Author: Allen Forte

Sometimes the things we face in life that are so compelling that we find it hard to believe things can be any other way for us.  We may know of someone who is sick, homeless, or in a difficult relationship.  We may know of someone who does not know the Lord.  We may be held by something from our past that continues to live on in our present.  Whatever your thing may be, we often look at our circumstances and find it hard to believe things can be different for us.  When you find it hard to believe something, it means you have found it easy to believe that something is impossible.

Scripture tells us something like this in Luke 1:18 when Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist had a conversation with an angel who told him he would be father to John.  Scripture says, “And Zacharias said to the angel, how shall I know this?  For I am an old man, and my wife is well advanced in years?”  Zacharias was saying fathering a child at his age and his wife having a child at her age was simply impossible.  We are past all that.  I want you to know that we may be past some things in our lives for sure, but nothing is past possible with God.  Nothing.

If you want to live with the understanding that no thing is impossible with God, you must learn to live with the knowledge that God is also the God of nothing.  You see, before any thing existed at all, God existed.  So, if He existed before a thing existed, then nothing had to be made possible by Him just like any other thing was made possible by Him.  When God tells us no thing is impossible for Him, it is more than mere words; it is His Word in which all things are possible.

Many of us believe like Zacharias.  We look at our situations, and we say it is past possible for this thing to happen.  But like with Zacharias, there is also an angel in our lives telling us to be ready for God’s plans for our future.  The angel is there to remind us that all things are made from some things that are currently no thing until God makes it something of it.

So, as you live out your life and the challenges that are before you each day, learn to ask the Lord to take the things that are nothing in your life and to make them something so that you can live joyfully with anything that happens with you.  The angel responded to Zacharias’ unbelief by saying “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and to bring you these glad tidings.”  God was saying to him, I am about to take nothing and make something great, so receive this blessing with gladness and joy!

You have your situation, I have mine, and others have theirs.  No matter what we face, if we involve the Lord in our lives in any way, we can learn to live with the understanding that no thing that He tells us is impossible for Him. And unlike Zacharias, who thought that since it was past possible for him it had to be past possible for God too, let’s live as if nothing is just a something that is possible but just not yet.  Wait then, expecting to have what is yet to come because with God no thing is impossible, and all things are possible to those who believe on Him.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

To my daughter.  I want you to believe deep in your heart that you can achieve anything you put your mind to; that you will never lose.  You either win or you learn.  Just go forth and aim for the skies.  I can’t promise you to be there for the rest of your life, but I can promise you to love you for the rest of mine.

This is an encouraging message from a father to a daughter that could be even more encouraging were it inclusive of a reality that we tend to overlook in life—we forget to involve the Lord in our life.  There is encouragement and inspiration in the words of this father, but they lack the power to change the realities of life a daughter will face.  Only the promise of the Lord and the Power of His word at work in our lives can do what this encouragement ultimately cannot.

In Philippians 4:10-13 scripture says what this father says but in a different and more powerful way.  Verse 10 says, “But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again; though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity.”  Paul is thanking the people of Philippi for their help in his hour of need by rejoicing in Christ and acknowledging their work and service towards him.  If you want to achieve all that you set your heart to achieve, you must do that with a heart that is set to serve through the power of Christ.  When you can rejoice in Christ you can find it easier to be thankful for the efforts of others towards you.

Continuing with verses 11-12, Paul says, “Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am to be content:  I know how to live humbly, and I know how to live in prosperity.  Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.”  Paul is saying life may be tough at times and it may not always be easy, but I will be ok with what life brings because I live through the power of Christ.  If you want to live at peace with life, you will need to learn to make your low times the high times for you, and you will need to learn to make your high times the times of humble gratitude.  You will need to learn to be full of what you have and at the same time to want more of what Christ can provide.  If you want to win and never lose at life, and if you want to learn through all things in life, you must live, work, and play at life in the Power of Christ.

Finally, in verse 13 Paul says essentially what this father says but with words of Power.  He says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  Paul is saying I may not achieve all that I put my mind and heart to achieve, but that is ok.  There is one thing that I can do, and it is this.  I can pursue all that my heart desires for me though the Power of Christ Who promises to strengthen me when I do so.  So, I may not become the engineer I put my heart to become, but I can pursue my dream of becoming an engineer through the Power of Christ.  “I can do all things” doesn’t mean I can be all that I ever want to be, or that I can do all that I ever want to do.  It means if I want to do anything at all, I choose to put my efforts to do anything through the life of Christ. 

