Growing in Spirit and Truth

Last week of 2010.... Christmas is over as far as the cooking, presents, and all the hustle and bustle. It was exciting, exhausting and full of laughter and love!! I find myself not wanting to let go of the feeling I have at Christmas. I don't mind letting go all the hustle and bustle but I want to hang on to the laughter and love. The closeness in hearts families seem to have at this time of year is amazing. Sitting here, realizing it is the last week of this year! I know, I don't have to end the year or begin a new year without laughter, love and closeness of heart. All of this can be just a fleeting feeling or it can be a knowing. When I say a knowing, I'm talking about true laughter, love and closeness in heart. The Joy we have at Christmas is with us always, even when the feelings seem to fade. It's the "Joy of the Lord". "His name is Emmanuel" "God with us" His presence is always here...not just at Christmas. I want to end m...

Good morning!! The title to this post comes from Mark 5:36. God is teaching me about fear and it's destruction. It blocks the faith of God in our lives. Fear gives Satan access to our lives. He knows if he can get us to act on fear, it will stop faith. This morning, I heard from within...."you cannot use faith as a band aid to cover up fear and expect answers" We are told...."do not fear".....this doesn't mean cover it up, pretend it isn't there, or try to have faith, thinking it will stop fear or even thinking its ok to fear. NO! No! No! We must refuse it's right to any part of us. We cannot walk in faith until we walk away from fear and we cannot walk away from fear until we choose to submit to God's Word and believe, no matter what. If we don't choose to submit to God and His Word, we will be submitting to Satan by default. No decision is a decision. By submitting to the Word of God, His Holy Spirit will lead us into "...

"If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (Romans 5:10) This is today's reading from "My Utmost for His Highest" by Oswald Chambers I am not saved by believing---I simply realize I am saved by believing. And it is not repentance that saves me---repentance is only the sign that I realize what God has done through Christ Jesus. The danger here is putting the emphasis on the effect, instead of on the cause. Is it my obedience, consecration, and dedication that make me right with God? It is never that! I am made right with God because, prior to all of that, Christ died. When I turn to God and by belief accept what God reveals, the miraculous atonement by the Cross of Christ instantly places me into a right relationship with God. And as a result of the supernatural miracle of God's grace I stand justified, not because I am sorry for my sin, or because I ha...

Here are my morning thoughts. I don't always write my thoughts down but I believe we should. Especially when we are praying and seeking God. It is at this time we are most sensitive to the Holy Spirit and His Word. I was praying and I told God, I wanted to glorify Him with my life. I have prayed this many times before but this morning, I was corrected. I heard, not out loud but within, you cannot glorify Me with your life. And then, I heard..... "But My life can be glorified in you".... This was like a flood light to me!!! All of a sudden, scriptures began coming to mind. Each one with a new light for me. John 9:3 - Jesus answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." John 11:4 - When Jesus heard that, He said, "This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby." John 11:40 - Jesus saith unto her, "Said I not ...

Here is a scripture that we all know: 3 John, verse 2.."Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." Every teaching I've heard majors on prospering and being in health. This is something we all want, "to prosper and be in health". We take this as truth and it is but we neglect the words, "even as your soul prospers". For several months now every time I read or think about this verse, the words "even as thy soul prospereth" would stick with me. God has shown me, how our soul (mind, intellect) prospers, is very important. We can fill our minds with, what the world calls truth, or we can fill them with THE TRUTH....THE WORD OF GOD. We have two kingdoms at work in this world: the kingdom of Satan(darkness,death) and the kingdom of God (light,life). We are told in Deut. 30:19 "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, bl...

Have you ever thought about the one thing you would like to leave behind when you leave this world? Lately, I have. The Holy Spirit has been teaching me in several different areas but they all seem to go together. They all are centered in Love!! 1 John 8&16 say, "God is love". Works and Grace...fear and faith...conditional love and unconditional love. These are very connected. There is works, fear and conditional love on the one hand and then there is Grace, faith and unconditional love on the other. Which one do you choose. Of course, we all would choose Grace, faith and unconditional love. With this being our choice, why do we see so much of the other? God gave us free will and I am beginning to understand why. He doesn't want to force us to love Him. He wants us to want to love Him. In the process of growing, because we have free will, we make many mistakes (we sin much). We call it mistakes but it is sin. The Law was given to show us our sin. Because we are ...

