Strengthen yourself in the Lord

stolen from bill johnson...can't wait to read the rest of the book

Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flows the springs of life. Prov. 4:23

All of the issues of our lives flow forth like rivers from one central location- the heart- and what we do in stewarding that one place determines the outcome of our lives. We live in the crossroads daily that place b/w mystery and revelation. My job is to trust my heavenly father with the problems and the situations I don’t understand and focus on stewarding my will to what I know to be true. My success in watching over my heart determines the measure of kingdom breakthrough I will experience in life. In other words, my inner reality often defines the nature of my external reality: If I prosper in my heart, my life will prosper. Strengthening ourselves in the Lord is an essential part of stewarding our heart. The tools that I have learned to use to strengthen myself in the Lord have become calculated responses to the warning lights of my heart, but the fact is I can only respond correctly if I already recognize and understand the signals my heart sends. If the oil light comes on in my car and my response is to take it to the carwash, I clearly do not understand what the light means. Worse yet the real problem has not been dealt with yet and will soon manifest in a break down. When it comes to my heart I have found that the only way I can correctly use the tools I have received to strengthen myself is to establish foundational truths in my thinking- truths about the nature of reality, who God is, and who He has made me to be, these truths help me identify my heart signals.

Did you know that your thinking and your heart are intimately connected? The western mindset compartmentalizes human beings when it comes to feelings and thinking, the heart feels and the mind thinks, but scripture says for as he thinks in his heart, so he is (Proverbs 23:7) In fact the Hebrew definition of the word heart encompasses the entirety of your inner man. Your heart is the seat of your mind, imagination, will, desires, emotions, affections, memory and conscience it is also the center of your communication with the spirit of God and possesses the faculties that perceive spiritual realities. Scripture refers to this spiritual perception as the eyes of your heart thus your heart is what enables you to have faith, which is the evidence of things not seen (Heb 11:1) Your faith grows as your heart, led by the holy spirit, perceives and understands the invisible realm of spiritual reality. The unseen realm governs the visible realm and brings your mind and will into agreement with the reality of the kingdom. In essence what I have just described is the process of renewing your mind. Our internal focus on and agreement with spiritual reality- either the reality of God’s kingdom established on the truth or the destructive reality of the enemy’s kingdom established on lies, gives permission for that reality to flow into the issues of life. This power of agreement with spiritual reality through our focus adds another dimension to the principle that life flows from the heart; you become what you behold. As I said in the previous chapter, God has made clear what we are becoming- the potential we are all called to grow into throughout our lifetime. We are becoming kings and priests of the planet following the lead of our elder brother Jesus. This is why Hebrews tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus (Heb. 12:2)

Our goal is to sustain our focus on him, b/c we become like the one we behold. The degree to which we understand our identity and purpose, who we are becoming, is always determined by the degree of our revelation of Jesus. He is the exact representation of the Father in whose image we were created.

Beholding Jesus cannot be reduced to reading about Him in scripture. He died that the same spirit that was in him and on him giving him constant access to what the father was saying and doing could be sent to live in us. The truth is that every believer has constant access to the manifest presence of God. WE ARE AN OPEN HEAVEN. But we have to take advantage of that access and we do that by turning our focus on him. Only in that place of communion with him do we come to know him and consequently gain the revelation of our identity and purpose and as we agree with the revelation of who he is, the reality of who he is, starts to flow into our lives and transform us into his likeness. All fruitfulness in our lives flows from this place of intimacy with the Lord. All fruitfulness.

1 Samuel 30:6