Category: Soul Fire

Celebrate The Cross


Easter Week is upon us and so much to celebrate meets us this week doesn’t it? We’ve just welcomed our Lord as a gentle King riding on a donkey, as he comes still today, ever so gently, to enter into the hearts of his people ~ to bring Hope, peace, love and salvation to needy souls.

This week now, we’ll nail Him to that outstretched and unbearable cross and pierce Him with a guilt that He knew nothing of in His own personal life. So sinless, spotless, and pure, The lamb of God became our perfect sacrifice, given over to death by His own Father to save the world! Our sin did it and He was willing to take it for the time, just only for us. A grace so great, a mercy so deep, and a love so unconditional it may make us blush with thoughts of it. And So the thing is ~ that scandalous cross of blood shed, becomes beautiful to us, and is still today something to celebrate as it stands for our freedom from death. So yeah, let’s celebrate the cross, and this gentle King who took the death penalty for us. The perfect One who knew no wrong, yet He died covered in ours only to make us right and clean and justified and whole before a Holy God that couldn’t look upon us in our wretchedness! Yeah, so we celebrate the beautiful cross, but we don’t leave it there because this week too, we go on and we move from the cross to see the tombstone, the grave where He laid and then beautiful souls, we see the empty grave, and the victory over death that is ours too in Christ.

Victory In The Cross

Yeah, When the grave couldn’t hold Him and when death couldn’t win, the enemy lost the war and Our King’s victory became our victory! So as we move through this week, this holy week of Easter, take time to look to the cross! While you’re there, kneel at the foot of it and let your heart cry out a big thank you to the One who died there with loving arms outstretched for you and for the world that He loved so unconditionally. Be sad for a moment but then let your brokenness be healed in the hope that is ours now, with His death and resurrection sealing our salvation as believers of Jesus! Oh we do have a lot to celebrate don’t we? Let’s not overlook this powerful, holy week! Let’s see it for the victory and the hope that it brings into our lives today, right now and at this moment. Christ Ones ~ Without the cross of Christ, where would we be?

What a victory He gave us, when death couldn’t defeat Him. Ponder it! Think on it! Saturate yourself in the grace of it! Bask in the mercy of it! Be thankful for the forgiveness in it as we walk through the week.
~k
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd sacrifices His life for the sheep.”
John 10:11

#Easterweek #HolyWeek #SoulFire

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Put On Your Armour


Ephesians 6: 10 – 13.

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand and after the battle you will still be standing firm.”.

If only we could realize, grasp and come to a full understanding that while in the heat of our battles our struggles with one another are not really with one another at all, but with the enemy himself in the unseen dimension of spiritual forces. In the middle of discouragements, anxieties, power struggles, deceptions, and all of our horrendous battles, it’s the old enemy, deceiver who has gained a foothold and is doing all in his power to bind us in our strongholds of selfishness, pride, resentment, bitterness, anger, strife and unforgiveness. He knows how to render us ineffective and will target us in our weakest moment and at our weakest point. We must be on guard, alert to his strategies, ready to take our stand and stand our ground against him. It’s so important to daily wrap ourselves in the full armour of God. To stand on God’s righteous Truth, grounded with peace, clothed and protected with the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation and God’s all powerful Word; the sword of the Spirit. Notice, there is nothing for our back. A good indication that we are not to run from the problem, by protecting ourselves with lies or calling judgment upon others. Retaliation is the devil’s right hand man and what he uses to take us deeper into the pit of ruin! Rather than retaliation, we are called to simply stand firm in God’s confidence, trust Him, make the right choices, do the right things, and watch Him deliver us into victory.

“Christ out-witted the strategy of the Prince of the power of the air, milked the serpent of his venom, out-thought the thinkers, out-fought the fighters, outclassed the mighty and asserted His universal Lordship. Jesus Christ is Lord; Sovereign and omnipotent. Ruler and King of Kings.” I love it but I don’t know the writer.

Let’s raise the banner of God’s sovereign majesty and fly His victorious flag, high for all to see…His victory is our victory! Let’s claim it for our lives for it’s through His victory that our marriages become stronger, our homes become happier, our families become more stable, our children more secure, our churches more spiritually alive and personal lives more solidly grounded, more mature in the faith. Put on that full armor before you face your day, remember His faithfulness and His promises and step out under God’s banner of victory!
~k

Psalm 91: 1, 2, 4a.
“Those who live in the shelter of the Most High, will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. He alone is my refuge, my place of safety. His faithful promises are your armor of protection..”
#Soulfire

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His Ever-Loving Love


Oh couldn’t we all just use a heaping dose of God’s grace today~ right now ~ this moment? A tight wrap-a-round of His protective arms just covering us in our vulnerabilties and strengthening us in our weaknessess? Oh yeah, we need to go deeper with Him today. Go deeper into His ever-loving love and know that he cares even for the littlest of the little. All those fears that tug at the heart and all those insecurities that well up inside? He’s what we need for all that stuff! Those protective arms of our almighty and sovereign One stretched out over the cross for you, with a love so great no one can fathom it! No one can understand it! But you can know it was for you, just as you are, with no strings attached.

