Hello Friend,
This blog post is for my fellow believers who have recently awakened to the true realities of this world. If you want to travel more wholeheartedly with God, this post is for you. This is also for those of you who have recently surrendered your lives to Christ and are unsure of why things seem to be out of order all of a sudden. If you want a personal encounter with God, or want to learn how to discern God’s Voice more clearly, you’re in the right place. This is both a testimony and a call to awaken from any lukewarm state you may be in, and take the remaining time you have on this earth to make some changes. This is a lengthy process and will take time. Please read this in any order you would like to. No two seasons will look alike. God takes us through different processes, but this is a testimony of what part of my process looked like. I pray that the words I wrote, convict you, encourage you, and compel you to take a closer look at your own life. I pray that you can find it in your heart to share this with someone who has lost hope and needs some motivation to keep going. Let’s grow closer to God together.
Repent
Everyone will come to the point in their lives where they come to a crossroad. At this crossroad, you will be faced with a choice: Jesus or the world. The choice can be daunting and unclear. We live our lives on a fast track to hell with no brakes in sight. We don’t care what happens to us while we’re living. We only care about how life makes us feel while we’re here. There will come a point in your life where you will begin to have a multitude of experiences and you will still feel empty. Well I’m here to tell you, that NOTHING here on this earthly plane will be able to fill you like Jesus will. Everything on this earth is temporary and quickly fading away. We must realize that we have been wrong this whole time. We don’t know it all. What we think we know is actually meaningless. In this life, Jesus is the only thing that matters. Our lives have no purpose without Him. Your job, that partner you have your eyes on, your passions are all meaningless without Jesus. We are out of alignment when we try to live life on our own. We repeat the cycle of sin, chasing a never ending feeling of pleasure that only grows into as habitual pit. We must stop this. We must change. We must wake up. We must repent. But when we are ready to repent, it must truly come from our hearts. We must truly be done with chasing that empty feeling that will leave us craving for more. When our hearts are ready, Jesus will be standing at the door.
If you are at the door of repentance, you recognize that you’ve got sin in your life and that you need grace, mercy, and deliverance. At this phase, you can finally see what this Jesus thing is all about. My Friend, Jesus wants you to know that He’s here for you, and He always has been.
Not to sound dramatic, but contemplate all of the things you’ve been through, and think about all of the times you probably shouldn’t have made it out of a situation. But somehow, some way, you did. Why do you think that is? It’s because it wasn’t your time. It’s because God already went before you and knew you would come to this moment, at this time, and have this encounter with Him. God has strategically purposed you for a time such as this. If you are still alive, He still has a mission for you. There’s a line in a song that says, “you don’t get to die until you get it right, He said, I envy the dead.” Ponder that for a moment…. He has called you to draw closer to Him so that He can walk you through this journey of your life.
In repentance, you must reconcile yourself to Jesus. You must truly have a contrite heart and be sorry for all of the sin you’ve committed. Then you can allow God to start His inner work in you. “Contrite” is defined as feeling or expressing remorse or penitence; affected by guilt. Seeing that God looks at the heart, He does not care about your pretty words. He cares for your authenticity with Him. Whatever you are feeling, offer it to Him.
The Isolation Period
One of the biggest signs of spiritual elevation, is the isolation period. This is the period where God will cause you to be completely alone for a period of time so that He can exclusively work on your inner being. Typically, you are brought to this period as a result of a drastic life event such as a period of awakening. In some instances, it will be a spiritual isolation. In a spiritual isolation, you sense a separation from those around you who are no longer aligned with your new path. It may be a period where people that were once close to you realized that you are changing and becoming different, and different doesn’t necessarily fit into their lifestyles. You will soon see them distance themselves from you. Depending on how many people you keep in your circle, this action may happen multiple times in a short period of time. For this reason, I caution you, (be mindful of when I caution you. These were heavy hitters through my awakening period that could easily hinder a new or even seasoned believer from following the path God has aligned for them) to guard your hearts because this is going to be one of the most painful pruning phases in the process of your renewal in Christ.
