It is better to be judged than to boast. The flesh is never louder than when it seeks to justify itself.

As I walked this morning, the song that was on my heart was ” I Am holing on to you.” The line from the chorus is ” I am hold0f0ing onto you, in the middle of the storm, I am holding on to you.” It is a beautiful sentiment and one I have felt deeply so many times in my life. Many times, I have hung onto Jesus with everything that was in me. As I continued to walk, I realised that just as many times I had no strength to even hang on. I felt the Spirit say to me ” just add an ” is,” to the chorus. Now the line reads ” I Am is holding on to you, in the middle of the storm, I Am’s holding on to you.” Maybe today you need to be reminded that when you have no strength to carry on, He will carry you.

Many saints I know ” pray,” as though they are not talking to God. They lecture Him, they teach Him, they use prayer to teach others, they do all these things but the one thing they are not doing is talking to God, at best they are talking to themselves. If you do not believe that you are talking to God, then you are not. Your own unbelief has become your ceiling.

Gal_6:5 For every man shall bear his own burden.

We see here in the Scripture that every man shall bear his own burden. This seems to contradict verse 2 of that same chapter where we are exhorted to ” bear you one another’s burdens.” Now we know that in this world we shall have trials and testings and so on. No one walks this earth untouched by its brokenness and sin. Some , it seems, have easier lives than others, some seem to have trials beyond measure, yet the one thing that is sure is that we all have burdens of one degree or another. Certainly we are called to love one another and to reach out to those who are going through trials. We are to love and support them in any way that we can or that we are led. Yet as we all know, there are certain things in our lives that we simply have to endure, to bear, they are uniquely our burdens and no one can help us but the Lord.

How we deal with such burdens, whatever they are, certainly determines how we walk this earth. And how we deal with such burdens also determines how heavy the burden is. Two different people can have a very similar burden. To one it is such a heavy load that it pulls them down, to the other it encourages them to go deeper into the Father’s heart and they become stronger and the burden becomes lighter. In the previous chapter of Galatians we are reminded of what the fruits of the Spirit are. Can I assure you that how we react to our burdens will be measured by the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Now the fruits of the Spirit are these…..love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,goodness, faith, meekness and self-control. As you carry your burden are you loving? Do you have joy? What about peace? Are you patient with others? Would people consider you gentle and good? Do you trust the Lord? When you are provoked by others, do you respond in kind or do you exercise self-control? You see, our burdens are our teachers. Are you teachable? Our burdens shape us, do you allow yourself to be shaped?

When the sculptor starts he starts with a large heavy block of stone. Each blow from the chisel not only shapes the stone, it also lightens it. If the stone could resist the sculptor and refuse to be shaped, it would remain merely a shapeless heavy block of stone. Do you resist the hammer’s blow? Have you been reacting correctly to the burden that you have been called to carry? Does it seem to you unbearable and heavy? Can I encourage you today to go deeper into the Father’s heart today? You know this burden is something that is not going to go away. It has to be dealt with and no one on this earth can help you with it. Jesus says “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Mat 11:28-30)

You see brothers and sisters, the burden is not removed but it can be made lighter. It is made lighter in Him. And as we come closer to Jesus, the very thing that could destroy us if allowed, begins to shape us and teach us and produce fruit in us. I grow up in a city, I could not tell you one tree from another, but I know what an apple looks like. The fruit identifies the tree to those who do not know. What fruit do you bear this day as you bear your burden? How heavy is your burden? The weight is determined by our proximity to God. Can I encourage you to today, draw closer to God and you will produce much fruit and your burden shall be light.

Forgive us Lord in this land for our willful disobedience to your word. We are not ignorant in this land, we are rebellious. We ask for spiritual awakening yet we have no desire to do justice. We ask for mercy yet we show none. We cry to the heavens and complain about the flood of evil, yet we do not repent that we ourselves unlocked the flood gates for our own wicked gain. We cry out to you for unity of thought while we remain behind the walls that we ourselves built for our own glory. Lord, tear down the walls that your people have erected to separate themselves from each other and build a name for themselves.

Lord forgive our pride that deafens us to the cries of the laborer in the field. Can it be Lord that you would hear us when we refuse to hear them? We jealously guard this land that you made available. We reject the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, we the oppressed have become the oppressors and it causes us no shame. You say to us ” I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins, you afflict the just, you take a bribe and you turn aside the poor in the gate from their right,” and Lord we do it all with pride and are justified in our own sight, forgive us Lord and heal our land.

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God is never to be trifled with. We must indeed fear God in this context. He is not my buddy nor my pal although He has called me friend. This should only make us reverence Him all the more. He is high and lifted up. He is majestic and glorious and all of heaven bows down to Him and cries ” Holy.” Indeed we have been allowed to boldly approach the throne, but not glibly. We do not skip into His presence although we can run into our high tower. We must bring to Him the sacrifice of praise. He is my savior and He is high and lifted up. He is my personal Lord and still the train of His robe fills the Temple. He comes to me in sweet and glorious fellowship and yet He holds the whole universe in the palm of His hand, the same hand that holds mine. It is a glorious mystery how one so vast as He, knows and cares for one so small as me.

