How do you see God? Is he a scary someone sitting in the clouds ready to send down lightening bolts whenever you mess up? Is he so far away you don't believe he hears a word you say? Do you need to do things in order to please him? How do you find his love?
It upsets me to think that there are so many of us that have a misconception of who and what God is. There's three simple words that sum it up.. God Is Love. 1 John 4 v 16.
If you have children you'll get this analogy easily. If your child came to you in strife, maybe they hadn't spoken to you for a while, hadn't done anything special for you lately but they were in trouble and they needed your help. Would you turn them away or would you do whatever possible to help. Some might even say they would lay down their life for their child. Thats love, it's the closest thing to unconditional love we can find. We don't generally put too many conditions on our love for our own children. Maybe on our spouse, friends, neighbours but our children get loved no matter what. How much more then does God love his children? You and I? He doesn't expect anything from us, no amount of door knocking, no standing on the street corner waving a bible in the air. You don't have to say anything, do anything, be anything, to be a beneficiary of Gods love. He knew you before you were even born, he stands there at your side waiting for you to ask him for help. He knows everything about you and yet he still wants to dress you in fine robs of salvation and put a crown of glory on your head. As you let God into your life and he fills you with his spirit piece by piece he removes the baggage and keeps filling you more and more with his love. Unconditional love. Thats right, his love has no conditions on it. The bible says that God inclines his ear to you, he leans in to you and he hears every whisper, every thought. He goes deep into your heart and he fills every gap, he is the completion of you. Even in the most difficult of times nothing can separate you from his love for you. He is the father of all fathers and he made you in his image, with the ability to love and to be loved. I pray that you will really come to know the love of Christ, which far surpasses mere knowledge, that you may be filled through all your being unto the fullness of God. That you may have the richest measure of the divine presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God himself! Ephesians 3 v 19. Amen!!
Wednesday 29 August 2012
Monday 20 August 2012
Find your inner vows, find freedom
As a woman I know how important I am. I bring to the table kindness, gentleness, courage, passion, joy and much more. Without me my children wouldn't learn the gift of growing into a woman. Without me my husband wouldn't get fed (ha ha), actually neither would the cat. As a woman I need to know these things about myself because how I am with myself is how my children will learn to be within themselves. When I have confidence in who I am the world has confidence in me too. My friends can trust in me and my family can depend on me. So.. perhaps this answers my own question I had to myself.. Why are parents so needed and why do they hold so much influence on us? It's always the heart cry of everyone. We've all had parents at some time of our lives whether it be for 5 minutes or 50 years. How we are brought up makes us who we are. As a child we perceive our parents so differently than how they realise. When a Dad who is constantly at work is thinking "I need to do these extra hours to provide for my family" a child is seeing "my dad is never home, he doesn't want to spend time with me, I'm not important". As a child you take what you see and you make deep inner vows to never be like that. How bad can an inner vow be? Seen as we're made up of so many of them it can cause a hardness in our hearts and can leak into our marriages and we see ourselves becoming exactly what we said we wouldn't.
*Everyone has made Inner vows as children, either consciously in our thoughts, or spoken out loud. They are hidden and hard to find and left forgotten from many years ago. We forget that we made them. A root is formed and begins to grow undetected until years later through the law of increase has reaped a crop of the fruit evident in our own lives in the way we relate with one another and do life.
Ask the holy spirit to reveal the inner vows you've made as a child towards your parents. It may be a little uncomfortable at first but as you start to recognise them and forgive your parents and yourself you can experience freedom to be the person God destined you to be. Your parents did the best job they knew how and you need to acknowledge that and return it with blessings of love and forgiveness. It will set them free too.
Daddy God, I pray for each person reading this blog. I ask holy spirit that you go deep into their hearts and reveal to them the inner vows of their hearts. I pray you help them to forgive the ones the vows were made against and also to forgive themselves for their responses and for hardening their hearts. Please soften their hearts and pour into their hearts everything they did not receive as a child. Pour in everything that they missed by putting up walls before you and others. I pray for blessings and favor in their lives this week.
In Jesus name Amen
*quoted material from Catch the fire College
*Everyone has made Inner vows as children, either consciously in our thoughts, or spoken out loud. They are hidden and hard to find and left forgotten from many years ago. We forget that we made them. A root is formed and begins to grow undetected until years later through the law of increase has reaped a crop of the fruit evident in our own lives in the way we relate with one another and do life.
