Take back the land.

Yesterday, I was having my time with the Lord, and found myself wanting to confront some things in myself with Him. Cleaning house in other words. I start most days with Him and cleaning, because when I get into "Please, this and would You that" I guess I just want to start off each day with Him, with a clean slate.

Anyway, I was thinking about Satan. How he comes to steal, kill, and destroy. He is serious about what he wants to do in each life, don't get me wrong. Dead serious.

But I think that we give him way too much credit for stuff. He can only be in one place at a time. God is omnipresent. He can be everywhere at the same time. I know, I don't get it either, but I believe it. Satan is not omnipresent. So if Satan is in Irag, he can't be in Colorado bothering you, himself.

Satan isn't omniscient. He doesn't know everything. It only feels like it. Only God knows everything.

And Satan isn't omnipotent. Only God has unlimited power.

So, how does Satan do what he does? I was asking God this, when I got a picture of the movie "The Wizard of Oz". You know at the end of the movie, where Dorothy and all are before the big head of Oz and he is thundering out his demands. While little Toto, the dog goes and pulls back a curtain revealing who was really behind the Oz.

So is Satan really in a small room, frantically pulling levers, pushing buttons on some machine to control his demons and his people? Pull that lever and out comes some fire. Push that button and zoom, a demon fires a thought.

Probably not, but I don't think he is what we think he is. He wants us to think he is huge and mean. But always remember who he has to answer to. God. Satan was only an angel, he isn't anywhere near the level of God, although he wanted to be.

Yes, we are living in Satan's playground. He owns the real estate. He even tried to tempt Jesus with it, if only Jesus would bow down to him.

Satan has demons, some of who are not chained in hell, to help him. Since he can't be everywhere at the same time, those demons must do the dirty work. They tell us lies, they try to confuse us, they use our words against us, and keep us diseased. I'm convinced that the battlefield is in the mind. (Like Joyce Meyer's book says.)

But. There it is Pastor. The but. But God sent a way. Jesus. Jesus came and lived on this earth to teach us how to live, and to take back what the devil has stolen.

And once we ask Jesus to be our Lord, and are walking with him, we have the dominion back. We don't have to listen to the lies, we don't have to be confused or sick.

The promise? One is James 4:7. "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

Don't put any little buts on this. "But, Satan tells me this. But he makes me feel like a loser....." Submit yourself and all to God, resist the devil. How? How do you resist all of those credit card apps. Rip them up and throw them away! Resist.

And he will flee from you. Don't add anything, or take anything away from that verse. It stands alone.

He will flee. Take back the land.

©BL2007

Hide and Seek

Holy Moly.

I just got done playing with my kitten. We were playing hide and seek. Honestly.

She'd run and hide, and as I'd walk by, she'd jump out at me. And then I'd run and hide (honestly!) and as she'd show up, I'd jump out at her. And she'd jump up in the air, pretending to be scared! Hilarious!

I don't remember the last time I laughed so hard.

Right now anyone reading this is going, "Umm... should we call someone and intervene?".

Well, we all know how good laughter is for us and have all heard how many times a day a kid laughs, right?

Does anyone remember how good it feels on the inside to just play? To really laugh for the sheer joy of it?

Do you remember how it feels to have fun?

I know, life is really hard sometimes, but I wonder what the Father was doing while my kitten and I were playing hide and seek. Do you think He was standing there, watching, and tapping His foot and looking at His watch? Do you think He was looking on with anger, saying, "Get back to work!"?

Naw, I think He was positively delighted! Remember, He's the one that made cats.

©BL2007

This morning I was watching my kitten. She never strays from being herself. She jumps. She runs. She plays....cat and mouse. What else can I call it. She meows. She responds by submission when I growl at her in a cat way. (Yup, I growl at her. It's a technique that my daughter taught me! When she is doing something that I don't like, I growl and keep it up until she submits by bowing her head, closing her eyes, or backing away - it works! Just a little cat tidbit!)

But she doesn't try to act like me. That would be funny. She stays in her cat mode. Because she is a cat!

