Today’s Reading:
Hebrews 12
Isaiah 58
And have you forgotten his encouraging words spoken to you as his children? He said, “My child, don’t underestimate the value of the discipline and training of the Lord God, or get depressed when he has to correct you. For the Lord’s training of your life is the evidence of his faithful love. And when he draws you to himself, it proves you are his delightful child.” Fully embrace God’s correction as part of your training, for he is doing what any loving father does for his children. For who has ever heard of a child who never had to be corrected? We all should welcome God’s discipline as the validation of authentic sonship. For if we have never once endured his correction it only proves we are strangers and not sons.
Hebrews 12:5-8 TPT
I heard the Spirit of the Living God say,
Live in thanksgiving. Live with a ready gratitude on your tongue. Look around and see My faithfulness and fingerprints and creative wonder working power everywhere. It’s all around you. You don’t have to look far to be grateful. Look first inside of you. Look what change and life and grace and health I have brought into your own body, mind and soul. Look what change I have squeezed out of you. Yes, discipline and training is never fun or easy, but look at what it has produced. Look at the better and more genuinely you version of you has been squeezed out from that process. Yes it’s ongoing. But the pressure cooker was real, and that caused exponential growth and change in a much shorter period.
Now all discipline seems to be painful at the time, yet later it will produce a transformation of character, bringing a harvest of righteousness and peace to those who yield to it.
Hebrews 12:11 TPT
I have condensed the time required to get you where I need you to get you in the shape I needed you to get there. That doesn’t come by easy victories and walks in the park. It comes through refining by fire. It comes through reshaping on the potter’s wheel, and it comes through hard fought battles with pride. Humility has been squeezed out of you. Kindness and compassion has been squeezed out of you. And now My favor can rest upon you in a new and more powerful way. You can choose to see desolation of the land, or you can choose to see opportunities to build. It may look like such battles have come that the days and world in front of you seem like a sci-fi version of the Stone Age. But I say, I have charged you to build. I have given you the favor, the eyes and the vision of a builder. Don’t be dismayed when you look out at the landscape, the great desolate plain in front of you and see nothing but sandy nothingness. This is the territory I have marked out for you to claim, and upon which I have called you to occupy and build.
and if you offer yourselves in compassion for the hungry and relieve those in misery, then your dawning light will rise in the darkness and your gloom will turn into noonday splendor! Yahweh will always guide you where to go and what to do. He will fill you with refreshment even when you are in a dry, difficult place. He will continually restore strength to you, so you will flourish like a well-watered garden and like an ever-flowing, trustworthy spring of blessing. Your people will rebuild long-deserted ruins, building anew on foundations laid long before you. You will be known as Repairers of the Cities and Restorers of Communities.
Isaiah 58:10-12 TPT
The beautiful, glorious and very sneaky thing about this territory looking desolate to man’s eyes is that no one will be fighting you for it. For a season you will have great peace, because the desolation will cause them to be uninterested. They may mock and laugh that you would try to build in such a desolate place. But they will not encroach on your territory, because they can’t see the favor I have put there. They can’t see what I have destined it to be. This place of desolation is what’s in your heart. It’s all the places I have called you to build which are in your heart. The world will not understand them. But that is to your great unseen advantage. Build well. The naysayers won’t catch on until it’s too late.
How to Respond
- Stir up gratitude and make it an ongoing practice to live and speak with an attitude of thanksgiving and praise to the Lord.
- Pray, Lord thank You that Your training and discipline is for my benefit. It’s to make me into the person You designed and destined me to be. Help me to continue to submit to Your instruction, so I can please You. Help me to look out at the places that seem desolate and view them with Your creative eyes. Help me to see the places You have called me to build, and help me to move forward in faithfulness and do exactly what You have placed on my heart.
- Declare, “then you will find the joyous bliss that comes from serving Yahweh. And I will cause you to prosper and be carried triumphantly over the high places of the land. You will enjoy the heritage of Jacob, your ancestor.” Certainly the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it!
— Isaiah 58:14 TPT - Decree, The ways of the Lord are higher than my ways. He is using the modest, simple and humble to build something great. Thanksgiving is my path forward. I will praise the Lord for His goodness, His faithfulness, His unending creativity, His favor, His provision, His sacrifice, His love, His patience, His training and discipline, His Presence and so much more. I will never run out of reasons to praise the Lord.
For more encouragement from The Glory & New Wine, check out the post from this day in years past:
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