Just a thought

Are we internally running or resting?

Tiny miracles!

I read a blog post by Ann Voskamp earlier this month, friends. And it has easily been one of the most heartfelt and impactful messages to me, this season.

September to me marks what I call a ‘bridge-building’ month. It is a point of convergence between the last few weeks of Summer this year and the ushering in of the Fall. It is that surreal season where the feel of warm cakes and the sensation of ice-cream dripping down my forearm, all seem to beautifully collide and peacefully co-exist.

This is where cup cakes, cookies and coffee beckon me and warm me up toward Fall, yet the precious scent of Summer continues to linger and entice.

Ok. Enough said.

Now back to the post.

Ann here gently encourages us to seize the last few weeks of Summer with passion and zeal. Needless to say, I was deeply moved and made up my heart to do just that. She also attaches a list in her post of some things that we can do in this special season to seize the flavour of Summer in what the year-end still has to offer, and squeeze the delight of childlike wonder as we commit to what I feel can best be described as – tiny miracles.

☆ the feel of cool, running water over my tippy toes

☆ having drippy butterscotch ice-cream

☆ applying pink guava shine lip balm with its fruity scent washing over me

☆ standing in my open balcony under the night sky, listening to the sound of water cascading down a stone wall at the entrance of our building

☆ listening to the sound of the world go by as I slow down and pray

☆ watching the sun set with Jesus and praising Him for painting the sky a different hue each time

☆ hearing the pitter-patter of gentle rain falling in the wee hours of the night

☆ eating fresh kiwi fruit from the market, and letting Jesus teach me to peel & cut it myself for the first time in my life!

Tiny miracles.

Getting myself ready for year-end thus, friends.

Though the thought of woollen socks and hot tea seem to soften me up for Fall, yet there remains honor to be paid to the last few weeks of Summer. And as September builds the bridge in between the seasons, I can’t help but ask,

Care to join me?

🥝

Perfect Father 🤍

Abba

“What is the value of your soul to God? Could your worth be defined by any amount of money? God doesn’t abandon or forget even the small sparrow he has made. How then could he forget or abandon you? What about the seemingly minor issues of your life? Do they matter to God? Of course they do! So you never need to worry, for you are more valuable to God than anything else in this world.”

(Luke 12:6-7, TPT)

Friends, today as I sat with Jesus over this passage of Scripture in my ‘Lectio Divina’ time (btw, if you have not yet been introduced to this practice, I highly recommend you googling some information on it, you won’t regret it, I promise!) I felt a tender, gentle reminder from Abba’s heart to soak in the Truth that I am hugely valued and eternally worthy in His sight. He looks at me with the deepest affection in His heart, a huge smile on His lips and a pure delight in His eyes.

Hmnn…

So I have made up my mind.

That that’s really the only thing that is going to define me.

The Love of my Father, my Heavenly Dad.

❤

A love so deep, profound and faithful that it will never leave me nor forsake me. It will never abandon me. It promises to be eternally true to me –

To be with me, to fight for me, to make a way for me.

Always and forever.

And should you let me speak some Truth over you today, He is the same for you too.

A doting, hands-on Father who is intimately involved in the details of your life.

You are His child, beloved – sought after, precious, valued, cared for, wanted, needed, esteemed, honored, fought for.

And though man may fail you, Jesus never will.

He calls you beautiful, bold, fearless, wise, strong, courageous.

He enfolds you within His loving embrace and calls you His own – His image bearer in the earth and His chosen one.

And no.

We don’t deserve it. We couldn’t have earned it.

But it is a grace-gift and the Bible says that Abba gives good gifts to His children.

🎁

So I’m learning to receive this uncomon grace, friend in a way so free and trusting that it lets my Heavenly Dad know –

“I love you right back, Abba. I love you right back.”

👑

Jesus is enough

Times and seasons change, friends. And as they do, a lot remains unexplained. But what I am increasingly discovering is that we don’t necessarily need to have all the answers when we have Truth.
Though it is very important for us to process our experiences with Jesus, the purpose of this relational dialogue is to bring our questions to Him, without questioning Him.

Without questioning the integrity of His nature, character and heart towards us.

Entering into the Presence of the Lord to receive the Truth of His narrative in any given experience or event that we have had to walk through remains vital, but we can learn to do so remaining anchored in the Truth of who He really, really is for us through it all.

God is Good, Faithful, Holy, Righteous and True.

He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent and sovereign.

He embraces us with Perfect Love, guides us in Perfect Wisdom and fights for us with Perfect Power.

