My Child, come here.  I want to talk to you.  There are many things that concern your heart this very day.  I want your attention.  I want you to make eye contact with Me.  I want your heart and soul to understand My intentions for you.

The details of your life are always before Me.  The cries of your heart come to My ear always.  I am working on your behalf today.  I am shifting and creating on your behalf as you have cried out to Me many times.

Can you trust your Heavenly Father even before you see all the answers?  This is what brings Me pleasure in you.  That you would trust Me enough and understand My love for you enough, that you could find perfect peace in the storm.  This is the place I call you into.  To function so different from the world around you.  To be so nestled in My lovingkindness that you can always smile at your future.

Are you troubled?  Take My hand.  Let's talk about it and come to an understanding about my heart for you.  Your adversary is real.  His hateful attitude towards you is real.  His power is real.  But the Greater One lives in you.  I live in you.  I breathe in you.  Your adversary is not in you.  He can only come at you from the outside.

I am a wellspring within you.  I will gush forth out of you when you open up to my presence within you.  You have the total capacity to be a river to the desert around.  First to you, then through you I will flow!  As I touch you and fill you, there resides a call to feed others with what I have fed you with.

There will be difficulties that come and are allowed by My hand to touch you.  These come that you may learn of Me and how my love and strength and grace are accessed.  For as you tap into Me, you will have plenty for others whom I will bring your way.

The details of your life are always before Me.  Never believe that you are hidden from My sight.  For how could a mother forget her young??

Enter into that new dimension of trust with Me.  See My love showering down upon you--even as you sleep at night, it comes pouring down upon you.  As you minister to your family My love comes upon you to secure your foot.  As you leave your house, My atmosphere of love seeks to exuberate from you for all you will touch today.

Let's walk together more and more and enjoy a Holy union that will create a thirst in others to know Me like you know Me!!

(photo taken by Christy in CO)

"For thou art my lamp, O LORD:

and the LORD will lighten my darkness. 

For by thee I have run through a troop:

by my God have I leaped over a wall."

II Samuel 22:29,30

*****

God is my candle, my lamp and the only hope of seeing something in full truth.  But I must strike the match or flip the switch so that the light can come.  It may just be a still small voice whispering "trust Me".  It may just be a quiet inner voice that says, "Be still and know that I am God".  However He comes to me with light, I must position myself to hear.  I must unburden my soul with the baggage it carries and deafens me to His voice.  But when His light comes, I will be liberated from my fears and anxieties.  I will enter a level of peace that surpasses the need to understand.  I will encounter a supernatural power to prevail against my adversary.

What is "my darkness"?  What is it that God will "lighten"?  Darkness in the Hebrew is the word "choshek".  It means obscurity, secret place, night. 

You know the place.

That place no one else sees.  The place you find yourself in time and time again.  The place where God forms you and breaks you and makes you into His image.  The place of death to self.  The battleground for your soul.

The place where things can get a bit dim...maybe even downright confusing...a place of uncertainty...a sense of gloom or depression.  It's that place between the setting and rising of the sun.  You can't really see much.  You can't really understand it.

"and the LORD will lighten my darkness"

My LORD will lighten my darkness.  He might not completely take it away, but He will sure come in and help me to see more clearly.  He will help and assist me to get through it.

When the light comes in on my darkness, I am going to begin running instead of tripping and stumbling over everything! I am going to start running so fast and swiftly as an animal set free from the trap!

And the troops that were engaged in raiding me for plunder, ravaging me, roaming around me, attacking me...will suddenly be split in two as I run through them and disappear before their eyes!

The wall that was before me, blocking me, stopping me, hindering me.....will become a hurdle that runners love to leap over in the race!  It will no longer stop me from making progress.  I will jump over it as a deer that leaps over a hedge and keep running with my God!!

All because God has come to me and illuminated my darkness.  He has caused me to see things as they really are.  And how are they really?

He is with me.  He will never leave me or leave me without support.  He loves me.  He is leading in in triumph over my adversary. He is ready to empower me in any moment of time, so I can stand and not faint.

That's My God.

"And do not be conformed to this world,

but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

that you may prove

what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God."

Romans 12:2

**************

Do not harmonize with the world!!!  Do not act in accord with it's standards!!  Have no agreement with the way the world thinks!!  Be separate from the standards and mind sets that only bring sin and evil of every kind.

This is God's command to His church.

But don't only refuse harmony with the world...

BE TRANSFORMED

In other words, be in the process of change....be in the process of looking different than you did a year ago.  Enter into the life of Holy Spirit metamorphose.  The metamorphose of your nature and character.  If you are a healthy Christian, change is going to be a normal part of who you are.  Your power source is transferring from fleshly impulses over to the power of the Holy Spirit to think, act and breathe like God.

How will this be accomplished???

"...by the renewing of your mind."

The renovation of how you feel, judge, determine and understand.  "Extreme make over" was God's idea first.  When you are born again (accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior), you immediately enter the remodeling project of your life...literally.

God is all about loving you as you are, but He loves you so much that He will not leave you as you are.  You  have now given Him permission to lead you into a metamorphose of a lifetime.  He will take you and transform you from that worm of a sinner into the most beautiful free flying butterfly that will be a sight for all to see!

When He's finished with you, you will have become the best version of yourself possible!!

