I Didn’t Do It My Way

Daily writing prompt

What sacrifices have you made in life?

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I am strong willed. I want to do things my way. I also have always had a stubborn conscience that has frequently contended with my will. When my will and my conscience have conflicted, I have strived to overcome the way of my will and obey the will of my conscience. Like any human being, I haven’t always succeeded, and my will has overcome my conscience (sometimes frequently), but never without a fight.

When I did violate my conscience, I sacrificed the comfort of lying to myself and saying that my rebellious thoughts, words, and deeds were good things. I admitted to myself and to other people that I was doing wrong and accepted the guilt that came with it. Then one day I found forgiveness through Jesus Christ, and I sacrificed my will to follow Him. I began to frequently pray a very frightening prayer: “Jesus, do whatever you need to do to me to be able to do what you want to do through me.”

He has answered that prayer. Jesus has miraculously let many doors close in my life that I have greatly wanted to go through. That has left me broken, disappointed, and humbled. In my brokenness I have cried out desperately for His presence, His comfort, and His inner healing. Christ has responded in such a way as to fil me with “peace that passes understanding” and “joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Now when I look back at the closed doors in my life, I am greatly grateful to Jesus because had those doors not been closed, I would have missed out on the beautiful intimacy with Christ that they drove me to and on the many incredible alternative blessings that came my way.

Through all the sacrifices, I’ve learned to trust in Jesus and He has never let me down. I woke up this morning with this short poem forming in my heart. It tells my story.

When a human heart
Is kept in tune with Christ
Life is a symphony
Of inner harmony
And never-ending hope.

After writing this post, my wife and I took communion together. As we did, I felt prompted to break the small wafer before I ate it. I felt like the Lord was telling me that to truly take the Lord’s Supper is to be so personally aware of the brokenness of Christ on the Cross that I can receive and embrace His brokenness with my own brokenness.

Immediately after eating the wafer and drinking the juice, I looked up and saw a big redheaded woodpecker pecking near the top of a four-story-tall dead tree trunk. It seemed like a sign. Its head covered with red reminded me that I need to have my mind continually renewed by the blood of Jesus. I need Christ’s perspective so I can die to my own desires, opinions, and perspective.

When I embrace the brokenness in my life and persistently knock on Heaven’s door like the woodpecker, the dead wood of the Cross sustains and shelters me. It’s not just a religious symbol. It’s a demonstration of Christ’s willingness to be meek and lowly in heart so that He can carry my brokenness. When I let His Cross connect with the brokenness in my heart I experience the miraculous power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death.” (Philippians 3:10.) Then His life (“Christ in you, the hope of glory,”) surges through me like rivers of living water!

I Wear Depth of Insight From Many Years Ago

Daily writing prompt

What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?

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Depth of insight looks for more than rational analysis and intellectual comprehension. It looks beyond the collecting, processing, and categorizing of information. It sees and experiences life directly with and through the heart.

Depth of insight is never satisfied with mere information about God. It hungers and thirsts for direct, ongoing, and heart-to-heart interaction with Him.

Insight is revelational and experiential. It isn’t analytical. It consists of flashes of awareness that burst on the consciousness and take it over with a fresh, life-altering, and unending way of seeing. Knowledge can come by study and human effort, but depth of insight must come directly from the living God. “This was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in Heaven.”

Depth of insight caused Isaiah to say: “I am undone because I am a man of unclean lips.” It caused Paul to say, “O wretched man that I am.” It caused Peter to say: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” It has caused untold multitudes of Christ-followers throughout the centuries to joyfully surrender their all to the risen Jesus even unto death.

Unity in the body of Christ comes from depth of insight, not from theological analysis, doctrinal agreement, organizational systems, or religious programming. When two or more Christ-followers are undone in the presence of the Lord together, when their will, their desires, their pride, and their opinions are melted away by the radiant love and overwhelming presence of Jesus, they are one in the Spirit and connected heart to heart to the risen Jesus Christ and to each other.

Depth of insight is the norm for Christianity. It should have never been confined to rare occurrences and once-in-a-life-time-experiences. We can live in moment-by-moment revelation from God. In fact, we are called to that. That’s why we have been given the gifts of the Spirit. That’s why Christ lives in us. That’s why we have the day-by-day hope of glory! That’s why Jesus said: “I am with you always.” Step into the depth of insight. “Behold the Lamb of God,” throughout each day, all day long.

