Tag: authentic

CHRISTMAS = Christ-IN-Us

Freely Authentic1 Comment

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!!

As I was reflecting on the season of Christmas that is upon us, I was thinking about what Christmas really is and what it actually means. Yes, I know the Christmas story, the wise men, the gifts, the manger and all the rest. I know all about the hustle and bustle the world throws our way. It tends to make us feel obligated to go spend money and buy gifts for people and maybe end up finding out that gift might not even mean anything to them. Yes, it’s good to give, but how much of our giving is because we feel like we are supposed to?

Ok, I don’t want to get sidetracked here, so, what does Christmas really mean?

The thought struck me Christmas is actually, Christ – IN – Us. So out of curiosity I looked up that little word…’in’ which means ‘Expressing a movement or a situation with a result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else.’

Well now, that’s interesting! Someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else…hmm. Think about it for just a moment, you are being wrapped with a nice warm blanket that will protect you from the cold, caterpillars are wrapped in a cocoon, how about food that grows from the ground or trees, they are all wrapped in a protective skin. Ok, think about this one…we are wrapped in a covering of skin. Even new flowers are protected until they bloom and new babies are in a womb until they are birthed.

The more I think about it, the more fascinated I am becoming with such a small word. Everything is ‘in’ something in the natural and physical world. How about in the spiritual?

John 15:1-7 talks about Jesus being the Vine and we are the branches. Branches are ‘in’ the vine. The branches cannot survive or live without the vine. All the food, nutrients and water come from the vine. Abiding in the Vine is abiding in Jesus. It can be very difficult to walk through life’s challenges and hurdles that we face everyday, if we are not abiding IN the Vine, Jesus. Yes, there are definitely going to be times when our branch gets pruned or maybe even cut off. But that just means new growth can begin to happen. New growth is always a good thing! We gain fresh perspective, we experience new things, we are vulnerable and we are young in that specific growth area and our dependence is on/in Him. Without Him we can’t live.

John 1:4 IN Him was life, and the life was the light of men

Acts 17:28 for IN Him we live and move and exist…

2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God IN Him.

Eph. 1:7 IN Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace

Eph. 1:13 IN Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed IN Him with the Holy Spirit of promise.

Col. 1:17 He is before all things, and IN Him all things hold together.

Col. 2:10 and IN Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority;

1 John 2:5 but whoever keeps His word, IN him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are IN Him:

1 John 2:27 As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides IN you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide IN Him.

1 John 4:16 We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides IN love abides IN God, and God abides IN him.

1 John 5:20 And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true; and we are IN Him who is true, IN His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

So now that I have listed a few scriptures talking about being IN Him, let’s go back and take a look at what that little word meant again…‘Expressing a movement or a situation with a result that someone or something becomes enclosed or surrounded by something else.’

Everything that exists seems to be IN something or someone. So I leave all of us with a couple questions…by what, or by whom am I expressing movement? By what, or by whom am I enclosed or surrounded by?

These last two scriptures are my prayer for us all…

Col 1:27 to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ IN you, the Hope of glory.

Eph. 1:18 pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance IN the saints (you).

I pray through this Christmas/New Year season that we all come to the revelation of knowing “who” we are IN. I pray that we are wrapped, enclosed, encased and hidden IN the love of God, so that when we go out into the world, the world sees none other than The One we are hidden IN.

When we are IN Christ, we live, we move and we exist. THIS is Christ-IN-us which is living authentically! God cannot express Himself without us, and we cannot express ourselves without Him! All creation groans for the revealing of God in the Sons of God, as they, too, will be set free into His glorious liberty.

I pray blessing and increase upon every household and heart and an increase of abundance for 2015!

 

Pulling Back the Veil

Freely AuthenticLeave a comment

Writing Your History

One morning while in my quiet time, I was reflecting on a meeting I had attended with a handful of interns the day before. What was stirring in me was what I had heard the speaker say in that small meeting. He was talking about a scripture in 2 Corinthians 3 about a veil being over our hearts and when we turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away. What he said was this, ‘to the degree the veil has been pulled back, is the degree of hunger we have for God’. While I was reflecting on this, I saw a picture of sheer curtains being drawn back and a heart-shaped book was revealed. It was open and there was a hand holding a pen, writing on the book. I was thinking, “oh, that’s cool, God is writing my history”. Then I heard a quiet voice say, “no, I’m not writing your history, you are”!

