Being tailor-made (continued)

Previously I wrote a post about being tailor-made, but I still feel like there is so much in my heart relating to the subject, so I have decided to elaborate bit on the growing process.

I feel that sometimes God needs to break us a bit in order for Him to put us back together again. It is not a process that we should be scared of, but it can be painful at times. As I mentioned in my previous post, we grow into our spiritual skin over the years and sometimes God needs to alter our understanding or beliefs, because they were formed by tradition or culture and not by Him. So sometimes we need to be broken in order for God to sift through the pieces. Like when making a quilt, He selects the correct pieces (revelations and truth) and discards the incorrect pieces (understanding formed by culture) and weaves together a new skin for us to grow into.

As you can imagine, being broken is a very vulnerable process. It might feel like everything is stripped away and you can't figure out what is new and what is old, what is truth and what is a lie. As I have mentioned before, it is a process. Don't try and do too much, too fast. Give yourself time to adjust to your new understanding and thinking patterns and embrace this time to rest in them. In times of confusion, don't try and figure things out with theological discussions, rather focus on the revelations and truth which you do know and which God has given you. Focus on the basics. God is love. No one can argue with that one. ;) know that God is in control of the entire process and He will complete it. God never forms anything that is not good and thus you can be sure that all things will work together for your good and according to His purpose. You are safe in His hands. Listen for His voice and follow His lead boldly.

Picture credit: Strawberry threads

Being tailor-made

Sometimes explaining an abstract concept can by quite tricky, so I'll start with an illustration. Our skin stretched with us as we grew from children into adults. Spiritual growth on the other hand is a little different in my experience. It is almost as if your spiritual skin doesn't stretch and as you can imagine, this could be problematic when growth occurs. You would literally have to grow out of your skin and in my experience this is how it feels.

Your spiritual skin is made up of your revelations, beliefs and understanding of God and His word and these shape and grow constantly as we grow closer to God. We go through different stages, sometimes we are comfortable with what we understand and believe and sometimes we feel challenged by God or others. We need to be challenged, because there is no growth without challenge.

When we feel comfortable with our revelations, beliefs and understanding of God, we feel comfortable in our spiritual skin and super confident, but when God starts challenging our understanding or increasing our revelations, we become uncomfortable. Something needs to give way, somewhere the skin needs to tear and new skin (new revelation) needs to grow, and sometimes old skin (incorrect understanding) needs to be cut out and thrown away. The only way that this can occur is when we tear the skin and make the adjustment. This process can be confusing and vulnerable. We all like feeling confident, but when we have a tear in our skin and a new revelation needs to grow, we might feel vulnerable in certain spots and maybe a bit unconfident and not so sure of ourselves.

But not to worry, as we grow into the new skin our confidence will grow again and our new revelations will inspire us forward. The old skin being cut away will allow space for God to pour new understanding into our hearts.

It reminds me of this verse: "Neither is new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst and the wine is spilled and the skins are destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17 ESV)

Never become an old wineskin, God cannot put new understanding into old thinking, it will be too much for you to handle. We must rather keep our wineskins fresh, flexible, ready to be tailored and ready to grow. If you find yourself in the middle of a growth spurt, take heart, even though it feels like you are moving backwards, you are in actual fact moving forwards. God is taking you from glory to glory as He tailors you to receive more of His wonderful love and wisdom.

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An overflow of love!

Today I just want to share about how amazing God is! I just feel such an overflow in my heart as I feel Him loving me and see Him loving people around me. I have noticed how it’s the people who don’t realise that He loves them so deeply, the people who feel disconnected from Him or the people that are so flustered in life that He just surprises with His love. It’s so amazing. He is so good and there is no requirement to receive His love. You might think this is ridiculous, but 8 weeks ago I stuck a note on my door saying God loves me and I’ve made a point to think about it more and more during the day. I truly believe that our revelation of His love for us cannot be too big! He loves us more than we can ever imagine!

The problem comes in that it’s often so hard for us to believe it, even a little bit. The lies in our minds also don’t help as they constantly remind us of how we fall short and try to convince us that we are doing something wrong. The truth is that we really do fall short. “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3:23 BUT “God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8

So yes, we do fall short as we all have sinned in our lives, but because of Christ’s love for us that sin cannot hold us back from God, it cannot separate us from God’s love for us and it cannot be used as an excuse to not receive God’s love. Nothing we can do can stop His love. Sin is powerless. His love is available to us, we just need to believe it. I have started making a habit of quieting the voices in my head. When they come against His love and try to make me feel guilty and condemned, I actually tell them to shut up! And I can honestly say that the less I listen to them, the quieter they have become.

When we believe in His love, it empowers us, it gives us confidence, because it teaches us who we are and that the God of the universe and our best friend is standing right beside us.

I doesn’t matter what you are going through in your life, God loves you and He is with you. Nothing you can do can scare Him away! He is the God of compassion and He doesn’t want anyone to be excluded, not one single person. Jesus didn’t die for some, He died for all and as He showed this love to us, so we should be the conduit of His love to the world. You will be amazed how He will start loving people through you if you allow Him to.

Maybe you feel like your rivers of living water have dried up? Do not worry or be anxious He has more than enough! Everything that you need is in Him. Sit with Him today and fill up until you overflow with His love.

“We love because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19

Picture credit: Daylightstarlight

Are you believing the lies?

If there’s one thing that I really do not like, it’s a lie. The Bible says this of the devil: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” John 8:44

The devil has no power over us except when we give him power. When he lies and we believe him, we allow his words to influence our lives. I have noticed over the years how easy it is to fall for his lies. Some lies are recent and some lies date back many years and by believing them, we have carried them into our futures. These can be lies which people have told you or just lies which you started believing due to your experiences.

