All around us, there are signs and wonders of God's presence and activity in our world, in our lives, and throughout all history. Yet, very few let these evidences impact their lives in such a way that our trust is placed in The Lord, tangibly...with life changing impact. This is exactly what had happened in Rahab's life, in chapter 2 of Joshua. The inhabitants of Jericho had all heard and seen the same things that Rahab describes in Joshua 2:8-11 (evidences of the awesomeness of The Lord).  But, out of the entire population of Jericho, Rahab and her family are the only people that let these "evidences" for God being WHO He says He is...change there hearts to trust and follow The Lord. Her reliance is in/on The Lord...totally! Even though her life is put at severe risk, she places her life (and that of her family) into The Lord's Hands! This trust means that she and her family are to be uprooted and leave everything that they know...and place their lives in a trust that no one around them is turning to. Really trusting The Lord (tangibly and with life impact) will mean the same for us. Most of the time in much less significant ways, but no less important. Trusting The Lord will always mean that we have "daily adjustments" in our lives at the very least...testing our own hearts to see what we are "trusting". Every day of our lives we have many "moments" that define our personal "trusts". I need The Lord's help to know these,  and to have my heart moved as strongly as Rahab's heart was moved by the "signs/moments" in her life.

Reading in Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea and Joel...seeing "harlotry of the heart" and what this means.  Anything that gets our heart a "bubble off" of perfect alignment with God's heart is harlotry of the heart....anything.  So my prayers lately have been more for God having HIS way...and seeking HIS help in letting go of what my idea of what HIS way is or should be - because my ideas are at the very least a "bubble off" from HIS.  This is hard, but anything less is harlotry in God's eyes.  And harlotry of the heart removes my life from the realm of God's direct intervention, i.e., the power of HIS "optimally desired" active will in my life.  I believe there are at least 2 types of "God's Will"...  The best is HIS perfect will, HIS optimally active will - the one that God desires for me, the one HE wants to empower in & through my life HIMSELF.  At the very least there is one other - HIS "less than optimal" permissive will, or that which HE allows into my life, but not what HIS first desire for me is, necessarily.Because GOD IS WHO AND WHAT HE IS, HE has the power and the capability to work Romans 8:28 into my life through all things - but HIS DESIRE is that I square up the way I think/plan/talk/live with the INSTRUCTIONS HE give in HIS WORD.  This “less than optimal” permissive will is the one that happens when my heart is a bubble off alignment with GOD’S HEART, and therefore my life is not working in alignment with God, but a bubble off.  This bubble off is what quenches the Holy Spirit, and what robs me of God's Best - His greatest desires for my life.  This is not a performance thing...it is a heart thing, a motive thing!  This bubble off is what can cause me to be a little out of tune with God, the same thing that brought so much complication and trouble into the lives of God's people in the Old Testament, and has caused so many of the problems of the New Testament Church - our churches today - and our world today...bringing us to receiving less than what God desires and wills for us to have in this life, as well as in Eternity.  The other "Will" is the one that moves mountains...slays giants....defeats hundreds of thousands with a few hundred...parts great body's of water...and washes us as white as snow....cleanses us from all unrighteousness...!!  There is nothing better than this WILL...nothing!  And it is a matter of the heart!  A matter of my heart being aligned, and devoted to God...yielding my motives/desires to have HIS way....no matter what.  That last line  (yielded to HIS WAY no matter what) is hard to type, let alone live it out.  But that is the line that allows God to bring my heart into alignment with HIS....and when this happens we may then realize GOD’S Power of Creation work in us and through us...watch our own giants fall....enemy's be defeated....barriers fall/part before us....and miracles happen in our lives, through our lives, and before our eyes.  This is what I know God wants to do within HIS PERFECT WILL for my live...  It is all about HEART!  And the core of this is in Micah 6:8, where God says, "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God".  To do what is RIGHT, no matter what...the only way is to align my heart with God's Heart (because only GOD knows TRULY what is RIGHT) no matter what...and to love mercy because of my humble dependence on HIS mercy, and to reflect this mercy in/through my life to those around me - by our own SACRIFICE for each other as HE sacrificed for us...and to want more than anything to WALK WITH HIM, to WALK WITH THE POWER OF CREATION, to want to walk HIS way...to go HIS way...in spite of what I may selfishly want....  This is the "posture" in life that opens up a potential miracle before our very lives...  Anything less from us, results in far less..this heart thing is a dynamic of life upon which so much "weighs" - and what determines the difference between GOD’S PERFECT WILL and GOD’S PERMISSIVE WILL being a reality in my life….

