Ought Is Not Enough

When the going gets rough, we're going nowhere without desire. And the going will get rough. The world, the minions of darkness, and your own double-mindedness are all set against you. Just try coming alive, try living from your heart for the Sacred Romance and watch how the world responds. 

They will hate you for it and will do everything in their power to get you to fall back into the comfort of the way things were. Your passion will disrupt them, because it sides with their own heart which they've tried so hard to put away. If they can't convince you to live from the safer places they have chosen, they will try intimidation. If that fails, they'll try to kill you —if not literally, then at the level of your soul. 

Jeremiah lived the struggle of desire. He knew the deep ambivalence of living for the Sacred Romance. His decision to trust in the love of God and join the battle for the hearts of his people made him an outcast, a pariah. Like the Master he served, he was "despised and rejected by men." After years of opposition, getting tossed naked into the bottom of wells, plots against his life, the shame of false accusations and the loneliness of isolation, Jeremiah has had it. He is ready to throw in the towel. He lets the passion of his soul forth, directly at God:

O Lord, you deceived me, and I was deceived;

you overpowered me and prevailed.

I am ridiculed all day long;

everyone mocks me. . . .

So the word of the Lord has brought me

insult and reproach all day long.

But if I say, "I will not mention him

or speak any more in his name,"

his word is in my heart like a fire,

a fire shut up in my bones.

I am weary of holding it in;

indeed, I cannot. (20:7-9)

He says, in effect, "You put this Romance in my heart, you drew me out on this wild adventure—how could I keep from following? But now that I have, it has only brought me the fury of my community. And what's worse, I cannot walk away. I'm trapped by my desire for you." Jeremiah may have become a prophet initially out of a sense of duty, but now he is caught up in the Sacred Romance because he can't help it. When the going gets rough, ought is not enough to keep you going
.

Courtesy of http://ransomedheart.com/

Genuine Goodness is Captivating - Ransomed Heart!

You can tell a lot about a person by his effect on others. What is he like to be around? What is the aftertaste he leaves in your mouth? Is this someone you’d want to take a long car ride with? We saw Zacchaeus’ reaction. Here are two more, from people quite different from each other and from Zacchaeus:

One of the Pharisees asked him over for a meal. He went to the Pharisee’s house and sat down at the dinner table. Just then a woman of the village, the town harlot, having learned that Jesus was a guest in the home of the Pharisee, came with a bottle of very expensive perfume and stood at his feet, weeping, raining tears on his feet. Letting down her hair, she dried his feet, kissed them, and anointed them with the perfume. (Luke 7:36–38 TM)

No comment of mine could add to the beauty of this moment. Nor to this one:

Two others, both criminals, were taken along with him for execution. [...] One of the criminals hanging alongside cursed him: “Some Messiah you are! Save yourself! Save us!” But the other one made him shut up: “Have you no fear of God? You’re getting the same as him. We deserve this, but not him—he did nothing to deserve this.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you enter your kingdom.” He said, “Don’t worry, I will. Today you will join me in paradise.” (Luke 23:32–43 TM)

What is stunning to see in these brief accounts is that people who knew themselves to be anything but holy found the holiness of Jesus winsome, open-armed, and utterly compelling.

Is this how you have understood holiness?

It changes everything when you do.

We Have No Idea Who We Really Are

We have no idea who we really are. Whatever glory was bestowed, whatever glory is being restored, we thought this whole Christian thing was about . . . something else. Trying not to sin. Going to church. Being nice. Jesus says it is about healing your heart, setting it free, restoring your glory. A religious fog has tried to veil all that, put us under some sort of spell or amnesia, to keep us from coming alive. As Blaise Pascal said, "It is a monstrous thing . . . an incomprehensible enchantment, and a supernatural slumber." And, Paul said, it is time to take that veil away.

When anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:16-18)

A veil removed, bringing freedom, transformation, glory. Do you see it? I am not making this up—though I have been accused of making the gospel better than it is. The charge is laughable. Could anyone be more generous than God? Could any of us come up with a story that beats the one God has come up with?

Courtesy of Ransomed Heart Devotions

Taking Every Thought Captive

Well, I hesitate about this post from Ransomed Hearts because of two reasons.

