WOP - Agent of Change

"seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence." 2 Peter 1:3 My friend, who I will call Mr. A, loves this song " No Bondage " sung by Jubilee Worship. I never asked him all of the details behind the why, but I know he has had a hard time in life. From loosing his father and going through a career change there has been significant realignment needed in this season. Personally, I've listened and sat in this song in order to take it all in. The refrain rings true filled with hope and expectation that I am free. But I never quite asked him, what have you been freed from? I know great details of his life and there are areas I can identify, but I have not asked him to specifically name those things.  As I read the lyrics of the song this morning the Spirit of God began to minister to me. This was before I opened the bible to read the living wor...

 It was freshmen year and I made a friend, a fellow African girl who lived in my dorm. She was a few inches taller than me, slim with a deep brown hue which would be acclaimed as, "Her melanin was poppin!" We did not have such terms or boldness back then. Her hair was plaited in medium box braids color 1B precisely. She was a simple girl in how she presented herself. We stood inside the Stamp Union, which is the hub for all students who attended the university and the only place on campus with our fast food restaurants. We were at my favorite spot, Panda Express and I was ready for some chow mein with orange chicken. Today, the chow mein is unpalatable to me but back then that was my go to. I was getting ready to go on my first mission trip that summer to Uganda and in excitement I shared with her that I would be bringing the gospel to the people of Uganda. There is so much to break down in my mindset but let's say there was youthful zeal and ignorance. Her face once smil...

 "Who has the final say?" sung by the leader and the congregation echoes, "Jehovah, has the final say." I grew up singing this song. The rest of the lyrics read, "Jehovah, turns my life around, Jehovah, turns my life around, He makes a way, where there is no way, Jehovah has the final say." I have always believed this to be true. However, before now I could not articulate the "why" in a substantial way. When digging into the reality of "propitiation" of Jesus's sacrifice which satisfied God's holiness, righteousness, and justice these lyrics became a reality in my heart. Jesus being fully man and fully God means He is the Great I Am. When thinking about the fact that propitiation means to satisfy this makes the satisfaction span from yesterday, today and forevermore because Jesus is God. Since Jesus is God, He is always now. Any action He takes is timeless. Jesus stepped into our timeline but as God very much remained outside of...

"Let us remember that when we talk of the rending of the veil we are speaking in a figure, and the thought of it is poetical, almost pleasant, but in actuality there is nothing pleasant about it. In human experience that veil is made of living spiritual tissue; it is composed of the sentient, quivering stuff of which our whole being consist, and to touch it is to touch us where we feel pain. To tear it away is to injure us, to hurt us and make us bleed. To say otherwise is to make the cross no cross and death no death at all. It is never fun to die. To rip through the dear and tender stuff of which life is made can never be anything but deeply painful. Yet that is what the cross did to Jesus and it is what the cross would do to every man to set him free...God must do everything for us. Our part is to yield and trust." A.W. Tozer - The Pursuit of God "Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and foll...

"See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.  For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form. Therefore no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day— things which are a mere shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God. If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees, such as, “Do ...

 "All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. So that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work." 2 Timothy 3:16-17 For God it is always now. Living outside of space and time, He is. That descriptor spoken to Moses saying, "I AM", I've never quite understood it. He is and is always. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, "But God has no history. He is too completely and utterly real to have one. For, of course, to have a history means losing part of your reality (because it has already slipped away into the past) and not yet having another part (because it is still in the future): in fact having nothing but the tiny little present, which has gone before you can speak about it." For me this explains man's desire for immortality, though no one living today has ever seen an immortal being we know it exists. How do we conceptualize a concept we have never experienced...