You Will Know My Voice

"Your ears will hear a voice behind you,'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right or the left." Isaiah 30:21

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me." John 10:27

Jesus did not say that His sheep will hear His voice and then should distrust it because they should beware that they are probably hearing Him incorrectly. (In fact, where would that thought possibly come from? The thief- John 10:10.) He is big enough to to make us KNOW wisdom and MAKE us hear correctly as we seek Him, as "He is a rewarder of those who seek Him."

"Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom." Psalm 51:6

"And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." Hebrews 11:6

"Seek My face, and My face you will find."

Lord, MAKE US TO KNOW WISDOM in our innermost being- that we may know that we KNOW.

Willing

Be willing…  it is a matter of will…. Submit it all unto Me.

             I have plans for you…
You  do not need to make your own…. Just follow hard after Me,
                                             and take one step at a time.

You will hear a voice behind you saying,
                              “This is the way, walk ye in it.” 

Don’t give into the fear of that moment that would try to discourage you.

         Step out and find me faithful… and thus build your faith (not in yourself, but in Me) for the next time.

       The decision to take the step of faith will not be an easy one.

It will require sacrifice (of your time, comfort zone, caring what others think about you),
         but with those trials (the testing of your faith) come endurance and growth of character…
                that matures you.. that you may be lacking in nothing.

Step out and see…

            The spacious place I have called you to..

                 Without all the boundaries that keep you bound…

                                     Go possess your possessions.

Dead to sin, alive to God.

                          Dead to self, alive to God…..     

           Oh, to deny self and say, “Yes” to God…..  
                          to whom with the call, gives His divine enablement.

God is Able

Go forth in the love and peace of your Heavenly Father
                                                 who is able
                                                                    to DO
                                                                         FAR MORE ABUNDANTLY (wow!)
                                                                                                      BEYOND

 (we’re gonna have to fix our eyes on Him and not our circumstances to believe that!)
                                 ....beyond all that we ask or think
                                                            according to
                                                                 the power that works within us

to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.  Amen. Ephesians 3:20-21

                We serve a God who is ABLE TO DO and uses us, and therefore we are able to do far beyond what we think because HE IS ABLE. 

                   FIX YOUR EYES ON HIM! and allow no other thing to distract you.

Concentrate on Jesus

“… let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith….”    
                                                                         Hebrews 12:1b-2a       
       “Fixing our eyes” means to look away from one thing and to concentrate on another, to look away to, as a continuous or repeated action.
      
        What if…..... we continually, habitually  “fix our eyes” on Jesus?
       
       Peter stepped out, walked on water, and then sank. Elijah called down fire from heaven, and then left afraid for his life. Don’t we see that strange pattern lived out in our lives as well?  In the moment when God is at work and enabling us to do the “impossible", there is great faith; He accomplishes His work through us (without us analyzing it to death) and enables us to walk by faith, not by sight. Then we walk away and get in what we would call ‘our right mind’ (we could just call it our natural mind), and we see all the impossibilities and decide to be more practical (to live by sight)!
     Is it possible to fix our eyes on Him (and all that He is) and … worry, doubt, be afraid, sink?
          Ponder that question.  Possible, yes, as we are still in this frail flesh, but as we look away from the overwhelming circumstances and look to JESUS and the Word, it is not as easy to be consumed with those negative emotions that bring us down.  Let us look to Jesus and take every thought captive to line up with what He says is true.
      
…..let us run this race with endurance, continually, habitually fixing our eyes on Jesus…. and walk by faith, not by appearance.

Step forward in the power and faith and grace that He provides THIS DAY! and look away from the obstacles, and TODAY continually, habitually  look to Jesus and all that He is!

Your Fearless Confidence

His Word: “….do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence!
For that fearless confidence carries a great and glorious compensation of reward.
For you have NEED of 1)steadfast patience and 2)endurance
so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away [and enjoy to the full] what is PROMISED…….. The just shall live by faith… and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him. [Hab. 2:3,4] BUT OUR WAY IS NOT that of those who draw back to eternal misery and are utterly destroyed, but WE ARE OF THOSE WHO BELIEVE [who cleave to and trust in and rely on God through Jesus Christ, the Messiah] and by faith preserve the soul.” From Hebrews 10:35-39 Amplified Bible


And our response: Oh Lord, You have given me all I need for life and godliness so that I have all I need to believe, to walk in the promises, and to have fearless confidence to perform and fully accomplish Your will! You have given me the faith and power to believe in Your promises. I take the seed of Your Word into this redeemed, good, and honest heart, and I hold it fast! (Let it not be stolen away.) Lord, You, produce a crop one-hundred times as great in my life! I trust in You…not in my ability or lack thereof. (see Luke 8:8,11,15)


“..we constantly pray for you, that our God may deem and count you worthy of [your] calling and [His] every gracious purpose of goodness, and with power may complete in [your] every particular work of faith (faith which is that leaning of the whole human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness). Thus may the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified and become more glorious through and in you, and may you [also be glorified] in Him according to the grace (favor and blessing –of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One.)” 2 Thessalonians 1:11,12 Amplified Bible

