Unleash Your Inner Warrior
My message and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith would not depend on men's wisdom, but on God's power. My dear warrior,
This time last year I would not have expected that I would be where I am today. I would not have expected to be completely set free and healed from all of my food allergies and health issues. I would not have thought I would be eating pizza, joining in on all the food festivities at work, and finally getting to enjoy the lush German Christmas pastries that I have missed and craved so much over the years. And yet here I am, completely healed. This Christmas I am happily eating gluten and free from the overwhelming feelings of guilt, shame and food depression that came with having food allergies.
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You call me out upon the waters My dearest warrior,
Imagine yourself standing before an ocean of possibilities. The ocean reaches to the farthest expanses, disappearing into the horizon line in such a way that sea and sky seem to blend together. You cannot tell where the ocean ends and the sky begins. All that is before you is vast and overwhelming. That is what our future often seems like. It’s an endless expanse filled with possibilities, and we don’t know how to take it all in. We have a goal in mind, but we cannot see how to get there from where we stand, and the idea of simply taking the plunge, diving headlong into our future can be daunting, to put it mildly. “My responsibility is to obey, to surrender my heart and to yield myself to the will of God. It is in the process of obedience that we gain understanding." My dear warrior,
As Christians—as warriors for Christ—we must live with utmost intentionality. The rest of the world may be lazy in their dealings, drift through life, simply get lucky or live any number of ways, but we are not meant to live as the world lives. We are not meant to think as they do. Warriors are intentional about each and every action they carry out: from the way they hold their weapons down to the way they dress, making sure they are armed to the teeth without you ever knowing that they have even one weapon on their person. "Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God. If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service, you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity "How long will you try to have it both ways? If the LORD is God, follow him” Dear warriors,
A few weeks ago in For the Honor of our King, I wrote about the fact that our lives are not our own. Our lives belong to God, and God alone. One of the greatest weaknesses of our fast-paced, tech-driven, control-your-destiny culture is the fact that we feel the need to be in control of absolutely every part of our lives. From controlling when and how we watch TV shows, to trying to control, manipulate and micro-manage other people in our lives and their decisions—as if that were our call to make. Control is first and foremost an illusion. You are not in control of your life. And neither is anyone else. Putting other people in control of your life simply becomes a means of passing blame onto someone else when things go wrong in your own life. Trying to control other people will only lead to frustration and heartache. Have you ever felt like the more you tried to control a situation, the less grip you had on things, and the more you felt like things spiraling out of control? “We do not have to make God willing to forgive. In fact, it is God who is working to make us willing to seek His forgiveness” -Richard J. Foster As believers, we all understand that we should confess our sins. At least, that is my hope. Confessing our sins and forgiving one another are vital parts of our walk with Christ. We cannot walk in step with Him if we are clinging to unforgiveness, clinging to anger and bitterness towards other people for having wounded us. Scripture tells us not to quench the Spirit (1 Thessalonians 5:19). One of the ways we quench the Spirit in our lives is by harboring unrepented sin in our lives. It creates a rift between God and us.
The first question for you then, dear warrior, is this: is there any unforgiveness in your life? If your answer was ‘Nope!’ then sorry, try again. This time, ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind where you need to forgive others; where you have unresolved anger, bitterness or hatred towards someone. Ask Him to point out things for which you have not forgiven yourself, or where you are mad at God, Himself. |
Check out Michele's new book, now available for purchase on Amazon!
Mere Humanity: Becoming a Mature Christian in an Immature World
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