More Gems for the Journey
Page 9
Journey Note
173 Today’s Gem
Through the affairs of the heart, God uncovers our motives, true intentions and what’s really going on inside us. We call it longing. Often, God responds to our longing with silence. In the meantime, and a lot of times, we fill in for God in an attempt to meet that need or needs. What do we create? A mess! Now God has our attention and will often ask, “Can you hear me now daughter?” Psalms 62:1 says, “For God alone my soul waits in silence; from Him comes my salvation. Verse 5 states, “My soul, wait only upon God and silently submit to Him; for my hope and expectation are from Him.”
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174 Today’s Gem
You’re not that woman anymore. You’re not broken, bruised, battered, beat down or bent over anymore. You are not depressed, dejected, despondent or denied. You are not suicidal or sickly, and shame doesn’t live here anymore. Stop giving the devil power, access and authority with your words and your thoughts. Flip the script right now and give God that same power, access and authority. Life is in your tongue. You are intelligent, capable and qualified. You are a phenomenal woman. You are every woman and you are supposed to be here. What God has spoken over your life will come to pass. Close the gateway to your past—it’s over because God said so.
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175Today’s Gem
Unbridled passion always soars out of control and becomes the devil’s playground. Unchecked emotions are like a roller coaster. First, you stand in a long line to get on a ride that you scream to get off. The journey starts off slow and it’s fun. Then you climb a steep hill—only to suddenly drop at a speed that’s dangerously fast. Then comes a turn here, a turn there and you’re at the mercy of the ride. Now you’re screaming, “Let me off!” The truth is, sis, in the beginning you had a choice…you didn’t have to ride. Guess what? You don’t have to ride the emotional coaster you’re on now, either. Get off! Stop chasing drama. Seek your thrills in a safe place—smack dab in the middle of God’s will for your life!
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176Today’s Gem
Drama is the result of unruly affections and out-of-control emotions. Ladies, drama does not denote passion. Drama is draining and zaps your energy and everybody that’s attached to you. The love, attention, affirmation and security that you seek is waiting for you—minus the drama. Settle yourself! Christ in you, the hope of glory, wants to empower you to check yourself. Allow His word to transform your thinking, which will transform your life. Today, Jesus speaks peace to your private storms. Jesus wants to anchor your heart in Him! For only in Him, sis, can true joy, fulfillment and wholeness be found. Matthew 6:21 declares, “For where your heart is, there your treasure is also!” Where is your heart?
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177 Today’s Gem
You need to deal with unresolved issues! Why? Because in the daily devotional, Word For You Today, writer Bob Gass said, “If you don’t submit your injury to the healing hand of God, today’s wound becomes tomorrow’s infection!” Unresolved issues become seeds planted in your heart that take root, germinate and inevitably grow into bad fruit. Fruit such as insecurity, arrogance, pride, anger, jealousy and unforgiveness. Ladies, life is too short not to maximize every moment. You are too precious to God not to be fulfilled, whole, satisfied and full of joy! Just like Cinderella knew in her heart there was more—so it is for you. You are not just a stepdaughter destined for leftovers! You are a joint heir with Christ already seated in heavenly places through Christ. Queen, take your throne.
Journey Note
178Today’s Gem
Rest in God and wait patiently for Him. Everything happens “on time” in God. To everything there is a season and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven according to Ecclesiastes Chapter 3. Stop working to make things happen before their time. You don’t have to promote yourself, lie, cheat or manipulate to make things happen. You won’t have to fight to make it happen. In God’s time, it just happens if you’re in place and in your season. Time is the landing place for eternal purpose. Time is the canvas upon which eternity is painted. Just know, there’s a place for your portrait of purpose in the gallery of God!
Journey Note
179 Today’s Gem
Are you a woman who is controlled by her emotions? I mean, you’re up one minute and down the next. When you are ruled by your emotions you are more vulnerable to respond to the desires of your flesh. The Message Bible says in Galatians 5:16, “Live freely, animated, and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. There is a root of sinful, self-interest in all of us that is at odds with a free spirit. These two ways oppose each other, therefore you live according to how you feel on any given day—unless you are a spirit-controlled Woman!
