Words of Encouragement

If things have felt stirred up lately — if the comfortable arrangements of your faith have been feeling challenged, if old understandings have been feeling insufficient, if you have been sensing that something more permanent than another wave of blessing is being called for — that stirring is not a problem. That is Jesus walking into the synagogue. That is the Holy One of God showing up and doing what His presence always does. Do not quiet the discomfort too quickly. Do not rush back to the familiar arrangement. Let Him surface what needs to be surfaced. Let Him challenge what needs to be challenged. Let Him do the deep, permanent, Renaissance work that leaves you with a fundamentally different and truer understanding of who He is — and therefore who you are. The demon cried out because it recognized that the arrival of Jesus meant the end of its comfortable occupation. Let that same arrival end every comfortable occupation in your life that does not belong there. Come Jesus come. He is already on His way.

Words of Encouragement

If you have been confused about your identity — if you have been drawing your sense of worth and belonging from your standing in a religious system, a ministry organization, or any other institution — hear this today with everything in you. Those things were never designed to hold your identity. They are too small, too shifting, and too human to carry something that vast and that permanent. Your identity belongs in the only place it was always designed to live — in relationship with Daddy God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. In the acknowledgment of His Name on your lips. In the presence that fills the room when genuine praise rises. In the community where every person contributes and every contribution builds. That city is closer to you than any visible one. You do not have to travel to it. You do not have to earn entry into it. You are already a citizen of it — and the praise on your lips is the key that opens the awareness of it. Lift your voice today friend. Let His presence define everything.