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Joseph has a dream that he would have a position of authority. His dream is followed by 13 years of slavery and prison, in which he rises to the positions of authority. Each place has parts of his dream, but it never realizes until the day he is brought before Pharaoh.

David has an extraordinary experience of the chief religious leader of his time declaring him king of Israel after each of his brothers were overlooked for the position. He has some immediate successes with Goliath and advancement in Saul’s army, but it is 15 years before that word comes to pass.

Abraham gets a word from God, a promise that he would be made a great nation. He believes the word but has to wait 25 years before he even gets one son.

The thing that stands out to me is not necessarily the wait but the acceptance that the promise would come to pass. What assurances did any of these men have that what they were told would happen? How many dreams have you had at night were from God? How do you know what someone says to you is from God?

Even the story of Abraham doesn’t explain how God spoke to him. Did he hear an audible voice, or was it just God’s voice spoken into his thoughts?

I do not doubt any of these men’s experiences, but it makes me wonder how can I be so sure. Several months ago I started my newest walk of faith which I mentioned in my post, Does Your Life Make Zero Sense to UnBelievers. Now I face what Blackaby calls the crisis of belief.

image courtesy of Adam Jones

The book of Genesis tells of two drastically different men: one who had to work hard to get anything he wanted; the other seemed to have things fall into his lap. It is interesting that the former was father of the latter. More interestingly, how do we become like the latter?

These two men were Jacob and Joseph. Jacob is well known as being a striver. He connives his brother out of his birthright and cons hims out of his blessing. He runs away for fear of him and then gets conned into working 14 years for Rachel. The tragedy of Jacob’s life is more than the difficulties that arise, you get the impression from Jacob that he feels alone in the world. Even when he left working for his father-in-law, he leaves under deception.

Joseph, on the other hand, had much greater difficulties arise against him. The tragedy that befalls Joseph may make some balk at my earlier statement of having things fall into his lap. However, no matter what hardships arose, Joseph met each of them with success.

What I noticed about these two men that was significantly different was the way that each of them was raised. Jacob was raised by Isaac who favored Esau over him. Joseph was raised by Jacob who favored him above each of his 11 brothers. Joseph knew the love of his father, which brought special attention, favors, and gifts. Jacob felt overlooked by his father and had to trick him to get attention, favors, and gifts.

Most of us if we are honest with ourselves, know that we are lacking in love. We may have the ability to love those who love us, but somewhere between that and our enemies we falter. This is not to discourage us, but just to show us we need supernatural help to fulfill what God has asked of us. We need God’s assistance to be able to love.

How do we pray for love?

The first thing to remember is that we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Any trouble we have in loving is directly tied to a lack of experience with God’s love for us.

• God open my heart to receive more love from you. Make me aware of what may be blocking my ability to receive from you.

The second thing to help you is to know that fear is the opposite of love (1 John 4:18). Your inability to love is directly related to an area of fear in your life. Are you afraid that person will hurt you, take too much of your time, or make you be someone you are not? Or, are you afraid that God will not take care of you?

“I am powerful, and what I believe changes the world!
So today I declare:
God is in a good mood.
He loves me all the time.
Nothing can separate me from His love.
Jesus’ blood paid for everything
I will tell nations of what He has done.
I am important.
How He made me is amazing.
I was designed for worship.
My mouth establishes praise to silence the enemy.
Everywhere I go becomes a perfect health zone.
And… with God
Nothing is impossible!”

Throughout the centuries the Church has been practicing corporate readings as a part of worship. Nowadays apart from corporate singing, this practice has waned.  Recenlty I found that my daughter has been reciting the above creed during her children’s church, and I couldn’t be happier. She is being trained to believe things about herself and God that is opposite to what I believed about myself as I grew up.

I grew up without much direction into who I was. I remember words that I was embarrassment and that I never do anything helpful. There were also circumstances that I didn’t know how to interpret, which spoke words that I was messed up, that I was unimportant, and that I was a burden. O, how imporant are the words that we say of ourselves. (My parents were not bad. I’ve made some poor choices in my words to my kids as well. The point is that words are powerful.)