“Look unto Jesus the author and finisher of your faith.” Don’t just be content to study and analyze Him and to listen to sermons about Him. “Come boldly before the throne of grace,” and surrender your all to Him. Every time you stray from the conscious awareness of His presence, immediately refocus your heart on His living presence with reckless abandonment to His sovereignty and Lordship over your whole life.

Replace your play list with Jesus. Listen to Him day and night. “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight.” –Philippians 1:9.

I want to
Bow my knees 
And be moved
By God's Spirit 
The way that trees 
Bend and move 
With the breeze.

I’m Being Led to be a Follower

Daily writing prompt

Are you a leader or a follower?

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I’m a low-keyed leader. I try to lead from the side, not from the front. I try to lead by being an equal with everyone. I feel no need to pull rank, use human authority, or strong arm anyone. I believe that God’s Spirit leads me to lead by being a radical follower of the risen Jesus and seeking to demonstrate His love, truth, and presence through my life.

The Holy Spirit wants to develop all Christ-followers to be mature servant/leaders. When the body of Christ is mature every member does the work of the ministry in love and unity under the Headship of Jesus as each person is prompted by the Holy Spirit. A plurality of mature believers trains all the members of the body to listen to and obey God’s Spirit. They humbly oversee and lovingly monitor assemblies of the saints so they can gently redirect any member who speaks or acts contrary to the Spirit.

Then the body of Christ can build itself up in love, unity, and “the knowledge of the Son of God” as “each part (member) does its work” so the whole body can grow under the direct and literal Headship and control of the living, resurrected Jesus Christ and demonstrate to one another and to the world “the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” God has provided gifts so that all the members of the body of Christ can be trained to do the ministry and fulfill the 50+ New Testament “one another commands” as they are prompted by the Headship of Jesus leading through the Holy Spirit.

O for the day when contemporary Christians “will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” O that the body of Christ in our time would grow into such maturity that every believer would be trained, encouraged, empowered, and allowed to speak the truth in love as led by the Spirit when we gather in Christ’s name.

We live in the daze of deception. Personal feelings and desires have trumped discernment and trampled truth. How we need to listen to, obey, and follow the direct, personal leadership of the risen Jesus. Open the floodgates of your heart and let the cleansing river of God’s Spirit freely flow from within you.

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The Source of my 5 Favorite Fruits

Daily writing prompt

List your top 5 favorite fruits.

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My five favorite fruits are: love, joy, peace, kindness, and self-control. The source that causes those fruits to grow, ripen, and flourish in a human being is the Spirit of the living God. The Bible calls them “the fruit of the Spirit.” There are four more: patience, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness.

Why don’t we live in a world full of those fruits? It is because that sin has severed people’s connection with the Spirit of the loving, holy God and turned humans into dead men walking–empty shells who reject God’s way, abandon the truth, and are lifeless inside. God longs for all people to come to life in His presence and to experience the beauty of His reality and the fruit of His Spirit, day and night.

Because of His great love and grace for people, God who raised Jesus from the dead shines His resurrection power into the death cold hardness of the human heart. He calls and knocks to enter in and as many as receive Him and follow His Spirit become life-filled children of God. They live by the faith of the Son of God as the risen Jesus lives in and through them and seats them in the supernatural dimensions of the heavenly realms so they can be living demonstrations of His grace and kindness on earth as it is in Heaven, not in theological theory but in day-to-day reality.

Born again Christ-followers have been rescued from spiritual death so they can continually surrender the control of their mind, will, desires, and emotions to the risen Lord Jesus Christ and manifest His presence and the fruit of His Spirit on earth as people who are seated in Heaven. The world desperately needs all born again Christ-followers to courageously, boldly, lovingly, and humbly shine His light by submitting to and obeying the inner promptings of His Spirit.

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Religious Boxes and Dry Pipes

Jesus is more real than the device you’re reading this on. What you are now seeing on this screen will soon be gone but Jesus will never pass away. Download Christ’s operating system into your heart and let Him provide the programming that runs within you day and night.

The Sunday morning religious box tries to contain Jesus under its control. Worship, listen to, and obey the risen Jesus outside of the Sunday morning religious box.

