Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Friday 09/17/2010)

Business As Usual, Will Never Give You Unusual Business!...

1 Corinthians 2:10-16 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁰Yet to us God has unveiled and revealed them by and through His Spirit, for the [Holy] Spirit searches diligently, exploring and examining everything, even sounding the profound and bottomless things of God [the divine counsels and things hidden and beyond man's scrutiny]. ¹¹For what person perceives (knows and understands) what passes through a man's thoughts except the man's own spirit within him? Just so no one discerns (comes to know and comprehend) the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. ¹²Now we have not received the spirit [that belongs to] the world, but the [Holy] Spirit Who is from God, [given to us] that we might realize and comprehend and appreciate the gifts [of divine favor and blessing so freely and lavishly] bestowed on us by God. ¹³And we are setting these truths forth in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the [Holy] Spirit, combining and interpreting spiritual truths with spiritual language [to those who possess the Holy Spirit]. ¹⁴But the natural, nonspiritual man does not accept or welcome or admit into his heart the gifts and teachings and revelations of the Spirit of God, for they are folly (meaningless nonsense) to him; and he is incapable of knowing them [of progressively recognizing, understanding, and becoming better acquainted with them] because they are spiritually discerned and estimated and appreciated. ¹⁵But the spiritual man tries all things [he examines, investigates, inquiries into, questions, and discerns all things], yet is himself to be put on trial and judged by no one [he can read the meaning of everything, but no one can properly discern or appraise or get an insight into him]. ¹⁶For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge? But we have the mind of Christ (the Messiah) and do hold the thoughts (feelings and purposes) of His heart.

Many years ago when we lived in Japan, my family was in the car together. At this time my children were much younger. Months prior we had been in a church service and the Word of the Lord came to me through a man and woman of God about my son, They said he would go through a phase in his life where he would not be so into this walk with the Lord but for me to have no fear, to continue to pray and believe because God had a hook in my son’s jaw. On this day as we drove down the slender streets of Okinawa there were (what I thought) unusual cloud patterns, and my son who was looking out of the window, looked up into the sky and said, mommy that looks like a hook. I looked up immediately trying to see what it was he saw. I did not interpret that cloud pattern to look that way but to him, it looked like a hook, but to me it was reinforcement and a reminder of God’s promise to me, from that church service months before. Since that time, God has used my children and nature to remind me of that same promise, to not look at the actions or reactions of my son, but to remember His promise to me that He has Him, even when it doesn’t look like it.

So many times we are looking for God to answer a questions, prayers and bless us and we are looking to what we know. We are looking at people and we are looking at a job, or a relative, when God is trying to get us to see beyond the natural, and what the normal is to supernatural, through His spirit. We have God in a box, and we keep Him limited, because we are limited, because for some of us that spend little time with God we only can rationalize Him through natural means. We don’t know God, beyond where we are right now, and what we can think or justify. We have a hard time reasoning that God is bigger, and better than anything, and if He wanted to materialize our needs out of thin air He is just that much God, to be able to do that. But we believe within rational order instead of believing out of the box, and knowing that God is able to really do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask of think. Why do we think that if we do things in our natural means, knowing we need a miracle that we will yield supernatural results? If we need movement and resolution in our lives of a spiritual and supernatural proportion then we have to do things not normal, not natural; but of a spiritual base, seeking to do things under the direction and unctioning of the Holy Spirit that may look, stupid, confusing or be misunderstood by others. For example if we need a financial blessing the first thing God will tell us to do is give out of our lack. The world would say save or see a financial advisor. I am sure that the battle of Jericho looked pretty strange to those watching, but it yielded supernatural manifestation.

If the world is looking at you and the means by which you do things as usual it is likely that you are doing business as usual. To get something different you have to do something different, something unconventional. To get someplace you have never been you have to take a different path and you may have to go on a different journey, one that most cannot accompany you on. If most people can rationalize how you are approaching a matter, it is likely that the way we are approaching a matter is lacking anointing needed to make it a God event. We have to look beyond what we see and go beyond what we know. This will always take us out of a place where everyone can go and into the very place that God can work; to a place of operating in the spirit and doing unusual business!