God spoke creation into being. And having been made in His image our words create new realities. If we speak words that are in agreement with our enemy, then we create greater bondages for ourselves. I still have to work at releasing myself to enjoy things for fear that I may be an embarrassment to someone. I know successful people that are still trying to overcome statements of being stupid or being a failure. Our words create our realities.

God wants so much more for you than merely freedom from sin. All sin is just symptoms of deeper issues going on. Even if you are able to contain the act, some other sin will pop up in another area of your life if the heart is not addressed. That is why you see alcoholics trading alcohol for anger or overeaters trading food for exercise. If the heart is not healed, you will find new ways to soothe the pain.

Maturity is not measured by outward expressions or overcoming sin. Maturity in the Lord happens in the heart. Remember God’s rebuke to Samuel:

But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” – 1 Samuel 16:7

Focusing on the sin also hinders you from celebrating the successes you do have. Thankfulness cannot happen if you are too focused on what you don’t have.

Try to imagine building a house. You clear the ground, grade it, dig the footers, pour the foundation, and start making good progress. Then comes the framing. In the early days of construction things move very quickly and progress is easily seen. After the outside is in place, work goes on within the walls and each step is not as visible. You get the wiring done and the insulation put up. The steps are no longer drastic and you start to long for the finished product. But, each step is necessary. If you don’t get the flashing put around the windows you would have high energy bills and water damage, but flashing does not appear to be progress.

Recently I was encouraged by a friend to reread Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster. This was my second time through the book, but the previous time was several years ago. While I remembered liking the book, most of the gems found within were either forgotten or not gleaned from that first pass.

This book isn’t a detailed review on how to do these different disciplines of the faith, but instead Foster encourages believer to partake of the blessing found in them. Foster finds a nice blend of God’s role and our roles in Christian activities. The disciplines are not our attempts to earn God’s pleasure, but they also do not come naturally. While they can be hard work, they should not lead us into slavery but greater freedom. Foster writes, “the primary requirement [for the disciplines] is a longing after God.” He goes on to say, “by themselves the Spiritual Disciplines can do nothing; they can only get us to the place where something can be done.”

While the Celebration of Discipline is not so much a ‘how-to’, Foster trusts the Holy Spirit to guide the readers in how to apply each discipline to their own lives. Each person is different and will approach the disciplines in their unique personality. With the Spirit as the guide and this book as motivation, your heart will be ready for new and ongoing encounters with God.

And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. – Luke 2:40

I have grown up in the faith being taught and believing that grace is the unmerited favor of God for believers. Since mercy is not getting something your deserve, then grace is getting something you don’t deserve. And where this makes definitions easy to remember, they cannot be right. If they are, then Jesus would have no need for grace. Jesus fulfilled the law perfectly. Therefore, Jesus would have merited and deserved blessings from God.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! – Romans 5:15

Grace was manifested in Jesus’ life and ministry and then distributed to us who believe. Where the death passed down by Adam gave us the power to sin, grace was passed down by Jesus giving us the ability to live in life. It is the power to live to God’s standard. Grace came through Jesus, came on the disciples, provided by God, and we can grow in it (references: John 1:17, Acts 4:33, 2 Corinthians 1:2, and 2 Peter 3:18).

The question should then be, how do we grow in grace? We need to love it, treasure it, pursue it, and give it away. God supplies what we need for all our circumstances.

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Down in you heart there is a temple
Come and kneel before its throne
Be still and know that He is God
Be still and know

Pursuing the heart of God is a goal of all believers. What is it that pleases Him? What is it about us that He likes? What makes God tick? This is not a pursuit so we can put Him in a box, but it is so we can be more intimate with the One who loves us.

A person’s heart is not only the place where all the blood circulates from, it is the source of all life for that person – physical, emotional, and spiritual. To understand the heart of God is to make sense of all of life. Why did He create everything? Why He lets us have free-will to sin?

The good news is God wants to reveal His heart to us. The access point to knowing the heart of God is through our hearts. God is looking for intimate lovers and friends. He will give us as much of His heart as we give Him ours. He may give a little more than we give, but that is His attempt to entice us to share more of ourselves with Him. Therefore we hit a roadblock with God when we don’t know what is in our hearts.

The degree with which we don’t know our own heart is the degree that we will be hindered in knowing God’s.