Sunday thoughts

My heart is full and I'm forever in His debt for the shifting today. I sat there decorating my room for VBS this week and had The Bowling sisters CD playing on my Ipad in the process and just had to stop for a minute and think back over the last 17 years of ministry. When it hit me that the room I was in was my very first classroom, it made my heart smile to think back to all of those memories....and God used that moment to dump in a load of grace and push that I honestly had been without for few weeks. It was in that moment thinking back to all of my classes that I have had during that time at more than one church (not to mention my kiddos in Nashville whom will probably always call me MelissaMann) and the lies of discouragement that the enemy had been trying to sow were yanked up by the root yet again. You see....if he can make us operate in our feelings, he wins. Feelings are one of his best weapons of distraction. The enemy knows when we are worn, tired, and our guards are down. I'll leave it at that.....but just because he pushes doesn't mean we have to stay stuck.  Sometimes we just need God to take us back down memory lane to where He's brought us from and to remind us we aren't who we used to be.  The core of our heart is the same, but He's refined it over the years to where for the most part those things that used to matter don't stay in focus so easily anymore. 

So many times we pray for the shift to happen, but we miss it because we are looking for it to happen in the realm we can see and God's shifting things in the realm we can't see. Shifts don't mean that circumstances change, it means we remember the ins and outs of the battle and that we were made for more than "this". Sometimes it's about God opening our eyes to see the journey how He's seen it and remembering that if He's done it before, He will do it again. I don't know your "story" and most of you don't know all of mine...but as I told a friend this week, God didn't do what He did then to quit doing now. If you are feeling the stuck.....get still and let Him remind you of all of the "done befores" and then remember His promises ....The One who calls you is Faithful and He will do it and He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. 

Make this week what you want it to be...the choice is yours. He never said the tearing down of walls (aka strongholds) would be easy, but the fire is refining you to answer that prayer of Make me More Like You Jesus. He knows our hearts after all He created them ;-)