In the Scriptures, the great miracle of the incarnation slips into the ordinary life of a child; the great miracle of the transfiguration fades into the demon-possessed valley below; the glory of the resurrection descends into a breakfast on the seashore. This is not an anticlimax, but a great revelation of God.

We have a tendency to look for wonder in our experience, and we mistake heroic actions for real heroes. It’s one thing to go through a crisis grandly, yet quite another to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, and no one paying even the remotest attention to us. If we are not looking for halos, we at least want something that will make people say, “What a wonderful man of prayer he is!” or, “What a great woman of devotion she is!” If you are properly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the lofty height where no one would ever notice you personally. All that is noticed is the power of God coming through you all the time.

We want to be able to say, “Oh, I have had a wonderful call from God!” But to do even the most humbling tasks to the glory of God takes the Almighty God Incarnate working in us. To be utterly unnoticeable requires God’s Spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His. The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life. We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life “hidden with Christ in God” in our everyday human conditions (Colossians 3:3). Our human relationships are the very conditions in which the ideal life of God should be exhibited.

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November 16, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

God, please give me some indication that I am on the right track, the right path. I feel like I am walking around in circles sometimes, hoping and praying that I am right where you want me to be. If my circumstances have not changed, if life does not seem to be getting any better, how do I know you are still there if I cannot feel you and know you are near?

And God says…”Nothing can separate you from My love. Nothing, not even you or the circumstances you create. When it seems as if no one else knows how you feel, My love for you is proven real; over and over. Simply wait on Me and know that when you do your hope will always be rewarded…….you can’t round up enough containers to hold everything I generously pour into your life through the Holy Spirit! ………”

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. Acknowledge the Lord in all your ways and He will make your paths straight. Seek first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.” 

One of the hardest lessons to learn comes from our stubborn refusal to refrain from interfering in other people’s lives. It takes a long time to realize the danger of being an amateur providence, that is, interfering with God’s plan for others. You see someone suffering and say, “He will not suffer, and I will make sure that he doesn’t.” You put your hand right in front of God’s permissive will to stop it, and then God says, “What is that to you?” Is there stagnation in your spiritual life? Don’t allow it to continue, but get into God’s presence and find out the reason for it. You will possibly find it is because you have been interfering in the life of another— proposing things you had no right to propose, or advising when you had no right to advise. When you do have to give advice to another person, God will advise through you with the direct understanding of His Spirit. Your part is to maintain the right relationship with God so that His discernment can come through you continually for the purpose of blessing someone else.

Most of us live only within the level of consciousness— consciously serving and consciously devoted to God. This shows immaturity and the fact that we’re not yet living the real Christian life. Maturity is produced in the life of a child of God on the unconscious level, until we become so totally surrendered to God that we are not even aware of being used by Him. When we are consciously aware of being used as broken bread and poured-out wine, we have yet another level to reach— a level where all awareness of ourselves and of what God is doing through us is completely eliminated. A saint is never consciously a saint— a saint is consciously dependent on God.

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November 15, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Dear God, why is it that I can be living life right along and enjoying life and our relationship and then without any warning at all, make a wrong choice, and damage my connection?

And God says…”It is in your nature to seek your own choices. It is in your inner core, to seek your own answers to your questions about life and it is in your nature to try to avoid pain and increase your peace and pleasure. Although your choices never bring the results you seek, you make the choice to be independent of Me over and over. That is why the grace you find in Jesus is never ending and the magnitude of the sacrifice so overwhelming. You can only find your life when you lose it, and you come to our connection only when you reach the end of yourself. Forget your failures, and drown yourself in My ocean of grace.  Focus on Me and be transformed.”  

 “As the Apostle said… ’And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate[a] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.’ 2 Corinthians 3:18

God’s command is, “Take now,” not later. It is incredible how we debate! We know something is right, but we try to find excuses for not doing it immediately. If we are to climb to the height God reveals, it can never be done later— it must be done now. And the sacrifice must be worked through our will before we actually perform it.