I wasn’t an extremely vibrant and talkative person before I met Jesus, but soon after meeting Him I started talking more and more, often very passionately as my encounter with God was so life changing. The devil started telling me that I talk too much and that people are thinking that I am a “know it all” and an irritation. For a girl who has never been the “centre of attention” type of person, this quickly made me withdraw. The more I spoke, the more I felt that I was being an irritation to people. But 6 months after meeting God, I told a friend that I think it’s so amazing that we all want to preach for Jesus and encourage people. She quickly commented that she doesn’t want to preach at all, but rather wants to work in orphanages in Africa. As I asked around I quickly realised that I’m the only one of my friends who wants to preach and I realised that God put this dream on my heart and it’s been on my heart ever since.

I realised that day that the lies that the devil brings are intended to keep us from reaching the destinies that God has for us and suddenly the voice telling me to keep quiet disappeared. As soon as a lie is exposed, it loses its power and Satan knew that by preaching the truth, I was exposing his lies. Since then I have identified many other lies in my life. Many years before I met God and some years after I used to think that I am a burden to people and this stopped me from meeting and encouraging new people and being involved. It seems so ridiculous when I look back at it now, but in those times the lie was very real to me and it stopped me from approaching the people God wanted me to help.

Lies are specifically aimed at distracting us from our destinies and Satan knows that when his lies are exposed, you will move forward with God in the plans which He has for you. For example, if he’s telling you that you are a lazy person, then you probably have an amazing ability to manage and organise. If he’s telling you that you have an inability to love, then you have an amazing undiscovered heart of compassion. If he’s telling you that you are not worthy, then you probably have an amazing gift of confidence to encourage others. If he’s telling you that you are broken, then you have an amazing capacity to love and give and so the list goes on.

Where in your life is Satan lying to you? Where is he keeping you from the plans that God has for you? The Bible says that as a man thinks, so he is. Try to identify the discouraging and fearful thoughts which you hear throughout a day and start fighting those thoughts with the truth. Maybe have a discussion with God or a friend that you trust and feel safe with and share your apparent flaws and fears with them. You might be surprised at how quickly they will tell you that what you believe about yourself is not true.

Begin to see yourself as God sees you and become free to be everything He has made you to be. Don't be blinded by the lies and don’t let anything or anyone’s opinion hold you back. Pick up the Bible, ask God and get a second opinion about yourself.  

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” 2 Cor 5:17

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” Phil 1:6

“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” Rom 8:37

Photo credit: vi.sualize.us

Never be afraid to change

Photo credit: favim

Tonight I have a simple, but truthful message on my heart. “Never be afraid to change.” God never changes, He was, is and will always be the same, but we need to constantly renew our minds. Our greatest enemy is our minds. We think we know everything, we understand everything and can anticipate things. Logically this actually doesn’t make sense, because 100 years ago people also thought that they were intelligent and on the forefront of technology, but now we look back and everything seems to be so primitive back then.

It doesn’t take much to remember the transition from record player to video tape to CD to DVD, everything is getting smaller and faster and wireless and and and we still think we are so intelligent! But in 100 years people will probably look back and think we were pretty primitive. The same with the universe, the further we travel, the more we realise that we are smaller than we think and the universe is larger than we thought. Our galaxy is a galaxy in a galaxy, but is there an end to the universe? Is it round? Ha ha, some random thoughts that fill my (very not scientist) mind at this moment. I’m sure there are people working on these things. ;)

Why do we think that we are so intelligent and that we have all the answers? And when we have no answer, we make an answer to fit a theory, so we can say that we have some idea and therefore we are intelligent. But just to be proven wrong a few years or decades from now and then we call it a new scientific breakthrough. It’s funny how we just assume that we are right. I like science and I think scientific breakthroughs are amazing, but at some point we need to realise that every generation needed to change to adapt to the next generation. In the way they think, dress, communicate, travel, live life etc.

My point is this: we cannot assume that we know everything about God. We cannot just read books with people’s opinions from years and years ago and take that information above the voice of God. Each one of us needs to have our own revelation of who God is and allow Him to teach us. What else is the point of having a God who speaks? It is too easy to just listen to a pastor or read a book. How do you know that they tell you the pure truth? What if they genuinely don’t know that they have a skewed or limited view of Jesus? How do you know that you are interpreting the Bible correctly?

I know that these are all scary questions and I don’t want you to panic, I’m not against church or books, but I do want you to think... Do I know what Jesus says on a topic or did I get it in a book or from a person? Is it your own revelation or second hand information? God loves to speak to His children and nothing is as precious as hearing His voice. Do not substitute His voice for anything. Do not be afraid to be led by His voice, even if it means that you have to change. God is a good God and He knows what is best for you. He will always lead you in peace. If you desire to know the truth on a certain topic, he will open your eyes, only be ready to believe, receive and follow Him.

This post is not about being right, it’s about knowing the truth. The bible says that the truth sets us free and when we live in the truth we will be able to show Jesus to people in a more real and accurate way. Religious thinking is acting on knowledge without having had a heart revelation and is a very dangerous thing as not all knowledge is correct and from God and not all knowledge will bring you revelation. This can lead you to wrongly make people feel condemned or judged. We should rather love all people in the seasons that they are in and walk patiently and graciously with one another in love, encouraging them to seek God’s wisdom and hear His voice. God is the one who brings change, we can only be willing.

“Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.”” Matt 13:14

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”” John 8:31-32

Thank you so much for reading my blog, it truly is a pleasure to write and a delight to read your comments. After chatting to the Holy Spirit last night, I feel that I should commit to writing around 2 posts per week instead of 5 and use the additional time to talk to God and to enjoy His presence. I trust that my posts will be more Spirit filled and encouraging as He takes me to new heights. Be incredibly blessed on your journey with God. He has great plans for you! :)