Many try to live by interpreting the signs.

If things work well, it is the Lord's blessing. If things fall through, it was the wrong decision.

Our God does not work this way. He reveals Himself in our weakness, and He is often experienced most richly in the fiery trial.

Remember so many whose lives have blessed ours - John and Betty Stam who were beheaded. The five missionaries who were killed by the Aucas. Peter, who was crucified upside down. Should I list more?

We are to be living sacrifices. This means He must be allowed to do anything with our lives that will glorify Him. Anything.

For the Soldier of The Cross, success is obeying the Lord. There is no earthly way to measure heavenly success.

You see the Lord or you don't.
You serve Him or you don't.
You yield to Him or you don't.

He has never hidden from a follower, and He has never played with any life.

Through thick or thin, trust Him He is able to lead, and He will lead with the fire and the cloud.

        I need to love the Lord enough to tell you the truth, and not always what you want to hear. As soon as I begin telling you only things that please you, our relationship rides on the balance of your responses.
     I am so grateful that God says it like it is. He says it creatively, tenderly, even wooingly. But He never compromises out of softness.
     He may withhold something for a time , but it is never out of fear of my disapproval - only Divine, creative timing.
     I am a weak little human, but the One Who rose from the dead lives in me, and that means that He is always working to prepare me for heaven.  So as I seem to stumble my way through, He is always putting before me a little more than I can comfortably do.
     The same thing happens in relationships. Our good friendship must be based not on frankness (that is something altogether different) but on my tongue answering with the light of God's Word as I am able.
     If you are interested in the same thing, we have fellowship one with another!

Are you a Christian worker?
     Does that mean you are available for the Work of the Cross?   
     Soldier, listen to me: You want what Heaven has to give - freedom.
     You must cease the evaluation of how you are doing, and you must step back into
the flow of the Holy Spirit, Who will guide you to the Death of the Flesh.
     Nothing else is more important for living than this principle..
     Are you available?  Not many are.
     But  when you are, He will reveal Himself in a new way - a way that will reveal
release and Heaven's momentum.
     Soldier, you must decide - do you want to be seen as successful, or do you want
Jesus.? That is the bottom line! 

     There is a teaching out there that leads Christians to believe that if they do everything as they should, "bad" things will not happen.
     There is an equally heretical teaching that "the Cross" is when hard, hard things happen, and it is "just our cross to bear."  
     Both of these ideas have root in labeling things "good" and "bad", when in fact, the Bible teaches us that we humans have everything upside down
     The purpose of the book of Job is many fold. It is not just about a patient man - in fact, I don't find Job patient at all. I find him faithful in refusing to find fault with God, and he is a beautiful example. But God seems to think it was good to say to Satan, "see my servant Job..."
     And then, all hell broke loose.
     And it was in the Plan!
     If we take each thing that happens as being in the plan of God, then we are able to obey His Word and look for Him - hope for Him - wait for Him. Even with the fiery furnace, Satan intended it for evil, but the Lord used it for good.
     Nothing just slides by the Lord.
     We must learn to live in humble gratitude for all that God allows, and we must tell Him constantly that we want things His way and not ours.
     That is the Cross - the place where the flesh is crucified. We must be eager to say (outloud) in the hardest times that we want His way more than we want out.
     That is the meaning of the verse that says "if any man will be my disciple, he must take up his cross and follow me..."

Have you set limits for the Lord?

Or have you told Him He can do anything with your life!

It is helpful to get together with Him and go over how trustworthy he is. Tell Him outloud.

Review what He has said He will do. Go over things He has done for others.

Tell Him how thrilled you are when you hear of those who trust Him. Tell Him how much you long to be closer to him, and how helpless you feel.

Then, tell Him you are His.

He will assure you, and you will never be the same.

     Lord, as I stand before you tonight, I gaze up at the Glory of heaven in wonder at your love for me and the breadth of it.

     I see the stars that seem to be so haphazardly scattered.  The same sky that was bright this morning is gone, so that they can sparkle and be seen more clearly in the darkest of nights.

     I trust you.  I will look for you.  I will speak of you and sing of you.  In the brightest day and through the darkest of nights.

     My Lord and my God.

     There is no way to experience tomorrow until it comes.  
     Time was created for the purpose of human choice - those choices that line up with God's Word! So, because time has intrinsic limitations,we have been clearly instructed not to rehash either the past or the future.
     It is one thing to remember the "pit from which you were dug. . " and yet another to imagine a thousand ways the situation could have turned out.
     In the same way, it is futile to imagine tomorrow. If I fall into that, I will miss the things that are right under my nose today. What's more, I will essentially lose the time I am spending now, but it is a double loss, because I have not only lost time on fantasy, I have also tainted tomorrow before it comes. I have predisposed myself to ignore the leading of the Lord, and I have set myself up to be my own lord!
     He gives sharp clarity for the moment, and when tomorrow's moments come, He will do the same!

     You have nothing to lose.
     Why don't you stand where you are now, and tell the Lord He can do anything He wants to with your life? Tell Him that because of His Word, you know He won't leave you without rescue, and that you will trust Him anyway.
     What has kept you from doing this earlier? Isn't eternity real? Isn't it more real than time?
     Get up on your feet. Speak outloud. The angels are watching respectfully. Say the thing that must be said. DO IT! You must do it. It is not enough to be stimulated or even to shed tears over it - you must tell Him so that you can hear your own voice declare the commitment of your life.
     He will love you and lead you and reveal Himself to You. There will be light for the next thing as there has been through the ages for these who have sought Him.

      God specializes in things thought impossible - as a matter of fact, that is all He does.
     He does not do the possible, and that is why we are so often limited in prayer.
    Learn to pray in such a way that God is not limited, but you are still an effective prayer. This comes by request, and through pressing the Lord for a creative prayer life.
     If you pray only for the things you can think of, you have no relationship to His creativity and you will not be able to recognize Him.
     Believers must develop wisdom to know when they may pray for specifics and when they should not.
     There is a famous story about Watchman Nee, who was asked to pray at a public gathering at the time when Japan had just declared war on China.
     The others before him had all asked God to stop the war and spare China from the ravages it was about to go through. But he could not.
      Some were angry and some were only disappointed when he said "Lord, we see in your Word that there will be wars. We know you have always used battles to take the land. We know you are sovereign. We ask you at this time to take the things that are happening and use them to bring China to Christ".
     God used that particular time to establish, deepen and spread the Chinese Church.
     Without God's Word used by the Holy Spirit in prayer, we are weakened and withered and ineffective.
     God grant us the thirst for abandon so that we may be able to stand before Him someday and know that the ground under our feet was an altar of prayer.

     Soldier,  God's Word says that it is the  Now that lures us and it is the Then that calls us.

     The Now is by sight.  The Now screams to be resolved and demands the evidence of that resolution.  Christians who live in the Now are frustrated, negative and always worried about something.

     Christians who live in the Then are seeing the Lord and agreeing with all that He has said, in spite of the gravity of the Now.

     Being a Soldier of The Cross means choosing what He has said over sight.  Over fear.  Over the storm.

     Tell Him.  Agree with Him. 
     Alone and aloud.