He reverses what the enemy meant for evil and uses it for our good and His great glory.

He heals us, sustains us, grows us and carries us all the days of our lives.

And He remains unchanging.

He is our anchor in the storm, firm and secure.

As a Perfect Father, He is completely faithful and absolutely trustworthy.

He is the alpha and the omega, leaves nothing unfinished and as He brings it all to completion, He also authors new beginnings that we really could never have expected.

So to be able to step into the greater things and new seasons that He has in store for us, I do believe it becomes imperative to see if we are carrying the baggage of unhealed pain and unresolved trauma from the weight and warfare of seasons past.

But as we do, I also realise that there will be things that remain unanswered and that’s ok.

We don’t really need to have all the answers, when we have Truth.

The Person of Jesus with us will always be more than enough.

He Himself is our peace.

So as we all prep up to step into the newness of life that the Lord has faithfully prepared for us, may we walk with humble hearts, sound minds and free spirits.

For where the Spirit of the Living God is, there is liberty.

Liberty to lay down our need to be right so that we can be free.

And not just free, my friend.

But free indeed.

For whom the Son sets free, is free indeed.

(John 8:36)

Amen.

🧡🤍

Heaven come

Hey you!

The Good News is that there is change in the air. I know you are probably tired, so am I. But our joy is not of this world.

Our joy, our peace, our hope is tethered to the reality of another world.

And guess what the other piece of the Good News is?

*You* get to receive and release that reality into the tiny corner of the world that you call your turf.

God created *you,* chose *you* and said,
“It is good.”

So shall we do this thing together, friend?

As the rains come down, let us roll up our
sleeves and get to work.

Let us pray, love and serve well this season.

Let us manifest a slice of Heaven in the earth.

Let us walk in the Truth of our identity as much loved children of God.

Let us flow in the power of His Spirit and in our authority as co-heirs with Christ.

Let us make a list of things we are grateful for.

Let us look back on our trauma and tell it that it does not get to define us.

Let us receive the Lord’s perspective and partner with the King of glory.

Let us bring to rememberance the testimonies of His faithfulness and rejoice.

Let us live fully, freely and abundantly.

And should it look like a selfie or two, know that you deserve it.

You are worthy, you are valued, you are loved.

Hey you!

That would be you.

💚🌈☔

Divine Demarcation

Funnily juxtaposed with the sunny disposition of this design is the mysterious revelation that accompanies it at a time that I candidly confess, was anything but sunny.

If anything at all, it has been fiery.

A fiery trial, some would say.

Going through something like this is not something I would opt for, but when the enemy does wage war, I gang up with Jesus.

Because He wins every battle he ever wages.

So at the very onset of this trial, I prayed to the Lord, friends; and asked Him to not only get me through the string of the impossible situations that seemingly stood like giants before me that came up overnight, but also bring me out with greater spiritual fruit than I had when I went in.

It’s literally how the Lord makes the devil pay.

So I decided to cash in on this Truth.

Today I write to you as a child of God with concrete evidence in her hands that God is Good, God does Good and God works all things together for our good and His great glory.

As He has safely brought me through this trial, friends; I have had to understand the difference between what I felt and what I knew to be Truth at another level.

I will explain as we go on.

With a high value for the revelation-light of Truth, friends; I love it when the Lord makes a wonderful invitation for us to seek Him throughout the pages of Scripture, and one of my most deeply personal favorite verses is thus,

“He reveals deep and hidden things; he knows what lies in darkness, and light dwells with him.”

(Daniel 2:22)

So when everything came up under siege overnight, I mentally scanned the Truth thatthe Lord had already deposited in my spirit.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

(Romans 8:28)

If this is true and it is, so the only valid question to ask was,

If this is what the enemy has done, Lord; then how do You want to redefine this narrative according to Your Promise of Romans 8:28?

How will You work all this together for my good and Your glory?

I heard the Lord say,

“With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19:26)

Each time that I doubted the Lord during my trek through this trial, the Holy Spirit would gently remind me of this Truth from Matthew 19:26.

I tried to remember the memorial stones that the Lord enabled me to pick up especially this year. Calling to mind testimonies of the Lord’s faithfulness is a sure fire way to stir up faith at a time when little else is needed.

As I would do this along with confessing the Promises of the Lord over my life, I found myself in battle. On the one hand, I knew God was Faithful. He saw me through then, He will see me through now.

But it was also at this precise juncture that the enemy tried to intimidate me with the size of the giant in front of me. I have slain giants before with the Lord, but this one?

