“Here, O disciple of Jesus, behold an emblem of thy present labour, and thy future reward. Thou sowest, perhaps, in tears; thou dost thy duty amid persecution and affliction, sickness, pain, and sorrow; thou labourest in the church, and no account is made of thy labours; no profit seems likely to arise from them. Yet the day is coming when thou shalt reap in joy; and plentiful shall be thy harvest.” -Horne, by Benson Commentary

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
He who continually goes forth weeping,
Bearing precious seed for sowing,
Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing,
Bringing his sheaves with him.”

We sow in tears when we sow precious seed. What is the precious seed? It’s what you plant by obedience during times of persecution.

We all need the promise of reaping in joy. It doesn’t matter how we ended up where we are. We can still reap a harvest of joy.

In Psalm 126:1 the psalmist references the captivity of God’s chosen people and their long road from Babylon (captivity) to Judah (home). But how did they end up in captivity in the first place? The same way they always did. By fear and unbelief.

You might be in great pain right now, due to persecution for doing the right thing which is usually the hard thing, or you are experiencing great pain because you did something you shouldn’t have. The key to God pouring out His Spirit on your soil so you can reap a God-sized harvest is not letting yourself come under condemnation. Don’t believe the lie that God won’t rescue you because you got yourself into a mess. Every one of us can leave the place of wilderness wondering whenever we want to. God’s not holding us there. Unbelief in the character and nature of God leads to fear that He won’t come through for us, so we panic and freeze.

This week on the podcast I talk about prayer that changes things. We start a conversation, using the prayer model Jesus gave us. We discover the difference between prayer which enforces our fear and lack and prayer that moves mountains out of our way. And you can start that journey today.

It’s time to stop waiting for God to the move mountain that He told you to move!

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Jesus had two very simple instructions when He sent the disciples on the mission—preach the Kingdom and heal the sick. I wonder if you consider that to be your life’s work as well?

When I began a serious pursuit of discipleship over twenty-three years ago, the first scripture God seared into my heart was Matthew 6:33, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” In context, Jesus was teaching His disciples how and how not to walk out the life of a disciple.

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns—and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how the lilies of the field grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Today has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:25-34

In a nutshell, Jesus was saying that sparrows don’t have to farm to be fed and lilies don’t give a thought to what they look like. Yet the sparrow is always fed and the lily more beautifully adorned than the richest man that ever lived. Sparrows and lilies don’t give a single thought to how they will provide for themselves.

The only way to live as a disciple is to spend no unnecessary time giving thought to how we will feed or clothe ourselves. Can you even imagine living like that? How is that even possible?

It gets even harder to imagine when we read Luke 9:1-6:

“When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.” Luke 9:1-6

There is no way around it: when God gives you an assignment, don’t start panicking about how you’re going to get there, what you will need to make the journey, and what will be available to you when you get there. The only way to achieve this is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. I used to think that seeking first the kingdom meant seeking to get people saved.

Turns out that spreading the gospel, healing the sick, and getting people saved is the byproduct of seeking the kingdom first and walking in righteousness.

The what was to proclaim the kingdom of God and heal the sick.

The how was to seek the kingdom of God for provision versus the world’s system for provision and to function in His righteousness instead of their own righteousness.

To seek the kingdom of God and walk in His righteousness to preach the gospel and heal the sick, it stands to reason the disciples had to have a clear understanding of what the kingdom of God is and how to walk in righteousness.

Not to totally switch gears but I have some news. I re-upped the podcast! Finally! I love podcasting because, not only is it a creative outlet for me, but it is part of how I fulfill the requirements of discipleship. It is how I spread the Gospel of Peace and heal the sick.

This week’s podcast is pretty strong. And by strong I mean no holds barred. It will make super religious people mad and some church-going people really mad. I hope you will listen in as I talk about the massive pain I’ve experienced in the last eighteen months, how I walked through it, and what God did before the pain so I could have victory.

And keep tuning in! Because we are starting a series breaking down exactly what the kingdom of God is and how to walk in righteousness, peace, and joy!

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Warning: the cheesy girl analogy post 😜, but there is a concept essential to your walk with God I can’t think of a better way to explain. So here goes…

It’s like when you love that new top on the rack but when you get home it’s just another shirt in a closet full of stuff you hate.

This is the spiritual exercise of put on, put off.

You put on the shirt in the dressing room. You’re rockin’ it. The dressing room mirror takes ten pounds off. You’re feelin’ it. You bring it home.

It’s in the closet. You try it on the next morning. You try every pair of pants you have, then skirts, then shorts, then skorts and you hate skorts. The ten pounds are back, and who made this ugly shirt anyway? You’re taking it back. Except you ripped the tags off and lost the receipt.

The you with the amazing new top and the disappearing pounds is your new man. The you with the ugly shirt and the extra pounds is the old man.

The you with the new top is the full armor of God. The you with the old top is the unguarded, insecure, codependent that doesn’t know who she is and what is available to her.

What changed? The new top didn’t change. You didn’t gain ten pounds from the store to home. What changed was the mirror through which you saw yourself.

“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices, and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” Colossians 3:9-10 NIV

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes…Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Ephesians 6:11, 13-17 NIV

You can literally take these two verses as the mental exercises that they are intended to be. You have a new nature. Your new nature is righteous. What does righteous mean? Righteousness is when you are functioning as you should be. Righteousness is when your new nature, with its Christ-like attributes, comes forward in you because you have accepted it as who you really are.

Stop lying to yourself and put on the truth. Stop seeing yourself through the lens of fear and see yourself walking in the spirit of power, love, and self-discipline that is in you now. Today. In this reality, on this side of heaven!

Renew your mind in the knowledge that you now have a new self. See yourself taking off the belt of the lie that you can’t be healed and victorious. Literally, visualize yourself putting on the belt of truth that has been tested against what Jesus died to give you. Did He die to heal you? What does being healed look like? How does it feel? Try it on!

Which new shoes would match your belt? How about the shoes of the Gospel of Peace? The Gospel of Peace says there is peace between you and God. He doesn’t have to let you remain sick to flesh out your old man. He only sees Jesus’ righteousness when He examines you. You need to start seeing it too! Start walking through life with shoes that can trek through any storm because you KNOW God has no need to test you. He has already approved you!

That new top? Don’t lie to yourself. It fits just right. It’s the breastplate of righteousness. It’s how you take any arrow. You can take any arrow because you know it’s not your righteousness you walk in. It’s HIS. A breastplate guards your heart against lying arrows that seek to penetrate your identity. That new top is INPENATRABLE because Jesus gave it to you.

I could go on and on with the cheesy analogy but you get the point. Whatever you’re facing today, put on your new man and get rid of that old man with its lies and false images. When you use this visual exercise to write the truth on your heart, your new nature will come forward and you can start functioning in it.

It is the real you now.

Here’s how to trigger a Christian: tell them God wants to prosper them or heal them. Then sit back and watch them manifest. They will shift, get uncomfortable, dart their eyes, and start gnashing (grinding) their teeth. It’s quite a sight to see, honestly. You could also tell them to meditate. You’ll get a good eye-roll from that one.

Here’s the thing about the biggest trigger word in Christianity: prosperity is Biblical. It’s okay to prosper. In fact, prosperity is your inheritance as a Believer. And I believe it’s true that in any area we are not prospering it is sin for us. 😲 Yep. But before you curse and shut down this page, let me explain.

It’s amazing how any new movement in the church does two things. First, the movement twists into a version that looks nothing like the original when the second and third-generation of “movement evangelists” champion it. For whatever reasons they seem to move further and further from the original truth and corrupt the message. Second, we eat our own. We see new ways of spreading the gospel work for other congregations and we immediately downplay the success, criticize the strategy, and throw shade by acting all religious about it. Because God-forbid, if people are coming by droves into the Kingdom, clearly it’s been built on heresy!

I’ll share a little church history of my own. I was raised in the Assemblies of God denomination. I am a Spirit-filled, tongue-speaking radical for Jesus. I believe in miracles, and I believe physical healing still happens today. It’s how I was raised. It’s who I was. It’s who I still am.

In my early adulthood, the church I spent most of my life in had a leadership change. The new pastor brought the purpose-driven church model to our congregation and he was, basically, lambasted for it. He had dreams of taking a very traditional church to a place they didn’t want to go. They thought they wanted to be seeker-sensitive but couldn’t let go of their traditions.

A seeker-sensitive church does its best to think like someone who didn’t grow up in church. They try not to sing songs with lyrics like, “are you washed in the blood of the lamb” for fear of sounding like an animal-sacrificing cult.  

I get that. I’m even down with that.

I’ll never forget a church service that opened with the blowing of a ram’s horn. I thought to myself, “I could never ask the friends I used to party with to come here. They would freak out and run out the door!” Even I almost ran out the door! I had no idea what the blowing of the shofar meant, let alone what freaky thing was about to happen next, so how was I going to explain it to a non-Believer? I would have been okay with the shofar-show had the pastor or worship leader at least explained what had just happened.

But nothing. Just the shofar followed by worship songs where everyone sings along and claps. Where else does singing and clapping in unison happen other than preschool? We do all manner of things that are culturally strange. It doesn’t make them wrong, but it does make them strange to outsiders.

I fully embraced the seeker-sensitive model. I found myself working for over a decade in churches that were led by pastors who were licensed through the Assemblies of God but followed the seeker-sensitive model. We didn’t model speaking in tongues as part of the services. We believed in healing but altar time was few and far between. Speaking in tongues wasn’t not taught from the pulpit, but we didn’t disciple people in the use of spiritual gifts.