I have heard countless times in the last five years or so that our time spent with God is a time of building our history with God. Those intimate quiet times are the times that the groundwork for our future and our destiny is formed. We begin to build with God by valuing the moments in life that we put aside to spend with Him. In those moments, the hours or even days of time spent with Him are very valuable and precious. They are opportunities we create, to spend time with the Father, the Creator of the universe, and the Lover of our souls.

I often ask myself, ‘what value do I have in spending time with God’? I have no desire to make the time I spend with him a ‘religious ritual’ but one that captivates all my attention and affection for the creator of my life, the one who is the very breath that I breathe. It’s easy to feel like we have to read the Bible every single day or pray for an hour every morning in order to maintain and cultivate a close relationship with God. For some people, having a daily schedule of reading and praying is just a religious act or ritual. For me, it has to be a desire born out of hunger that pulls me and beckons me with anticipation for what He might show me or say to me in those moments that I have created a place for Him to unveil His love for me. For a person that grew up in a correct-action-produces-acceptance-lifestyle, this endeavor is for the purpose of love, not to experience acceptance because my behavior has pleased someone; it is in this experience, that I fall in love with the One who gave everything for me. This is not about accomplishing ritual, this, is about surrender to love.

What does spending time with God do? It begins to transform the way we think, the way we see, the way we talk and the way we walk out the Kingdom in our lives. The more time spent in love with Him, the more we are transformed and the more the Kingdom is revealed. The more time spent with Him, the more our hunger is cultivated and the more we can’t live without Him. The more I give Him my all that I am, the deeper my well gets and the more the pen writes on the page of my heart the history that I am building, the story of my life through the eyes of love and not acceptance produced by my own effort of ritual.

Yes, we are building a history with God, but at the same time we are also digging a well. We determine our capacity for His presence and His glory in our lives by how deep our well is. The closer I become with Him, and the deeper my well gets then the greater my life story gets. The depth of my well tells Him what I can hold and what I can contain, and sustain. I don’t know about you, but I want a very deep well to contain and sustain all that He is, to me. When I have the opportunity to minister then it’s not about me trying to prepare a good message, but the message would come from the depths of my well, from the history that I’ve created with God; my message is what I have become.

Hunger for More

Hunger drives us to pursue. When you are naturally hungry, you go get something to eat right? My family and I were walking down the Santa Cruz Boardwalk recently having just eaten dinner at a great restaurant. We had our leftovers in a couple of small containers and as were walking a young man sitting on a bench asked us if we could part with our leftovers. Of course! I mentioned to my husband, ‘wow, that is really bold for someone to just ask for your leftovers’. Now, where we live there are a lot of homeless, so I’m used to seeing them, and being asked for money or food. I can’t remember ever having anyone ask my for the container I had in my hand. My husband said, ‘hunger will make you do bold things’. Wow…how true is that. Hunger within says, I won’t be satisfied until I have what feeds me, what will sustain me and what will expand me to want even more; He has created me this way.

Life is full of activity, responsibility and commitments that take up the majority of our daily time. Our natural tendency, especially those of us with a correct-action-produces-acceptance-lifestyle, is to get under the weight of all that life demands. This steals our joy, robs us of our hope and causes us to feel overwhelmed, even becoming depressed at the lack of time to complete all that needs to be done. It ultimately steals the most precious thing of all…time with the most incredible Father.

Matt. 5: 6 says, ‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they SHALL BE satisfied’. 

So I share what is becoming me, what is becoming His message that draws me to consider, to ponder, to meditate upon, that would encourage me to search my heart.

Lets engage the risk that says we are willing to give all that we are to Him, and not to build our lives on how correct we should be. Are we willing to take risk and go after more of love, in place of my rightness? How much hunger do we have for love? How thirsty are we to be satisfied? How deep is the well? How far have we pulled back the veil of our hearts? I know that when I have my heart wide open to where I am fully exposed and vulnerable, God pours into me everything I desire and need to walk out life on a daily basis with His heart. Every moment spent with Him the veil is removed more and more (2 Co. 3:13-16).

