John 14:1 says, “Let not your heart be troubled, you believe…” A troubled heart is one that lacks peace. In verse 27 Jesus gave His peace to His disciples. Peace is an irrevocable gift. Nothing can take it away from us, but troubling thoughts can cover it over.

How do we maintain peace and keep it active through any and all of our circumstances? It is rooted in trust. Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.”

A proud heart will not trust. When you find yourself unable to fully trust the Lord in your situation, check out your heart for pride. Strength to endure our trials comes from His grace. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble heart. His grace enables us by working His resurrection power in us.

Jesus endured the cross because of the joy that was set before Him. Have you ever considered that a proud heart does not experience joy? How can we have joy in the Lord when HE is the One resisting us?

Pride empowers us to do things in our own strength. Philippians 2:13 Amplified says, “(Not in your own strength) for it is God Who is all the while effectually at work in you (energizing and creating in you the power and desire), both to will and to work for His good pleasure and satisfaction and delight.”

Verse 14 shows how to defeat pride. It says, “Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining (against God) and questioning and doubting (among yourselves).”

There is no peace in our heart unless we choose to trust the Lord at all times. Peace, as well as joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It is a fruit that is borne in a heart that is submitted, guided, and controlled by the Holy Spirit. May His peace and joy rule in your heart today.

Let’s go back to John 13. The disciples were totally perplexed by Jesus’ statement that one of them would betray Him. Verse 3 is a stabilizing verse for us. No matter what our circumstances are, we can stand in truth because it is eternal.

A betrayer thought is a lie! It is designed to refute God’s word. Have you ever said ‘I can’t’ or had a negative thought against yourself? It is imperative to remember that most betrayer thoughts will come in the first person.

‘I can’t’ opposes God’s word because Philippians 4:13 says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Have you ever spoken a derogatory word over yourself? That is a betrayer thought because we are made in the image of God.

We cannot know what others think. Have you ever had a thought like this: ‘they don’t like me’ or something similar? Unless they told you to your face, you were hit with a fiery dart. If you brought that thought in and began to dialogue with it, you would build a barrier in your heart so keep from being hurt.

Betrayer thoughts are cunningly designed to destroy relationships. The enemy of our soul hates God so he hates us. He knows he can’t stand against God. Therefore he has to use deceit to get to us.

We must be watchmen over our thoughts. 2 Corinthians 10:5 says to bring every thought captive. We do that by implanting God’s word into our heart which is our belief center. When our heart believes God’s word over anything thrown at us, we will stand. That inward truth is a sentinel on the ramparts of our heart. Truth watches for the lies. They are captured before they can hit and penetrate.

Psalm 15:2 says, “He who walks uprightly and works righteousness, and speaks the truth in his heart.” We speak it when it becomes part of our thought processes.

Here is one of my favorite watchman verses. Nahum 2:1 says, “He who scatters has come up before your face. Man the fort! Watch the road! Strengthen your flanks! Fortify your power mightily.”

Any thought against God, His ways, His will, or against another is a BETRAYER thought. We see this played out in John 13. Judas was a disciple of Jesus. He walked where Jesus walked. He was one of the ones who helped distribute the food when Jesus fed the 5,000+ folks. He was there when Jesus calmed the sea, healed the sick, and cast out demons.

HOW did he even come up with the idea to betray Jesus? John 13:2 says, “And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Him.”

It all started with a thought that was not of his origin. It was a thought planted in his heart by the devil. Betray means to be disloyal to, break faith with, or denounce.

We must be aware of betrayal thoughts. Have you ever had a thought of suicide? That is a betrayer thought. If mulled over in your mind and accepted, you would carry that thought out in killing yourself.

Who is behind killing innocent babies in the womb? Only one, and that is satan. Ephesians 6:11 warns us to put on our whole armor so that we can stand against the wiles of the devil. Verse 12 says, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

One of satan’s wiles comes as fiery darts. They are thoughts against anything that God stands for. They seek to penetrate through our minds and embed themselves in our hearts.

