Take Up Your Cross

God paved the way for my present and my future with the prayers that He placed into my heart many years ago. I didn’t know what new challenges I would have to overcome or what would be required of me as I uttered the sentiments of my heart into His ears. All I knew was that I wanted to serve Him.

One my many heart’s desires was to not be a seat filler. I didn’t want to grow content with occupying a seat in the church and never getting out of it to go into all the world to do what God had ordained for me to do in the earth. At that time I didn’t know who God had called me to be and I didn’t understand that some of my prayers was an indication of it.

Spoken from a transparent place, as life happened, the more God told me to get up the more I wanted to sit down. Tiredness and fear had gripped me on more occasions than I want to admit and I have had the audacity to whisper, “ get somebody else to do it”, on more than one occasion. I felt justified in what I was feeling and I had forgotten about those desires that I had shared with the Lord until He recently reminded me of them.

One thing about God is that in His grace, He will correct you. Once He has revealed your purpose to you, it is selfish for you to lay it back at His feet and then walk away from it because you didn’t realize that it would require you to both deny and die to yourself.

“Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it”

(Matthew 16:24-25).

Consider what your cross is:

· Could it be that you don’t have enough time in the day to get things done or is it that no one is helping you in the manner that you feel they should?

· Is it your emotions, complaints, or family obligations?

· Is it the bitterness that you feel from past wounds or new wounds?

No matter what the cross you carry may be, it all matters to God. He is not asking you to drain yourself for Him. He is inviting you to gain more of Him. Serving God is not about work, it’s about your heart posture.

Lord, I pray for Your spiritual eyesight and mindset. I pray to no longer see things from a me perspective from Your perspective on a local and global level. Forgive me for grumbling, complaining, and for trying to handle life on my own. I pray to receive the daily manna that you have for me and the peace that comes with knowing that you are with me. Help me to maintain peace. In Jesus name, Amen.

Comments

The Private, Matters

“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.” And the angel answered and said to him, “I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, and was sent to speak to you and bring you these glad tidings. But behold, you will be mute and not able to speak until the day these things take place, because you did not believe my words which will be fulfilled in their own time.” ( Luke 1:1-20 NKJV). Zacharias’ prayer was not answered in the way that he thought that it would be. During his prayer time with the Lord, he asked God to allow him and his wife to have a baby, but years passed, and they got older. Zacharias’ went on with his life until his season changed, and it was time. Time for what you may ask; it was time for the blessing of the Lord over this man and wife to come to pass. The issue was that Zacharias had allowed this prayer to leave his heart, and unbelief took its place. Wha...

Why Are You Here?

During an encounter that I had with a young person recently, I told them that things were difficult for them because there were some things that they would need to do that had never been done before. The analogy that I used to help this person understand what I was saying to them was that of a wilderness full of trees. I told this young person that they would be the first one to cut down the trees in that wilderness to create a smooth path for those coming behind them. The same is true for many of us. There are large trees that we must cut down so that those coming behind us won’t have to fight as hard as we are fighting, and they will not stumble because we are destroying everything at the root that is attempting to block us. The task of doing this may seem difficult but the testimony is worth it. You have to be able to identify the things that have hindered individuals in your lineage, know what the signs of those things are in your own life, and then eliminate it. ...

Why I won’t date

So many women define themselves by their relationship status. I used to be one of those women. It didn’t matter if that man cheated on me, lied to me, or insulted me; I was not going to leave him. I needed a relationship to make me feel beautiful and wanted, but at the same time I knew that the men that I was trying to make love me were not ordained for me. Women don’t consider that word, ORDAINED. It’s easy for a man to make us feel loved, wanted, less lonely and desired, but that man cannot make us feel full. That is what I need in my life, fullness. I understand that God is my husband and that my fairy tale love story has to begin with him before I bring a man into the mix. You see, marriage is a union. You become one with your husband. You live with him, you love him, you worship with him and you fight (spiritually) with him. The not so tricky thing about the before mentioned aspects of marriage is that all of those things have to begin in your singleness. I have a tendency...

Eat The Meat

I am not sure what age my parents took my bottle away, but I do know that I was old enough to understand that it was time for me to give it up. I remember wanting a pool, and my father told me that I could have the pool if I threw the bottle away. He didn’t have to tell me twice. I put the bottle in the trash and found it back on the counter a little while later. Perhaps my parents knew that I would not adjust well, or perhaps they didn’t want to find out what it would look like for me to go through that transition in that moment in time. To make a long story short, I continued to use that bottle after I threw it away, and I never got that pool that I wanted. Growing up never excited me, and I suffered for many years because of it. There were times that I thought that I was big enough to be ‘grown', but mistakes and the need of my mom pulled me right back down into reality. As I continued to get older, many intersections that I faced placed me in a...

