What Do You Believe? Part Two

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
The lies we believe make us impervious to the truth. We need God’s scalpel-word to pierce through the impervious to set us free. The fiery dart lies that we believed, unknowingly by us, control our lives.
Please read Proverbs 22:17-21. My paraphrase: listen favorably to wisdom; apply it in your everyday life; keep it within your heart; speak it to yourself. Verse 19 says, “So that your trust is in the Lord…” Verse 20-21 says, “Have I not written you excellent things of counsels and knowledge, that I may make you know the certainty of the words of truth, that you may answer words of truth…”
(from chapter 4 of Emotional Freedom) Scar tissue is the body’s way of creating a protective barrier to an injury, surgery site, or a wound. Emotional scar tissue is a means of self-protection and self-preservation. It is an internal callous built around our heart.
What are you believing when you bury an emotional pain? Anything we do as self-protection is a lie. The Lord created our hearts to commune with Him. Any wall of self-protection blocks that design because it inhibits openness.
Years ago the Holy Spirit taught me to ask: what do I believe about myself right now? whenever I over reacted. The Lord used that over reaction to put His finger on something hidden within me.
The next time your flesh bristles up, stop right there and ask yourself what you believe about yourself in that moment. It could be something like: you have no right to speak to me like that; you are wrong!; I feel powerless; you are treating me like a child. It could be any number of beliefs. The fleshly reaction comes from within and without any thought.

What Do You Believe?

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Proverbs 18:21 says, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” Death words: negative, derogatory, defeated. They are spoken against others, yourself, or your circumstances.
 
Sentences that start with ‘I can’t’ means unable. ‘I won’t’ means that you are able but you refuse. Have you ever said ‘I can’t believe…?’
 
The Holy Spirit startled me this morning earlier when He said: negative thoughts are a signal that your core beliefs are under attack. Tears stung my eyes. Wow! It is so profound. I never considered it before.
 
2 Corinthians 4:13 says, “And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, I believed and therefore I spoke, we also believe and therefore speak.”
 
Asaph was struggling with his thoughts. Psalm 77:6 says, “I call to remembrance my song in the night; I meditate within my heart, and my spirit makes diligent search.” The result brought him back to his core beliefs that had been attacked.
 
1 Corinthians 2:11 Amplified says, “For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man’s thoughts except the man’s own spirit within him?…”
 
Proverbs 20:27 says, “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the inner depths of his heart.” That is what happened with Asaph. I will leave you to think about your core beliefs 💜Are they under attack? All death words are first thoughts.

Heart Thoughts Part Two

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Proverbs 3:6 says to acknowledge Him in all our ways. When our thoughts are NOT Christ-centered, they are flesh-thoughts. To acknowledge Him, say in planning, would be something like this. ‘Lord I need your wisdom because…’
 
Proverbs 16:1 says, “The preparation of the heart belong to man but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord. Verse 3 says, “Commit your works to the Lord, and your thoughts will be established.”
 
The word ‘commit’ is illustrated by the camel. When it is time to unload his burden, his owner unstraps the load, he kneels down, rolls over, and the burden slides off. What a picture for us! How too often we carry a burden that isn’t ours to carry because our heart isn’t kneeling.
 
Proverbs 16:24 says, “Pleasant words are like honeycomb, sweetness to the soul and health to the bones.” I looked it up. Blood vessels and bone marrow run through other parts of the bones. The holes in the honeycomb-like mesh actually makes the bones stronger.
 
Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart does good, like medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” Proverbs 15:13 Amplified says, “…by sorrow of heart the spirit is broken.”
 
Nehemiah had surveyed the walls in Jerusalem. He wept and was heart-broken. Watch this conversation. Nehemiah 2:2 says, “Therefore the king said to me, Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart…”
 
Proverbs 15:15 Amplified says, “All the days of the desponding and afflicted are made evil (by anxious thoughts and forebodings), but he who has a glad heart has a continual feast (regardless of circumstances).”
 
Here are two questions: do your thoughts burden your heart or free it? Is your countenance peaceful or troubled? Words, actions, attitude, and habits are all first thoughts.