So today, reach out to the One who can take it all and speak peace into those dark corners of your world. Those places where anxieties lurk and rejections haunt and yeah those insecure places where any strengths go unnoticed.

Today, right now, “Come let us worship and bow down, Let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is God. We are the people He watches over. The Flock under His care. Psalm 95: 6, 7. Our Psalmist knew the Great King’s care. He was assured of His protection much like a shepherd protects his flock. The great creator of heaven and earth is our maker, so beautiful soul, in all of our vulnerable state, with our inadequacies and our insecurities and in those trying moments and fearful issues, sing with Psalmist today as he sang in Psalm 95:1, 2, 3, 4, “Come let us sing to the Lord! Let us shout joyfully to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come to Him with thanksgiving. Let us sing Psalms of praise to Him. For the Lord is a great God. A Great King above all gods. He holds in His hands the depths of the earth.”

Yeah so you can know today, right now, this moment, Those same hands took the nails and those same arms outstretched the cross to reach you, to hold you, to protect you, to carry you, to love you and to grace you. So lets you and I and we and us go deeper today into His presence and saturate in His most amazing grace!

~k
#FragmentedSoul

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Forgive?

Accept The Loss And Lose The Bitterness

A little bit about forgiveness, and something I wrote a year or two ago, came through my memory news today. Always relevant and A soul Note to self today with a picture taken on the Atlantic waters. I love the trail of fading water in the backdrop/past and the glistening water in the forefront, depicting so well the power and the delight of forgiveness as God works on our own hearts to free us from the stuff of the past. Beautiful soul, It’s in the letting go and leaving it behind, that we can find that glistening, sparkling element of life that says it’s all ok, no matter what! ❤

Raising four kids over my ‘mom’ years has taught me some interesting and valuable lessons about forgiveness. I’m still learning but I’ve realized it isn’t about the other person or the offender at all. No ~ As selfish as it sounds, It’s about the “me, myself and I”, before the Lord, in the situation, and His power and His strength in us, giving us the ability, to accept the loss or the hurt, regardless of how deep it may go! We have to get closer to God in order to forgive and accept any loss. You see beautiful soul, simple ‘acceptance’ releases the chained weight of the bitter spirit. That bitterness that binds and tugs around the ankle! Simple acceptance, like a key clicked in the lock, sets us free of the offense! Yeah, simple, straight forward acceptance! It’s the only way! Only then can I ‘begin’ to heal in the whole healing process. It won’t be instant, it never is, but just as time heals a surgery, a wound, or a broken bone; the broken heart, the pain of offence and the hurt of loss also heals with time, if we’ve accepted the loss before our Lord who lost His life at the hands of the angry mob. What did He do? He prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” They weren’t asking but He accepted His brutal treatment and ultimate loss of life on the cross and all for us, who are so undeserving! So must we ask God to forgive them and “accept” our lot and our loss. Yeah, when we accept the loss,  and it can’t get any worse so, what does it matter? It’s done! it’s over! It’s happened and we can’t change it! So we accept it and we learn from it!  The irony is this, that when we accept the loss, the upside is, we lose the bitterness and the anger that drives us crazy.  We  forgive and we are forgiven over and over and over again in this life and each time we move on hopefully a little smarter and a little wiser in our journey!

Think of it this way! Have you ever forgiven your kids, even when they haven’t asked? When they’re young, we do don’t we? And in their child-like simplicity they forgive us when we fail them in their little worlds, so big to their concerns. It’s all in a days work and just a valuable part of training in kids-world and parenting. However, as they get older with their own minds and rebellious behaviors, it becomes a little more “adult like” difficult and chances are they’re not asking because they don’t care. So, rather than harbor it, holding it against them ~ we have to accept what they’ve done, forgive and let it go and yeah, maybe ten times a day or more and always with the knowledge of another day tomorrow with maybe more of the same scenario. Remember the offender seldom asks nor do they have the ability nor power to heal. If we depend on the offender for our healing we may take the bitterness to our grave.
~k

Matthew 18: 21, 22
“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times? “Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

#Soulfire #SoulNoteToSelf

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