How could our nation be so divided? It starts with one thought that is embraced and owned. Tomorrow is election day. Join with me and countless others to ask the Lord for His mercy. May He turn the hearts of the American people to vote FOR His ways, His will, His purposes for our nation.

O Lord, we cry out to You for Your mercy. Fan the flickering light into a blazing flame that will glorify Your name which is above all names, and above and over every principality and power and dominion and thrones. In Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

American roots go deep in the soil of believing. Our founding fathers were united. With one accord they trusted in God. Still on our paper money it says, ‘In God We Trust.’

Yesterday I was reading John 12. Verse 46-47 says, “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.”

All over the world there are pockets of revival springing up. Unbelievers are turning to Christ. May these pockets connect until they become a river that runs throughout the world–unstoppable!

Jesus only spoke what the Father spoke. O Lord. Open our ears to hear what You are speaking in this time of history. Help us hear, believe and speak out! Take our roots deeper in You so that nothing can shake them.

John 12:49-50 says, “For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak. And I know that His command is everlasting life. Therefore, whatever I speak, just as the Father has told Me, so I speak.”

Notice how Jesus used the word ‘command’ twice. What is the command of the Father? Everlasting life. He has no desire to see anyone perish. This is our hour to speak His command–believe.

Romans 10:17 says that faith comes by hearing the word. Verse 14 says, “…how shall they believe in Him of who they have not heard?…” Let us follow in Jesus’ steps and be about our Father’s business to proclaim salvation. O Lord open ears to hear and believe.

I wrote a few posts earlier about how our roots need to continually feed on nutrient rich soil. In 2016 the Holy Spirit took me on a journey of meditating. He would wake me up in the night with a phrase from a verse or maybe one word. He would give me rich insights as I was meditating. He drew out verses from my heart-reservoir that I had memorized, or that He had highlighted through my daily reading. That is why it is so beneficial to hide God’s word in our heart.

When I got up in the morning I would type what He showed me. It resulted in 35 short ebooks in seven and one half months. He then had me compile five paperbacks, making each ebook one chapter. Each of the five are of the same topic. For instance, “Victorious Garden: true heart forgiveness” covers many aspects of forgiveness.

We can mediate any time day or night. My best time is when everything is quiet, long before my day begins. Meditating is like a sheep ruminating. They ate earlier, but their shepherd then led them to a quiet resting place so they could re-chew their earlier grazing.

Psalm 119:15 says, “I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways.” Meditate, contemplate, consider, and ponder are great words to express how our heart thinks, feels, and chooses. We bring His word into our mind, roll it around in our thoughts, inculcate it, and deposit it into our heart belief-bank.

This is my testimony. I love these verses. Psalm 119:147-148 says, “I rise before the dawning of the morning, and cry for help; I hope in Your word. My eyes are awake through the night watches, that I may meditate on Your word.”

Here is another favorite. Psalm 104:34 says, “May my meditation be sweet to Him; I will be glad in the Lord.”

Meditating is a deliberate action to bring God’s word from the printed page into our heart and make it our own. Meditating weaves His word like threads intertwining in fabric. His cherished words become the golden threads in the tapestry of our lives that give brilliance to the dark threads of hard times.

Psalm 107:9 says, “For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.”

In the 1970’s I read a book that radically changed my life. I had no idea that I was thirsty, but I was spiritually parched. Nothing satisfied. My heart was awakened as I read “Pursuit Of God” by A. W. Tozer.

I was drawn into his prayers at the end of each chapter. They were words like this: I long to long for You more. They were words of intense longing to have more than what he already had.

For me, I had nothing. I had stuffed my emotional pain and ignored it. My ‘longer’ had been silenced. I didn’t know it was still in my unconscious, screaming out for release.

I kept myself so busy that I didn’t have ears to hear my weeping heart. If I had, I wouldn’t have known what to do. As I began to make A. W. Tozer’s prayers my own, something inside began changing. It was an awakening that was like a tight rose bud opening to the sun.

Asking the Lord to give me a desire to desire Him began a whole new segment of my salvation. I accepted the Lord Jesus as my personal Savior in 1958. I didn’t know about intimacy with Him until 1977. I had fallen head first into a six foot ravine and was bedridden. Flat on my back, no longer able to stay busy, He began to open my heart.

