Please pray with me – Heavenly Father, forgive me my transgression oh Lord. Give me the strength to turn away from iniquity. Build in me compassion and fill my heart with Your love. Help me to center my life on You Father. Open my mind and spirit for the message You have blessed me with. Allow me to receive it with gladness and without condemnation. I offer up to You my praises, You are worthy Lord God and I humble myself before You. My heart, my thoughts and my spirit worship You Father. You are my God, my Savior and my Redeemer and I will serve only You; in the precious name of Jesus, Amen.
Before I go onto topic let us take a moment to get to know Jesus a little better. Yeshua (ye-SHU-a) is the original name for Jesus. It’s meaning (Yeshua) in Hebrew is “salvation”. Jesus, which is the English version of the Latin name Lesous is a rendition of Yeshua which is also related to Joshua that means rescue, deliver and deliverance. These different renditions of Jesus’ name all have the same, (but different); meaning: “salvation, a saving cry, a cry for help, my help, deliverance, deliver, rescue and savior”. You can find his name in the Old Testament and in the context of the times of the Old Testament describes Jesus (salvation) and His purpose thousands of years before his birth! Even His name was predetermined many years before His birth. Pretty awesome getting to know the Savior, don’t you think?
Now on to topic…
Too Far Gone?
Being saved changed almost everything in me but a heart check helped me realize how far from God I really was. It was a battle to give up some of the things that I liked in my life even though I knew it wasn’t good for me or my walk with Him. I couldn’t make that commitment that God wanted or how to let go of my life which I freely gave to Christ.
Ezekiel 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances…
Our rebirth was a significant time in our life becoming a child of God. Salvation marks the day you become dependent on God and less on self, much like you were dependent on your parents as a newborn. No thought was given to how they would provide for us, we had faith in them. As babes, we didn’t doubt or question the love we felt or the closeness we had with them, it was natural for us to believe they did. We didn’t fear the dark or things that bumped in the night because we trusted them to protect us and keep us from harm.
The day we accepted Jesus, He gave us new birth, a new life and awoke our spirit. We became babes in Christ and as newborns we hunger for the word of God.
1 Peter 2:2 Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.
Becoming complacent (stale, bored, uninspired) in our walk with Him allows the heart to begin to harden. We take our eyes off of Him only to lose our way and move further and further from knowing His love, being under His grace and away from His protection.
Ephesians 4:18 Being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart. 19 and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness…
The further we go the easier it is for the enemy to tell us lies that we begin to believe. Using things of this world to buy your loyalty, to steal your joy and confuse your heart and mind. Distance creates guilt which makes us turn our back and doubt our salvation. We try to put our spirit at peace when we lose our way by attending church on special occasions or casually talking about the Lord all the while our heart has become as stone. Deceiving those close to us, hiding our spiritual health and knowingly hurting Him. It stings when it’s put bluntly, doesn’t it? We ignore what is right, we hear Him but we choose to not listen and why? Because we’ve gone too far? We’ve done or said things that convict us, (Prov. 15:4 Gentle words are a tree of life; a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.), or changed our ideals knowing in our heart of hearts it isn’t pleasing to Him and yet we allowed ourselves to become swallowed up by the enemy and all of his lies. I think we can all agree that God keeps His promises? Joshua wrote of one…
Joshua 1:5 No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
That’s great news! So, you guessed it, time to check your heart…Growing up our house had this particular room that was very nice. It was forbidden to play or sit in for having the best furniture that was placed perfectly to be viewed from the front door or the window and when someone would peek through or come into the house they would see this really nice room. It had the classic pictures on the walls and fancy trinkets placed throughout. A nice coffee table and matching end tables and lamps on either side of the most comfortable couch in the house. There was even a small statue that sat atop another nice piece over in the corner. When special friends or extended family came over they were able to enjoy this room, sitting on the couch and the overstuffed chair putting their drinks and snacks on the nice coffee table and enjoying the ambiance this special room provided. After the visit was over we always got a compliment on what a nice house we have. This would be the only room they saw, of course it would be assumed the whole house was this way and that every room in the house be just as important as this one, but we knew of all the problems the rest of the house had and some rooms were not so nice.
