Big Dreams

On August 28, 2023   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 37: 4

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

This certainly sounds like good news to me. You? And yet, I wonder. There seem to be many people who have not identified the desires of their heart. What is your dream? What do you want?

I remember when I was young that I didn’t go after everything I wanted. I kinda waited for things to come to me or for my parents to provide. There were definitely some things I would have liked to have done, adventuring types of things but I never told my parents. Those things were in my heart but not before my eyes. They were not where I could grasp them, so I didn’t pursue them. I regret that.

Life is different now. I understand my heavenly Father and that He wants to bless His kids. I now do with Him what I should have done more frequently with my parents. I tell Him what is in my heart. There is an important point buried in that statement though, because the thing I find I must do is to search my own heart.

Have you searched your heart lately? Do you know what is in there? Some call it soul searching. I find I need to spend time searching my heart. You know, you can go along believing you are pursuing your ambitions and yet when you slow down and search your heart find that your desires have changed.

Some people are going along without any dream at all! I don’t want to be that person, ever! To me, that isn’t living. It is existing. I do not believe our Lord gave us all these wonderful words to live by so we can just live day to day without a goal or ambition. I believe He wants to continue to fulfil our dreams until we step into the fulness of eternity where we will live our dreams fully.

This life is a dress rehearsal for the rest of eternity. We are authorized to dream big and to communicate those desires to the Father of fulfillment. I think about Ephesians 3: 20 where Paul described our Father, “who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.” Paul teaches that our Father thinks bigger than we do and is able to fulfill dreams more grand than anything we have yet thought about or asked for. Come on! That is big! This verse would not exist if we were not supposed to have dreams and pursue them. It is part of God’s plan that we should take our heart’s desires to His throne room and give them to Him.

If you cannot, right this moment, say what your dream is, then take some time alone and search your heart. If all things are possible, and with God you know they are, then what do you want?

Here is my advice. Develop that deep desire. Communicate it to the Father and then Don’t Take Your Foot Off the Gas! Or, for the cyclists, Keep Pedaling. Don’t let age, failure, deadbeat relatives or anything steal your dream! Second, find someone who will agree with you. If you don’t have that person in your life, call me. You haven’t dreamed a dream big enough yet that I can’t agree with you! Let’s give Dad some fun things to work on. Let’s go big!

May your heart’s desires be fulfilled, in Jesus’ name.

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Testing

On December 5, 2022   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Mark 4: 24

And He was saying to them,. . . “By your standard of measure it will be measured to you; and more will be given you besides.”

Last week’s Word of the Day was about our God meeting our needs. God does meet our needs. However, the passage for the Word of the Day was taken from Philippians where Paul taught that needs are met through the fulfillment of our own giving. Paul told the church that his God would meet their needs because they had met his. This is such a powerful lesson, but few grasp it. In fact, since last week I have wondered how many of you really believe me and the lessons I send. Therefore, I thought I would tell you a small story this week about the time I put God, and these scriptures, to the test.

Some years ago, I sowed one dollar into Ivey Ministries. It is the only dollar I have ever given to my own ministry. I believed God for a return. Shortly thereafter, I received a check for $50. I was pretty excited; not because I got fifty dollars, but because it appeared God’s Word worked. My tithe on that would have been $5, but I decided that if I was going to put God to the test, I had to press on, so, I decided to sow the entire fifty dollars.

I wish you to understand that at this point things became a bit more challenging for me. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but it was hard to let go of the full fifty dollars when my obligation was for five, but I believed Yahweh was continuing to lead me in this area. So, believing for a hundred-fold return, I sowed the entire amount into a ministry. Then came the really hard part, the waiting.