Visionary: See It Before You See It

One of things that I ask God for in my prayer time is the ability to be able to hear Him. I want to hear God clearly when He speaks to me. I don’t want to drown out His voice which is easy for me to do because I have a tendency to be easily distracted. When God has shown us something, we cannot allow ourselves to get off task. We have to be able to listen to God and we have to be able to envision what He is saying to us. For the past few nights, the word see has been jumping out to me as I read my bible. Before God gave certain people instructions, He told them to see first. Sometimes the personal words that God has for me can be hard to believe because they are things that I don’t see in myself. Life can sometimes have a way of making us not believe the things that God is saying to us, but we have to be able to see His promises mentally before we actually see them tangibly. Despite what may be going on around you, all you need to do is see . Sometimes you have to see what...

When God Calls You to Trust Him While He’s Making You Who He Wants You to Be!

One of the hardest but most comforting aspects of this Christian walk is the fact that God actually knows the purposes and plans that he has for our lives. In everything we go through there is a purpose. When I was out in the world I thought I had a plan. My plan was to become a doctor, maybe move in with my boyfriend, and get saved later. All but one of those plans fell through. I didn’t think about the plan that God had for my life. I put aside the secret desires of my heart and I just used writing as an emotional outlet from time to time. I didn’t know that the thing that I considered an outlet was actually attached to my destiny. I didn’t know that God had a real plan for me. We hear the verse “ trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” but we don’t really apply it to our lives. We make all these plans and never think that God has a different one that will blow our mind...

The Importance of Knowing How to Pray

No matter what mental state you are in, where you are in life, or who you have around you, prayer will always be the heartbeat of your survival. You need to know how to pray during both the mountain top experiences and the valley experiences. If no one ever taught me anything, I learned how to express myself to God through prayer. Prayer isn’t always about asking God for things, but you can actually sit with Him and tell Him how you feel. There have been moments in my life where I felt like the Lord was the only one that I could talk to about what was going on in my life. You have to get into a place where you begin to communicate with God as you would with anyone else. There are times when I speak out loud to God because I know that He is around me. God’s presence is peace, it changes the atmosphere, and it will shift your entire mood. Once you’ve talked to the Father, you know that everything will be ok just because He is around you. I pray that for anyone that needs it. I p...

You Are Not Alone: Wilderness Chronicles pt.2

“But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers” (1 Kings:19;4 KJV). The wilderness is a different place to different people. Some people consider the wilderness to be a dry place full of nothing. Other people may consider the wilderness to be a situation. Whatever you consider your wilderness to be, know that you are not alone. The devil uses the wilderness to isolate you, but God uses the wilderness to teach you, advance you, equip you, and then eventually release you out (or back) into your purpose. God can also use the wilderness to refresh you. Elijah was an awesome man of God. He literally prayed down fire and he went against kings in the name of the Lord. Elijah was bold, but he was also human. On one particular occasion, Elijah went into the wilderness after an encounter he had wi...

Can You Praise the Lord in Prison?

“Around midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening” (Acts 16:25 NLT). Paul and Silas were some bad boys! Can you imagine doing the right thing and being locked up because of it? These men had a freedom that the people they encountered needed to see because they were not bound although others could visibly see the chains that had been placed on them. They did not misrepresent Christ because of their circumstances and they did not try to give up serving Him because of the predicament that they had found themselves in. ~~~~~ Stop being mad at God because things do not go the way that you expect them to. ~~~~~ “ And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Paul and Silas knew who their God was and they knew that He was going to come through for them no matter what their situation looked like. They knew enough about God...

Learn to be Content

What are you connecting with spiritually? Are you connecting with God or are you connecting with the flesh? I often tell one of my friends that she connects with a certain individual that she knows so well because they both have a habit of leaving their crowns at home. When you are filled with the spirit of God, don’t try to hide the glory that he desires to show through you. The connection that they have is a spiritual one because they are equipped to pour into each other spiritually. Today I realized that I have a connection with an individual that I work with because I do to myself spiritually what he does to himself in the natural. I work with children and many of them have uncommon gifts, but the things that they have experienced in the world make them connect more with their flesh than with the things that God has placed on the inside of them. Many of them don’t know who they are “yet” in Christ so they act as if they are not royalty and precious in the eye sight of the...

JaNina B.

Search This Blog