In the isolation period, the enemy will try to send sneak attacks. Satan loves to attack you when you’re all alone and vulnerable. You see, the devil knows scripture and uses it to his advantage. Genesis 2:18 says that it is not good for man to be alone. I know you’ve heard the saying that two heads are better than one. Ecclesiastes 4:12 says, “A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” The enemy knows that when you are alone, you won’t have assistance in withstanding his attacks. He takes advantage of the isolation period, ESPECIALLY if you’ve never been through one before. He banks on the fact that you are completely lost in this new process. He will try his best to be the first one at your doorstep to steer you back into his direction. God is strategic, and if you decide to focus on Him, he’ll bring you under His wing to build and protect you. He will rebuild you into the way He originally called you to be built from the beginning when He formed you in your mother’s womb.
God is going to take away who and what no longer serves you. In order to be properly positioned in where He wants to take you, there must be a cutting away (a pruning process). The people you’ve been pruned away from were not the type of people that God intended for you to be aligned with on this journey. I caution you to be very observant in this portion of the process. Recognize people’s fruit. What type of energy do they give off when you’re around them? Do you consider them to be a follower of Christ? Do they exude drama or peace? Are they always reaching out to you to partake in things that take you away from God, or brings you closer to Him? Matthew 12:33 says, “A tree is identified by its fruit. If a tree is good, its fruit will be good. If a tree is bad, its fruit will be bad.” There are many lies, but only one truth. Jesus is the only truth, the way, and the life. So when you walk this journey, notice who is around you and their “fruit”.
My Friend, despite what the masses feel, you have made the right choice by choosing to change your lifestyle. Though you may feel like you are going crazy, you aren’t. You are simply awakening while others are still caught up in the oblivion of life. You will begin to notice that the people that are not yet awakened, are caught up in worldly desires such as vanity, physical luxuries, social media trends, Hollywood celebrities, the secular music, etc. Most of these things that you once cared about will begin to lose their grip on you.
God has a mission for you that is much greater than what you could ever fathom. If you decide not to trust Him, you are only delaying the promises He has for you. God is calling His Children home, and time is short, so choose wisely, my friend.
I urge you to get comfortable with being alone and enjoying who you are becoming in this process. 1 Peter 4:12 says, “Dear friends, don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you.” Though it all seems odd and foreign, understand that these changes are going to preserve and protect you. God wants to draw you in as His own. Take this time to journal and reflect, do mental check-ins, fast, pray, and reflect on your growth. You are aligning with what God has had in store for you all along.
Trusting the Process
What do you do when you’re traveling through a wilderness season, and you can’t see where you’re going? Everything around you seems foggy, you keep stumbling over branches and stumps, getting attacked by pests, and the temperature outside is extremely outrageous? You lean on faith and TRUST God. Anytime the Israelites were faced with a giant that came to interfere with their the destinies, they had to lean into their faith and trust God. Your promised land is right on the other side of your obedience. There may be a blessing if you endure, or a curse if you take matters into your own hands. Don’t veer off of the path that God has set for you. I know it’s uncomfortable not knowing what’s going to happen, I’m going through the exact same thing as I write these words. All I know, is that our obedience through this process is key in achieving the keys to glory.
The hardest part of trusting God is that, once you fully decide to follow God’s path for your life, sometimes it brings about some uncomfortable pruning. In order for God to truly move in your spenders properly He must take away things, people, and mindsets that take you away from His presence. Don’t be surprised if you have to have some uncomfortable conversations with those that are connected to you. It’s part of the process to make it understood that you can’t do the same things you used to do. God is taking you in a different direction. You can either choose to follow God, or man. It’s that simple. During this process, if you choose God, He will reveal the shallow mindsets you once had and why they were flawed. 1 Thessalonians 5:6 NLT tells us, “So be on your guard, not asleep like the others. Stay alert and be clearheaded.”
