God uses pressure to replace us with Him.

While in Israel, I walked the recently excavated road Jesus took from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple. Half way up, though, I discovered I needed another ticket to proceed.

I exited the path, got the ticket, and proceeded to enter what I thought was the entrance (pictured). I discovered, however, that it was a very narrow underground tunnel I shouldn’t have taken!  

You should have seen the ticket agent’s face when I came out. With a disbelieving and disapproving look, he took my ticket and asked, “How’d you get here?” I didn’t care; I simply wanted to experience my Savior’s journey.

Deuteronomy 4:29 states that if we seek the Lord, we will find Him. The meanings of seek and find imply having pressured applied to our lives that results in an encounter with God. By going through this pressurized process, we’ll know God for who He actually is, not who we think or want Him to be.

Will you allow the Spirit of God to go digging in your life to discover the lies stored in your brain so He can replace them with the truth? (Last week’s entry.) It won’t be comfortable. Letting go of our thoughts never is.

Will you then ask the Spirit to help you understand and apply that truth using the wisdom only He can give? It won’t be easy. Wrestling never is.

This pressurized walk is what it will take to know God – not some false narrative of Him – and to experience more of Him through a transformed life.

How badly do you want to know Him? Your answer is worth the pressurized journey it will take to make it happen.

Allow the Spirit to replace the soil of lies with the soil of life.

Pictured is the Pool of Siloam – at least that is what archaeologists thought they were going to find when they started digging in early 2023.

Twenty-seven years ago, I walked through Hezekiah’s tunnel, which brought water inside the city of Jerusalem (2 Kings 20:20). Upon exiting the tunnel, I came upon a series of steps that led downward to a walled-off dirt field. The leading theory was that the Pool of Siloam lay directly beneath that field.

Yet, when the archaeologists finally began to dig, they found a reservoir instead of a shallow, pool-sized mikveh (a ritual cleansing pool of living water). They “know” the pool is in this area; they are just not sure exactly where… yet.

Sometimes we are like those archaeologists. We think we know why we do what we do when we don’t. Instead of exchanging the lie with the truth, we attempt to exchange the old behavior with a “godly” one, which only allows the stress of failure to continue.

The Spirit, however, wants to do the biggest dig of all times – the storage areas hidden in our brains! He wants to get rid of the strongholds, the reasons, and the attitudes that go against the truth and keep our lives unchanged (2 Cor. 10:1-5).

If we want to see Him change our lives, we must allow the Spirit to uncover the lies that have been stored in our brains over the course of our lives. Yes, this can be scary and takes time.

But the Spirit is the Greatest Archaeologist of all time. He already knows what’s under the dirt! He will uncover the lies a little at a time in order to crush that sin-confession cycle.

Let the digging begin! Trust the Spirit to dig gently and accurately. Trust the Spirit to reveal what needs to be exchanged with the truth while staying sane at the same time. Then watch the Spirit bring the life Jesus promised to give those who follow Him.

“The essence of surrender is getting out of God’s way so that He can do in us what only He can do through us.”

Cain and Abel each brought an offering to God. However, God only looked upon Abel’s offering of meat and fat and turned away from Cain’s offering of fruit. This ticked Cain off.

If Cain had done right, however, all would be well. But Cain didn’t. He wanted a relationship with God on his terms.

At this point, the LORD said to Cain, “Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Gen. 4:7). James writes, “Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin” (Jam. 1:4-15).

Desire is the crucial point in both statements. The thought or the desire is not sin; it’s when we act on it that we sin (“gives birth”). The thought or desire simply exposes the lie that leads to sin is.

We can then either surrender to God and ask for His power to make the right choice, or surrender to the thought or desire that leads to sin and the absence of all the good things God has for us (Gal. 5:22-23).

This surrendering choice starts the moment the lie rears its ugly head, either as a thought or a desire/feeling (thoughts lead to feelings that lead to actions/choices). This is when the specific truth the Spirit gave you comes into play.

“Wait a second. This thought or desire I’m having, when compared to the truth, is based on a lie. Spirit, give me the strength to surrender to Jesus in order to act on the truth, which leads to becoming more like Jesus.”

Slow down the decision-making process. In the Spirit’s power, you can make the big choice – you for Jesus – by surrendering to God’s desires just like Abel.

Most with us believe God’s patience has an end, but it doesn’t because of the cross.

I’m very appreciative that God’s mercy allows Him to patiently wait for me to grow in my understanding of–and how to live out by faith–what He says to do.

It appears the Twelve needed it just as much as I do. They all heard and saw Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead. They all heard Jesus say He would die a horrible death and rise from the grave in three days. He even told them this as late as the Passover meal before heading to the Garden of Gethsemane (pictured).

Judas didn’t get it and died without believing it. Mary Magdalene didn’t get it either. In fact, she even asked Jesus where His body was taken! Peter and John didn’t believe Mary Magdalene’s eyewitness testimony that Jesus was alive, even after looking into an empty tomb.

Ten of them were hanging out when Jesus literally appeared out of nowhere, but it took Jesus eating fish to get them to believe He was the same person who died three days earlier. This leaves Matthew–good old Matthew–who wasn’t in the room. He would only believe after touching Jesus, not because Jesus said it would happen or his brothers’ testimony.

John records that Jesus came and went three times. Acts 1:3 hints that there may have been more appearances by Jesus as He gave “many convincing proofs that He was alive over a 40-day period.”

Yet not once, not one single solitary time did Jesus scold them. He knew these guys would need time to wrap their heads around the truth that Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms wrote about.

It was a life-changing truth that would take time for them to process, grasp and then live out, which they did at the cost of their physical lives.

Be still and know that the Lord is God. His grace and mercy allow Him to have the patience you and I need during the Spirit’s process of transforming our lives. Change will come.

Keep asking the Spirit to open your mind and increase your faith. In the meantime, praise Him for His patience with you.

“Stop seeking validation in a world that crucified a perfect person.”

Hannah had a huge problem. Elkanah had two wives – Hannah and Peninnah. While Peninnah was pushing out children left and right, Hannah was barren.

We all live in broken bodies. And like us, Hannah didn’t get to choose her body either. Yet, there was an interesting twist to her story: “The LORD closed her womb” (1 Sam. 1:6).

The LORD was behind her lack of children. Maybe He was turning chaos, a broken body that couldn’t produce children, into one that could. Or, she was perfectly healthy but He was holding back children for a specific purpose and time.

We don’t know. But what we do know is that during this entire story, she only sought validation from the One who could do something about it – the LORD. After much patience and prayer, she gave birth to Samuel, a great Israelite prophet and leader, who made the Faith Hall of Fame (Heb.11:32).

Like Hannah, Jesus also only sought validation from the Father (Matt. 3:17) and never from men (Jn. 2:23-25).

We were born into a chaotic world where we didn’t get to choose the family we were born into or the bodies we have. We do have control, however, over the choices we make in the moment. We can either listen to and follow Jesus, the healer of brokenness, validator of existence and giver of a worthwhile purpose to pursue or we can listen to and follow broken people.

You know Who to listen to. Keep choosing wisely.