1)     First, it seems like it is geared toward women only. But, in reality any child of Christ males or females experience spiritual warfare.

2)     The second reason I hesitate is because while the author did not say it, but this idea of struggling through spiritual warfare with Satan because he is trying so hard to create doubt in our mind about Christ, purchasing you and I through His blood, works to a certain extend.

Satan can play this kind of game with us when we are babe in the faith because we do not know who we are in Him, quite yet.

If you have passed the stage of being a babe in the faith, because you have been a Christian for a while now, yet Satan can still make you doubt your Sonship and the price that was paid for you and me, then this means you need to get on your knees and find out what has been happening with you in terms of your salvation. The only proof that you have been sealed as a born again Christian is that the Holy Spirit is working in your life. It is His job to witness to your soul that you are a child of God. So if this has not been drilled down within to a place where Satan has lost the power to play this basic game with you, then you are failing somehow or the Holy Spirit is failing. Take your pick

When you are a true child of God and you are maturing in the faith no matter how bad and how big your sin is, like David when he was confronted about his sins of adultery and murder, he was able to fall down to his face and call upon his father for forgiveness. Why was it so easy for Him to do? Simply because he knew no matter how he messed up, God would not stop being his father. When we mess up with our human father, there are always consequences, but the love does not go away. If we as human being we can love in spite of the offenses and imperfections of our children, then what about God?

By the same token, I have people in my family, friends and acquaintances who claim to be Christians, they are involved in Church activities, mission, and leadership and so on, yet nothing about them seems to show they have been born again. Yet, they sound good because intellect, education and common sense are at work. They have this kind of twisted frame of mind where they put all their stocks and bet on God’s love to fix everything for them. Some of them actually believe the more you sin, the more grace abounds so they act as if God’s grace is a license to sin. Most of these people fall under this verse you find in Matthew 23:15 “"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.” This is a very big accusation on Christ’s part and some people would tell us that this verse is for those under the law.

What some of us do not realize is that Satan has a very big ministry right inside the Church. There is nothing new under the sun. This ministry of his is to keep people from truly turning to God while they remain busy living some form of godliness. Satan is very well aware when we are selling this kind of diluted Salvation and he steps in big time with these “Christians.”  Sadly, we might not know where we are with God, but Satan knows it. So, with these kinds of Christians, he does not bother whispering to them that they have failed, rather, he does the reverse and keep them thinking they are alright with God while he helps them minimize sin and believe God’s word backwards.

I hope you can see the difference. Know that there is a balance in the Christian faith. It is found only in Him as we allow Him to live this life through us. 

HERE IS YOUR POST FROM RANSOMED HEART

In order for us to live in freedom and become the women we are to become, we need to receive God’s love even in our lowest places. Spiritual warfare is designed to separate you from the love of God. Its goal is to keep you from living in the freedom that Jesus has purchased for you. Satan whispers to us when we have failed or sinned or are feeling horrid that we are nothing and no one. He is a liar. And our fight for our freedom involves exposing him for who he is even when the lies feel completely true. The battle is waged and won in our thought life: in our minds and in our hearts.So what are you thinking? (Yeah, right now.) Descartes famously wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” I would add a fill-in-the-blank in each phrase. I think I am ______, therefore I am __________. I think I am kind, therefore I am kind. I think I am chosen, therefore I am chosen. I think I am becoming more loving, therefore I am becoming more loving. I think I am forever bound to sin, therefore I am forever bound to sin. What we think about ourselves, others, or a circumstance informs how we perceive it, which informs the way we experience it. Our thoughts play out in our lives."We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." (2 Cor. 10:5)What do you think about God? What do you think about yourself? Who are you? What do you think life is about? What do you think is true? Because what you think informs your reality and has a direct effect on how you live your life. What we focus on, we move toward. What we look at, esteem, molds us in its direction. What we think is true plays out in our moment-by-moment existence

God Thwarts Us to Save Us

This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He's disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He's not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines, therefore do not lose heart (12:5-6).

God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true—we must be saved from what really will destroy us. If we would walk with him in our journey, we must walk away from the false self—set it down, give it up willingly. It feels crazy; it feels immensely vulnerable. We simply accept the invitation to leave all that we've relied on and venture out with God. We can choose to do it ourselves, or we can wait for God to bring it all down.

