Father, thank You for this day! Thank You for all of the blessings You’ve provided me and for giving me eyes to see all the ways that You have blessed me and how You continue to bless me. Thank You for the education that Your Holy Spirit is providing to me. Thank You for all my family, friends, and anyone You’ve placed in my path to learn from. Thank You for all the ways that You express Yourself through us. All of the books I’ve read and continue to read are expressions of You, from all different perspectives. Thank You for showing me that You’ve been with me since the beginning of my time, and for making me more aware of Your presence each day. Thank You for the example of Jesus. You love us, regardless of what we think of ourselves, that is unconditional love. Unconditional love is almost impossible to understand with our carnal minds. Still, just because we limit You or ourselves, that doesn’t really restrict You or ourselves, only our ability to comprehend what is happening in our lives. Thank You! Thank You for the lessons that You are teaching our family, Lord. We are communicating better, it may never be perfect, but it can be better today than yesterday or the week before. Thank You! Lord, it is with a heavy heart that I lay one of my family members at Your feet. In this illusion we live in, her body appears to be shutting down, You know the end result we request. We have made our requests known to You. I ask that You give our family eyes to see what You see, Lord. Give us eyes to see Your will, let Your will be done, Lord, not ours. I ask that You give our family an awareness to see all of the awesome things You are doing at this time. When we focus on the negative, we do not get to see all of the healing that is happening where we’re not looking. Thank You for allowing us to see how You bring families back together, and how You reconcile us to You through the relationships in our life. Thank You Father for being present and making me aware of Your presence as I write this journal entry today. I ask that You give me this day my daily bread and that everything that happens today would be glorifying to You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
The Father is showing me my own blind spots as I use my daughter as a mirror rather than someone I look at with different problems than my own, and her problems are glaringly obvious, to me. We identified as a family this morning, something that has been building up in our home over the last few months or so, at least. My oldest daughter knows the truth in many situations in her own life, some based on personal experience, and other times only what she has been taught so far. There have been times in her life when she becomes the truth, by doing the hard things, having the hard conversations, and identifying areas that need work and addressing them. There are other times when she appears to us that she is just taking the easy way out at the moment, and this makes her life more difficult and less harmonious as a result of doing the easy thing at the moment. It’s so easy to identify in her what I’m still very blind to in myself. I have chosen to take this time of reflection after offering correction to my daughter to allow the Father to work in me, now that I have an awareness of yet another blind spot in my life. My oldest daughter and I are a lot more alike than either of us would probably care to admit. I’m not sure why I didn’t see it before, but I am thankful for the awareness that I have been given at this time. I’m going to tell the reader what my daughter does by talking about myself for a moment. Allow me to start out by saying that I have already forgiven myself, I did not have the level of awareness I currently have when I chose to continue to tell myself lies. I’m getting better at this, while I still have a lot of work to do, I’m not the person I used to think I was. I know the truth deep down inside of me of what the right thing to do is in any given situation. I often choose not to listen to the voice of truth because he shows up and asks me if I’m ready to get dirty and do a little work. I wait for the voice that I know is coming to save my day, the one that offers me the easy solution at the moment, the one that requires the least amount of effort so I can get on with my day and take care of the things that were most important in my life, I was the most important thing in my life. The game I can now see that I would play with myself is that I would wait for the lie, the sweetest sounding voice to the part of me that is lazy. I would repeat that voice over and over until I was comfortable believing the partial truth and could justify my way out of any situation using the lie that I believed and expected everyone else to believe as well. This online journal is an example of listening to the voice of truth in my life and this entry is just one more example of how good He is in my life. There are easier things I could do with my time than sitting alone quietly and allowing Him to flow through me, but He rewards me with these times of reflection. I had no intention to write what I have written today, there are times that I do, but more often than not, it starts with the prayer the reader sees in the beginning. The prayer I write is the prayer I pray as I’m writing and pouring out my gratitude to Him. I don’t just write the Lord’s prayer in every entry, I recite that prayer often and sometimes it speaks differently than others, so there will be variations from day to day in that prayer. I used to believe in Jesus and thought that I could have a distant relationship with Him. It started with belief, but when I began reading what it is that I believed in, that’s when it started to get inside of me. I began treating my body like the temple it is. I’m not perfect at any of this, but just having an awareness of my challenges allows me to go to the Father who is within me, to go into my upper room, close the door and pray to the Father. I want to love others the way Jesus loved others in the examples we’ve been given in the Bible. In order for me to love others the way He did, I need to be able to see others the way Jesus looked at them. I ask the Father to give me eyes to see, and ears to hear, so that I may see all of the ways He works in me and through me. Even though sometimes it feels like I’m alone in this fight to destroy the kingdom of darkness, I know that is the voice of my soul enemy. Without an awareness of the kingdom of darkness, would we know how good life could be when we follow the Father? Would we know what hot water is if we didn’t know what cold is? Would we know hate without first knowing love? I’m ok, I understand now that the kingdom of darkness is a necessary evil, but I want to be there when someone who has allowed themself to become a prisoner of their own mind comes to the awareness that enough is enough. I came to this awareness by the grace of God and I know if I can, with as lost as I felt, others can as well. I want us to be there for the others, to help catch them when they fall, to pick them up, dust them off, and help them to see not only that they can, but that they should try again. Have we destroyed the entire kingdom of darkness at that time? No, but we begin to dismantle the darkness that has been built up within them and let the Holy Ghost shine through them if they will allow it. This is what my intentions are when I say I want to destroy the kingdom of satan with the Holy Spirit. Peace to you all, and God bless you, each and every one! -A humble spiritual warrior
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hyprocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw you pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” -Matthew 7:1-6 (ESV)
Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil, for Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever and ever, Amen. -The Lord’s Prayer