Have you ever woken up at the onset of the day and felt like there was this cloud of heaviness over your head that seems to overshadow you depriving you to think right?

And then you get to work carrying the same load unknowingly causing such oppression to cloud even your memory and to remember anything is such a challenge.  Hmmmm … it was tough!  I was so out of focus that even resulted to guilt, shame and condemnation.

It was one “not so fine day”, if I may say, that seemed like I was empowered to do all the wrong things one after the other, having my mind taken captive to think the wrong way.  And because I could not live up to the standards of what was expected of me at work, it boiled down for me to have a heavy and condemned heart.

But God Who is rich in mercy and abounding in love was in my midst all along.  I knew His presence was reachable, tangible and experientiable.  Though I kept failing and falling, the Holy Spirit was constantly and consistently reminding and quickening me with this verse … “If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.” (1 John 3:20)

In the middle of my every step in such downward spiral, there was an unceasing and comforting whisper of assurance that He was upholding me with His righteous right hand with strong impressions in my heart that I am ALWAYS accepted and approved in the Beloved and that He will ALWAYS love me in my unlovable moments, all because Jesus’ blood bought, paid for and took away my lawless deeds and unrighteousness and gave me in divine exchange the gift of righteousness, that my confidence in His presence will not be tarnished by the under-toned lies of the enemy.

There was a fight of purging out my fleshly shame and fought a good fight of faith for my heart to stay in line with how God sees me, justified and sanctified with the moral grandeurs and excellencies of the finished work of Jesus Christ.  How God soooo loved the unlovable world that He gave His only begotten Son to demonstrate that kind of unfailing, unconditional, unearned, undeserved, unmerited and unequalled love.

All by His grace and mercy in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, He kept my eyes focused on Him in spite of what was going on around me.  I love how Matthew 6:22 TPT reminded me, “The eyes of your spirit allow revelation-light to enter into your being.  If your heart is UNCLOUDED, the light floods in!”  

We are to study how to show ourselves approved before God by rightly diving the Word of Truth, fully persuaded that it is not by our own good works that will earn us His favor, but because when Jesus becomes our Lord and Savior, we come to know and trust how He is so mindful of us every step of the way, healing us ALL who are OPPRESSED by the enemy.

Oppression means that something else is lording over us or pressing down upon us which definitely and absolutely does not come from God.  Thank God that His grace allows us to see who is lording over us if our minds and hearts are not at peace.  And when we shift our focus and attention to Him and allow Jesus to Lord over us once again and again, our thoughts and our hearts begin to be maneuvered by the voice of His Word revealed to us by the Holy Spirit that brings hope and delivers us from where we are at.

Jesus declares about Himself, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. (Luke 4:18)

To be oppressed is not our permanent address if we take on the courage and strength of Him Who guides us into all truth.  He is The Lord Who is strong and mighty to save.

Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.
Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Lift up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in. (Psalm 24:8-9)

Hmmmm …. In the midst of chaos and confusion, we lift up our heads!  We offer a sacrifice of praise, praising Him even if we do not feel like praising. We sing praises to the King of Glory for He inhabits the praises of His people.  We sing praises to shift our focus from ourselves and the wrong things that we’ve done to Jesus and the glorious fininshed work that He has done. We welcome Him with the majestic sound that comes from the beating drums of our thankful hearts to receive His strength and might and before we know it, the light of His presence has pierced in into our hearts, converted our sour words of saying, “Sorry, my mind is kaput today” into “Thank God, I have the mind of Christ.”

Mind you, what He reveals in our spirits affects the confessions and the declarations of our mouths that eventually changes our situations.  When the grace of God lays out before us a feast of His revelatory words, our faith is ignited and invited to receive.  A thought cannot be fought by a thought.  It can only be fought when we declare and decree His Word over us.  It is in the hearing of what comes out of our mouths that determine what is firmly founded in our hearts.  Once confidently decreed, surely it shall come to pass.

We keep on getting the seed of God’s Word into the ground of our hearts until the full picture of how the Lord sees us through the eyes of His love for us is birthed inside us, seeing ourselves the same way as He sees us.

There is always a battle that we face day in and day out and it is always to cause us to lose the tarnish of our identity of being His beloved, blessed and favored sons and daughters, called to be the righteousness of God IN CHRIST.  This is so because when our confidence of being the apple of His eye, having full access into His very presence, gets dented, it affects our boldness to come before Him, Who is our very present help in time of need.

This is the reason why we are to meditate the Word of God day and night, night and day.  It is living and powerful.  It reminds us with full and absolute assurance that no matter what comes our way, we are being fully understood and unconditionally loved by the One Who is Love Himself, the Lord our God.

“My son, give attention to my words;
Incline your ear to my sayings.
Do not let them depart from your eyes;
Keep them in the midst of your heart;
For they are LIFE to those who find them,
And HEALTH to all their flesh.”  (Proverbs 4:20-22)

Before my day of work ended, there were two instances where I witnessed myself supernaturally remembering what were somehow forgotten.  My colleague saw and heard and I considered that as the Lord’s amazing saving grace that put everything back into its rightful perspective.  His Word that I have declared became flesh and manifested before my very eyes.  It is not by might nor by power, but by the Spirit of God.

The best part of the day was just before I went off to bed.  When I was about to meditate His Word, I closed my eyes and asked for His presence to envelop and embrace me and in an instant, He did.  Surely and only His goodness and mercy purse us all the days of our lives, never leaving us nor forsaking us, never leaving us without any support nor leaving us helpless.  And as we cast our cares to Him because He cares for us, He makes His presence known and felt in such suddenness that captures our hearts and makes us relentlessly in awe of Him.

Always remember His promise … “Behold, I Am with you ALWAYS.” (Matthew 28:20)

 

Prayer:  Heavenly Father, thank You for Your unfailing and unceasing love that surpasses all understanding.  Thank You, Jesus, that we can call upon Your Name and be confidently assured of being instantly saved because You have dealt with every need we can think of at the cross when You cried out, “It is FINISHED!”  You are the One Who walks beside us, upholding us with Your hand at the same time living inside of us as our HOPE of glory.   In You, hopelessness does not exist.  It is only in You where we can joyfully expect blessings to come upon us and overtake us.  Thank You, Holy Spirit, for the strength with power that we may be able to somehow comprehend in our hearts and experience in our lives how soooo loved we are.  Amen!