Here is where we often fail. There was not $500 in my mailbox that week nor even that month. Time dragged on and on with no visible return on my seed. I prayed about it, I journaled with God about it, but no resolution came to my mailbox or my heart. Often, I forgot about the seed as if I had never given God that fifty dollars. It sometimes became lost seed to me. But, I have read a few things in the Bible so I would pick myself up and dust off my faith. Believe me, this was an ongoing challenge. I would stand, full of faith and believe for my harvest. Before long, though, my strength and resolve would ebb. Finally, I became convinced in my heart that God is not a man that He can lie (Numbers 23: 19). With a firmer resolution in my spirit, I began to believe in my seed and my harvest.

Now this may sound crazy to some of you, but I want you to understand how far this goes. As my faith grew, I began to realize that the seed had to produce. It is a spiritual law. The seed doesn’t get to choose whether or not it will obey the law of the Spirit. That is when things changed. I no longer whined to God about my harvest. Nope, I confronted Him. What? Yes, confronted! When I prayed, I said, “Father, you owe me money.” Not only once did I approach Him with my demand but rather, it became the way we spoke about that seed. And, guess what. Yahweh was not intimidated by my demand. In fact, He acknowledged it. Once He told me that one way He was going make up part of the return was in my new car. Inside I was like Sarah who laughed at God’s promise because I knew I couldn’t afford a new car, at least not the one I wanted. Well, time went on and I returned to talk with Him about this money. I was no longer falling back into doubt. I no longer failed to remember I had good seed in good soil. That had been, it turns out, doubt. I forgot about my seed because I had stopped believing in the return. In truth, I had lost my belief in the principal of sowing and reaping. However, my faith began to grow and my resolve stiffened. I started out testing God on this principal of sowing and reaping with one dollar and I was not giving up now.

I have taught about giving many, many times. I teach it and try to encourage everyone to give because I want you to be blessed. I thought I believed God’s Word, but I found out that when I set out to test God’s Word, it was really I who was tested. I stumbled and fell many times. I learned, though, that when you fall, when you fail, God doesn’t consider it final. He did not burn my seed in the ground when I failed in my belief. Instead, and this is amazing to me, He preserved that precious seed until such a time as He could get me to be as determined as that little seed. He is an amazing, generous and kind Father. He loves us and wants us to be blessed and He has taught us the way. He told us that if we would give, it would be given back to us multiplied (Luke 6: 38). Those are words on a page though. Does it really work? Is that actually a lesson from God?

Sometimes I pray to God for the thousand-fold return. You won’t find it in the Bible, per se, but when I look at the Bible in its fullness, I see it all over the place, and more beyond. Abraham received way more than a thousand-fold. Jesus received a greater than thousand-fold return. It is my way of speaking with God about His willingness and ability to do, “far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,” (Ephesians 3: 20). He is not limited to the hundred-fold or even my thousand-fold. He is super-abundant, beyond my ability to comprehend, and that is the moral of this story.

I did receive a new car and it is a blessing. I also received a gift that will mean more than $90,000 over my lifetime. These are part of the glory of Christ. I am beyond grateful. However, I have a new challenge. Is this the fullness of God’s blessing? Is He done? Shall I cut Him off here? It is certainly much more than I expected when I began. The hundred-fold return on my $50 seed would have given me $5000 and that is what I believed for. Yahweh went far beyond, but who is to say He is done? Only my faith limits Him. He is waiting to see if I will allow Him to do more. My answer is, “Do all that is in your heart Father,” because what I know is that the financial blessing is wonderful and amazing but the best part of it is that He has brought us closer together. I live in a new space of gratefulness. I see His heart more clearly and I am completely overwhelmed by the knowledge He has imparted to me through this experience. When I say, “Our God is good!” I have the weight of a mountain behind it. Those few words have more love and meaning in them than can be contained in this one universe because His goodness is so vast.

God challenged us to test Him, “put Me to the test now in this,” says the Lord of armies, “if I do not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.” (Malachi 3: 10). He told me to test Him. I wasn’t impudent. I was obedient. Now for you few with brave hearts, I have given you the link for Malachi 3:10 so that you can easily see for yourself how God’s statement began for as you can see, I only included the end of His statement. Simply click on the verse citation above and you will be transported to the full scripture.