The descriptions the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ give of The New Earth and of Heaven are only the glimpses of what will take FOREVER to fully know and appreciate. Even then,the language the book uses is obvious the “base layer” of what The Creator & Artist of all life is only going to reveal to us fully once we begin forever in Heaven with HIM as our FATHER in Heaven. Our impatience and lack of persistence in seeking to know God more & more in TRUTH sometimes leads us to a running away from God, and away from the PLACE HE is preparing for each of us. A humility inspired patience for The Absolutely Sovereign God & HIS Ways is what will keep us true to the course of seeking to know God as our Heavenly Father in Truth and the Eternal Blessings He has promised. Impatience in us will open the way for a sense of entitlement that leads to our becoming just like the people in Exodus 32, when they grew impatient for Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. And this impatience brings even more challenges into our lives by brewing a pride & arrogance that turns us into rebellious runaways that want nothing to do with our TRUE FATHER..., and developing a hard heart that becomes increasingly crusted by a more rebellious pride & arrogance, & an increasing sense of entitlement that twists our judgement so much so that we loath any thought of Almighty God being our FATHER. This pride and arrogance inside of us grows to a point that “it” deceives us into believing that we can fully understand God and His Ways. The idea that our brains have what it takes to fully understand a Sovereign/Omnipresent/Omniscient/Omnipotent GOD is ludicrous! We are totally incapable...! Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 says it this way, ”I tried to understand all that happens on earth. I saw how busy people are, working day and night and hardly ever sleeping. I also saw all that God has done. Nobody can understand what God does here on earth. No matter how hard people try to understand it, they cannot. Even if wise people say they understand, they cannot; no one can really understand it.” Then I found a quote that speaks to the terminal dangers of the pride & arrogance leading us to think we can fully understand God & His Ways->,”This desire to understand God completely turns sinful, however, when we begin to believe that we should be able to understand God completely. It’s not wrong to cry out for direction, to wish that the fog would clear and the right path would be more obvious. But to imagine that God is so small a ruler that his thoughts and ways could be grasped and understood by our finite and sinful minds reveals our lack of a high view of God.” What drives me to think of these things this morning is what Rev21:27 says ,”and nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination (LOATHING OF GOD), and lying, shall ever come into it (Heaven), but only those whose names are written in the Lambs Book of Life.” When we are created & given birth, our names are written in His Book that records everyone being born into what God desires to be His Family. HE is our Father in Heaven! The first mention of this “Book” is in Exodus 32:33,where God says,”Whoever has sinned against Me I will blot out of my book.” The people in Exodus rebelled against their Father in Heaven when their impatience turned into a sense of entitlement that made them want a god that they could “make, that would go before them”->basically, a god, going & doing & providing for what they wanted...instead of honoring Their Father in Heaven. They began to LOATH Their Father in Heaven by seeking and running away to other gods (practicing abomination)! By doing this, they divorced themselves from being God’s children...in essence erasing their names from His Book! We can do the same thing when we begin to have the same kind of pride & arrogance, & a sense of entitlement that the people in Exodus had. A door to our lives is opened into our minds/hearts/lives when we fail to deal with these ideas & thoughts quickly by patiently seeking to hear from our Father in Heaven about what HIS WORD and ALL CREATION have to say about HIS GLORY and HIS MERCIES enabled and empowered through Jesus Christ. TRUSTING and FOLLOWING Jesus is the ONLY way that our sin is washed away and our names remain written in the Lamb’s Book of Life -> our persevering Trust in Christ alone to Save us AND Guide us, into and through every day we have the privilege of living. Dear Lord, so many times, I make YOU into a little “g” god that is infinitely far from WHO AND WHAT YOU truly are…and in this arrogance I even put words into YOUR mouth and have ideas about YOU and about life that are totally upside-down. I pray for YOUR WORD and YOUR SPIRIT to open my heart and to open the eyes of all I am.. so that I can begin to have a peak at the GLORY of WHO AND WHAT YOU TRULY ARE every moment of every day…so that I may grow in my AWE of You…and may I grow, with Your help, in understanding how much and more I should be in AWE of Who You are AND WHAT You have done for me through CHRIST ALONE....& may I seek to honor You as my Father in Heaven with every breath & every step You give me to take.

