Ten Things to Remember

1. There will be seasons, perhaps days, perhaps years, when no truth however expressed –whether through Scripture, prayer, the kindness of a friend, music or dance –will reach your soul deeply enough to offer joy or hope. During those seasons, remember it was when our Lord lost all sense of His Father’s presence that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. The Spirit’s best work is sometimes done in the worst times.

2. When all is lost, everything will be gained. Emptiness embraced and brokenness owned creates a void of all that the human soul longs for. The outpouring God cannot see such a void and restrain Himself from filling it –in His time and in His way.

3. There will be seasons when an honest look into the mirror of your soul will fill you with disgust and despair. You will not only hate what you see but you will also fear you will never change. During those seasons, as pride is purged, you will be immobilized in quiet desolation. It is then you will be able to rest at the foot of the Cross and know the love of the Crucified One.

4. Only suffering arouses the deepest thirst. Only uncertainty breeds stable hope. Only failure and fear escort you to the center of your God-filled soul and will then release you to be the poem of God’s making.

5. There will be seasons when your persona feels necessary and therefore justified. Nothing will begin to release you from its stranglehold more than an honest search to know your impact on another. The broken jar of brittle flesh will then crack and living water will trickle out of your soul into another with the fragrance of Christ Himself.

6. Every disappointment in both relationships and ministry as well as in physical and financial circumstances opens the door to the sustaining discovery of a prophetic burden that no disappointment can destroy.

7. There will be seasons of blessings and freedom and joy that seem as if they will never end. Cling to those seasons and you will be assigned to lesser battles in the advance of God’s kingdom. Cling to the source of blessings, freedom, and joy and you will be rewarded with fiercer battles that accomplish much more.

8. Refuse to be surprised when life does not work as you wished. It is then that you will be given a clearer glimpse into what God is really doing.

9. There will be seasons when fear will plunge you into the prison of self-obsession where you will be helplessly curved in on yourself and will taste the hell of the inability to love. When you cry mercy with no claim to deserving it, you will discover the key to the prison door is already in your hand. The choice to indulge your deepest desire to love will bring you to the outskirts of heaven.

10. Demand nothing here. Expect everything there. Surrender all rights to justice, to loving treatment from others, to fulfilling ministry, to all the good things of this life and you will be given tastes of the good things to come. That is how you taste the Lord and discover that He is good. It is those tastes that fill you with sustaining hope until you’re welcomed to the banquet.