God will not violate our space, but desires unlimited access to our heart, life and soul. He fulfills every longing, every desire, every dream that you have if you open wide your heart to Him. God is not waiting for you to prove how serious you are, He is just waiting for you to bring your heart to the table. Again I say, God is not looking for your spirituality, He is looking for your surrender.

The only expectation is that I am fully yielded to Him!

Becoming Authentic

Freely Authentic6 Comments

Welcome to “Freely Authentic”! I pray you will find this blog encouraging and full of hope. It is my personal journey to authenticity. I hope you follow me and you can discover your authenticity too! This is meant to be a tool of encouragement, of risk-taking into the unknown, and a tool for both you and I to uncover and unravel the intricacies in the mystery of who we were created to be.

What does it mean to be authentic? Authentic is to be genuine, not false or copied, of undisputed origin, entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with knownfacts or experience; reliable; trustworthy. 

All of us are looking for the authentic person we’ve been created to be. Authenticity says we know who we are and we don’t have to be a copy of something or someone else. We are fully known within ourselves and that is the freedom that we walk in that allows us to express who we are.

As a child around the age of 10 or so, my parents divorced. My father was an alcoholic, and my mother had just about all she could take. I remember when they sat all 7 of us children down at the dining room table and explained to us that they were getting divorced. From this time on, there was something that rested upon me and I immediately felt that I had to step up to the plate and be responsible. I remember my oldest brother and myself, the middle child, mainly being the ones who were the ‘responsible’ ones at that time. Mom had a nervous breakdown and that placed even more ‘false responsibility’ on my plate. As I grew up, to be accepted, loved, seen and known, I was unaware and threw myself into being all things to all people. This caused me to become a people pleaser, never really addressing or acknowledging how I felt about myself. Just ‘do what you’re told’ gripped me for life. The lie of ‘children are to be seen and not heard’ hovered over me for so many years and has continued to follow me all the way into adulthood.

So because of this life I had been given as a child, my authenticity was compromised and I never ‘knew’ who I was. This is the journey I am on today. God has healed many places in my heart the last five years, but there is still so much more. I am beginning to see, beginning to express, beginning to delight and become excited about the person that is emerging from the shadows. This person is becoming freer everyday!

God didn’t create us and then tell us to go be like someone else. He created us in His image therefore, if we are to be like anyone we are to be like Him. Because of our humanity and having un-renewed minds, that opens the door for us to begin floundering in our lives as we grow up, wondering who we are etc. It is a daily walk to have our minds renewed everyday so old mindsets don’t come creeping back in. There is nothing more that the devil wants than to keep up bound, silenced and in chains. It is his mission to do that.

Being authentic means that each of us carries a part of the nature of God within us that no one else on the planet carries. I am a part of Him that you are not part of.

Jeremiah 1:5 says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you…”

God knew who we were before we were ever conceived. He saw us from the very beginning. He had a plan for our lives already stamped in the heavens! He knew us before we there was any formation of us. That just blows my mind. Wow! What an incredible God. Yes, our lives took turns and went down roads that were not in His plan, but through His faithfulness, mercy and grace He never leaves us or forsakes us. He was always there, He is here now and He will always be with us everyday and every moment that lies ahead of us.

I would like to encourage you today to begin to look within and take a good long look…do you like what you see? Is what you see authentic? Is what you see genuine, true, reliable and trustworthy? Sometimes when we just take a moment God can show us so many things. He loves you just the way you are right now, but He also knows who your REALLY are! Take a few moments and see what God says to you. Jesus will never make you feel condemned, but will always show us how He sees us and will always encourage us to take a risk, step out of the boat, and come to Him and be freely authentic!

Declaration: I will not be bound by old mindsets, nor silenced by my fears and I refuse to believe any lie that the enemy has for me. I will continually renew my mind in the Word of God and time spent with The One who created me. He is the true model of authenticity. His love, His peace, His joy and His hope will fill my life on a daily basis and I will become more and more like Him. My identity comes from time spent with the Creator!

I am Freely Authentic!