If you choose to put all your efforts to do what you want through the Power of Christ, He promises He will never leave you nor forsake you.  He is the only one Who can deliver on the promise of being with you for the rest of your life and loving you for the rest of your life.  And His life too.  If you want this for your life, then encourage yourself to stop doing things on your own strength.   Whatever you want to do in life, aim to do that through Christ Who is the Power of success for all that you will ever need and want.  With Christ, you don’t have to aim high, you just have to aim for Him.  If your heart is set to find Him, He will find your aim and move into your life.  You become a winner in Him.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

After the flood that destroyed everything on earth but Noah and his family, Noah built an altar and offered a sacrifice to the Lord.  The scripture says the Lord smelled the sweet aroma of the sacrifice and vowed to never again curse the ground because of man, although the imaginations of man’s heart is evil from his youth.  This area of scripture has always caused me to pause and check inside my heart to see if I find any evil lurking there.  I’m saddened to say I found a lot of evil ways in me that I didn’t expect to find.  Alarmed at that, I asked the Lord to help me purge thoughts of myself because for me evil starts there.  It is thoughts we have of and for ourselves that sets us on the wrong side of things before God and others.

But how could I rid myself of something that hid itself so well from me?  Even when I said I wanted to root it out, I couldn’t always find what was lurking right under my nose.  Scripture has the answer to this in 1 Chronicles 29:18. Here, King David is praying to God when he says, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, our fathers, keep this forever in the intent of the thoughts of the heart of Your people, and fix their heart toward You.”  David knew that the people must guard their hearts.  He knew that God would test the heart of every man, and that He takes pleasure in uprightness of the heart of man.  He speaks of uprightness rather than righteousness of heart.  So, he asks God to fix the heart of the people to be towards Him because David knew the people would have trouble doing it themselves.

So, what is this uprightness of heart that David speaks of, and why is it so hard for people to attain?  Let’s look at the heart of the three people David mentioned in his prayer to God.  Abraham was upright in his heart towards God because he willingly decided to follow the plan God set for his life.  All that Abraham did was done with this in mind.  Yes, he may have sinned along the way, but he walked with God in his heart.  He never questioned the path he was on.  He never attempted to chart his own path for his life.  No, Abraham fixed his heart to follow the plan God had for his life.  Abraham saw a lot of God in his life.  This is hard for us to do today because we see more of ourselves in our lives than we see of God in our lives.  When you see more of you than you see of Him, you will be challenged to fix your heart on Him.

With Isaac, we find a man who was delivered by the hand of God as a child from a sacrificial death for God.  Isaac had all the reason in the world to wonder about God, but instead he was steadfast in his belief in God because God delivered him as a child from being sacrificed.  Isaac found it easy to fix his heart on God because he saw how much God’s heart was fixed on him.  We find it difficult to fix our hearts on God in this way because we have not experienced the deliverance in our lives like Isaac.  We say we love God, and He loves us, but we probably love ourselves more.  So, our hearts are fixed on ourselves more than on Him.

Jacob had to rely on God to provide the basic needs of life for himself and for his family.  So, Jacob fixed his heart on God the provider because he saw no other way to sustain life for himself and for his children.  Jacob was a believer in what God believed in.  We find it difficult to fix our hearts this way because we often find it difficult to believe in things the way God wants us to believe in them.  There is still too much of our heart ruling our lives and not enough of God heart living in our lives.  

David knew the challenge with our hearts so he prayed that God would fix the heart of His people on Him so that they would live more in uprightness of heart.  We are like the people of David’s time.  We cannot fix our hearts to God by ourselves because too much of our hearts are still fixed on ourselves.  If you are going to be upright before God, you must first be upright right for others.  More of them and less of you.  

So, like David, why don’t you make this a prayer request of your own.  Ask that the Lord will keep the thoughts and intents of your heart upright before Him, and ask that He will fix your heart to lean toward Him more than towards yourself.  If you do this, He will do what you ask and more of what you do in life will be pleasing to Him.Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

We are in the middle of some tough times these days.  COVID does not seem like it will ever go away. Our economy seems to be weakening. Essential things are more costly today than in times past. Many are unemployed still. Work is available but people are hesitant to get back to work because of COVID. Our leaders are more divided than ever, and they contribute to more of us being divided. Things are just difficult right now, and it seems like we have no where to turn in hopes of getting relief.

