Growing in Spirit and Truth

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...