It may even become eerie as you start to feel isolated because you are starting to go a different direction than most people decide to go. Don’t worry, you’re simply awakening. I caution you to take this process as slow as God will allow you to, so that you can catch all of the revelations He wants to show you.
As you go through your isolation period, you will feel alone, but you will also begin to feel enlightened. As you begin to awaken and grow closer to God, He will begin to show you more spiritual things. You will begin to let go of your old mindsets and naturally gravitate towards where the Holy Spirit is leading you (you may have heard it called going from glory to glory). Mysteries will begin to unfold around you, and the veil will slowly be lifted more and more from your eyes. I caution you, the people that are meant to stay in your life will stay, and the people that are meant to go will go. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT get caught up in the ones who are meant to leave!! Once they’re gone, keep them at bay for your own salvation’s sake. Some people were only meant to depart from you for a season and then return when they are whole, so seek God throughout this process.
Resisting Your Flesh
Because I was so isolated and didn’t trust any opinions from human flesh, I went to the first place I could think of to find truth: the word of God. I became convicted of things I was doing that I discovered were wrong. So naturally, I decided that I was going to fully surrender to my will to God and let go of what He was telling me to. This meant that I was going to have to learn how to resist my flesh.
Resisting your flesh is a PAINFUL process. When I awakened, I realized that the more I resisted my flesh, the stronger the attacks became. It is inwardly and outwardly painful. I literally couldn’t seem to catch a break. The stronger the attacks were, the tougher the decision making process became. Think about it. In life, we tend to choose the path of least resistance. We eat what we want when we want, we do things that bring us pleasure instead of pain, and we surround ourselves with people and things that make our lives easier. That’s truly what led me here in the first place: no discipline and no truth. When we are blind to the word of God, We blindly follow the customs of this world. Just like Eve, so easily deceived, and so easily trapped. The new direction my life began to take was life-altering. This was the first time that I’ve fully surrendered all of my decision making to God and allowed Him to take charge of the direction of my life.
I understand now more than ever the saying, “for the spirit is willing but the body is weak” (Matthew 26:41). I’ve seen how much tougher I’ve gotten through this spiritual walk. In the beginning, these spiritual changes it almost took me out. I recall moments where I felt so stripped bare that I felt hollow and empty. I was numb, emotionless, and a shell of myself. I had completely lost my previous identity, and I had no tangible reality to cling to. Then God began to fill my empty vessel with Himself. Looking back on the journey, the pruning of my flesh was incremental and necessary in order to bring me through each phase of my refinement. I never knew how strong one’s flesh could be until I started to fast from the things that I once fell victim to. I noticed how much I squirmed and buckled as the pressure grew. I realized how easily triggered I was by so much around me that I would have never otherwise recognized before. To this day, I have a peace that exceeds my understanding even in the face of my weak flesh. The process of resisting your flesh is tough but will allow you to see life clearer and for what it truly is.
Resisting your flesh is important because it allows you to level up in your faith. It also allows you to increase your self control/discipline, which is one of the fruits of the Spirit. If you don’t learn to resist your flesh, it will overtake you, and when you’re faced with adversity, you will cave in at the first sign of pressure.
So how do we do it you may be asking. I have a few tips for you to guide you through this process.
Set Boundaries
Be specific on what it is that you are trying to resist and the reason why you need to resist it. You can’t resist what you don’t know you’re supposed to be resisting from.
Set a Timeframe
Be mindful that it is important to be specific in knowing if you are resisting for a period of time such as saving sex for marriage or if you are cutting something out completely such as adultery or stealing.