All of this made sense to me at the time because people tend to exploit the empowerment they’re given. You’ve seen these churches. These are the ones that haven’t had church unless someone was screaming tongues into the microphone and people were falling down all over the alter for three hours. Minimum. Chaos and disorder take over. But unless bonified miracles take place on the regular in these services, their growth eventually taps out. People grow weary of looking for miracles and not receiving them. They grow weary of “taking the Kingdom by force” and begging at the altar for God to change their circumstances. They grow tired of giving more than ten percent but still facing poverty regularly.

They grow tired of having answers but never any solutions. After decades of dedication to the message, they tire of not getting life to work.

This was me. For three decades I was caught between the promise that God wanted me to flourish in life but Him dangling the perverbial carrot of abundance in front of me until I was broken. I was d-o-n-e DONE. You can only take so much hope deferred. A sick heart has no ability to walk in Godly desires fulfilled.

But I still believed. Like Job, I thought God was allowing all of this pain to happen to me, though I never cursed Him or walked away. I never denied Him. But I did begin to pursue the truth. I wanted a gospel that worked. If Jesus said I could have it—if He died to give it to me, I wasn’t going to be denied it any longer. All I knew was that the doctrine I was raised on—the doctrine I led others with, had no ability to put my life back together when it fell apart. If Jesus wasn’t a total liar, something had to give.  

The Prosperity Gospel attracts the broken, poor, destitute, and oppressed. It promises you can have whatever you speak; if you name and claim it, it’s yours! But you’d be surprised to learn it didn’t start out that way. The radical behavior of the prominent prosperity teachers of today is not the marker of those who championed the message of faith and grace. As I studied the writings of various prosperity teachers over the years, I discovered some very level-headed thinking! I found a path that led towards activating faith that moves mountains without screaming at the devil.

God is passion and love. But God is also logical.

Take Kenneth Copeland, for instance. His ministry started when he was broke and had thousands of dollars of debt. In eleven months, he was debt free and has never looked back. He outlines the principles he followed in his book, The Laws of Prosperity, written in 1974. Here are a few quotes:

“True prosperity is God manifesting Himself to us in His Word.”

“True prosperity is the ability to use God’s power to meet the needs of mankind in any realm of life.”

“When you make it your need to get salvation into the hands of the people, when you make it your purpose to feed the gospel to the unsaved, God will support what you do. This is true prosperity.”

“When you put the Word of God first in your life and it becomes your final authority, prosperity is the result.”

All good. But fast forward to today…

The prosperity gospel is suddenly something you can use to kill a manmade virus and demand a vaccine come forth. The problem is, both the virus and the vaccine are killing people now. That doesn’t seem like a God-inspired solution.

And He isn’t the prince of war. He’s the Prince of Peace.

Twisted. Exaggerated. Manipulated, and exploited. For what? For gain. What is gained? A crowd of followers who think screaming at a defeated enemy will bring health and wealth.

The truth is, God gives us the power to create wealth so He can establish His covenant in the earth (Deuteronomy 8:18). We SHOULD have wealth. God wants us to control the wealth of the world. It’s not hard to understand why He doesn’t want evil men to control it. He wants wealth used to spread the Gospel of Peace to the world, not immorality.

But how can that happen if Christians don’t know how to prosper?

The bottom line is this: wealth doesn’t come to us by screaming at the devil or by thinking or speaking it into existence. All manner of Christian books has been written about taking every thought that crosses your brain captive, controlling your thoughts, positive self-talk, and speaking Bible affirmations. Yet we aren’t any wealthier or healthier than other people groups.

This problem is not a mind or speech problem. It’s a heart problem. The prosperity gospel has all but ignored the Bible’s instructions on our personal responsibility to minister to our own hearts. It is out of the heart that the mouth speaks. In other words, you will speak out whatever you believe to be true in your heart. This is why it’s so important to guard whatever enters our hearts. You can recite positive self-talk out loud all day but if your heart doesn’t believe is it true about you, you’ll never be able to see it activate in your life.

The same is true for your thought life. Your thoughts are generated by the belief in your heart. You can’t think your way into changing your thoughts. You must change the belief in your heart to change your thoughts and your speech.

According to scripture, the heart is the seat of your identity. It is where you hold your beliefs about who you are. Unless those beliefs are aligned with the finished work of Jesus, you won’t be able to prosper in life the way Jesus’ demonstrated you could.

This week on the podcast, I break down what it looks like to take your land. Your land is any solution that solves a problem in your life. Your land is moving from lack to prosperity, whether it’s prosperity in health and finances or in relationships and careers.

The glaring difference between the truth of the Bible and how the prosperity gospel has perverted the truth is this: you cannot take your land by force. Your land can only be taken by faith and faith only comes after rest. We are never told to strive to be prosperous. In fact, the only thing we are ever told to strive for is to enter into rest. Adam started from a position of rest. It was only when he wanted to be his own source that the striving began. The land was never cursed by God. It was cursed because of Adam’s belief he could be his own source. Our land is never placed back under the curse by God. It is only subject to the curse of the world’s system when we refuse to take it by the yoke Jesus longs to give us. His yoke and easy and light, not toilsome and difficult.

We become like the god we believe in.

We never have to behave like a prince of war when we have the Prince of Peace.

I mentioned that not prospering is sin for us. Sin isn’t just direct defiance of the ten commandments. Sin is when, in any area of our lives, we function in a way that isn’t God’s best for us. What is God’s best for us? Whatever Jesus died to give us. This is why prospering in our hearts, relationships, finances, physical and mental health, and spirituality is so important! We want to be functioning in the freedom we have been given!

A final thought regarding my church upbringing. I need you to know, I had to repent for my buy-in on the seeker-sensitive movement. Just like any movement, it wasn’t all bad. But not discipling people in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, not teaching them how to operate in words of knowledge, have faith for miracles, how to attain physical healing, the purpose of speaking in tongues and why it’s so important, words of wisdom and the like is never okay. These abilities should be like breathing for the Christian. Throwing them out because we’re afraid we can’t control the people is nothing short of the Catholicism control tactics.

But on the back of that repentance, I had to repent for having an “us and them” mentality toward church leadership. I participated. Wherever I went, there I was.

Three different people gave a word of knowledge that I had spears in my back from the accusations and anger church leaders threw at me. And wouldn’t you know it, I had unexplained back pain for several years. I knew in my heart these words of knowledge were almost right. The prophecy is subject to the prophet’s preconceived notions about God. I know no one’s judgment of me can cause debilitating pain unless I have somehow come to an agreement with them.

The sin for me was believing I wasn’t the perpetrator and that they were. And yet, by taking a paycheck, I was just as guilty. I led the flock away from the healing power of Jesus by refusing to teach the full Gospel of Peace, even while I operated in the supernatural in my own private life.

Not okay.

And wouldn’t you know it, the minute I repented, the debilitating back pain left immediately.

I agree with the prosperity gospel that God’s will for physical healing is always yes and amen because of Jesus. How our healing comes is where the prosperity gospel and I are miles apart.

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Wow!! The story of Elijah in the cave has had so many interpretations. As one Rabbi said, "The interpretations of this episode in Elijah's life are endless, and none has achieved definitive status. The story, as we shall see, is too complex for that. Each reading leaves a thread or two or three untied...".

I couldn't agree more! I too have felt there were too many untied threads in the common narrative we've accepted. Not to say that I haven't received ministry from our understanding of Elijah. I have lost ground to my fair share of Jezebel's. But based on what we now know about the original Hebrew language of the Bible, it's challenging to affirm Elijah was a fragile prophet who suffered from an identity crisis.

This message challenged me! I hope you will listen, even if just to consider a different possibility and discover a model for a faith that moves mountains!

You’ve probably heard me mention Prosperity to Providence if you’ve been following along for some time now. It is my first book so that’s kind of a big deal! I heard an accomplished author once say, “If you say you’re going to write a book someday, you’re not doing to write a book someday.” He was addressing the fact that those who say they will, don’t.

I started writing by blogging forever ago. I wasn’t consistent but it got my feet wet. It turns out that my obsession with reading since I was a kid helped my brain understand that writing is a conversation and that if you write at a comprehension level above fifth grade you won’t last long in the book sales space.

And that’s good for me because I may speak well addressing a crowd or in a board meeting full of angry teachers trying to “rush the border”* to get what they want, but writing seems to just flow from everyday conversations I’m already having with you in my head. (Rest assured this hasn’t happened recently, but believe me, you can’t work in education for long without it happening at some point. Sadly, the education a teacher receives to become a teacher is more like entitlement indoctrination 😤. Add that to the twenty-somethings that become teachers and, well, you know. 🤦)

So I LOVE writing to you. I feel like Meg Ryan in You’ve Got Mail (my favorite movie by the way). She loved books first, and after losing her bookstore she learned she loved writing too. Writing is a passion for me. And especially the research before the writing.

You may have thought it strange I would include a Christian trigger word like prosperity in my title. When God put Prosperity to Providence on my heart, the title came before I even understood what the message was about. I initially thought I was writing about how the Prosperity Gospel spun so far out of control that the church threw the baby out with the bathwater. And it’s understandable! The way infamous prosperity preachers present the message today is nothing more than greed combined with offering people false hope.

