Let the devil know not today!

Last Sunday I came away from the Hillsong Colour conference in a difference place to where I was when I arrived on the Thursday.

Praise God!

Thursday I arrived with no agenda for God, I didn’t have a list of problems I wanted him to address (I mean there were a whole lot of issues but I didn’t come presenting them to God as his ‘to-do’ list). I simply came expectant. I say simply but actually I think it’s quite brave to approach God and say “I’m open, I’m willing, over to you, do what you want”.

I arrived open but I also arrived broken.

We talk about how we are body, soul and spirit but I had so neglected my spirit that it was shrivelling up…it was dying.

I had separated the parts of me out, body…soul…spirit and each part was broken. And I had fooled myself that if I could get one area ‘right’ then the others would be ‘right’ too. WRONG!

We were not made to separate ourselves out, we were made to be integrated with ourselves and I most definitely was not!

But thankfully Jesus stepped down into my mess and is beginning a restoration! Hallelujah!

So I came home Sunday with God’s truth both in my head AND my heart. Before it was separate, it was head knowledge which was not permeating into the rest of my being. But last weekend was like my whole being was watered and gently, lovingly, brought back to like.

I came home with truth! I came home with freshly toiled soil that God could plant into, but I also came home with a lie trying to sneak right up in there!

Over the weekend I had listened to incredible speakers, I mean like A..MA..ZING!! Speakers with such contagious passion for Jesus, with such heart to see people come to know Jesus. Speakers who do amazing things all over the world; relief aid, building schools, speakers who daily put their lives in danger as they serve and follow God. And the lie?

You are not truly serving God! Look at those phenomenal people, these true servants of God. What are you doing? Toddler group? phaha! Pathetic!

And while I came home with fresh truth I also came home a little deflated.

But only for a moment!!

At the conference we were given stickers (I love stickers!) and one of them said Boots on the Ground.

At the time I thought “nice sticker but what’s that mean?”

When that lie tried to creep in I saw it more clearly! WE are God’s boots on the ground. All of us! And God calls some to share his message around the globe. But he has given them the gifts by which to do that!

At this moment God hasn’t called me to preach around the world, thank you God, he hasn’t called or equipped me to do that.

But, he has asked me to invest in the lives of the people he has placed around me, in the lives of my local community. And that has just as much significance to God, otherwise he wouldn’t ask me to do it. So I hold tight to the truth God has spoken and in holding that I silence the liar!

I’ll sing the night into the morning

I’ll sing the fear into your praise

I’ll sing my soul into your presence

Whenever I say your Name

Let the devil know not today

What is God calling you to that the enemy is trying to get you to believe is unimportant?

The devil doesn’t need to destroy us, he just needs to distract us!

Let the devil know not today!

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Jesus was not my focus!

Oh man…something is a shifting in me.

This weekend I am at the Hillsong Colour Conference in London with my big sister and I am #lovingit

I am 36 years young and I have spent far too many of those years putting myself down. Believing I am worthless, that I don’t matter, that I’m insignificant and stupid, ugly and a waste of space. Left wondering why God would even bother me when I can’t even bother to care for myself. Wondering what I could possibly offer to God when I believe I am, at the very core of me, NOTHING!

And I’ve heard the message before, so many times. I’ve heard it, made notes on it, shared it with others and yet NEVER taken it on board for myself. It’s not travelled the few inches from head to heart.

UNTIL TODAY PEOPLE…until today!

Oh my gosh! Yes day I stopped trying to earn and strive for it, I simply accepted it!

I am God’s beloved!

Today I heard talks from Bob Goff, Priscilla Shirer and Bobbie & Brian Houston. Incredible talks! And something has shifted.

In Bobbie’s talk she quoted the Beauty Myth

“an obsession with physical perfection that traps modern woman in an endless cycle of hopelessness, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of flawless beauty,”

This is what I have been trapped in for countless years. The pursuit of something I could never achieve and the consuming self hatred which goes hand in hand with it.

I have believed 2 things, firstly that I have nothing to offer God and secondly that I am nothing to God. One of those is true the other is most definitely not!

I have nothing to offer God other than what he has given me. Yet the things he had given me I had hidden in a drawer, what use is that? Priscilla said that God gives us treasure, but the treasure he gave to me I hide away, believing it wasn’t as good or as worthwhile as what I believed he had given to others. Yet I was wasting what he’d given me, I was not reaching the potential he placed on my life. I played my gifts and talents down, I diminished my God given gifts!

Having never heard Bob Goff speak before I now adore him, he spoke right to the core of me! He said that Satan doesn’t need to destroy us he just needs to distract us. How true is that! He just needs to shift us off course ever so slightly, and he’s been doing that to me for years! Slowly moving God out of the centre of the picture and putting me and my self loathing in his place.

I need to STOP wanting to be like other women, STOP comparing myself to other women and start living as the woman God has and is making me into. I need to believe Biblical truth about who God says I am and not who the enemy claims I am. Because those are LIES!

So if God’s treasure is already within me all I need to do is give it back to God and ask him to make it sufficient.

Today I am taking the message from Bobbie and choosing to believe that I am a women of passion and potential, nurture and creativity, instinct and empathy, strength and wisdom, with a desire to live and excel! That is a pretty incredible woman to be, why would I hide that away in a drawer and not celebrate that with those who love me? Hiding it doesn’t give glory to God it just renders me ineffective and Satan has done his job.

I’m going to do like Brian and dig deeper and trust that God can do more that I could ever guess or imagine, even with the small amount I can offer him.

My 5 loaves and 2 fish can be multiplied by Jesus and they are more than enough for God to work with. If I will just give him the permission to.

Today is a new day and God is moving me forward.

Amen