Prov 4:23 "Above all else guard your heart for it is the wellspring of life"

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" Yeah right!

Peoples' comments and judgements toward us hurt very much and hinder our walk with the Lord and with others, but the Lord would say this morning from Proverbs 4:23 to "guard our heart for it is the wellspring of life."

God judges very differently than man and we see in the story of 1 Samuel 16 where the Prophet Samuel is called to anoint a new King and in verses 6&7 "Samuel saw Eliab and thought, 'Surely the Lord's anointed stands here before the Lord'. But the Lord said to Samuel 'Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
How quickly we judge by what we see and hear, but the Lord calls us not to do that, but to look at the heart.

Psalm 139:23-24 "Search me, O God and know my heart, test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting"
This has been and continues to be our journey with the Lord. One way the Lord has shown me over the past few years of the state of my heart, has been through dreams. I would have a dream that would show I was frightened in a situation, show that I was hurt by something or show some sort of attitude. In these dreams and the processing of these, he would show me the truth that needed to be there instead. For instance "His perfect love casts out all fear" so I would question, why was I afraid and then speak God's truth to the situation. If His perfect love casts out all fear then I needed a deeper revelation of His love for me and the truth of what the love looked like. If I was anxious about something then I would ask myself, 'why was I anxious?' 1 Peter 5:7 "Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you" so I would learn that I needed to give him the things I was anxious about trusting that he would look after those things as I surrendered them to him. Phil 4:6 "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus".

Prov 25:2 "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of Kings. As the heavens are high and the earth is deep, so the hearts of kings are unsearchable".
We don't know the true state of our heart sometimes, but if we are willing to test out our hearts, then the Lord will show us. Sometimes like the verse above we need to search out what the Lord is trying to say. Dreams can be one way where the Lord is speaking to us in a way we can understand - like a parable - but then we need to search for the deeper hidden things; the gold. As I have searched out what the Lord has been saying and have been learning to speak the truth which sets me free into it, the Lord has brought greater and greater freedom into my life and especially from the mindsets and words that come from man.

Psalm 51:10-12 "Create in me a pure heart, O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me."

The Lord is wanting to take us from glory to glory and for that to happen we need to ask the prayer above - to be willing for the Lord to create in us a pure heart. Matt 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God".

"A man's enemies will be the members of his own household" Matt 10:36

Recently we have been pondering how to deal with situations in our family that don't line up with the word. What action do we need to take? Are we being too harsh? Do we accept the behaviour or be considered by those around us as "too radical" or "too black and white"? "Where is grace in all of this? How do we love the sinner but hate the sin? What about forgiveness? What is the role of discipline? What makes that sin any worse than lying? What is true love? And there are a lot more questions going through the mind in how to work through this and know God's will and desire for the situation and the person. And firstly to say we have not come to any conclusions and are growing and learning day by day in this but I want to throw it out there. In Matt 10:34-39 says "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn "a man against his father, ...

"I am ruined for the ordinary"

“I am ruined for the ordinary” A statement that can possibly be to some, come from a place of judgement, or it can be from a place of there is more in the Kingdom of God that I am yet to experience or understand, revelation that I have tasted of something that actually shows me that I have not tasted of anything yet. A place where there is such a contentment and joy in what I have seen and longed to see and yet a revelation that there is way more "beyond what I think, ask and imagine" (Eph 3:20) and one that spurs me on to seek and discover all the fullness that could be ours in the Kingdom of God. When we as Christians see other Christians going places or experiencing things that we don’t understand or perhaps we have not yet moved in, we can either become jealous of that person and judge and bring them down to our level, exclude them from our lives or we can choose to be excited by what is happening and be encouraged and spurred on in the Lord for the more than ca...

Distraction or Traction?

Our most value asset is: TIME I don't know about you but I find it is easy to get distracted and drawn away from what I was intending to do or where my focus needed to be. I often find myself getting 'entangled in civilian affairs' as it says in the scripture above. But the discernment is knowing if that is God's interruption for the day or a distraction that takes me away from the purpose and plan that God would have me walk in. I think we can often miss those God opportunities and God calls on our life because of distractions. " A distraction is something we do that moves us away from what we really want." Distractions bring confusion, feeling like you are in a muddle, not knowing where you are going, often feeling like you are busy but probably not really achieving a great deal. The opposite of distraction is TRACTION. Traction is an action that moves us toward what we really want. Momentum and movement toward the desires of the heart. But often we don...

Education changes the fabric of community

Hosea 4:6 "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge" "Education changes the fabric of community" was a quote by one of the ladies at the gathering of Women that I went to yesterday. This quote struck me as I had never seen the impact that can be created in what we are are doing in GRM through "Schools of the Spirit" and in "training and equipping", "in preaching and teaching", people in the variety of ways that we do, how we can effect and change communities and societies. In reality that is what we are doing, if only in a little way, it makes a ripple effect that can change so much more than we think or realise, ask or imagine.(Eph 3:30) They shared about what they consider "success" to look like and they defined it as people who: Had courage Tenacity and Resilience Integrity and humility Creativity Ambition - "Say Yes" Respect This was a gathering of very influential women of society and bus...

Obedience and Commitment are big things in Gods Kingdom

Reading in Acts 7 this morning the story through Stephen of Abraham being told by God to " Leave your country and your people and go the the land I will show you" So he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After the death of his father, God sent him to this land where you are now living. He gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, even though at that time Abraham had no child." As I reflected on this and the journey of Abraham stepping out in faith into a land that he received no inheritance in but a promise of what was to come for his descendants of which we live in the fruit of that, I thought of todays generations in which often is only doing things that we want to do or that will benefit us personally as we live for 'today' not worrying about tomorrow. A sense of if it feels good then do it, if it doesn't then we will move on - perhap...

I shared last night about 1 Cor 15:36 "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body..." I was preaching on it last night and it will come up in video form later in the week on the GRM sight, mainly reflecting on we can sow things one way, but God raises it up as HE determines how it should look. But this morning I got more revelation which will be quite obvious to some, but to me it struck me afresh. When we sow something it get's buried, it cannot be pulled back up. It no longer has 'connection' with 'me' if you like. It gets 'covered over' unable to be pulled up. And yet I recognise in my own life how we can sow something but there are still 'strings attached' as such as we often are still determining or expecting it be rai...

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