But we do. We can turn back to prayer. Yes, back to prayer. God hears all our prayers all the time, but we must get beyond praying just because times are difficult.  We must get back to a life of prayer, even in the good times. Scripture encourages us in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 to “Pray Without Ceasing.” But why? Why are we encouraged to never stop praying? I believe it is because God knows stuff will always be happening in our lives, and so it is in prayer that we learn to always talk with God about the things going on with us.

I used the phrase “talk with God” because I believe this is what He means when He says pray without stopping.  He is encouraging us to talk with Him always about all things. We have come to think of prayer as our way of asking God for things, and that is partly the reason we pray. But more than asking for things, prayer is the way we simply cultivate and deepen our relationship with Him by talking with Him when we are not asking for anything at all. So, we should encourage ourselves to pray and keep praying always. We should talk with the Lord and keep talking always. If you are not in the habit of talking with God, you should ask yourself, who are you talking with?

The bible tells us to watch and pray because our Spirits are willing, but the flesh is weak. So, keep praying always. You do not want to become comfortable talking with the Lord only when you have problems you cannot resolve on your own. Keep Praying. Do not let your good times make it easy for you to stop talking with the Lord. Keep praying. If you learn to keep your heart and mind open to talking with the Lord, you will learn to:

• Endure when things are tough because you know He is there, and He knows your situation—satan does not want to be in the same place as the Lord;
• Walk in the light and not in the darkness because you know He is the light and the way;
• Walk under the guidance of wisdom and insights because He shares these things with you that others want but they cannot have—the things that others want to see but they cannot see; 
• Be at peace with difficult and challenging people and situations because the Spirit gives you the ability to live in grace and patience—you pray to the One who can change the things you cannot change;
• Comfort those who are fainthearted and who are overcome by the things they face because you have the strength of the Spirit working in you;
• Live a thankful life no matter the circumstances of your life;
• Change some things about you that will change some difficult things around you; and,
• Make better decisions about life and about the lives of those around you.

All this because you learn to keep praying.

So, pray and keep praying. When you do, you will learn to hear His voice when the noise of difficult circumstances is all around you. So, keep praying and hold on to every conversation you have with Him. If you pray, He will hear. Keep praying. Hold on to your faith and do not grow weary at waiting on things to change; He will bless you. Do not give up on or give in to your situation no matter what it is. Don’t become discouraged.  Keep praying; hold on to the hope you have in Him when you pray. When you keep praying you are telling the devil that he cannot have a victory over you in anything no matter what the situation is. Keep praying; do not give up. Do not grow weary because in due season He will show you that He has been listening to all you have ever said to Him in prayer. He will not let you down if you do not get down with your circumstances. Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

I believe if God asked either of us to do something great, we would be willing to do it because we know He would help us when things are beyond our abilities to do ourselves. But God never asks us to do anything that is greater than we have the capability to do. With God there is no great or small. All things are the same to Him. We see large and small because we see through the eyes of our capabilities instead of our hearts or our faith.

In 2 Kings 5:10-13, Naaman, commander of the Army of the King of Syria, was sent by God to wash himself in the Jordan river to be healed of his leprosy. Scripture says this: “And Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, go wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored to you, and you shall be clean.”  Naaman was not happy at hearing this. He expected a visit in person from Elisha. Naaman indeed became furious at the way he was being treated, and he went away in anger. But his servants reminded him that if God had asked him to do a great thing to be heal, wouldn’t he do it?  Why then would he make a great deal of doing a small thing like washing in the Jordan. Naaman listened to their counsel and did as Elisha had instructed him. He was healed just like Elisha said he would be.

I can see some of Naaman’s attitude in myself.  I believe I am ready to do the great things God would ask me to do, but I get an attitude when I’m asked to do the little thing that is right before me.  Why am I this way?  Or perhaps, why are we this way? We can see several things in Naaman that may be in us as well.

First, Naaman expected God to answer his prayer the way Naaman saw it happening. Many of us will miss the blessings of God that are right before us because we expect things to happen the way we want them to happen. God’s ways are not our ways.  We must remember that.

Naaman became angry at the situation and with God. He got an attitude! In doing so he offered up what he thought was a better way to solve his problem. The problem with this is Naaman could not solve his issue; that is why he needed God. We must remember that our attitudes are the one thing that can take us higher in the favor of God or move us completely out of the favor of God. Choose your attitude well.

