke 1:26-34

If you’re intimate with ministry, you’ll reproduce ministry. If you’re intimate with church, you’ll reproduce church culture. Neither of these are bad, unless they are void of The Spirit of God. Intimacy is the key to birthing what God has planned for you. Intimacy is the gateway to destiny! Nobody can lay hands on you and impart intimacy to you. You have to build your own history with God. Intimacy matters, and there’s no shortcuts to intimacy!

All too often we are trying to gain favor with God through our acts of service or our personal achievements. I can remember praying, asking God to help me and then listing off a large number of things I have done for him. In essence I was telling God how good I was, and basically saying, what’s wrong with you?

Your favor with God won’t come by what you do. You found favor with Him when you said yes to Jesus, and that favor grows through spending time with Him. Building intimacy. You are not a human doing, you are a human being! Just being with Him!

God has extended a beautiful invitation to each of us to come like Mary, and sit at His feet and spend time with Him, enjoying His presence. The more time I spend with Him, the more I become intimate with Him. The more I become intimate with Him, the more I reproduce Him on the Earth.

We will only reproduce what we are intimate with!