Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard? The Eternal, the Everlasting God, The Creator of the whole world, never gets tired or weary. His wisdom is beyond understanding. God strengthens the weary and gives vitality to those worn down by age and care. Young people will get tired; strapping young men will stumble and fall. But those who trust in the Eternal One will regain their strength. They will soar on wings as eagles. They will run—never winded, never weary. They will walk—never tired, never faint. Isaiah 40:28-31 The Voice
Broken People Need God’s Renewal-Restoration
Broken places? Undivided heart? Out of alignment with God? Dusty soul? So many things in this world knock us out of vital-vertical relationship with God. Help us Lord God to love You better than our finite could ever love anyone. Renew us, remake our worldly viewpoints, create in us a kingdom perspective. We are a broken people, needing a redeeming-restoring God. We need Your power to renew us. May You, Jesus become our first and last resort. Our minds have become garbage dumps, change this up and let Your mind thoughts be living water running through our thoughts. Bend our lives to Your will, until we are more and more leaning into Your sovereign will becoming a reflection of Your image.
“We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’ miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.” Author~Tim Keller
An “Eve Like” Enticed Trap
Life doesn’t always go smoothly and when our comfort zones are disrupted, we try so hard in our fleshly ways to fix things, to rearrange our lives so that we feel comfortable again. What makes it not so good is we try to fix things in our own strength, which empties ourselves of God’s power and creates huge gaps between us and His peace. Why is it that we human beings want to know everything at once, we feel we have the right to know. This is the same trap Eve fell in, wanting to see our future in whole, tempted to know more than God was willing to reveal at that time. God shows us completely and we only see things in part and we in our pride rebel when what we see in part is not to our liking. We have got to stop falling into this trap the enemy sets for us.
“God can never entrust His Kingdom to anyone who has not been broken of pride, for pride is the armor of darkness itself.” Author~Francis Frangipane
Living From The Inside Out
When we don’t understand what is going on, instead of trusting God, we try to position ourselves to see more and to try to avoid suffering. We seek and pursue to know more than God intends for us to know, and we try to change things up so it is easier for us to deal with. When we stop trusting God with the unseen and take matters into our own hands, then our inside relationship with God and outside relationship with the world become unaligned and the gap between who we are on the inside and who we are on the outside becomes larger and larger, until our true identity is masked and eventually stolen from us as we yield and conform to the outer life instead of submitting our lives to God, growing through our brokenness and living from the inside out.
“We want to avoid suffering, death, sin, ashes. But we live in a world crushed and broken and torn, a world God Himself visited to redeem. We receive his poured-out life, and being allowed the high privilege of suffering with Him, may then pour ourselves out for others.” Author~Elisabeth Elliot
Topsy-Turvey Lives
When things in our life are not vital-vertical with God, our world becomes unstable and topsy-turvey and our inner strength slowly fades as we hide the weakness and what we are on the inside and playout a cultural drama on the outside. When we lean into outer living, we become a character written for us by our culture, instead of living out of what God has written on our hearts and the gap between who we are on the inside and who we are portraying to be on the outside, as we act out of the worldly script we write, is a gap that creates empty spaces and broken places in our soul. To effectively make a difference in our culture, we must live the life of Jesus from the inside and impact our culture outside.
“Even if 80 percent of the population of a country are Christian believers, they will have almost no cultural influence if the Christians do not live in cultural centers and work in culture-forging fields such as academia, publishing, media, entertainment, and the arts. The assumption that society will improve simply by more Christian believers being present is no longer valid.” Author~ Tim Keller
Keeping Our Vital-Vertical Relationship
In order to fix these huge, empty gaps in our souls, our heart closes like a fist around our spirit which is soul saturated, drenched in emptiness, loneliness and restlessness and the light of God’s peace dims and we get a moldy soul. The mistake we make is when we turn to the temporary fixes of this world to feed ourselves with fleeting doses of a worldly peace, that does not endure the test we are growing through. Jesus is our peace and when we turn and fully face Him, the realization of His Sonship on our face, the yielding of our hearts and souls to Him, floods every empty space in our soul with His light, life and power that can’t ever be reproduced by this world. Jesus will fill the gap between who we are on the inside to who we are on the outside, until there is no gap and we belong wholly-holy to Him from the inside-out, living life in vital-vertical, holy aligned, relationship in, with and through Him.
“There is no enemy can hurt us but by our own hands. Satan could not hurt us, if our own corruption betrayed us not. Afflictions cannot hurt us without our own impatience. Temptations cannot hurt us, without our own yieldance. Death could not hurt us, without the sting of our own sins. Sins could not hurt us, without our own impenitence.”
Author~Joseph Hall
Keep Your God-Given Freedom
It is always the intention of our enemy for us to live outside of the freedom Jesus purchased for us. Our enemy likes to see us in chains because He knows the freedom God has given us is powerful, so the enemy of our soul will trick us back into slavery when indeed, we are free in Christ. We exchange our Jesus bought freedom in Christ, for spiritual bondage. We need the power of God to break these chains and renew us once again in the freedom that is ours. Jesus, come into the empty spaces of our broken places and consume us once again, complete us, redeem us. Holy Spirit live through us, live in us and create in us undivided fellowship with You. Wholly-Holy align us, Father God with Your heart, spirit, soul, mind and ways as we submit ourselves completely to You, Lord God.