But that's not all.

According to Romans 12:2, as you are transformed, something will begin to happen inside you.  Your level of discernment is going increase.  You will be able to prove and examine things that were unclear to you before.  There will be a "sweeping away of the cob webs" in your mind.  You will understand more often than before, if something is genuine or fake, good or bad, true or false.

As you mature you will be able to understand the good will of God...the acceptable will of God and even the perfect will of God.

Thank you Lord for your word.  It instructs me and challenges me and it changes me.  Help me now to apply it to my heart and soul that I may continue this metamorphic journey.

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart
         And do not lean on your own understanding.

Proverbs 3:5

*******************

TRUST!!!

The word "trust" in the Hebrew is the word, "batach".  It means things like have confidence, be confident, be secure, be bold, feel safe, be careless.

Another thing I read is, "to throw one down on his back" or "to throw in the face".  

Picture this: 

All hell is breaking lose around me and I just lay down on my back and rest there, full of confidence in the Lord, because I have literally just spent time tossing my cares in His face.  He is now in charge and there's no care or worry of mine powerful enough to put a dent in my circumstances for change.  I have entered a level of trust that is supernatural and mind boggling to the natural way of thinking!!! 

This, my friend, is taking it to the next level.  It's a level that He calls each and everyone of us to walk in daily.  It can't be attained any other way than getting a fresh infusion of power straight from the throne room of Grace!

"...with all thine heart"

The word "heart" is the Hebrew word "leb".  This word denotes your thinking, reflections, memory, emotions, passions, courage, appetites, moral character, inclination, resolution and determination (of will)

That would pretty much describe our whole being wouldn't it?  In a nutshell God is commanding us to:

TRUST HIM WITH ALL

"And do not lean on your own understanding."

The contrast here is "trust in the Lord" or, "lean on your own understanding".  That's the choice we have been given.  Far too often we are bent on our own understanding of a situation/crisis. 

A true definition of leaning on our own understanding would be this: 

To calculate without God.

Our circumstances will always try and dictate opposing things before God.  You and I are the one who will determine the course.  You and I will be a major factor in how much glory God gets.  To not be moved when the storm is raging seems like an impossibility.  My friend, it is possible to get to the point of being moved only by the Spirit of God.  This is our call and this is our goal in every troubled water that we find ourselves in.

In my storm, I must find the Rock.  In my tribulation I must find the Shelter of the Most High and stay under Him.  When all hell is storming against my gates, I must become one with the Captain of the Host and meet the adversary with the Warrior Spirit that lives inside of me.  Until my final breath on this earth, there will always remain a reason to trust in the Lord with all my heart.  Every day on this earth, I will be tempted to reason with my own natural emotion and calculate without God.

This is the way I will grow and mature in God.  I must trust less and less my natural vision in exchange for the Holy eyesight of my Heavenly Father who loves me and calls me the Apple of His eye!  I must grow in intimacy with Him.  I must remove the garments of fear and receive His garments of glory and love as I tread upon my path to my eternal home.

******

Jesus, help me today.  Reveal to me, where I am leaning upon my own emotional, natural understanding.  Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.  I feel washed up on the beach, tired and worn out.  Tired of leaning on my own understanding of my circumstances.  Lies of the adversary swirl about my head.  Take me now, into Your shelter and tend to my aching heart.  Cover me in your garments of grace and glory.  Set me in a solid place.  Feed me at your table in the presence of my enemies.  I receive Heaven's fresh provisions today.  In Jesus' Name....AMEN.

Hebrew words found: http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html

If there ever was a time for you to draw close to Me, it's right now.  Forget what you may or may not have been doing in previous days and turn towards Heaven now.  My love reaches towards your weary brow and it beckons you to release your baggage....let go.  How long will you strive and struggle in your own little world of thought and care?

The swirling events of your life will continue to take your breath away outside of my shelter.  In my shelter there is peace to confront confusion and faith to combat fear.  There is power to face weakness under My wing.  Winds will continue to blow.  Trouble will continue to threaten and turbulence will always move towards you.  This world offers nothing less.  But there's a world within this world that I invite you into.  The world of heaven...yes unseen by the natural eye, but more real that what you are seeing with your physical eye.

To live according to the heavenly realm is what I'm asking of you.  To be in, but not of, this world is your key to getting through.  Cross over my beloved and see as I see.  Think as I think.  Feel as I feel.  This is what will take you forward in victory. 

How often I grieve that my children have not tapped into My atmosphere.  It's so close, yet they choose the atmosphere of this world to control and lead them.  Few have really tapped into all that I provide for your earthly journey.

Come, pilgrim....come weary traveler...join Me over here where I am....often and forever stay with Me and let me help you in your passage to your Heavenly home.  Life can be much different for you as you walk in step with My Spirit.....more....and more....and more.

How...you ask?  By talking to Me like the constant companion that I really am and listening to me as one who is traveling with you.  Changing your mindset of aloneness.  Singing to Me from your heart and fellowshipping with Me....I will even sing and dance over you as we travel together.  Become one with Me....become rooted and grounded in My love for you....and as My love takes over your heart, the fears will have to bow down to faith as it rises upon your heart.  And My kisses upon your face will be like a fresh injection of life and love for you to spill out upon those you touch!