Triumphant Victorious Reminders | August 27, 2021 | Hold Loosely While Clinging Tightly

It's been April, 2019 since my last entry. To say, "Much has happened since then" is definitely an understatement. As many of you may know in 2017, I started a YouTube channel called, Let's Talk with Teresa Ann and began a perspective shifting segment via Instagram LIVE on Monday's titled, Heavenly Wit Monday, based on the book I released in March, 2020 titled Heavenly Wit: Seeing Mission Fields in the Midst of Battlefields. It's definitely been a journey to learn how to see with God's Divine insight. To see the mission fields in the midst of the battlefields. 

Meanwhile, learning from the effortless flow of water, how to be flexible to simply lean in to hear the voice of God through the Holy Spirit's help with properly reading God's Word and praying. Continuing to learn that prayer is simply yet profoundly agreeing with Him. It's not about Him agreeing with me. 

To know that this life is about holding onto Him so tightly so we can hold everything else so loosely. I've been learning that there's a gravity within this world that pulls us into being reliant on the things of this life; to be repetitive within the boundaries that we've created instead of being submitted to the creativity of God in even obeying Him. The grace of Who He is invites us into that dance of obedience. Yet this is so foreign to our good, credible habits that are often times not God inspired. They were in the beginning but we didn't move in Him to know what He wanted to do. Instead, I would tell Him what I was going to do next...to even write that is laughable, isn't it?

There's been a classroom experience with the Holy Spirit. As I hold onto Him tightly, I can't help but to hold everything else so loosely. There's this meditation of Psalm 37:4, that when I begin to delight in Who He truly is, the desires of my heart are now submitted to Him and begin to transform. My heart now only desires what He wants; my heart only wants what He desires. In that truth is where we can find out that His every desire will come to pass in our lives as we continue to delight in Him.  

Another learning lesson is following through in my own disciplines can quickly become a trap to pridefully boast in self-righteousness. In that is where I can quickly forget that I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It is only by His doing and His invitation that provokes a yes to His glorious invitation. It's a life of active worship that stills the mind from wanting to control everything and realizing more and more that His yoke is easy and His burden is light. 

For instance when I took notice of the effortless flow of water and how flexible it is, it was a reminder to be that way in the Lord. Yet it's so easy to be distracted into being rigid and staying within the lines of great discipline. Yet I have found that this is from the place of trying to get God's approval. Whereas now, because of knowing I have His approval, I just have a greater desire to obey Him with His effortless joy. His grace enables us to obey. This is when we quickly find out that it's not from a place of obligation but from the place of grateful heart. Obedience simply becomes an expression and from that place it looks like we are sacrificing. Yet when we go after Him with grateful heart, obedience follows and no wonder it becomes better than sacrifice; because the sacrificing happens by default. 

Isn't this amazing? 

So, with all of that, I am learning that procedures within companies and corporations is one thing; but to bring that mindset into my relationship with God; it is impossible to know Him for He truly is within that heart and headspace. In learning to be flexible like water, is learning His love is to surf the waves of the Spirit and follow after Jesus.

Yet for those who have found safety in things and people that were seemingly consistent and reliable; for the most part, 2020 brought that to an end. Many of those things we just 'knew' were structurally sound, they crumbled and toppled into nothingness. Those thoughts that would drive me, "People want consistency and reliability." -  it sounded great but those were chains that bound. It sounded so true until I got that loving reminder that felt like a joyful "gut punch." It was with God's insightful truth with this Triumphant Victorious Reminder, "No. People don't want consistency and reliability; they think they do. But their greatest need is for Almighty God. For He is Consistently Reliable in the midst of the changing tides of this life." 

When I "felt" that "knowing" I was immediately stirred to read, Isaiah 40:8, "The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord will stand forever." Then another scripture that I was led to was from the Gospel of John as recorded in John 2:24, "Because of the miraculous signs Jesus did in Jerusalem at the Passover celebration, many began to trust in Him. But Jesus didn't trust them, because He knew all about people. No one needed to tell Him about human nature, for He knew what was in each person's heart." 

The Holy Spirit didn't call us to trust our processes, other people, or anything within this life; He simply called us to follow Him so we could actively trust Him more and more. It's in the relationship with Him; it's in the fellowship with Him that we can begin to trust Him and realize how much more we are in need of Him. The trusting in Him intensifies and then that's how we are able to hold onto everything loosely as we cling to Him so tightly. 

Triumphant Victorious Reminders,

Teresa Ann, https://linktr.ee/lets_talk_studio

What is God showing you today?