Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down

Prov. 2:16-22

Wisdom will save you also from the adulterous woman,

   from the wayward woman with her seductive words,

who has left the partner of her youth

   and ignored the covenant she made before God.

Surely her house leads down to death

   and her paths to the spirits of the dead.

None who go to her return

   or attain the paths of life.

The adulterous woman represents anything that leads us away from our covenant with God. The way to her house is subtle. Each step small and seemingly harmless. Each step you take further from wisdom and into deception, self deception. You’re ok, you tell yourself. Look how much you love God with every other area of your life. Who’s perfect, right? The closer you get to her door, death’s door, the more you deceive yourself that your sin is not sin at all. And then sin grabs you and holds you in it’s death grip. It’s there in the still, cold grave that you hear wisdom calling and realize too late that the adulterous woman is a liar, her words poison, that she has lead you so far away from God that you’ve lost yourself entirely. You lay in the grave, faceless, nameless, you are gone...

And then you begin to hear the voice of love calling your name, “Child, rise up!”

Answer Him. Shake off the dust.

“Child, rise up!”

Breath in the breath of God. You can come back to life again. Cause there ain’t no grave that can hold your body down!

Live your new life empowered by the faith of the Son of God who loves you so much that he gave himself for you, and dispenses his life into yours! (Galations 2:20)

Ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down!

Big Dreamer, Big Planner...Failure

I’m a planner, a big dreamer, man I’ve got visions!! But that’s really all I’ve got. I’m thrilled by the planning, mapping, scheduling, but the follow through is where it ends. I rarely ever follow through with anything. Cleaning plans for my house, school plans for my future, business plans, hobbies, household budgets, plans for daily prayer and devotions, fasting, exercise...I’ve never followed through on any of those things. I’ve come to realize that I love the high of planning and the low of failure. When I have succeeded in accomplishing anything I either never meet my expectations or someone is still disappointed with me. If I can’t succeed then I may as well fail, because success takes work and no one wants to invest only to be disappointed. I’m sure you can see that my thinking is askew and like the faithful Daddy he is, God wasn’t going to leave me this way forever.

I’ve prayed about my lack of desire to clean my house and etc.. desperately, I thought! But it came down to timing for one, and a real honest look at myself and my motives. Then confessing them, and repenting for them. That opened the door for truth and revelation.
God said, “Don’t make a list, don’t make a plan. Everyday choose to do what’s right. AND not for the praise of anyone, do it for Jesus alone!”

This timely revelation came two nights before I was going to attempt a Daniel fast. (By talking about it I hope this doesn’t break the rules for fasting. I just think it’s applicable to this topic.) Normally it’s scary for me to attempt any sort of committed discipline. Yes, I have to have “21 days” in mind, but God is teaching my big dreamer, plan down to the last detail brain, to take things one choice at a time. Each choice has a right or wrong, and right in the moment I choose. If I was thinking about a fast before, I would’ve taken every detail to the extreme, I would’ve overwhelmed myself and quit before I started or failed on the first day and been miserable with guilt an failure.

Usually when I wake up in the morning my first thought is of coffee. The first morning of my fast, my first thought was a line from a song, “God I look to you. I won’t be overwhelmed. Give me vision to see things like you do”. God is gracious! He knows how addicted to coffee I am and how intimidating it is for me to commit a length of time to not drinking it. Every time I walk by the Keurig I choose, “no”. Every overwhelming craving, I choose, “no”, every Tim Horton’s drive thru I choose, “no”. One right choice at a time. I won’t be overwhelmed!

If you’ve been struggling to give something up or to begin something. Start by examining your motives, confess and repent and begin by making one right choice at a time. If you fail you’ve only failed at one choice, when the next choice comes choose again.

I just felt the need to TESTIFY!