Hi guys, as anyone who has read the material on this site, you will know that I typically avoid politics or the issues of the day, because typically they are a symptom of a larger disease. In order to become whole, one must treat the disease, not the symptoms. When we arrive at the heart of the matter, this is where Jesus does His work, everything else is usually nothing more than getting ” caught up in the weeds.” It is important that we have eyes to truly see. The general reaction to the release of the young American soldier is a good example of a symptom of a disease. It is a deep malady and has a central cause which exhibits itself in anger and hatred and mistrust, bitterness and fear and loathing. I want to suggest that none of these things are the fruit of the Spirit of God working in our lives, they are the fruit of another spirit that wars against our souls in an effort to pull us away from God and render us powerless and without light in an ever darkening society. We Christians are the salt and the light of the world. If our light is covered and we have lost our saltiness, what good are we for the cause of the Kingdom and to a desperate and dying world?

I recently wrote about this very spirit, based on Luke 9:51 where the disciples wanted to call down fire from heaven and destroy, and presumably kill everyone in a Samaritan village because they had insulted and rejected Jesus. Jesus rebukes His disciples , much like He rebuked Peter when Peter told Jesus he would not be crucified. Jesus says to the Disciples that this anger in them, this reaction was not of the Holy Spirit in fact they did not realize ” what spirit you are of.” I would like to share a word of caution to my brothers and sisters. Do not get caught up in these situations and throw your lot in with those who are given over to a spirit that is not of God. In this particular case there is more than likely major negotiations going on with the Karzai government , the Taliban and America about America leaving. This young man is undoubtedly just a bit player, a smoke screen to cover the release of those high-ranking Taliban members.

The war in Afghanistan is coming to an end and I say praise the Lord. The day that the last young American leaves that terrible debacle will be a fine day. And if the Taliban turn on the government there, then that is their own problem, it is not worth the life or limbs of any young American. When America went to war with Afghanistan , I do not know anyone who believed anything other than that the sole purpose of going there was to punish and dethrone the Taliban for aiding Bin Laden and of course trying to capture him. No one I knew believed that America was going there to ” re-build,” that country over a period of decades, or that trillions of $$$ and countless lives, blood and treasure, would be spent on trying to create a democracy. If the American public would have been told that up front, I believe there would have been little to no support for going there.

Most of us and I would include myself in this, first instinct is to draw the sword, and when it is a seemingly ” virtuous,” thing to do, the sword comes out all the quicker. This is of the world, it flows not from the Spirit of God, but from the spirit of man. What spirit shall we be of? Shall we mind the things of God or shall we be found to mind the things of men? Jesus identifies this spirit with Satan himself. Let us walk in the Holy Spirit. This gives us the freedom not to render evil for evil. In this Spirit we can love our enemies and do good to them that would spitefully use us. The spirit of the flesh says ” strike back, lash out, get justice for yourself, destroy your enemies.” The Spirit of God say ” Forgive them Father for they know not what they do.” What spirit shall you walk in? We get the choice. Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.

Tis a foolish task to urge the blind to see, let first his eyes be open by a greater one than he.

We can operate in our own strength and talents and the world can mistake it for anointing and blessing. At the very same time we can be moving ever further away from the Lord by the arm of our own strength yet still appearing spiritual to men. Those who do this have to glean what is going on in the realm of the Kingdom by listening to other men who are simply following the Spirit. So, we can be followers of men or followers of God but we cannot be both.

As I walk each morning I am always on the lookout for deer. It is a heavily forested area I walk through and so it can be difficult to see anything. Of course you could walk at dusk or dawn and increase your chance of seeing them, but you just never know. I was walking the other day and looking into the foliage and suddenly realized that I was looking right at the deer and she was looking right back at me. It was as if just one second before she was invisible but then she just appeared before my very eyes and I wondered how I did not see her before. The whole time my grandson was visiting me a few weeks ago, I was desperate for him to see a deer. I took him at the right time and the right places but we never saw one.

I thought about the manifest presence of God. I thought about seeking God. I thought about the wind and how we never know where it will blow next. It seems to me this is the way with God. If I only walked every now and again, or gave up walking because I never saw deer, it is likely that I would never see the deer. Yet, because I walk every day and seek every day, all of a sudden, there is the deer right there, looking at me. As it is with the deer, so it is with God. He is looking for those who will search diligently for Him, in fact the word says He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. And the reward? To come into His presence. To ” know,” that He knows you, that He sees you, that He is watching over you. May our souls long after Him today and every day and if they do, all of a sudden, there He is.