So I started diving into research on the history of the Prosperity Gospel. I read Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel by Kate Bowler. (Kate Bowler is best known for her book Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved.) Blessed is Kate’s in-depth look at how the Prosperity Gospel became popular. She evaluates the ministries of positive thinkers like Norman Vincent Peale, and revivalists like Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin, along with today’s hugely successful prosperity preachers, namely Kenneth Copeland. And she looks at other contemporary religious leaders such as Creflo Dollar, Joel Osteen, T. D. Jakes, and Joyce Meyer.

And speaking of Kenneth Copeland, I read his foundation book, The Laws of Prosperity. While Kenneth Hagin was really one of the founders of the Faith Movement in America (now known as Word of Faith), Copeland is known for spreading the Prosperity Gospel in America. What started with Hagin as an effective approach to living the abundant Christian life was twisted and distorted by Copeland. Regardless of the distortion, it took off like wildfire because of Copeland’s charismatic ability to mesmerize and convince a crowd—common attributes of those we now call “Prosperity Preachers”.

Interestingly enough, I had already done my own research on successful healing ministries from times past as well. I read Sister Aimee: The Life of Aimee Semple McPherson, founder of the Four-Square Church, and her biography, The Story of My Life.

And then there was John G. Lake, E.W. Kenyon, Smith Wigglesworth, Kathryn Kulman, T.L. Osborn, and F.F. Bosworth. I studied them all.

Y’all. I did my homework. And I didn’t stop there!

I studied science and miracles. I delved into books based on scientific research such as The Biology of Belief by Bruce Tipton and Healing Body and Soul: The Meaning of Illness in the New Testament and Psychotherapy by John A. Sanford. and The Anatomy of a Miracle: Cutting-Edge Science Has Finally Advanced to a State That Puts the Miraculous Within the Grasp of Modern Man by Dr. James B. Richards.

Dr. Richard’s book is most notable because he led crusades all over the world in the 70s and saw every healing miracle in the New Testament. He has a doctorate in Theology, a doctorate in Ancient Chinese Medicine, and a doctorate in Human Behavior. He not only teaches, but he proved what he teaches in his own life, long before writing and building his Bible schools that are now worldwide. Dr. Richards has used faith and wisdom from the Bible to not only heal others by the millions but to heal himself of a terminal illness. He shouldn’t be alive today.

Yeah.

Dr. Richard shows how the study of quantum physics proves that miracles are not really as miraculous as one might think.

Pretty crazy stuff.

One day I pray we can see healing by the masses here in America. But there is a very real reason we don’t see it here.

The reason is we live by one of two gospels. The Prosperity Gospel and the Providential God Gospel. Just like the Prosperity Gospel, there is some truth to it, but much is extrapolated from scripture to fit our human experience.

I didn’t know anything of the Providential God Gospel when God put the phrase Prosperity to Providence in my heart through a dream. In fact, I thought I was supposed to take you on a journey from prosperity teaching to discovering the all-providential God of the Bible!

Turns out, I was wrong. In my research, I stumbled on John Piper’s 700-page dissertation on a “providential” God called Providence, his book on Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, and his widely popular website Desiring God. John Piper is known as an American theologian and a New Testament scholar.

And as it turns out, Providence is the most widely-accepted theory in America about God’s activity in creation and His intentions toward us. For the Assemblies of God and most non-denominational Spirit-filled churches to the Southern Baptist Convention, Lutherans, Catholicism, and Mormonism, the Providential God Gospel is irrefutable.

All I can say is, wow.

If I can summarize the Providential God Gospel it would be this: God is the firefighter who starts the fires in our lives so He can put them out.

Or this: Stop blaming Satan for anything because God created him, don’t take any responsibility for anything because God controls everything, and blame God for whatever happens in life. (It’s mostly Calvinism without all the predestination stuff if you want to know the truth.)

Or maybe like this: Don’t think about it all too hard, you’ll hurt yourself. God can’t be understood anyway. Just trust that if you find yourself starving or homeless or sold into the sex trade, it’s so God gets the glory so don’t hate on God. Just ignore scriptures like, “I’ve never seen the righteous forsaken or His seed out begging for bread.” (Psalm 25:35). Or Psalms 23. Or Romans 1:18-20 which says, “…For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been CLEARLY SEEN, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” (Emphasis mine).

Yikes.

Apparently, according to the Bible, God isn’t a mystery after all. Who knew? Apparently, He doesn’t work in mysterious ways. And Paul says it’s wicked to keep this information from people. 😲

You can know for sure when a “gospel” isn’t true. I’m told there is an old saying among seminaries and it’s this: “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” For what John Piper can’t explain he blames the mystery of God’s character and His “complex emotions”.

Lord Jesus, help us.

I have studied the Bible in its original languages (Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic) for over twenty years. And I mean really studied. I have never been a “read the Bible in a year” Christian. If you truly meditate on scripture and study the language, context, and history behind the stories, you can’t read the Bible in a year unless you live full-time in a monastery. I was raising kids. But the study of scripture has been the passionate pursuit and motivator of my life for decades.

As a student of the Bible and a disciple of Jesus (not simply a convert), to simply read other authors, theologians, and healers is not enough for me to land on a position and try to convince you to believe something else about God than what tradition handed down to you. So I took the bottom-line opinions from each authority I studied and held them up to the full council of scripture. I took nothing out of context. If there was a contradiction in the English translations (as there often is) I researched it out until a cohesive message consistent with the life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus could be found.

So, I GET THIS. You might even call me an expert on the subject of the Prosperity Gospel, the Providential God Gospel, and healing ministries by now.

But wait, there’s more! 😉 Not only do have intellectual knowledge, but I’ve put these principles into practice in my own life as well. This is what the Bible calls having experiential knowledge of scripture. I’ve experienced firsthand the limitations and devastation each gospel has on the Christian experience. When it comes to healing ministry, I have been healed multiple times and have prayed for others and they have received healing.

I don’t say this to impress you but to impress upon you that I take rightly diving the Word of God seriously.

The truth behind the cover-up is that the Providential God Gospel leaves you on your own to solve your most life-controlling issues. It’s sold by making you think you are making peace with suffering as something from the hand of God when in reality, it’s forcing you to make peace with the devil.

The truth behind the cover-up in the Prosperity Gospel is that it makes it all about what you gain from God. It puts destiny and calling before the relationship. And it convinces those who can’t get a miracle they don’t have enough faith, despite the fact that even non-believers operate faith every single day, and it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain of a problem! (When it comes to miracles, by the way, the answer is never to get more faith.)

You can understand how damaging both gospels are. I call them “gospels” because that is our culture’s way of describing the two but in reality, they are not gospels at all.

It cannot be gospel if isn’t one hundred percent true and one hundred percent Good News.

Neither of the two fit the bill.

Okay, so what is my point here? My point here is that I want to really open up this conversation with you—the why behind writing Prosperity to Providence and why it is so essential, IMPERATIVE in fact, that you read it. As the days get darker you’re going to need to know how to operate in the miraculous and why Jesus said you could and would do greater things than He did.

If you can’t do those greater things you’re gonna be in big trouble. When the markets permanently collapse, housing is overtaken by the government, and America falls, it won’t matter a lick what you scrimped and saved for all your life.

What will matter is how you see God and how the full expression of Christ in you works in real life.

Every theologian and Bible commentator uses a lens through which they interpret scripture, whether they would admit it or not. They either see God as the prosperity God or the providential God. And the lens they use determines the God they get.

Here is the bottom line: we become like the god we believe in.

What is the solution? The Gospel of Peace and the Gospel of the Kingdom. You must know what it truly means to have “your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15) and to be discipled in the Gospel of the Kingdom (Matthew 24:14).

I don’t want you to be in fear. Miracles and provision happen for those who believe, even during the end times.

But just know this: neither the Prosperity Gospel nor the Providential God Gospel will prepare you for it. Both will leave you impotent.  

Okay! That was heavy! But as future blog posts roll out, I will dive into each gospel to help you put it all into perspective. Stay tuned! Because what you read (and what you hear on the podcast) will give you the tools to overcome ANYTHING!

I spent years in music ministry. I grew up on stage, both leading worship bands and in secular choirs that toured and competed. I took private voice (and piano) lessons. I know music. And as I’ve watched the Christian music scene over the last decade I’ve been saddened. While the world is more broken, discouraged, hated-filled, and fearful than it’s ever been, the people we present ourselves to be through our worship lyrics aren’t much different. The overwhelming majority of worship music in the last decade, with its message of defeat and begging God to do what He has already done through Jesus, has lulled the church to sleep. We have favored slow songs in minor keys that depict us as a sorry bunch of suffering sinners still in need of salvation instead of celebrating our new nature and authority, the finished work of Jesus, and the reality that we will never be more saved than we are today.

But we keep trying to get more saved.

I do my best not to constantly come off like I hate the church, as though I’ve turned away from the church, or that I’m bitter after years of service to the church. I assure you that is not the case at all. I love the church. I’ve given and will continue to give, my life in service to the body of Christ.

But I am not afraid to speak up when the church isn’t acting like the church. And I do feel part of my mission and message is to shine a huge light on how we as a collective body have missed our mark. Even after all these centuries we still don’t see Him as He is.

If the church does not get up and discover for the first time the true meaning of the Gospel of Peace as presented in the original language of the Bible, she will not experience a revival or a great awakening. What you see taking place today in the church is not a revival. The church is too corrupt and compromised to bring about revival. The American church looks “like communism” more than revivalism, an observation by a woman from the underground church of China who moved to the United States. She was shocked to see how American churches look the same, sound the same, and move in lockstep as if they are still “sinners at the hand of an angry God” who wants to hurt them to grow them. We have successfully confined church to our buildings and programs. We haven’t made the body of Christ come alive the way Jesus said we could.