I suddenly wasn’t too sure.

On a particularly anxious day, I stumbled over a podcast from Christine Caine. She said something that I felt was straight from the heart of God. I made a note of it. The next day, the message from the Lord’s heart again caught my attention as Christine shared precisely the same thought on her Insta page.

Let me paste it below for you.

It struck home.

I felt bolts of lightning go off in my head as I realised the Truth that it was never the size of the giant in my life that determined my destiny. Rather, it was the size of my God that did.

The God in me. The God through me. The God around me.

With new found faith, I found the courage to believe again. Putting my hands in the hands of Jesus, I decided to let Him walk me through this and teach me everything that was on His heart for me.

After all, this giant may be too big for me. But it was nothing compared to the bigness of my God.

“The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

(Exodus 14:14)

Because it is the Lord who fights for me, I need only to be still…

What does that mean?

I believe that what the Lord was and still is saying through this is that because it is Him who fights for me, I have no need to be anxious about anything. The enemy is already defeated in Jesus’ Name, and the irrevocable victory of the Cross is already my portion in Christ. Therefore, the outcomes of my life situations and circumstances are already secure in the hands of my God.

But what about the process?

This is where friends, I believe we really get to meet Jesus face-to-face.
The Lord is a God of process. As surely as He kept affirming me that He would bring about my complete deliverance and vindication, He also lovingly exhorted me to commit my way to Him so thatit could align with His right way forward.

So, in response to this perfectly wise Father, I released my process to Him.

And I learnt much.

So much more than before, friends.

With more insights in my spirit, more humility in my heart and more dependency on the Lord; I had many more arrows in my quiver.

Allow me to repeat myself.

This is how Jesus makes the devil pay.

Jesus started to emphatically teach me that though His Promise of victory will see to it that I come out on the other side stronger than I was when I went in, it does not mean that my feelings will magically line up.

More often than not, they don’t.

Though my spirit knows the Truth, my soul is often having a fit.

So what do I do?

I learn to demarcate between spirit and soul.

Between what I know to be the Truth based on what God is saying v/s the feelings that I am currently having which are based on the facts of my temporal circumstances.

As believers in Christ, we are given authority by the Lord to challenge the facts of our current circumstances by declaring the Truth of what God is saying.

Therefore, it naturally follows that the temporary state of my temporal circumstances is just that – temporal. It is now in fact, subject to change according to the eternal, everlasting Truth of God’s Word that will not only come to pass, but will endure forever.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

(2 Corinthians 4:18)

So what I am getting at is this:

When we are willing to acknowledge our opinions and feelings for what they really are – just feelings and opinions – and readily exchange them with the Truth of what God says, then it is a sign that our soul is coming into alignment with God and is thus, being saved.

My soul says that this is how I am feeling _______________________________ .

But it is also willing to admit that these are just feelings, it is NOT Truth. Just because our feelings are real does not mean that they are right. They are after all, only feelings based on facts. But facts change because God moves in alignment with Truth, and eventually manifests it.

So even though I felt the giant was too big, I knew that it was no match for the bigness of my God. Even though I felt it was the end of everything, I knew that in the Kingdom, it was only a new beginning. Even though I felt abandoned and forsaken, I knew I was never alone for Jesus was with me every step of the way.

Feelings v/s Truth.

A divine demarcation.

So I am learning that the degree to which we are humble enough to admit that how we feel is not based on reality because reality is only determined by what our Holy God says,is the degree to which we will be able to trade them in for Truth and be healed, whole, saved, contented and at peace.

Coming out on the other side of the tunnel, I can attest to the fact that how we feel during a trial is often misleading. The only way through the valley of the shadow of death, is to hold on to the helm of His garment and fix our eyes on Jesus – the author and the perfector of our faith. As we humble ourselves under His mighty hand, He promises to take us by the hand and lead us forward, step-by-step, into His promise for our victory.

And as He does?

Our pit becomes our pulpit
Our test becomes our testimony
Our mess becomes our message
And our trial becomes our triumph!

So as I draw to a close, friend; I will leave you in the Presence of the Lord with one question:

What mountain are you needing Him to move on your behalf today? How can you learn to partner with Him as He unfolds your triumph?

Let me lead you into a prayer to get started.

“Dear Lord Jesus,

I thank You that because of Your finished work on the Cross on my behalf, I am now a partaker of Your Victory, on earth as it is in Heaven. I thank You that in the power of Your Name, the enemy is defeated and I am now seated at Your right hand in heavenly places.

