Faith – BLOSSOMING INTO…

Happy Monday Ladies and Gents!

I’ve been thinking a lot about growth, identity, purpose… seems to be the theme for a while…Been on the book of Ephesians for a bit….enjoy!

You know what’s so great?

Psalm 39.

O Lord, you have examined my heart
    and know everything about me.
²You know when I sit down or stand up.
    You know my thoughts even when I’m far away.
³You see me when I travel
    and when I rest at home.
    You know everything I do.
⁴You know what I am going to say
    even before I say it, Lord.
⁵You go before me and follow me.
    You place your hand of blessing on my head.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
    too great for me to understand!

⁷I can never escape from your Spirit!
    I can never get away from your presence!
⁸If I go up to heaven, you are there;
    if I go down to the grave, you are there.
⁹If I ride the wings of the morning,
    if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
¹⁰even there your hand will guide me,
    and your strength will support me.
¹¹I could ask the darkness to hide me
    and the light around me to become night—
¹²    but even in darkness I cannot hide from you.
To you the night shines as bright as day.
    Darkness and light are the same to you.

¹³You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
    and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
    Your workmanship is marvellous—how well I know it.
¹⁵You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion,
    as I was woven together in the dark of the womb.
¹⁶You saw me before I was born.
    Every day of my life was recorded in your book.
Every moment was laid out
    before a single day had passed.

¹⁷How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.
    They cannot be numbered!
¹⁸I can’t even count them;
    they outnumber the grains of sand!
And when I wake up,
    you are still with me!

¹⁹O God, if only you would destroy the wicked!
    Get out of my life, you murderers!
²⁰They blaspheme you;
    your enemies misuse your name.
²¹O Lord, shouldn’t I hate those who hate you?
    Shouldn’t I despise those who oppose you?
²²Yes, I hate them with total hatred,
    for your enemies are my enemies.

²³Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴Point out anything in me that offends you,
and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

It’s so beautiful to know that we have a Father who will never be surprised by the way we do certain things because He made us. Self-discovery is interesting because we find out what He has placed in us. God can only do fantastic (minus our flaws) so go ahead and get finding…

How do we know though?

In a conversation with a friend, he said: ‘ It’s hard to find out your purpose because it involves things that come so naturally’.
I had to ponder on that and agree. We are all build with reason and purpose right, with our uniqueness so inbuilt that it is hard to differentiate between ‘this stands out’ and this doesn’t.
For example… in my house, I’m called to organise things in the fridge (there is a point to this don’t worry). If my mum and brother try to pack everything in there, it will be chaotic and not everything will fit. However, my dad and I seem to ‘have a knack’ for arranging things.
Could something as trivial as packing away shopping be directly linked to my purpose? We don’t know yet, only God does, but it is not the act of packing that makes it worthwhile it is the processing and the way in which my dad and I think that enables us to pack the fridge. So do my dad and I have the same purpose? No, we have the same skill but used them differently. Even though we both end up with an organised fridge, my dad may put the milk, egg, bread etc in different places to me.

What point am I trying to make? It’s easy to spot who is completely different to you, but what about those similar?

I feel like a lot of aspiring leaders with bright ideas end up unfulfilled because they have gone: ‘That person has done something similar already…. and it’s better than mine..’ This is not because the other person’s idea had more financial help or had more publicity, it’s mainly because the other person did it in a different way, using the same skills.
Amplified disparity between you and ‘the-standard’ you set as the other person.

I hope I’m making some sense here….

A lost idea isn’t lost in one instance. It is a build up.
A friend of mine sums this up well, such negativity does not come from just within, give it a read; Taking every thought captive

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you your heart’s desires Psalm 37:4

God places desires on our hearts and gives us ideas in order to fulfil those desires (Psalm 37:4). Then you ponder and think about it and you can get excited, plan it out, looks like it is going to happen…Then after some moments: doubt, fear, questions….
How convenient….

Jehovah-Jireh knows when, where, why, how… (all the W’s and H’s ) about the reasons behind an idea.

So what should we do? Use our weapons

The Word – The Truth declared and spoken into, over around (and all other directions) will bring a life and energy to you that will enable you to work for that plan with more enthusiasm. You will be grounded with the truth, your defence mechanism against anything that is not from God.
Prayer – Communicate with God about it.Write out the conversation. Use His Word in prayer, commit your plans to the Lord and they will succeed. (Proverbs 16:3).
Praise Him! Focus on who He is, your Father, who made you as He wanted and doing what He predestined and planned for you to do. That is amazing. I love the way the NLT puts this;‘For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago’.
Ephesians 2:10

At the end of the day, when we carry out what is on our hearts, we impact, we shine as the lights we are called to be.
Ephesians 3:7
I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power.

At the end of the day, when we carry out what is on our hearts, we impact, we shine as the lights we are called to be and we encourage the pursuant to keep running towards Our Father.

So why Nature Vs. Nurture?