Revival is when we are revived to the message of the Kingdom and the Gospel of Peace, not the gospel of “maybe God will help me or maybe He wants to hurt me” gospel we have passed down from generation to generation. Revival comes when more than just the church is revived. When the church starts doing the greater things Jesus said she would, the world will catch the revival too! Revival isn’t about just us getting set free. It’s about setting the world free too! Revival should spill over airways and social media outlets, highways, and byways. The lame should be walking and the blind should be seeing. Oppression, mental illness, and fear should be driven out as our love for God finally advances toward maturity.

“There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because
fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made
perfect in love.” 1 John 4:18

God’s love has no need to be made perfect. Our love for Him must mature (move towards perfection, grow) and as a result, fear cannot reside. The world will come in droves as they finally see the full benefits of the finished work of Jesus manifest in us. They will see both the literally dead and the spiritually and emotionally dead be raised to life.

Revival is when the church can no longer contain what is inside of her.

We are never waiting on God to revive us. We are not waiting for the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is here, in the now, with all its resources, benefits, and promises.

And we can use our keys to unleash it any time we want.

But pointing the finger at our failures is of no value if we do not also evaluate the good we have done, what has worked to spread the message of the Gospel of the Kingdom. Since the massive shutdowns and manic pandemic response, many Christians have reevaluated what they have chosen to believe. Many have begun to see there is more to intimacy with God than what is coming from the pulpit. Many are beginning to ask hard questions and they want real answers.

So here are some thoughts on where to go from here:

• Don’t believe it just because it was handed down to you.

• Learn to hear the voice of God in your own heart.

• Be teachable. Be willing to listen to those you don’t initally agree with.

• Find a path to doing the greater things Jesus said you would do and don’t stop looking until you find it and get it working in your life.

As the world gets darker, we get brighter! Be among those who know how to activate faith that moves mountains. Practice it now. Build this in your life now. Don’t wait until the banks crash, housing is confiscated by the government, and communism sets itself up as god. Lean in. Move into a place where fear cannot abide regardless of how difficult the circumstances get because you have experienced abiding in Christ.

To abide in Him is to wrap yourself up in Him.

Abiding in Christ begins with seeing Him as He really is. My new series on the podcast (and a subsequent eBook) is called Profile(d). Profile(d) is a look into how God has been unjustly profiled and a Biblical look at His true profile. We take this journey by looking at the profiles of key Bible characters who have also been mis-profiled. You are going to see through the lives of Abraham, Jonah, Elijah, Deborah, and King Solomon how God is always trying to lead us in paths of righteousness and preventing destruction in our lives.

We have all been unfairly profiled at one time or another. We are generalized and misrepresented then censored, canceled, and oppressed. But at the end of the day, here is the declaration God wants to make to the church:

No one in all of history has been more unjustly profiled than God Himself.

And we cannot do the greater things Jesus said we would until we see God as He really is.

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Will the REAL God please stand up???!! I saw the word "profile" in a dream while having a conversation with God. He said the word "profile" but I read it back to him "profiled" with a D on the end. I was then given understanding that God wanted a convey a message to the church that He has been mis-profiled for centuries. We don't see Him as He really is. He wants to set the record straight, to introduce you to His real purpose and intentions toward you.

He wants you to see Him as He really is, probably for the first time ever.

He then gave me a list of several Bible characters. He wanted to speak through the profiles of those characters to reveal how they too, have been mis-profiled and to provide an accurate perspective on their character and actions, and God's interactions with them.

We have created a god we are comfortable with because the God of the Bible doesn't fit our preferences. We have accused Him of being the cause and even the source of our pain (which is accusing Him of the same thing) instead of reconciling the pain in our lives through the lens of the life, teachings, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.

We think we have God all figured out. But all we really have is tradition that makes our faith of no effect.

In this new series, you are going to see how God has been unjustly profiled and discover the profile of a God as you've never seen Him before. When you see Him as He really is, you will see a path toward fulfillment and healing in every area of your life!

If you’re not on this bandwagon yet, it’s time to jump on it. It’s the bandwagon of ditching mainstream theology and finally getting down to what YOU believe about God.

In my “dark night of the soul”, I had to figure out what or who was the source of my torment. Growing up in church I was told it was God allowing pain so I could be a person He could actually do something with. The problem with that messed up ideology is it makes God the abuser, defying His own laws of justice.

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“But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood.’” Ezekiel 33:6

By God’s own decree, if you see the predator coming and don’t warn the prey, you are guilty of their blood.

Would God not hold Himself accountable to what He deems just? Would God make Himself guilty by not warning you of danger before it happens? God “will not let you stumble” (Psalm 121:3). But you might let you stumble.

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“Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due [its rightful recipients], When it is in your power to do it.” Proverbs 3:27

It is always within God’s power to do good for you. He cannot withhold it or He becomes a liar.

He is a good Father. And because of Jesus, you are the rightful recipient of good (Strong’s 2896: pleasant, agreeable to the senses). Pain isn’t good for you. It isn’t pleasant or agreeable to your senses. It is PAIN. Pain comes to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10). It takes life from you. It has no power to give life.

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“When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;” James 1:13

When we are in pain, we are never to draw a conclusion that God is testing us.

Tempt: peirazó, Strong’s #3985 - to make proof of, to attempt, test, to try, make trial of, to solicit to sin, scrutinize.

What is testing if not soliciting to sin? God never tests you. He just doesn’t do it. Period. He can’t. It’s not in His nature. Somehow the church totally missed that Jesus was tested for us. God has no need to scrutinize us or put us on trial. He did that to Jesus. You were raised up into life and righteousness. What is there to test?

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I had been a woman of prayer, studying the scriptures daily, for over 20 years when my life fell apart. I didn’t know how to dig myself out of depression from grief and loss, PTSD, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and anxiety/panic attacks. I didn’t leave God but I left the ministry. I couldn’t take another sermon that was giving me answers but no solutions.

Don’t get me wrong here. I love the church even when she’s not acting like the church. I will serve the church for the rest of my life. But the church has lost more than just the proper translation of scripture. It’s lost its ability to solve people’s real-life problems.

To say God is allowing pain to train you is an answer (also, it’s a lie). But it isn’t a solution to your pain. It won’t help you walk out of pain. It won’t help you break free from destructive cycles. All it will do is cause you to accept an untruth about God so you can cope with your most life-dominating issues. Coping is managing and it certainly isn’t healing.

And that is all Christians around the world are doing…coping. They say they are helping others in their pain because they can relate. But all they can relate to are coping mechanisms that perpetuate the lie that God is the abuser and you should make peace with your pain.

I have no need in my life to make peace with pain. Not after all Jesus died to give me. Jesus didn’t make peace with pain. He defeated it. He put it in the pit of hell where it belongs.

And we can too. But the only way to do this is to put every ideology handed down to us on trial. We do this by testing them against the full council of scripture, not scripture taken out of context like pulpits across America do daily. And we stop reading the Bible in English for cryin’ out loud! Pull out a concordance and study keywords, if not every word in every scripture. This is part of the Biblical process of meditating day and night on the Word of God. We were never just supposed to read the Bible in a year just to check it off our good-Christian to-do list.

And definitely get a mentor. For the next two weeks, I feature an interview with my Hebrew/Aramaic teacher, Chaim Bentorah. I have studied under Chaim for years. Chaim received his B.A. in Jewish Studies from Moody Bible Institute, his M.A. in Old Testament and Hebrew from Denver Seminary, and his Ph.D. in Biblical Archeology.  His Doctoral Dissertation was on the “Esoteric Structure of the Hebrew Alphabet.” But most impressive, I think, is that Chaim has spent 4-5 hours a day for the last forty years studying the Bible in its original languages. Chaim was studying under those who translated the NIV in the 70s and witnessed firsthand how truth in translating was kicked to the curb in favor of money.

Yep. It’s that bad.

But the good news is that Chaim’s thousands of hours of teaching are available on his blog, daily word study emails, Full Access membership, and in his books. His studies will take you deeper into the heart of God than you’ve ever been before.

Photo: https://unsplash.com/@priscilladupreez

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It’s Christmas time and I’ve been thinking about the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus, born as a human, came to establish a new kind of kingdom. But what is fascinating is that after all these centuries since Jesus was laid in a manger, the overwhelming majority of Believers have no idea what the Kingdom of Heaven is. It isn’t taught from pulpits. It is completely ignored. And yet it was the thing Jesus talked about the most. Every parable and every miracle was supposed to teach us the laws of this new kingdom and how to establish it on earth. If we are living by priority, Kingdom Living should be our first pursuit.

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“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air: They do not sow or reap or gather into barns—and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

And why do you worry about clothes? Consider how the lilies of the field grow: They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was adorned like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles strive after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” Matthew 6:25-33

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The thing about lilies and birds is they don’t bother asking for what they already know they have.

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God wrote Matthew 6:33 on my heart twenty-three years ago and I’m saddened to say that for more than half that time I had no idea what it meant. I thought to seek the kingdom first meant putting the spreading of the gospel above anything else. And while that is certainly part of our mandate as Believers, it is the byproduct of Kingdom Living. In our pursuit of the kingdom, people won’t help but notice we live by a different set of rules.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a realm. It is the realm in which God is king (ruler) and all of His resources are available to us. Because God already knows we need food, shelter, and clothing we don’t have to ask for it. In God’s reality, in His kingdom realm, these needs have already been met. God is already looking out for our provision.