Heart Thoughts

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
This verse gives clear definition of why we are the way we are. Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he…” Our thoughts govern our actions, and affect every aspect of our lives.
 
I’m reading through Proverbs. I am noting how many verses speak of our health because of our thoughts. Here are a few. Proverbs 13:2a says, “A man shall eat well by the fruit of his mouth…” Proverbs 14:30 Amplified says, “A calm and undisturbed mind and heart are the life and the health of the body, but envy, jealousy, and wrath are like rottenness of the bones.”
 
Proverbs 15:30 says, “The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and a good report makes the bones healthy.” The literal means fat. How ‘fat’ are your bones? The Amplified says nourishes the bones. Could osteoporosis be rooted in our thoughts?
 
Here is something to consider. Job 21:24 Amplified says, “His pails are full of milk (his veins are filled with nourishment) and the marrow of his bones is fresh and moist.”
 
Bones speak of our skeletal strength. When I broke my foot, I discovered it had no strength to bear my weight. The above four verses help us to see that our thoughts truly affect our health.
 
Here is another. Proverbs 3:5-8 in my paraphrase. When we trust the Lord with all of our heart, acknowledge Him in all of our ways, we fear Him, and depart from evil, verse 8 says, “It will be health to your flesh and strength to your bones.”

True Desire Part Two

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Here is the rest of yesterday’s post.
A.W. Tozer wrote “Pursuit Of God.” There was a prayer at the end of one chapter that captured my heart. It said something like this, ‘Lord I want to desire to desire You.’
 
As I read those words in 1972, something inside me stirred. I have learned since that it was the Holy Spirit awakening my heart to embrace the Lord’s desires. At that time in my life I was clueless. I’m sure that is why I got derailed so often through the lies of the enemy.
 
The Holy Spirit, the Spirt of truth, has to teach us to follow because we can’t do anything redemptive through our own efforts. Psalm 51:6 says, “Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.”
 
His mission, and the call on our lives is to be holy as He is holy. It is called progressive sanctification. Here is another part of Jesus’ prayer in John 17. Verse 17 says, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” A large part of our walk with the Lord is to hide His word in our hearts. That gives the Holy Spirit the tools He needs to set us free from the things that bind us.
 
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 helps us understand how to stay focused on Him in our now-trials. It says, “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”

True Desire

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Here is the last part of the chapter I added to my book in progress:
We are made in the image of a God who desires. Therefore, we have the capacity to desire what He desires. Listen to Jesus’ words to His Father the night before He was going to be crucified. John 17:24 says, “Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”
Luke 22:13 says that the Passover was prepared. Verse 15 says, “Then He said to them, With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
These two verses really touch my heart. Both were spoken before He died on the cross for us. He still desires that we behold His glory, and that we remember Him in His death through communion. He was speaking future and present.
What happens when we behold His glory? 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that as we behold His glory we are being transformed into the same image. Metamorphosis is that inner change that is all accomplished by God alone. We do the beholding. He changes our fleshly desires to desires that please Him.
Here is a lesson for us. Always, satan seeks to derail us from that true desire. He gets us so focused on our emotional pain and lack of fulfillment, that we lose sight of God’s desire.

Heart-Examination Part Two

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Yesterday the Lord gave me another chapter to add to my last paperback compilation of seven ebooks. We all need to let the Holy Spirit give us a heart-examination. We cannot examine it ourselves because we don’t have the ability to access what we have hidden.
 
He asks us probing questions that press up against the hidden. They evoke an emotional response. We feel the emotion of the hidden pain which facilitates our answer.
 
Here is the question He asked me, so I ask you. What is your core felt-need? I have polled several of my friends. The answer comes quickly. Here are a few of many which I have included in my chapter. “To belong to someone who loves me; why am I still here?; I’m a question with no answer.”
 
Here is the next paragraph after the question. “How do we process the unmet felt needs? That is a great question. The word ‘process’ is the operative word. It is not a bandage or a quick fix. The Holy Spirit patiently trains our heart in righteousness. He builds a foundation of trust so that we will willingly follow Him. He never leads us into darkness, but rather leads us from darkness into true light. He shines His light in the dark corner of our heart where the pain is buried and leads us out of that bondage into emotional freedom.”
 
