Dear Nneka,

I love you completely just the way you are.
You don’t have to perform for me, strive for me, or turn yourself inside out trying to please me.
You don’t ever have to be insecure about my love for you.
It is eternal and will always be there for you.

I will love you completely, and my love will make you feel complete.
Because I see the beauty in you, my love will make you feel beautiful.
My love will give you the confidence you need to do anything you need to do.
My love will help you move into your destiny and fulfill your purpose.

Love,
God

faithlovehopefreedom:

Hope, Identity and Breakthrough

I have found myself charged by the Lord as of late to call the Church into a place of hope, identity, and breakthrough. Many in the Body are dealing with great grief, and are looking to their past and letting hurts, failures, and mistakes determine where they go in their future. God is committed to us coming into a place where we align ourselves with our true identities as children of God. God desires to give us good gifts, to bless us, and to give us a future.

God wants us to be healed from our painful history and to find our identity in Jesus. “The issues” that make up who we are and how we live are found in “how we relate to our past and what we think of Jesus.” Finding the grace in God to overcome your past is the key to what will unlock our hearts to move forward and into 2010—with wholeness. The Holy Spirit will reveal to us the places where we are held captive by bitterness, anger, and shame.

Our identity must first be established in our relationship with God or in intimacy with God. Our relationship with God is grounded as we encounter His thoughts and affections toward us. You have to know that your current circumstances are not punishment for some way you have failed God. If we have a confident relationship with Papa, we will not be waiting for the other shoe to drop, but instead we will overcome the negative aspects of our history and start to walk in confidence and purpose. If we agree with Heaven and literally start speaking the biblical truth of who we are before God, we will begin to soften and become accessible for healing.

A Vision of Healing the Past

The Holy Spirit walked me through a vision, where I saw a large group of people lined up in front of me, and showed me how He literally went into each person’s past.

In one instance the Holy Spirit went in through the eyes of a woman in front of me, and He took me to this woman’s bedroom when she was a child. She was lying on her side, crying in bed, and I watched as Holy Spirit started to cup His hands around her feet and breathed into His hands. This little girl started to slowly light up with a warm glow as if light was coming from inside of her and glowing through her skin.

I was then pulled back in front of this grown woman, tears were rolling down her face as she said, “I forgive you, dad.” The Holy Spirit had literally gone back in time to when she was an abused little girl, and He healed that place in her heart.

Next, I saw an older man standing in line, and again I went on a journey with Holy Spirit and saw this man much younger sitting on his sofa, sobbing. His wife was explaining to him that she didn’t love him anymore and was leaving him for another man. The man was left alone sobbing on his sofa as she said goodbye.

Then I watched as Holy Spirit rushed to him and started to put His hands around this young man’s heart and breathe. The same event took place as above, and I saw this young man with a warm glow. Then again, I was pulled back and saw the older man now with tears rolling down his face. The man was looking straight forward and said, “I forgive you, sweetheart.”

This was what was taking place with everyone in line. They were all allowing the Holy Spirit to go deep into their pain, hurts, and disappointments to heal them. God then said, ”I am literally going back in time for the sake of your future.”

Everyone in this line had luggage in their hands, and now at the front of the line was an airplane. Written on the side of the airplane was the phrase, “Acceleration to 2010,” and I heard a voice in Heaven say, ”If you’re boarding the promises of God, you have to check your baggage.”The luggage was too big and heavy to take on board this airplane of acceleration and had to be handed over to Jesus before boarding. As people chose to hand the luggage over to Jesus, He took their baggage from them.

We need to let go of the baggage in our lives and move forward with Him. God is dedicated to us going into our future—healed up and restored. We have so many wonderful things in our future as we grow in Christ Jesus, and our heart responses to situations that have hurt us are vital in our journey.

Let’s choose to be brave and allow the Holy Spirit to go into our past so we can be made whole and released into our future! Make a decision today to not hold captive those past wounds and failures, but to trust Jesus with our past, present, and future. Today the Father wants us to choose to forgive.

Declarative Prayer: Father, we trust You and give You permission to go into the deep places of our history and do a work of healing. Jesus, we forgive those who may have hurt us out of ignorance or even malice and we choose to give them to You.

I want you the reader to literally say, “Jesus, I give You ‘person’s name’ and everything that this person did to me, Lord please forgive them.” We invite You, Holy Spirit, to even now begin a work in our own hearts toward daily forgiveness. We choose to let these past hurts go for the sake of our future. In Jesus name, Amen.

Luke Holter
Prophetic Sheep Ministries
Email: propheticsheep@yahoo.com

 Thanks for posting this. I am crying.

irini:

There are days when I say why the hell did I choose to be celibate? Why? Why am I doing this? Because giving up that one thing, making that one sacrifice would make my life—at least the “love” part—that much easier…but then I remember how much sex didn’t actually make anything easier. It actually made stuff a lot more complicated. It made me not value myself. It made me not care. I didn’t even enjoy having sex, but I would do it for the brief attention from a guy.

So when you ask me why I’m celibate…when you try to tell me it’s just a “religious” thing..you’re wrong.

I’m celibate because I want my value to be more than what I can offer you physically. I’m celibate because I don’t want to share my body with anyone but the one that I’ll marry. I’m celibate because I chose to be, not because God told me to be. And while celibacy is a big part of my relationship with God it’s not the only part…so when you say I do it just for my religion it hurts a bit too….but that’s fine because we all have our own opinions about things right?

Right.

Took the words right out of my mouth. I’ve been celibate for close to six months now and it sure hasn’t been easy, but I was so tired of giving a part of myself away to people who didn’t even value me. My husband will. Which is why I wait.

metheliving:

Ahh! YAY! I totally forgot about the Fleet Week pictures until browsing the National Arts Society website. I am totally in a couple of those photos. :D

High society is so exciting when you don’t permanently live in Manhattan and therefore it’s not your everyday life.

 Reminds me of the episode of SATC called “Anchors Away” on Season 5. Sorry, I have this uncanny ability to relate almost nothing back to the show, lol. =/

1. I want to get down to the nitty gritty of hardcore Bible study. I read my Daily Mass Readings everyday and am aware of scripture, but actual study of the Bible, especially the Gospels I have never done. There are books of the Bible I have never read (I can especially say that now since there are additional books in the Catholic bible) and I can honestly say that I have never read through the entire Bible. I want to truly study and marinate in the word, and I want to make memorizing scripture (one a week) a priority.
2. I want to learn more about my heritage. I am half Nigerian (hence my name) and that’s where the buck stops. I don’t know much about my family that still lives there, any history at all. Hell, I’m Igbo and don’t speak the language. It’s so embarrassing when I come into contact with other Nigerians and because of my name they expect me to know certain things but I don’t and I end up looking like another ignorant American. It was my Dad’s decision to not teach myself and my sisters (that also all have Nigerian names) the different traditions, history, introduce us to all the food, and the language, and I can’t change that. Since I’m old enough now, I can discover it for myself. My long term goal is within 10 years to visit there for the first time.