Know Exactly Why You are Resisting Your Flesh
We know that certain sin leads to death, but not all sin. But we want to be sure that we are not making a habit of sinning (1 John 3:9, 1 John 5:18, Romans 6:1-23). Knowing the why behind resisting the flesh, will give you a leg up on the enemy because connecting your purpose to your why gives you longevity. A big factor I learned was that one sin can lead to another, which creates a domino effect and can ultimately creates chaos your life. Once you are able to nip one sin in the bud, other sin will not be as tempting as they were before. An example is, by not drinking alcohol allows you to be less prone to lust for another individual due to clarity in your mind. The alcohol would make your mind wander to places it normally wouldn’t sober, so you also lessen your chances of the trap of lust. So once you stop one sin, the more you will become resistant to other sin in your life.
Fasting and Praying
If you want guidance from the Holy Spirit, fasting and praying is vital. “Relationship” is defined as the way in which two or more concepts, objects, or people are connected, or the state of being connected. Notice that it’s a 2-way street connection. In order to grow closer to God, you must know how to clearly discern His voice. As you learn to become obedient to God you will experience stillness, a lot of listening, toils with your flesh, and finally obedience. This process will repeat itself until you learn to heed the instructions of the Holy Spirit. Yielding to the Holy Spirit will strengthen your faith. As you grow in obedience, you will begin to receive confirmation after confirmation and blessing after blessing. This is not a glamorous process and will be met with much pain, but it is worth it. I can’t tell you how blessed I felt after receiving response after response that something prophetic I spoke or did spoke right to different people in such divine timing and gave them the confirmation they were awaiting. Your obedience to His voice will become so addicting that you will start to want to go deeper and deeper into your spiritual journey. Which brings me to fasting and praying.
Fasting allows you to deny your flesh. Our flesh is the part of us that craves the things of this world with our physical eyes and bodies, causing us to trip and fall into sin. Fasting allows us to tune our ears and hearts to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I finally realized how hard it was I was to let go of certain worldly things that I grew accustomed to. Even though we are IN this world we’re not OF this world. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be an easy journey. Letting go of certain things, even if it’s for a short period of time can be daunting. God knows exactly what you like and crave. Fasting from things that are difficult for you to let go of shows God your willingness to heed His will for your life. One thing I always tell myself through a fast is, “if I can learn to tell myself no to this now, then when times get harder I will have that much more faith when faced with other temptations that God wants to pull me away from.”
Jacob’s Trouble is known as the period before Jesus’s second coming in the last days. It is going to be the worst time on the earth like there never has ever been. Mark 13:19 NLT says “For there will be greater anguish in those days than at any time since God created the world. And it will never be so great again.”
If you choose to follow the customs of this world and not grow in obedience and discipline with God, you will easily give in when temptations arise. Imagine being faced with losing your soul because you got a little hungry and you knew you couldn’t buy or sell getting the mark of the beast. If you have weak faith or no faith at all, you would be blindly condemning your soul. The process of refinement is PIVOTAL!
Isaiah 55:6 NLT says “Seek the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near.” I caution you to grow your faith while times are not as tough right now. Soon, there will be a famine of the word and right now is the time to seek the Lord with everything you’ve got. Amos 8:11 NLT says “The time is surely coming,” says the Sovereign Lord, “when I will send a famine on the land— not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the Lord.” When God completes the sealing His Children, there will be no more delay, no more time to repent, no more time to get right, no more time to be saved, period.
To deepen your prayer life, it is important to learn the Voice of God. My suggestion would be to learn how to do “listening prayer”. Ecclesiastes 5:1-2 NLT says, “As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut. It is evil to make mindless offerings to God. Don’t make rash promises, and don’t be hasty in bringing matters before God. After all, God is in heaven, and you are here on earth. So let your words be few.” It is important to hear from God more than you speak to Him. He knows what you need. Our lives were already laid out for us long before we ever took a breath. Ecclesiastes 6:10-11 NLT says, “Everything has already been decided. It was known long ago what each person would be. So there’s no use arguing with God about your destiny. The more words you speak, the less they mean. So what good are they?” We should learn to listen to Him more than we speak.