Your nature is nurtured by the path of life to propel you into the path of promises for your purpose.

Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations forever and ever! Amen. Ephesians 3:20

Blossom Into,

Nurtured Believers

Gina x

First Monday of the Year, Ladies and Gentlemen! Happy Monday indeed! 🙂

This year, I have a lot of things on my heart to do. A new year brings a lot of new plans for people. It’s so easy to be motivated and excited; to put new incentives in place now. If the Lord has placed it on your heart to do something, pursue the purpose.
Here’s a Word the Lord gave me back in September, that is so timely for us with plans:

Pray over your plans. For God has designed the prosperity path but it’s not all milk and honey from the Promised land. Whatever plans you still or have in place for the rest of the year and into the next, I urge you to stand on the Word of God to encourage, develop and establish the manifestation of them all. For He has blessed the work of your hands (Deuteronomy 28) and whatever you do [whatever your task may be], work from the soul [that is, put in your very best effort], as [something done] for the Lord and not for men. (Colossians 3:23)

However, today’s message is not on the content of your plans. It is on how to maintain motivation and energy for your plans and in general life.
Here’s the ‘secret’ : declarations.

My cloest friends know I am a big promoter of life-giving language. If you can’t speak life over it, don’t speak at all. I’m the friend who will tell you the correct sentence to say, instead of the negativity that potentially was about to come out your mouth.
A defeatist attitude is a my daily struggle for me. Hence why I have declarations. I used to wake up with no hope for the day, plagued by such negative and fearful thoughts. I would see the day as a wasted day because I had such a dark cloud over my head. We thank God for His saving grace, for He revealed my heavy heart and broke the bondage I was under. He has placed joy and gratitude in my heart and as soon as I wake up, I make sure I state: ‘Praise Be to God!’

If I could urge you to do anything in 2016, it would be to change the way you speak.

A declaration is ‘the formal announcement of the beginning of a state or condition’.

I’m currently in the process of writing declarations in the areas in which I struggle to maintain faith. For example, after I was saved, my mind was attacked with the thought of “Are you actually saved though?”. Now, Jesus knew my heart was sincere and I was so assured of my salvation afterwards. However, a few weeks in and opposition arose.
I didn’t even know my mind was under attack, until on the Bible App there was a reading plan: ‘ Satan Lies,God’s Replies’. ( a highly recommended read). It revealed to me a lot of things I had to work on. Thank you Holy Spirit. It is so vital that we realise how important our speech is.

Proverbs 18: 21 –
Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
And those who love it and indulge it will eat its fruit and bear the consequences of their words.

There are consequences for the way we speak. Tell someone they are beautiful enough times, they will believe to be truth. Speaking life over each other is the best gift we can give one another. Speak into there future and you are prophetically proclaming beauty. I want to be that friend! We were called to do for and to each other. Ephesians says so:

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19).

I find it so beautiful when words are spoken from a genuine loving heart. Having recently celebrated my birthday, I had tears of joy flowing from the life spoken over me, I praised God for putting such people in my life. Words have an impact!

So then “faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Read scripture out loud, confirming and establishing your faith. State your declarations and pray over them, asking Father to open your heart to be fully convinced of the power of the Word.
A few days ago, the topic of declaration was in my mind and just yesterday morning, Father confirmed it for me. I was watching a sermon which focused on the following scripture:

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life”. (John 6:63).

You can have a declaration over anything. Currently, I’m working on a declaration of faith, assurance of salvation and confirmation of my identity in Christ. All the declarations are founded on the Word of God. They are all scripture filled and they are life, because they are the Words from our Father.

As striving-for-Christ Christians, we need to be able to change our language from doubters to the language of our Father which is victory-speech. If only we could realise who we are and what we can do, (which is everything! Philippians 4:13), we will never limit ourselves.
So that exam you have? Instead of saying: “Oh I’m going to fail”, how about “Jesus hasn’t bought me to uni to fail, I’m more than a conqueror”. (Romans 8:37).

Have you ever noticed though that society promotes defeatism? It is not the social norm to speak highly of yourself and to be confident in yourself. Society does negativity in even the simplest and smallest of things,such as: “The weather is so horrible”. No, it isn’t. It’s” the day the Lord had made and I will rejoice and be glad in it”.(Psalm 118:24).
It’s that real. I’ve come from a place of such pessimism that I’m consistently and continually focusing on my victory speech – because being in the place I was, was not healthy. With every word spoken, I am renewing my mind (Romans 12:1-2). It is a struggle, but my Father didn’t create a limited life for me. No, Sir.

Let’s deliever God-given Victory-Speech. Using the scriptures to uplift, elevate, motivate, edify and encourage you in day to day life and definitely over any working projects and weak areas in your life.

Your a child of God, you can do it.

Blossom Into,

Victory-speakers.

Gina.

Tag: Faith

Nature Vs. Nurture

Victory Speech