Follow the Lord Fully: Part 2

       While Caleb proclaimed of the Promised Land, “We should by all means go up and take possession of it, for we will surely overcome it.” Numbers 13:30,.. “the men who had gone up with him said, ‘We are not able to go up against the people, for they are too strong for us.’  So they gave out to the sons of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, ‘The land through which we have gone, in spying it out, is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great size.  There also we saw the Nephilim ….. and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight.”  Numbers 13:31-33 
  
       Which report do you think they HEARD?  Of course, the negative one, and this unleashed grumbling among all in the congregation (Numbers 14) and made the heart of the people melt with fear (Joshua 14:8)
         Fear does this; it makes the heart melt and spreads to those around us.  A literal translation would be that they made the heart of the people become demoralized with fear.  Demoralized is defined as 1) To corrupt or deprave, 2) To lower the morale of, 3) To throw into disorder. 
        How often do we allow a bad report and fear throw our hearts, with all our emotions, into disorder?
       Let us once again, and daily, take our eyes off of the circumstances around us, take captive the thoughts that raise themselves up in opposition to God’s truth (all the vain imaginations), and fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.  Let us entrust ourselves to Him who says that with Him, nothing is impossible!
                    _______________________________

      And let us ask ourselves which report would we have ‘heard’ and taken to heart?  Do we not almost always take this negative view? ‘It/they are too big for us, too much for little me.’  We become little grasshoppers in our own sight; how, then, CAN we stand against the giants in our lives?   And with the fear, our God inevitably becomes ‘little’ in our sight, which truly does render us useless.  The obstacles before us become insurmountable (not in our spiritual reality but) in our MINDS.      
        It takes a work of the Spirit in us to see the overwhelming circumstances of our lives through eyes of faith and be enabled to say (when He calls us to), ‘we should by all means go forward, for we will surely overcome it!’.
         “..faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.”₁  Let the word of Christ dwell richly within us₂  that we may be able to take Him at His Word and have “a firm persuasion, a conviction based upon hearing”₃ and be able to give God’s answer to every situation as it is in our heart₄ because our hearts are one with His.  May we be able to say the same thing as God and follow the Lord our God fully.₅

This whole account is recorded in Numbers 13 and 14.
_{1) Romans 10:17, 2) Col. 3:16, 3) definition of the Greek word for faith, 4) Joshua 14:7, 5) Joshua 14:8}

Follow the Lord Fully: Part 1

“’See, the Lord your God has placed the land before you; go up, take possession, as the Lord, the God of your fathers, has spoken to you.  Do not fear or be dismayed.’  Then all of you approached me (Moses) and said, ‘Let us send men before us, that they may search out the land for us, and bring back to us word of the way by which we shall enter.’”  Deuteronomy 1:21,22 (Notice whose idea it was to go get the 'natural' view, and the Lord agreed to it and sent these twelve leaders. Numbers 13:1-2)

Joshua's account  of this is in Joshua 14:7-9, “I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-barnea to spy out the land, and I brought word back to him as it was in my heart.  Nevertheless my brethren who went up with me made the heart of the people melt with fear; but I followed the Lord my God fully.  So Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden will be an inheritance to you and to your children forever, because you have followed the Lord my God fully.’”

What a contrast!  These twelve men were sent to spy out the land, and only two saw that land through eyes of faith- faith in their very Big God, His very Big promises to them, and His great ability- not only the ability that they had heard about, but had also experienced first hand!  The other ten saw it with their fleshly eyes and though it looked good and they wanted it, it seemed too impossible and frightening to go forward and take for themselves so they "were not willing to go up, but rebelled against the command of the LORD" and grumbled. (Deut. 1:25-27)  

Have you allowed what your 'natural eyes' have seen to take away your FOCUS? Have you allowed any other 'report'  to melt your heart with fear so that you are tempted to give up on the promises of God for your life?  Or is your heart full of faith in your very Big, Almighty God so that you can follow the Lord your God fully?  How is your heart?

Oh,  may He be big enough, in our hearts and minds, not just to listen to but to obey! And may we GO and take possession of all that He has promised us. 
Do not fear or be dismayed.  Stand firm!

This Year....

            May the God of peace…equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in you that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.       (Hebrews 13:20,21)

This year, Lord,
             … let us continually, each day move toward who You want us to be and not give into discouragement that we are not fully there yet.
           
             …let us say ‘Yes, Lord” to everything You call us to do and live in radical obedience…. by the power of Your Holy Spirit within us.
                (Let us not just say ‘Yes’ this year, but actually DO ‘Yes’)

          
           ...let us surrender our will to You absolutely and irrevocably.
          
            ...let us say, “On the ground of Your Word (at Your bidding), I will….
                                              ....walk in obedience … I will do as You say
(even though I have tried exhaustingly before and seemingly failed)."₁                                                  

  Let all that You say of us in Your Word be true and real in us- yes, and amen.

Let us LIVE!
       ………..LIVE abundantly in all the exciting extraordinary stuff and also LIVE extraordinarily in all the everyday, ordinary, stuff of life…  doing all things as unto the Lord and for Your glory.

May this year be a year of purity and a year of growing in holiness and faith.
May we seek You first and all these things (faith, purity, holiness) be added unto us.  May we follow the Lord our God fully.

       Lord, grow our faith and incline our hearts to You as we continually, habitually fix our eyes on You.                                                                       
                                                                                         ¹see Luke 5:1-11