I thank You that You are the Sovereign Lord with whom nothing is impossible. So I ask, Lord that You would help me walk in Your promised victory for my life in the context of the challenges that are confronting me in this present day, time and season of my life.

I invite You to enlighten the eyes of my understanding by Your Spirit so that I can learn to partner effectively with You. Teach me to embrace the process of growth that You have for me through this phase. I trust that because You are fighting for me, I can surrender all my anxiety for Your Perfect Peace.

I also ask for Your help with my emotions and feelings in the process, Lord. As You hold the outcomes of my life securely in Your Faithful Hands, I declare that I will trust that despite what I feel, the Truth is that You have the power to do what You promise. Help my feelings to slowly line up with the Truth of that which You have spoken concerning me as Your Beloved Child and grace me to whole-heartedly receive it.

I thank You that You will not only see me through, Lord but make me better as a result of walking this out by faith in You.
Honor and praise belong to You!

In Your most Holy Name,
I pray,
Amen.”

He fights for you, beloved.

Let Him ⚡

Your God loves you! And He is who fights for you! ⚘

Free Resource

Hi friends!

I am so delighted to share with you a FREE RESOURCE that I believe will be a sure blessing in your faith journey in Christ.

It is a tiny capsule of 32 wonderful, life-giving Biblical truths that convey the message of the infallibility of God’s promises, in direct co-relation to the perfection of His character which inadvertently assures us of the certainty of His ways.

There are 4 pages in all, and I have attached the image files here for you. The link is below, friends to enable print out for you to get your own personal copy. So I invite you to just dig in!

https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn:aaid:scds:US:1f830b25-4194-4e37-9a62-22d25ec5b9e6

I hope that it serves to bless you, and should you desire, stick it up on a wall or a journal. Give yourself permission to get creative with how it can serve as a daily reminder to you about the Truth that God is Faithful.

And if He said it, He will do it.

Let’s fight our battles well.

Hallelujah!

❤🤍

The Royal Art of Re-memberance

Friends, I made a journal for myself this year in April to record and remind myself of the promises that God has made concerning me and concerning those that I care about.

It is one of my absolute favorite things to dive into this journal from time-to-time to read, confess and release the power of God’s Word over my life.

Why do I do that?

Because like Mary in the Bible, the mother of Jesus, who pondered and treasured the words God had spoken about Jesus being the Saviour of the world, anointed and appointed, to take away the sin of humanity; I do believe that we too have the same privilege.

The same privilege to receive, believe and steward the Word of God so that it is the Lord’s narrative that we are intentionally choosing to partner with and eventually see made manifest in our midst.

So I felt it back then, friends.

I felt an urgency, an impulse, an unction of the Holy Spirit to make myself a journal that would allow me to organise all the wonderful, prophetic words that God has given me thus far, in one neat place. One click on Amazon got me this babe:

I think she is fearfully and wonderfully made!

Ok.

So my jouney with Jesus through this brand, new journal began. I divided it up into a couple of different sections and promptly began decreeing the Word of God over my life.

Happy to report that not only have I seen the Holy Spirit move and manifest God’s will time-after-time, but also that the Lord continues to add more and more promises to my bounty.

Pastor Bill Johnson often says that we attract what we value. The Bible puts it this way,

“For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him.”

(Matthew 13:12, NASB)

God here, I believe, is talking about the sheer value of stewarding the revelation of His Word. He guarantees, that should we commit to this process of discovering and consistently releasing the sound of His Word into the earth, it is sure to have a domino effect and reel in even more abundant revelation, simply because we show that we value the sanctity of what our Holy God has decreed.

Like rain drops filling up a bucket.

Or like the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being consistently and increasingly put together by the Hand of God.

That’s what the Promises of God do.

The promises of God can be likened to the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that God is putting together behind-the-scenes.

The things that most puzzle and confuse us are these ___________________________. Fill in the blanks, literally. Questions about our identity, our purpose, our destiny. Questions about our family, household and community. Questions about God’s plan for us, individually, corporately and globally.

But what if we learned to take these questions to God Himself, instead of trying to figure things out in our own limited strength, with our own limited wisdom and our own limited resources?

What if we stopped trying to simply ‘fix’ everything ourselves and dared instead to entrust our matters to The One who is sovereignly in control, confident in battle and more than capable of bringing resolution to the very things that confound us?

God truly is who He says He is, friends.

I have always, always witnessed that whenever I am challenged by a trying and impossible circumstance, God always, always shows up.