1 Corinthians 12:12-29 NLT The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit and we all share the same Spirit. Yes the body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, "I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand," that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, "I am not a part of the body because I am not an eye," would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye how would you hear? Or if the whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts and God has put each part just where He wants it. How strange a body would be if it had only one part! Yes, there are many parts, but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, "I don't need you". The...

I wanted to share this song...I'm sure most of you have heard it but it is becoming more and more real to me. Seems the name of my blog isn't just a name, it's a prayer. I didn't realize that until this very moment. My heart is being drawn to Jesus and the power of His Word and away from me and the power of my will. The purpose of my will is to except God's Word as absolute truth. This takes me into trusting, believing and surrendering to who God is instead of trying to become who I think God wants me to be. Have you ever read something and as you are reading have an almost out loud thought? Well, I have and this happened as I was reading a comment my brother, Mike, wrote on my last post. He said, "these scriptures make me think that I am not keeping His Word." As I read this, I heard...MY WORD IS KEEPING YOU.... Did you hear that? HIS WORD IS KEEPING US!!!!!! We spend so much time striving to keep God's Word when we could be rest...

If you ask most people if they believe the Word of God is truth, they will most emphatically say yes. We, who are Christians believe God's Word is true but do we believe it is the absolute truth? Again, we would say, yes!! We believe that Jesus is the Son of God..we believe that He was crucified and died on the cross,was resurrected on the 3rd day and is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven. We believe He died for our sins. We believe if we except Him as our Lord and Savior we will live throughout eternity with Him. What do we believe now, right where we are?? What are we doing with Jesus and His Word. Do we try to make His Word line up with our life or is our life lining up with His Word. Jesus has given us much instruction and truth to live by. We never have to hope His Word is true because whether we believe or not doesn't change the fact that every Word in the Word is absolute truth. Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. If we don't re...

Neh. 8:10 We have all heard this scripture in times of weakness. We tell ourselves or someone else will tell us, "the joy of the Lord is your strength." Well, we don't have any joy at that moment and we definitely don't feel strong. So, thinking we aren't supposed to be like this, we try to have joy and be strong. Sometimes one word can change the meaning of a verse. For the first time, I noticed the word "of". It's the joy of the Lord, not the joy of Connie. I think, I have always thought of it as my joy in the Lord. Joy in the Lord is something I feel. Everything of God is Truth..it is substance..not a feeling. Just as Hebrews 11:1 says, "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." God has given us His substance to replace our feelings. Feelings are always conditional..God's Truth is unconditional. It's His Joy that gives me strength. My joy only brings feelings. His joy never fails......

Hello God..... I need to ask You something. Why is so hard for us here on earth? Jesus went through much more than we can ever imagine and never lost His focus. We can be moving along real good and then something happens and immediately our focus goes straight to what ever that something is. God, You know, my brother is going to say the "f" word [flesh]. If flesh is sooo bad why did You put us in it to start with? God, I just want to live in Your Word not my flesh. God, You know how bad things are...do You like being given the credit of being in control? If I were You, I wouldn't want anyone to think I was in control of this mess but then I'm not You. I only see the mess, You see the finished work. Psalm 91 says that 1000 will fall at my side and 10,000 at my right hand but no evil will come near my dwelling. My dwelling is in Your secret place and I am abiding under Your shadow. I don't have to fear anything. Ok, if I really believe that, why did I panic ...

There is a word that has been in my thoughts for several days. The word is, [positive]. This morning, I had a couple more added, [confident and courageous]. I looked up positive in the dictionary, it has 11 meanings as an adj. and 2 meanings as a noun. I am not going to write all these meanings. The #1 meaning is: that will not be changed and is not to be questioned;definite.#2. perfectly sure; certain. I was watching Beth Moore on Wed.'s with Beth. This is where I got the words confident and courageous. They fit with the word positive. She also told about a statement one of her daughters made while sitting in a doctors office. She said, "He knows it is scary to be us". I thought, that's sooo good, He does know. He not only knows He cares. He has given us His Spirit to comfort us while leading us in Truth. We can only be positive about the Truth we know. If we aren't in the Word..the Word will never be in us. God knew from the beginning that we would have to...

