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The Lord’s insight. It is God who Fathered you; it is man He used to do that.

Deuteronomy 32:18: “Of the Rock Who begot you, you are unmindful and have forgotten the God Who fathered you.”

If God had not begotten our spirits, we would not exist as the humans we are today. In our humanity, we are all the products of our earthly parents. They are our earthly mothers and fathers. But we have a heavenly Father, who is God, who begot our spirits. Without the Spirit Being that God begot in you, there would be no human being of you.

A man and a woman cannot birth any child that God has not already begotten in the spirit. In a way, we spend a lifetime where our spirits are trying to live through our humanity that our earthly parents helped to bring forth. Moses, in Deuteronomy 32, warns the people of Isreal that they had begun to live like human beings born only to earthly parents rather than the begotten children of God.

That was a long time ago, but if we live with the awareness that we are children of God, we can see in us today many of the things Moses saw in the people then. Moses’ warning to the people may be relevant to us today also.

In Deuteronomy 32:18, Moses warned the people they had become unmindful of the Rock, Jesus, who was their heavenly Father.  In 2026, in many ways, we have become a people who are unmindful of the things of the Lord and more mindful of the things of our own hearts.

In Deuteronomy 32:3-4, Moses proclaims the name of the Lord and the greatness of God. He reminds the people that God is our Rock. All His work and all His ways are perfect. He warned the people they had become corrupted and removed themselves from being His children.

In 2026, it seems as if we remind God more that He reminds us. We want the Lord to know we can be rocks of our own. We want Him to know we can know what is right and wrong based on our own morality. We want to remind Him our ways are perfect when we focus on each person. We want Him to know we are more perfect today than we have ever been. We are our own children and our own parents.

In Deuteronomy 32:20, Moses tells the people that God said He would hide His face from them. He would wait to see what would be the end of their own making, for they were a perverse generation, children in whom there was no faith.

In 2026, could it be that have hidden God from our face? Could it be that we have removed Him from many aspects of our lives? Could it be that all that we are able to do on our own is the beginning of the end of our own work and doings? Is it possible we have replaced fundamental Godly truths with fundamental human errors, and this is our end?

And could it be that in 2026, because we have removed God from most all places in life, that we have no need to live with faith. And since we live with no faith, we must live by what we can believe in ourselves and of our own doings.

Indeed, when we consider all this, we should wonder if we have made ourselves children who have no Father. And if we are children with no Father, we will be left to our own ways where we argue among one another trying to get one another to live the way we believe we should live more than to live the way God wants us to live.

So, in 2026 and thereafter remember, you are begotten. You have a heavenly Father. You did not beget yourself. Without a heavenly Father and faith, it is impossible for us to live in truth about anything.

Live A Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight.  When God asks you for something it’s usually because He wants to give you something.

John 4:7: “A woman of Samaria came to draw water.  Jesus said to her, give Me a drink.”

John 4:15: “The woman said to Him, Sir give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.”

Matthew 11:28: “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

You may know of this scripture where Jesus meets this Samaritan woman at a well when she comes to draw water. It’s where I get the reference “Moment at the Well.”  Jesus asks her to give Him a drink of water. When she questions Him, Jesus tells her if she knew who He was, she would have asked Him and He would have given her living water.

She responded to Him by saying, “Sir, give me some of this living water.” Jesus asked her to do something so that He could give her something. In Matthew 11, Jesus is teaching the people when He asks them to come to Him and He would give them rest. Come and He will give.

Has Jesus ever asked you, “do you really know Who I am?” Do we know where He comes from?  Do we know why He is here in our lives?  Do we know what He wants to do for us? He asks us to believe on Him, that He is the Son of God, so that He can give us eternal life.

So, for those of us who are wearied, for those who are tired of drawing water each day, for those who get up each day and can barely stand on our own, for those of us who can see no relief from the difficult things life brings to us each day, for those of us who work hard and get little, for those of us who are laden with worries and challenges that won’t go away, perhaps we should cry out “Lord give me some of the Life from above that You offer.

Listen, the Lord, does not give you water that comes from the ground.  He gives you water from above where He lives. He does not give you life from earth; He gives you Life from above.

He does not wake you so you can live through another hard day. He lifts you up above what is here, so you can live daily in the freedom He offers when you live through Him not just with Him.

He does not stand by and watch you work hard and get little. He stands with you so that you are blessed, working at the little things He asks so He can give you more of what things others work hard to have.

