I love the Lord, for he heard my voice;

he heard my cry for mercy.

Because he turned his ear to me,

I will call on him as long as I live.

Psalm 116:1-2

Never forget the place in which you where when God pulled you out. Don't look back to allow the evil one to have power there, but rather to have yourself humbled as a reminder of Gods great love for you.

It is easy to look around, take a snapshot of another persons' life and make assumptions about them. You too were once in a place in need God more than anything else. He reveals Himself when He chooses, not when we push him on others, not when it is better timing for us, but when He chooses, in His time.

It took a lot of hearing for me to listen to God in my life. Some days it still takes time. As the Father gains ground in my life, it is a gift to have a time and place staked out that I am able to remember the state I was in... for while we were still sinners our Heavenly Father loved. Loved and rescued. Rescued and saved... and still saves. Thank You, Lord.

Change

We pray for change, and when it happens we are not ready to change with it.  When praying for people, we forget that as they change we too, shall change with them, toward them, toward Jesus, redemption and the cross.  The cross where suffering and eternal joy are met.

Today I am at a crossroad, and it brings excitement, sorrow and anticipation altogether.  Prayer works, and it always works at the exact time it needs to.  Fasting with prayer never takes long for answers.  Answers the way God gives them, and not always in the form I would have wanted, but answers non the less. Does God not know what is best for His children?  Can we trust that?

A life surrendered cannot pick and choose how God speaks, what He speaks and when.  A life surrendered moves when He moves, jumps at the sound of their name, and lays all of whom they are before the King.  Surprised to receive everything back, but polished and made new.

The process can be long and painful, the process can be exciting and quicker.  Obedience in the process is a choice.  Meekness is unbridled power brought into submission, once a fight against any attempt to bring the will under control of the master, now yielding.  Never loosing its strength or endurance, but a surrender of control to the master.

Today let us not have a battle of the will; let us choose to move forward in the bridled power of our Lord, and relinquish our control to Him.

Park, poolside, swimming lessons had begun.  In looking around I was drawn to those I knew, but they were leaving, their kids done with lessons.  I waited for my oldest in the pool, as my youngest taunted my grace interacting with strangers, beckoning my constant watch.

I threw out a line to another mom.  She nibbled and threw it back, and so our conversation began.  As the conversation continued she shared.  As she shared and a common love for a common Savior emerged.  She spoke of addiction.  She spoke of the desperation, the falls, the blessings, and then the touch of Jesus.  The moment, heart wrenching, emptying of self and call to our Lord.  The physical touch and all consuming love, from her knees she had known and felt the arms of Jesus.  "All consuming and total complete love, complete love".

As she spoke, my spirit danced with hers, rejoicing in Gods love, grace, goodness.  She spoke a message of thankfulness for past suffering.  A message not understood by many, and the few that do are left changed for another destination, another calling and purpose.  Perspective flipped in a 180. A 180 into the most brilliant light, an overwhelming filling of the human heart, a rebirth, metamorphosis of the soul.  Longings filled, searching found, and filled to the brim of every goodness your life on earth can experience.

In the moment, I almost fell to my knees overwhelmed by her testament wanting to praise God for His goodness.. the word goodness cannot come close containing the truness of His essence.  My eyes were taken over by tears, and had I spoken at the wrong moment, I would had caught my breath in a sob of relief for the woman she once was. Her story that morning like a gentle kiss from a parent in a sacred moment never to be forgotten. So grateful for this gift, simply hearing the story of one masterpiece molding to His image...

Today, throw a line... you may be surprised where God beacons you onto holy ground, with another child of God.

It was in the silence she was most uncomfortable. Nothing was hidden when that room was entered. There was no hiding behind words that filled space, no noise to consume the nothingness she felt, nothing to grasp as her insides climbed in a potential free-fall to the bottom.  All was too mysterious, unknown, and intimate for one on the search... for one seeking another out... but then the seeker can never be found.

