Spirit’s Path encourages us to trust the path that Spirit leads us on, for each step is ordained. He will not let us slip when our hearts and minds are fixed on Him.
- Isaiah 30:21 (VOICE) Your ears will hear sweet words behind you: “ Go this way. There is your path; this is how you should go” whenever you must decide whether to turn to the right or the left.
- Ruth 1:16 (VOICE) Ruth: Stop pushing me away, insisting that I stop following you! Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God.
- Hosea 2:6 (AMP) “Therefore, behold, I [the Lord God] will hedge up her way with thorns; And I will build a wall against her [shutting off her way] so that she cannot find her paths.
A Prophetic Nugget from “Daily Downloads from Heaven” by Meghan Williams is connected to this. It’s called “Relentlessly Pursue Me.”
Ruth 1:16 (NIV) But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.
Beloved, choose Me. Refuse to settle for any substitute. Relentlessly pursue Me. Make Me your obsession. For those who are steadfast to Me will not be put to shame. Rather My glory shines through them – blatantly apparent in their lives, a beacon to those around them – calling them to Me.
So be unapologetic in your pursuit – persisting through trials and would-be distractions. Time and again choose Me above everything because you know that I AM worthy. I AM faithful. And I love you.
Another Prophetic Nugget from Meghan Williams of Dyed4you Ministries is connected to this. It’s called “An Irrefutable Testimony.”
Matthew 19:21 (AMP) Jesus answered him, “If you wish to be perfect [that is, have the spiritual maturity that accompanies godly character with no moral or ethical deficiencies], go and sell what you have and give [the money] to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me [becoming My disciple, believing and trusting in Me and walking the same path of life that I walk].”
Beloved, hold nothing back from Me. Follow hard after Me. Allow Me to work My perfect purpose in and through you. As you allow Me in restrained access, My burning passion and the fire of My Holy Spirit refines and matures you, bringing forth your inherent strength and beauty of character.
Then as you walk in My favor – as one with unreserved access to the King – I will cause the miraculous to follow you. For your faith has declared My faithfulness thus My power will make manifest the fruit of your faith, making your life and your walk an irrefutable testimony of who I AM.
A Mustard Seed by Larisa Chirila of Dyed4you is connected to this. It’s called “Follow My Path.”
Romans 8:28 (VOICE) We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan.
No treasures this world has to offer could ever compare to what our Heavenly Father has prepared for us when we simply follow His path. It’s so easy to be blinded by material things and money, but that’s not what will give us unsurpassed joy and peace. It will only offer temporary pleasure, but the deep emptiness still remains.
Truth is that only our Abba can fulfill that deep aching desire for true fulfillment! Regardless of your circumstances, you can’t help but be joyful when He is your driving force. When we simply follow His path, His plan for us will supersede our plans. Trust that His plan for you is greater than what this world is wanting to seduce you with.
Another Prophetic Nugget from Meghan Williams of Dyed4you Ministries is connected to this. It’s called “El Shaddai (God Almighty).”
Exodus 33:15 (AMP) And Moses said to Him, “If Your presence does not go [with me], do not lead us up from here.
Beloved, let your heart be so taken with My presence that you refuse to move without Me. Remember that I AM El Shaddai (God Almighty), and the source of all life and power. Nothing good is accomplished without My hand.
Look to Me. Be steadfast in your gaze. Resist the urge to be distracted or to wander out from under the shadow of My wing. Allow Me to lead and accept no substitute. For I AM God, and there is none like Me.
Bethel Church’s “Pursuit” from Jesus Culture is connected to this. This song is a declaration of intent. An intent to remove anything that would take our gaze of God. It declares the intention to pursue His presence with relentless abandon – to be like Jacob wrestling the angel and refuse to let go without success. In the same way, this song is contending to see God’s glory, and declares an inability – and in fact an unwillingness – to live without His presence.
A post by Meghan Williams from MeghanW.com is connected to this. It’s called “Expect Imperfection.”
Often in our desire to please God, we hold ourselves to a standard of perfection that only Jesus could achieve. Then we waste time and energy being frustrated with ourselves for not being perfect. But the fact is God isn’t expecting us to be perfect, and so we need to manage our expectations to align with His and expect imperfection.
In my post The Impact of Expectations (How-to Manage Your Expectations), we talk about how much negative emotion we can avoid by managing our expectations, and that’s really what we’re talking about here. Not expecting perfection from ourselves because we’ll never meet that expectation. So manage your expectations to expect imperfection even as you strive towards excellence.
What we may not realize is that often our desire to be perfect is rooted in our own vanity. Yes, we should strive for excellence, but we must remember that as flawed, imperfect humans, we will fall short – and there’s no shame in that! In fact, if we are perfect we rob God of His glory because we receive the glory. God is glorified by His ability to work through flawed, imperfect individuals and still achieve His greater purpose. We see this over and over in the Word. Imperfect people doing amazing things in spite of shortcomings. Here’s just a few examples:
- Moses – a murderer and someone who struggled with public speaking becomes the leader who brings a nation to freedom
- David – an adulterer becomes a beloved king and man after God’s own heart
- Paul – persecutor of God’s people becomes one of His greatest apostles
It is not in our own flawlessness that God is glorified, but rather in the full spectrum of our stories, which include both failures and victories. We need to keep in mind the story as a whole. We need to manage our expectations and expect that we will have imperfections and extend grace to ourselves when we do (and others when they do – remember Ephesians 4:2, and bear with one another in love).