True Christianity is intuitional not institutional. It’s built on direct personal revelation from the living God, not on human organization. Let the risen Jesus out of the religious box and you’ll be amazed at what He does in and through you.

Religious people had Jesus killed. They didn’t want divine revelation or heart-to-heart relationship with God. They just wanted to protect and preserve their rituals.

Christianity has built religious organizations called churches, but they are too often dry like this pipe and Christ’s living water has to find a way to flow outside of their control like the water flowing beneath the pipe.

Keeping Jesus
In a church box
Too often blocks
Him from real life.

Jesus wants to
Live and reside
And work inside
Of your heart, 
Not be stuffed inside
A Sunday church box.

Open Up to Agape

Daily writing prompt

What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

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Every day
I can open up
To agape.

When Christ came to pay
The price for my sin,
That was agape.

When Jesus calls me
To follow and obey
Him throughout the day,
That is agape.

Every time I pray
And God fills me
With His joy,
That’s agape.

When Jesus molds me
Like a potter
Working with his clay,
That is agape.

Every time I see
An inner ray
Of God’s bright light,
That’s agape.

Every time Christ calls me
To come back to Him
When I stray away,
That is agape.

I long to be able
To constantly convey
To hurting people
The love called agape!

If your skies are gray
And you feel dismay
Open your heart
To God’s agape.

The Invisible Man Who Changed My Life

Daily writing prompt

Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

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I didn’t see him with my eyes, but although he was invisible to me, he changed my life. In an instant everything shifted within me and my whole life seemed different. I’ve never been the same since the moment I first encountered his presence. I’ve spent the rest of my life seeking to align my mind to the mind of Christ.

Ever since then I have wanted to capitalize the pronouns that I use to refer to Him because I believe that although He is fully human, He is more than a man. I believe that Jesus Christ is also fully God and that He is present and active in human beings today through the Holy Spirit. I know that because He is always working inside of me, and because I frequently see Him working in and through other people.

The Bible says: “We have the mind of Christ.” When Christ-followers literally align their mind with Christ’s, they begin to spontaneously overflow with His thoughts and insights.

To align your mind with Christ requires childlike trust and innocent spontaneity. Then you can learn to freely flow with His Spirit as He actively lives and works within you to continually lead and direct you to His “joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Renew your mind by aligning it with Christ’s throughout each day. Then the fruit of His Spirit will ever flow through your consciousness, and He will empower you to show His presence and reality to those around you as you supernaturally demonstrate His words that are called the “Beatitudes.” (Run a quick search for them.)

When Christ-followers are encouraged to freely flow with and obey God’s Spirit, Jesus builds His ekklesia for all to see! Then Christ shines through His followers like the sun.

Inner Freedom!

Daily writing prompt

What does freedom mean to you?

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Without inner freedom–freedom from the dominion of our own desire and self-will–we humans are still in bondage no matter how much we pridefully proclaim and celebrate our liberty. People like to use outward freedom as an excuse to justify their inner bondage but there’s no real freedom without inner freedom.

True freedom is freedom from mental and emotional torment and oppression. Without inner freedom we human beings are only pretending to be free. Until we find freedom within, outward freedom will only be superficial. No Bill of Rights can give people inner freedom. They have to find that for themselves.

The key to inner freedom is to be in Christ. To be in Christ is to no longer live by your will and desires. It is to align and surrender your will and desires to His–to go wherever He takes you–to live moment by moment in obedience to and reliance on Him. It is to be crucified with Christ–to be dead to your own will and desires. To be in Christ is to be resurrected, inhabited, and led by His presence.

The more you align your will and desires with Jesus the more you will see His power flowing in and through you. The more you are in Christ, the more you will hear His voice. You can hear Him. Listen closely throughout each day.

When you’re feeling encouraged for no reason, you’re hearing Jesus. Listen to Him. When you’re feeling forgiven and you know you don’t deserve it, you’re hearing Jesus.

When you’re experiencing inner peace in the middle of one of life’s storms, you’re hearing Jesus. When you’re experiencing joy while your heart is breaking, you’re hearing Jesus.

When you’re feeling patient in the middle of a major delay, you’re hearing Jesus. When you’re feeling kind in a hostile environment, you’re hearing Jesus.