He sat with her.  He had sought her out that morning and been waiting for a moment to be heard. All she spoke of, He already knew.  All she asked for He would give from eternity.  All her feelings known from birth.  He sat with her.  He sat as she read, He sat as she journaled, He sat as she got up to get another coffee.  He watched her.  He was amazed by her.  He was so pleased with her.  As He sat with her, He desired so much more for her... for them. In her asking, He whispered to her.  

So faint was the whisper that she almost missed it. It was like a quick and quiet glance.  Like the beginning and the end with an assumed middle.  She was filled.  In a moment she had been filled.  In hearing she got up and went about her day.

He had not yet finished.  There was so much more.  As the room was left hidden, as she went about her day.  The beginning and the end, a middle should never be assumed. 

What is it that keeps us from the intimacy of silence?  Is it what we may hear from our Lord and not like what he says?  Do we not have the discipline and practiced peace to hear? Are we lacking in trust and patience?   Or is it that we think we can do without?  Whatever excuses you use, I would invite you to rethink them, take responsibility for them, and begin to practice the gift of quieting your soul. While the world spirals in chaos around you, practice silence.   While your world falls apart, and you are helpless to do anything else, practice silence.

It is when we are completely empty of ourselves our talents, our wants, our needs, our stuff that He will begin to speak, build, answer.  To have nothing is to gain it all.  In nothing, in the silence, in that empty room you will seek and find and keep your Salvation.  

"He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”" Ps. 46:10

"He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm." Mark 4:39

"Tremble and do not sin; when you are on your beds, search your hearts and be silent." Ps. 4:4

...In Silence Spirit speaks to spirit. There is no physical involved.  As you grasp this truth not only will you know the sound of the Savior, but recognize Him in others.  In what others say, the transfer of communication becomes spirit, and so much fuller in its understanding.  The richness of communication made in the likeness of being one with Him as He is one with the Father is a rare found gem.  It can be found in the body. It can be found in relationships.  and it is meant for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, to always point us back to Him who gave us all we are in Him.

the Prodigal daughter

When I was much younger I fooled myself into believing that putting limits on people was a way of slowly choking the life out of a young women’s spirit, the slow fade of a radiant light, a violent drowning resting at the bottom of a forgotten ocean of dreams. I began to believe that rules were a result of not being trusted, a sick means of control for the people that had paranoia’s beyond my juvenile and inexperienced soul.  God’s rules were not viewed much differently.  And as the time of age ticked, without any parameters given I tested this false belief with every extreme I could get my hands on.  Walking in the opposite direction of my Heavenly father, I choose to journey alone.  This is the story of the Prodigal daughter, and her journey back into the arms of her Savior.

I became a friends with Jesus at the age of four.  I remember walking and talking with Him just as sure as I have walked and talked with some of you over the past few days.  This relationship was full of beauty and innocence; things only the movie of our minds with the right music and the right setting could create.   I’m not sure at what age it took place, but something very dark that I blamed myself for in the years to come happened.  This perceived sin became the stronghold that caused me to live as an outsider to the family of God for many years to come.  It covered me in layers of punishing behaviours that I choose for myself as an atoning for my sin.  I was attracted to evil as a moth is to a flame.  Eating disorders, cutting, drinking, drugs, and borderline suicidal behaviour became my comfort.  I believed that somehow I could beat my body into paying for how disgusting I was. For how disgusting my sin had been.  At one point, I remember there being two distinct me’s.  Somewhere behind the screaming, hatful, angry girl, there was a lonely crying, misunderstood child longing to be wrapped in her saviours arms.

Between grade 10 and 11 my family moved which placed me from attending a school of 150 to 1500.  My parents looked for a Christian group for my brother, and I was made to tag along.  This group was called Youth for Christ, and this is where my past and present calling meet.  A sort of heavenly appointment where the hand of God so gently pushed me toward the extension of Christ’s love here on earth.  This group of people soon became a very safe place for me to fall. I floated in and out of Youth for Christ for the next three years.  There was still deep rooted acts of self-hate, but now there was a community of believers that cared, and made sure I knew it.  I would be gone from the group months at a time, and when I returned for a visit, they would always ask me where I had been, what I had been doing.  They knew – they could see it in my eyes, smell it on my breath, hear it in my voice.  They loved me anyways.  I continually fought with the two me’s.  One was full of all sorts of hate, evil, and latched onto anything that would pull her down.  The other wanted to believe the childhood stories of a loving saviour, more powerful and beautiful than our souls could imagine.  But I could not be vulnerable, I couldn’t need anyone.  If anyone found me out, in the places I hid, the pit, the soil in which I had laid my head…  They would never love me.  I couldn’t do it. And now the end to the beginning, and the beginning of a new end.

