What a Wonderful Sunday!

I love Sundays like today. Filled with the presence of God, such deep praise and worship, being fed GREAT word, and being filled to the brim by the Holy Spirit. Joy. A joy filled day.

I'm going to share the song that spoke to me today, the song that moved me, the song that spoke exactly what I was feeling and brought me into the presence of the Lord. The song is called, "Love Is Here" and it's by a band called Tenth Avenue North. It was mentioned that this may be the band that will be performing at our Xperience Youth Rally this fall. I'm praying so!
(Be sure to mute the music player at the bottom of my page.)

Come to the waters, you who thirst and you'll thirst no more.
Come to the Father, you who work and you'll work no more.
And all you who labor in vain and to the broken and shamed:

Love is here.
Love is now.
Love is pouring from
His hands, from his brows.
Love is near, it satisfies.
Streams of mercy flowing from his side.
Cuz love is here.

Come to the treasure, you who search and you'll search no more.
Come to the lover you who want and you'll want no more, no.
And all you who labor in vain and to the broken and shamed,

Yeah:

Love is here.
Love is now.
Love is pouring from his hands, from his brows.
Love is near, it satisfies.
Streams of mercy flowing from his side.

Yeah

And to the bruised and fallen,
Captives, bound, and broken hearted.

He is the lord
He is the lord,
Yeah

By his stripes he's paid our ransom
From his wounds we drink salvation

He is the lord
He is the lord

Love is here.
Love is now.
Love is pouring from his hands, from his brows.
Love is near,
It satisfies.
Streams of mercy flowing from his side.
Streams of mercy flowing from his side.
Cuz love is here
Love is here.

Today's message was titled, "Choices." One of our scriptures was Deuteronomy 31:19 "I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:"

God gave us all free will and the freedom to choose for ourselves. Every decision that make reflects what we believe and how strongly we believe it. We have the choice to choose God or not to. Sometimes we make decisions without clearly thinking them through. Wrong decisions always have consequences that make us regret our decision and wish we could back and undo it. How many times have you made a decision only to say, "How I wish I hadn't done that!" Before we make decisions there is a thought process that takes place. If we don't train ourselves to recognize where our thoughts come from then we will make more wrong decisions. When we seek God and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal if our thoughts line up with God's word or not then we will know where our thoughts come from.

Sometimes you just know, sometimes you really have to seek God. Satan hates us because we were created in the image of God. He hates God he wants nothing more than for us to fall. He attacks us in our thoughts. Thoughts lead to desires. He attacked Eve's thoughts. He enticed her, he lied to her and she believed. It brought death. Many times our thoughts are not lined up with God's word. Many times we think our thoughts are but we can become strayed and fall very far away without realizing until its too late. Sometimes we know but we still choose wrong.

Wrong lines of thinking come from many different things. Pride and rebellion are huge in causing us wrong thinking. Satan was so prideful he thought he was better than God and he rebelled. Pride and rebellion are two of this favorite things to use to cause error in our thinking. Sometimes God is calling us to do a particular thing but it isn't what we wanted Him to call us to. We may want to be in another facet of ministry so our thoughts become erred and we begin to believe that because what we want to do it FOR GOD that its right, even when it isn't what God wanted us to do. We may not want to come out of our comfort zone so we allow fear to keep us seated. God may want us to sit down for a while and feed but our pride gets in the way and we refuse to sit continuing in a ministry where we actually hurt others instead of help them. Satan has victory in these instance, when he thwarts God's plan for us.

We may want to serve in another church and our thinking process has a wrong idea of what a church should be that keeps us away. Sometimes people run from the truth because it wasn't their idea and because satan is fighting tooth and nail to keep us from receiving the truth. Wrong thought processes come when you are seeking to please your flesh and your *ideals*. As in deciding on a church rather than looking for a church that operates in order and speaks the truth. Your thoughts follow the pattern of "it should be friendlier, it should be smaller, it should be larger, it should be this or it should be that." These thoughts can actually prevent us from hearing what the Lord is telling us, and hinder us in being where God really wants us or from doing what God really wants us to do because instead of allowing God to speak we want to listen to ourselves. I use this example because I can look back in our move and these were thoughts I had about our church and tonight I was able to look around and see how wrong my thoughts were about the people that are now my church family. Satan tried every trick in the book to cause us not to plant ourselves at HWC and today I was able to see how far we would have gone had we not made the right decision.

When we align our thoughts up with God's word, when we listen and obey God our thoughts turn and we can see the error of our thinking process and we can look back and thank God that we heard and that we listened.

The devil's hold is your desires.

That is where he gets us. Think about that for a moment. Your desires. Whether you are talking about churches, ministries, family, life, jobs, kids, books, T.V., music, friends...whatever the situation, satan's is your desire. He can't make you choose. You always, always, always have a choice to make.

I started thinking about some things in my life that I'd been wrestling with. Things I've been seeking God for direction in. As I looked at each situation I looked at my desire over each particular instance. I weighed my desire. I asked myself if my desire was to please myself or to please the Lord and immediately the Holy Spirit began to correct the error in my thinking and I was able to make the right choices. I was actually amazed that I had been so confused over a few things because deep down I knew right from wrong but my thoughts had become so negative that wrong things seemed right to me. I suppose I was justifying the wrong, but the big thing here is that I DIDN'T EVEN REALIZE IT. Once I seen in the spirit the error of my wrong thinking the Lord immediately gave me the correct thoughts and I was able to see clearly without a doubt and then came the revelation that I had known it all the time but the enemy had masked it.

Then the realization that your decisions never just effect you. Your decisions always, always, always effect others. Your spouse, your children, friends, family, the lost, the way the lost perceive Christians, the way Christians' perceive other Christians. We can become stumbling blocks for others. We can actually lower the standard from God's word by living in wrong thinking. Realizing that I alone as the Godly woman, wife, mother could be responsible for my family going the wrong way. That my choices, my sin could effect them for a lifetime and eternity, startled me.

I'm not talking about BIG things like adultery or drugs. To me those are obvious, I would KNOW they would effect my family and others. I'm talking about where I am with God. If I had hindered my family in attending the church that the Lord led us too it could have been the only foothold that satan needed to attack them and get his hands on them (and me). If my attitude doesn't reflect Christ and my children don't see me growing, how are they going to know how to grow? How will they not be filled with doubt in God if they don't see their mother leaning on Him and trusting Him. How can they know His peace if they've never experienced it? (I'm not saying that parents have to be saved and living right for children to I'm just saying that MY actions have consequences not just for me for all around me.) Hear me.

If I'm not being the wife I should be, allowing my husband to be the head of our house, trusting his decisions, if I'm unsupportive of him then he may never become the man that God intended him to become. Maybe my unhappiness and attitude leaves him feeling like less of man because it's his desires to please me. Maybe he doesn't trust his decisions because I don't trust him. Maybe I insist on making the decisions and having all the control. Imagine where that could lead your family. We can hinder our families in the smallest ways. The smallest things can sometimes cause the largest ripples. The longest lasting effects.

I don't know about you but I want to be a building block, a strong link, for my family. I want to help strengthen them and further them in their walks with Christ. I want to allow the Lord to use me and teach me how to be the best Christian woman, wife, mother, daughter, friend that I can be with Christ. I don't want to stand before the Father one day and know that I hindered my family or that I was the reason someone turned away from Him.

If you love Jesus, you will make the right choices. You will set aside your own desires and listen to the Father. You will obey. Choose life and not death. Choose blessings and not cursings, for both you and your seed........