When Jesus taught us to pray, He taught us to confess what was already true. It was already true that God’s name was holy (hallowed) above every other name. It was already true that His kingdom had come and His will could now be done on earth as it is in heaven. He already gives us our daily bread, just as He does the lilies and the birds. He has already forgiven our trespasses and debts. He never leads us into temptation (James 1:13). He is always trying to deliver us from evil. And His IS the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever!

So why ask God to do what He has already done? First, Jesus didn’t say to pray. Nope. “He said to them, “When you pray, SAY…”. Jesus didn’t say to ask God to do these things. He said to say (confess, say the same thing God says) He has already done these things. In fact, the word say is a pretty powerful word. It means to put an argument to rest, bring a message to closure, or move to a conclusion. There isn’t any asking in saying.

There is good reason for that. The problem with asking God to do something He has already done is you are telling yourself two things. One, that He hasn’t done it yet, and two, you don’t have it. The only thing you accomplish by asking God to do things He has already done is to confess your sense of lack and unbelief.

In Aramaic, Jesus’ native tongue, the word prayer is tselutha. It comes from the root word tesla. A tesla is a dry leather skin used for covering the body, a table, or a bed. The word tesla also carries the idea of sinking into the depths and being totally covered, as the leather skin totally covers you like clothing, bedding, or a tablecloth.* It kind of reminds me of the beloved weighted blanket I sleep with every night. I feel completely covered, enveloped, and engrossed in its warmth and weight.

Prayer should always and ONLY be about reminding ourselves of what God has already accomplished for us. Focusing on the daily cares of this world will make us forget what is already done in heaven and strive for it on earth. But confessing daily that we already have everything we need for life and Godliness (2 Peter 1:3) moves our hearts into the realities of the kingdom realm and out of the realities of the world’s system.

Jesus knew we would want to spy out the land even though God said to go straight in (Deuteronomy 1:21-22). He knew we would look at the waves (Matthew 14:30) and number our army (2 Samuel 24). He instructed us to confess the kingdom reality with our mouths daily in order to write in on our hearts. He told us to look at kingdom resources and not natural resources until only the kingdom reality is real to us. We can only fulfill our mission to share the gospel by word and deed (Col. 3:17) when the kingdom reality is our only reality. Only then will be living by priority.

*https://www.chaimbentorah.com/2021/06/aramaic-word-study-pray-tselutha-%D7%A6%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%AA%D7%90/

Did you know that the most pervasive gospel taught in America is anti-Christ doctrine? True story. According to 2 John 1:7, any doctrine that denies Jesus came in the flesh is anti-Christ doctrine. This doesn’t mean it is pro the anti-christ that is to come. It means it denies Christ as a man.

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world who do not confess Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh.
This is a deceiver and an antichrist."
2 John 1:7

Most of us have read this and assumed it means those who deny Jesus ever came at all are anti-Christ deceivers. But that’s not what this verse is saying. It is a lie to say Jesus never came to Earth at all, but it’s not enough to say Jesus simply came to earth in human form. The key to avoiding anti-Christ doctrine is acknowledging that Jesus left His God-form in Heaven.

“He who, while he was in the form of God, did not esteem this as a prize, that he was the equal of God, But he stripped
himself and took the form of a Servant and was in the form of the children of men, and was found in fashion as a man.”
Philippians 2:6-7

Jesus didn't consider it necessary to be equal to God while on earth. What does that mean? Let’s look at some Greek definitions:

• The word stripped means to make empty, to abase, neutralize, he laid aside equality with and the form of God and took the form of man (Strong’s 2758).

• Form doesn’t simply mean a human body. It means a form (outward expression) that embodies essential (inner) substance so that the form is in complete harmony with the inner essence (Strong’s 3444).

• Prize means to claim for oneself eagerly (726).

In order for Jesus to have emptied Himself and taken on human form, His inner human form had to be in harmony with His outer human form. Said this way—Jesus was God, but He didn’t have God’s essential inner substance while on earth. He made no effort to take it with Him to earth; He didn’t consider it necessary to accomplish His miracles and mission on Earth.

Jesus came to earth as a human and was filled with the Holy Spirit to show us what a human filled with the Holy Spirit is capable of. Jesus was trying to show us how a human could experience Kingdom living right here on earth.

THIS. IS. HUGE.

Why? Because if you believe Jesus was able to do everything He did because He still had His inner God essence on earth, you have NO BASIS for believing you can do the things Jesus did, or even greater things than He did (John 14:12). You are not God. I am not God. If it takes being God to perform the miracles Jesus performed then we have no hope of ever doing them ourselves.

Jesus didn’t tell us to ask Him to heal people. He said, “You heal them.” Jesus didn’t say, “Ask Me to move your mountain.” He said, “Tell your mountain to move.” Over and over again Jesus said He did what He did as the Son of Man and that is why we can do the same.

We were given dominion over what happens on earth (Genesis 1:26). This is why Jesus had to come as a man—only man had dominion on earth. This is also why Jesus said, after His resurrection, “All power in Heaven and Earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18). Jesus defeated death and the curse, taking back the power that man had given up. He was the only human in history who held power in BOTH Heaven and Earth.

And then He gave us the authority to use His authority. We have the keys of the Kingdom realm. Whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 18:18). The decision we have to make is whether or not we will loose God’s will on earth or our own will. God’s will isn’t automatic on earth and He won’t violate our free will. The world would look nothing like it does today if God had all the control. God gave us the same autonomy He has. He only has control to the degree we give it to Him.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with the responsibility of doing the greater things Jesus said we would do. We have authority (dominion) just because we are here and we are human. But what keeps us using our dominion to loose on Earth what God has already approved in Heaven? The Providential God doctrine has convinced us that Jesus didn’t come in human flesh and that God is in ultimate control of every outcome. It has caused us to stop seeking the miraculous and live by fatalism. If God is in ultimate control and pulling all the strings, you wouldn’t need faith and your authority would be meaningless. This is why healing crusades and miracles are prevalent throughout other countries but we don’t see them in America. We are convinced God is the ultimate decision-maker and in doing so we have abdicated our dominion.

On the podcast this week we begin a new series that will help you get over that thing you haven’t been able to overcome yet. Whatever habit, addiction, fear, or limiting belief is keeping you stuck can be unstuck when we understand how Jesus was able to accomplish so much and how to use His authority to do the same!

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So many Believers are asking: "Why can't I get free??? I'm saved, I'm a Believer, but this habit, addiction, depression, etc. keeps haunting me!" We come to Jesus and receive salvation and yet, most Believers don't look any different than non-Believers when it comes to cycles of self-destruction.

In this new series, we will break it down and find the path to freedom. And we will start by taking a look at common behaviors and beliefs that drive our inability to find freedom.

Ref: "Grace: The Power to Change" by Dr. Jim Richards, Dr. James B. Richards, Chaim Bentorah, Hebrew Word Study

It’s Advent time. And with the addition of our now 22-month-old, we are thinking about new traditions. If we’re to be honest, we are those parents who let the church teach our oldest two about Christmas while we overworked ourselves. I was always busy planning massive Christmas events for mega-churches. So while the girls did have some fun times, we could have used a lot more family time surrounding the holidays. And we could have done a much better job talking about and preparing for the birth of Christ at home.

I also didn’t take very good care of myself in those days. I remember visiting with a pastor I worked with a few months after resigning from full-time ministry. He asked how I was doing and I said, “I went to the nail salon for the first time in three years!” He looked at me with a mix of shock but I could also detect some sorrow. He knew how hard I worked but I never showed how little I did for myself. Probably the worst part is that my self-neglect wasn’t out of necessity either. I chose it. Whatever it was in me that needed to be needed so badly (call it what it is: my codependency) and was driving my performance-based identity just didn’t want me time.

Talk about messed-up priorities.

I’ll never forget asking Rimmel how we should spend one particular afternoon together a few years after leaving vocational ministry. He said, “Taking a nap by the pool.” and I thought, “People actually do that?”

I am older and wiser now. So no excuses.

I’ve been thinking about the various things I would do this December to remember the birth of Jesus and somehow the privilege (and necessity) of rest comes to mind. So while we will develop an Advent tradition for our second-time-around family, I’ll develop an Advent of my own.

One of these days we will break down the scene of the first communion, but for the purposes of this blog post, I will just tell you this: I’ve never been in a church that has taken communion according to scripture. Communion is to be a time of gratitude and celebration for the reality of our new man in Christ. It was never supposed to be an accounting of our sins since the last time we took communion. The church created a ceremony of condemnation rather than the celebration of gratitude for new life it should be.

My Advent will be something like communion. As I am slowing down to rest, I will reflect on the One who is my ultimate rest. I will fan the flame of gratitude in my heart that because He lives, I can face not only tomorrow but anything and I will overcome. I will call to mind that all of my tomorrow’s are in His hand and He is able to guard and protect whatever I entrust to Him (1 Tim. 1:12).

The first thing I will entrust to Him is me. He is my oxygen and I have to have my own oxygen mask on before I can help anyone else.

Here are some ideas for a self-care Advent:

• Spend my quiet time on the front porch with candles, a blanket, and a cup of coffee.

• Read my magazines when they come in (also to be done on the porch) instead of tossing them in a pile.

• Actually use my giant soaking tub and bath tray with its book and wine holder that one of my besties gave me because she knew I needed it.

• Decorate for Christmas (because design is not only my trade but my hobby too!) but slow it down with Christmas hymns playing and Rimmel’s homemade eggnog. We always seem to rush through it like it’s some big chore.