Ask the holy spirit to reveal the inner vows you've made as a child towards your parents. It may be a little uncomfortable at first but as you start to recognise them and forgive your parents and yourself you can experience freedom to be the person God destined you to be. Your parents did the best job they knew how and you need to acknowledge that and return it with blessings of love and forgiveness. It will set them free too.
Daddy God, I pray for each person reading this blog. I ask holy spirit that you go deep into their hearts and reveal to them the inner vows of their hearts. I pray you help them to forgive the ones the vows were made against and also to forgive themselves for their responses and for hardening their hearts. Please soften their hearts and pour into their hearts everything they did not receive as a child. Pour in everything that they missed by putting up walls before you and others. I pray for blessings and favor in their lives this week.
In Jesus name Amen
*quoted material from Catch the fire College
Monday 13 August 2012
Witchcraft, Drugs and Heaven
I have two concepts I'd like to intermingle together so I'm hoping I can write this and capture a space in your mind to paint a picture of what I think heaven might be like and also how important our dreams are. So I'll start with the dream I had and explain the meaning of it. (Also I believe God speaks to us in dreams and he uses parables and riddles just like he did in the bible). I dreamt I was in a bathroom about to have a shower but there was a spider in there so I went to another shower and there was yet another spider. I tried fly spray to kill the spider but needed the help of a stranger to get rid of it.
This is what God was showing me and not only me, it was for my best friend also.
1) Bathroom - cleansing *
2) Bathing - cleansing/repentence *
3) Spider - (huntsman spider) predatory person/one who casts spells *
4) Stranger/man - angel.*
The spider representing witchcraft in this dream has a direct link to drug use. The word sorceries in Revelation 9:21 is the greek word, pharmakeia. Which is where we get the word pharmacy. The shower meaning I needed cleansing/repentence from the drug use in my past and the man helping was an angel. When I told my girlfriend about the dream she shared with me that for the last 2 or more years every time she took notice of the time it was 11:11am/pm. She thought it was God saying she needed to pray for her daughters grandmother as it was her birthdate. The grandmother was involved in witchcraft and was constantly casting spells on her and her daughter. What had happened was because we had taken our fair share of drugs together before and after becoming a christian (it took awhile to completely stop) we had allowed ourselves to be open in the spirit to witchcraft, hence giving the grandmother a hold over her. As soon as we recognised what God was saying through the dream we repented and were set free. She has not seen 11:11 again! Ephesians 6 v 12 "..we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers..in the heavenly places"
Moving along with this I want to take the drug use that I just admitted to and show you what I have come up with and please, I'd love your feedback as this is strictly from my own thoughts. Back quite a few years ago now I was in love with ecstasy, cocaine, meth, whatever I could get my hands on actually. It got to the point that I could not go out and have a good night without it. Sure we had some crazy weekends but it was always at a risk. We never knew what was being cooked up in the mix. Any one of these nights could've killed us. To top it off was the come down.. to every high there is a low. The high of ecstasy is overwhelming warmth, confidence, everyone around you is lovely and beautiful, you can dance like a pro, everything you touches feels amazing and comes to life in your hand. So there's a pretty big drawcard to get on it. Little did I know this is another way of satan trying to win u over with falsities and not what true ecstasy is like at all. So I was thinking, God is all powerful, he is glory and when anyone says holy, holy, holy is the lord God almighty the angels drop to there knees and worship him. What if you were walking down the streets of heaven and you see angels dropping to there knees and as they bless the Lord he returns with waves of his glory transcending down the street and you get smashed over with his joy and love, legs in the air, laughing and crying uncontrollably trying to get it together till another wave comes along and you just look like you're constantly on heavenly ecstasy or drunk in the spirit, without ever coming down. Always happy!. Worth giving your life over to God to spend eternity laughing and loving. Just something for you to think about anyway.
* The divinity code, to understanding your dreams and visions
by Adam F Thompson & Adrian Beale
(definitely recommend this book, it opens up so many possibilities to understand what God is saying to you in your dreams)
This is what God was showing me and not only me, it was for my best friend also.
