Good morning, DearHeart.

The llamas in the field about 3 miles from my home make me grin every morning. How can you look at one and not grin? What kind of God thought up such a thing?! Even llamas have a purpose.

Your eyes opened this morning, therefore your purpose is real.

This is the day. THE day.

The one that has been assigned for you to receive

more light,

a new perspective,

a new smile … even in this ordinary day.

This day is delivering your incredible opportunity … simply because you opened your eyes and arose.

You will impact eternity.

You already have.

When you, in faith, ask Father God to release more of Him to you, to give you a higher dose of His Holy Spirit, when you ask Him to consume a greater portion of you to bring Him glory …

His grace pushes in.

His force strengthens beyond anything you could have imagined.

Your perspective impacts His ability to use you, even today.

“Give me more LIGHT, Father. No matter what, Lord – give me eyes to see the potential You are unlocking through me “

My precious friend, the Creator of the Universe will rewrite your bio. His DNA in you re-codes His image over yours. With everything in you, ask Him for your reset.

This is the day.

Do not underestimate His purpose in you and the impact of that purpose for His Kingdom.

‘Therefore, be imitators of God, as dearly loved children. Ephesians 5:1

Wake up.

Be re-coded.

Go.

Good morning, DearHeart.

Sometimes, I just forget to get still and simply FEEL God … to feel loved by our Creator … held by God Most High. I know He is with me, but sometimes I fail to truly experience Him in my mundane.

“GOD said, “My presence will go with you. I’ll see the journey to the end.” Exodus 33:14 MSG

Pause. Set aside a moment and in your mind, see your Maker’s very bright light above your head.

Let His holiness wash down over you,

over your head,

your shoulders,

down your back,

arms,

and legs.

You are allowing His light to wash through every cell, every major organ of your body. His light holds you in safety as He releases

every hesitation,

every worry,

and every bitter expression.

He prepares your breaths for gratitude. He loosens up the darkest areas for release.

He created the universe from nothing-you can trust Him completely to give you all the energy you need to release the any harmful thought, or pattern, or habit. He allows you to bring the gift of gratitude, and forgiveness, and compassion, and joy home to your heart. Just sit with Him a moment. Let Him remind you He is with you every moment of this earthly journey. Gosh. He is so good to us.

Wake up.

Pause in His presence.

Go.

Good morning, DearHeart.

The other night I had the most bizarre dream that a mom-friend and I were staying in an abandon cabin south of Carnegie fighting dinosaurs. She had to leave to go get her son, so I stayed there and kept fighting. We were not scared, we were just fighting the dinosaurs like it was an everyday, normal process.

How bizarre is that?! And, why would I dream such a thing?! I woke Dale to tell him about it – he was not as amused as I was, haha!

God has been teaching me about dreams lately, but in the most unusual of ways. He is showing me we don’t start with the dream, we start with the Dream-Giver.

Picture a bullseye. 

In the center of the bullseye is God, and the assignments He has given us on a daily basis. For me, and for you, our jobs each and every day are the people and events right before us. It isn’t a mystery. There isn’t something to figure out. Who you serve and what you are “supposed” to be doing is right in front of you, with our God in the middle of it all. For me, that is my husband, my family, and the people that God continuously brings into life each day. For right now, there isn’t “something more” to discover. What I’m supposed to be doing, is what I’m already doing. “Stay the course”, He tells me.

The concentric circles, or outer circles, are what God is doing. Our hopes and dreams are in these circles. This is the place where we want to start because this is flashy and fun and glitzy to talk about. But this is not where we start. We start, in the bullseye.

God has shown me that I need to do a better job of discerning hard work from striving.

Motherhood is hard work, even when they’re grown.

Marriage is hard work.

Relationships are hard work.

Work is hard work.

Maintaining is hard work.

Some days, these are not the things I want to do because they are hard. Yet, they are the God given gifts and responsibilities that I have and ‘get’ to serve.

I get to be a wife.

I get to be a mom.

I get to go to a workplace and serve.

I get to do this work.

Staying in my bullseye with my Maker requires hard work, and I need to be ok with hard work.

Striving, on the other hand, is a struggle. It is what we do when we desperately try to bring something into fruition. Struggling looks like obsessions, distraction, and selfishness. Struggling is our attempt to do what only God can do. We struggle when we attempt to accomplish outer circle tasks on our own.

The outer circle with our hopes and dreams, like our inner bullseye target, is for and God alone. The outer circle is for Him to accomplish, or if He has already accomplished it, then it’s for Him to reveal to us in His own timing. We can’t hurry or rush or hustle enough to accomplish outer circle tasks. When we attempt to do this, though, that is called striving.

The opposite of striving, of course, is rest. And we rest most easily, in our bullseye.

“God wants us to be with Him before we do something for Him.” (Lysa TerKeurst)

All of us want to know who we are, what it is we are supposed to do with our life, and how to make this life count. But we can’t start with those things. We can’t start with us. We must start with the One who made us, and who will accomplish all of those things through us if we allow Him.

When we stay in our bullseye – in the knowledge of who God is and where He has placed us in this very moment in time – then we free ourselves from the impossible weight of trying to accomplish what isn’t ours to do. We return to our Creator and ask that He continue to remake us into the person He has made us to be.

Ephesians 2:10 says that we are “his workmanship.” So often the confusion and frustration that we feel in trying to discover “who we are,” though, is that we keep our eyes trained on ourselves. We will never discover who we are apart from Christ. When we start by learning who He is, though, we naturally start to discover who He made us to be.

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Ephesians 2:10 ESV

Wake up.

Stay in the bullseye with God Almighty.

Go.