Rather than beating ourselves up when we fall short, we should pause and reflect. When I was in project management, we used to take time at the end of each project to do a “postmortem” where we assessed what went well and what could have been done better; where we had failures and what caused them. Taking time to do postmortems after a situation is a healthy and wise thing to do. It allows us to learn and grow from mistakes. But it also gives us an opportunity to intentionally set them down and move forward. This also helps keep us from being drawn into shame, which could cause separation in our relationship with God.
When it comes to God’s plans, when we desire to be in His will we need to trust that God’s ability to lead us exceeds our ability to screw it up. In reality, our belief that we’re able to block God’s plans even when we are trying to obey Him is actually a form of pride because we’re giving ourself more power than Him!
We need to stop trying to limit God. He is bigger than we can begin to understand. He is fully able to achieve His purposes in and through us. If we’re moving the wrong direction, He is able to “hedge our way with thorns” (Hosea 2:6). This is why we need to not assume all opposition is from the enemy. Too often we give credit to the enemy – in essence praising him (I talk more about this in my post Not Speaking on Behalf of other gods (Exodus 23:13)) – when in fact God is at work. Think of Balaam in Numbers 22:22 beating his donkey for not moving forward because he wasn’t understanding an angel of the Lord was blocking his path (this is in today’s Prophetic Nugget on DailyDownloadsfromHeaven.com called “Press Through”).
Romans 12:2 talks about the good, perfect, and acceptable will of God. I think of this like a GPS system. When you enter point A and point B, you see multiple routes. They all get you there, but the journey will be different. But there are also the routes that don’t get suggested, perhaps because they’re roundabout or backtrack, but again, ultimately you’ll still get to point B. We need to trust that God can always get us to where He’s leading us when our hearts are set on obedience.
Yes, personal flaws, fears, presumptions, etc. may cause us to get off a more direct route, but God is fully able to lead. So choose to trust Him. Choose to yield. Choose to learn along the way. Lay down any pride and allow Him to be glorified through you, imperfect though you are. Because He is able.
As always, blessings to you as you seek Him!
Another Prophetic Nugget from “Daily Downloads from Heaven” by Meghan Williams is connected to this. It’s called “I Will Guide You.”
Isaiah 30:21 (TLB) And if you leave God’s paths and go astray, you will hear a voice behind you say, “No, this is the way; walk here.”
Beloved, you will not “accidentally” walk away from Me. I will not force you to stay, but you can’t “lose” Me. My desire for you to walk uprightly is even greater than yours, so if your heart is to walk with Me and in My ways, I will help you along that path. I will guide you with My eye, hedge the way you should not go with thorns, and gently direct you along the way. Listen for My voice, beloved, for I AM speaking to you.
So walk with confidence and assurance, knowing the God of all creation is at your side, directing and guiding you. Do not turn to the left or the right or be distracted by the things vying for your attention, stay with Me. Stay righteous. Stay true. Walk in victory.
Psalm 32:8 (NKJV) I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.
Hosea 2:6 (AMP) “Therefore, behold, I [the Lord God] will hedge up her way with thorns; And I will build a wall against her [shutting off her way] so that she cannot find her paths.
A prophetic download from Elisa Eaton is connected to this. It’s called “Consecrated to God.”
Romans 12:1 (AMP) Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [dedicating all of yourselves, set apart] as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship.
{vision} I saw a woman waving her arms up and down in worship. Her eyes were closed, and I could sense she was fully enraptured and focused on God. I got the sense that as the motion of her arms was meant to symbolize the rising of incense, I could sense her soul ascending in some way and recognizing its oneness with God.
This vision came to me as I was meditating on the subject of aliyah, the immigration of the Jewish people in the diaspora to the Land of Israel. In Hebrew, “aliyah” means “ascent.” As I shared in my post, “Our Songs of Ascent,” my studies of Scripture through a Hebraic lens have given me a deep appreciation for God’s promise to Abraham and his descendants. And while I, along with many others in Christ, eagerly await the fulfillment of God’s promises to manifest in the earth, I always find there’s much to learn about our spiritual pilgrimage through events in the natural.
As my friend author Meghan Williams often says about the story of Scripture, “All along God has only wanted one thing: that He would be our God and we would be His people.” From Genesis to Revelation, we see the lengths that God has been going to in order to restore humanity to oneness with Him. He desires to make His dwelling place with us. Humankind sins, yet again and again, God makes a way to redeem us; He makes a path for us to return to Him.