Maybe you too should test Him. He welcomes it and I encourage it because in the end, you are going to be very blessed.

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Challenged

On January 23, 2019   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Philippians 4: 19                    God’s Word

My God will richly fill your every need in a glorious way through Christ Jesus.

Do you believe this verse? I mean do you really, really believe it? Today’s Word of the Day is not, surprisingly, about God meeting your needs. It is about believing. It is about challenging our beliefs. The truth is, most of us don’t really believe the Bible. We believe a version of the Bible. As we read the Bible we need to learn to challenge our belief system asking whether it agrees with the Bible.

Here is another verse, “By His stripes we are healed,” (Isaiah 53: 5) or its New Testament partner, 1 Peter 2: 24 “By His wounds you were healed.” Do you believe you were and, therefore, are healed? That is what it means to challenge your belief system.

We encounter verses frequently which are just over the top lavish. Here is another one for you, “Now glory be to God, who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes,” (Ephesians 3: 20 TLB). How much can we believe that our God really wants to and is going to bless us? How many caveats do we have for each of these verses?

Our belief system is built one verse at a time. You encounter verses like these and you have to spend time with them before you can really believe they are true. How about the verses that tell us to not to fear? How do you get those into your structure? Most people, including Christians, that I hear, talk about fear. They have more belief in fear than in faith. Why? We simply have not integrated God’s Word and our lives. We don’t stop and evaluate our lives in light of the Word. Everyday day when you read the Word of the Day you should look at the verse and ask how fully you believe it and how thoroughly you have slotted into your life paradigm. Do you live that verse? Does it affect who you are? If the words of the Bible aren’t changing your life then you are not allowing the Word of God to do its work. We have to run headlong into these verses and challenge ourselves to believe.

It is an ongoing practice and I doubt anyone has fully integrated every single verse in the Bible but that is our goal. Each week, we ought to become a little more Bible infused. We ought to think more and more like God and less and less as the world does. So, as you read the Bible, stop and ask yourself if you really believe what you just read. Did your mind simply acknowledge the words without affecting your beliefs? The Bible should challenge you. You won’t always like what it says, at least until you let the Holy Spirit teach you about it, but engage it, work with it and let it change your life.

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I Dare You!

On November 14, 2018   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Psalm 12: 6            Passion Translation

For every word God speaks is sure and every promise pure. His truth is tested, found to be flawless, and ever faithful. It’s as pure as silver refined seven times in a crucible of clay.

Oh, if we only believed this. Wouldn’t life be different? The truth of the matter, sorrowfully, is that most Christians aren’t really believers. We believe in Jesus but not necessarily all his words. This is lamentable, but you know what, this is something we can change individually and globally.

Today’s psalm is a song of David, I think you might hear his voice in this verse. He trusted God. He believed in Him. Not only did he believe in God but even more importantly, he believed God. David believed that whatever God said was true and sure, that there was no way it could not come to pass. He believed that ever promise of God was yes and amen to him, that it was undeniable. He believed in the purity of God’s promises and every word which proceeded from the mouth of God. And David’s belief had no choice but to manifest in his life. You see, what we believe is what we will manifest.

The heathen know this. Why don’t we? They know that what the heart believes will become reality. And they are right. That is the way God made this realm to operate. It’s not a big secret. David has told you right here that all of God’s words are absolute truth. Jesus said, “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you,” (Mark 11: 24). Or think on this from Mark 11: 23 as recorded in the God’s Word Translation, “I can guarantee this truth: This is what will be done for someone who doesn’t doubt but believes what he says will happen: He can say to this mountain, ‘Be uprooted and thrown into the sea,’ and it will be done for him.” What you believe is reality. Period. That is really a huge statement and yet so easily read over. Let me say it this way, if you will teach and train yourself to take God’s word, and yes, even God Himself, at face value, then all that He has said will be your reality. What you believe is the truth you will live. Actually, the life you are living right now is that which you have believed in the past. If you want to up your game, believe bigger. God said that He was willing and able to do above and beyond all that you are able to imagine (Ephesians 3: 20). So . . . think bigger. Take Him at His word.

