Well, Feb has been and gone…again. Of course it was a big February for me taking on a new role and yet it was so good to be grounded in something familiar. There’s something in February that is always the same no matter what else is going on in my life. As I have mentioned before, Feb is the month that I spend 28 solid days simply going back into my spiritual journal and re-reading every single entry, marvelling at how God has spoken into my life.

Here follow the highlights, and I publish these to encourage anyone and everyone to set aside time with the God of the Bible and just wait and see how much he speaks. I can’t help also but embolden my favourites.

I began the my ‘spiritual new year’ still in the Proverbs. All of the following emanates from meditation upon that book.

• Every moment = an opportunity to prepare.
• Without God, life is lived in either endless retreat or endless defensiveness.
• As the consistency and faultlessness of God’s care becomes apparent I am released to serve more effectively.
• So many of Satan’s plans can be thwarted by simply choosing to believe the best about people.
• The poor often have an ‘unwelcome’ way of revealing to us who we really are. When I have avoided the needy it is because deep down I’ve wanted to avoid my own brokenness.
• To care for the poor is to trust God’s provision.
• All that we perceive is a gift…and so is the ability to perceive it.
• Oppression begins when we fail to notice.
• God demands and gives everything.
• Without faith a promise remains only that.
• I enjoy my leisure time so much more when I have invited God into it.
• Gratitude is the best way to ‘shut up’ the mind of the flesh.
• Even being led to think about humility is a gift from God.
• I love God. Ironically, I am aware of this due to my great grief that I have not loved him more.
• Trust God for, about and with everything.
• Whether I am a human being or a human choosing, I commit to be a human following and a human worshipping.
• Every word of God proves true. (Prov 30:5)
• Patience = expectation + joy + time.
• God waits for us to discover our need for him at our own pace.
• It is impossible to navigate the temporal without access to the eternal.
• My deepest need is not my loudest, nor visa versa.
• One less day to wait for him.
• Do I:  (Prov 30:25-28)
  • Store up spiritual food for the winter?
  • Shelter and maintain my home in the rock of ages?
  • Cooperate without command?
  • Make myself useful for the king?
• A wife of noble character is from the Lord. Amen!
• The closer I am walking with God, the more I enjoy my marriage.
• Why is the ‘wife of noble character’ the final chapter in Proverbs? Because to find a godly wife is the pinnacle of wisdom.
• Be content with your adulthood.
• Things once feared flower into new joys as expectations align with Scripture.
• I have seen too much evidence of God’s care for me to give up on faith.

(Then, I spent a few months in James.)

• Real joy is preserved for those who pray with expectation.
• We can choose to let endurance grow.
• God’s voice says: ‘Get up’ not ‘Stay down’.
• I’m slowly learning to love it when God proves me wrong.
• Loyalty and peace are directly related.
• Temptation is the opportunity for a renewed depth of relationship in disguise.
• Reliance on God > Blessing > Reminding > of Reality > producing Gratitude > affirming Loyalty >facilitating Transformation > resulting in Holiness > to Passion > to spiritual Security. The worse your starting situation, simply start earlier in the process.
• As I reflect on my life, I realise that it was ‘in that moment when all hope had faded’ it was then that I took up my father’s ‘sword’.
• If you can make it, mould it, manipulate it, switch it on or switch it off….it can’t save you.
• I am helpless without the Lord, and learning to love it.
• Obedience is accepting the word planted in your heart of hearts. Amidst the process God reveals back to us who we really are.
• Disobedience is forgetting who you are in Christ.
• Obedience is often spelt P.A.T.I.E.N.C.E.
• You don’t get control over your tongue until  you spend some serious time with the one who made it.
• With every trembling response to the promise of Scripture, my sight is restored.
• Remembering his faithfulness IS leading every thought captive to Christ.
• Consistency of action is a by-product of time with God.
• (Jas 2:5) It only makes sense that only a true creator would see intrinsic value in those most reliant upon him.
• Man-made gods are characterised by their reflection of, and want for powerful and effective people….so are some ministry articles unfortunately.
• Those in poverty are quick to pray, those with resources are quick to reach for them instead.
• Jesus asks: what unnecessary complexity is preventing you from walking into my presence?
• The greatest test of faith is abundance.
• Whenever I withhold mercy, I am automatically a hypocrite.
• Actions of faith procure truth’s confirmation, thus feeding the spiritual mind.
• Faith in a difference making God, results in a difference making person.
• Words are the vehicles that transport the spiritual into the physical realm and alter it. Maybe the most important 3 words ever spoken: “it is finished.”

