Tag Archives: feelings

TRUSTING SILENCE

1 Reply

TRUSTING SILENCE

SELAH Daily Devotions!

 

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Matthew 27:46

 

I would never presume to speak for every believer, this is just me, okay? One of the most difficult challenges for me to master is trusting God when Heaven goes mute! Not only does this create anxiety, stress and discouragement, but the doubt, confusion and sense of abandonment becomes a personal virtual hell. And no, I am not a babe-in-Christ, but I’d consider myself to be a reasonably seasoned-saint! #ijs

Our spirit man knows quite well that God answers all of our prayers in one of three ways. Yes, No or Not Now, right? Nevertheless the carnal mind could care less! Can I get a witness? Flesh  wants immediate gratification. ‘I did what You told me, I asked, seeked and knocked; but I guess the answer must’ve got lost in the mail or  perhaps You’re too busy managing the world to be concerned about what’s concerning me, huh?’ Now don’t look at me with that tone of voice, surely I’m not the only one to concede to the Tempter’s situational analysis!

In all of scripture, these feelings of abandonment is never more profound than at the words uttered from the mouth of our Savior hanging on The Cross… and God is silent! And while there is no record of God’s answer in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, or Luke, the Passion story does not end with our Lord’s despairing cry. In Psalm 22, God’s affirming Love and Grace encourages us to trust Him to resurrect Greater Greaterness out of our greatest messes! “In you our ancestors trusted; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried, and were saved; in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.”

While some folk would have you believe that faith means unwavering trust in God’s power and ability to do anything, and that’s absolutely Truth. Nevertheless, there’s that other part of faith that commands trusting God’s silence as well as His actions, that has proven to be, at the least, extremely unsettling!

The Word of God tells us that the promises of God are Yeah and Amen, however we tend to forget that spiritual things are governed by spiritual laws. Case in point, seed, time and harvest! God is more concerned about developing christian core values and attributes than providing our fleshly creature comforts!

The Prophet Isaiah encourages believers to persevere through the trials expecting your deliverance is soon to come. ‘But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.’ (Isaiah 40:31) And James 1:4 admonishes us to ‘let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. Honestly, while both texts have been tremendously resourceful, strengthening and comforting, sometimes they ring hollow when the circumstantial eveidence against you is screaming hopelessness, rejection and it appears as if Heaven’s doors are closed and locked you out!

As you walk with Jesus, experience will teach you that these feelings are just a trick of the enemy to get you to doubt the validity and Faithfulness of God’s Word. If He ain’t saying nothing else, then keep doing the last thing He told you because evidently He ain’t changed His mind!

Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. Psalm 46:10

Beloved, when you can’t see God’s Hand, feel His touch or hear His Voice, trust His Heart! REMEMBER THE TEACHER NEVER TALKS DURING THE TEST! DON’T TAP OUT ON HOPE, KEEP TRUSTING GOD’S SILENCE!

SELAH!

Pause, Ponder, Pray & Praiz!

Ann Caffee

 

SLAVE 2 HOPE!

1 Reply

African black hands in chains on white

SELAH Daily Devotions!

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”…being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. Romans 4:18, 21

 

Do you remember, as a child, ever being warned by your parents (supposing to avoid the pain of disappointment),“Don’t get your hopes up”? For many of us, the devil was laying a foundation for years of pessimism, doubt, unbelief, hopelessness, low self-esteem, depression and despair! WOW! Who Knu?

Ever wonder why God told us not to walk by our feelings? Well, if you’re anything like me, you’ve probably accumulated enough regrets, resulting from poor choices you’ve made listening to your fickle-feelings, to realize how irrational flesh can be, huh?

Let’s set the record straight! Sometimes, it’s difficult to ascribe a tag to feelings; feelings jus are! Directed by proper motivation, feelings are good! That’s why we need the Spirit of Discernment! Remember, when out of no where, you felt that bleep that kept on bleeping up  out of your spirit and something told you…‘don’t go that way, stop right now and turn around or call so-and-so, pray for him now?

Unfortunately, more often than not, we’re tempted to dismiss things if it doesn’t fit within the realm of our logic. Kinda like Abram’s first response to the burning bush! Yet, something pricked his curiosity to closely investigate and ultimately leading him into a personal encounter with The Supernatural Almighty God!

Abram over-ruling emotions and human reasoning, choosing to consider not what he could see (circumstantial evidence) but rather believed and reached for what was not seen! That was faith, yall!

Now, the world looks at this and calls it foolishness, weakness and denial! However, the scriptures reveal that Abram was clearly aware that except by Divine Intervention, it was impossible for a 100 year old man and a 90 year old woman to conceive and birth a child! Because God does nothing in the earth until He gets a man to come into agreement with Him, have you ever wondered what if Abram and Sarai had continued to jus laugh off the promised as an impossible pipe-dream, if perhaps…???

No doubt over the next 25 loonnng years, Abram faced many demonic challenges tempting him to give up his hope of  living to see the manifestation of such a miraculous feat. Yet, against all hope, Abraham hope on! Oooh Glorraa2GAWD! God testified that because Abram believed that His God had the power to shift nature and call those things that be not as though they were, Abraham received the Promise and thus became the Father of our faith!

Howeverrr, how often have we insisted upon ignoring that still small voice of conscience to satisfy feelings of our own lusting, self-centered emotions driven by fear of ‘What if and What’s in it for me’? Even if it means forfeiting our Hope and God’s Peace?  OMG! The next time, perhaps we need to re-think before we act on them, huh? #ijs

Beloved, HONESTLY! This walk of faith that GOD EXPECTS is NOT REALLY all that unreasonable when your HOPE is firmly rooted and ground in Jesus Alone, consistently trusting, wholly relying upon HIS Supernatural Grace to strengthened us to walk out our faith, looking unto JESUS, obeying HIS teachings and patiently awaiting HIM to fulfill every Promise that HE has ever spoken over our lives! #Didjaheardat? SLAVE2HOPE!