How can you teach yourself to believe God? You must commune with Him. There really is no other way. David learned to walk with God daily. He invested himself in the relationship. The more you come to know Yahweh personally, the more you will believe Him, the more you will believe His word with your heart, not only your mind. We have to learn to hang out with God more.

The other thing we should all do is to press our friends to become believers. It is a pain to be around me sometimes but when my Christian friends say something totally unbiblical, I nudge them, even correct them, if the truth were told. Why should I let my friends wallow in lies and deceit? I cannot. There are those, however, that I can’t teach, can’t train, can’t move. The veil of their Christianity is just too thin, and it may tear. You do have to leave those people where they are no matter how it pains you. Your committed friends though, hold them accountable for their words and beliefs and invite them to hold you accountable.

Let’s do this. Let’s push each other and ourselves to become Davidic believers, people who trust the Lord our God at least as much as David did. Maybe we could even believe God in the same fashion as Abraham whose belief was accounted as righteousness by God. Believe God. Take Him at His word. I dare you!

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Done and Done

On July 3, 2017   /   Word of the Day   /   1 Comment

1 Corinthians 2: 9

Just as it is written, “THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND WHICH HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.”

The part of this verse which really grabbed me was that God has already prepared things for us. The verse does not say that once we pray, God will prepare these things which are beyond what eye has seen and ear has heard. It says that He already has prepared all these things for us. That is a pretty big revelation. This substance, these things which God has already prepared for us is beyond what has ever entered our hearts. That is the second part of the revelation, that God has already created things for you that you currently don’t even know you want.

Ephesians 3: 20 says that God is able to do for us beyond all we can think or ask. Before we have even dreamed up the next idea or want, He has already created and stocked it for us. He has already prepared things which are beyond our ability to dream or think. So, ten years ago, for instance, or 20 years ago, God prepared the things that you want and need today. I hope this is a revelation which is sinking in. Take it a step further though.

He has already prepared things for you which no human eye has ever seen, which no human ear has ever heard and which no human heart or mind has ever conceived. There will come a day when an idea, concept or dream will drop into your mind. That idea will require resources. That dream will be an expansion of your former thoughts. Where does it come from? Perhaps God is the source of these ideas and dreams and before they are ever perceived, God is already at work providing the means by which they can and will be realized.

If God has already stocked the storehouse, if He has already prepared the resources, then the only question is, how do you requisition the materials. I believe the answer begins right here. We must first apprehend this simple appreciation of God’s provision. We need to allow this revelation to take root in our hearts so that we know and believe that all we need has already been prepared. This is the beginning of living those dreams.

God has great plans for your tomorrow and your today. He is giving you hopes and ambitions and He has already laid aside the substance of those dreams so that you make walk in success and enjoy all the good things He has prepared for you.

Will knowing this verse change your prayer life? Will it alter the conversation you have with God? Will your prayer ask God to provide when the Bible is telling us He already has or will your begin to look more for distribution than manufacturing? Tomorrow can look very different today because now you know He has already provided.

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Preferred Placement

On September 9, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

Romans 12: 10

Be devoted to one another in brotherly love; give preference to one another in honor.

Can you imagine a pastor standing up in front of the congregation and delivering this message today? It just doesn’t sound like a modern message to me. I wonder how well it would go over. Brotherly love isn’t something we discuss frequently and I don’t think I have heard many, if any, sermons on showing preference to one another. I am not being critical. I am just saying that this might not be the way we think and dialogue these days.

You know, this really is a tough scripture when you think about it. We live in the “Me” generation and are working on getting our own needs met. Then we move into getting all of our desires met above and beyond all that we can think or ask. That’s Bible, it’s scriptural so how do we reconcile this passage with all the teaching on God wanting to bless us supernaturally?

