While we were still helpless [powerless to provide for our salvation], at the right time Christ died [as a substitute] for the ungodly. Now it is an extraordinary thing for one to willingly give his life even for an upright man, though perhaps for a good man [one who is noble and selfless and worthy] someone might even dare to die. But God clearly shows and proves His own love for us, by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:6-8 (Amplified Bible)
Kindness Is Free
Romans 2:4 ” Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”
Today at the store, I was with a friend and a lady who was also entering the store at the same time, showed her kindness in the form of a compliment. This was a complete stranger. She put herself out there and risked being vulnerable by showing her admiration of my friend’s hat. I know this sounds somewhat obvious in nature; However, we often go along in life and pretty much ignore our fellowman or woman.
Kindness is a virtue. It is something we exhibit without expecting anything in return. Kindness often comes from a place in our heart of a pure heart. It can come in the form of provision, thoughtfulness, care, protection, and every form of helpfulness. It can just be a kind word, opening the door for someone and general thinking of others than yourself.
It is grace towards others. God is very kind to us knowing our human condition here on the earth. So many things here, on earth, were hijacked by Satan. Our life here often is not what God intended. God’s knowing is His love for us and letting us know He cares about us above the negative things going on in the world. He did not create the negativity.
Kindness in us can convey God’s love for people. We can outshine the darkness by sharing the kindness of God. His deepest desire is to show people beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is good, and He loves us.
Pastor Delilah’s Heaven & Hell Adventure
Good News Church in Riverside, California is blessed to have Pastor Delilah in their congregation. She has wowed us with this part of her testimony. Please, listen and enjoy Part 1 and Part 2 of her story.
Discernment is Needed Today
And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,
Philippians 1:9-10 (New King James Version)
Made In God’s Image
Identity
Identity is such a vital component of knowing ourselves and God. It is a foundational piece of information to help you understand where you are going. It is a place of reflection or anchoring to build on or build from. It becomes a place of safety and being familiar with oneself. It distinguishes us from other people or other things. It has unique marks or qualities of each individual person.
To Identify is to be or become the same. It is also to perceive or state the identity of (someone or something). Next, it is to ascertain the identity of someone or something. This helps us understand Identity.
Genesis 1:26-27 ESV – “26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
We are knit together because we are all made in the image of God himself. We are called his children, so we are all the same in the Kingdom of God. We are the Family of God. Have you ever met someone and know you have never met them before? And you know they are so familiar. Often it is the familiarity of the Spirit of the living God that dwells inside of them. I have noticed they light up when we run into them and there is a natural attraction to the Spirit of God that dwells in them and you.
I would like to speak to the familiarity for a moment. When we come together in the Kingdom and we are building, we need the strength of each other to build. The strength (encouragement) or gifts we have will help the building process. So, identity is key.
1 Peter 2:4-6 ESV – “4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
Psalm 118:22 ESV – “22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”
Isaiah 28:16 ESV – “16 therefore thus says the Lord GOD, “Behold, I am the one who has laid as a foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation: ‘Whoever believes will not be in haste.'”
False identity is often the killer to our path. The enemy of our souls will attack relentlessly to stop us from knowing our identity and try to sell us a bill of goods saying we are something otherwise. Satan is the great perpetrator of identity theft and assault.
If our identity can be distorted, stolen, or stopped we then will have a challenging time co-creating with God which is part of our identity. With His image we have His and our righteous imagination and play to use in the Kingdom.
Currently, in our present day and age, we are suffering as a body with unity. We have not come to understand who we are and who we belong to. Our uniqueness is not celebrated. The Kingdom of God is absent from most believers’ daily lives.
In this book, we will look at unity and knitting together. False identity and assault from the enemy, is the destroyer, of who we are created to be.
We are ALL created in His image.
This is a chapter out of my coming book “The Sexualization Of America”.
Love Your Neighbor
“For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word :” You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Galatians 5:14
It’s Actually Favor
Jesus Loves Me Podcast: May 2023
Sharon and Jana touch talk about what favor from God looks like in our lives. Favor permeates our daily lives more than we understand or can even imagine. But, the more favor we receive in gratitude, the more favor God gives us.
We’re Talking Revival
Jesus Loves Me Podcast: March 2023
Sharon and Jana touch base about revivals, past, present, and future. They hit on some controversy and let us know what they think we can expect moving forward.
Can I Trust You, Lord?
