destiny

Slay the Hidden Desire

/ The WheatandTares

Desires can make or break you.

Desires can thrust you into success or throw you down in shame.

And what you do with hidden desires will be the difference in honor or humiliation.

Desires have to be pulled out into the sunlight and exposed to verity and axiom.

Desires have to have the magnifying glass of honesty peered over them in full.

Desires have to be broken down with integrity and authenticity all wrapped in accountability.

Otherwise when concealed, neglected, and cloaked with insignificance, those same desires will become a dragon thirsty for flesh.

Those veiled desires throw off their disguises and unleash a furious reckoning that cannot be hinged.

So no matter how wise of a sage you have grown to be,

Those ignored desires will grow to be a beast not easily reconciled or silenced.

No matter the might you believe you posses,

No matter the expertise you trust you’ve acquired,

If those desires are held in secret, they will become your evil demise.

Reveal them to absolute truth and faithfulness, and those demons who seek your soul may be impeded and chained.

…Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

James 4:4

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battlewithin you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

James 4:1-3

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, yousinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

James 4:7-10

Flippin’ Tables

/ The WheatandTares / 2 Comments

What are you allowing in your life that Christ would urge you not?

What are you coveting that He would have already cast away?

Sometimes, our lives seem to be on hold, and we blame it on circumstances, being held back, and maybe even our own incapacity to overcome a certain handicap in our lives.

Yet, I have found too often, my limitations aren’t due to someone or something around me, but rather it’s from pursuit of something I should have never been chasing in the first place.

When we start chasing God stuff rather than me stuff, we will find success will come on a whole new level.

Ask Him what tables He would flip in your life, and let Him start cleaning house.

It’s a whole better place when He’s in charge and He comes to abide.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”

Matthew 21:12-13

Stay on Mission

/ The WheatandTares

Keep going.

Keep striving.

Keep achieving.

Their words don’t matter.

They didn’t call you.

He did.

Stay on mission.

We’re not home yet.

And we have a battle to win.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do,forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:12-14

Choose Well

/ The WheatandTares

It’s so true that there are many things of which we have no control of our choices.

Decade in which we are born.

Parents. Birth location. Upbringing.

Physical attributes. Talents. IQ.

These things are given to us, and we have no say.

Yet, we do have a say in how we respond, in how we handle, and in how we carry on once we have them.

And this choosing results in our character.

Which is also a choice.

And it also will become our voice.

How we respond to the things we cannot control will determine our promotions, our successes, and our influences.

We are never a victim.

Being a victim is a choice. And that choice brings about our character.

When we choose to hate these things out of our control, or maybe just fight against them in a rage that wounds all those around us, it shows our character as rude, spiteful and selfish.

When we choose to embrace these things out of our control as chains, and we are just a martyr for the cause, or maybe we just can’t do any better because of all that has befallen us, it shows our character as weak, whiny and self centered.

Yet, when we choose to accept these things out of our control, fight against the things that would try to inhibit us, and become overcomers inspite of the pain, the turmoil and the difficulties, it shows our character as bold, courageous and focused.

And when we take this tenacious attitude a step further and begin to show others how to overcome their own obstacles, it shows our character as loving, giving, and outward seeking.

We can be a hero or a zero.

The choice is ours.

What will you choose today?

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

Romans 8:37

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Romans 8:31

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

Romans 8:28

Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me. And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

2 Corinthians 12:8-10

Define Freedom

/ The WheatandTares

What is freedom?

Is freedom being able to “do what I want when I want and however I want?”

Is freedom having an absence of confinement and restrictions?

Is freedom being able to speak, work, and live without rules and boundaries?

Truly, in this day and age, freedom seems to be negotiable to the person or parties making those decisions.

However, because we are children of God, our truth doesn’t change with culture nor with man.

Our truth comes from the Word of God; so, when seeking the definition of freedom, we must seek what God tells us is true.

Jesus said, in John 8:36, “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

Then, Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:17, “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

And in Galatians 5:1, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”

Christ has given us a clear picture of what freedom is and what He has meant it to be in our lives: true freedom can only be found in the redemption fo Jesus Christ!