Hi..... I just finished a new book.."The Noticer" by Andy Andrews. A friend at church gave it to me to read. It's about a man name "Jones"..he helped people who were in a bad place in their life by giving them a new perspective in their situation. This made me think of Jesus...He's our "Noticer"...He notices every detail of our lives. I thought, wouldn't it be great if Jesus just showed up and talked us through our troubled times. We all have times in our lives when we feel separated from everyone and everything. It can be due to many things..the death of someone we love, sickness, being hurt by someone we trusted or just life in this old world. We begin to think no one cares. Well, that isn't true...Jesus cares and He notices our pain and tears. He has noticed every second of every day of our life. He has guided us through all of our hard times even when we didn't feel His presence at the time. We may not hear His voice but He has ...

Lam. 3:21-23 "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope." 22 - "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassion's fail not." 23 - "They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. If you read my post yesterday, I guess you could hear where I was. I want to impress on everyone that reads these blogs to write down what is in you whether it is in a blog that the whole world can read or just on a piece of paper that no one will see but you and God. We tend to bury what is in us because it may seem too negative to express. I will continue to write my heart and it may not always be pretty but it will be laid out there for the Holy Spirit to do with as He wills. I am writing with expectancy more and more each time. Thank you, Jesus Yesterday, that was everything in me in print. Today..this very morning, I was sitting as I usually do drinking my coffee. Not even realizing I was thinking. A clear picture of why I ...

I have a question.... Has anyone ever been at a place in their life, where they did not know how to not be human and did not know how not to believe at the same time? We live in an imperfect world that expects perfection especially from Christians. Actually, even we Christians expect each other to be perfect. I don't know how to fill those shoes. Jesus is the perfect one, not me!! I don't want to be a fence straddler but I haven't gone far enough to not be human and I have gone to far to stop believing. It feels so much of the time, when I walk out my door, I'm walking head on into fiery darts. We have armor for those darts (Eph.6:11-18) so they can't kill us but they can sting pretty bad. As I was praying this morning, I heard in my spirit..... People are not the enemy..Satan is...and...people are not perfect..I AM GOD'S WORD IS TRUTH...ALWAYS HAS BEEN...ALWAYS WILL BE STAY STAY STAY IN THE WORD..BELIEVE BELIEVE BELIEVE THE WORD..STAND STAND STAN...

This title is a chapter in a book I am reading.."HAVING A MARY SPIRIT". The author, Joanna Weaver was going through as she refers to it, "black difficult times with my friends". She said the word confound was the word that kept coming to mind to describe her situation. She looked the word up and it meant, "to confuse or perplex as well as to contradict or refute." An archaic meaning is to defeat or overthrow. She said, the bible seemed to go along with the last meaning because God had only confounded His enemies in scripture. But she knew this wasn't the case this time because He had continually reassured her of His love through this. She knew this wasn't punishment but a necessary pruning. "But why this confounding? this pain? this frustrating confusion?" (her words) Another word that kept coming to her was "meekness". She was telling her friend about it and her friend asked, "what does meekness mean"? Joanna told h...

About a week ago, unforgiveness became a word I couldn't get rid of. So I held on to it because I figured it was there for a reason. In one of my past post, I used the scripture in Matthew 21:21-22 which is also in Mark 11:23-24 - "For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith." 24 - "Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." Ok, back to unforgiveness; with this word came a scripture to mind. I always just remember a part of a scripture and hardly ever know where it is, so I have to look it up. Anyway the part I remembered was: "when you stand praying forgive"...I found it in Mark 11:25, right under the above scriptures. Verse 25 - "And when ye stand pr...