• Swap out the wine at bath time with the eggnog (spiked of course) and swap the book for the magazines.

• Take a brisk jog through the neighborhood at night when the Christmas lights are on.

• Find a new cookie recipe, bake them with my favorite organic flour and maple sugar (no refined sugars) in the afternoon, and enjoy them hot out of the oven while Charlie naps, Hallmark Channel on, with my Jim’s Organic, decaf dark roast coffee. (I don’t get paid to promote these items. These are my favorite, feel-good baking/coffee companies.)

• Take the therapist’s advice and set the boundaries around Rimmel, myself, and Charlie so the trauma and grief of the last year can start melting away and becoming a faint memory.

• Refuse to feel guilty about setting those boundaries. Maybe even have a little celebration after doing it! I have a FANTASTIC roast chicken recipe for that!

• And a girl’s night out. At the wine bar. In Scottsdale. Cuz we can.

I’m sure more ideas will come. I hope you’ll start your own December Self-Care Advent with Jesus. If there’s one thing I know about Him, He loves it when you rest in Him.

And be sure to check out part two of my two-part series, Women Can Do All The Things on the Podcast! I break down the purpose of a woman from the greatest Hebrew teacher I know!! Trust me… you didn’t learn this in church!

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Can women do everything men can do? Of course they can. It's an age-old debate amongst theologians and it's popping up again as a trending topic. Let's put the debate to rest. The truth is, it's a moot point and this podcast episode will show you why. We will break down the most controversial scriptures in the Bible's original language so you can see for yourself how God planned for women to have a greater impact than the church has ever given us. You are going to LOVE this conversation that includes in-depth word studies from THE authority on Biblical language, Chaim Benotorah!

Photo By: https://unsplash.com/@janromero

Are you sick of debating whether a woman can be a senior pastor, teach a man in church, or has to give her husband authority over her? I am too. But it’s trending so we gotta talk about it. Maybe I can set the record straight once and for all.

Here’s what I know: the organized church, denominations, and Christian leaders are under attack. But this particular attack is not by Satan. It’s by Believers who are finally waking up and testing everything they’ve been taught. Institutions are falling because they are being put to the test by the people they are supposed to serve.

After the pandemic, George Floyd’s death, riots in the street, and election fraud Believers want to know why the church didn’t stand up for them. They want to know what made their churches so afraid to take a collective stance. And as a result, they have lost faith in leadership and are beginning to question everything.

And the inevitable will happen—pastors will refuse to answer for their missteps in order to save their reputations, finances, and egos, especially in the area of women’s roles in the church.

The debate over what women are allowed to do in church is centuries old. It’s been hashed out a hundred ways to Sunday. And it’s a question I had to grapple with myself. I felt the call to preach when I was sixteen years old. But for years I hid behind operational roles in the church. And because we are drawn to only what we are willing to perceive, I was drawn to churches that didn’t open the path to preaching for me or recognize the potential gift in me. They gave me the perfect place to hide the calling I was so afraid of.

Because I was hiding from my calling I didn’t bother looking intently into whether or not I even believed a woman could preach in a senior role or teach men at all. Once God got a hold of me and started steering me into accepting who He made me to be I had to answer these questions for myself. In fact, I had to answer a lot of questions for myself. It was time to stop believing whatever I heard from the pulpit and put it to the test. We test what we hear by taking the whole council of scripture and by testing scripture against scripture.

I had no idea how quickly my foundational beliefs would totally unravel.

Ninety percent of what you hear in a sermon is commentary.

Yep. Many pastors that serve have never had theological training or, perhaps, more importantly, they’ve had zero training in the original language of scripture and Semitic culture. And on top of that, you never see them do the things Jesus did that He said we would do like heal the sick or raise the dead. A disciple cannot live on what the preacher says alone. A disciple proves in scripture what he/she hears and then puts it into practice to bear good fruit.

A disciple is a doer, not only a hearer. And as the world continues to spiral out of control it will be harder and harder to find disciples who know how to use their faith to move mountains, make the blind see, the lame walk, or survive any famine or evil regime.

I don’t say this to cause fear but to encourage you that a new day in the walk of a Believer has dawned! Resources are more available now than ever before. You don’t have to accept traditions handed down by those who refuse to challenge (and often practice) what they preach.

And ladies… you can stop being unsure of God’s divine destiny for you, whether or not you have to stay in a controlling marriage, or if God wants you to run a Fortune 500 company or plant 500 churches. I’ve put every argument to the test. I’ve studied it from every angle.

I’ve got you.

Check out the podcast this week for part one of a two-part message on women’s role in marriage and the church. You are going to learn WHY God made us and I am confident it’s not the reason you think it is!!!

And don’t forget to subscribe, give a thumbs up and/or a 5-star rating, and SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! We need to get this message to as many women as possible so they can be set free to fulfill their hopes and dreams!

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We don’t listen to our hearts enough. As soon as you tell Christians to listen to their hearts they melt down. It’s the result of a lot of bad teaching on the heart.“I don’t listen to my heart! The heart is wicked!” Well, maybe. But not the new heart that Jesus gave you.

The number one way God relates to us is through the heart. When you received salvation, God put a new heart in you. He didn’t leave you with the old one because it was wicked. But your new heart can be trusted… as long as you write the truth on it and don’t let it become like the old one.

Jesus came to “heal the brokenhearted” (Isaiah 61:1). A broken heart is a heart that has been crushed and trampled on. To be broken-hearted quite literally means that someone or some circumstance has walked all over your heart, leaving you with a fractured sense of identity. A trampled heart will believe lies and make judgments that become so real it will no longer recognize the truth. When we see our lives through the lens of a broken heart, we will find evidence to prove the lies and judgments we’ve accepted.

Said another way, the heart will do whatever it takes to make our limiting beliefs real—more real than the Kingdom of Heaven to us. The Kingdom of Heaven is the realm we access through the heart in which all of God’s resources are available to us to solve any problem. We can’t enter into the reality of the Kingdom of Heaven—into Kingdom living, through a heart that has been diseased by lies.

Complicated? Maybe at first. But join me on the podcast this week as we journey to learn about the heart. You’ll learn how it has brought you to the place you are now and how to change course with a healed heart.

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What we believe about God determines how well we function under pressure. And really, the root of all emotional stability starts from this same place. Who we believe God is and what we believe He is willing to do for us will determine our next move when we feel backed into a corner.

There is a very interesting exchange between Jesus and a blind man in the book of Mark:

“And they came to Jericho: and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great number of people, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the highway side begging.

And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

And many charged him that he should hold his peace: but he cried the more a great deal, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.

And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.

And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.

And Jesus answered and said unto him, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? The blind man said unto him, Lord, that I might receive my sight.

And Jesus said unto him, Go thy way; thy faith hath made thee whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus in the way.” Mark 10:46-52

We can be assured Jesus knew the man was blind. And yet Jesus still asks him, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” In other words, what are you willing for me to do for you? Belief in God’s ability is rarely a problem for the Believer. The problem is we are not sure what He is willing to do for us.

And that begs the question: if it is impossible to please God without faith, but we don’t know what God is willing to do for us in our given situation, then how can we pray a prayer of faith for the outcome?

The answer is, we can’t.

The only way to pray a prayer of faith is to be absolutely certain what God’s preferred outcome is.

Which begs the next question: how can you always know God’s preferred outcome for your situation? Join me for this podcast episode where we learn how to become certain of God’s character, intentions, and will toward us. Once you know His desired outcome for your problem you will have to decide if you are willing for God to do it for you. If you know His will, and you are willing to agree with Heaven, you can pray the prayer of faith and experience miraculous results!

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I don’t normally post recipes, although cooking is a big part of my life. It’s one of my favorite things to do actually. It’s funny that over the years people have made big assumptions that because I am career and business focused I’m not a homemaker or cook. And truth be told I wasn’t until my girls came along. Rachel Ray and Food Network taught me how to cook while I was a stay-at-home mom and I’ve loved it ever since. As the girls got older our pallet just continued to expand and we are now true foodies. Maybe even food snobs. We spend a lot of time talking about good food and trying new recipes. And our oldest two, now adults, are quite the cooks themselves.

My collection of holiday recipes has had the biggest impact on our family traditions, especially Thanksgiving. The girls expect my grandmother’s sweet potatoes, my mom’s homemade yeast rolls, and my lemon-parsley gravy. And my homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We eat them while we watch the Macy’s Day Parade. Maybe this will be the year I finally blog our greatest holiday hits.

Over the last several years we’ve worked hard to get processed foods out of our recipes. We traded name-brand flour for organic flour from Sunrise Four Mill. Their flour is much easier on the gut than processed flour. And the biggest change has been trading white and brown sugar for Nova Maple Sugar. You will be shocked at how little flavor difference there is. Our recipes don’t taste like maple at all. Recipes with processed sugar are way too sweet for me now and just taste a bit off.

If you don’t have maple sugar sitting around or don’t want to spring for it (it’s a bit expensive for sure) just use white flour but use 1/2 a cup instead of 1 cup. In most recipes, a 1-to-1 substitution is sufficient but I wanted to put the sweetness in these cookies a bit over the top.

Enjoy! And let me know what you think!

Salted Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Cup (2 sticks) Unsalted Butter, softened

1 Cup Packed dark brown sugar

1 Cup Maple sugar

2 large Eggs

2 teaspoons Vanilla extract

1 ¼ Cup All Purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon Baking soda

1 teaspoon (1/2 for dough, and 1/2 to sprinkle on top)

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

3 Cups Instant Oats

1 Cup dark chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 325°F.

1. Cream butter, brown sugar and maple sugar in mixer on medium speed until smooth, about 3 minutes. Beat in one egg at a time until combined. Add vanilla.

2. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and ½ tsp of fine sea salt and then add to butter and egg mixture and mix until combined.

3. Fold in oats and chocolate chips into entire mix with a wooden spoon until combined.

4. Drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto parchment-lined baking sheet two inches apart. Sprinkle the last of the sea salt with a pinch onto the top of each cookie. Bake for about 12-15 minutes. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

How’s your prayer life? You probably guessed I have some thoughts about an effective prayer life. Prayer that avails much looks nothing like the way we’ve been taught to pray. We’ve been taught to bind and loose the devil even though Jesus already stripped him of all rule, rank, and authority (Col. 2:15). We’ve been taught to beg God to do for us what we can’t do for ourselves even though He gave us the Holy Spirit, wisdom, and the authority of Jesus. We’ve been taught to pray ‘if it be thy will’ instead of ‘thy will be done’. We’ve been taught to pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ even though we have no idea what that means.

To pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ means to pray in alignment with His will. But we’ve been told we can’t possibly know the will of God because who could possibly know the mind of God (1 Cor. 2:11)? We fail to read verses in context and forget we can have the mind of Christ if we want it (1 Cor. 2:16).

To have the mind of Christ and praying effective prayers goes hand-in-hand. To know God’s will and intentions is essential to an effective prayer life.

Because here’s the reality…if you don’t know God’s will you will magnify the problem when you pray. In magnifying the problem you will become more and more desperate for an answer and less and less assured your needs have already been met. Your mountains just become bigger and bigger when you’re begging God over and over again! It’s truly an exhausting process.

Prayer should look a lot more like confession. Confession means to say the same thing. Prayer should look more like saying the same thing God says about your situation until your heart is convinced He has already provided for your solution.

I find these scriptures helpful when I pray about any problem:

Scripture: “His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.” 1 Peter 1:3
Confession: “Thank you God that I already have everything I need that pertains to life and fulfilling your perfect will. I lack no good thing (Psalm 34:10).”

Scripture: “For as many as are the promises of God, in Him is the "Yes." Therefore also in Him, the "Amen" by us is for glory to God.”
1 Cor. 1:20
Confession: “Thank you God that every promise you ever made to anyone is yes and amen for me too. You never change.”

Scripture: “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.” Psalm 37:25
Confession: “Thank you God that because I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus I will never be left without food, shelter, clothing, or a way out of the temptation to fear or to sin in my fear (1 Cor. 10:13).”

Scripture: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Cor. 5:21
Confession: “Thank you God that I am righteous because of Christ Jesus. Therefore sin no longer has power over me.”

I’m telling you right now—if you will find a scripture that answers your need and confess that scripture over your problem, the problem will become smaller and the solution will present itself. Every solution to every problem you will ever face was solved in the life, burial, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Effective prayer always aligns with God’s will. God’s will always aligns with His heart. And God showed His heart and intentions through the finished work of Jesus.

Join me for this week’s episode of The Getting Life to Work Podcast where we examine the finished work of Jesus. This teaching will help you change the lens through which you see your problem so you can magnify the solution Jesus already provided for you!

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Blog Photo Cred: Priscilla Du Preez

Y’all. FINALLY.

Many have asked me, “Why don’t you have a podcast?” To which I would say, “I will get one done. In my free time.” But that free time never came about until two things happened:

1. I stopped wavering (being double-minded) on this issue and determined I would do it. Decisions in life never come down to “I would if I could”. God-given destinies are “I could if I would”.

2. I became a stay-at-home-mom to a 20-month-old.

I raised a now 22-year-old and 21-year-old. The 20-month-old was so out of the blue there are days I am still in total shock. At a time when I had planned to be pursuing the dreams I had put off until my biological girls were raised I was suddenly a mom to a toddler all over again. I would be lying if I said my emotions up front knew it was all going to work out and I would still live my dreams of full-time ministry, writing, and speaking. Quite the opposite. The truth was I felt like life was over. I knew that wasn’t true in my mind but my emotions tried to tell me differently. I had to build up the belief in my heart and not determine my fate based on circumstances.

This podcast is all about Getting Life to Work. I share my personal journey from the dark night of the soul to taking the limits off God to putting my life back together according to Jesus’ model for a great life.

Take a listen, give me a 5-star rating to help others find it, and share it with a friend!

I have 5 episodes already loaded for you so you can dive right in!

For your heart today…

Colossians 3:1-3 reminds us that, having been raised with Christ, we are hidden in Him.

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”

We can set our minds on things above when we believe the truth in our hearts. When God gives us a promise and a mission nothing can stop the fulfillment other than our unbelief.

“As has just been said: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the desert? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed? So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” (Hebrews 3:15-19)

It is rarely ever God’s timing or God flat-out saying, “No, not now.” that keeps us stuck where we are. These are merely justifications for our unbelief. Our unbelief in God’s willingness to keep His promise no matter how unlikely the circumstances appear leads to fear. Our fear keeps us from obedience. And because “faith without works is dead”(James 2:26) our disobedience keeps us from seeing our desires fulfilled (Prov. 13:12).

But everything is possible to him who believes (Mark 9:23). The key is our belief. It has always been the key. Yes, there are times when man’s free will delays God’s ability to allow us to step into a Divine moment. But we can always be on our way through preparation. Preparation looks like adding necessary skills that will help us fulfill our destiny. It also includes prayers that avail much (James 5:16). In my private mentorship group, I am putting together a study on how to pray effective prayers and activate a faith that moves mountains. Sadly, the way we’ve been taught to pray is exactly the opposite of how Jesus taught us to pray. And we definitely haven’t been trained in operating faith for miracles.

I hope you will join my mentorship group! It is a deeper dive into discipleship and the best way you can support this ministry on a monthly basis. I have learned I cannot do what God sent me to do to the scale He wants to do it without your partnership. All proceeds go to spreading the gospel and feeding a 20-month-old. ;)

So whatever you are facing today know that “God’s gifts and His call are irrevocable”. (Romans 11:29). This means He never takes them back. He doesn’t “give and take away” (Job 1:21). That is something Job said in his arrogance and ignorance and God corrected him for it.

But we can forfeit the gift and the call (fail to activate or receive it, thereby frustrating grace Gal. 2:21) by believing it’s over and our circumstances are insurmountable. Build up your belief today by meditating on the truth that nothing is impossible for you if you would only believe and then obey.

I’ve read the book of Proverbs several times but during this fall-to-winter season, I determined to take a deep dive into it. This transition in my life is like nothing I’ve experienced before so I find myself in great need of wisdom. There are a million ways I could handle this life-altering change. I could run. I could completely freak out. I could willfully bury my head in the sand and let it pass me by. I could repeat old patterns of self-abasement, self-neglect, codependency, or narcissism.

In short, this is an opportunity to really screw up my life or an opportunity to walk in the protection that comes from practicing wisdom.

“The path of life leads upward for the wise.” Proverbs 15:24

The benefits of wisdom are pretty astounding: life, health, length of days, favor, rich rewards, protection, and more. Wisdom has everything I want in this season and it is available to me right now. But what I want most that wisdom provides is life. Real life. Abundant life.

I did a word study on life and I think you’ll find it as desirable as I do. The word life comes from a Hebrew word that goes far behind just existing. It is a word that means welfare and happiness. It is an earthly bliss combined with spiritual blessing. I want me some of that!

When Christians can’t explain the hardship they are experiencing or others around them are experiencing they often say, “Well, God never promised us a good life!” or “God never said it was going to be easy!”

Hmmm…

It’s true we were never promised we wouldn’t experience hardship or persecution. But we were promised wisdom to guide us on a path to always winning. Always winning doesn’t mean other people have to lose to us. It means that in the end, whenever circumstances shake out, we can come out whole or better than before.

Have you ever wondered why Jeremiah 29:11 promises a future and a hope which looks to the future?

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Jeremiah 29:11

It’s because God is trying to put the path to welfare in our hands but He can’t show us what that future looks like until we choose it for ourselves. It’s not automatic. So often we determine our only possible outcome is evil (lack, limitation, our detriment) instead of looking for the good outcome God promises.

Jesus makes some wild declarations, maybe the wildest being that He came to give us not only life, but abundant life. No matter how you try to translate the definition of abundant it always comes back to being over and above, more than is necessary, more than enough, preeminence and the advantage in every (all-around, continuously) situation, superior, extraordinary, surpassing, uncommon, and more! There are never any exceptions, only the prerequisite… you choose to take hold of it and have faith for it until you see it materialize.

God has a way to work all things together for the good of those who love Him, are called, and are in pursuit of His purposes. And one of His purposes for you is a great life, life to the fullest!

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” John 10:10

If you are under pressure today, look for the way out. Every time we are tempted to solve our problems on our own or by our flesh (our five senses) God always has a way out that leads to abundant life. Believe that He has that for you, ask Him to show you the path, then use wisdom to get there. Wisdom is the practical application of knowledge or the truth. And truth alone cannot set you free. Truth has to be applied and acted upon in order to bring you to freedom.

And what is freedom? Well, it probably looks a lot like the life that comes from walking in wisdom—welfare and happiness, earthly bliss combined with spiritual blessing.

And what about the whole easy life thing? Well, circumstances and people in life might not be easy on us, but God’s instructions are easy and light. Yoke up with Him and you’ll walk right into your victory.