He may not do it the way I expect or would like for Him too, or even on my timeline. But I can testify that He always, always does show up and show off.

Imagine a scenario, friend where you find yourself in what appears to be a snow-covered wasteland. For as far as your eyes can see, the land looks completely barren and desolate. You are fully geared up for a trek, equipped for the harsh conditions in front of you. Donning a long, furry overcoat to keep you warm and gum boots to help you plough through; you are good to go.

Yet, you can’t.

You feel lost for direction.

Now imagine the same scenario through the lens of the pilot of a chopper overhead. He can see that if you only take a few steps forward, turn right and walk for about a mile, you will be warmly greeted by a kind and hospitable old, godly couple who even have a guest room to spare, warmly lit with an inviting fireplace and a steaming cup of hot chocolate milk.

The pilot of this chopper overhead has insight into things that are obscure to you because he has a higher vantage point.

Yet, you do have the option of connecting to him through your cell phone device. You can choose to pull it out from your pocket, press the right buttons and connect!

One call away.

That’s how I believe it works with God too. He has insight into the road and the route ahead that will be instrumental in paving the best way forward, but we have to be willing to connect to Him using the cell phone device called the Word of God.

For the Word of God is our GPS to help navigate life.

“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”

(Matthew 4:4)

Spending time in the Word and receiving His insight into the plans and purposes that He has for us is precisely how we trek through the snow-laden terrain of the broken pieces and parts of our lives.

All we are tempted to see and believe in the moment though, is that one piece of the jigsaw puzzlethat we find ourselves in the midst of. But God knows the whole picture!

And believe me, its a good one that He’s painting.

Things may look unanswered and incomplete to us in the natural, but we can take heart because we serve a supernatural kind of God.

“With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

(Matthew 19:26)

The God who knows the end from the beginning, already has the answers and the redemptive solutions our lives need. He reveals these hidden plans and purposes of His heart through a revelation of His Word by the Holy Spirit.

What He does require in the process is for us to put down the bricks of humility, vulnerability and complete dependency on The One who is perfectly faithful and absolutely trustworthy. The assurance of His Perfection is the fuel that empowers us to bring the broken pieces of our lives to Him so that He can begin to do what only and only He can do.

“Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’
says the LORD Almighty.”

(Zechariah 4:6)

The promise friends, on the other side of our obedience is, that God will raise up a wall with the modest bricks that we have put down so beautically and monumentally that it will not only leave us astonished, but even those that we care about.

The truth is that God is the Architect of our lives, friends. As He has taken the complete charge of bringing about the complete restoration of our lives, I like to call this a process of ‘re-membering,’ i.e, rearranging, reassembling and realigning the different parts and pieces of our lives into the Grand Masterpiece that He has in His heart and mind concerning us.

So as He ‘re-members’ the different parts and pieces of my life, I find it incredibly helpful to in turn, ‘remember’ the truth of that which He has spoken and decreed.

☆ The Book of Rememberance ☆

It can be a file, a folder, a journal, a diary because the goal is to have a place to document and rehearse Truth.

Friend, for the Lord to ‘re-member’ our lives, we must remember what He says.

The devil is a liar, and in the absence of Truth, it is easy to believe what the world says. It is easy to believe what the media says, the government, or even our family and friends. Therefore, I find it so vital to be intentional about my time in God’s Word so that I can literally dwell in the Truth that He has spoken over me, letting His narrative shape and frame my reality, and not a lesser word.

So simply put, The Book of Rememberance is a space friends, where we get to put down God’s dream for our lives, and through the power of a loving partnership together, watch Him make it a reality.

Activation:
Friend, I would like to invite you to ponder some questions with the Lord in your own, unique miracle-in-the-making story. Letting God come into every dark and obscure crook, cranny and crevice of our lives is key to a lifestyle of ongoing holistic healing and good success.

I’ve learnt this much, and I know its true.

Any part of our life that is kept from the Lord will become an open door for the enemy.

While there may be areas of your life that you perhaps don’t feel comfortable addressing with the Lord yet, I encourage you to start opening up bit-by-bit to the Goodness of God. He is good, He does good, and He works all things together for good.

So friend, consider asking yourself the following questions:

What has God spoken concerning me? What has He spoken concerning my health, my family and my calling?

If you feel unsure about these questions, it’s time to press in. Its time to pray and seek God to reveal His heart and mind concerning the things you care about. Its time to let go and let Him step into your life and do what He is best at – make all things new!

Your life is now His story.

Let Him make it a grand one.