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180Today’s Gem
The consequences of living a facade, pretending to be what you’re not and perpetrating a lie or a front is that you eventually lose sight of the truth. One day you look in the mirror and realize that you don’t know the person staring back at you. Be true to yourself. How? By coming to a compassionate Father and being totally transparent about your issues, your pain, your shame and your mistakes and bad choices. God has made provision for your healing and wholeness. He has made a way of restoration. In the end, if you don’t take advantage of the opportunity to make it right—guess what? It’s not His fault.
Journey Note
181 Today’s Gem
Unforgiveness is like spiritual constipation. You are so backed up with bitterness, anger, resentment and hatred that it is hard to function. You continue to live a facade because you are concerned about your image and God is more concerned with your health—your spiritual health. Your appearance is together but your soul is sick. Your money is right but your mind is tormented. You have a great job but your heart is aching. Sis, God wants to cut his wound out from the root—yes, the wound that’s been covered with other wounds. Why? Because it’s blocking the pathway to your promise. Take a spiritual laxative today and allow God to flush out your soul. The discomfort lasts for a moment—but the freedom will be well worth the process.
Journey Note
182 Today’s Gem
How do you deal with pain? God understands that pain is not pain until you feel it. God communicates His ways and His thoughts and His mysteries through your pain. Adversity perfects character. Let it hurt not so it won’t destroy you later. Why? God is putting things back in order. Often, that requires that God tear down instability, inconsistency and our way of doing things. There is purpose in your pain. You can’t get to a new day without first going through the midnight of an old day. The Lord loves you so much. He wants to make you mentally stable and emotionally steadfast. Before you know it, your pain will be transformed into power.
Journey Note
183Today’s Gem
Desire can be a dangerous thing when the object of our desire replaces God. Have you ever wanted something or someone so badly that it made you sick? Well, noted author Michelle McKinney Hammond said, “God’s prevention is God’s protection. God knows that the very thing you think you can’t live without is the very thing that will kill you.” Colossians 3:2 states, “Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.” To set means to take and place. Take your affections and place them on things above and beyond what your flesh craves for. How? Philippians 4:8–9 says, “Finally, sisters, whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Put what you have learned from me or seen in me into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
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184Today’s Gem
You’ve closed your heart so that no one else can get in! But the pain from your past is also locked in! God’s love wants to melt the fortress that you’ve built around your heart! You will love again. You will care again. You will feel again. How? Through Christ. He longs for your entire heart. What you really need and what you rea
lly want are usually so far apart. Jesus told the woman at the well in John 4:10, “If you only knew the gift God has for you and who I am, you would ask me, and I would give you living water.” God wants you to put Him at the top of your list of needs and you’ll need nothing else. Why? Because when Jesus becomes your everything, you will discover that He truly satisfies your every need, want and desire.
Journey Note
185 Today’s Gem
Bitterness can make your life unbearable. It gnaws at you. Then it turns into resentment and ultimately unforgiveness. Unfortunately, unforgiveness becomes an idol that you worship because it prevents you from moving forward. Why? Because you are stuck in your place of pain. But, sis, first you must separate the offense from the offender. Then, God will work through you to release the oil of forgiveness. Ephesians 4:31–32 says, “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.” Bitterness occupies space that is created for love. So release the bitterness and receive the love for your season of giving all and getting nothing is over!
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186Today’s Gem
Give your disappointment to the Lord. Psalms 62:5 says, “Find rest, O my soul, in God alone; my hope comes from him.” Stop putting your trust in the limited and start believing in the God that is limitless. Through Him, all things are possible. Where there is God, there is always hope. There is also always the assurance that the best is yet to come. Listen, no person on earth can produce the peace, self-worth, validation or security you seek. God is the ultimate source of all these things our hearts crave. Psalms 23:1 states, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I shall not want for anything! So, sis, seek the Kingdom of God, seek His righteousness and then, do nothing. God will do the rest!
Journey Note
187 Today’s Gem
As children and children at heart raced to the Christmas tree, God wants you to rush to the mirror. Why? You are His treasure and you are more valuable than diamonds, emeralds, silver and gold. Even with its thorns, a rose is still a beautiful flower! You are unique and necessary to complete the bouquet arrangement that God is preparing. Yes, today is a day to celebrate, and instead of focusing on what you did not receive, what you don’t have, and who you have not heard from, focus on the fact that Christ wants to give you a gift—your self-worth, your self-esteem and your value as His woman!