Let me caution you that there may be a period that you won’t hear anything at all from God. Your mind might start to wander and you may easily become distracted. You must understand that this is a process. We live in an instant gratification world, but being patient and waiting on the Lord is a fruit that we must learn to grow. If you decide to put time expectations on God, you will be humbled. His timing is not our timing. He will allow Himself to be heard when He feels you are ready.
When you consistently seek God with your whole heart, He will speak. It may be just one or two words you hear at first. Even after those first few words, it may still take a while to hear more again from him. Have faith that it will become easier to hear His Voice. One thing I did in the beginning of my journey was to write down what I heard. I remember hearing God’s Voice, not trusting my own judgement, asking Him to repeat the message, I wrote it down on another blank sheet of paper, and it was identical to the previous list.
Another helpful tip is to study the word as much as possible!! Read each scripture slowly and let it speak to your current situation as if it was meant for this exact moment. Replace yourself with the characters in the Bible and actually learn the characteristics of God. This will allow you to learn how God speaks, what He speaks, and the way He sounds. This is going to sound very cliché but hear me out. His voice is a still, quiet, Voice. When God speaks, you will sense peace. If you could imagine being in the middle of nowhere outdoors with God. It is calm, still, maybe a soft breeze can be sensed but for the most part, everything around you ceases to exist. Hear me out, I’m trying to describe this the best way I’ve experienced. When you start to hear God’s Voice, you will recognize that nothing else matters in that moment. You may start to feel vulnerable and protected at the same time. If your isolation period was anything like mine, many times the emotion of your current state and finally being at your Abba Father’s Feet, will make you an emotional wreck. I cried A LOT, and still do! If you let go of how you think the presence of God should look, you will realize that it is truly beautiful and overwhelming.
When I experienced His Presence, it became addicting. I was addicted to God’s Presence with my whole body and soul. I began to go to my secret place and pray multiple times a day. I honestly WANTED more time and isolation from the world because I wanted nothing more than God to speak to me again.
It’s important to have a secret place that you can comfortably go to talk to God. In this solitude, get into the habit of physically closing the door behind you, so that you have no distractions and are not ashamed about how you look while you pray and cry out to God. The secret place doesn’t have to be fancy. It can literally be a bathroom, a room, or even your car. It’s not about where you are, it’s about accessing God’s Presence. Matthew 6:6 NLT says, “But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.”
In my isolation period, I realized how vulnerable I was when I was with God in prayer. I didn’t want others to see how broken I was. I only felt comfortable being vulnerable and exposed before God. and I didn’t want anyone to be able to take away our intimate time or the essence of my raw emotion. So naturally, I got into the habit of closing AND LOCKING the door when I prayed. I didn’t want any opinions or distractions around when I went to my Abba Father. You may begin to recognize how strong your prayers are after you begin to do these things. The atmosphere in your home and everywhere you go will begin to shift just because you are there and because of the Presence of God you carry. It may become contagious to those around you, and slowly but surely because of your faith they will begin to become convicted about things in their own lives. Naturally, they will begin to awaken and change too. The light of God that you carry inside of you, will become contagious to others or repel those in darkness away. 1 Corinthians 7:16 NLT says, “Don’t you wives realize that your husbands might be saved because of you? And don’t you husbands realize that your wives might be saved because of you?”
One last tip I will give is to journal as much as you can. Notate the questions you have for God and the revelations that are revealed to you throughout your journey. I feel it’s also important to journal your dreams and be as specific and detailed as possible. Notate the way you feel in your dreams, what you sensed, the characteristics you felt about the key players in the dream, and why you felt you had the dream. After this becomes a habit, you will start patterns in the way God speaks. You will also be able to discern instructions from God, and also if a dream is a demonic or one from God.
Realize that as you level up spiritually, your spiritual attacks will become stronger and more frequent. James 4:7 NLT says, “So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” The more and more you resist, the harder and harder it will be for the devil to attack you while you are awake. He will try to attack you through your dreams and steer you off course. Because you are becoming stronger in the Spirit, he will try to attack you while you are asleep and more vulnerable.
