End Of The Rope

 

Jacob was on the run!  A trickster, deceiver, and conniver, who had taken both his brother’s birthright and blessing! Now he was fleeing for his life from brother Esau’s angry death threats. I love how God guides even in our wanderings and I love how Jacob came to a certain place on his run! An “End Of The Rope” kind of place. A lonely place! A place where God met Him just simply because He wanted to. He had a plan for Jacob’s lineage and He needed Jacob to give himself up and over to a sovereign God who could lead him in the way which God had for him! I loved Jacob’s ladder connecting him to God and heaven but a very interesting thought for me in this story was Jacob’s pillow that night ~ that of a stone! I wonder, have you been there? At the end of your rope? That lonely “End Of The Road” kind of place, where your pillow seemed like stone and endless nights of guilt racked at your conscience and left you sleepless? There is no comfort there! No sense of peace! It’s a cold, calloused place of hardened hearts and deep, rooted pride and oh it’s so lonely! But praise the Lord, it’s a ‘grace’ place, a place where God meets us in our vulnerable state to get our attention! To make us listen! He got Jacob’s attention! He gave him a ladder in his dream that connected him to God and heaven! When your pillow is a stone ask God for His ladder to connect you to heavGenesis 28:10 -19

Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring, and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place– and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

#Brokenandloved

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Awesome Grace

So you messed up again and this time really badly! God’s offer of grace still stands for that! Thing is, are you willing to accept it? Then just straight out accept it, but at the same time remember He’s not offering grace for a re-run but just for now! We can’t live with the idea that we can redo just because we’re covered by His grace. Yeah, I get it, that some things are just too difficult to give up and so we hang on to them but I also get that He understands our frailty. He really does! He knows the struggle of our weak and fleshly humanity and how easy it is to succumb to its pitfalls and fall into the traps so readily made available to us. Our weaknesses are just so relentlessly there all the time and If it happens again His grace will totally meet us right there once again for that time, just as it always does!


Let’s get it though, that His desire and His grace is sufficient to totally free us once and for all from whatever has us bound tightly. Accept His grace for that too! His grace totally exceeds the darkness of this wretched world and covers anything we could ever do. We have to want it to cover us though, so decide today to renew your heart and your mind with His help. Let’s change directions in our mind, heart and souls and be freed from the pitfalls that take us down!

“…But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” — Romans 5:20
#Soulnotetoself

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His Brilliant Plan

Yeah, sometimes we just don’t get what God is up to. Life seems complicated and chaotic and all outta sorts, but even still, amidst all of its conundrum, God has a sweet plan, a noble plan, a brilliant plan. Turns out, all we have to do is trust Him and follow His lead 💕

Psalm 28:7
“The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song, I give thanks to him.”

#Soulnotetoself

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It’s A New Year

So here we are about to close the curtains on 2019! I wonder, was it a good year writing happy stories and making warm memories or did it write sadness, anger and bitterness over things that went down that shouldn’t have? Oh yeah, so much ‘life’ gets thrown into our faces and when we least expect it! You know what I’m talking about because life happens to all of us? We’ve all been there, where it throws it’s curveballs into the game, or sideswipes us off balance, leaving us reeling about with hurt from losses, failures, and insecurities rather than successes, wins, home runs, and victory lines! Life has no guarantees for anything, So, here we sit, with a new year of 365 days soon to unfold and we haven’t even wrapped our heads around the old yet. Will we carry the baggage of failure and broken past the final sunset of 2019 and on over the horizon of 2020, only to drag it around just because we can’t let it go? Beautiful Soul, our failures do not define us. They are not who we are! Drop them! Put them down! Genesis 1:27, reminds us we are created in the image of God. “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God He created them.” God has stamped His approval all over us even with our imperfections that show up all over the place and at the most inconvenient times. Yeah, we’ve all made mistakes, but that’s not who we are! We’ve had our losses and our wins but it’s not who we are!  We’ve got our shortcomings but we also have our strengths, you and I and we and us, and they make our story but they don’t write the final chapter. Our Choices write our final chapter and the good stuff is that we can choose to pick ourselves up and move on with a new slate, a new pen, a new notebook and a brighter outlook with a positive attitude.

So beautiful people, let’s give it up and let’s give it over to the Sovereign God in charge! The all-powerful, omnipotent and omnipresent, Ancient Of Days, who sees all, knows all and orchestrates all. He holds our past year in His safekeeping, just as He holds us close to His heart! Our dismal failure or our height of success, is all the same to Him! His grace is lavished on all regardless of what’s gone down! Yeah, if we have breath, it’s our perfect opportunity to take it and run with it. So let’s run right into the arms of Jesus and let our Saviour save us from the sorrows and strife of this life.

James, a servant of God and the writer of this awesome book in the Bible, knew the joy of living for His Lord. He reminds us of it in James 1:2, when he pens the words, “Dear brothers and sisters when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.” and in 1:12 he reminds us of how blessed we are under trial, “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.”

Our struggles help us write strong chapters in our lives, so let’s choose to endure, persevere in the race and write well as we live and make our way into a new year!
#SoulFire #NewYear

Hebrews 12:1, 2
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off every encumbrance and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race set out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.…”

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