When we ask the Lord for wisdom, He gives us His perspective. He sees everything clearly. Our present trial is only a speck in the big picture that He sees of our life–from before conception and throughout eternity. Maybe that is why Paul used the words ‘our light affliction’ in 2 Corinthians 4:17
 

Heart-Examination

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
David wrote Psalm 26. Listen to his words. Verse 2-3 says, “Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my mind and my heart. For Your lovingkindness is before my eyes.”
 
Our fiery trials refine or examine our faith. I think of Jeremiah (Lamentations 3:1-27), Habakkuk (3:16-19), and Asaph’s (Psalm 77:1-15) words from their refining crucibles. Each one was in dire straits. Their hearts were revealed through their words. Each were spiraling down in their thoughts, but then they recalled God’s lovingkindness.
 
I am not a Hebrew scholar, but there is a note in my Bible about mercies I want to share with you. It is hesed which means covenant love or steadfast love. Lamentations 3:22 says, “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.”
 
The enemy of our soul wants us destroyed because we are made in the image of God. He hates Christ followers. His evil strategy is to shoot fiery dart lies that will penetrate. They come in the first person. “You are no good” type lies. If we believe them, they will control our thoughts, purpose, and actions.
 
We may not even be aware of them. They are hidden in our heart to sabotage our faith. Remember when Jesus was in the wilderness He was tempted by satan. Luke 4:13 says, “Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time.”
 
Ephesians 4:27 Amplified says, “Leave no (such) room or foothold for the devil (give no opportunity to him).” We cannot be lax in our faith building. Romans 10:17 says that faith comes by hearing His word. Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. That is why satan attacks our faith through any way he can.
 
However, we have a marvelous effective weapon. Ephesians 6:16 says, “Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.”

What Is Inside? Part Three

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
My folks bought a house that had a really old peach tree in the back yard. It bore a lot of fruit. Though the outside looked great, the inside was rotting around the pit. For some reason the pit heated up and began to ‘cook’ the inside.
 
Have you ever had a pain in the ‘pit’ of your stomach? What about a pain in the pit of your heart? Buried emotional pain takes up the capacity that belongs to the Lord. The pit-pain is a felt need that was not met. It unconsciously keeps looking for fulfillment.
 
What is inside your pit that was never fulfilled? Psalm 107:9 says, “For He satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” Jeremiah 31:14 says, “I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance, and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness, says the Lord.”
 
When our emotional needs are not met, it doesn’t matter if it is in the past or the present. It is a ‘felt’ need in our heart. There is only One who can fulfill it. When we bury it, the need remains and begins to heat up inside. Decaying thoughts emerge from it. They spiral down as they look for answers, not up to the Lord.
 
John 6:63 says that the flesh cannot profit. 1 Samuel 12:21 says, “And do not turn aside; for then you would go after empty things which cannot profit or deliver, for they are nothing.”
 
There is an old hymn that says, ‘Where could I go but to the Lord?’ Psalm 31:9-10 was David’s languishing words. “…My eye wastes away with grief, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity.” If you have emotional pain buried in the pit of your heart, it is time to go to the Lord with it. He’s paid for your sin. The forgiveness for withholding it is right before you.

What Is Inside? Part Two

~ jma47 ~ Leave a comment
Have you ever cut a piece of perfectly looking fruit open to discover it was rotting inside? Maybe you discovered a hidden worm. It all looked good, until you could see the insides.
What is inside your heart? 2 Peter 3:10-12 described the day when the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with a fervent heat. The earth will be burned up.
Verse 11 says, “Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness.” I have been thinking about ‘what manner’ means.
1 Peter 1:14 says, “As obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts…” Amplified says, “…do not conform yourselves to the evil desires (that governed you)…”
Hebrews 12:15 says that bitterroot judgments will defile us and those around us. If we put a rotten apple in the middle of good apples, they will all rot.
Hidden sin defiles from within. Acts 8:21-23 says, “…your heart is not right in the sight of God…pray God if perhaps the thought of your heart may be forgiven you…you are poisoned by bitterness and bound in iniquity.”
Here is a good way to pray. Psalm 139:23-24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”