Growing Pains
In order to reach new heights in your spiritual journey, you must be willing to go places, do things, and say things that you never have before. You must be willing to unlearn your prior way of thinking. Matthew 18:3 NLT says, “Then he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.” You must be willing to understand that almost everything you’ve been taught is flawed. We must be filled with the truth and become like a child to accept it. The truth comes from the living word, the Holy Bible.
You’ll be faced with a choice each time you’re headed to another level in your spirituality. The tough news is, after you’ve drawn closer to God and have dwelled in His word, the Holy Spirit will begin to teach you right from wrong. You’ll literally feel convicted about certain things, and it’ll start to happen more and more until you finally start to obey His instructions and give up your sin.
When faced with a tough decision, you will have an inner knowing of the right path to take. The hardest part is actually making that tough decision. A lot of the time, the decisions you decide to make in favor of God are going to drive people away from you or at least have them question where your head is. As soon as they realize you’re turning away from what your lifestyle USED to be, the separation will begin. Matthew 13:37-38 NLT says, “Jesus replied, “The Son of Man is the farmer who plants the good seed. The field is the world, and the good seed represents the people of the Kingdom. The weeds are the people who belong to the evil one.” When people feel uncomfortable being themselves around you, they will distance themselves. People that continue to comfortably live in sin with conviction are there weeds choking out the good wheat. So when people decide to distance themselves from you as you continue to choose God, let them! You must realize that people like to feel comfortable in their own sin. Just look at the world we live in today and how everyone is so controversial and offended by correction. It is going to be tough to experience the pain of those drifting away from you that you once thought were your ride or dies. Conversations will cease, visits will become less frequent, and the relationship (if it’s not centered on God) may completely fade away. Prepare yourself my friend, it’s coming. Growth is on the other side of the door. Once you take out the trash (for a lack of better words) you have a fresher cleaner home (temple) to work with. So keep striving and cleaning, pushing, and clearing. 1 Corinthians 13:11 NLT says, “When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” In order to step into the promised land, you must grow in your spiritual maturity and let go of who you once were. You have to unlearn and re-learn the new you, God’s Way.
Growing Your Roots
Growing your roots in Jesus is going to be imperative in the coming days. We are only experiencing the first of the birth pains now. Recognize that birth pains get stronger and stronger and closer and closer together the closer the mother is to deliverance. Matthew 24:8 NLT says, “But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.” Those who choose NOT to grow their roots in Christ Jesus will simply be uprooted along with their very short roots, and no further attention will be given to them, nor will they be able to survive once severed from the Vine of God. People that choose to ignore the call to repent and return to God are the same ones that think everything is going to go back to normal. They are blind to the truth happening around them because of the great deception. 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4, 9-12 NLT says, “Don’t be fooled by what they say. For that day will not come until there is a great rebellion against God and the man of lawlessness is revealed—the one who brings destruction. He will exalt himself and defy everything that people call god and every object of worship. He will even sit in the temple of God, claiming that he himself is God. This man will come to do the work of Satan with counterfeit power and signs and miracles. He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them. So God will cause them to be greatly deceived, and they will believe these lies. Then they will be condemned for enjoying evil rather than believing the truth.”
Growing your roots will entail a complete lifestyle transformed by Christ. Surrendering to God may look like: reading His word, prayer, listening to Him, fasting, denying your flesh, worshipping Him, sacrificing your old ways to make room for the new, living a life of humbleness, having a repentant heart, and living a true godly lifestyle. This lifestyle change will begin to become more natural as you continue to replace old habits with new ones.