Much like the Jewish people’s return to the Land of Israel, our spiritual return to God is an ascent. Through Christ and the path of holiness and righteousness, God lifts our lives out of the captivity of sin and into His marvelous light of freedom. Yet this ascent to the Jerusalem Above is a daily process, a walk that is paved with grace. Like the children of Israel in their cycles of captivity, our aliyah requires consecration. As Psalm 24:3-4 says:
Who can possibly ascend the mountain of the Eternal? Who can stand before Him in sacred spaces? Only those whose hands have been washed and hearts made pure, men and women who are not given to lies or deception (VOICE).
What I sense from my vision of the worshipper about aliyah is our need to continually consecrate our lives to the Eternal. The worshipper symbolizes what it means to be a living sacrifice. We must close our eyes to the physical realm in order to realign with what is true—the fact that our lives are hidden in Christ and He now lives through us. Like the worshipper lifting up her arms, we willingly give our hands (our everyday actions) to the service of the King.
Many Jewish scholars share how keeping the commandments are meant to elevate the mundane activities of life and make them spiritual. When Israel sinned and was carried into captivity, their return back started with a return to the covenant of God. We too can see that, through our own repentance and redemption, we receive the Holy Spirit, and God writes His commandments upon our hearts. Our actions, great and small, suddenly become elevated as we are led by the Spirit. We become pleasing in the sight of God.
Yet, in order to be led by the Spirit, we must make room for the Spirit. There are always new areas where God desires to redeem us from captivity and cause us to return to Him. Therefore, we must clear our minds, turn our focus upon the King, and expand our hearts so that He can write more of His Word upon it. Much like the children of Israel before Mount Sinai and the followers of Christ before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, there is a call to consecrate and prepare ourselves to come up higher in the things of the Spirit. God desires to flip our perspective so that we come to see our everyday lives through heaven’s eyes.
Beloved of Christ, God desires enlarge your heart to receive more of His Kingdom. This paradigm shift will elevate the mundaneness of everyday life onto the level of the holy. For He has called you to be a king and a priest, to live a life that is set apart and pleasing to Him. Receive the fresh revelation the Spirit is pouring out. Allow Him to write His Word upon the tablets of your heart so that His ways become your ways, your hands become His hands, and your actions become His actions. Allow Him to flow through you, move you in a new way so that you act as one. Tarry and make room to receive more of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Exodus 19:10-11 (NKJV) Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the LORD will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Luke 24:49 (NKJV) “Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”
Acts 2:1-2 (VOICE) When the holy day of Pentecost came 50 days after Passover, they were gathered together in one place. Picture yourself among the disciples: A sound roars from the sky without warning, the roar of a violent wind, and the whole house where you are gathered reverberates with the sound.
Revelation 21:2-3 (NKJV) Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God [is] with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them [and be] their God.
A prophetic download from Margie Puckett of Unhindered and Unashamed is connected to this. It is called “I Keep You In My Heart.”
Dear beloved, I want to remind you that sometimes words are not necessary. I know all of your needs and all of your desires. I know that all you desire the most is to always experience My loving presence upon you! Oh, how you love My presence and My voice!
In the midst of all the great works you are doing for My kingdom, I know that sometimes all you desire is to spend time with Me. Just like a young child desires to be held in the comfort of her Father’s arms, know that I hold you closer than you can ever imagine.
I have you in My heart, cherished and protected. In My heart I hold you close. I sway and rock you to the humming of the sweet lullaby of My heart.
Bask in My love and enjoy My stillness that brings forth joy and peace. Rest in Me as I cover you with My hands and I shelter you under My mantle. I keep you lifted from the dreary darkness of this world, and I give much-needed rest. In My heart, you will always be engulfed in the overflow of My love.
Beloved, hush your thoughts and listen to the melody of My heartbeat. Allow Me to comfort you and give you rest. My love will strengthen you. My love will restore you. My love is more than enough. Let it permeate every cell of your being as I prepare you for greater works for My glory.
Remember, you are always loved, embraced, covered, and protected in My heart. There is no need to rush. Be still in Me. Rest in my love. Selah.
A final Prophetic Nugget from “Daily Downloads from Heaven” by Meghan Williams is connected to this. It’s called “Time to Blossom.”
Song of Solomon 4:12 (VOICE) You are a locked garden, my sister, my bride, open only to me; a spring closed up tight, a sealed fountain.
Beloved, I’ve set you apart, for you are Mine and Mine alone. Your heart belongs to Me. You are accepted and chosen, cherished and loved. I AM devoted to you – you mean the world to Me.
Rest in My favor. Be shored up by My strength. For My love is steadfast and true. My eyes are upon you, My ear is attentive, and My heart is forever true. So rest in My goodness, and rest in My love. Flourish in the safe place that My affection grants you. It’s now time to blossom and come to fullness of joy, to bloom nourished by the love that surrounds you.
The name of the silk hidden in this image is My Path. The colors in it are golden brown representing humility, olive representing fresh oil, light turquoise representing refreshing, and coral representing deep things of God.
Father, may we yield to Your Spirit’s direction, may we trust ourselves to follow, and may we trust Your ability to lovingly get us back on course if we ever go awry. Thank You for Your precious leading, we trust that Your path is good. Thank You for Your mindfulness of us.
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