Good Morning Gorgeous,

It’s a brand new day. A fresh new start. A new day to seek God and be open to a fresh revelation from Him.

A new day to expect to learn something new.

Or

A new day to unlearn something old.

If you still have breath in your lungs, God has more to teach you.

You don’t know it all. You haven’t arrived. And Jesus still has things to show you about His Kingdom.

And the moment we believe we have nothing new to learn and God has nothing new to reveal to us, we are in trouble with either deadly pride or there’s a major plank in our eye.

Jesus taught difficult spiritual truths and the Pharisees, which were the most religious people of the day, MISSED it! They didn’t understand. They refused to unlearn and relearn. They ceased be teachable or moldable. They self righteously believed that they already knew it all. They had studied the scriptures their whole life and weren’t open to any new revelation even if the One Revealed was the Lord Himself!!

Lord, let us not miss a single truth You are trying to teach us!

God has each believer on this incredible journey of growing up in Him. He is continually revealing more and more of Himself, His character, His plans, how His kingdom works, and inviting us to partner with Him in kingdom assignments.

And the more we hunger and thirst for Him, the more He gives. The more we desire to do His will, the more He reveals His will. The more we ask with sincerity of heart, the more He answers.

Amidst a confusing culture, I desire to continually be running to Jesus to find out what He thinks about the tough topics, the hurt in the world, the pain I see, and how He wants me to move amidst this dark age.

In order to grow up as mature and able to both bear and hold much fruit, I must be willing to be pruned and gardened by the One who created me with the purpose of bearing fruit in the first place.

The orange tree doesn’t get to choose to bear apples. It must bear the fruit for which it was created. Our culture tells us that we can chase any dream we so desire and we can do anything if we work hard enough. But what if it’s counter to the call and perfect destiny of Christ?

If we chase our own will, we won’t bear the fruit that was so specially set aside for our life. We will face constant struggle and uphill resistance as we try to bear fruit that wasn’t meant for us.

A much easier path is to lean into the Lord and offer up our whole selves to be shaped and pruned and molded as He so desires.

Talk about COUNTER culture! To abandon self and do the will of the Father is exactly what this Christian life is all about.

It’s not about adding Jesus to your life, it’s radically laying your whole self down and your life becoming Jesus’s so that He can work in you and through you.

Anyone who preaches Jesus as an add on to your life to simply enrich it is teaching a false Jesus.

Jesus only had followers who left everything behind to follow Him. The rich young ruler tried to follow Jesus and Jesus said that the only way to follow Him was to get rid of everything that he was clinging to and follow Jesus with his WHOLE heart. When the man couldn’t do that, Jesus didn’t force him to follow him. The man went away sad.

He didn’t have the heart of Peter, James, John, or some of the apostles that came after Jesus’s death like Paul and Timothy.

Friends, Jesus didn’t teach a prosperity gospel that if you followed Him, your earthly life would be now be perfect and that He was simply an added accessory or title you could take on.

He said to follow Him was to lose your life. To follow Him was to pick up your cross. To follow Him was to leave it all behind, anything that hindered your obedience and faithfulness to Christ, must be left to fully follow Him.

Today this means leaving behind old thought patterns, strong belief systems, religious practices that bring false security, influences of culture, going the way of the crowd, worrying what others will think if you get too radical in your walk with Christ, and living on the fence with one foot in the world and one foot in the kingdom.

And because the pull of the world is so so strong, we live in it, we work in it, many of our friends and family are still prebelievers, we must continually get before God and ask for Him to shape our thoughts, our beliefs, our talk, our walk, and ultimately, our destiny.

Friends, if you’ve been following Jesus for a long time, you should not look or sound like the world. Your beliefs should be getting closer and closer to fully and completely lining up with the very thoughts and mind of Christ.

And yet, of course we are in process, so there will always be growth taking place. We will continue to be molded and shaped until our final breath.

My heart cry today is that I would remain moldable and shapeable. That I would be like putty in the Father’s Hands. That I would submit to His shaping, His design, His molding, and His thoughts would become mine. My old ways would pass away. My old thinking would be worked out of me as I take on His thoughts and will for my life. That He would gently remove lies I’ve believed. That He would show me places that I’ve partnered with logic over faith. That He would reveal planks in my eye and then gently remove them so I could see with spiritual eyes things of the Kingdom! That He would cleanse me daily of worldly thinking and worldly desires so that I can be used to advance heaven’s agenda in the earth. That’s my cry and I believe that if Christians around the globe made that our cry, we would see the promise of Jesus unfold before our eyes! That not even the gates of hell could overcome us! We would be forces of light and life that people would run to for healing, and all darkness would bow to the light of Christ shining from these Christian earthen vessels who simply surrendered to the total will of Jesus Christ..

Dear Heavenly Father,

Following You is both simple, yet hard. Filled with abundant blessings, yet continually letting go. Joy abounds, and yet we grieve the losses. Hope arises as we know You are moving. Faith becomes our sight as we look to the spiritual realm and not what our physical eyes are viewing. Lord, HERE I am! Shape me, mold me, renew me, prune me, take what’s not mine in Christ, remove the world’s influence over my mind and my choices. Make me more and more and more and more like You Jesus and less and less and less like my flesh. Grow up my spirit and weaken the flesh. Set me ablaze for kingdom work and let my own agenda be broken into pieces that can never be ressurected. I trust You Lord to fully surrender my whole heart and mind and life over to Your will! Keep me teachable, shapeable, moldable, and willing to grow.

In Jesus’s Name,

Amen.

Blessings and abundant life in Christ be upon you,

Vanessa Lynn

*If this post blessed you today, please consider sharing it with a friend or on your favorite social media outlet!

And if you came across this post and you haven’t yet accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, may I encourage you that by choosing Him you receive eternal life in heaven, BUT ALSO abundant life NOW. Following Him is the most precious adventure you have ever taken!! All you have to do to get started is to pray and receive Him as Lord. The Bible says to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and believe with your heart the precious gospel message that Jesus taught. Repent of your sins which means simply to ask Jesus to forgive you and then choose to walk away from them and go in the New Direction that God is calling you to. Confess or speak that you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who died for you, that He was resurrected from the dead, and ascended to heaven. And that you recieve Him as your Lord and Savior. That you are sorry for your sins and you recieve His FULL and complete forgiveness for every wrong you’ve ever committed. And that you are choosing to follow Him now and leave the ways of the world behind for the things of Jesus!!! And if you mean that with your heart, you are saved and set free to live a new life free of sin! The Bible says you are now a brand new creation! Old things have passed away and new things have come!!! The Bible also says that all of heaven rejoices whenever a person is saved!!!! Just imagine the party being held in heaven on your behalf right now!!!