The Inevitable War

I pulled the car door closed, it had been a long time since I felt this weight of darkness drop heavy on me. The devil knows what chokes me. Schemer.


Fear encompassed me as I imagine an MRI machine would make me feel, fear of suffocation.


Her words, “you failed to keep your word . . .” had reopened an old wound in my soul. A wound she had nothing to do with. The lesion that bleeds whenever I fail, whenever I miss the mark of making me enough to be worthy of love.


I had sought to do the thing I promised, but it didn’t work out and then life took me a different direction and limited me. And I forgot…


I felt horrible.


Whether a person’s expectations are truly make-or-break and do-or-die expectations . . . or only those I perceive to be the litmus test for my value.


When will I ever be free of people-pleasing? When will I be emancipated from fearing rejection? When will I be able to keep my mind on the things that are good and true and pure and right and excellent and praiseworthy? When will I be able to keep Jesus in my view . . . the Spirit . . . instead of my performance? [me, seeking to keep an impossible law]


I fear the answer is:
When I die.


I seem to fall into this trap most often when my life is wound so tight that I can barely breathe. When there is “trouble on every side” … that’s when the eyes of my heart seem to land on my weaknesses.


That’s when I fall into the old slave-mentality of “perform to save self”


That’s when I forget to remember the truth.
That is when my own expectations are placed on myself instead of depending on God.


It’s not up to me.


It’s not up to me and grace is free.


Not one can save self.
Only Jesus can save.
And He helps me remember His truth the moment I bow my head and seek His grace.


I remember Jesus.
All these years with Him teaching me.
My long-suffering Savior, giver of grace, epitome of unfailing love.


It’s coming quicker than it once did, my repentance.
I feel the weight of slavery, and I know now to turn to the Emancipator.


My face.


It’s about where I face.
When my face falls for the feels,


head hung low . . .
self is in view.
When I lift my face to the rising sun, where mercy resides, where grace frees . . .


Jesus is in view; I am facing Him.

Him, in the hills, that place where my help comes from. Psalm 121:1 KJV

Lord Jesus, I am relying on SELF again! Forgive me! 
And He gives me more grace. Again. Praise Him!

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.


Flesh . . . when God mentions it, He means that part of me that acts independently of Him.
Self-reliant.
That is flesh.
It’s the 666
Three times short of seven with a sabbath where I rest in Him.


The flesh or the self is opposed to the Spirit of God. Galatians 5:16-18


When I allow a human being to have power over my value, I am worshiping the human being.
God calls that idolatry.
And idolatry is slavery.
I default to slavery.


But He split the sea so I could walk right through it!!!
Egypt is in my rear-view mirror!
Get behind me Satan! You are a defeated foe!


My Christ has won the victory!


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