Category: Praise

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Open Doors

Thank You, sweet God. I needed to remember what I know. I needed to look ahead and look around with that perspective. Now what would You say?

Praise is a Key, a big Key to a Big Door. Not because I have a big ego that needs stoking like a fire with the fuel of your devotion, but because My whole heart is devoted to you. To all of My creation. I love nothing more than blessing those I love. Your praise, your trust, your recognition of Who I Am is what allows those blessings to flow. All the locks are on your side of the door. There are no locks whatsoever on My side. Your choices can create barriers, and those barriers sadden Me. Yes, just as with Jesus’ physical body, your earthly choices have the power to wound My Heart. A harsh word wounds My Heart. Lives devoted to destruction, theirs and others, wounds My Heart. My Great Work of Creation is ongoing, for I Am always creating new chances, new possibilities, new outcomes for everyone on the planet. Your steady choice to believe and receive has swung open the door for you and your life many times.

Now let’s take the next step. If you can commit to what you know of Me again this morning, we can take the door itself off its hinges. The door will transform into a bridge across to My Country. You don’t ever have to go back or even look back to that existence where you questioned or doubted My Love for you or My “plan for your life”—which is expanding blessing, just as the countryside opens up before you. Like Lazarus, like Jesus, you can experience a resurrection, but you still have to make the choice to come out of the Cave. I Am inviting you into yet a larger life.

How can this be? you ask. You can live without fear. You can live without anxiety. You can live without upset. All of those are cave-dweller mindsets. You can live without worry. You can live with confidence, live in assurance, and experience daily, hourly synchronicity. I will never withhold from you any true blessing. Trust My timing to be perfect. “Yes” to praise frees you. Begin again to see Beyond.

This is how time-travel works for you. See the future I promise as real in your now. See it for everything you care about, your business, your family, your friends. See it for anyone who struggles. You don’t have to tell Me what you see of the struggle, unless doing so helps you release it. Instead, let Me tell you and show you what I see so you can see with Me.

This is the point where you’ve always drawn back before. “What must I sacrifice?” you thought. “What must I give up?” “What must I suffer?” These are false questions and they lead back to false gods, not to Me.

Live a life so connected with Me, so overflowing with blessing, that it magnetizes others to good. Let your very presence cause them to open their door to Me, which is how healing happens. You will have to give up the world’s perspectives of fear and of anxiety in order to fully inhabit the life I have for you. You will have to give up an obsessive concern for what others think of you in order to wear well the mantle of what I think of you.

You are thinking, how do I begin. You’ve already begun. You’ve walked a long distance already. You can jog now. You can run now. You are not a beginner. You know this.

You have pictured your life lately like a finite water bucket that others dig down into a well, and draw from what you perceive as your small, leaky reserves of time and energy.

You are a river in Me, the Great River. Live connected and experience an unending flow.

Living in the flow rejuvenates you and it increases your capacity to flow. That is what we are doing this morning. We are excavating in the Spirit. Like a mighty Canyon River, we are carving new pathways of possibility—I Am, by My Power and Intention, and you are, by the power of your agreement. Alleluia, alleluia. I have waited long for this day. The last boulders are tumbling downstream and the floodgates are flung wide open. Alleluia, alleluia.

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Into the Quiet

It’s Quiet. I mean, very. Lord, what would You say?

What would you say?

Huh?

What would you pour into this safe, round container of Quiet? If you could say anything?

Gosh, it is beautiful, this Quiet. So honestly I wouldn’t want to mar it with any complaint, anything negative. Just gratitude and praise. Just, praise You, bless You, thank You.

I’m telling you, you have a free pass—you can vent—you can say whatever you need or want to…and you are choosing praise? Gratitude? Why?

Because…because I love You, Lord. Because my heart is full of praise, full of gratitude. Because only that seems fitting to pour into this round Quiet. Lord, I’m seeing blown glass, rather the action of glass-blowing, creating a beautiful glass ball. Is this what the Quiet is like? Easily shattered?

What makes glass special is its transparency. It also makes glass vulnerable. It is the fire, the breath, and the water that take the elements of earth and shape them into a container, a vessel, of such exquisite beauty. My fire, breath, and water have made you a beautiful, transparent vessel. Yet you feel vulnerable to the least pressure as if you are in danger of imploding any minute.

Aren’t I?

No. Some glass balls hang high on the tree, way out of reach, but that’s not you. You are more like the Japanese fishing balls that help secure the net—amazingly resilient even in storms, yet still beautiful and unexpected. You, your life, is a surprise! You were, to your parents. You were and are to Pete. And you are, to your world. You have let Me fill you and heal you over and over, and you’ve done it again.

Thank You, Lord. It’s Your Promise, too, I see that. I can feel that.

 

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Seeking and Finding God

I think I am listening for Your voice. It’s like a singer with a distinctive voice—like Barbara Streisand. Anyone could sing the words, but you immediately recognize her voice.

And what do you think of as My voice?

Well…the words themselves can be firm, and pointed, but always loving and fair. And Your voice, at least to me, is always gentle. Loving and gentle. And I am not hearing that in many places.

What if I said to you, “Go where you find Me.” Then what would you do?

I guess I’d need to go look for You. Spend time trying to find You.

 But I didn’t say, “Go try to find Me.” Or, “Go and Seek.” Read it again. “Go where you find Me.” Where do you find Me NOW? Find Me consistently? Or to put it another way: where are you enriched? What do you look forward to with gleeful anticipation? Go where. Go there. Don’t waste your time turning over rocks in a dry streambed, seeking for gold. Mine the gold you have. Treat every morning, here, as church. Play worship music on your guitar and in your car. Sing Me the love songs that you delight to sing. And as for your book—books—they are to be love stories. Write Love Stories. My Love Story always has a happy ending!

You praise Me—really—because you love Me. You are singing love songs. That is what sets you apart from so many others—you fell in love, with Narnia and Aslan—and Me. Your Door was different for a reason. I didn’t bring you in the Church Door, or the Bible Door. They came afterwards. I brought you in the story door, the Love-story door, and a story focused on Talking Animals to boot—for a reason. Yours is not a traditional path and it is not a traditional calling. There are a lot of, too many, mixed messages in the traditions.

You are a Creativist and a Creationist, meaning that two of the offshoots of your spiritual path are creativity and the natural world. You find Me in both, and yet I Am Beyond both. So are you—you find sustenance in and through both, and yet there is more to you, and more to what you have to give—that is why I keep saying your work is beyond natural history. It’s not that natural history won’t be a part of it—of course it will, because you love to share about creation—but your work is beyond that, as you are beyond a naturalist. So your watchword for today is Beyond.