In this freedom Christ has made us free and completely liberated us; stand fast then, and do not be hampered and held ensnared and submit again to a yoke of slavery which you have once put off. Galatians 5:1 Amplified Bible
Dusty Soul Windows
Our thought life is where the enemy begins to move us towards bondage once again. The enemy of our soul wants to take a strong hold of our mind, giving him influence over our thoughts. We can’t let this happen, we must fight the fight of faith in our minds with the sword of God’s spirit, His powerful Word of Truth. Lord renew our minds in Your truth, break the bondage of our minds to the assumptions, rationalizations, presumptions of our enemy that tantalize us and tempt us with half-truths, associating us with darkness and keeping the window of our souls dusty and our ways unclear. Wash us clean of all things in our mind that are not wholly-holy truthful. Lord Jesus, crush under your feet every assumption, presumption, rationalization and half-truth and sweep the dust from this out of our souls, cleanse our spirit from the residue of enemy lies and be the river of truth always running through our deepest soul thoughts.
“God’s Word must be so strongly fixed in our minds that it becomes the dominant influence in our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions. One of the most effective ways of influencing our minds is through memorizing Scripture. David said, “I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11).” Author~Jerry Bridges
Lean Into The Miraculous Edge
Jesus, we have empty spaces and broken places in our soul that knock us out of alignment with You and Your purposes that are in play in our lives at all times for our good. We are not wholly-holy aligned to Your heart Lord God, we have undivided hearts, partially seeing with a worldly viewpoint and teetering between that and a kingdom perspective. Renew us Jesus in Your kingdom perspective, in the thoughts and intentions of Your heart, so we lean fully into Your sovereign will. Lord God cause us to always see through the eyes of Your kingdom perspective, therefore our inner character can be designed and shaped to match Your personality. Help us not to settle for the comfortable culture charm of this world, but to dig deeper with You, being renewed inwardly and clothed with the characteristics of Your Kingdom that are not cultural comfort, but Kingdom purposeful and powerful. Lean us into the miraculous edge of our lives in You, Holy Spirit, and live through us, renew us, consume us and remake us to be wholly-holy Yours.
“Remember that grace and truth cannot finally be crucified. Remember that all the high things that make humanity beautiful cannot be forever laid in the dust, spattered with blood. And most of all, remember that He who rose from the dead, rose to pour out His Holy Spirit into human lives, and, by that Spirit, to make available to any individual all the fullness of Himself, twenty-four hours a day.” Author~Ray C. Stedman
Dressing Our Inner Personality
Selfishness holds us back in so many ways. Jesus, strip us of our selfish, finite nature and eradicate the foolishness of this world from us. Cleanse the window of our souls that we might see clearly heart to Heart with You, and learn from You new spiritual habits that keep You clearly at the center of our focus. We want You to consume us, complete us, renew us, so Your Holy Spirit is living through us and we are walking wholly-holy with You. It is our one desire to be Spirit to spirit, in undivided fellowship with Your truth, and become completely Yours. Cleanse us of our dependence on ourselves and this world, so You are the refuge of our soul, You are our first and last resort. Wash and clean the window of our souls that we might clearly see You and walk in a followship that is perfectly in step with You and Your kingdom truth. Dress our inner personality with the infinite characteristics of Your heart. We are broken by this world, remake us to be like You, a broken vessel of Your light that powerfully pierces the dark night of this world with a brilliance, a Kingdom glory glow, that can’t be put out by a counter cultural blackness. Let it be miraculously so, Almighty God.
“We can be assured that each step deeper into the Lord’s Presence will reveal areas in our hearts which need to be cleansed. Do not be afraid. When the Spirit shows you areas of sin, it is not to condemn you, but to cleanse you.” Author~Francis Frangipane
Walking Upstream Towards The Kingdom
Complete us Lord Jesus, Your purposes are in play in our lives, help us to step into the current of them, instead of fighting against them, trying so hard to understand them as we foolishly walk downstream with the world, instead of walking upstream with the current of Your Kingdom. Consume us Lord God, renew and redeem our flesh and may the power of Your Holy Spirit live in us and through us, unhindered by our human condition. In every unlikely way possible, by Your power in us, let us be renewed daily in Kingdom precepts, principles, purposes, provision and power. Jesus cause us to be people who will humbly walk upstream with You against the cultural currents, creating a new flow toward Your kingdom, by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Let it be so.
“Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul.” Author~ Alexander MacLaren
Our “Yes” Is On The Table
Oh God, pursue us, renew us, never let us go, redeem our human condition and consume it completely by Your Kingdom power. Forgive us for running off independently, making foolish choices and breaking Your heart Lord God. Help us to love you better from every moment into every choice, depending on You and making the right choice for You and the glory of Your Kingdom. May we walk in wholly-holy alignment with You, undivided in heart, sold out completely to Your kingdom. May our sight be found with a steady kingdom focus and our spiritual habits be set by a kingdom perspective. From here to there unto forever, from every moment into every choice, may we be wholly-holy Yours. Jesus we submissively put our Yes on the table of our heart. Before You even ask us anything, we have said YES to You because we are sold out completely to Your way, Your will, Your wisdom and being found leaning completely into Your sovereign kingdom truths. Yes Lord, Yes. AMEN!
For as many as are the promises of God, they all find their Yes answer in Him, Christ. For this reason we also utter the Amen. so be it to God through Him, in His Person and by His agency to the glory of God. 2 Corinthians 1:20 Amplified Bible
What an incredible “Worship SpotLIGHT” we have this week in The Bridegroom’s Café. The Worship Spotlight today is by Avalon entitled: Renew Me. It is a precious cleansing song for our dusty souls. I hope you enjoyed your stay in The Bridegroom’s Café today and I pray your soul was fed by praising God. Please share this hope with others by using the social media buttons below. I would love, love to hear from you, so please leave a comment on how this post inspired you to increase your praise, thankfulness and gratefulness to God. God bless you MUCH, KimberlyMac