He does not simply stand by and watch you live under the weight of worries and burdens that keep you from focusing on Him.  He relieves you of what burdens you by connecting you to the yoke He pulls so that He pulls your weight for you as you travel with Him.

So, let today be the day you respond to His cry that you give Him a drink. When you give Him what He asks you to give, you open your hands and arms to receive more of what He wants to give you.

He is asking you to give Him a drink of your worries and He will give you freedom from worry. He is asking you to give Him a drink of your burdens and He will give you an ability to move freely with all that you encounter.  He is asking you to give Him a drink of your doubts about life and He will give you confidence that doubt is nothing but a step before a firm belief and faith.

If He asks you to give Him a drink of your unbelief, it’s because He wants to give you faith that comes from above. If He asks you to give Him your defeats, it’s because He wants to give you victory that comes from above. If He asks you to give Him some love, it’s because He wants to give you more Love that comes from above.

Lord, I want more of what you offer from above, so please ask me what you want me to give to You so that You can send me more of the things from above that You have waiting for me.

Live A Delivered Life.

Accepting and Claiming

The Lord’s insight. If you still have more to leave than what you have left behind, you are closer to where you were than where you should be.

Ruth 1:16: “But Ruth said, entreat me not to leave you or to turn back from following after you.  For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”

Acts 9:20:” Immediately he preached the Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God.”

Sometimes our relationship with the Lord might seem like it is stuck in the same place. For many of us, our relationship with the Lord may actually start this way and never change. Accepting the Lord should tell us more about who He is and about who He promises we can be.

We can get the feeling we are stuck in the same place because we won’t give up who we are and what we have now so that we can become who we should be and have what we are promised. Think of it this way. We keep playing with our old lives, trying to get a new experience rather than forsaking our old life for a new life and new the new experiences that come with the new life.

In Ruth 1:16, she is in a way saying to Naomi, her mother-in-law, please don’t ask me to go back to the place I was and to the person I was before I met you.  I have left that life behind me. I have accepted the new life I believe I will have when I go with you. I will stay where you stay. And I claim the same God that you claim.  Ruth accepted something new and she claimed something she never had.

In a like way, it is said in Acts 9:20 that Saul went from being a persecutor of the church to Paul, a preacher of the gospel. He went from being called Saul to being Paul, and from being a persecutor to being preacher. How did this happen? Well Paul left all that he was before He met Jesus, and he accepted the Lord’s call to live a new life. He claimed the Lord as his Savior.

Many of us feel no different in our lives as believers because we do not accept and claim. We must accept the promise of eternal Life the Lord offers us, and we must claim the life the Lord wants us to live daily as we wait. The Lord doesn’t want us to find more enjoyment in hanging on to all our old ways while we keep the promise of a new way of life as an unwrapped gift.

We can know if we have accepted the promise and claimed the life He wants for us by looking at ourselves today to see how much of what we were yesterday still lives in us. If we have not forsaken much, we probably have not moved much.  If we do not see what we left behind, we probably still live in those things. If we find more comfort and enjoyment in remaining who we are we may be stuck having an unwrapped promise.

If we have claimed the life that Christ wants us to live daily, we will be different tomorrow from the way we are today. If we are not feeling any different, we are probably not any different. If we are taking into our tomorrows the things we should forsake today, we are probably still living our old lives only with knowledge of the promise of a new life.

So, start each day accepting what it means to have Eternal Life. We cannot rightly have the new while holding to the old. And let’s live each day claiming the life that Christ wants us to live and forsaking the life we lived to ourselves. We must accept His promise, and we must claim that we are His and He is ours.

Lord, encourage each of us to not turn back from following You. Where You go, we want to go. Where You live, we want to live. We want to be one of the people You call Yours. And we want You to be our God. Help us to forsake all that keeps us from this. We want to accept your Promise, and we want to claim You as our Lord and us as your children.

Live A Delivered Life.

Wisdom follows nothing.

The Lord’s insight. Wisdom is more important than wealth.

Proverbs 4:7: “Wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. And in all your getting, get understanding.”

 Proverbs 1:4: “To give prudence to the simple. To the young man knowledge and discretion.”

If you are a parent, you know this. There is much you would like to share with your kids but there is not enough time to do that. And more importantly, your kids don’t always want to hear what you have to say. God saw that we would be this way with Him too. There is not enough time, or books hold all that He wants to tell us.

