Tag: wins

Ramping Up

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What if Holy Spirit isn’t dependent on your energy level? What if He’s not limited by your abilities? What if your soundness of mind or spirals of thought can’t ruin His day? What if your level of momentum at this present moment cannot stall out His unstoppable forward movement? What if He’s not as impressed with your shortcomings as you are? What if you became more impressed with His ability than your inability? And . . .

What if Holy Spirit is RAMPING UP His work in your life and your world? I could answer all those questions for you, but you know the answer. I want to challenge you to KNOW the answer (so deep in your soul that’s it’s unshakeable in your heart, words and actions). How do you get there? Meditate on God’s ability in you and your world. You may feel like you’re stuck, or drowning, or moving backwards, but know this – Jesus completely understands AND He is, in NO way, stuck or drowning, or moving backwards! Every real transformation, real breakthrough, every miracle – Holy Spirit did it AND He remembers how to do it. He doesn’t have amnesia and He’s ramping up His work in your life and in your world. That’s God’s word for you.

One challenge – read back through the above questions and statements as many times as it takes to get them deep in your spirit! “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 1:6 NIV)

What is victory?

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“I got to tell her that I couldn’t do that, only God could heal her hand!” Juliana (my 9 yr old), says excitedly to me at 10 PM last night. “Whaaaaa!!??!! That is so awesome!!!! . . . Now, it’s time to go to bed.” Kids always seem to pull out the best conversation AFTER bedtime – haha. At school her friend was telling her about her sprained wrist, and she told her how they had prayed for mine on Saturday and it was healed (power in testimony!). So her friend said, “You can pray for mine if you want.” God is so good! That’s a win!

So what’s the difference between a win and a victory? Ultimately, we are seeking victory. Wins are awesome, but they’re also momentary. With God, what is the victory? Here’s some insight . . .

“This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. . . . This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.” (1 Jn. 5:2,4 NIV)

To love Father God, His Son and from that place to love His kids, builds our faith and that is the victory. However, I’ve had wins that caused me to celebrate a little too much in MY heart and not continue to press in to HIS heart. There was nothing wrong with the win, but my response to it did not produce victory – and that’s the difference. God will want to give us more wins, when we are stewarding those wins to drive us deeper into His heart. I have had losses that demoralized me and I didn’t dive deeper into God’s heart either. Neither the wins or losses are as important as how we are stewarding them. Are we allowing both wins and losses to push us deeper into God’s heart? Because that is the victory. We can live in a state of victory with eternity written on hearts (Eccl 3:11) as we do that.

So, celebrate the wins, learn from the losses and use both as motivation to dive deeper into God’s heart – that’s the victory.