When I turned 18 I decided to go out with a guy that had no interest in me but to get me high and do what he wanted with me.  I choose it.  I choose it because of my self-hate. I choose it because I had bought into the lie that I deserved it.  I lost my virginity to him, and soon thereafter became pregnant.  I remember having the conversation with God about a baby.  The gentle imprisoned Johanna longed for a child.  Longed to love and be loved.  Almost as quickly as acceptance had been thought of, it was stolen away.  I can still remember the place I stood when I gave God the finger and walked the other way. The next day the appointment was booked.  It was to be the ultimate punishment – the ultimate display of how sickly and not valued my life or anything that could come from this body was.  It came from hate, from whispers of a dark kingdom – perhaps from Satan himself.  I don’t remember much between the time I walked away and the appointment.  A death had taken place, a spiritual suicide. It was like the beautiful child I once had been was now laying on the floor of the prison dug out for her, because of one lie.  The true me hung in the balance of life and death during the appointment.    As life was taken and drugs then given to comfort, she knew it would take so much more than drugs to forget this one.  She emerged, exhausted and overcome with remorse, heaving with every bit of emotion left in her broken heart. 

In the weeks to follow her body became infected.  There was so much pain, she dropped out of school.  She hoped she would slowly fade, unnoticed by anyone.  Forced by a friend to go to the doctor, she was hemorrhaging from an infection.  Given medicine, she was told to rest.  Rest was the last thing she was able to do.  She was afraid. The feared that murder would be the end of it all.  She feared that she had walked too far outside of the parameter of grace.  She thought her saviour wouldn’t want her anymore.  She was empty, she was alone.

My journey to forgiveness was a miraculous one. I was invited to a Freedom in Christ conference by one of the Youth for Christ workers.  I sat through two maybe three hours of prayer and confession.  I wasn’t convinced. God wasn’t going to show up – but God had never left.  He ran quickly without hesitation into the pit to rescue this child of His.  Held her hand through every moment as she flirted at gates of Hell.  Covered in every sort of demon, darkness, he fought for her, and carried her lifeless body to breathe her back to life again. Brought her back to the beginning.  Gave her a new beginning.  Filled her to overflowing with all the love, light and truth available to man.   He calls her His own; a child of the most high God.  He freed her for condemnation, works all things for her good, has established, anointed and sealed her to do His good work.  She is now hidden in Christ.  Cannot be touched by the evil one; been given a spirit of power, love and a sound mind… no fear is in her.  She is now God’s temple, a minister of reconciliation, appointed to bear fruit.  She can approach her Father, her God, her Saviour seated in the heavens with freedom and confidence.  He passed her life through the saving power of the cross.  She has been made free. I am free.

Had I known that the limits put on me were meant to protect, and not to snuff out a light; had I known the rules were safeguarding my wandering and innocent heart… I may have listened, I may have obeyed.  I may have experienced freedom sooner.  Putting limitations on ourselves is meant for freedom. Don't buy into the worlds lies that the sky is the limit, the only way this is possible is with the creator of the skies. In knowing the rules, we are free to be whom God originally created us to be; loved beings to share in his creation with Him.  Without limits life is overwhelming, exhausting, and all-consuming in every area.   And as I become closer to my Jesus, rules fade into respect, and instead of a checklist, I experience the grace extended in a relationship.  Instead of being drowned at the bottom of an ocean, I am given the opportunity to go with the creator of the universe wherever he chooses, with Him at my side.  Today choose His Limits, choose life, choose freedom.