God did something about this. Knowing that we would not listen to Him; knowing that we would not read His Word; and knowing that we would not hear anything but what we wanted to hear, He made wisdom available to those of us who are willing to know how to view life in a better way.  Because how we view life determines how we will live life.

An old man sent his two sons to a land far away.  He told them to look at the land and let him know if it would be a good place for them to sell the shoes they made.  The oldest son saw that the people of the land didn’t wear shoes, so he reported back to his father, “there is no chance to sells shoes there because none of the people wear shoes.”

The youngest son saw the same thing. But he reported back to his father, there is great opportunity to sell shoes there because none of the people wear shoes. How could this be? How could they see the same thing but arrive at different perspectives?

Well, its simple.  One brother lacked wisdom and the other thrived with wisdom. Wisdom is the key to your life. It is the key to everything important to you. It is the key to good health. It is the key to great relationships. It is the key to any success you may have in life.

Wisdom is the principal thing. But it is not learned from what you do.  It follows nothing. It is revealed in how you think and in how you live.  It is the reason for the way you live and for all that you do. Wisdom is the principal thing to us. But it is nothing if we do not make it the principal thing.

This is what I mean. God made wisdom the principal thing to how we live. It is principal whether or not we make it principal to us. Nothing can take the place of what wisdom will do for how successfully we live. Whether we recognize we need to be saved or not, all people need to be saved.

Jesus saw this when God sent Him to that land of people far away from heaven.  Jesus could have reported back to God “Let’s now waste our time. The people there are selfish and want only what they want.” Good thing He did not do this. Jesus saw exactly who we are as people and still He said to Himself, “they all need Me.”

Because we lack wisdom, we make hard things harder than they should be. We make simple things more complex than they are. And we make awful things from the best things that we have. It doesn’t make much sense. But nonsense is exactly what follows a lack of wisdom.  We do not have the ability to make sense of what makes no sense to us when we lack wisdom.

So then, what do we do with this message? If you have wisdom as your principal thing, you are likely to see how you should adjust your life so that wisdom leads. Wisdom never follows. It is either leading or it is not present at all.

This is a getting message. In all your getting, get wisdom first. Before you get a job, get wisdom.  Before you get a degree, get wisdom. Before you get married, get wisdom. Before you get your next meal, get wisdom. When you get wisdom, all the things you want to get will come to your more easily when those same things will escape others.

The principal thing is not to have more of what life has to offer, it is to have just a little bit of the thing that will make life give you what it keeps from you because you lack wisdom.

Live A Delivered Life.

Whose Way Do We Want

The Lord’s insight. What God restricts man want to allow. What God allows man want to broaden.

Genesis 3:6: “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.  She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”

Matthew 7:13: “Enter by the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

I believe Adam and Eve had many times seen the tree from which God told them not to eat. How else would they know to stay away from its fruit? But after being tempted by the devil, Eve saw the tree in a different light; now she wanted to have the knowledge of good and evil. She wanted what the devil said more than what God said.

So, she and Adam ate the fruit. They decided to follow their way to a place of their choosing rather than to follow a path God chose for them to a place God chose for them. To them God’s command was a restriction that kept them from enjoying all that life had to offer. They wanted to be allowed to live life to its fullest.

In Matthew 7, Jesus talks to us about destruction and about the path we take to life. He tells us life is something we find and enter into by our living. So, we must restrain ourselves so that we live on a narrow path that leads to a narrow gate that opens to life eternal. He wants us to learn to deny our own way of living by restricting ourselves to the way and the path God has chosen for us.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be focused on living life to its fullest when we don’t really know what that means.  Perhaps life can only be had when we learn to deny ourselves and to restrict our way of living to that which God has said. This, Jesus warns us, is what will lead us to find the fullest life possible.

In a way, God tells us that what seems like restrictions to us are actually His allowances for us. Because what He allows for us is always good for us and it always leads to life. And like this, we must recognize that the thing we would allow for ourselves is the thing God will always restrict for us because our choices of allowances will almost always lead to death.

But we are like Adam and Eve in that we want to live with more allowances than with restrictions. We believe it is actually more destructive to live a narrow way each day so that we never find a full life. So, we justify our own way of living by broadening the path and gate God has reserved for life.

We see this idea of taking the broad way of living almost everywhere. When God describes marriage as between a man and a woman, we see that as a restriction. So, we broaden the idea of marriage to include a relationship between two people of any sex. We want to allow for rather than to restrict from.

