Heaven is a Person

Heaven is a Person and Hell is a Perspective. Heaven, being thought of as a place in all of its splendor and beauty, means nothing without Jesus being there. We could have all these eternal spiritual good things but without the presence of God they all would be meaningless. When Jesus primarily teaches about the kingdom of heaven being near while he was here on earth, that topic is primarily highlighting the KING of that kingdom but in a humble manner. This king who IS peace, love, joy, freedom, etc, is freely accessible to you as you dwell inside of his authority and leadership. The only place I want to live eternally is as close to Jesus as possible. I don’t care where this, what this place looks like, what I have, what others have, who is there, as long as I am as close as possible to his heart and his face. Nothing else matters being he is my heaven. He is my only refuge, my only hope, my only strength. He can determine anything about my reality because it belongs to him, he created it and its for his glory.

The worst part of existence in this lifetime, although I realize is for my good and for my growth (to learn to rule and reign as he does), is when my perspective lies to me and communicates anything other than heaven being here with me now. I am accepted right now, I am saved right now, I am God’s eternal dwelling place right now, I am in union with Christ right now. Just because I lose sight of those truths doesn’t change this reality, my lack of ability to see these truths affects whether or not I experience these realities from the inside out. The bible teaches the kingdom of heaven is righteousness, peace, and joy. These become our experience in this life as a result of submitting to Jesus’ rule on a daily basis; our faith and surrender allow us to participate in this eternal goodness while on earth. The work of the devil, as outlined in Jesus’ teaching to steal, kill, and destroy. My conjecture from this lesson, is that the devil’s aim is to interrupt our experience and participation of God’s kingdom while we are here on earth, and he does that first by interrupting our perspective, which, in turn, interrupts our experience, by resulting in changed behaviors.

The devil wants to sow the opposite of God’s kingdom into your experience. The opposites of righteousness, peace, and joy are sin, anxiety, and depression. Do you see the fruit of any of those perspectives in our society around us or in your own life? If that is the case you may be a victim of spiritual theft, death, and destruction. This is because you are a unique creation of God’s beauty and expression, full of life, love and divine purpose. You are powerful and Christ loves to live with you, through you. You are a gift to this earth and a bright shining star. Have you forgotten this, or been reminded about this yet today?

Heaven is available to you to experience today, because Jesus is available to you, to be with you, near to you, close, in relationship today. May your perspective actively stand against every thought which opposes what Christ has purchased for you with his blood that he died to return you to as a gift, freely given. Return to through rest and faith in your living savior to the power of heaven and the purpose of God in your life right now because Jesus displayed his ultimate love for you by dying for you on a cross, and chose to give up his life so you could fully live yours. Happy Easter.

BOOK LAUNCH DAY

Hi! I’m forty years old and wrote a book to celebrate! It’s a collection of lessons of faith from my first forty years of life all in one place. It’s filled travel, adventure, risk, and FAITH!

One random winner will win a free copy each Friday this month. To enter to win, go to my facebook and share or my instagram and comment! You can send the prize to yourself or a friend!

Or if you want to buy it now for the price of two coffees, click this link!

May it be an encouragement to your faith!

A New Beginning

I usually come here with a message I want to share but today I just really wanted to come here and write without knowing what!  There is an exhilaration in living life in the unknown and so a part of adding joy to my day is doing this!

I just want to write that the purpose of life is so much more than what we produce!  Did you know you can have a perfectly wonderful day apart from being productive??  That the moment we leave this earth, all of our to do lists cease and everything we were intending to do never gets done and the earth still spins without us??  There are thousands of people around the world with no job or no career that wake up and exist, some with joy even, and are their lives not still full of value?!?

I would speculate that the purpose of our lives is to experience the exchange of love, either between us and people, or us and God, and hopefully both.  And money, whether it is elusive or we have plenty, only fits into this equation of purpose when used as a tool to experience this LOVE?

We are even good at turning ministry into a work and can lose joy trying to make as many people possible experience this exchange of love!  God’s calling never asked you to set aside your piece of experiencing heaven on earth for the sake of others; we share what we walk in, whether a worker mentality or a son or daughter of God mentality.

Did you know the fastest way to your eternal productivity is to rest in God’s orchestration and providence in your life and be faithful to the people he’s already placed around you in life?!?  Did you know we are not supposed to pour out our soul for the sake of trying to make something happen that God can do so easily on his own and in his own timing?!?

There is grace and joy when heaven is behind the work of your hands, even when enduring hard or difficult obstacles, where there is nothing else you would rather be doing with your time and energy.  Did you know that rest IS powerful?  Did you know that trust IS productive?

No matter how hard Moses tried in the natural he could have NEVER liberated hundreds of thousands of his people from the Egyptian empire, but when God wanted it to happen, Moses participated but God did all the work?  When we trust God for him to accomplish his ideas through us, it always is supernatural beyond our own abilities?  Deliverance wasn’t even in Moses’ mind!

God’s ideas are the best for us to partner with and sometimes it requires a lack of our own understanding of the how or the why or the timing.  This is great!  You are not doing anything wrong, you are trusting for something bigger than your ability to orchestrate the outcome.

Trust and rest in God’s impossible!  May you truly experience the awe of his manifest glory and presence and orchestration in your life.  Peace and blessings!

Trust/Rest

I’ve been around the idea of trust for sometime, but I didn’t really begin to think about rest until listening to a series on it maybe seven years ago.  I never realized how powerful rest is.  When we strive and fear and fret, its not only so exhausting, its just simply a less fun way to be alive.  I think it helped me to answer the question, what does trust look like?  It can and often, looks like rest

Our imagination can cause our heart to tighten up and our breath to shorten when we imagine some undesired outcome.  Sometimes this process of fear is actually worse than even what we’re fearing!  Most times, these imaginings never come to fruition and they are nothing more than a haunting illusion.  But the goal of fear in our lives is to cause us to become our own Gods.  This is never in our job description.

The only thing that interrupts this is a living relationship with the one who is God.  When we know he is good and we know he is in our future situations and events as much as he’s in our immediate moment, we will rest in the face of illusions of possible frustrations or disappointments.  I think one of the ways God displays his greatness is actually in the personal details of our lives.  He’s really good at.

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In the kingdom of God, a living relationship with a good father, brother, and friend (just a few of the dimensions of our relationship with God) keeps our heart at rest.  Because we experience his love for us, we believe it, we remember it, and we trust rather than react like someone who is alone and needs to fix/control things when there could be an event or situation outside of our expectations.

In God’s kingdom, peace doesn’t have to be forsaken.  If there is a thought or conversation that threatens it, when you recognize that feeling, it is okay to let go of control, to change or fix something.  It is okay not to figure everything out or why something went wrong.  It is okay not having everything figured out for things to come.  It’s okay.  You’re going to be okay.  You are living loved.  And there is someone very capable with you sharing in your experience who is not worried, not fretting, not far away, and who understands and loves you very much.

Trust/Rest is just one more wonderful attribute of God’s wonderful invisible kingdom.  I have forgotten this in certain situations and events in my life.  I can feel his tangible love even now.  And just recently I have been able to completely let go of things in the past I don’t understand, aren’t fixed, and can’t change.  I can trust/rest God completely with the past as much as we can with illusions of our future.  He really is good and moves on our behalf.  It is a beautiful journey of courage that only love creates: surrender.

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Character     Covenant     Creativity

Family     Freedom    Gift Giver

Joy    Judgement    Kindness    Trust

Love     Praise      Prayer     Self-love