If you have no clue as to what your false self may be, then a starting point would be to ask those you live with and work with, "What is my effect on you? What am I like to live with (or work with)? What don't you feel free to bring up with me?" Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to; long enough to raise the deeper issues, let the wound surface from beneath it all. 

Courtesy of: http:// Ransomedheart.com

The Offer Is Life

"The glory of God is man fully alive. (Saint Irenaeus)When I first stumbled across this quote my initial reaction was . . . You’re kidding me. Really? I mean, is that what you’ve been told? That the purpose of God—the very thing he’s staked his reputation on—is your coming fully alive? Huh. Well, that’s a different take on things. It made me wonder, What are God’s intentions toward me? What is it I’ve come to believe about that? Yes, we’ve been told any number of times that God does care, and there are some pretty glowing promises given to us in Scripture along those lines. But on the other hand, we have the days of our lives, and they have a way of casting a rather long shadow over our hearts when it comes to God’s intentions toward us in particular. I read the quote again, “The glory of God is man fully alive,” and something began to stir in me. Could it be?

I turned to the New Testament to have another look, read for myself what Jesus said he offers. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). Wow. That’s different from saying, “I have come to forgive you. Period.” Forgiveness is awesome, but Jesus says here he came to give us life. Hmmm. Sounds like ol’ Irenaeus might be on to something. “I am the bread of life” (John 6:48). “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him” (John 7:38). The more I looked, the more this whole theme of life jumped off the pages. I mean, it’s everywhere.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life” (Prov. 4:23).“You have made known to me the path of life” (Ps. 16:11).“In him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4).“Come to me to have life” (John 5:40).“Tell the people the full message of this new life” (Acts 5:20).

From the Ransomed Heart Devotion Book

Holy Grace

Now, I know my fellow evangelicals will rush to protest that it is the cross of Jesus Christ alone that opens the way to heaven for any person. No amount of personal righteousness could ever suffice. I believe this. It is grace alone—the unmerited and undeserved forgiveness of God—that opens the way for any of us to know God, let alone come into his kingdom. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9). Thank God for that.

However, you also find in Jesus and throughout the scriptures a pretty serious call to a holy life.

Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord (Hebrews 12:14)

For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. (1 Thessalonians 4:7)

As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:14–16)

In fact, one of the most stunning things about Jesus is how such a gracious, kind, patient, and forgiving man holds—without so much as wavering—such a high standard of holiness. On the one hand, we have the beautiful story of a woman caught in the act of adultery—and how horrifying and humiliating would that be? The mob drags her before Jesus, ready to stone her (they actually did this sort of thing, and not that long ago; it still happens in some Muslim countries today).

It is brilliant, and poignant. The town square is now deserted; only the woman and Jesus remain. She is probably wrapped in nothing but a bed sheet and her shame. He rescues her from a terrible death, and then forgives her. It feels as if the scene could not be more powerfully reported. What more could be said? But wait, Jesus has one last word for her:

“Go on your way. From now on, don’t sin.”

Yes, grace reigns in the Kingdom of God. But right there alongside it is an unflinching call to holiness. Go and sin no more.

Courtesy of  Ransomed Heart

http://ransomedheart.com

What Does He Want From Us?

The gospel says that we, who are God's beloved, created a cosmic crisis. It says we, too, were stolen from our True Love and that he launched the greatest campaign in the history of the world to get us back. God created us for intimacy with him. When we turned our back on him he promised to come for us. He sent personal messengers; he used beauty and affliction to recapture our hearts. After all else failed, he conceived the most daring of plans. Under the cover of night he stole into the enemy's camp incognito, the Ancient of Days disguised as a newborn. The Incarnation, as Phil Yancey reminds us, was a daring raid into enemy territory. The whole world lay under the power of the evil one and we were held in the dungeons of darkness. God risked it all to rescue us. Why? What is it that he sees in us that causes him to act the jealous lover, to lay siege both on the kingdom of darkness and on our own idolatries as if on Troy—not to annihilate, but to win us once again for himself? This fierce intention, this reckless ambition that shoves all conventions aside, willing literally to move heaven and earth.  