Naaman had a talk with himself about how poorly he thought he was being treated by God. He told himself how he could have done what God was asking him to do on his own. Why then, he asked himself, did he need to do anything at all? We must remember that God never treats us poorly. When we come to Him with our problem, God must often heal us first of the unseen problem before He can heal us of the thing that we can see. He is the vine, and we are the branch. We cannot tell the vine where we want to grow. God must be our God, but we try to make Him our God by owning Him. We are His children, and He does with us as it pleases Him. We do not get to do with Him as things please us.

Ultimately Naaman changed His attitude and did as God asked him to do. He was healed because of this. He went on down to the Jordan river and washed himself seven times just like Elisha instructed him to do. Naaman was healed just as Elisha said he would be healed. We must remember to be ready always to do the little things God asks us to do as quickly as it is possible for us.  God will not twist our arms to make us do anything. But He will wait patiently on us as He asks us, “Will you do it?  Our response should be immediately and boldly, “Yes Lord, I will do it.”  Will you do it today? Will you commit to living a life that says whatever the Lord asks of you to do, whether big or small, you will say to Him by your actions, “I will do it”?

Live a Delivered Life. Love you.

There was a period in the history of man and God where man did not have a king.  After the Israelites conquered the promised land, they lived on the land of promise, but they no longer had Moses or Joshua as their spiritual and earthly leaders.  I guess it would be natural that the people would soon fall away from following God when their spiritual leaders had been lost and not replaced.  In a way, since Moses and Joshua died, the people let God die in their lives.  They allowed themselves to do as they pleased.  

That was then.  What does it feel like to us today?  Judges 17:6 says, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”  So, what does it mean “right in his own eyes”?  If you and I see the same thing, but you see it differently than me, is it possible that we could both be right?  Could both of us be wrong?  I submit that the only way to be right in your own eyes is to give up your right for what is right before God.

When the Israelites had to learn to live without Joshua and without Moses, they had to learn to live before God.  But they didn’t do this.  Instead, they fought one another trying to live before one another.  People who had lived as one—as brothers, as relatives, as children of God—now lived as enemies towards one another.  They became noisy before one another.  They pursued what was right and best for themselves more than for anyone else.  They took one another before judges to have matters of dispute settled.  In many ways, they found it easier to live together as enemies than as brothers.  How could this be?  Because God is the only thing that can bring together things that would naturally be separate.   The Israelites couldn’t love one another.  The most the judges could do was to enable them to manage their hate and dislike towards one another.

When we fight with one another about what is right or wrong, we are more likely to be wrong than we are to be right.  Why is this so?  Because the only standard for what is right is found in God, so when we base right and wrong on anything else, we are likely to get it wrong.  We can be right before man, but man could still be wrong in his judgment.  Every king must have a king, every captain must have a captain, every law must itself have a law, every leader must have a leader, and every piece of authority must have over it an authority.  Everyone one of us who would rule our own lives must ourselves have a ruler over our lives.  If we have no one to answer to but ourselves, then we have no way of knowing if we are right or wrong because we are a poor standard for what is right.

If you want to live in right standing before man, learn to live humbly before God.  If you want what is right from man, learn to live humbly before God.  If you want your neighbor to do right before you, learn to live right before God.  If you want what all men want, learn to quiet down your life before men and live quietly before God.  He will make sure you have all the things you need—the things others seek in the wrong ways.  If you need judgment, quiet your life, and let Him judge first.  Learn how not to live like man lives.  If you do what man does, you will receive the sentence that man will receive.  Man’s best is nothing compared to God’s provision showered upon you.  Try to live before Him in humble submission to His Lordship over your life.  If God is your God, if He is your King, if He is your Lord, then you will learn to live a quiet peaceable life in submission to the higher things of the Spirit that are not seen by those who live for themselves.  If you quiet down, God will speak up on your behalf and make the noise of you and about you in the lives of others.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

Scripture tells us Jacob and his children were forced to leave their homeland and go to Egypt because there was a famine in all the land.  In Egypt they found food and shelter because God had blessed their brother Joseph to rise to the prominence there as second in command to Pharoah.  Joseph had his brothers bring his dad and all that he had to Egypt where they would be cared for.  Pharoah, it is said, gave Jacob and his family the land of Goshen.  Goshen was the best land in Egypt.  But more than that, it was the land where God would protect His children from the hardships that were to come.  Goshen is God’s protected place.