Surprising Intimacy
I closed my eyes and settled into the silence. It started with a gentle kiss, a warm caress on my shoulder, then a more forceful embrace. The room in my mind was dimmed with red light symbolizing the perfect passion of Christ’s love for me (The same red light the enemy has stolen and perverted.). I thought of the Song of Songs and understood. The intimacy is remarkably blush-worthy. Jesus’ love excites His promise in me that I will be healed. This love of the Lord is difficult for me to imagine and receive. Growing up I trusted the adults in my life and intimacy was defiled. I didn’t know how much intimacy draws people together in reciprocal trust and care.
The truth is that people don’t trust God because they don’t trust people.
We’ve all trusted someone and have been let down. It’s inevitable that trust will fail on some level at some point in our relationships. We can expect to be disappointed because people are fallible. People will fall short of our expectations, especially if our expectations are too high, miscommunicated, or unreasonable. It makes sense that we’d have a hard time trusting again after we’ve been hurt. When we’ve been hurt over and over, trusting others becomes difficult. Which makes trusting God difficult too.
When we’ve trusted and been hurt, we can give people grace and forgiveness to maintain relationships. God does the same thing with us — He forgives us and gives us grace abundantly. God understands that we have a hard time trusting and He seeks our hearts anyway.
God’s compassionate agape love for us goes far beyond what we can ever imagine. God is trustworthy to say and do the very best for us. We can trust Him. God does not lie, so we can believe what He tells us in Scripture. God leads us in Proverbs 3:5–6, TPT saying, “Trust in the Lord completely and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on him to guide you, and he will lead you in every decision you make. Become intimate with him in whatever you do, and he will lead you wherever you go.”
Trusting God is an important foundation of our relationship with Him. If we don’t trust God, we will not easily enter our Secret Place. We must find the ability to trust Him to begin healing and growing in our relationship with Christ. We need to trust God and be receptive to receiving all He has for us.
Not Trusting is Not an Option
Without trust in God, we stay immature, lukewarm, broken, and fractured. We miss what is happening in the Body of Christ. Holding onto a lack of trust in God builds anger and resentment. Life becomes joyless, unfruitful, and stuck in cycles of destruction. Without trusting God, we stay the same, unchanged, with broken relationships, no purpose or vision, toxic, without identity, unsafe, and estranged from supernatural connection with Him. We suffer, remain discouraged, hopeless, scared, alone, and feel abandoned.
The truth is that when we trust God, He will draw us out of all the destruction caused by our sin and rebellion. We are in sin and rebellion when we don’t trust God because we are rejecting Him and all He has for us. God wants us to be free, whole, and healthy. He wants us to see the victory we’ve been offered through Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. God wants to permanently heal us, save us, and help us to know our identity in Him. With trust in God, we can find freedom in our Secret Place.
Trust Comes with Hope
God made us with a specific calling, purpose, and destiny we can only fulfill in our relationship with Him. Let’s receive more of God for our healing and to fulfill our destiny. Let’s live in our victory. Let’s bring our lack of trust and all our other cares to Him. Let’s surrender everything, even our lives to Him. It may be hard at first, and it may be a process, but we can find God our Secret Place. We can connect with Jesus deeply and enter His holy ground to receive everything He has prepared for us.
Everything we are looking for is waiting for us in our Secret Place. The desires of our hearts can be made manifest as we spend time with God. The exhilaration of freedom awaits us. Knowledge and understanding find us there. There’s more to the Secret Place than we can understand.
God Doesn’t Want a Middle Man
He Wants You
Let’s take a look at a few items related to our personal relationship with God and the covenant, and religion we now experience. In Covenant we are truly lovers and followers of Jesus Christ by the Word that is the Word of the Lord. In Religiousness we trap ourselves and we take our eyes off Jesus, like Peter walking on the water.
Consider the table below:
| In Covenant | In Religiousness |
| God talks directly to you. John 10:27-28 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. | We give ministers authority to talk to God for us. Exodus 20:18-21 Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” |
| Jesus paid the price for us. Galatians 3:13-15 Christ paid the price to free us from the curse that the laws in Moses’ Teachings bring by becoming cursed instead of us. Scripture says, “Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed.” Christ paid the price so that the blessing promised to Abraham would come to all the people of the world through Jesus Christ and we would receive the promised Spirit through faith. | We pay penance by doing works for God. Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. |
| We have freedom in every area of our lives. 2 Corinthians 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. | Man-made rules, laws, and behaviors are followed. Romans 7:6 But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code. |
| Everything we are blessed with is freely given. Matthew 10:8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. | We have to earn degrees and certificates to be successful and approved. Matthew 23;1-5 Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to His disciples, saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do to be seen by men. |
| God is always faithful to us. 1 Corinthians 1:9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. God’s faithfulness calls us into relationship, into a family where. We can experience love and growth together. | Man will fail us. Psalm 118:8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. |
Hardwired for Life 
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