We've been offered many explanations. From one religious camp, we're told that what God wants is obedience, or sacrifice, or adherence to the right doctrines, or morality. Those are the answers offered by conservative churches. The more therapeutic churches suggest that no, God is after our contentment, or happiness, or self-actualization, or something else along those lines. He is concerned about all these things, of course, but they are not his primary concern. What he is after is us—our laughter, our tears, our dreams, our fears, our heart of hearts. Remember his lament in Isaiah, that though his people were performing all their duties, "their hearts are far from me" (29:13 italics added). How few of us truly believe this. We've never been wanted for our heart, our truest self, not really, not for long. The thought that God wants our heart seems too good to be true.

From:   http://www.ransomedheart.com/

Forgiveness!

I heard someone say one day that unforgiveness is like taking a poison and hoping the other person would die.  It is so true. Unforgiveness eat us alive inside. One of the reasons I learned to forgive no matter how hard someone hurt me, and believe me, I have been hurt so deep, if God was not on my side, there is no way I would have ever recuperate. I like paying close attention to myself to see how I react when I say or do something outside the Holy Spirit vs when I am in the Spirit. There is a world of a difference between the two and I hate the person I am when I am not in the Spirit. So, when you pay close attention to yourself, you will find what is keeping you from forgiving someone else is because your ego cannot let go even after years. You keep reliving the hurt as if it happened yesterday. Every time you relieve the pain, your pride is dying within you and it mingles itself with everything that you are to bring about a need for revenge. I have to share with you, until God took me in the wilderness, I dealt with people who hurt and humiliated me so much, people who took my job away from me and so on, I honestly wanted God to send a ball of fire and burn them right away.  

I remember there was a time I used to imagine how I would hurt them back, and I was scared of what I could concoct within me. I was scared of myself. As I looked at what my mind and heart could concoct to get revenge I can understand easily why we had people like Hitler and why we still have so many people out there who seemed to have been born to hurt others, with pleasure. Through God’s grace, I learned not to entertain these kinds of thoughts and take control of my anger as I put it all at His feet. This is easier said than done. Most of the time, there is nothing within me that wants forgiveness for these people. But, I learned to bring it to Him, in spite of the consequences of the hurt that was inflicted and in spite of the lack of vengeance. It is so painful to know someone who hurt you seemed to have gotten away with it and living it out.

We can find healing and we can find peace of mind if we truly believe. Forgiveness is an opportunity for us to prove that we truly believe the God that we serve. It is an opportunity to fear Him and glory in His sovereignty and majesty. As I learned to see that forgiveness is directly proportion to my faith in Him, I have also learned not to tolerate it in my heart for even one minute. In fact, when someone hurt me, it is imperative for me to take it right away to God, not only in word but in my actions as well. I always pray for God to heal my heart, but most of all, teach me how to pray for this person’s welfare. I do not care anymore about ever being avenged. If the person is not a believer, I pray for this person’s salvation. This is a spiritual skill we can acquire when only we understand our role in it. As time goes by, I am watching myself changing so much that when people hurt me, it hardly lasts a moment in my heart. My goal at any cost is to reach the point where I can honour God and pray for them like Stephen when he was being stoned, or to be like Christ when He was on the Cross. The healing starts, when we remember who we serve.

With that in mind, I am leaving you with this post from Ransomed Heart

We must forgive those who hurt us. The reason is simple: Bitterness and unforgiveness are claws that set their hooks deep in our hearts; they are chains that keep us held captive to the wounds and the messages of those wounds. Until you forgive, you remain their prisoner. Paul warns us that unforgiveness and bitterness can wreck our lives and the lives of others (Eph. 4:31; Heb. 12:15). We have to let them go.

Forgive as Christ has forgiven you. (Col 3:13)

Now - listen carefully. Forgiveness is a choice. It is not a feeling - don't try and feel forgiving. It is an act of the will. "Don't wait to forgive until you feel like forgiving," wrote Neil Anderson. "You will never get there. Feelings take time to heal after the choice to forgive is made . . ." We allow God to bring the hurt up from our past, for "if your forgiveness doesn't visit the emotional core of your life, it will be incomplete." We acknowledge that it hurt, that it mattered, and we choose to extend forgiveness to our father, our mother, those who hurt us. This is not saying, "It didn't really matter"; it is not saying, "I probably deserved part of it anyway." Forgiveness says, "It was wrong. Very wrong. It mattered, hurt me deeply. And I release you. I give you to God."