“So Abraham rose early in the morning . . . and went to the place of which God had told him” (Genesis 22:3). Oh, the wonderful simplicity of Abraham! When God spoke, he did not “confer with flesh and blood” (Galatians 1:16). Beware when you want to “confer with flesh and blood” or even your own thoughts, insights, or understandings— anything that is not based on your personal relationship with God. These are all things that compete with and hinder obedience to God.

Abraham did not choose what the sacrifice would be. Always guard against self-chosen service for God. Self-sacrifice may be a disease that impairs your service. If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace; or even if He has made it bitter, drink it in communion with Him. If the providential will of God means a hard and difficult time for you, go through it. But never decide the place of your own martyrdom, as if to say, “I will only go to there, but no farther.” God chose the test for Abraham, and Abraham neither delayed nor protested, but steadily obeyed. If you are not living in touch with God, it is easy to blame Him or pass judgment on Him. You must go through the trial before you have any right to pronounce a verdict, because by going through the trial you learn to know God better. God is working in us to reach His highest goals until His purpose and our purpose become one.

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November 11, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Last night during the men’s Bible Study we shared what Jesus means to us. Each one of us took a turn and talked about Jesus in his life. We all had a different way of explaining our different positions and yet we all were saying the same thing. Jesus we said is the answer, the lover of our souls, our conviction, our Savior and Lord, and best friend and brother. We each saw Jesus differently and yet it was clear that Jesus was for each of us exactly what God needed Him to be in our separate and individual lives. Thank you Lord for Jesus, and His sacrifice and willingness to be our all in all.

And God says…” Jesus is the way, the truth and the light. He is the living water for your life, regardless of your circumstance. When you seek the Kingdom of God, you find the step by step direction in Jesus. When you come to Jesus and surrender yourself, He can and will meet you right at the point of your need, and because the needs of each man are different, Jesus can and will be described differently. But He is the same. He is everything you need, right when you need it and remember God provides for all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”

After sanctification, it is difficult to state what your purpose in life is, because God has moved you into His purpose through the Holy Spirit. He is using you now for His purposes throughout the world as He used His Son for the purpose of our salvation. If you seek great things for yourself, thinking, “God has called me for this and for that,” you barricade God from using you. As long as you maintain your own personal interests and ambitions, you cannot be completely aligned or identified with God’s interests. This can only be accomplished by giving up all of your personal plans once and for all, and by allowing God to take you directly into His purpose for the world. Your understanding of your ways must also be surrendered, because they are now the ways of the Lord.

I must learn that the purpose of my life belongs to God, not me. God is using me from His great personal perspective, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him. I should never say, “Lord, this causes me such heartache.” To talk that way makes me a stumbling block. When I stop telling God what I want, He can freely work His will in me without any hindrance. He can crush me, exalt me, or do anything else He chooses. He simply asks me to have absolute faith in Him and His goodness. Self-pity is of the devil, and if I wallow in it I cannot be used by God for His purpose in the world. Doing this creates for me my own cozy “world within the world,” and God will not be allowed to move me from it because of my fear of being “frost-bitten.”

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November 10, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

I am once again in need of your grace today. I seem to always find it right where you placed it, with and in Jesus. Thank you for providing never ending grace in the person of Jesus Christ and allowing me to always find your grace and everything I can and will ever need right at the foot of the cross.

And God says…”All things are possible and available in Christ Jesus. I save you in Christ Jesus and have known your beginning and ending and all that you do and do not over your entire life, and I love you. The grace of Jesus covers you as He comes to give you life and life more abundantly. Look to Jesus for all your answers and for your direction. Trust in the Lord, seek first His Kingdom, delight yourself in Him and your life shall be full as you share the fullness with others.”