Also, in a similar way, we see many people today who believe the church should represent the people of the communities in which the church is located. The church will encourage people to come as they are without the expectation that they must change who they are. The church in essence is changed by the people more than the people are changed by the Word of God.

We want the life behind the straight and narrow way to be had by allowing a broader and wider way of living. And so that our way of living is not condemned by others, we legalize the broad way and the wide gate so that those who follow the straight and narrow way must allow for a broader wider way.

One way to know if your way of living is the way God wants you to live is to ask yourself if a law is required to allow or to restrict how you live. God tells us to love one another. We don’t need a law to allow or to restrict loving others. Loving others is a straight and narrow way of living that leads to life.

God also describes marriage as between a man and a woman. We don’t need a law to accept what God says about marriage. This is God’s way. This is the straight and the narrow way of living that leads to life.

Learn to live in a way that is delivered from what you want to what God wants. God’s Way is always better than our ways.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. Love is kind; it is not tough.

1 Corinthians 13:4: “Love suffers long and is kind.”

John 15:12: “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

I’m sure you have heard people speak of “tough love,” or you may have used the idea of tough love yourself, but love is not tough at all.  God made love the cornerstone of everything.  We are to first love the Lord with all our hearts and with all our souls.  Then we are to love others as we love ourselves.

The Lord wants us to abide or to live in His love.  Part of the reason for this is that we can learn to love in all things, to love at all times and to be love towards all people. Just like believing in Him is not made difficult for us to do, loving Him and others is not tough.  It is easy.

So, how then did the idea of “tough love” find its way into how many believers suggest we should interact with others sometimes?  Perhaps it’s because in some ways we may want people to deserve our love because of the things they do to us. But God did not ask us to earn His love, so we ought not to think that others must earn or be deserving of our love.  There are three things to consider with love:  Love is not tough; Loving is not tough; and Being love is not tough.

Love is not tough.  Love is kind.  Things that are kind are not tough things at all.  If you live in the Love of the Lord, you live in the kindness and in the grace and in the mercy of the Lord.  It may be tough for you to love because you want to bring a consequence to someone, but this does not make love tough. You may want to withhold kindness and grace and mercy until a person accepts personal fault, but this is not love.

Thinking this way simply makes “tough love” a pretense for love when it is really selfishness and condemnation and the like that you want to be received as love. It may be tough for you to accept the kindness of Love, but love is never tough because you are tough. You don’t protect yourself with “tough love.”

Loving is not tough. We are called to love God with all our hearts and to love others as ourselves.  Loving God and loving others then is not tough. God did not make something so crucial to our relationship with Him and others to be difficult for us to do.  Loving Him and loving others is easy and it should be as natural as loving our own selves. Loving is not tough because Love is not tough.  You are loving because you are Loved.

Being love is not tough. 1 Corinthians 13 says that love is patient, it doesn’t envy, it is not selfish, it does not behave rudely, and it thinks no evil. If you listen to this scripture, it tells you that love is something that lives more than it is something that we just do.  Being love is not tough, so manifesting the things that come from being love is not tough. If being love is tough for you, perhaps it is because you are simply trying to do loving things, but you are not being a loving person.

So then, love is not tough, loving is not tough, and being love is not tough.  Perhaps then, we should consider if the idea of tough love should be something we embrace. Ephesians 4:15 tells us that love is intended to unify not to divide.  We are to speak the truth to one another in love so that we come closer together.

But let’s make sure we speak the truth more than we speak our feelings.  Your feelings may not be the truth.  Your feelings just may be your need to hurt others in love rather than to speak the truth in love.  If what you say to others is not intended to love and to bring unity, perhaps it’s something you should keep to yourself.

Love is never tough to give; it is never tough to receive; and it is never tough to be. What is tough is for us to learn that we don’t need to express all our hurt and pain that others may cause us simply because we want them to know how we feel.  Love spoken in anger is not love. You can always forgive others for their hurts even if you do not share with others you are hurt.

This is the strength of Love.  Love can love easily and always even in the middle of pain.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. The Lord puts His name on the people who favor Him.

Matthew 5:3-12: “Blessed are the poor in spirit; those who mourn; the meek; those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; the merciful and pure in heart; the peacemakers.”

Numbers 6:24-27:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying, this is the way you shall bless the children of Israel.  Say to them:

The Lord bless you and keep you;

The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you;

The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.

So, they shall put My name on the children of Israel, and I will bless them.”