I find myself sometimes during different seasons in my life, trying to be what I'm not. Whether it's a diva, a model (Ha!), a bookkeeper (those that know me can laugh, but that's what I find myself doing these days, for our business), a grocery store clerk, a sales rep, or whatever.

But what makes my heart sing? It's when I actually sit down and write. And write something that speaks of God's heart and mine.

It's when I do what God made me to do. Sing. Create. Love.

It's the song of my heart. It's what God thought of when He fashioned me before I was born.

I'm more at peace and happiest when I follow God's heart for mine.

©BL2007

Instructions on using Keys

Yesterday, when I was at church, a church elder preached. Pastor was gone on vaca, so this elder put in the time.

He preached on prayer. Actually, "Why Pray?"

First of all, we are so blessed to have people to fill in so our pastor can go away with his family.

But most of all, we are so blessed to have more than one man that loves God's Word enough to study up. To fill us up.

He and I were talking afterward about his message, and I was overcome at God's plan. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over this earth, but they didn't even get the chance to enjoy it. They gave dominion over to Satan when they agreed with him that they would not die if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They also agreed with Satan that they would be as gods, knowing or deciding for themselves what is good and what is evil. So they took that bite and in that bite, all of heaven and earth moved. The whole earth and all it held; the future and the past came crashing together in a spiritual and moral death, in that one bite. The physical death would come later. The whole earth, and everything in it, was now under Satan's rule.

But that isn't the end of the story. God so loved this world and all it held. He had lovingly created everything in it. Taken time to design the plants each with beauty, usefulness, (well, there is that one weed....), each animal with such detail and thoughtfulness. But when he designed man and woman, He surpassed anything ever made.

God loved us so much, man and woman, the whole earth, that He gave His own Son to die a horrible death, so that we would not perish.

Jesus came to set us free from the bondage of Satan. He literally took the keys of the Kingdom, that Satan had taken from Adam and Eve, back. He took them back.

And what do we do with the keys? We have them in hand if we are born again. (See John 3:3 - if you still have questions, email me!)

For more than 20 years, I walked around, just carrying the keys. Oh, I'd put them on a key chain that had a WWJD line on it. Or I'd safely tuck them away in the pocket of my purse. They had a special hook by the door that I would hang them from.

But did I use them to unlock and set the captives free? (Is. 61:1-4) No.

Did I use them to preach and teach the Good Tidings? Or to open those bound in their prisons?

No, I just walked around with them. "Aren't these pretty?" I'd ask. "Don't they make a neat sound as they sway from my belt? You know that belt of Truth." "Jesus gave me these." "Nope, no I haven't used them for anything..."

It's time that we as Christians take those keys off of our belts and choose a key and plunge it into the lock and turn it until we feel and hear the lock open.

Prisons opened. People set free. Eyes clear and seeing.

How? Ask God. Read His Word. There are instructions in there on how to unlock things.

©BL2007

Puke it Out

It amazes me that we as people of God, of people of the Redeemed, still live like we do. We still wallow in our muck. Lying in our own waste, and puke. Never rising up and shaking off what Jesus came to set us free from. We all do this.

We all have baggage and the pat answer is 'it's because of sin in this world', but there is more.

Do we want to get set free? Do we ever want to let the Savior - The Great Warrior - set us free?

Or are we afraid to do that? Yes, it's scary. To let everything out and show it to the world. To puke it out and let the world see us with snot and tears and puke streaming down our faces. To see the blackness of our hearts.

We put this beautiful facade on for others to see....crowns of beauty, masks of 'I'm okay'. Costumes of what we want to show to the world.

We must take them off, the masks, the crowns, the costumes. They were put there by us, by the world. They are fake. They are conterfeit.

We must let Jesus take them off, if we are to be the warriors that the Bible says we are. We must, if we want to live our lives above the puke. We must be willing to let God do the surgery.

He came to set us free.

©BL2007

Root Canals

Goodness where does a month go? I just got a coffee drink and she asked where I'd been lately - and she finished with the obvious question. On vacation?

Oh, what I wanted to unload on her! No, not vaca. Far from it.

Dealing with a rental property that needs mucho work before it's ready to rent again. And with a dear mom-in-law, and going through all of her stuff with her after a mini-stroke. No vaca.