It might help to remember that those who hurt you were also deeply wounded themselves. They were broken hearts, broken when they were young, and they fell captive to the Enemy. They were in fact pawns in his hands. This doesn't absolve them of the choices they made, the things they did. It just helps us to let them go - to realize that they were shattered souls themselves, used by our true Enemy in his war against femininity.

http://ransomedheart.com/

Surrender!

I know so much about surrender that I could literally write a book about it. But as I read this in the book Ransomed Heart, I realized there is no way I could describe it as beautiful as this one. 

SURRENDER BY RANSOMED HEART

The time has come for us to quit playing chess with God over our lives. We cannot win, but we can delay the victory, dragging on the pain of grasping and the poison of possessing. You see, there are two kinds of losses in life. The first is shared by all mankind—the losses that come to us. Call them what you will—accidents, fate, acts of God. The point is that we have no control over them. We do not determine when, where, what, or even how. There is no predicting these losses; they happen to us. We choose only how we respond. The second kind is known only to the pilgrim. They are losses that we choose. A chosen loss is different from repentance, when we give up something that was never ours to have. With a chosen loss, we place on the altar something very dear to us, something innocent, whose only danger is in its goodness, that we might come to love it too much. It is the act of consecration, where little by little or all at once, we give over our lives to the only One who can truly keep them.

Spiritual surrender is not resignation. It is not choosing to care no longer. Nor is it Eastern mysticism, an attempt to get beyond the suffering of this life by going completely numb. As my dear friend Jan describes, "It is surrender with desire, or in desire." Desire is still present, felt, welcomed even. But the will to secure is made subject to the divine will in an act of abandoned trust. Think of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Courtesy of:

 http://ransomedheart.com

A "Propositional" Christianity

We have lived for so long with a "propositional" approach to Christianity, we have nearly lost its true meaning. As Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen says, Much of it hinges on your view of scripture. Are you playing proof-text poker with Genesis plus the Gospels and Paul's epistles, with everything else just sort of a big mystery in between—except maybe Psalms and Proverbs, which you use devotionally? Or do you see scripture as being a cosmic drama—creation, fall, redemption, future hope—dramatic narratives that you can apply to all areas of life? (Prism interview)

For centuries prior to our Modern Era, the church viewed the gospel as a Romance, a cosmic drama whose themes permeated our own stories and drew together all the random scenes in a redemptive wholeness. But our rationalistic approach to life, which has dominated Western culture for hundreds of years, has stripped us of that, leaving a faith that is barely more than mere fact-telling. Modern evangelicalism reads like an IRS 1040 form: It's true, all the data is there, but it doesn't take your breath away. As British theologian Alister McGrath warns, the Bible is not primarily a doctrinal sourcebook: "To reduce revelation to principles or concepts is to suppress the element of mystery, holiness and wonder to God's self-disclosure. 'First principles' may enlighten and inform; they do not force us to our knees in reverence and awe, as with Moses at the burning bush, or the disciples in the presence of the risen Christ" (A Passion for Truth).
Courtesy of: http://ransomedheart.com/

Separate Journeys: Head and Heart

The sense of being part of some bigger story, a purposeful adventure that is the Christian life, begins to drain away again after those first-love years in spite of everything we can do to stop it. Instead of a love affair with God, your life begins to feel more like a series of repetitive behaviors, like reading the same chapter of a book or writing the same novel over and over. The orthodoxy we try to live out, defined as "Believe and Behave Accordingly," is not a sufficient story line to satisfy whatever turmoil and longing our heart is trying to tell us about. Somehow our head and heart are on separate journeys and neither feels like life.

Eventually this division of head and heart culminates in one of two directions. We can either deaden our heart or divide our life into two parts, where our outer story becomes the theater of the should and our inner story the theater of needs, the place where we quench the thirst of our heart with whatever water is available. I chose the second route, living what I thought of as my religious life with increasing dryness and cynicism while I found "water" where I could: in sexual fantasies, alcohol, the next dinner out, late-night violence videos, gaining more knowledge through religious seminars—whatever would slake the thirsty restlessness inside. Whichever path we choose—heart deadness or heart and head separation—the wounds, the Arrows win, and we lose heart.