God gave the priests the power and authority to bless the people with this prayer.  He gave them the authority to put God on the hook to put His name on the people.  This was to say to all the other people at that time, the children of Israel belonged to God and He was their God.

So, in doing this, the priests were not asking the Lord to bless the people.  They are telling the people to be reminded that the Lord blesses them.  He keeps them as His own.  He smiles down upon them from heaven and gives them all peace. This was their blessing.

The Lord God chose to distinguish His people by showing the world that He favored them over any other people.  He was saying they are Mine and I am theirs and this is how you know that.  I will favor them in all things. They will carry My name on their lives.

The Lord loves all people, but He chooses to favor those who favor Him.  This is the key to this blessing.  God favors those who favor Him.  He puts His name on those who find their names in Him.  He puts His claim on those who claim Him. He lifts up those who lifts up His name.  He honors those who honor Him.

Years later, Jesus taught the people about blessing and favor and being children of the Lord. He tells us in Matthew 5:3-12 the things we can do ourselves to show that we favor Him over anyone and anything else. How do we show that we favor Him? Well, it’s when we choose to put His name on ourselves.

And how do we put His name on ourselves? Well, it’s when we keep ourselves poor in spirit; when we mourn; when we are meek; when we hunger and thirst for righteousness; when we are merciful; when we are pure in heart; and when we are peacemakers.

You see, if we had to describe Jesus to someone else, aside from Him being the Son of God and our Savior, we could say He is God, but He is poor in spirit; He is a caring Lord Who mourns for the people to have the things of God; He is God, but He is meek and lowly in heart; He is God, still He hungers and thirsts for righteousness; He is God, but He is merciful and gracious; and He is God but He is pure in heart and He is a peacemaker.

Today, it is common for many people to reject our earthly parents and choose a path we believe in for ourselves.  Many of us will often say we want to be nothing like our parents. We will say we know better than our parents because we have access to more.  We have our parents’ last names, but we can often deny that we belong to them or they belong to us.

We should not treat our earthly parents this way and we must not treat the Lord like we would treat our earthly parents. If Jesus is all these things, wouldn’t it make sense that we would be this way too if we are His and He is ours. We should want His name to be on us, and we should want our names with Him. This is the blessing of all blessings.  To have the Lord’s first name as our own.  To have the Lord’s last name as our own.  And to have the Lord’s reflection on us as a reflection of Him saying we are His.  Do you have His name showing on you visibly so others can see it without you saying a word?  The Lord bless and keep you. The Lord be happy with you.  The Lord puts His name on you.

Live a Delivered Life.

When Things Do Not Go My Way

The Lord’s insight. Believers are called to Be and to give, not to get and to have.

1 Peter 3:17: “For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.”

Luke 22:42: “Father if it is Your will, take this cup from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done.”

It was a real surprise to me the day I realized my belief and faith in Christ changed my mind on what I had always thought was right for me. I learned that there would be many times where I would be expected to give when before I had wanted to get or to have.

Look at 1 Peter 3 again. Perhaps it is saying to us that there will be consequences that come our way whether we do good or whether we do evil. One way or another, we will suffer good or evil outcomes from our actions if they are good or evil. But in the world, believers should not always or only expect good outcomes to be the result of good actions.

In the world, we will get good outcomes from good actions, and we will get bad outcomes from good actions.  We will also get bad outcomes from evil actions, and we will get good outcomes from evil actions.  The world does not care about good for good or evil for evil.  And the world does not care if things go the way you want them to go.

If you are the type of person who wants to have things to go your way, you better be the type of person who wants the Lord to be the provider of the things that happen to you.

I have learned that being a believer does not mean that I can now have all that is rightfully mine.  It does not mean that all things will go the way I want things to go.  It does not mean I get to have something from the world that I couldn’t otherwise have.

Listen, in the world you can never rightfully have anything anyway. Why would you want the world to be forced to give you what it does not want to give?  The value of a forced apology is nothing compared to the sincere regret of the person who apologizes before you and who seeks your forgiveness before the Lord.

When you live like everything must go your way for you to be happy, you will likely never be happy. And if we say it is not about being happy but about having what is right for us, all we can ever have is the thing that someone else does not want us to have.

Remember we are called to Be and to Give more than we are called to get or to have.  Our disposition should be this. “Lord, if it is Your will, make my friend return what he stole from me; nevertheless, that is what I want, but if You want something different, that is what I want more than anything.”