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Many would describe grace as God’s unmerited favor, but really that’s more akin to mercy. While favor is certainly a dimension of grace it isn’t a holistic view of grace. Grace is favor but it is a favor that EMPOWERS. It gives us ability beyond our own. It literally empowers us with God’s ability to do what we could never do on our own.

God’s grace working in us is SHEAR. RAW. POWER.

While there are numerous things twisted and wrong about the Supernatural TV series, one thing they did do was provide an excellent picture of grace. In the show, two of the main characters are angels. These angels only had supernatural power when they had their grace. When they lost their grace or if their grace was stolen they were left with mere human ability.

Paul understood the power of grace better than most. Check out these verses:

“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Galatians 2:21 (KJV) The word frustrate means to neutralize. If grace were defined simply as unmerited (unearned, undeserved) favor rather than a favor that bestowed power on us and in us it wouldn’t be something we could just neutralize. We can neutralize grace or keep grace from working in us by operating in our own ability versus God’s ability. When we operate in our own strength Christ becomes of no effect to us and we fall from grace (Gal. 5:4). Falling from grace doesn’t mean losing our salvation experience. It means leaving that realm of God’s ability and choosing instead to operate through our strength.

You can see why grace is so vital to living a successful Christian life. Paul knew that aside from grace he was left to his own weakness. But with grace, even his weakness was strong! Paul described his thorn in the flesh as a “messenger of Satan” buffeting him (2 Cor. 12:5). Because a thorn referred to people in the Old Testament (Joshua 23:13) we see that Paul was referring to the crowds of haters that were constantly trying to cancel him (the original cancel culture) so they could persecute him. God responded to Paul’s plea for the thorns to be removed by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor. 12:9. This was not God saying He would put Paul on life-support with a steady drip of grace. This wasn’t God saying, “Paul, I’ve given you unmerited favor. That should be enough for you. Get over yourself.” This was God saying He would empower Paul to triumph! God couldn’t change the free will of the haters but He did give Paul His own grace or ability to be strong in any situation.

God’s ability. Let that sink in.

Jesus had it. We can have it too.

Grace is available to us in abundance. James 4:6 says, “But he giveth more grace.” More grace than what? More grace than the power sin has over us. More grace (His ability and empowerment) than any situation or stronghold has to overpower us. Anywhere that sin abounds, grace abounds more (Rom. 5:20).

So what does this mean? Well, let’s define sin first. There are several Greek and Hebrew words for sin throughout the Bible. If you were to take a zoomed-out look at sin as a whole you would see that sin is not just violating the Ten Commandments. Sin is anytime we are living in a standard that is less than what Jesus died to free us from. Sin is anytime we come short of functioning in our new man, our new nature.

Addiction, depression, fear, unbelief…these are all expressions of sin. But where these abound in us grace ABOUNDS MORE. This means that if we choose to partner with God and lean on His ability to overcome addiction or any pattern of behavior that has held us captive, we can activate His grace which is more powerful and more abundant than the thing we want to overcome!

This takes practice. It could truly be summed up in the only thing God ever told us to strive for…entering into rest.

When we finally rest from trying to white-knuckle it,

grace can take over.

I have a million books in my head. It’s possible the next one could be a grace challenge. I hope you’ll stick with me. Podcasting is coming soon, and more teaching in my Getting Life to Work mentorship group…all designed to help you learn to walk in grace to defeat your addictions, codependencies, and repeated patterns of failure.

Because here’s the thing: many of us came to salvation in Jesus and were immediately set free from a whole slew of destructive behavior patterns. But the reality is, most Christians never overcome their most life-controlling issue, whether it be overeating and yo-yo dieting, pornography, codependency, shame-based thinking, etc. The good news is that it is the same grace working in us at salvation that will work in us to overcome that thing we haven’t been able to defeat!

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My Bible teaching centers around one fundamental truth that isn’t very popular. In the Kingdom of Heaven (the realm in which all of God’s resources are available to us), pain is never gain. Pain is pain. Pain comes to steal, kill and destroy. Always. Every time. No exceptions.

And that is why God never uses it to get a desired response from us.

I know. Saying this doesn’t always win me more friends. In fact, it makes a lot of people really mad. But the truth is the truth.

I’ve said over and over that pain has no ability to teach you, train you, or make you a better person. It is only your response to pain that can do that. And that is why God doesn’t use pain to train you.

And He doesn’t even allow it in your life. Man allows it.

Here is where people start freaking out and their heads start blowing up. People will do anything to protect the bad doctrine they’ve used to reconcile the pain that came into their lives.

How can I say God doesn’t allow pain? Because He doesn’t. And those who teach otherwise have to contend with thousands of Bible verses that don’t support their ‘no pain, no gain’ narrative, all of Psalm 121 being just a few of them. Check it out:

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from ALL harm—
    he will watch over your life;
the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.” Psalm 121

I’m not sure how much clearer the Psalmist can be. God KEEPS you from ALL harm. If we find ourselves suffering it’s the result of a fallen world and/or we didn’t heed God’s warning. It was man’s free will that got us here.

God is only in control of our outcomes to the degree
we choose to take responsibility
and refuse to hold Him accountable for our pain.

If God allowed pain even when He could relieve it, He would be in violation of His own system of justice.

“But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.” Ezekiel 33:6

“Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power to help them.” Proverbs 3:27

God holds those accountable who see evil coming and do nothing when it is within their power to act. God always sees down the line and it is always within His power to act. Would He not require the same justice of Himself?

The man who is overcome by the sword is overcome because of his own sin. Sin comes in many forms. Sin is not limited to simply violating the 10 commandments. In fact, there are 33 different words for sin in the New Testament. Sin is any form of unbelief in the goodness of God, missing the mark, or living below the standard of the abundant life Jesus modeled for us.

By giving us free will, God has OBLIGATED Himself to hand us over to our desires and beliefs. If we believe He is causing our pain, allowing our pain, or using our pain, we won’t recognize His warning to avoid the pain or take hold of His way out of the pain.

God is always trying to prevent our pain. And when we find ourselves in pain He is always trying to show us how to overcome it. He isn’t using the pain to teach us a lesson. God uses His word and the Holy Spirit to teach and train us. It is a fool that learns through pain alone. It is the wise that heed the warnings of wisdom and learn from instruction.

In my book, Prosperity to Providence, I use Biblical evidence to make the case for the failure of American Christianity, an extrapolated doctrine that taught us to blame God or blame satan for everything that happens in our lives. In all cases, whether we caused our pain, someone else caused it, or Adam’s original sin caused it, we are responsible… we are able to make a response that gets us out of pain. I’ll show you how to get the pain to stop by viewing pain through the lens of the finished work of Jesus. Download a copy today and learn how to get back on the racetrack you were born for!

Think you can’t limit God? Think again. The Israelites were famous for it.

‘“How often they provoked Him in the wilderness and grieved Him in the desert! Yes, again and again they tempted God, And limited the Holy One of Israel.” Psalm 78:41 (NKJV)

What God can do for you is limited to what you are willing to believe about Him and then walk out in obedience. The words hearing and obeying in the original Hebrew language of the Bible are nearly the same words. We only hear what we are willing to obey.

And having ears to hear is synonymous with having eyes to see.

In other words, we only hear what we want to hear and we only see what we want to see.

So what are you willing to see?

We limit God when we decide a positive or miraculous outcome in our situation isn’t possible. We limit God when we decide we will only get the outcome He wants us to have. We limit God when we refuse to see the possibility of an outcome that is in alignment with the finished work of Jesus.

God wants you to have whatever Jesus died to give you. But He can only give you what you are willing to hear and obey.

And here’s the good news: You can know the perfect will of God (His desired outcome) for any circumstance by testing it against what Jesus completed on the cross.

This expert from my book, Prosperity to Providence: Why American Christianity Isn’t Working and How to Get Back on the Racetrack We Were Made For, will help frame this up for us:

God’s preferred outcome for any given circumstance in your life is:

•       You are not poor, destitute, inadequate, or ill-equipped for life.

•       You have a mended heart, where unexplained failures or cycles of self-destruction have ceased. 

•       Your circumstances have zero power to hold you.

•       You are healed from all sickness and disease, in this life, on this side of heaven.

•       You have the faith of God to move your mountains.

•      You are not stuck. Your emotional debt and physical pain have been paid for.

How do I know this? The authority of scripture:

“Surely our sicknesses he hath borne, and our pains -- he hath carried them…” Isaiah 53:4a (Young’s Literal Translation)

“And evening having come, they brought to him many demoniacs, and he did cast out the spirits with a word, and did heal all who were ill, that it might be fulfilled that was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, 'Himself took our infirmities, and the sicknesses he did bear.'” Matthew 8:16-17

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18-19

And by the way, you have all these benefits, today, in this life. Because “…as He is in this world, so are we”. 1 John 4:17

Everything Jesus did, you can do too—and then some!

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do…” John 14:12

The key to getting God’s preferred outcome in your life is to not limit Him by accepting a lower standard of living than what Jesus died to give you.

Your will and your belief are one and the same
and God won’t violate either one.

He cannot give you what you are unwilling to believe He wants to do for you.

I highly recommend studying the scriptures above and testing your circumstance against them. Download my book where I expand more on miraculous outcomes I have personally experienced because I stood on the promise of what Jesus died to give me instead of limiting God to what I could see in the natural or what I was afraid of.

The best outcome is possible for you, but if you limit God you’ll limit His grace (His ability and empowerment) needed to get a miraculous outcome—you’ll be left with only what is possible in your strength.