From my Heart

Confidence.  Do you have it?  Are you confident in Jesus?  Do you really believe, really trust?

"So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded."  Hebrews 10:35

Life comes at us hard and the blows hit exactly where they were meant to.  The arrows of the hateful one hit their mark.  Make no mistake about that.  The one who comes against us is good at his game.  Are you?  Are you equipped?  Are you masterful at your game?  We heard some truthful words this weekend.  And they too found their mark, they too accomplished the purpose for which they were sent.  Will you let them in?  Will you hold them close and brand them on your heart and in your mind?  Will you turn your face away from (close your ears to) the one who screams and dare to look to the One who loves?  Who whispers?  Who spreads light and make the darkness vanish?  Will you let go of the bar that is titled comfort zone?  Can you love enough to let go of the things that hurt.  It takes choice, courage, action, faith to let go of the things that have gripped us so tightly.  As painful as those things are, they are known and common and even comfortable and expected.  

Funny, we identify with what is known, like pain or failure.  We fully understand pain even make room for it, lay down with it, make excuses for it - but love.  Do we dare to love?  Really love.  To step out of that comfortable place, for the child Jesus died to save, do we fear rejection by the ones we want to help?  Or do we shy away because they are so different from us.  Uncomfortable with their sin?   That's right, I said uncomfortable with their sin!  With our God given Spiritual eyes we can sometimes see their sin but do we become blind to our own.  Without drinking deeply from the Word of Truth we become blind to the love that Jesus died to give us, the love that God commands us to have for one another, the love that sets us free. 

The words from the song Hope Now sung by Addison Road, written by Ryan Gregg.

If everything comes down to love

Then just what am I afraid of?

When I call out Your name

Something inside awakes in my soul

How quickly I forget I'm yours

I'm not my own

I've been carried by you 

All my life

Everything rides on hope now

Everything rides on faith somehow

When the world has broken me down 

Your love sets me free.

 And you have been set free!

That freedom came with a price, freely given while we still hated and didn't know love.  One of my favorite verses - 1John 4:19 We love because he first loved us.  So simple but so true.  We cannot love without the One whose Word is Truth branded on and hidden in our hearts, transforming and renewing our mind, setting us free to love and accept the pain that can sometimes come from loving deeply.   

Understand this:  There is no other like Him.  He is the King of Kings, the Beginning and the End, the One who was and is and is to come.  He is the One who dwells in unapproachable light, the Glorious One.  And know this:  God will not be tolerated.  He instructs us to worship and fear Him; to know Him is to know His Word and obey. (excerpt from the book "Crazy Love" by Francis Chan)

God Bless you sisters.  I pray that as you go about your week that you look to the One who loves you and worship at the feet that created all that you love.  Amen.