In this way, you allow yourself to Be merciful, to Be grateful, to Be forgiving and to Be giving of what you do not rightfully have to give. And in this way the world sees mercy, and grace and forgiveness and selflessness in ways that these things will be produced in more of us.

So, how is this better for you?  Because the Lord blesses the people who are merciful, who are grateful, who are forgiving, who are willing to suffer for doing good for the good of those in the world who know no good.  For Christ suffered for the Just and for the Unjust. And we were all unjust before being made Just through Him.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. We find rest in Him when we stop living in ourselves.

Hebrews 4:1:  Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.”

Matthew 11:29: “Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”

Long before Jesus came, God made a promise to the people that in following Him, they would find rest for themselves. The Israelites were in Egypt over 400 years or so.  Most of those years they were in bondage to the Egyptians.  Life was hard for them.  They knew nothing but work, work and more work.

There was no rest for them.  There was no rest for their souls.  When they did get a moment to sleep and eat, I imagine they spent that time praying to God for relief. Perhaps for rest.

Hebrews 4 recounts the promise of rest God made to those who were obedient to Him.  It was an eternal promise that was fulfilled by Jesus when He came.  Matthew 11:29 notes that Jesus Himself invites the people who are burdened with life to come to Him and He would give them rest.

Life is great but living is sometimes very difficult.  Like the Israelites, today many of us may feel like we are in bondage in some ways.  We may not have all the basic necessities of life.  We may be sick in some way. If you are like me, you may have a nagging shoulder ache that just won’t go away.

Most of us have to learn to live with some difficult things that come our way in life. So, we must remember, just as God made sabbath a day of physical rest for the people long ago.  He gave us Jesus so that we could have rest today from living in a difficult world.

But the rest He provides us is more than relief from what challenges us.  God is Spirit so He first gives us rest from living our own lives so that we can find rest to live the life with Christ that He wants us to live. Many of us are exhausted because we will not stop living for ourselves and start living with Jesus.

When you travel along an interstate highway, you will usually find a place we call a rest stop.  There you can pull off the road and find things needed to refresh yourself.  After you are rested however, you get back on the road and start doing what you were doing before you stop.

The rest God promises is different from the rest you get when you pause what you are doing so you can catch your breath. The Lord brings His rest stop to you.  He doesn’t give you rest so you can keep on doing what you did before.  He gives you rest from living the way you lived so you can find the rest to live the way He wants you to live.

So, take Him up on His promise.  Get on the interstate highway that leads directly to His heart.  It isn’t a long highway.  You won’t have to drive far.  Leave all your stuff behind you.  You won’t need anything old when you take on His yoke.

He will not ask you to pause your life, He will ask you to live with Him a new life.  The new life that He asks you to live is new each day so there is no chance for you to become lazy or to feel like you are in bondage to the same thing’s day after day. There is no chance you will become weary at the things you do. He has everything you need to live a busy restful life in Him.

So let today start the day that you learn to stop living in yourself and start living in Him.  You will find His rest when you do this. There may be no rest for the weary, but in Him there is rest that keeps you from becoming weary.

Live a Delivered Life.

The Lord’s insight. As a nation, we celebrate our Independence; as believers we should celebrate our Dependence.

Acts 17:24-26: “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.  Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath and all things.  And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.”

Today, July 4^th, 2026, is our Independence Day. It’s a day we set aside each year to remember and to honor our birth as a nation and our independence from the rule of any other nation. It’s our Independence Day. We formally embarked upon becoming the United States of America.

In declaring our Independence from the rule of any other nation of peoples, our founding fathers had the sense to make sure we declared our dependence on the God of all creation. Our Independence from the rule of other men led to our Dependence on the Lord God of all.

Today, we struggle with our Dependence as in many ways we now want Independence from God so that we can have full Dependence on ourselves. We ought to consider what this means to us.  A nation that declares its Independence from God is destined to fall in its Dependence on itself.

So, as we look to our futures, let’s take a fresh look at Independence Day and remind ourselves to be grateful for the men who fought to free us from the rule of other men. But we should also remind ourselves to be cautious as our founding fathers declared two things, Independence, so we could have Dependence.

They sought independence from men and the ways of men so we could find Dependence on God and on the ways of God. So, with Independence Day, let’s celebrate all that it means to us as a nation. And at the same time, let’s find time to acknowledge our Dependence Day on the Life of Christ and what that means to us.

Independence from men and Dependence on God.

Live a Delivered Life.