No Regrets

Do not suffer remorse. Repentance is of the Lord, but remorse is not His tool unless it is of the sort that leads to repentance. Remorse by itself, apart from repentance, is a bitter brew. Do not partake of it.

Scripture: ...I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way...2 Cor. 7:9 NIV

Look Ahead

The Lord knows the path you’ve traveled. He knows of your pain, of your remorse, and your sorrows; those that have been self-inflicted and those that pierced your heart as wounds inflicted by others. His love and His compassion are yours and you belong to Him. Do not be afraid of the path before you; blessing lies ahead. Learn to wait upon the Lord. Learn to trust in Him even though you cannot see the prize. He will provide for you. Only do not flirt with evil; it has no part of you, and you do not belong to it.

God knows your heart. Read the message to the church in Philadelphia in Revelation 3:7-13. God will vindicate you, but first you must step out of His way. You impede the Holy Spirit’s work when you attempt to be judge and jury of your fellow human beings; this is not your job. You will make yourself a menace to others, and this is not God’s will. He desires that you be well-loved and well-respected. There comes a time when those you seek to correct have a better hope of making a turn-around without you dogging their steps. Withdraw and allow God time to work in the memories and in the thought processes of those you seek to change; God can remake memories. He is with you. Allow Him to guide your footsteps in a different direction. Blessings are ahead, and if you will give God time and space to work, blessings are behind as well. God is above time and space. He can literally remake the past. But in order for Him to do this regenerative work, you must step aside.

Scripture: Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Philippians 3:12-14

Prince or Pauper?

The searing pain of a blow to the heart can cause you to question yourself. You may feel that you are holding your wounds too closely, or that you are brandishing and cherishing the ways in which you have been hurt. You may even allow yourself to be convinced that you are somehow to blame for the degree of pain that you have experienced. The Lord disagrees with this assessment! You were in distress. He has been your Savior. The fact of your injury is real, but the Lord has delivered you out of this distress. Now you are angry that you ever were in distress at all! What more do you want your Heavenly Father to do for you? He has delivered you.

You desire vindication and independence. Having suffered previously, you seek to protect yourself against further pain. God allowed suffering in the past and you did not understand why. Not understanding, you fear that you will have to suffer again. This perspective of fear blended with a desire for vindication is the disease that causes the servant who becomes the mistress of the house to be a menace to herself and to others (Proverbs 30:21-23). The cure is to allow God to change your perspective. Were you a slave? Or were you royalty in slave’s clothing? Were you enslaved by others? Or did you choose to bow to God’s will and His way in faith believing, as an undercover agent assumes an identity for the sake of the mission? Choose your perspective.

The Lord is your Vindicator. A day will soon come when those who have caused you pain will fall at your feet and acknowledge that you have been loved and that you have been chosen. You are now and always have been a child in the Father’s house. Walk with confidence. View yourself as the precious and chosen child of the King that you are. This perspective will enable you to respond with the generosity of God’s mercy to those who will one day serve you.

Scripture: I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you. Rev. 3:9 NIV

Obedience

Walk forward with the Lord in obedience. You have observed the difficulties faced by those who disobey; let these teach you. Self-inflicted burdens show you the consequences of willful disobedience, but also should reveal to you God’s mercy and grace. The fact that those who belong to the Lord are able to experience His comfort and peace even as they live with the earth-bound consequences of rebellion and disobedience should cleanse you of fear for your own future. He does not treat us as our sins deserve…(Psalm 103:10). You have received a warning to avoid disobedience. You have also received evidence that blessing arrives through belief, apart from works. This warning to avoid rebellion along with rich evidence of God’s great mercy toward those who believe is, should you decide to accept it, the key to the blessings you have sought as your heart’s desire.

The tragedy of sin can separate you from an awareness of God’s presence with you, but nothing can separate you from His love. The cause and effect relationship between disobedience and death has been broken by the blood of Jesus Christ. You are now able to walk in obedience because your obedience does not earn your salvation. Obedience brings intimacy with God through Jesus Christ. You show your love for Him by obeying Him. You are unable to obey in order to earn a reward, but you are able to obey in order to act out your love for God. Loving God is what you were created to do.

Remember that the sins of other people cannot rob you of blessings. God is so powerful as to be able to use all circumstances that touch you as conduits for His blessing.

Scripture: Praise the Lord, oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits—who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s…he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Psalm 103:2-5, 10-12

The Story of My Life

How often do you look at your circumstances and respond with emotions of hopelessness and despair? Your circumstances are but the trappings; your real life occurs in the Lord. Your history does not consist of a record of things that have happened to you in the physical world. Your history is written upon the heart of God, and consists of milestones of your faith in Him.

The memory of your own earthbound history shifts and changes because you see the past through the lens of your limited human mind. So long as you stand in time rather than outside of it, your perspective will be thus limited. Furthermore, your mind is influenced by an ever-changing tide of emotion. This emotion influences your memories of past events and causes your perception of your own time line to be even less accurate.

The history of your life that is Really Real, that is worth recording and talking about and saving, are the events of your spiritual life; your life hid with Christ in God. Just as the recounting of the Israelites' history stayed the same each time the story was told throughout the Bible, the history of your life in the Lord has not changed over the years.

Record the events of your life in the Lord. When did you first know Jesus, first become aware of the miracle of the Holy blood spilled for you? When did you accept Him into your heart as Lord and Savior? How did you come to experience the Holy Spirit Comforter, and what path led you to know Christ in you, the hope of glory? What promises have been fulfilled, what anointings bestowed? Record these and view them as your reality. Teach them to your children. Rest on the certainty of God's promises. He has not failed you. He will not fail you.

Scripture: Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them. Deuteronomy 4:9

A Child in the Father's House

There is a deception that would lead you to believe that the acquisition of the blessings of obedience is so difficult as to be impossible for you. You seem to believe that truth as revealed in Scripture is unable to help you apart from your ability to perform some action based on that truth. Freedom from the enemy’s deception reveals that The Truth has done His work all by Himself. Unless you consider opening a gift to be a feat that requires great effort and sacrifice, there is no difficult action to perform. Acceptance always requires less energy than rebellion!

When you accept that the work of your salvation has been wholly the Lord’s, you may have peace; the peace of a child in her father’s house. The house is hers because she is her father’s child. The home cannot be lost because the father is all-powerful. She has no responsibilities but to be a child in the father’s house.

Psalm 15 lists the characteristics of one who is a member of the Lord's household. Because of the blood of Christ they are not conditions, but characteristics. These are the outward signs that your heart belongs to the Father: a blameless walk, righteous acts, speaking the truth from your heart, no slander on your tongue, casting no slur on fellow men, keeping an oath even when it hurts, lending money with no interest, and refusing to accept a bribe against the innocent.

These are not a list of Things to Do. They are like a thermometer whose measure allows you to gauge whether you are abiding in the Lord—or not.