+My love, it is not because you are "good" or because you are "bad" that I come to you. This love I offer is totally disconnected from your behavior. I see you. I know you. My Love transcends your feeble attempts to get things right. I AM LOVE. It is the very inability to be who you want to be that My Heart is drawn to! This is why it's so important to not judge. Don't judge others and don't judge yourself! When you feel like things are spinning our of control and your emotions are raw; when confusion wraps tight around your mind and heart...STOP! Step back and know that I am God! I am YOUR GOD...Who sees the whole - beginning to end. Remind yourself of the ways I've protected you and revealed My Love for you over and over. Right now, all you can think of is what you are losing. This slides you into the black hole of all the times where you felt surrounded by "no's." The mountain of disappointments looks huge to you...casting a dark shadow over everything, even though the sun is shining. Even though My Love for you hasn't changed, you feel abandoned and desolate. Take heart My love. Trust now in the darkness and believe that My light of Love never stops shining on you! Take all the loss and fear and disappointment (in yourself and in others) and simply COME TO ME! There are no words to capture or even understand what you are feeling. I know your struggle. Accept the unknowing and your weakness and step towards Me in faith. Declare with all your heart, that you ARE "confidant that you WILL see the Goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Believe that this Word has Power. It is true! Just speaking it can convince your mind and take you out of this black hole...back to My waiting arms. I've never moved. I will always be right by your side....for you...in you ....convincing you that you are loved perfectly....forever!

 +No matter what is going on around you, I have complete Power to keep you in the silence of My Heart. My Love - My Unfailing, Faithful Love - is the truest, most enduring FACT of your life. It is the reason you can relax and enjoy the life I have given you. You have been blessed with more than you can contain, so give...give with all your heart all that I move you to give; and enjoy being you! The enemy's only tactic is to take away your identity, but My love, you are too rooted in My identity now for that to happen. Each day brings you deeper into Me...closer to the fullness of the overflowing Love of the Father....the empowering strength of the Spirit. Never let your heart be troubled over ANYTHING! I have called you ...redeemed you...formed you exactly the way I saw fit. Everything about you is covered in Grace and Beauty. Live each minute as a declaration of the Father's Goodness and Love and you cannot help but bring the fruit that only you were designed to bring. Nothing can thwart the fruit because you are Mine. As you celebrate the flowers in your garden, blooming and becoming fuller and fuller according to your tender care (and My perfect law), see yourself as My flower, planted for beauty by my scarred hand...watered in love by the Holy Spirit...fed and nurtured by your Maker...your own Father...My Father. This, My heart, is the fullness you are destined to enjoy. Nothing and no one can take this away from you. This is why you can release all worldly disappointments and cares and trust in glad celebration that God is God and everything about you is according to His loving specifications. Your only task is to be filled with thanksgiving and joy. This is your Father's desire...that you hold His hand and trust that you are His precious child and that His love for you is Perfect. In His silent, sweet Love....you are protected and empowered. All is well. All is well. This is the secret no one can touch. This is why you have confidence and peace. All is well!

-I will make darkness bright before you and smooth out the road ahead of you>" Isaiah 42:16b


+ To many people, darkness is a thing to be feared. To you - because you are in Me - it is an instrument of expectancy. Because there is no darkness in Me (dark isn't even dark to Me) you can watch with eyes of faith for the darkness to melt before you. A life of faith is a life of LIGHT. Lately, you've been thrilled by the early July fireflies as they silently swim through the dark and shine their little lights against it. The darker it is...the brighter they glow! See, My love? I am constantly USING the darkness for my GLORY!  It cannot hold up against My brightness. That's why my continual refrain is:
          "Arise shine for your Light has come and the Glory of your Lord  rises upon you." and even though; "Darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the people, the Lord rises upon you and His Glory appears over you!" Isaiah 60:1-2
This is the sum and substance of the Kingdom come to earth. This is the high calling of your life...to "shine like stars in the universe...holding out the Word of Life as a lantern on the path." Philippians 2:15-16 The call is clear. I want YOU to be My Light! The irony in this call is that once you were darkness. This is something you need to remember so that you are always aware that it is MY LIGHT shining in and through and not your own. You are actually a lot like the moon.....the inconstant moon....reflecting in varying degrees the light of the sun. But here's the difference: I live outside of shifting time. In the Kingdom, there is only fullness, so ...because of the work of the cross and the great power that destroyed death and with it darkness ... you can be ever full...fully reflecting the light of My Presence. Now ...when darkness descends...you see it differently. You open your eyes of faith and watch to see how I will overpower it. (I actually made your eyes to adjust your pupils and cause them to dilate so that dark isn't dark to you either! Indeed! You have been created in My image!) So, as you go through your days in Me, look for the ways I will dispel every darkness. Let what once brought fear and uncertainty, work to reinforce all you know about Who I am. Rejoice that your Savior has come and continues to come as the Light of the World forever. This is why you need never let your heart be troubled. This is why you can be full of Joy. This is why I want you to "Arise. Shine"... My love. Truly, "your Light has come"!
 

- "Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work and walking around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for Him."


+ Eternity is now, right now, in the simple moments of your life. Salvation is now every time you look to Me to translate what things mean. It is always in the little moments - the quiet things that could so easily be overlooked - that I wait to show you redemption. When you seek to embrace what God is doing, a day... one day can burst with revelation of My Love and Presence. The Father reaches down eternally...minute by minute...to show you His beauty...His Love...His faithfulness. He is waiting excitedly for you to find Him (not unlike the way your little Cooper waits for you to find him in Hide and Seek). So He waits to reveal exquisite beauty to you...the depth...breath...height...and length of His Perfect Love. The Holy Spirit has been given to you to expand your capacity to see, to absorb and to believe. Ah what joy it gives your Father when you simply believe in all the simple, unassuming ways He calls your name. He loves it when you turn your heart to Him...looking for His face ...sure that He loves you. Ah...when you stop and are actually still...just for Him...and you fix your gaze on what is UNSEEN and WAIT...that's when your rainbow-laden eyes are given sight! Yours is not a distant Father...demanding and elusive. Yours is a Papa Who RUNS to meet you...delights to give you His Best Robe and Who celebrates with abandon your heart of repentance. Every time you turn to Him and choose Him is a cause for great celebration. And, rather than hold you accountable and keep you at arms' length until you've demonstrated proper penance...He throws penance into His vast sea of forgetfulness, pulls you close and just LOVES you! Why do you think My constant refrain and reference...My heart and my Life were consumed by My Father! It is because there is NO ONE Who even begins to compare with HIM...EVER!! To know Him is to be set in a place of luminous, radiant JOY that cannot be matched or destroyed. This is what the crucifixion was for. He gave the Highest Proof of the Totality of His Love for you when He asked Me to be His Perfect Sacrifice to buy you back. You will never understand this exchange on this side of eternity. But the Holy Spirit...the Incarnation of His Heart...has been given to you to live in you and give you tiny glimpses. This, beloved daughter of the King, is the Truth that has set the world and you free forever.  So, when you embrace what God is doing in your life...know that you give Him pleasure. Fathers love to love their children and oh how they loved to be loved back! They get measureless Joy out of their children's simplest moments. You are His design, created out of His Perfect heart of Love...so...embrace Him back by ever holding Him in your heart.