Mat 23:28 So you, too, outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
When we’ve hardened our hearts and have lost our way we tend to put God in one room, the “nice room” for all to see. We won’t deny we love Him or know Him but we’ve become convicted in our hearts and we forget how God can help us. Our conviction is so great confusion is now our master and it is easier to just keep Him in this room and close the door. We know Him, we are not hidden from His righteous Word but the enemy is now louder 1. This is not a finger pointing session, I need you to understand God has desires, He desires we live in prosperity and love but His biggest desire, the most desirable thing God wants is simply us, all of us, that’s it!
Sam 14:4 Like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be recovered, so we must die. But that is not what God desires; rather, He devises ways so that a banished person does not remain banished from Him.
He gave us a way to come back to Him and be in His grace once more. Ask yourself, does God walk through every area of your heart or just the one you let everyone see? Is He a part of your life or do you let Him out of this one room for part of a day when it’s convenient. Has our hearts become hardened because we don’t have room for God to live within us? I don’t believe this is the case, I believe sometimes it takes something drastic to happen to open our eyes and see what our priorities are. God will allow these things to happen because He knows what is best for us and our families. He said if we talk to each other in truth and be prayed over by the anointed the healing will take place within our hearts.
James 5:16 …Therefore, confess your faults to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous (appointed) person has great power to prevail…
He loves us completely and gives us hope and extends grace unlimited. He knows what happened and He knows how to fix it.
Ezekiel 26 Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
“A heart of flesh”, meaning a soft heart, one that will give and accept love and be compassionate but more so, a soft heart that will accept the Word of God as a seed and allow it to grow and produce a great harvest.
Luke 8:8 Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded
a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.
There is only one thing that impresses God, it’s not how much money you donate to a church, it’s not how well you can sing hymnals, it’s not even how much work you do in His name, (not by works Eph. 2:8-9), it’s us! All He wants is to give us immeasurable love, joy and the secrets of the Kingdom.
Ephesians 3:17-19 So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
“…Be filled with the fullness of God”, what a magnificent promise. How great is this to be able to have the chance to be filled to overflowing capacity with our Creator?…”know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge”, how much love could it be that we would need “strength” to just “comprehend” it and that the depth of this love “surpasses knowledge”? The unthinkable and treacherous pain and suffering Jesus endured and yet He kept His eyes and His faith upon the Father through it all, knowing this was the plan for Him.
We lose our way by some of the most insignificant and trivial things and it is sometimes shameful. If I could take back all the days I had lost walking within the world, turning a blind eye to those hurting and lost and make those days that I could have had some part in showing them home by simply allowing God to be the Master of my heart and in every area of it. We are commissioned to reach out and lead those back to the fold. Bring them to a place of fellowship and worship so by the Word they can be strengthened and do great things for the Kingdom of God.
Eph. 4:11 And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.
I pray that we all can receive the knowledge we need to have confidence and the compassion of Christ to reach those that are lost and confused. Those who can’t seem to find a way to reach out to God and ask for forgiveness. I pray a heaviness is placed on your heart to help those who are buried in guilt and have hardened their hearts and are in the grasp of the enemy. I pray your heart weeps for those that are walking within the world in a fog not able to see their way clearly, who are needing you to just reach out to them and give them assurance and hope. His desire is us and He only asks that we love Him and bring those that have wandered off a chance to come back to Him. He doesn’t want to lose not even one of us because He loves us beyond measure or understanding.
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy (His Son) and to walk humbly with your God.
Become strong in the spirit my Brothers and Sisters. Receive prayer from the appointed ones as the scripture declares. Get involved and tell the good news to all that will listen and be a part of something bigger than yourself by building the body of Christ (the church) with believers. Humble yourself before God and allow the Holy Spirit to guide you. Listen for His voice and fall in love with our Father every day. He is good!
God bless us all with His love and His gracious mercy. In Jesus name, Amen.
More to come…
