The Shepherdess Ministry

                                                                                                                                                                   Issue 41

            One of the best benefits available to the Christian is that of a fresh start and of those, as many as you require, indeed every day. The bible says that His mercies are new every morning. And this is true. Confession, repentance and forgiveness aside for just a moment, most of our fresh starts should be based on revelation. If indeed, you have a real relationship with Christ and abide in Him, it should resemble any human relationship you have in that there is back and forth communication and fellowship. Now, a relationship with God is far better than with any person in that it also involves counsel, direction, correction, wisdom, inspiration, warnings, healing, help, comfort, gifts-everything that is good for you and will be good for you for the goodness of God endures. What God calls good endures as good. It should be a good friendship. If this is true and what you have, then you should be able to express on any given occasion what areas of your life He is touching and working on, what He is currently training you in and teaching you. With every fresh revelation, we come up a little higher in Him. The bible says we are being changed from glory to glory. Now if you have a vital relationship with Jesus, if He also speaks to you and you spend time together, you should not fail, not become derailed. Why? Because there is motion. You should be able to sense His hand on your life in an overwhelming way. So that no sins, no errors, no mistakes, no warfare, no condemnation can give you pause or stop you on your way. Maybe you have some glaring problems; nevertheless, you are going somewhere and there is somewhere to go in Christ Jesus. God’s main concern with any of your faults is that they are hampering your way and causing you problems or will. But this is surely not all His conversation with you for you are called and chosen and God is bringing you somewhere and into some service. The motion is God’s overall plan for your life. The bible says that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance. This motion is your constant, even if your spiritual life is rather up and down and harried at times. This motion is your comfort. So whereas you might suffer discouragement, despair, self-pity- this will pull you out of it for this motion doesn’t cease, God does not cease. Perhaps like you are adrift at sea and the waves are constantly moving you somewhere, only this is God and God is precisely taking you. And if you are holding on to paddles, trying to maintain some control, throw them over board. And when you hear a word, go with it, like a fresh start- start fresh.

Regarding revelation then, this week again, I have been meditating on His lordship in our lives, how our lives are not our own. That when He said to take up our cross and follow Him, the cross is the death we died to ourselves and the world. The cross is the day we died to our own desires and the day we began to live for Him. If your life is not your own and it is His, if this is in you like a revelatory truth, then you stop looking back and you humbly submit to the next things He has for you. You look at Him and you look ahead. You leave your opinions about your circumstances, about the way He has taken you and all the hurt and complaints that are in you and you leave them at the cross. And you go on to serve Him. All the stuff that has broken our hearts at various times, the injustices, even the horrors, things we can never understand and the not understanding that causes us to stumble, to just drop in place- where we get stuck... if we could only begin to recognize that these are the places in our emotions where we need to choose to soldier on, where we must choose to not draw back. This is the spiritual life. This is the spiritual battle. This is fighting the good fight of faith. The battle is in our thoughts and emotions.

I had a problem with this when I first began to serve the Lord. I would think all these negative thoughts and just spiral all the way down to hell. It was miserable. One day, in one of those deep holes, God moved me to call my church during the day time  on a weekday and the lady there told me my problem and after she told me what I was doing wrong, I began to be able to recognize what was happening and instead of letting my thoughts and wrong thinking drag me down in misery, I learned to stop it. The simple answer is that I was not taking my thoughts captive.

"For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds,  casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,  and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled."

The bible is our only truth, our hard line. We believe it more than our own lives, more than our own eyes, more than our own experiences and more than our own feelings. So we examine every thought and compare it to the word of God and to what we know of His character and nature and if it does not line up or pass the test, we cast it down. We cast it out. We do not entertain these thoughts. We do not run with them. We refuse. Resist the Devil and He will flee from you. Whether the thought originates from you or is Satan egging you on in your misery, ALL thoughts are subject to God. We make our thoughts subject to Him. This is our obedience. This is Christ's obedience. If you are submitted to Jesus and His Lordship in your life, you will master this. And you will cast your days at His feet. He is worthy.

Post script: This week, I had occasion to personally review this in my own life. I suffered some financial blows this week through no fault of my own and one afternoon when I woke up from a nap, I started thinking like a foolish person. I heard God say, “Be careful,” but I was not very careful because I was grieved. So I spent a miserable afternoon and evening pondering my ill fate. In the morning, I heard singing in my spirit, it was Jeremy Camp’s Word of Life:

“Speak to my weary heart
Strengthen my broken parts
Lead me to Your open arms
Word of truth
Illuminate all these lies
The enemy speaks inside
In freedom I will rise

'Cause You called me out from the grave
So I can live like I've been changed
There is a new song in my soul
And it begins when I breathe in
Your word of life”

It was so perfect that I was turned around immediately and forgot everything I said. Well, I apologized to God first and then forgot all the foolish things I said when I was distressed and God renewed a right spirit in me. I hope that you too can hear well enough to be turned around lest things become imbedded through rehearsal and it become much harder for the truth to penetrate.

            God said “be careful” in this case not because I did not have cause for complaint, for I did and God did gladly listen to my problems but because when we let negative thoughts run wild within us, we move out of faith and into fear and misery and that is not a good place to go, not where God wants us at all. It was a caution for my good.

Kirsten Caraway

Email: Spiritsheepranch@gmail.com