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Norma L. Brumbaugh

Inspirational Writer, Author, and Speaker

PO Box 6432, Chico, CA 95927
nlbrumbaugh@gmail.com

Keep a smile in your heart.

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Accessing and Applying God’s Word, A Spiritual Intervention (25)

Time for a final application activity, also known as homework. Are you still with me? Things worth doing usually involve some hard work and lots of processing. This is no exception. Let me know if you have any breakthroughs in your spiritual life. We can celebrate together.

APPLICATION ACTIVITY

Get alone with God. Let God know you are aware of His presence. Be still with God and listen for Him.

1. Welcome God as you give Him these minutes of quietness. Rest in God’s presence. Allow His sweetness to envelop you and your spirit. Ask God for a fuller awareness of His presence. Confess, repent, and surrender. Thank God for His forgiveness and grace. Write down thoughts you wish to remember or praises you are expressing to God.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20 ESV

2. Meditate on Galatians 2:20. What does each phrase in this verse say to you? Why is it important to crucify self to Christ? If you have not had a complete yielding of yourself to Christ, then you have not participated in being crucified with Christ. Becoming real as a Christian is part of this spiritual transaction of placing yourself in God and experiencing a death to self and any self-interest.

3. Identify the areas in you where you are fearful or vulnerable. Picture God taking you through a door as you leave the fears and uncertainties behind, you walk into the presence of God’s divine radiance, no longer shackled by their hindering presence.

4. Praise God for the work He is doing in you. Let go of any bondage you know exists in you that inhibits your relationship with God and with others. Give this to God. Ask for a release of God’s intervening work within you, to set you free.

5. Ask a praying friend to walk though this with you if you are feeling weak and unable. Satan is powerful. He will engage to dissuade or defeat you to stop you from taking this step of surrender. He will try to block your healing. There are times when we need praying friends to join in the spiritual battle. Do not hesitate to ask for prayer support.

6. Share what you are learning and experiencing in your relationship with Christ with a friend or a relative. Begin walking in freedom. If there is no release, healing, or sense of closeness with God, review and repeat earlier lessons. This might be a positive thing to do regardless.

7. Allow your emotions to surface for their presence is part of the healing process. If you are rigid or harsh there is need for a deeper awareness and spiritual awakening. The character of Christ is kind, loving, firm/strong, and unhurried and much, much more. Record areas you see within you that are being transformed or transformed into Christ-likeness.

Accessing and applying God's word is critical to spiritual health.
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Feedback: As you complete this series what has been helpful or informative? Please leave a comment. I welcome your input.

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Embrace Father-God (15)

God notices when we thumb our noses at Him and disregard His ways and leading. It must cause Him some measure of pain.

PATH TO SPIRITUAL FREEDOM – LIVE A TRANSFORMED LIFE

I heard a story the other day about a man who bought some fries at McDonald’s for his four year old son. His son was eating the fries and the aroma was tempting the dad. He reached over to snag a couple of fries when his son stopped him. “Don’t, Daddy, these are my fries,” the boy exclaimed as he pushed his father’s hand away. Now, in reality, the boy wouldn’t have had any fries if his father hadn’t bought them for him. In essence, it was a moot point. However, what bothered the father was that his son didn’t want to share with him what he had given his son in the first place.

After the exchange with his son was over, the father began thinking about what had just happened.

It made the dad think about God and us and our reaction to God. He saw a picture in his mind of God with His children, how God must feel when He gives us what we need and desire, but then we aren’t willing to share back with Him out of what He has given us.

If we could just grasp this concept. All that we have comes from God. Why wouldn’t He want to be a part of our lives? He does. Our Father wishes to have His children’s love and loyalty in response to His great love for us that He desires to share and complete in us.

It is similar to when we wish to be with a person we love, but we find we can only see them for a limited amount of time. We alter our schedule and responsibilities in order to make time to see that person even at the expense of other things of importance.

God wants our love, our friendship, our time, our desire for Him to be of value, interactive, and reciprocal. I believe God to be this way. We are dependent on Him, but it need not be a contest of God’s will versus our will. We pull together. He in me, and me in Him. Our lives pivot with Him at His command. Even our bolting and erratic behaviors are not apart from His yoke, no matter how independent or self-motivated, actualized we are.

When we quit fighting and yield and lean in to God, bend our will to His will, as part of the team and with no form of resistance, then we find spiritual rest. This is a true state of rest for our souls, soul-rest, spiritual rest, formulated in trust. We find ourselves never alone. God is with us, always.

The key to supernatural spiritual rest is found in God. Spiritual rest will not and can not happen until we let go of ourselves. This will come as we yield. Come to Him. Look deeply inward. Ask to take His yoke, His life as part of yours.

Seek to learn, not just know.

Allow God to manifest Himself in you by actually surrendering your right to yourself. Then the rest will follow on its heels. With spirit-rest, there will be peace, joy, and genuine Christ-likeness. The end result? A person begins to change on the inside, and we stop being Christian phonies and become real spiritually.

What about our pain? Its healing becomes part of a renewal process as you give it to God for His tender graces as you seek Him for truth, righteousness, and healing. The healing may come quick or it may be slow. It is a part of the transformation that occurs as you seek to find God in a spirit of openness, humility, and with God-sufficiency. You are done with your own self- rule and self-sufficiency.

It is freeing to let go of ourselves. Let go, and let God. Many of us have found this to be true. It takes an act of the will. It takes trust in God. It takes initiative on our part. And it takes time. It takes all of these and always will. In time they become who you are and you are a new creature in Christ.

Those who seek God will find God in the intimacy of relationship, real and loving, and worth every problem and heartache it has taken to get there. God makes us new. He restores, heals, and renews our lives. In this, He refreshes our souls. I am so thankful that this is true. It makes life worth living. Freedom is where it’s at.

Joy comes in the morning.

Believe it. Know it. Embrace it. Start living!

Embrace your new life. God is there for you.
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