The Christian worker has to be a sacred “go-between.” He must be so closely identified with his Lord and the reality of His redemption that Christ can continually bring His creating life through him. I am not referring to the strength of one individual’s personality being superimposed on another, but the real presence of Christ coming through every aspect of the worker’s life. When we preach the historical facts of the life and death of our Lord as they are conveyed in the New Testament, our words are made sacred. God uses these words, on the basis of His redemption, to create something in those who listen which otherwise could never have been created. If we simply preach the effects of redemption in the human life instead of the revealed, divine truth regarding Jesus Himself, the result is not new birth in those who listen. The result is a refined religious lifestyle, and the Spirit of God cannot witness to it because such preaching is in a realm other than His. We must make sure that we are living in such harmony with God that as we proclaim His truth He can create in others those things which He alone can do.

When we say, “What a wonderful personality, what a fascinating person, and what wonderful insight!” then what opportunity does the gospel of God have through all of that? It cannot get through, because the attraction is to the messenger and not the message. If a person attracts through his personality, that becomes his appeal. If, however, he is identified with the Lord Himself, then the appeal becomes what Jesus Christ can do. The danger is to glory in men, yet Jesus says we are to lift up only Him (see John 12:32).

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November 9, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Just about the time I begin to feel  holy and righteous, because I have come so far as a believer, I do something that painfully reminds me of how far I have not come; I decide to do something outside of God’s will…..and I  remind myself of of Adam and Eve and their blatant disobedience.

And God says…”Those things you do not wish to do, you will do. And those things that you wish to do you will not do. Who will save you from this never-ending predicament? Jesus has already provided the salvation and as you look to Him He will keep saving you, (sanctifying you) day by day by day. When you slip and fall get right back up, acknowledge your disobedience, truly repent and I will forgive you over and over and over and over and over toward an eternal definition of grace.”

“And all the while, as you focus on Jesus and the cross, by the power of the Holy Spirit within you, you will be changing from the inside out. Your disobedience slowly becomes a fading memory as you become more and more like Christ, until it is no longer you that lives, but Christ in you.”

We realize that we are energized by the Holy Spirit for prayer; and we know what it is to pray in accordance with the Spirit; but we don’t often realize that the Holy Spirit Himself prays prayers in us which we cannot utter ourselves. When we are born again of God and are indwelt by the Spirit of God, He expresses for us the unutterable.

“He,” the Holy Spirit in you, “makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:27). And God searches your heart, not to know what your conscious prayers are, but to find out what the prayer of the Holy Spirit is.

The Spirit of God uses the nature of the believer as a temple in which to offer His prayers of intercession. “. . . your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit . . .” (1 Corinthians 6:19). When Jesus Christ cleansed the temple, “. . . He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple” (Mark 11:16). The Spirit of God will not allow you to use your body for your own convenience. Jesus ruthlessly cast out everyone who bought and sold in the temple, and said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer . . . . But you have made it a ’den of thieves’ ” (Mark 11:17).

Have we come to realize that our “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit”? If so, we must be careful to keep it undefiled for Him. We have to remember that our conscious life, even though only a small part of our total person, is to be regarded by us as a “temple of the Holy Spirit.” He will be responsible for the unconscious part which we don’t know, but we must pay careful attention to and guard the conscious part for which we are responsible.

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November 8, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Knowing You are living inside of me, that you are everywhere I am, comforts me. Knowing You will withhold nothing good from me as evidenced by Jesus and the cross, reminds me of my privileged place.

Lord, Thank you for these reminders. Thank you for the fullness of Your Spirit.

And God says…”When you worship Me the Holy Spirit living inside of you joins  with My Spirit, we are connected and you are confident and courageous of your place in Me. The circumstances do not matter, the situation is unimportant, you are confident of your place in Me. Stay connected to Me in prayer and worship, all day long. Pray without ceasing, and live an abundant life, day by day. Know I am here with you.”