This is the story of all our lives, in one way or another. The haunting of the Romance and the Message of the Arrows are so radically different and they seem so mutually exclusive they split our hearts in two. In every way that the Romance is full of beauty and wonder, the Arrows are equally powerful in their ugliness and devastation.

Courtesy of: http://ransomedheart.com/

Walking With God

Walking with God leads to receiving his intimate counsel, and counseling leads to deep restoration. As we learn to walk with God and hear his voice, he is able to bring up issues in our hearts that need speaking to. Some of those wounds were enough to break our hearts, create a rift in the soul, and so we need his healing as well. This is something Jesus walks us into- sometimes through the help of another person who can listen and pray with us, sometimes with God alone. As David said in Psalm 23, He leads us away, to a quiet place, to restore the soul. Our first choice is to go with him there-to slow down, unplug, accept the invitation to come aside. You won't find healing in the midst of the Matrix. We need time in the presence of God. This often comes on the heels of God's raising some issue in our hearts or after we've just relived an event that takes us straight to that broken place, or waking as I did to a raw emotion.

Teach me your way, O LORD,
and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
I will praise you, O Lord my God, with all my heart;
I will glorify your name forever. (Ps. 86:11-12)

When we are in the presence of God, removed from distractions, we are able to hear him more clearly, and a secure environment has been established for the young and broken places in our hearts to surface.

Courtesy of : the Ransomed Heart Minitries  http://ransomedheart.com/

To Harden Our Hearts

What makes the Day of Judgment so unnerving is that all our posing and all our charades will be pulled back, all secrets will be made known, and our Lord will "expose the motives of men's hearts" (1 Cor. 4:5, emphasis added).

This is the point of the famous Sermon on the Mount. Jesus first says we haven't a hope of heaven unless our righteousness "surpasses that of the Pharisees" (Matt. 5:20). How can that be? They were fastidious rule keepers, pillars of the church, model citizens. Yes, Jesus says, and most of it was hypocrisy. The Pharisees prayed to impress men with their spirituality. They gave to impress men with their generosity. Their actions looked good, but their motives were not. Their hearts, as the saying goes, weren't in the right place. A person's character is determined by his motives, and motive is always a matter of the heart. This is what Scripture means when it says that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart. God doesn't judge us by our looks or our intelligence; he judges us by our hearts.

It makes sense, then, that Scripture also locates our conscience in our hearts. Paul says that even those who do not know God's law "show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness" (Rom. 2:15), such as when your child looks guilty for having told a lie. This is why it is so dangerous to harden our hearts by silencing our consciences, and why the offer of forgiveness is such good news, to have our "hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience" (Heb.10:22 NRSV). Oh, the joy of living from right motives, from a clean heart. I doubt that those who want to dismiss the heart want to dismiss our consciences, set aside the importance of character.

An excerpt from the book

The Ransomed Heart by John Eldredge

We really are the Sons and Daughters of God

This was taken from: the Ransomed Heart by John Eldredge

This is so beautiful and so true, I could not resist, I had to post it

 Life on the road takes us into our heart, for only when we are present in the deep sentences can God speak to them.  That’s why the story is a journey; it has to be lived, it cannot simply be talked about. When we face trials, our most common reaction is to ask God “Why won't you relieve us?” And when He doesn't  we resignedly ask, “What do you want me to do?”  Now we have a new question: Where is the romance headed?”

There is another great “revealing” in our life on the road. We run our race, we travel our journey, in the words of Hebrews, before “a great cloud of witnesses” (12:1). When we face a decision to fall back or press on, the whole universe holds its breath-angels, demons, our friends and foes, and the Trinity itself-watching with bated breath to see what we will do. We are still in the drama of Act III and the heart of God is still on trial. The question that lingers from the fall of Satan and the fall of man remains: Will anyone trust the great heart of the Father, or will we shrink back in faithless fear?

As we grow into the love of God and the freedom of our own hearts, we grow in our ability to cast our vote on behalf of God. Our acts of love and sacrifice, the little decisions to leave our false loves behind, and the great struggles of our heart reveal to the world our true identity: We really are the sons and daughters of God