Day 11 - Becoming/Discipline (Tiffany)

God can only bless you in proportion to the condition of your soul. 

Are your feelings and emotions roadblocks to His work in your life? 
I think that my feelings and emotions are definitely huge obstacles to the Lord working in my life. Emotions and feelings are big in our areas of experience and it is difficult to push past them at times because they can become overbearing to what our mind truly thinks about the situation. The problem is that the longer we take to confess what we are feeling emotionally and we keep trying to handle things in our own strength, the harder it becomes to discern the voice of the Lord. I read this piece earlier this morning about King Saul and his act of disobedience. The Word said that it is better to obey than to sacrifice, meaning that we need to live by the Spirit and the Word that He gives us instead of trying to hold on to tradition, or what others may be telling us. Many times we can get stuck into moving in legalism in our lives because we are at a place where we may feel disappointed in God because He has not moved in the timing that we felt that He should move in and so we take matters into our own hands.

I have done this countless times, because I failed to trust Him in certain areas financially, I would take extreme measures (not to mention I grew up in a home full of gamblers, so unwise risks were embedded into my cultural make-up)...but I cannot blame what I grew up around, because I am a new creature in Christ, but like I just wrote earlier, our feelings will get us to make a decision out of our flesh instead of on the truth of what the Word of the Lord is saying to us in a particular season.

God confirmed and reconfirmed some writing assignments and details, but I kept my focus on what was going on in my life financially and not giving it over to Him, but trying to make things happen myself...all to the point to where I've now become dependent on others...and yet the enemy is still using this as a point of pressure. It's the system of Babylon and the enemy will keep trying to use it to get Kingdom citizens to bow down from their true purpose here on earth.

"It isn't that God won't bless you, but that He can't bless you until your soul is rightly ordered and restored to God's original plan."

This is a time and season to be correctly in alignment with the purposes of God and His will so that His Kingdom come and His will be done here on earth as it is in Heaven!

"Paul said the discipline of God is not so much about what we choose not to do, but more about what we choose to do."

And I get that! Prior to all of these tearing down in my life, I went through a series of fasts, where I fasted from food. I was getting to the point where my financial situation changed and I didn't have as much food as I used to, so fasting from food didn't make any sense plus I was loosing too much weight! I then heard the Lord say that I need to use His Word in the situations that I was facing, so I began a season of where I would use the Word of God sometimes, but then I would get discouraged after speaking and it didn't seem to come to pass as I thought it should be...especially with one particular circumstance, I know that God spoke because He said it more than once and used two different scriptures in the situation. He told me to "Be still and see the salvation of the Lord." Twice in two different texts...yet, when it came down to it, I was sitting on the floor in fear one day, I was really trying not to feel fearful or dismayed as I sat there, but I was in absolute terror...I was brought to a place where I could feel myself when I was four and a half years old and I felt so alone, so lost, so unprotected, uncovered and vulnerable...I was having a huge problem with trusting God and believing by faith for a miracle, and then the exact thing that I did not want to happen, happened...Now according to law of attraction, this one thing that I was afraid of had been tormenting me since 2004. Throughout the years, the Lord built my faith to the point where I said that I won't worry about tomorrow, but when tomorrow turned into today that's when things were hard, because what God really wants us to do when He says not to worry about tomorrow is to just REST in Him...to carry ALL of the burdens that we have in prayer! We actually forfeit the peace of God because we are too busy trying to handle things on our own!

I believe that God has me at the place where I am...stripped down to next to nothing so that I can properly plan with the Vision He has given me. He wants me to concentrate on writing plans and working and executing, but the devil will come in and try to get me off focus, not concentrate on to-do lists, to think all of these other things need to be done...the enemy will bring external forces who are nosy about my life and begin to ask me all these questions and then offer their opinions, then I start listening to them because I'm not following God (mediating on His Word day and night and not looking to the left or right) and when that happens, that's the discord...FOCUS TIFF, FOCUS!

When the Lord has placed something deep within your heart/soul to help others, you cannot continue to ignore it...you cannot continue to look at everybody else...it's time for DISCIPLINE in your life and to follow the law of love and not legalism. Confess to the Lord where you feel broken, let down and your struggles with how things turned out, and then leave it there and move forward! You can't move forward and look back at the same time, you'll run into something & keep running into things...don't be Lot's wife turning into a pillar of salt, but rather be what God called you to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world!

Colossians 3:12-14 

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: Compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.