 “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine” Isaiah 43:1

“Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be moved, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed.” Isaiah 54:10

Martha believed in the power available to Jesus Christ; she believed that if He had been there He could have healed her brother; she also believed that Jesus had a special intimacy with God, and that whatever He asked of God, God would do. But— she needed a closer personal intimacy with Jesus. Martha’s theology had its fulfillment in the future. But Jesus continued to attract and draw her in until her belief became an intimate possession. It then slowly emerged into a personal inheritance— “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ . . .” (John 11:27).

Is the Lord dealing with you in the same way? Is Jesus teaching you to have a personal intimacy with Himself? Allow Him to drive His question home to you— “Do you believe this?” Are you facing an area of doubt in your life? Have you come, like Martha, to a crossroads of overwhelming circumstances where your theology is about to become a very personal belief? This happens only when a personal problem brings the awareness of our personal need.

To believe is to commit. In the area of intellectual learning I commit myself mentally, and reject anything not related to that belief. In the realm of personal belief I commit myself morally to my convictions and refuse to compromise. But in intimate personal belief I commit myself spiritually to Jesus Christ and make a determination to be dominated by Him alone.

Then, when I stand face to face with Jesus Christ and He says to me, “Do you believe this?” I find that faith is as natural as breathing. And I am staggered when I think how foolish I have been in not trusting Him earlier

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November 6, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

The lyric from this song says it best…. ”Savior please…. keep saving me.”

And God says…”I began a good work within you and I will complete it. Yours is but to surrender. And all things will work toward this effort….your surrender, until; you become invisible and all that remains is Christ Jesus.”

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, “Oh, I can’t deal with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.

The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered “according to the will of God” (1 Peter 4:19), having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. When it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering— the way of the “long road home.”

Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through— we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize— “God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”

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November 5, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

Today God brought a number of things together in a way that I could see Him working in and through my life and the lives of those I love. People met other people, needs were met and I was able to make some sense of my most recent business dealings. But it all came together and made sense NOT because I got all the answers I needed and all problems were solved. It all seemed to come together because I was looking for and at Jesus.

 And God says…”I am the way, the truth and the light. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things shall be added to you. I came to give you life and life more abundantly. Look to Me and you will find the answers for all your questions. It is not easy to seek Me in the midst of a storm, but when you stay connected with Me there is no need for seeking and the storms come and go and you hardly pay them notice”.

“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 121:7, 8

It is essential that you give people the opportunity to act on the truth of God. The responsibility must be left with the individual— you cannot act for him. It must be his own deliberate act, but the evangelical message should always lead him to action. Refusing to act leaves a person paralyzed, exactly where he was previously. But once he acts, he is never the same. It is the apparent folly of the truth that stands in the way of hundreds who have been convicted by the Spirit of God. Once I press myself into action, I immediately begin to live. Anything less is merely existing. The moments I truly live are the moments when I act with my entire will.

When a truth of God is brought home to your soul, never allow it to pass without acting on it internally in your will, not necessarily externally in your physical life. Record it with ink and with blood— work it into your life. The weakest saint who transacts business with Jesus Christ is liberated the second he acts and God’s almighty power is available on his behalf. We come up to the truth of God, confess we are wrong, but go back again. Then we approach it again and turn back, until we finally learn we have no business going back. When we are confronted with such a word of truth from our redeeming Lord, we must move directly to transact business with Him. “Come to Me . . .” (Matthew 11:28). His word come means “to act.” Yet the last thing we want to do is come. But everyone who does come knows that, at that very moment, the supernatural power of the life of God invades him. The dominating power of the world, the flesh, and the devil is now paralyzed; not by your act, but because your act has joined you to God and tapped you in to His redemptive power.

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November 4, 2010

Journal Entry for Today-JDV

When I found this song this morning it spoke to my spirit that has been crying out for answers……I have, as the song says, been shut up, shut down, held out, held down, in ways I never knew…….but I can feel Your fullness in my life.

And God says…. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Isaiah 43:1-2 “But whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm” Proverbs 1:33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world! “John 16:33