SELAH!

Pause, Ponder, Pray & Praiz!

Ann Caffee

A PERFECT HEART

1 Reply

A PERFECT HEART2

SELAH Daily Devotions!

 

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars. 2 Chronicles 16:9

 

According to Data Center Solutions, the KJV Bible uses the word ‘heart’ 884 times. When the scriptures speak of the heart, it’s not referring to the 9-ounce muscle that pumps the blood throughout the human body. But rather, it’s speaking of the central control room of our emotions, ( feelings) of love, our desires and yes the seat of hatred, envy, covetnous, bitterness, resentment and fear!

We tend to so readily embrace those scriptures that bring encouragment and comfort to our hearts, right? However, when it comes to those that teach how to avoid those secret subsceptabilities that are exposed by the light of The Holy Spirit, Who intentionally searches the hearts of men, chances are we’ll speed by those, pausing momentarily to clip a few notes that ‘I jus gotta share this one with Sis. Cantelope and Bro. Watermelon, both of whom definitely will benefit from this, more than I will!”

Today’s scripture, 2 Chronicles 16:9, says that God is searching for perfect hearts. Well here’s when most of us leave the conversation, afterall, ain’t nobody perfect, right? But a closer examination of the situation discloses God’s interpretation of a perfect heart! As our Heavenly Father peered into the heart of His servant, King Asa, we notice a few things were missing. First of all God expected to see a Holy Awe, a Reverence and Appreciation for The Almighty God who had showed Himself Powerful to deliver in the time of battle against the Cushites. Hence, instead of loyalty, total commitment and a willingness to obey God, Asa’s heart was torn between a reliance on self, man, the world and God!

When Asa was confronted by the Prophet Hanani, who alerted him of the precariousness of seeking help from any source other than God, Asa’s anger flarred up and he immediately ordered Hanani thrown into prison, revealing the true condition of his heart!

How many times have you heard someone declaring, “God knows my heart!? #ikr! He certainly does!  Therefore, He’s not easily impressed by our good works. Sometimes, we need to examine our hearts to determine if our good works are the result of right motives. Could we be harboring a religious spirit of self-righteousness? One way to identify this is by asking ourselves, “Is MY right doing to glorify and honor God or MYself?” #OOPHS!

That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. Matthew 6:18

Solomon, dubbed the wisest man in the known world, shares this intellegence, that we must be mindful to monitor our hearts, putting limits on our feelings and desires, guarding against the innate proclivity to rationalize certain behaviors that will ultimately determine how we live. (Ref. Proverbs 4:23-27)

Beloved, a perfect heart does not means that you will always do the right thing. And, we all know the low probability of that, huh? However God’s looking for that ‘want to’, in other words, a GENUINE desire to grow in grace! This is only possible by a conscious deliberate effort to hide the Word of God in your hearts that you might not sin against the Faithful and True Living God! (Ref. 2 Timothy 2:15; Romans 12:1-2) #DIDJAHEARDAT? #WOW!

Jesus says, ‘That’s close enough, I’ll take it from here!’ PERFECT!

SELAH!

Pause, Ponder, Pray & Praiz!

Ann Caffee

THE UNTOUCHABLES!

Leave a reply

The_Untouchables

SELAH Daily Devotions!

“For she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.” Matthew 9:21

A while back, there was a TV drama entitled, “Touch by An Angel” starring Roma Downey and Della Reese. The program was about “a female angel sent to Earth to help solve people’s problems with a touch of spiritual guidance”. Not surprising, it became quite popular and the series lasted from 1994-2003. Can you image how much better we’d be if all of our life’s crisis were eradicated by Divine intervention?Well guess what, it’s absolutely possible!

According to Free On-Line Dictionary, ‘touch’ means “To cause or permit a part of the body, especially the hand or fingers, to come in contact with so as to feel”. Just wondering, if you conducted a census of church attendees, what percentage of those on the rolls have actually personally touched or been touched by Christ?  I’ve discovered that talking about God or studying Theology (The Story of God) and actually experiencing GOD is as different as life and death!
 
According to studies, never in the history of the western world have we had so many people on church rolls as there are today. I’m talking about folk who ‘profess’ to know Christ! Unfortunately, these same studies conclude that the number of ‘committed’ Christians is at an all time low!

Evidently, it is possible to be in Church yet not in Christ! Don’t  u dare touch that delete key!

I’m simply submitting, for your consideration, the reason we have so many border-line-hypocritical-uncommitted folk in our churches today, is because you can’t really be faithful and committed to a god that you can’t touch or who can’t touch you! #FLATOUT!

There is an exclusively reserved GOD-size hole in each of us! And while some church folk are content with a theoretical relationship (living on the edge, in the vicinity of) with Christ, others of us have such an insatiable thirst, hunger, a longing for HIM that keeps us in constant pursuit for more and more of His Presence, His Grace, Peace and His Joy!

Just like the woman with the issues in today’s scripture text, we have come into contact with the ONLY TRUE, LIVING, HOLY, LOVING, DELIVERING SAVING GOD who can be touched even with our weaknesses!

“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15)

DO YOU KNOW HIM OR R U yet THE UNTOUCHABLES? #jusaskining
 
SELAH!
 
“Have a WONDER-FILLED day!”
 
Ann Caffee