As the days go by, time will literally seem to slow down as you start to feel more and more convicted about different things in your life that need to be pulled away. The more and more you study the word, the more Holy Spirit will convict you of the things that speak directly to the situations in your life. I caution you to look deeper into situations in the Bible that confuse you. Get more comfortable with referring to the dictionary on words you are unsure about. Become a student of the word. Words are powerful. As you seek deeper meanings, you will begin to see more revelation. I caution you, your lifestyle is going to rapidly change from this point on. There will be times you will ask yourself, “what is happening to me?!” Take heart friend, you are being refined. In order to reach your promised land, you must be obedient. You must continue to make the decision time and time again to keep going through this refinement journey. Don’t give up just because you don’t understand your current evolution period.
You may lose taste for certain music, certain places you once frequented, the people you’ve hung with, the list goes on. This period of refinement may also look like be a period of self enjoyment and intimacy with God. For me, this was the time that I heard most from God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. As I look back on this period, I recognize how important every single phase was in the refinement journey in Christ, and why each individual season was necessary.
Love
God commanded us to love. He didn’t ask us He commanded us. That means it’s important. Love is mentioned 361 times in the Bible. Why? Because it’s important. Through my refinement period, God worked with me through themes. He would direct me to certain scripture, certain books of the Bible, and there would be people and situations around me that repeated the same exact things He was teaching me in those moments. God wouldn’t allow me to move out of those themes of learning until I deeply learned the lessons He was trying to teach. Sometimes, I would even question God like, “really God?! I just read this book of the Bible like 5 times in a row!! What is it?!” God would gently tell me to go back and review it AGAIN. It’s crazy that each time I read it again I would still get a new revelation I didn’t get before. That was God pruning me. One of the themes I was drilled on was love. Even though I thought I was good in that department, the Holy Spirt sent conviction after conviction until I realized I wasn’t. You will realize that when God won’t allow you to move on from a cycle or situation, it’s because there’s still something He wants to reveal to you that you haven’t quite gotten or understood. I urge you to seek God and ask Him questions like, “which book of the Bible do you want me to read to, which scripture do you want me to read,” etc. You will start to be able to point out the key words in the pattern He wants to teach you about. For me, some of the themes He really had me focusing on was: false teaching/prophets, fasting, praying, love, forgiveness, fear, doubt, repentance, the body of Christ, etc.
I encourage you to press deeply into scripture about love. When you do, look through the lenses of the characteristics of How God shows His Love. This exercise will allow you to uncover so much about God’s Grace and Mercy. It will also allow you to understand Him on a deeper level, which will DEEPLY enrich your intimate relationship with the Father.
False Teachings
At the time of me going through this part of my refinement period of my journey with God, I didn’t quite understand why He wanted me to study the topic of false teachings. There will be themes that God is going to teach you that you aren’t going to completely understand the relevance of it in YOUR life at that time. It will later be revealed to you, so just focus on being obedient. God’s ways are not our ways (praise God), and He sees things that we don’t see. Our days were laid out before we even got here, and He has a reason for each season He’s bringing us all through.
So, I told you that the people connected to you may start to change and want more of what God has for you, for themselves naturally right? I kid you not, my son said to me last weekend, “I don’t know why but all I want to do is watch Bible stories. Like I haven’t even been wanting to watch the other things that I used to watch.” Glory be to God!!! My son is only 9 years old!!! Anyways, we were watching a kid’s Bible story and there were a few scenes that didn’t occur in the Bible. My son and I literally made eye contact each time, then had a discussion about what was wrong with each illustration. It’s a beautiful thing when your 9 year old son asks you to look something up to clarify because he doesn’t remember them saying or doing that. It’s a beautiful thing when you can start to question the shows you watch that depict Jesus and you are able to point out the things that don’t align. There’s a specific reason why God doesn’t want us associating with stuff like this. There is and will be so many deceived. Hosea 4:6 KJV says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge”. I caution you to learn as much as you can!!! There will soon be a famine of the word and you won’t get the opportunity again. 2 Timothy 2:15 KJV says, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
In the last days false teachings will drastically increase. I caution you not to take anything I’ve said lightly. I pray I see you on the other side someday.
“And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Romans 12:2 KJV