God did not fight for the Israelites in Egypt.  Instead, He protected them while they were there.  And like them, God does not expect you and I to fight every day to live in peace where we are.  Often, He wants first to be our protection right where we are before there is a need for a battle.  But we must see how He works and be willing to accept protection more than we want to fight a battle.  

Scripture gives us another example in 2 Kings 6:8-23.  The king of Syria sought to kill the prophet Elisha because Elisha was doing the work of God to warn Israel about the plans of the king who fought to destroy the Israelites.  Scripture says, “And Elisha’s servant said to him, alas my master!  What shall we do?  So, Elisha answered, do not fear, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”  Then Elisha prayed that God would open the eyes of his servant and allow him to see what he did not see yet.  Elisha’s servant saw the host of the Syrian army all around them and wondered in fear what they could do to save themselves.  But he did not see that what surrounded them was itself surrounded by a mountain full of horses and chariots of fire.  The Syrians surrounded Elisha, but God had surrounded the Syrians to protect Elisha.  

Even though God could have easily destroyed the Syrians, God did not fight the Syrians that day.  Instead, He blinded them so they could not see where they were.  When God opened their eyes, the Syrian army found themselves prisoners of Israel.  Yet still God did not fight.  Contrary to human impulse, God fed the Syrians, nourished them, and sent them back to their homes.  By blinding the Syrians to the natural things they wanted to do, God revealed to them the power of the Spiritual things they did not see.  Now understanding the power of God, the Syrians never again raided the land of Israel.  Without spilling a drop of blood, God gave the Israelites His protection as He had given their ancestors in Goshen.

Like the Israelites, we must learn that often God’s protection comes just before He engages in the things we want to battle in our lives.  He wants to protect us from ourselves while He protects us from others.  He wants to protect us from those who would hurt us and do us harm, but He also wants to protect us from being like those who would hurt, harm, or endanger others.  Why is this?  Because sometimes we come up against an enemy stronger than us, and sometimes we are our own enemy or the enemy of someone God is trying to protect.  God wants us to live in the place where His protection abides.  He wants us to live in the Goshen He has prepared for us.

Perhaps God is not as willing to fight others as we are ready and willing to fight.  Instead, we must learn to live under His protection.  By opening the eyes of our hearts, our faith, and our beliefs, we can see what we struggle against is surrounded by the army of God.  Our natural eyes and our minds will tell us to fight those who fight against us.  But the Spirit of God might just be saying to us to stop fighting what God does not want to defeat.  Instead, learn to live a protected life—a life that says no matter what comes against me, there is something greater that surrounds the thing that has come up against me.  I know I will be protected so I will wait patiently here in my Goshen for the hand of God to deliver me and to deliver the thing that comes against me.

God’s Goshen is the best place for you to live under His protection.  When you take matters of your life into your own hands, you take God’s hands off the matters of your life.  If you will accept God’s protection, then you will be able to let God choose when and how to fight the battles that come your way.  Learn to live under His protection then you will know that you are protected.

Live a Delivered life.  Love you.

In the Old Testament, the Bible speaks of the works of Sampson.  He was a strong man, stronger than any man of his time.  The Bible says he even killed a lion with his bare hands.  But Sampson’s strength was not simply natural; it was supernatural!  Soon after he was born, the Spirit of the Lord began to move upon him.  Sampson had the anointing of God’s favor which was the reason he could do so many powerful things that other men could not do.

You and I are no Sampson, but we have access to the same Love of the Lord that Sampson had.  Scripture tell us this in Nehemiah 8:10, “Then Nehemiah said to them, go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord.  Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”  Nehemiah was reading the book of the law to the people who had not heard God’s word for many years.  When they heard it, they wept because they realized they were not living the way God wanted them to live.  They were sorrowful to the point of tears.  But Nehemiah encouraged them, because through their repentant sorrow, they would get to experience a supernatural strength much like Sampson’s that came in the way of Spiritual Joy.

