Yesterday's Heart to Heart ladies breakfast was amazing. The Lord truly blessed us with His presences and He certainly did not let us down in ministering to all of us about the Goliaths in our lives. It was so good to see the auditorium completely full of women that were hungry for the Lord. I believe we all left there filled up with Him and ready to fight the good fight!
Now that I am no longer focused on the "Heart of a Warrior" message, I will have a little extra time to begin reading other books. Our church is reading "You Were Born for This" and my friends started Beth Moore's 90 Day Journey of Faith with Paul. There was no way I was going to sit back and watch them grow in leaps and bounds without me! So I have to say a thousand "thank yous" to Amanda for blessing me with that awesome book.
I can't think of two greater books to begin reading after studying the heart of a warrior. The title alone of "You Were Born for This" screams warrior and Paul was certainly one of the greatest New Testament warriors to walk the face of the earth...next to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. :) I know that reading these books are going to help equipment me to walk out the everyday life of a warrior. As I opened the pages of Paul (Which is one of the most gorgeous books I have seen in a long time. There's just something about reading a "beautiful book" that helps add to the overall content.), I find myself challenged to consider the traditions that I follow within my walk with Christ. I am embarassed to say that until this morning it had been a really long time, if ever, that I have stopped and thought about the depth and importance of the traditions that the Lord calls us to observe as Christians. To think that as I take the Lord's Supper I am carrying on a tradition established by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And for thousands of years other Christians have done the same. As elementary as it my seem to you, it was an "ah-ha" moment for me. I walked away from this morning's quiet time with a deeper appreciation and awareness of the traditions that are sacred to those that follow Christ.
I also began reading "You Were Born for This" and was immediately challenged. I'm a person that underlines things in the books that I'm reading and I found myself underlining several statements that Bruce Wilkinson makes on the first few pages of text. The very first thing I underlined was on page 7 - "He never asks you or me to serve Him in a way that doesn't fit us personally and perfectly." For me, this related back to the message yesterday that David could not wear Saul's armor, neither can we wear someone else's anointing or armor. The Lord is a God of such intricate detail. Everything He gives us and asks us to do is tailor-made just for us. And that my friend gives us grounds to whole-heartedly trust Him in everything that He does and asks us to do. It make that "Warriors Walk in Obedience" a lot easier to fulfill. By the time I made it to page 8, I discovered that I had to redefine what I consider to be miraculous. I often think of healing the blind as a miracle. I've not really seen me being at the right place, at the right time to bless someone as a miracle. I do it, I just never labeled it as such. I had just always labeled it as "being used by God to meet the needs of someone". As I continued to read and underline I ran across the statement on page 10 that totally connected this to the heart of a warrior.
"You'll discover that what God chooses depend on for these divine encounters is simply a willing servant." That was the very first characteristic of a warrior's heart that we saw in David yesterday. He was a willing, humble servant and because of those characteristics God used him in one divine encounter after another. One of those being his divine encounter with a 9-foot-tall giant that found himself face down in the dirt. Things didn't end well for him and the Children of Israel were delivered from a tormenting enemy that seemed too big to conquer. I just get so excited thinking about how this is all working out for the women of Family Church. God's plan is amazingly intricate. He weaves our lives together so beautifully. He delivered us a powerful word yesterday on being a warrior and now He's given us a book that's going to help us walk out that calling.
The cry of this warrior is "God, please send me to do Your work by Your power today!"
Hey there!
ReplyDeleteI wanted to tell you that you should visit the church near my hotel in Paraguay; it's fantastic, really!