1 O Lord, you have examined my heart and know everything about me. 2 You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I'm far away. 3 You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. 4 You know what I'm going to say even before I say it, Lord. 5 You go before and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! 7 I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! 8 If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. 9 If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the fartherest oceans, 10 even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. 11 I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night-- 12 but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. 13 You made all ...

I was reading someone's blog this morning and she used the phrase "Jesus with skin on". She was referring to us as hope to others. This took me to John 14:12 "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." which took me to Mat.21:21 & 22 "Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done." (22) "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." which took me to Mark 16:17 "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18)"They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall n...

When we started these blogs, we were all excited because we were able to talk about what we believe and what we felt the Holy Spirit was leading us to say. I believe He was leading us to say what we all have said but along the way what we believe has been compromised. This has thrown us into confusion and fear of this confusion has made us a little leary of even doing a blog. We all know that confusion does not come from God. If we look at where our blogs have led us, it's no wonder that Satan would want to bring confusion and fear into the picture. He definitely doesn't want us to be led into the Truth of faith and Love. Heb.11:6 says, "But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Gal.5:6 says, "faith which worketh by Love". 1John 4:8&16 says, "God is Love". We are being led out of our human understanding of all these script...

Just wanted to say something..kinda feels like we have all gone dormant. I love this picture so I decided to post it on my blog. My daughter said it had a majestically peaceful look. When snow is falling there is a quietness that seems to overtake everything. We only got 4.5 inches but for us that is alot. The kids had a ball..for some it was the first real snow they had ever seen. Our malls shut down..businesses closed..schools were out(of course)..even our church shut down for the first time ever. But I heard people talking about how there were families out everywhere with their children playing in the snow. Snow can sometimes be inconvenient but this time it was like it slowed everything down so families could come together and just enjoy each other. Facebook was loaded with pictures and videos of moms and dads and their children sledding, making snow angels, writing their name in the snow, eating snow cream, building snowmen, turning flips off their sleds, just picture after p...

I was awakened...there's that word again...I am becoming very aware of this word. Anyway, I was awakened early this morning to the words..."you don't have passion". Sometimes God can be so blunt. He has been giving me hints for awhile but I guess He decided it was time to just flat out tell me. I remember passion, it was something I had when I was younger for my husband. I also remember the passion that was in me when I was baptised and filled with the Holy Spirit. In both cases I just couldn't get enough but over time I have become more and I'm not sure this is the right word but because I don't want to use the word "lukewarm"...I am choosing the word passive. Websters definition of passion: 1.any very strong feeling as of great joy, anger, etc.; especially, strong love between a man and woman. 2. great liking; enthusiasm 3. that for which one feels a strong desire or liking 4. Passion, the suffering of Jesus on the cross or after the La...

I'll tell you up front..this is probably not going to be very spiritual.If you are going to read my blog, I guess you'll have to get used to reading a lot of words that just belong to me. I'm sitting here looking out the window at the glitter snow falling on the frozen ground, very pretty even though it isn't very much. I am thinking of all these things I need to do and not wanting to do anything. Sometimes I think I could just sit for days and not do anything..would you call that lazy? Ok..now I'm talking to me but if you want to listen you can. Get up and on purpose do something. Emotions are part of the flesh and discipline (self-control) would be a fruit of the Spirit...Gal. 5:22amp..."But the fruit of the (Holy) Spirit (the work which His presence within accomplishes) is love, joy (gladness), peace, patience (an even temper, forbearance), kindness, goodness (benevolence), faithfulness, gentleness (meekness, humility), self-control (self-restraint, cont...

In my post on the 29th, I quoted what Oswald Chambers wrote in his book "My Utmost for His Highest". The scripture that he gave (John 6:66) kept jumping out at me. We all know what 666 stands for...(the Antichrist) Rev.13:18.."Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six." I thought it was interesting that the chapter and verse of John being 666 coincided with the meaning of the number. The verse says, "From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more". They became anti-Christ. In chapter 6 Jesus fed the multitude from a little boys lunch...five barley loaves, and two small fishes (John 6:9). This was something they could all see...so they believed and wanted to make Him king. (John 6:15) They again were seeking Jesus the next day...Jesus told them (John 6:26 & 27) " Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek...