You are Beautiful and Priceless

Too often the message we hear is one of disdain and disapproval. We hear words that imply we’re not good enough in beauty, intelligence, or behavior. We experience judgment instead of grace, condemnation instead of mercy, and anger instead of mercy and compassion. Beloved, the accusations against your heart are not God’s. His heart is so tender toward each one of us, filled with incredible love, joy, and forgiveness as well as delight in simply who we are: who He created us to be.

Psalm 139:14 says we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” by the same God who flung the stars into space and created the majesty of mountains and oceans.

Isaiah 62:3-4 declares, “You shall also be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no longer be termed Forsaken…for the Lord delights in you.”

Furthermore, Zephaniah 3:15, 17 radiates the passion of our Daddy God for us, “The Lord has taken away your judgments, He has cast out your enemy. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. You shall see disaster no more…The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

For anyone struggling to believe God’s delight in you today, below are the lyrics to several powerful songs about your worth, value, and beauty. Don’t listen to the accusations and condemnation of the enemy. Saturate yourself in the joy of Jesus in who He made you today, Beloved. 

·         1GN - Guard Your Heart

·         From the album UNITE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_xZtdlYlMw

In the middle of this crazy messed up world we live in
Surrounded by voices pressuring us to give in
Believe me, I get it
I know you wanna fit in
Everybody's telling you
What you're missing
But don't listen to anything but the truth

Know your worth ‘cause you are priceless
More than gold, more than diamonds
Be the light inside the dark
Keep your faith and guard your heart
It's where life, it's where love is
Every beat has a purpose
It holds everything you are
Above all else
Guard your heart
Your heart
Your heart
Your heart
Guard your heart

Maybe you feel all alone like something's missing
And all of your friends have found their prince charming
Believe me, I get it
You're so tempted
To settle or give up on love
But it's in God's timing
You can't rush it, don't believe you are not enough

I'm not saying to build a wall
Just to trust that God won't let you fall
I'm not saying to build a wall
Just to trust that God's in control of it all

·         FOR KING & COUNTRY - Priceless

From the album Run Wild. Live Free. Love Strong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPgSrMOTnqM

Mirror mirror
Mirror on the wall
Telling those lies
Pointing out your flaws
That isn't who you are
That isn't who you are
It might be hard to hear
But let me tell you dear
If you could see what I can see
I know you would believe
That isn't who you are
There's more to who you are

So when it's late
You're wide awake
Too much to take
Don't you dare forget
That in the pain
You can be brave
Hear me say

(Chorus)

I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
Oh so priceless
Irreplaceable
Unmistakable
Incomparable
Darling it's beautiful
I see it all in you
Oh so priceless

No matter what you've heard
This is what you're worth
More than all the money all the diamonds & pearls
Oh this is who you are
Yeah this is who you are

So when it's late
You're wide awake
Too much to take
Don't you dare forget
That in the pain
You can be brave
Hear me say

(Chorus)

I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
Oh so priceless
Irreplaceable
Unmistakable
Incomparable
Darling it's beautiful
I see it all in you
Oh so priceless

Sisters
We can start again
Give honor till the end
Love we can start again
Brothers
We can start again
Give honor till the end
Yeah we can start again

(Chorus)

I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
Oh so priceless
Irreplaceable
Unmistakable
Incomparable
Darling it's beautiful
I see it all in you
Oh so priceless

I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
We can start again

I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
I see a rose in bloom
At the sight of you
I see you dressed in white
Every wrong made right
Oh so priceless

VERIDIA - Furious Love

From the album Inseparable

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts_osvAzEhA

He said that I would never be
A silhouette that he would want
I shifted shape and recreated me
The girl I was, I soon forgot
A love like that won't last long
So suddenly it all goes wrong
When beauty starts to fade

But you say I am beautiful
I don't need the world's approval
Only you madly pursue me
And jealously tell me
I am worthy of
Furious love

With all you have and all you are
Your universe was incomplete
In a sea of silver stars
Still the sky was dark
And so you dreamed of me
A love like that is all I want
I don't ever have to be what I am not
God, I love the way

You say I am beautiful
I don't need the world's approval
Only you madly pursue me
And jealously tell me
I am worthy of
Furious love

Your passion is a fire
An all consuming fire
I can't get enough
Furious love

You say I am beautiful
I don't need the world's approval
Only you madly pursue me
And jealously tell me
I am worthy of
Furious love

Your passion is a fire
An all consuming fire
I can't get enough
Furious love

Your passion is a fire
And all consuming fire
I can't get enough
Furious love

No Holding Back

Tonight while we worshiped during service at Faith Center, I saw a picture: a great dam, a strong dam, like the dam at Niagara Falls with a great big, beautiful, peaceful lake behind it. I felt in that picturesque moment, the power of the Spirit suddenly burst upon the lake.

As the power was released, I saw people in the water and the water felt like the souls of the people filled with such radical, absolute passion that they could no longer stand being held back. The people and the water rushed at the dam and broke through it, pulsating over the rubble fast and strong.

I felt in that moment that my heart wanted to burst. Yes, Lord! Let there be such intense breakthrough that nothing can hold the church back.

Then I felt, but I’m not sure, that the Lord said, “The dam is holding My church. It is built to create the lake, a quiet, peaceful place to learn and grow. But get ready! Get ready! The power of My Spirit is about to be released in a new way, a way unparalleled in history.

"It will seem as if the whole dam is breaking—the whole structure upon which you, My dearly beloved, lean. Upon which, you My dearly beloved Church, lean. Because I cannot be held back by anything man-made. I must have a glorious Bride—a Bride created for excellence, released by the Spirit to expect more than mind can see or heart can imagine.

"I’m coming again. I’m coming for a Bride washed, redeemed, and sanctified, wholly one in heart with Me. So I’m doing a new thing. I’m doing a radical thing. I’m taking the old and breaking it apart to allow an even greater impartation of grace by My Spirit.

"See, I’m doing this thing, here, now. And I’m letting you know so you can get ready! I want you ready so there’s no hindrance, no obstruction to grace. Don't fear, Beloved. Perfect love casts out fear and My love is perfect for you, My beautiful Bride, My beautiful Church.

"I say, 'Get ready!' Rush smooth and strong in perfect sync with the new wine I’m bringing, the passionate grace I’m imparting, not just to one or two but a dispensation of anointing upon everyone from the youngest to the oldest, from the wisest to the simplest so that everyone may see and know that I am the Lord your God.”

Stewarding King's Gold

For this is the will of God, your sanctification… I Thessalonians 4:3

No matter where we are in our lives—young, old, married, divorced, widowed, single—there is one area that all of us must steward with care. The area of sexual/romantic passion.

For some of us this resource, a gift from God, exists in its potential, hidden underground like untouched reservoirs of petrol. Others of us who have participated in an intimate relationship have discovered the gushing, almost overwhelming power of sexual desire, like the force of a petrol spring. Like an unexpected strike while we are cultivating friendships, suddenly the oil gushes out with abandon, heedless of everything and everyone around.  For others among us, the oil has ceased to surge out with relentless force, yet the reserve still exists, deep under the surface.

For generations, men and women have built oil rigs—the institution called marriage—over these forceful springs. They recognized that the thick, murky substance, called black gold, was a bountiful resource upon their land, and they respected the truth that both petrol and sexual/romantic passion must be handled with care in order to benefit the owners. If handled carelessly, God's gift of passion, King's gold, creates great harm rather than great good, acting just like crude oil, coating land, animals, and people with its toxic, gooey texture, ruining the crops growing in the area, and forming a mirey bog.

Instead of respecting the reasons behind tradition, recent generations have been exhorted to exude a laissez-faire attitude toward sex and romance. They’ve been told by the leading gurus in human wisdom, “Go ahead! Frolic in it! Have fun! It’s natural—enjoy it!” Then they’re even handed matches to light a fire and dance in the flames. After all, passionate love is explosive. It’s amazing. It’s the black gold everybody says will make us rich and famous and above all—make us feel loved. It’s also black and ugly and deadly for those coated in the oil when the fire ignites.

Just like petrol, sexual passion requires special equipment to reap the benefits we all know it has. The Bible says clearly that the special equipment needed is marriage. Worldly gurus wave aside the significance of a legal ceremony, blithely declaring that a wedding certificate doesn’t make a difference. But God says with incredible clarity that marriage matters. When we enter into a marriage covenant, we bring God into the union—along with His oil rigging.

The oil rigging plunges into the oil well and brings up the natural resource for the benefit of all. The owners of that field can then use the oil to fuel their ovens, their cars, their lamps, and their homes. Petrol converts into many forms for many uses, all of which produce dividends for the couple who submit to God’s covering of marriage. The oil rigging also enables the couple to drill deeper and bring up the petrol sitting in reserve even when the first rushes of passion have subsided.

God’s oil rigging makes sure the passion doesn’t destroy the good seed He’s placed in our souls, the strong character He’s developing within us. However, those who refuse to enter into a marriage agreement are like farmers who refusesto invest in drilling equipment. They let the oil keep pumping out until the whole land is coated with black tar, unfit for man or beast to walk on. In the same way, sexual activity outside of marriage dumps toxic petrol all over the insides of our hearts, clogging our receptivity of Living Water.  When oil covers a land, water just runs right off. It can’t penetrate the earth or enable plants to grow.

Some of you may be like me, knowing that the force of a petrol spring exists and wondering how to contain it since the oil rigging is not in place. In these cases, the Lord has said to me, “The powerful force of this desire must be covered by a huge, heavy stone so that the oil does not contaminate the land.” I cried out to Him, “What stone is strong enough to withstand the force of desire when it hits?”

The Lord said, “I am the Rock. I am the One who covers you.”

Ah, Lord, how amazing and wonderful You are! Jesus is the Rock who covers our desires, reserving us for the union that will bring honor to Him. Until that day, He requires obedience and faithful trust. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God…For God did not call us to uncleanness but in holiness. Therefore he who rejects this does not reject man, but God, who has also given us His Holy Spirit” (I Thessalonians 4:3-8).

Jesus doesn’t ask what can’t be done. He wouldn’t say to abstain and wait for marriage if we were unable to obey.

Nor can He protect our land if we keep edging the Rock off in order to please ourselves. The oil will seep up and contaminate our hearts, building into a toxic wasteland within our souls if we do not take a firm stand against all sexual activity while single. Once married, only sex for the sake of the marriage partner will please the Lord. Removing the Rock to gaze at pornography, masturbate, contemplate love-making scenes within the mind or on TV, or any other activity that pleases the flesh rather than the Lord, will all pump that black oil into the deepest crevices of our souls.

And eventually toxic exposure will destroy us. (Romans 6:15-23)

Praise God, though, that when we come to the point of repentance, the place where we’re sick of all the pretenses and self-gratifications, Jesus is there to wash us clean. Ephesians 5:26 says Jesus cleanses and sanctifies us by the washing of water by the word. What word? The word of truth. The word of righteousness.

Father, Spirit, and Son will never contradict the Scriptures that testify of them.  No one can say that God has authorized their unmarried or extra-marital sexual activity. If they seek to claim a special privilege, they have deceived themselves. Nor can we claim that since God is so forgiving, we’re allowed to wallow in the mire of unrestrained sexual passion anytime we want to then be washed clean. The toxicity of the land will testify to the Law of God: “What a man sows, that he will also reap. He who sows to the flesh will of the flesh reap corruption. He who sows to the Spirit, will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.” (Galatians 6:8)

That life is for today. Now. Abundant life.

Praise God for redemption! Praise God for repentance! Praise God for second and third and fourth chances! But let us also choose—choose—to walk in joyful obedience, knowing the great price He paid for our cleansing.

Lord Jesus, today cleanse us, wash us, sanctify us, and place the strong Rock of Your very Person—our relationship with You—over the desire for intimacy that exists within us. We choose this day to submit to You.

Make us a people ready and useful for the outpouring of Your splendor!

(For further Spirit-filled studies and counseling on the stewardship of Biblical sexuality, visit http://www.masteringlife.org.)

Every Fire Needs Grace

In the natural, every fire must have two ingredients to keep burning: fuel and oxygen.

Firefighters pre-burn an area of land with smaller fires they can control so that when the raging wildfire arrives at that strip of land, it finds no more fuel. With no more trees or brush to consume, the fire turns back on itself and dies. In his book Welcoming a Visitation of the Holy Spirit, Wes Campbell, pastor of New Life Vineyard Fellowship in Kelowna, British Columbia, shares, “In the same way, the fire of the Spirit must be touching new people every day in order to keep blazing.” I would add that the fire within our souls must stay in continual connection with God to stay alive.

Isaiah 9:18-19 makes this same correlation, although in a negative sense. Remember, what is true spiritually applies both in the positive and negative. The prophet writes, “For wickedness burns as the fire; it shall devour the briers and thorns, and kindle in the thickets of the forest. They shall mount up like rising smoke. Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts the land is burned up, and the people shall be as fuel for the fire. No man shall spare his brother.” The emphasis of the passage is not on physical fire devouring natural trees but about how spiritual wickedness devours people.

Spiritual passion operates by the same principle. Love for the Lord ignites in our hearts when we offer our lives as fuel for the Lord’s flame, the flame of Yah. This fire then leaps forward, blown by the wind of the Spirit, to the next willing heart—the next person hungry for God’s love and personal Presence.

Jordan Fowler conveys this principle with beautiful and powerful imagery in the song Fuel:

“I have no silver and no gold to give.

No frankincense or precious myrrh.

But what I have to You I give: a heart that’s broken for the world.

Consume me for Your fire and use me for Your heart’s desire:

To spread Your flame to every tribe and nation.

I give up my life to You to burn as Your holy fuel.

Ignite my heart to burn up for the nations.

My life can be Your fuel—my hopes, my dreams, my wants, my all.

My life can be Your fuel.” 

Second, fire must have oxygen. We can have all the wood in the world, but if the atmosphere is sucked dry of oxygen, every fire will instantly extinguish. That’s why small fires can be suffocated with a heavy blanket or stomped out by a tough boot. The same truth applies to us as people. In the realm of spiritual analogy, oxygen represents grace. Robert Louis Stevenson once said, “There is nothing but God’s grace. We walk upon it; we breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the universe.” Ole Hallesby said, “The ‘air’ which our souls need also envelops all of us at all times and on all sides. God is round about us…on every hand, with many-sided and all-sufficient grace.”

Without grace, we perish. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God!” (Ephesians 2:8). Without grace, our passion for God suffocates. “Our sufficiency is from God…not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills but the Spirit gives life” (II Corinthians 3:5-6). The fastest way to kill passion for Jesus is with legalism. Will we still love Him? Yes, but our strength to serve Him will be gone. Why? Because “The joy of the Lord is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10) and “Desire gave you renewed strength” (Isaiah 57:10 NLT). This spiritual principle also applies in a positive and negative. We can be passionate for things that are not of God, pursuing them, such as Isaiah talks about, because desire spurs us on. Or we can crucify sinful passions and cultivate passion for Jesus. This passion becomes our strength to keep running after Him and keep pouring ourselves out to others. Proverbs 11:29 says, “The way of the Lord is strength for the upright.” Why? Because He is our delight and greatest pleasure (Psalm 16:11).

However, legalism kills desire. When we “ought” to do something and are critically judged by others around us, or even by ourselves, when we fail to get it right, our mistakes become a towering wall of perfectionism—an impassable barrier between us and the joy of the Lord. The Apostle Paul writes with rejoicing, “But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” Why is he rejoicing so greatly? Because Christ paid the cost of all our mistakes! Every sin and failure and misunderstanding was laid upon His shoulders at Calvary. He hung upon that tree to make sure we’re never trapped behind the Wall of Perfectionism again!

Does His incredible grace mean we can sin and not be called to account? No, but grace means that when we realize how badly we’ve blown it and that we’re on the wrong side of the wall again, we can leap over it, back into the place of right fellowship with the Lord (Psalm 18:29, I John 1:9). The Holy Spirit declares to us with beautiful invitation, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). The Spirit calls out again to us through the prophet Isaiah, “Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come buy and eat. Yes come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price…. Let your soul delight itself in abundance! Incline your ear and come to Me. Hear, and your soul shall live!” (55:1-3)

We come to God through grace. There is no other way. Anyone who tries to live by the law must keep every part, but there has never been a man or woman who can (Galatians 6:13). Nor can the law make anyone perfect, even after salvation through faith (Galatians 3:3). Grace alone is God’s tool to form His Son in us. Grace is the oxygen of the soul.

When grace abounds in a life, a church, and a community, then the fire of the Spirit will blaze free and strong. Our hearts will be ignited with a holy thirst to partake freely of the waters of life (Revelation 22:17).

Then we will be the Bride who calls along with the Spirit in her, “Come! Everyone who thirsts, come to the River of Life!!!”

The Holy Spirit's Oil

In the previous post, I mentioned that I was unsure of what the black oil in my vision represented. After all, petroleum isn't in Scripture. However, lamp oil is found throughout the Old and New Testaments, and I sense that for the Lord's purposes, they are the same.

In the natural world, oil is turned into kerosene and gasoline for fuel for both private and corporate use. If this black oil is the same as lamp oil referred to many times in Scripture, then the Word says, “There is desirable treasure and oil in the dwelling of the wise, but a foolish man squanders it” (Proverbs 21:20). Each of us has oil, but not every one is saved nor do all use it wisely.

So what is oil? I believe oil represents passion. It can be passion for Christ or the squandered passion of recent generations. Desire needs to fuel our walk with the Lord, or we soon burn out and begin to stray in our hearts, no longer passionate for the things of God. Zechariah 4:1-14 talks about two oil trees which supply continual oil to the lampstand in the temple. We are the temple of God (I Corinthians 3:19), and throughout the Old Testament oil represents the anointing and presence of the Holy Spirit (I Samuel 16:12-13, Isaiah 61:1).

Jesus also speaks of the wise having oil in their vessels and lamps while the foolish took no oil with them. Those who did not bring an extra supply of oil  went to buy more, but when they returned, they were not allowed into the bridegroom’s chambers (Matthew 25:3-13). We know that those who are not born again do not receive the Holy Spirit, and therefore do not have eternal life in them (Romans 8:9-11). They pursue fleshly passions, which do not qualify them to enter the kingdom of heaven, but are in fact in opposition to it (Galatians 5:24, Ephesians 4:22).

The Holy Spirit longs to fuel our passion for the Lord just like the sun is fueled by an interior energy source. Daniel 12:3 says the righteous will shine forth like the stars. I deeply believe that this word applies today. Jesus said we are the light of the world, because He is in us and He is Light (Matthew 5:14-16, John 1:4,9, 12:46). Natural light always comes from either fire made from natural resources such as oil or wood or from nuclear energy, such as the fire of the sun and stars.

Today the Holy Spirit yearns to burn within us, fusing our natural desire to His so that we will radiate so much heat that we become nuclear power plants of holy fire!

Let's seek His passion so we can live our lives on fire for Him!!!

Pursing the King of Kings

So where do we begin in our pursuit of this Jesus who loves us so passionately and gave up His Kingly rights to romance our hearts? Scripture tells us where to start this journey to meet with Him: “Enter His gates with thanksgiving; enter His courts with praise.” (Psalm 100:4)

Yes, Jesus, we praise You and thank You for the incredible gift of Yourself. And unlike any other gift that we could live without, we desperately need You. Marie Barnett says it so beautifully in her song Breathe: “This is the air I breathe…Your holy presence. This is my daily bread… Your very word spoken to me. And I can’t live without You.”

Tommy Tenney writes in his book, Finding Favor With the King: “Most of the time, we enter the court of the King according to the protocol of His presence…. We thank God because He has done something wonderful in our lives that we want to acknowledge and remember. We praise Him because of who He is, because of His attributes, or because of His ways. He is worthy of praise—period—whether we are having a good day or a bad day.” (p46)

Tenney continues, “But there are more rooms in the palace than the outer courts and the inner courts…. [W]orship…transports us into the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber, the sacred dwelling place of God’s glory…. We humble ourselves before Him simply because of who He is.” (p47)

Yahweh, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, requires humility in the person who craves His glorious presence. Why? Because while He is passionately in love with us, He is also a holy God. Pride simply cannot be in our hearts if we desire to have a heart-to-heart encounter with our wonderful Savior. Jesus shared this in His parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector. “Do you think this man went home justified [who praised himself and condemned others]? No, but God accepted the man who beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’” (Luke 18:11-14, my paraphrase)

James and Peter both felt it necessary to warn the church: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.”(James 4:6, I Peter 5:5) And God makes it very clear when He proclaims in Isaiah 66:2, “On this one I will look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at My word.”

So what is humility? One of the key ways the enemy can trip us up is by redefining the words we ought to know, skewing their meanings away from God’s intention into a human perspective. But in order to run after our Heavenly Bridegroom, we must know what pleases Him. Humility always acknowledges my frailty and gives all the glory to God. Are there areas in our lives where we tend to pat ourselves on the back, saying to ourselves, “Good job! You were really smart to think of that. You’ve really done well with the gift God’s given you?”

Oh, dear friends, I hope that we catch ourselves and direct all the praise where it ought to go. Proverbs 27:2 says, “Let another man praise you and not your own mouth. A stranger and not your own lips.” If someone compliments you, well and good, but let us always seek to turn the attention to the Master who gave us the talents. Without Him, we are nothing. We can do nothing. “So why do you boast as though you have not received?” Paul asks the Corinthian church. (I Corinthians 4:7)

True humility directs all the glory to God. It is a conduit of praise and thanksgiving and worship. And then we find ourselves stepping with bare feet onto holy ground.

Standing, Arms Wide, Freefalling into Grace

"You'll need every bit of what you learned at YWAM," Jesus said to me a few days ago, and now I understand what He meant.

I need every bit of grace and mercy and freedom from judgment that Jesus extends to start this blogspot because fear would slap ducttape over my mouth. Two years ago I gave up my blogspot about Scripture jewels to return to China, and now I'm a divorced mother of four young children, immersed in a second year of college, studying secular psychology. What do I know about the perfect Christian life? Nothing, but I know the truth that Gerald May wrote: "Grace is God's passion." So here I am, letting go of fear and freefalling into the arms of beautiful grace to share again.

My heart overflows with all the goodness God has poured into my life, and I feel like TobyMac in his song Tonight, "Like a river no dam can hold, being driven by a Source overflowing our souls." God's grace and mercy are so big, so wonderful, and so gentle to the wounded heart that, like Peter and Paul before the Sanhedrin, I "cannot help but speak the things which we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20).

Isn't Jesus wonderful? Isn't He the most beautiful Man who ever lived? Doesn't He hold our hearts with such joyful love? For surely His heart rejoices when we rest our souls in Him. So I invite you on this blogspot to join with me in sharing what Jesus has done. We're His witnesses of His mercy and grace, and the world needs to hear it.

When I talk to people, I talk about "My Jesus." Why do I do this? Because we need a personal Savior. Jesus is real and close to each one of us when we call to Him. When we accept His testimony of Himself, recorded in the Bible, He becomes for each one of us "my Jesus, my Savior, my Healer, my Deliverer." The world needs to know this Jesus. They need to experience what A.W. Tozer said, "We can seek God and find Him! God is knowable, touchable, hearable, seeable with the mind, the hands, the ears, and the eyes of the inner man."

When I say, "My Jesus" I mean the Savior of mankind who lived and bled 2000 years ago and rose again, triumphant over hell and the grave. Hallelujah! The Father has left His record of proof in the documents composing the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible. He authenticated His life, death, and resurrection in a way that puts secular history books to shame, preserving and declaring the truth by His Spirit, confirming to our hearts and minds that we are adopted as His children when we fix our faith on Him and not on our own efforts or the devil's lies.

So help me, please, all of you who rejoice to know this Savior, in discovering more and more of our precious Jesus, falling even more radically in love with Him, and rejoicing in the passionate depths of His love for us.