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188 Today’s Gem
Love, real love, is not easy. We often confuse love for attraction or infatuation that is that warm, fuzzy, tingly sensation in response to someone or something wonderful. But real love is often an uneven exchange of appreciation, of problems, of hopes, of disappointments, which make us realize how much life is to be cherished. A woman’s deepest need is to love and be loved. To not do so is to deny our very nature and suffer the pain of being untrue to our divine design. God wants us to be available to give and receive love the way He does. Even when we don’t make it easy, He keeps loving us. You don’t need a reason to love. Know this: give love freely and it shall be given unto you—pressed down, shaken together and running over shall it be given back to you.
Journey Note
189Today’s Gem
We as women must find our self-worth not in doing, but by being! Be the nurturer. Be the life-giver. Be the enhancer. Be the reflector God designed you to be. Stop looking for love in all the wrong places, with all the wrong people and using all the wrong methods. Open your heart to receive the One who has always loved you with an everlasting love, neverending love, never judging love, unconditional love. God wants to make you complete in Him. God doesn’t just want your ear—He wants your whole heart. God doesn’t just want to talk to you and you to Him—He wants to commune with you. You can’t earn God’s love! Just receive God’s love! Just believe God’s love! Before you know it, you’ll be so full of Him, you will be overflowing!
Journey Note
190 Today’s Gem
God intricately and delicately formed women with emotional characteristics that differ from men. A woman cannot honestly separate her emotions from her physical state. The man who touches your body, also touches your emotions. God made you that way. You cannot make love to a man and remain emotionally untouched no matter how hard you try. You cannot give your body without giving your heart. That’s why God commands us in Romans 12:1 to present our bodies a living sacrifice to Him because He also wants your whole heart. You are precious to Him but He will not share you heart with others. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flows the springs of life.” Let God show you what love is today!
Journey Note
191 Today’s Gem
Every woman has needs. It doesn’t matter your age, marital status, condition of your body, emotions, spirit or mind-set. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a believer in the Body of Christ—if you’re a woman, you have emotional, mental, physical and spiritual needs, longings and desires. Too often, we are guilty of looking to others to meet those needs—especially those close to us. Only God can meet our deepest desires, longings and cravings for acceptance, assurance, approval and affirmation. Psalms 62:1 says, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.” In Christ, you have strength for all things and through Christ you can handle anything—for you are self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.
Journey Note
192 Today’s Gem
Striving to become “every woman” is about breaking out of self-defeating cycles of repeated patterns, behaviors, choices and habits. Becoming the woman God purposed us to be requires us to stop availing ourselves to illusions—created by denial and devastation caused by other people’s madness. We must begin to manage matters of the heart. This involves perceptions, expectations, misconnects, and disconnects. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and above all that you guard, for out of it flows the springs of life.” Hide your insecurities in the secret place of God’s security—and your issues will begin to disappear.
Journey Note
193Today’s Gem
Are you insecure? Do you maneuver or manipulate relationships into what you perceive to be your favor? What has happened to you that has caused you not to trust God to be God—even in your relationships? Well, God wants us to want Him first. God wants to fill those empty places and consume us with more of Himself. It’s time to move away from being all show and no substance. Time out for being all talk and no transformation through Christ. It’s time to rise above our limitations and manifest Christ in the earth! It’s time to move from pain to purpose. Come on, girlfriend—God has plans for you!
Journey Note
194 Today’s Gem
Sometimes, life can deal us such blows that we feel we will never recover. The winds of life toss us into uncertainties and places of discomfort that cause us to feel overwhelmed. But Psalms 61:2 declares, “When my heart is overwhelmed and fainting; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Verse 3 says, “For you have been a shelter and a refuge for me, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me find refuge and trust in the shelter of your wings.” Now, sis, pause, and calmly think of that.” Do you need help today? Let God elevate your heart from daily distractions to lasting confidence, comfort, and consistency—in Him!
Journey Note
Now What Do You Do?
Thank you for sharing my journey with me to this point. As I told you in my first book, Gems for the Journey, coming to the end of a section does not mean that your journey is over. It simply means that your journey is about to change AGAIN. Fear not, for the Lord is with you wherever you go, sis. He has tremendous plans for you. Don’t be so trapped by your past or so consumed by your future that you mismanage your now. Transition is your friend. Just be aware that transition requires transformation—change. Life is about the moments you enjoy that take your breath away. You have made it t
his far and you can make it the rest of the way. Inhale! Exhale! Now go and be ALL that you were created to be.