I mentioned in one of my previous writings that joy and happiness are not the same thing.  Being happy is an emotion we have because of external circumstances we like.  Joy is a spiritual state of being that we come to when we realize who we are in Christ.  Joy is indeed the place where we get the strength to live through our circumstances instead of being overcome by our circumstances.  Joy is the realization of how much the Lord loves each of us.  It is coming to realize the real meaning of the children’s song, “Jesus loves me, Yes I know, For the bible tells me so.”  Most of us know this song, but few of us understand the joy that is present within it.  Joy comes not because the bible tells us Jesus loves us, but because we come to know for ourselves what it really means that Jesus loves us.

Just like the people of Nehemiah’s time came to know God’s Word and were moved to sorrow, we will be moved to a state of joy in our spirits when we come to know God’s love for us.  The person who comes to know that God simply loves loving us, that it is the Lord’s great joy that He gets to be our Lord, will be filled with the same joy Jesus has towards us, the same joy that moved Him to die for us so we could live with Him.

When we come to know that God loves loving us, we are strengthened in the Spirit to live in ways that enable us to overcome the challenges of life that cause others to stumble.  We have a supernatural strength to see right from wrong, to see good over bad, and to see what others cannot see.  We are given strength to understand all that we hear, to give when others take, and to serve when others want to be served.  The joy of the Lord brings a spiritual anointing upon our lives that enable us to be content in our natural state because our spiritual state has the power to change the things around us.

We may not be able to kill wild animals with our bare hands, but knowing that the Joy of the Lord is our strength gives us the confidence to endure with joy all that comes our way.  So go your way, and do not allow your circumstance or your desire for happiness keep you from the strength of the Lord that is found in His joy for you.  There is supernatural power in the Joy of the Lord.  Seek it and enjoy it.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

A few months ago, my youngest son asked me to meet him early one morning to help him with a project.  He told me exactly where he wanted me to meet him.  Well, that morning I drove to the place where I thought we were supposed to meet, but he was not there.  Within a short while, my son called and asked, “Dad, where are you?”  I told him I was sitting in the parking lot of the place he wanted to meet.  He said, “No Dad, you’re in the wrong place.”  He told me how to use my phone to share my location with him, then he told me to stay exactly where I was.  He arrived shortly, and I followed him to where he had instructed me to be.  I knew where I was, but I was still lost in relation to where I was supposed to be.

Many of us are like I was that day.  We get lost knowing exactly where we are.  Scripture tells us this in Isaiah 55: 8-9, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord.”  Your life follows your thinking.  Look at how God constructs His Word here.  First, He deals with our thinking.  He says His thoughts are not our thoughts.  He is saying we think one thing, but He thinks another.  Then He says our ways are not His ways.  That is because our thinking is not His thinking so our ways cannot be His ways.  If we follow our thinking, we will have to follow our ways because ways must follow thinking.

Listen to what is being said here, and do not do as I did with my son.  I heard his instructions, but I did not understand all of what he was saying.  I thought I could figure out what I did not understand, but I did not even know what I did not understand.  I was lost before I even started out that morning, and I did not even realize that because I knew where I was all the time.

Sometimes knowing right where you are is the reason you are lost, and you do not know it.  I should have called my son, told him where I was, and asked if was where he wanted me to be.  But I did not do that.  So how can we guard against following our own thinking and our own ways so that we do not become lost in plain sight of knowing where we are?

First, we should always be thinking that we are here to seek the Lord.  While we have life, seeking to find Him should be at the top of our minds.  Now I can hear you ask, “Always?  How is it possible to always be seeking the Lord?”  God wants to be found by us so we can be certain that our thoughts of His whereabouts are the thoughts He has towards us.  He wants those of us who seek Him to find Him.  This is His promise to us.  If you seek Him, you will find Him when you seek Him with your whole heart, meaning your whole life.  Even if you are going to your six-year old’s soccer game, go seeking to find the Lord there.  He loves kids’ soccer.

Learn to turn away from thoughts that are clearly and purely your own.  Learn to listen to the Lord instead of what you say to yourself.  Listen carefully to Him, and you will find ways of living that will refresh your life when things are difficult.  Indulge in what the Lord gives you instead of what you can achieve for yourself.  You may not always know where you are, but you will always know that you are where He is.

Often, we think of wanting happiness and freedom when we should be thinking of having joy.  When we think of our happiness and freedom, we do things that may remove us from unhappy situations and with the hopes of finding happiness in some other ways.  This too is our thinking.  God wants us to focus on the pursuit of joy instead.  He promises joy!  Happiness is an emotional response to an earthly situation.  Happiness is carnal, but joy is a state of spiritual fulfilment.  Joy can be fully realized regardless of the state of your earthly life simply because God is there with you.  Joy is found when you can give to others while happiness is mostly about what you can get for yourself.

