Life Journeys

You are not defined by your worst day. Suffering doesn’t disqualify you from glory. Take your cues from above rather than from within the noise of your fears and failures. The same heavens that opened over Jesus have opened over you. Immersed in Him means to put your mind on what is true about you in Christ rather than what feels true about you in the flesh.

For every obscure, suffering, cave-dwelling saint who ever believed God in the dark: The cave is not a punishment. Sometimes it’s a seminary, the place where God forms what He cannot form in comfort. It can be a place of lifting, not of the symptoms or the circumstances, but of the weight of them - the crushing sense that everything depended on them changing. 

Do I have enough faith to move God. Please hear me on this — that wrong question will crush you. The right question is whether you have enough faith to move yourself. Faith is proven not in what it receives but what it surrenders. It allows love to grow through the trial rather than demanding the trial be removed.

The weight that breaks our own strength is the very weight that opens the door to a divine strength that no devil can withstand. God is not indifferent to your pain. But He is more committed to your glory than to your comfort. The fire is proof of value, not punishment. You are not disqualified by falling, only by giving up.

"Lord, still my restless soul. These afflictions and darkness are neither accident nor abandonment, but move beneath Your eternal purpose." God whispered, "Your fatigue feels like identity. Let Me set the pace." Peace isn't born from a perfectly ordered world, but in a heart that has surrendered the drive to be its own savior.

As a weary, noble sentinel guarding the Temple of God within, you recognize that you have been humbled—and humility is the very mechanism of God’s victory. God allowed the pressure to reveal the "carnal tremble" of your soul—not to condemn you, but to invite you to overcome. Stay preoccupied with who God is, instead of who you aren't.

Living by God's grace requires a living sacrifice. It includes surrendering our ego and need to be treated with respect. Instead, respect God’s mercy to all men. Draw life from above instead of from others. Weep over their sins instead of judging them. True liberty will govern your life and release God's provision.

Resurrection stood right in front of Jesus’s disciples and said, “Peace be unto you. I’ve sent you here.” We’re not to be intimidated by our world but to overcome it. Find the peace of God and you’ll find your purpose. A settled calm is released in us as God himself breathes these few simple words.

Some things on earth that make men crazy are paralleled by things in heaven that make men worship! What looks like a trial is really a trail in God's plan. Stop trusting more in your failures as a sign of defeat than you trust in Jesus's success as a sign of guaranteed victory. God can handle what you can’t.

God will take the imperfect life we give Him and weave such glory into it that at the end of life we'll be able to say, "I have arrived at just the place God planned for me all along.” God uses failing people because it's all about His grace, not our perfection. Condemnation doesn’t earn us points with Him. It attempts to take redemption out of His hands and put it in our own power.

The price we pay for thinking we're OK is barrenness. The well-being that comes from trying to love ourselves is nothing like the inner peace that comes from experiencing the love of God. Beating yourself up is much harder to overcome than God's disillusionment with you. Faith is way easier!

Christianity is not an education about God. It's an encounter with Him that validates our lives, for He is life. You are more precious to God than the sum of millions of fans crying out your approval. When your money and friends are gone, your validation is still based upon the same word that put the stars in the sky.

Your pain need not be in vain. Human suffering and glory are not incompatible. The path to glory is through suffering. Hardship doesn’t mean you're “less than.” Too often we lose our sense of hope because of what we’re going through instead of finding our honor because of what Christ went through.

See what God sees in you instead of what you see in you. He sees the gold and works to remove the impurities in the Refiner’s Fire. If you dwell on what you’re not, that’s where you’ll stay. Stop trying to grow in God’s character by your own power. Learn to live a supernatural life of holiness and peace.

Hardship in this world is heaven's summons to believe. It is not a summons to try harder to better yourself or to give up. It is a call to seek God to build up your faith in the knowledge of His love. The impossible is the way through to your supernatural life purpose. Only relentless faith can navigate this pathway.

Never interpret the hardness of the way as a sign of failure. Favor from on high only fits into the container of the fear of the Lord, and is often forged in the furnace of hardship. Mary was highly favored, not because she was perfect, but by God’s choice. His grace determines our value. Our value doesn't determine His grace. Trust Him when you can't trust yourself!

All you have of eternal value has been freely given. Your life is not a mistake, no matter how hard it's been. Unrelenting pain is not greater than God’s unrelenting choice of you.  God’s love in you can change a thousand lives. His gracious choice of you says, “You are as beloved to Me as My Son Jesus is to Me.”

A heart at peace is a wonderful thing that lies near the core of a man's man.  It is the blessing of faith applied to the pursuit of holiness - the atmosphere of a whole man. It’s a place of self-control where no idol compels us to defeat. You don’t obey God to have peace but because you are at peace.

God will let life break us down eventually until we’re faced with an inadequacy that only He can fill. His intended holiness isn’t a limitation, but a life of extreme liberty, where we’re no longer controlled by the darkness or the desperation of inadequacy. It’s a completed life of wholeness, value and honor.

The devil likes to diminish our sense of identity, purpose, and value to entice us to build ourselves up instead of trusting in God! "What good are you?" is a demonic question not worthy of consideration! It’s not what you’ve made of yourself but what you’ve let God make of you that matters. Rest!!

Temptation and failure challenges you to find more of your life in God and less in the world. Don’t beat yourself up over not having arrived yet or let the enemy deny your identity in Christ. Stop fighting the symptoms. God’s drawing you closer. You’re created to be complete only in Christ. 

When God fills our soul, nothing this world takes from us need matter. Stress and defensiveness are the soul's longing for God. If loving people is wearing you out, that’s your soul’s thirst for God. We’re created to need God and trust that He’ll take care of everything. He can fulfill in us what no man can.

God’s silence is often heaven’s call to walk by faith. The source of faith is not the absence of hardship. Suffering does not erase the degree of God’s faithfulness. It tests our faithfulness. Faith doesn't wonder about what God will do but what we will do. Don’t use faith to argue with God. Trust Him.

Fixing the side effects of a nation’s corrupt values will not make America great again. Our future’s not determined by how well we adhere to the Constitution but to God’s Word. It’s a false freedom that leans on the First Amendment while living an immoral life. This battle’s about faith and values, not liberty.

Don’t go out in public until you can get into a foxhole with your political enemy and be willing to die to save their life. How? The best time to establish love for your enemy is when your soul is humbled from your own sin. It’s God’s love that builds faith in us. Let His love in you do the same for others.