(Taking a break at the all-together pastors retreat.)

• Be prepared when you’re top dog to see your relationships change overnight.
• The way I am tempted to get peace is to reduce my world to manageable size.
• Naming you trauma brings light into darkness.
• We must be intentional because we gravitate towards making things difficult.
• Never underestimate the ministry of presence.

(Back to James)

• True wisdom doesn’t become proud because it is aware that it is a gift.
• There’s nothing like the cross to bring perspective to every moment.
• Doubt is tempting because it is a way of ignoring the possibility that ‘I am the problem’.
• you never realise until it happens, how much of a blessing it is to realise how deceitful your heart can be.
• Jesus uses the very things that terrify us to bring us to himself.
• The key to the mind rests in the heart.
• Learning to hate sin for sin, not simply for its consequences is the first step towards freedom from it.
• Give it over to God and he will use it in a life giving way.
• Revivals begin with tears.
• “I go now to prepare a place for you” is Jesus’ words to us. Christians have a responsibility to ‘pay it forward’ to the hurting and vulnerable.
• Stop simply accepting that God interrupts your schedule, rather pray that he comes up with it.
• The deepest promises are for those who endure.
• A higher level of leadership requires a higher level of prayer.
• ‘No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to others’. Ie: stop thinking you’re some special case or that life is harder for you than others!
• There’s no excuse because there’s nothing to fear.
• Let pressure drive you to God.

(Then some time in 2 Corinthians:)

• Don’t wait for it to be a will of the flesh to tell people about Jesus.
• To live according to God’s will guarantees transformation.
• We tend to want joy, minus surprise.
• Part of losing your life for the sake of the Gospel is holding spiritual blessings with an open hand.
• Everyone chooses to suffer for something.
• The moment something becomes a ‘proof-text’ it ceases to be for God’s glory because it’s become advantageous to the one using it. Peace prevents proof-texts. Leave room for God to take up your case.
• God. Rescues. Every. Time.
• Maybe the greatest stumbling block to the hard-line intellectual is that prayer actually works.
• God promises clarity to those who bother to listen.
• I am a Christian because only Jesus presents enough evidence for God.
• Satan can’t extinguish truth so he’ll attack our devotion to it.
• Christ enables victory over evil by granting men and women authority to forgive in his name.
• The ache to be enslaved by love emanates from the deepest part of the soul. The only pure and life giving subjugation is being a slave to Christ.
• There’s a sense in which to be constrained is to be held still, is to be therefore at rest.
• I just feel better after being with the Lord.
• It’s my inadequacies that drive me to Jesus, where I receive power over what I once thought were my adequacies.
• The difference between the old and new covenants is where they’re written; stone vs heart.
• Moses needed others to tell him that his face was shining from God’s presence. (Accept the blessing of a compliment.)
• Spiritual disciplines have become religiousity when they have become uninterruptible
• If the mind of the flesh was under the control of reason, it would be convinced by the Bible’s consistency.
• If faith could be bought or gained thru effort, it would set up a false economy thus turning it toxic. Hence Jesus’s ‘mustard seed’.
• A truly positive outlook depends almost entirely on prayer.
• God never gave anyone grace nor power so that they could live their old life.
• Since we are created out of love, so we are re-created out of love.
• Everyday is precious because everyday is the day of salvation (2Cor6:2)
• Assurance trumps agenda. (We’ll get more done because people are amazed at God’s grace than ever because of a well-crafted plan.)
• Not. One. Church. has an iota more confidence in God’s provision than its leadership.
• You can’t get 100% agreement but you can aim for 100% understanding.
• When a Church’s leadership ‘hedges it bets’ it’s congregation will try to serve two masters.
• How we respond to sorrow reveals our deepest beliefs about God.
• I will boast that I need daily revelation to take another step. For then every step I take is a testimony of God’s faithfulness.
• It’s not about what’s believable, but about what’s true. ‘Believable is contingent upon presupposition, truth is truth in any culture.

Well that’s to about the end of July. August to Jan 30 in part 2 coming up:)

Bless ya.