In many ways some of this is a victory. I am not going as far down as I have in the past when the last straw was the cat playing keep-away, and I'd go ballistic. I've only had one real meltdown and that was when the contractor that is helping us repair the house, pulled up the linoleum in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, and I saw the rot there. When a simple phone call telling me that the dishwasher was leaking would have meant a call to the Maytag guy. I walked away and cried. Each day, my sister and I would go to the Lord, asking for forgiveness for wanting to annihilate the renters, get set free again, and go back to the house and find another clue to this riddle. Another piece to this puzzle. Another repair that could have been avoided, if they had only learned to be transparent and call us. I'm not sure what the picture will be when we get it all put back together.

But I am sure about the good thing that God is doing in my heart. He is making sure that each little remaining piece of anger, hatred, unforgiveness, resentment, blame (thanks Pastor Mike!), etc. is pulled out. It's like a root canal. They have to make sure that each little piece of that tooth's root is cleaned out, because of the possible spread of infection. The dentist says that there is even a stink when they open the thing up.

I'm sure too that when I let God open the thing up in my heart, that there is a stench to God's nostrils. And I'm also sure that if I let Him, He will want to go in and clean every bit of the stinky mess out of my heart.

So use the renters, God. Bring it on. Bring on the whole stinky mess and open up my heart to heal, so I don't stink or offend You anymore.

©BL2007

Gardening with sharp shears

It was spoken over me not too long ago about how Jesus is the True Vine and I am a branch. That as we are vitally united, He pours Himself into me to produce fruit in my life.

It was cool because I got such a physical sense of a filling with His Spirit and His love, pouring into me. But even better, how connected He wants to be with us. Bear with me as I write this out. I think it out as I write.

Anyone that looks at a tree or plant, will see the vine or trunk swelling with growth. And as a branch starts growth, it swells too, because of the sap flowing through the trunk, and into the branch. (I could get all scientific here, but I'm not going to, because I'm not scientific!)

I just 'saw' in my mind a picture of a movie-like shot of a tree all in one motion - growing from a sapling, up into a huge tree, complete with many branches. And into limbs and into the leaves on the ends of the limbs. Whoosh! Growth.

But okay this is nothing new. The vinedresser, the vine, the branches. Ho hum.

I was pulling weeds one day and noticed that many little weeds were growing out of an old cement and brick ledge. (Why can weeds grow anywhere in any conditions, but the plants that we spend money on die with the best of conditions!) Somehow a seed was dropped there and it took root.

There it is. The answer.

The roots. When I coldly pulled the little weed out, a huge long root followed it. No dirt. Just root.

So if a tree or plant puts out strong roots, it will grow, thrive, be able to withstand the storms and winds, and grow up huge and tall.

I love the verse, "For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river; and it shall not see and fear when heat comes; but its leaf shall be green. It shall not be anxious and full of care in the year of drought, nor shall it cease yielding fruit." (Ampl.) Jer. 17:8.

The roots by the river. Who is the river? In John 7:37, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink!" Jesus is the River. So if I grow my roots deeply in Jesus, I will not fear when the heat comes and my leaves will be green and not wither. And I will continue to produce fruit in my life. I can even grow roots in the midst of cement and stone and brick in my life (have you ever been between a rock and a hard place?!)

But what about those gardening shears? You use those when you want to increase fruit production. You remove parts that are dead, or hindering true growth. He has removed businesses from my life. He has cut out people that are hindering me from growing. He has removed people that I was getting too tangled up with. You get the idea.

But there are branches not producing anything at all. A tree surgeon calls those dead. Duh. And they take the chain saw and down they come. The tree looks alot cleaner without them and usually within a few years, a new shoot will begin to grow in it's place. Ouch.

First of all it hurts to be severed from our Creator. But, does that mean that if we have come to Jesus, don't abide in Him, but choose our own way, we will be severed off from him? John 15:6 says "If a person does not dwell in Me, he is thrown out like a [broken-off] branch, and withers; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned."

Ouch, ouch.

Man, makes me want to hug my Vine.

©BL2007