So, if you are a child of the King today, YOU ARE FREE!

If you are saved by the Blood of the Lamb, and your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, YOU ARE FREE!!

Let us rejoice in His freedom!

Let us praise Him for the great things He has done!

Let us raise our hands and lift our voices with a grateful heart for the freedom He has brought us both within our spiritual lives and within this country that we live because we are free to worship Him today!

I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything.

1 Corinthians 6:12

Freedom to Be

/ The WheatandTares

We have the freedom to live free or chained.

We have the freedom to live free or caged.

We have the freedom to live free or bound.

It is our choice.

We are slaves to whom we lend ourselves.

If we choose anger, confusion, fear or agony, that is our prison.

If we choose joy, love, hope and grace, that is our sentence.

It is a choice, and it becomes our confinement.

Choose well.

For your choices will overwhelm and set shackles on you.

One is for life and one is for death.

And you get to pick and choose.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness? But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

Romans 6:15-18

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6:23

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Faith Over Fear Brings Freedom

/ The WheatandTares

Sometimes, you just have to saddle up and ride the horse scared.

Sometimes, you’ve just got to take a deep breath and dive in deep.

Sometimes, you’ve got to put one foot in front of the other and keep climbing.

If you don’t, you may never see the landscape from the mountain too.

If you don’t, you may never experience the exhilaration of exploring the utopia of the abyss.

If you don’t, you may never realize that he courage you had hidden deep within.

So, take the plunge.

Take the ride or die.

Chase the dream and see what is to come.

You never know the freedom of success until you do.

And David said to his son Solomon, “Be strong and of good courage, and do it; do not fear nor be dismayed, for the Lord God—my God—will be with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you, until you have finished all the work for the service of the house of the Lord.

1 Chronicles 28:20

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

1 Corinthians 15:58

He’ll Run to You

/ The WheatandTares

I love the thought of my God loving me enough to protect me.

I love the realization that He loves me enough to defend me.

And I love the image of imagining Him as a lion running to me.

He will do this.

He is a mighty God, an everlasting Savior, an all Powerful Lord,

And yet,

He cares for me. He cares for you.

And He longs for us to be with Him.

And if He needs to run to us,

He will.

And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry.

Luke 15:20-24

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

John 3:16

Be Not Afraid

/ The WheatandTares

Enough said, but then, there’s more to explain.

Not having fear sounds like a great statement, but when it’s your dream, your sickness, or your child, it’s not always that simple.

Control seems easier and less unpredictable.

Having more faith and less fear seems like a great slogan to follow until it’s you who has to walk out on the water, weather the storm in the (seemingly) rickety boat, or step out on the tightrope of success and hope it holds.

Control seems more comfortable and less unreliable.

Yet, I have found in life experiences that no matter how intuitive I think I am, He always sees better.

I have found in all my days of leading, advising, sharing, no matter how capable I feel, He is always stronger and more able.

Control seems right through our carnal eyes,

But His ways are higher than my ways.

His thoughts are beyond my imagination.

And His love is beyond my recognition.

And so, I will trust Him, and I will follow.

I have found in my life that my heart is safer within His mighty hands than it ever was within my human ones.

And I will walk forward with faith.

I will move toward the goal with my focus on Him.

And even if I’m trembling within, I will trust He’s got this because He loves me beyond reason.

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Isaiah 55:9

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:11-13

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

Matthew 6:33

Be Like Joan

/ The WheatandTares

Life is hard.

Surviving can be a struggle.

Take it on like a champ.

You were born for this.

Don’t be afraid.

Don’t hesitate.

Do not fear.

March on.

When you fall, get back up.

When you’re wounded, bandage it.

Shake of the pain and move forward.

You can do this.

You were made for this.

And bonus: when you’ve walked through the fire, and you’ve slain your dragon, there are those following.

And they need your victory.

So, be like Joan. Be not afraid.

Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Hebrews 12:1-2