When you’re empowered to do good when you want to be bad, you’re hearing Jesus. When you’re being faithful when you want to quit, you’re hearing Jesus.

When you’re being gentle when you want to lash out, you’re hearing Jesus. When you’re keeping yourself under control when you want to lose it, you’re hearing Jesus. Always listen for His voice.

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I disagree with almost all public figures.

Daily writing prompt

What public figure do you disagree with the most?

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We live in an age in the Western world where public figures encourage us to pursue pleasure, desires, comfort, and government support for our desires. I believe that is a deceptive and dangerous focus, so I disagree with almost all public figures.

A focus on the satisfaction of personal desires reveals the insight that our human desires are never fully satisfied. Pursuing their fulfilment is a lifelong treadmill. True fulfillment comes when we get off of the treadmill and search for inner peace instead of desire-fulfillment.

Human beings are made in the image of God, but rebellion, pleasure-seeking, and domination by self-focused desire has separated us from the presence and character of God to the point that we have become a faded, cracked, and contorted copy of a photograph of God. We have abandoned the continual cultivation of heart-connection with God for lesser pursuits that entangle and entrap us in self-deceptive pleasures and in tormenting thoughts.

In your finer and nobler moments, notice the remnants of God’s image (His still small voice) stirring in your heart and calling you to return to, surrender to, and daily live in obedience to His presence. Through the blood of Jesus Christ, God has made a way for you to leave your prison of guilt and shame behind and be reconciled to ongoing loving intimacy with Him.

The burnt embers of the image of God in you can become “Christ in you, the hope of glory,”–God’s eternal flame in your heart. Shift your pursuit of pleasure to the pursuit of Christ’s presence. Exchange your domination by desires (the dominion of darkness) for the kingdom of God, the full and complete dominion of the risen Jesus within and through your heart. Be reconciled to God and demonstrate that reconciliation in what you say, think, and do. Be a living demonstration to other people that they, too, can be joyously reconciled to God.

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My career plan is write away (to where the words go).

Daily writing prompt

What is your career plan?

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My career plan is to write away every day and see where the words take me. I try to take off my hard hat, loosen up my stiff neck, set aside my analysis, and listen to the still small voice within me. So, let’s see where the words go today.

Uplifting words
Begin to flow
And within me grow
But I don’t know
Where they are
About to go
Until they show
The truth they tow.
They seem to blow
Into my heart
And then they start
To assemble
Themselves together.
So, I lie low
And listen
Through God’s window
In my soul.

Christ gives me
New desires.
He inspires
Me to do
As God requires.
Christ takes His plyers
And He rewires
My identity
So my heart
Never tires
Of the warmth
Of His fire’s
Pure glowing
Within me.

Let your heart be a sail
That always flows
With the wind
Of God’s Spirit
And always goes
Where He leads.

It’s easy to
Stare at your phone
And scroll on and on
As if you were
A mindless drone.

It’s easy to
Sit in a church
With your hard hat on
And listen to words
That can seem to drone
On and on.

It’s never easy
To make the choice
To crash the drone,
Get off the phone,
And listen to God’s voice
Until you discover
That your heart was made
To always rejoice
In the Spirit
Of the Lord.

I like people
Who are
Different than me.
They give me
Another perspective
To see.
Love doesn’t
Have to stop
When we disagree.

Two weeks ago, on a trip to southern Italy, I saw a woman from Sierra Leone selling trinkets on the street. She was mostly being ignored so I approached her. She didn’t speak English, so I asked if she spoke Spanish. She responded that she did, and we had a delightful conversation and connected heart-to-heart. Afterwards she gave me a tiny bracelet as narrow as a string and I put it in my wallet. Just now as I looked down, I noticed the outline of a cross on the back of my wallet, I realized that it was the string bracelet she gave me. I picked up my wallet and the way the light hit it the cross turned into the number 8 (which stands for new beginning) and then into a butterfly (which represents new life). God speaks through the humblest people and the simplest things.

Sometimes we search so hard for miracles that we overlook the simple supernatural of God’s still small voice. Look and see! Open your heart and mind to SI (Supernatural Intelligence) — direct personal revelation from God.

If you compare your custom-made life to other people’s life it will make it look like a hand-me-down. Your life is beyond compare!

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