The descriptions the Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ give of The New Earth and of Heaven are only the glimpses of what will take FOREVER to fully know and appreciate. Even then,the language the book uses is obvious the “base layer” of what The Creator & Artist of all life is only going to reveal to us fully once we begin forever in Heaven with HIM as our FATHER in Heaven. Our impatience and lack of persistence in seeking to know God more & more in TRUTH sometimes leads us to a running away from God, and away from the PLACE HE is preparing for each of us. A humility inspired patience for The Absolutely Sovereign God & HIS Ways is what will keep us true to the course of seeking to know God as our Heavenly Father in Truth and the Eternal Blessings He has promised. Impatience in us will open the way for a sense of entitlement that leads to our becoming just like the people in Exodus 32, when they grew impatient for Moses coming down from Mount Sinai. And this impatience brings even more challenges into our lives by brewing a pride & arrogance that turns us into rebellious runaways that want nothing to do with our TRUE FATHER..., and developing a hard heart that becomes increasingly crusted by a more rebellious pride & arrogance, & an increasing sense of entitlement that twists our judgement so much so that we loath any thought of Almighty God being our FATHER. This pride and arrogance inside of us grows to a point that “it” deceives us into believing that we can fully understand God and His Ways. The idea that our brains have what it takes to fully understand a Sovereign/Omnipresent/Omniscient/Omnipotent GOD is ludicrous! We are totally incapable...! Ecclesiastes 8:16-17 says it this way, ”I tried to understand all that happens on earth. I saw how busy people are, working day and night and hardly ever sleeping. I also saw all that God has done. Nobody can understand what God does here on earth. No matter how hard people try to understand it, they cannot. Even if wise people say they understand, they cannot; no one can really understand it.” Then I found a quote that speaks to the terminal dangers of the pride & arrogance leading us to think we can fully understand God & His Ways->,”This desire to understand God completely turns sinful, however, when we begin to believe that we should be able to understand God completely. It’s not wrong to cry out for direction, to wish that the fog would clear and the right path would be more obvious. But to imagine that God is so small a ruler that his thoughts and ways could be grasped and understood by our finite and sinful minds reveals our lack of a high view of God.” What drives me to think of these things this morning is what Rev21:27 says ,”and nothing unclean and no one who practices abomination (LOATHING OF GOD), and lying, shall ever come into it (Heaven), but only those whose names are written in the Lambs Book of Life.” When we are created & given birth, our names are written in His Book that records everyone being born into what God desires to be His Family. HE is our Father in Heaven! The first mention of this “Book” is in Exodus 32:33,where God says,”Whoever has sinned against Me I will blot out of my book.” The people in Exodus rebelled against their Father in Heaven when their impatience turned into a sense of entitlement that made them want a god that they could “make, that would go before them”->basically, a god, going & doing & providing for what they wanted...instead of honoring Their Father in Heaven. They began to LOATH Their Father in Heaven by seeking and running away to other gods (practicing abomination)! By doing this, they divorced themselves from being God’s children...in essence erasing their names from His Book! We can do the same thing when we begin to have the same kind of pride & arrogance, & a sense of entitlement that the people in Exodus had. A door to our lives is opened into our minds/hearts/lives when we fail to deal with these ideas & thoughts quickly by patiently seeking to hear from our Father in Heaven about what HIS WORD and ALL CREATION have to say about HIS GLORY and HIS MERCIES enabled and empowered through Jesus Christ. TRUSTING and FOLLOWING Jesus is the ONLY way that our sin is washed away and our names remain written in the Lamb’s Book of Life -> our persevering Trust in Christ alone to Save us AND Guide us, into and through every day we have the privilege of living. Dear Lord, so many times, I make YOU into a little “g” god that is infinitely far from WHO AND WHAT YOU truly are…and in this arrogance I even put words into YOUR mouth and have ideas about YOU and about life that are totally upside-down. I pray for YOUR WORD and YOUR SPIRIT to open my heart and to open the eyes of all I am.. so that I can begin to have a peak at the GLORY of WHO AND WHAT YOU TRULY ARE every moment of every day…so that I may grow in my AWE of You…and may I grow, with Your help, in understanding how much and more I should be in AWE of Who You are AND WHAT You have done for me through CHRIST ALONE....& may I seek to honor You as my Father in Heaven with every breath & every step You give me to take.

The Bible leaves no gray area about our need to be cleansed of sin, as John1:7-9 states->”But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”. King David knew this as he prayed in Psalm51, ”Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love, according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are proved right in your verdict and justified when you judge...Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow....Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me...”. The greatest courage we might ever have is that needed to be absolutely humble & absolutely transparent within ourselves, and with others..& especially with God. Our pride and arrogance may be the most strategic parts of our being that are leveraged by the enemies of Almighty God to turn us away from our absolute need for a Savior...and away from a desire to know God as our Father! After Jesus says, ”He who overcomes shall inherit these things,& I will be his/her God and he/she will be my son/daughter.” in Revelation21:7, He says “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars-their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.T his is the second death.” Jesus is not being mean in any way here. As Jesus talks about the ultimate destination for those that do not overcome the arrogance & pride that terminally turns us away from the Mercies & Graces that Jesus paid so dearly for us to have, you know that there is EXTREME PAIN in Jesus’ Heart as HE is offering these verses as a last warning for those that are denying themselves the courage needed to be transparent and honest before people, & especially before HIS Throne about our sin in our hearts. And God Himself leverages all of HIS Ways to make known to everyone the condition of our hearts->Romans1:18-20,”For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For HIS invisible attributes, namely, HIS eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” David knew this as he opened his heart to God in the prayer above. The problem we have is in turning to the courage that will enable us to be as transparent and honest as David was! This is the “cowardly” that Jesus is talking about->allowing our arrogance & pride to blind us to TRUTH. This cowardice is what opens the door of our minds/hearts/lives to sins of unbelief of God and His Word; to our being vile/disagreeable/unpleasant/foul; cutthroat/slanderers/deceptive; sexually immoral in our thoughts, hearts,& bodies;& becoming those who practice magic arts/rely on anything other than God’s wisdom & discernment; having idols of success, accomplishment, & placing our FAITH in anything other than Christ; and finally refusing to appreciate Absolute Truth and Revere TRUTH…leading us away from the Eternal Life that the Bible promises, and away from the place that Jesus says he has gone away to prepare for us(John 14:2). Dear LORD, I pray for the kind of contrition and humility that David had in Psalm 19 be in my life…so that David’s prayer in that Psalm may be my prayer - “….Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back YOUR servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me….Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in YOUR sight, O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer.”