I think the reconciliation is in our “getting”. When our eyes are on others and we are putting their needs ahead of ours then we are in the will of God. We don’t strive in order to get. That is the key. We allow God to be the giver rather that for us to labor in the getting. But this goes way, way beyond money and things. This is about humility in human relationships. 

When you are in a body of believers who all subscribe to this philosophy it really can be heaven on earth. The difficulty comes when you are constantly forced to interact with those who are not only carnally minded but self-minded. They are always seeking to fill their own desires so the human inside of us feels compelled to push back some. These self-oriented people may make you feel like they will swallow you whole. Therefore, your internal man attempts to defend itself. Don’t we wish we just didn’t have to be around them. Their dialogue is always about what they want and they really don’t care what anyone else wants. I can appreciate that if you have some of those people in your life it can be very taxing. It may be too obvious if you send them today’s Word of the Day.

Here is what we have to do. We must begin to pray for them. Notice I didn’t say about them. Praying “about” people means we are praying our agenda. Praying for them allows God to apply His will. Clearly the love of God is not perfected in any of us yet. Their self-centeredness is the revelation of their heart that they have not received the love of God. They do not yet have a inward revelation of God’s love for them personally. They may intellectually know that God loves them but the tape in their head of their unworthiness is probably playing louder. It is our unworthiness, though, that makes the love of God so profound. Once we accept our unworthiness and reconcile ourselves to that truth then we are finally free to receive the unmerited love and favor of God. Then we humbly give to others and make preference for them with honor because we know at such a personal level how Yahweh and Jesus have done the same for us. This is called “loving the unlovely” and it is really hard because your natural person resurrects its ugly self. However, the more we can receive the truth about the love the Father has for us, the more we will be able to make others needs and wants a higher priority than ours. I don’t say it is easy but if we can all make a little shift in that direction, then all will be better and easier.

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Hear Me

On July 17, 2015   /   Word of the Day   /   Leave a comment

John 16: 13

But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come.

Okay, so here is my question. How is it that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is supposed to “speak” to us? Well? You see, I was reading in the book of John when I read this very familiar verse. I mean, it’s highlighted in my Bible. I know this verse and yet as I was reading it, I just stopped in my tracks. I have always assumed so much as I read it. How, am I to hear what the Holy Spirit is speaking? How is he going to guide me into all truth? This is a big verse with several really big disclosures in it. Are we all prepared to hear him?

I am aware that there are a lot of people who never hear Yahweh speaking to them. I’ve got to say, my heart grieves over this fact. Most of you know my story and how I was desperate to hear God talking to me. I literally chased God down in my pursuit to hear His voice. The Bible says to seek Him but I was way past that. I flew 2500 miles to a conference to get Him and I told our Father that I was coming back with the ability to hear His voice. And you know what, Dad honored my desire. I got what I wanted and Dad got what he wanted, me. Life has not been the same since.

There is no reason why you cannot hear God, the Holy Spirit and the Son speak to you too. There certainly is nothing special about me. Maybe you can hear Him now but just not as often or as clearly as you would like. My advice to you is, “Don’t settle for anything less than everything.” Ephesians 3: 20 casts our mind out beyond normal, common or perhaps even possible. Father wants us thinking beyond our boundaries continuously. Today’s boundary is tomorrow’s history. He is the God of “exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or think.”

Jesus sending the Holy Spirit to us was a really big deal. This is the age of the Holy Spirit right now and we really need to connect with him. He was sent here for us, to help us and to be always at our side. We can talk with him, we can see him. He is here, in the earth, for us. It is he who leads us into victory daily.

I want to encourage you. If you don’t hear God’s voice routinely or you just want to improve your connectivity – Press In. Call on God. Chase Him down in the streets if you must. He is willing to grant you this interconnectedness with Him where you feel His presence and hear His voice. There is more that He would do with and for all of us but it is beyond all that I can think or ask in this moment. Let’s rally together to call on God and receive everything that Jesus won for us, especially that we hear all the Holy Spirit speaks.

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