He wooed me from a slumbering believer to one who clung to Him with refusal to let go. I love Psalm 63:1-8. It became my daily prayer. Verse 8 in the Amplified says, “My whole being follows hard after You and clings closely to You; Your right hand upholds me.”

Emotional fillers are satan’s counterfeit-lies. Drinking deeply is the Lord’s way to fulfill the intense longings of our heart.

Psalm 65:4 says, “Blessed is the man You choose, and cause to approach You, that he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house, of Your holy temple.”

John 15:16 says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you.”

We are chosen to be set apart for the Lord in a deep personal fulfilling relationship with Him. No other created being has this privilege.

Buried emotional pain sets up barriers in our hearts so that our capacity to enjoy the Lord is diminished. A fulfilling relationship is two-way. It is Heart to heart communion.

Open intimacy is without fear. We desire to share all of our heart—holding nothing back. We can’t do that when we have hidden pain.

I want you to picture it like this. Down in the dark windowless basement is a room where you stuffed your emotional pain. You have starved it. It is crying out for release, but you ignore its cries.

Psalm 42:1-2 says, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?” The panting is from a deer that knows it will die unless it can get to water.

That is how we are without intimacy with the Lord. Our heart dries up like a barren field. He alone can satisfy the longings in our heart. When we look to someone else or something, WE create emotional hunger.

I bit satan’s bait and was hooked on self-deception. I pretended that everything was alright, but I had a vacuum inside from broken expectations. I sought to fill that vacuum with my own efforts. My life marinated in pride-juices, therefore my motives were pride-driven.

Emotional fillers are heart idols. They are anything or anyone that we put before the Lord to fulfill our needs. Ezekiel 14 is written to Israel. We can make personal applications.

Verse 4 says, “…who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols. Verse 6 says, “…Repent, turn away from your idols…”

Zechariah 10:2 says that the idols speak delusions and they comfort in vain. It is impossible for our emotional filler-idols to satisfy needs. If you would like to read more about heart idols, I encourage you to read my ebook, “Heart-Idols Are Idle-Worship” on Amazon.

The crux of my emptiness was that I did not have a fulfilling relationship with the Lord. He was not my All In All at that time in my life.

The Holy Spirit dropped these two words into my heart for another chapter in my book: DeFlating Pride.

In 1973 I began having horrendous headaches. Nothing would take them away. I went to a specialist who gave me a glucose tolerance test. Yes, I was having severe low blood sugar symptoms.

He put me on a special diet. No more sugar! I thought I would come unglued. Sugar was a staple in my life—I thought.

This doctor taught me to look for preservatives in the food I was buying. Fillers and additives that would keep the food from spoiling were abundant. He also taught me to look for supplements that had no fillers. Looking at every ingredient before I bought something slowed down my shopping experience.

What he didn’t teach me was to look for emotional fillers. What was going on emotionally at that time? As I think back to those years, I filled my life with as much busyness as I could. I connected my radio to the front door switch. The moment I entered my house I’d flip the switch on to produce instant noise.

I gave gifts of things I desired myself. I became what I wished others would do for me. I filled my void with anything I could find. Yet I remained unfulfilled.

The bottom line—I was emotionally empty. Pride had taught me to bury my emotional pain.

We stand in grace. It is our eternal position. Yet, we walk in His grace daily for the empowerment of our progressive sanctification.

John 17 was Jesus’ prayer just before He went to the cross. Verse 17 says, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” Verse 19 says, “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.”

Sanctify means to set apart. Walking in the truth’s of God’s word, daily applying it to our lives, exemplifying His character, and speaking truth in our hearts is our breath.

Experiential truth nourishes our spirit. Truth on the printed page is just that. We must believe the truth, and incorporate it into our thought processes. Until then, it will not bring the dramatic inner transformation needed to derail our strongholds of pride.

Our minds still have to be renewed from our old beliefs, lies, and mindsets. Those strongholds will only be destroyed through His implanted word. Ephesians 4:23 Amplified says, “And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind (having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude).”