God’s unwavering “LOVE” remains constant despite our hesitancy or doubts. His purpose is not thwarted by our denial that He truly cares. He has a purpose in His delay, and in our dash.  Our unanswered prayers draw us closer as it makes us more dependent on Him. His silence in our waiting is a test of our faith.  God has not changed His mind, His Word, His promise, or His ways. He still confounds the wise as He does not depend on our faith to fulfill His promises. “Be still and KNOW that I am God.” We choose to trust Him at His Word.

The Spirit of God speaks, and we must be silent to hear. His love is never exhausted. His love does not have a catch 22.  His faithfulness does not run out of time. Our Father never wavers, He is never out of touch, far off, or blind sided by our doubts or fears. The  Spirit of God does not build us up and then destroy us with fear.  He doesn’t light a fire and then pour water on it. Jesus is the Lover of our soul, as the world shuns us. Without a backup plan or alternate route, we walk by faith, not by sight. God’s Word means what He says it does even when we pause in disbelief.

Our Father never retracts truth because people get impatient. Eternity does not change God, it reveals His perfect timing. Delays will never cancel His promises. God is not withholding anything from us. He is weaving His way right through our struggle to understand.  God never ignores our pleas. He is working to orchestrate everything in the heavenlies to our greatest benefit. He is our Abba Father who delights in us. He waits for us to open our hearts that we may receive even greater grace. “Come, follow Me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people. At once they left their nets and followed Him.” Matthew 4:19 Do not hesitate, but obey.

God loves us in the valley and on every mountain top. We may take detours, but God’s Way points to eternity with Him. Jesus sees our setbacks. He sees our mental breakdown, but His Spirit never left us alone. He waits patiently for us to turn back to Him. He knows we question His timing, His ways, and His goodness — but our ways do not prevent His pursuit of our whole heart. He knows the fear we don’t talk about. When we run from Him,  He speeds ahead to stop us.  When we are angry, God is still loving us. His written word never reacts to our weakness. We cannot unchoose what God has already chosen for us. Our lack of faith cannot undo what He has already planned. The cross did not stutter. The tomb didn’t whisper. His silence is not rejection, it is our Father waiting for us to trust Him.
God is not late and His purpose is not undone by politics, or enemy plots. God bends time restraints and all chains that bind. He calls what is not yet into what He wills. Say yes, Lord, and believe again. Every promise is being fulfilled in our waiting, trusting, and believing.

Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up. This is a call to embrace a gritty, authentic faith that is found in the trenches of life. It is where God meets the broken. His resurrection power in us — takes root and it blooms beauty out of ashes. The world encourages us to be neat and tidy with our words and ways. But God calls us to put our boots on — and put away our comfy slippers. We are His ambassadors who welcome the call to get to the nitty gritty truth. We speak it softly, and we don’t smooth things over or sweep life under the rug.  God did not save us — to put us up on stages. He commands that we humbly take the back stairs down to the basement. To go under the bridges where hearts are raw and knees remember how to bend. We are His light that shows up when someone prays. We lend an ear and love best with a closed mouth.  We go where hurting people live, into castles, and into homeless shelters. We let our shining countenance speak louder than any word. When the pulpit is polished with eloquence, the saints march out with tracs. We share our rumpled Bible pages, with scribbled margins from when our life hurt and yet HOPE still came to visit. We humbly walk behind the Spirit who leads and we only speak the words He gives us. Speak it slow and plain. Let your simple testimony be the match, not the sermon. Let it spark a fire of hope in the hurting.  Truth prevails as we tell about the time we lost everything, and God gave us a hymn for our hunger. The time a quiet voice whispered in the hospital bed. The moment the call came when a loved one died and Peace invaded our soul. The time God renamed our fear a promise. The trenches don’t apologize. They baptize us in reality. We smell fake believers who complain as  babies cry. We judge not, lest we be judged by the holiness of God’s mercy. God’s pulpit is wherever He meets the broken. His sent ones do not chase applause. We submit to the One who wrote our story. We agree with His way and our scars.   The world calls us weak and wreckkess, but God calls us His own.

When the world says we think too small, God calls us submitted. As the world thinks we are shrinking, our Father knows we are listening. When the world demands a fight, we speak forgiveness. We talk with the Father, and He is pleased by our humility as we tell His truth. Jesus grabbed our hand as we hung on a crumbling cliff. God rooted us in His Word, and He raised us up and broke through the concrete jungle of this world. What the world calls a weed, God calls the apple of His eye. We got His treasury, His blood covering, and we speak truth with the authority He gave us. Examine your heart. Galatians 1:10 “Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Overriding our emotions to make good decisions is the key. The game of life includes a circus of feelings that swing high and low. We may at times misplace the rules God gave us to follow. We may have lost our way just because we  got caught up in what others are doing. When we hear a loud outburst of emotions, it is wise to test the spirits that we allow to speak into us. Thoughts fly through that strongly suggest: “You don’t know the truth! ● You just don’t have what it takes! ● People don’t like you or believe in you. ● This task is too difficult ● Your dream is just a fantasy.” Our emotions can go up and down like a seesaw about the right way to go — so what!  There is no rule about first “feeling okay”  to go ahead and do the right thing. We are not required to feel confident to just show up everyday and trust God. We don’t have to feel at peace to move forward “in Him.” We make decisions, and it is ok to change our minds, adjust our sails, and allow the invisible wind of His Presence to carry us when our feelings rage like a storm. God gave us emotions so that we feel pressure, hot, cold, grief, joy, and His abiding assurance to walk this way. We stop, we measure our steps, we pause just long enough to make the next RIGHT decision for us.

God designed us with emotions. We are very human, we are not robots. We laugh, cry, question, and doubt. When we want to quit, or pause, this is not a sign of weakness, it could be wisdom knocking. We stop, take an inventory of our emotions, recognize them, and seek guidance from within. Our emotions are allowed to be in the car, but we don’t allow them to touch the wheel. Feeling our emotions is good. We are not numb, we are alive and we own our emotional state. We choose to override all emotions with clarity from our reliable indwelt Counselor. In our weakness, He is stronger than our emotions and He leads us by still waters with confidence.

By His Blood