Learn to seek joy before happiness, and you will be led by the Spirit to live in ways that will be in plain sight of the Lord.   Check to see if you are lost knowing right where you are.  If you are, perhaps it is because you are listening more to yourself than you are listening to the Lord.  Perhaps also it is because you are seeking to have something for yourself rather than seeking to give more of yourself to others.  And perhaps it is because you are consumed with the idea that happiness is the measure of how great your life is rather than with finding joy in the life you have just as it is.  Do not be lost in plain sight of knowing where you are.  In all your ways acknowledge Him, seek Him while He may be found, and call upon Him while He is near.  Then He will establish His thoughts and His ways to be your very own.Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.

In the book of Genesis, we learn that God created man and all the other animals on the sixth day of creation.  But there was something special about the account of man’s creation.  God has a conversation with Himself in which He says He will make man to be different in a special way.  Man was to be made in the image of God Himself.  Indeed, this makes man different from any other thing that God created.  One of the first blessings God gave us at our creation was to be made in His image.  One of the of the best blessings He gives us each day of our lives is the opportunity to live like we were made in His image.  With our birth, God started His work in us; with our lives, we should allow Him to finish His work.

Isaiah 64:8 reminds us, “But now O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and You are our potter; And we are all the work of Your hand.”  With our births, God created the clay from which our lives could be fashioned into the finished products He envisions for each of us.  But we can sometimes keep Him from finishing His work because we start to work on ourselves by ourselves.  Because we can think and reason for ourselves, one of the ways we are made in His image, we sometimes think we are a more finished product than we are.  The scripture says three things that should help us remember that we will always be a work in progress with God.  God is always trying to create a new you in you. 

First, He reminds us He is our Father.  And if He is our Father, that means without saying it, we are His children.  So, we must know what a father is and what does it mean to be a child of the Father.  A father is our provider, our safety, our guide, our encourager, our problem solver, and our source of love.  A father gives his children a sense of the value they have and the potential of who they can become.  A father is the example of the type of person we should want to grow to be.  

But the Father God speaks of is much more.  This Father is the Source of the raw material that is used to produce the persons we are.  A Father is the place where we get our existence.  Before we were born, a Father was the source of the idea of who we would be.  A Father is the Source of all the knowledge we can know about ourselves because the Father chooses the raw materials that become the finished products we are.  Without a Father we cannot be a child.  A Father helps you quench the old you so that the New You can come forth.  You cannot be a New You unless you know what the Father had in mind for who you ought to be.  Do you know God as your Father?

Next scripture tells us God is the potter and we are the clay.  If we are going to become New Persons, we need to understand the divine order of things.  There was a time when I thought I knew best who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with my life.  Then I learned that God is the potter of our lives; He wants to craft us into something that He has in mind.  Life with God can never be what I think I want it to be for me.  Sometimes we say that God lives in us by His Spirit, and this is spiritually sound thinking.  But when we recognize that God is the potter of our lives, we don’t just say He lives in us.  More than that, we learn that it is better for us to live out our lives in Him.  When we are in Him, it is more likely we will submit to Him as the potter, recognizing that we are but the clay of His workmanship.  If you are your own potter, you cannot be the clay.  And if you are the clay, you need the work of a Potter to fashion you into something New.  If you come to live in Him, then you will come to live as the clay in His hands.

Finally, scripture tells us that we are the work of His hands.  When we submit to the fact that He is our Father and that we are but clay in His hands, we understand that God has shaped us to be who we are.  God knows what He is doing with our lives more than we can know what is happening with our lives.  If we find ourselves orchestrating our lives instead of following what His design for our lives, we are probably trying to work out our own lives without His help.  God wants to work on you, and He wants to work in you.  Your job is to allow Him to complete His work.  With God things of yesterday are old, and they must pass away so that new things can come forth.  If you are no different today from who you were yesterday, you probably have not allowed the work of His hands to bring forth a new you.  

When you accept God as your Father and realize you are His child, when you realize He is the potter and you are the clay, and when you realize you are the workmanship of His hands, then you will be a new person each day.  God has something new in mind for you for every new day that He gives to you.  God does not want you to take the old you into a new day.  Live a Delivered Life.  Love you.