1) Bathroom - cleansing *
2) Bathing - cleansing/repentence *
3) Spider - (huntsman spider) predatory person/one who casts spells *
4) Stranger/man - angel.*
The spider representing witchcraft in this dream has a direct link to drug use. The word sorceries in Revelation 9:21 is the greek word, pharmakeia. Which is where we get the word pharmacy. The shower meaning I needed cleansing/repentence from the drug use in my past and the man helping was an angel. When I told my girlfriend about the dream she shared with me that for the last 2 or more years every time she took notice of the time it was 11:11am/pm. She thought it was God saying she needed to pray for her daughters grandmother as it was her birthdate. The grandmother was involved in witchcraft and was constantly casting spells on her and her daughter. What had happened was because we had taken our fair share of drugs together before and after becoming a christian (it took awhile to completely stop) we had allowed ourselves to be open in the spirit to witchcraft, hence giving the grandmother a hold over her. As soon as we recognised what God was saying through the dream we repented and were set free. She has not seen 11:11 again! Ephesians 6 v 12 "..we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers..in the heavenly places"
Moving along with this I want to take the drug use that I just admitted to and show you what I have come up with and please, I'd love your feedback as this is strictly from my own thoughts. Back quite a few years ago now I was in love with ecstasy, cocaine, meth, whatever I could get my hands on actually. It got to the point that I could not go out and have a good night without it. Sure we had some crazy weekends but it was always at a risk. We never knew what was being cooked up in the mix. Any one of these nights could've killed us. To top it off was the come down.. to every high there is a low. The high of ecstasy is overwhelming warmth, confidence, everyone around you is lovely and beautiful, you can dance like a pro, everything you touches feels amazing and comes to life in your hand. So there's a pretty big drawcard to get on it. Little did I know this is another way of satan trying to win u over with falsities and not what true ecstasy is like at all. So I was thinking, God is all powerful, he is glory and when anyone says holy, holy, holy is the lord God almighty the angels drop to there knees and worship him. What if you were walking down the streets of heaven and you see angels dropping to there knees and as they bless the Lord he returns with waves of his glory transcending down the street and you get smashed over with his joy and love, legs in the air, laughing and crying uncontrollably trying to get it together till another wave comes along and you just look like you're constantly on heavenly ecstasy or drunk in the spirit, without ever coming down. Always happy!. Worth giving your life over to God to spend eternity laughing and loving. Just something for you to think about anyway.
* The divinity code, to understanding your dreams and visions
by Adam F Thompson & Adrian Beale
(definitely recommend this book, it opens up so many possibilities to understand what God is saying to you in your dreams)
Tuesday 7 August 2012
What does your name mean?
Before I start blogging I'd like to thank my sister Vanessa for allowing me to use her as my subject. It hopefully will inspire you to check out your own name and what you are actually saying about yourself without knowing it. About 3 weeks ago I was tidying my bedroom when the Lord spoke to me and asked me to check out the meaning of Vanessa's name. I thought "well, it means butterfly doesn't it?" Turns out with a little research you can learn a lot about a name and where it comes from. The name Vanessa was made up by the poet Johnathon Swift who had written a poem "Cadenus and Vanessa" about his unhappy love affair with a women named Esther Vanhormrigh. Van from her last name and essa from the poetic nic name for Esther. It was written back in 1713. Why would God need me to know that and where was he taking this? The next sunday at church our pastor preached a sermon about Jacob and how his name meant deceiver or heel puller. The meaning of Jacobs name was constantly spoken over his life anytime anyone called him by his name. "Hey deceiver.. come here deceiver.." Say that for years and years over a life and what do you think they will become? The cool part is that God gave Jacob a new name. Genesis 35 v 10 Again God said to him, your name is Jacob (supplanter); you shall not be called Jacob any longer, but Israel shall be your name. So he called him Israel (contender with God). So, for Vanessa's whole life the underlying meaning of her name was spoken over her life... unhappy love affair. Thanks Mum and Dad! We were able to pray about it together and break off the lie. God gave her a new meaning to her name, worshipper. We also went with her middle name which I believe means Gods precious gift. I'm looking forward to seeing the positive relationships in her life become happy and lasting. I love how God takes us deeper, gives us instant teaching from unasked for sources and promptly sets us free. Be free Vanessa, I love you my beautiful sister x
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