Mark 8:34-38. Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “If any of you want to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Do you not see how applicable this is to your life today? Do you not see how your enemy keeps your attention diverted in order to keep you from serving Me completely? Do you understand yet that, at the bottom of it all, this is always been the only real focus for you? Think back, think carefully. When has your life worked best? When you are focused on yourself? Or when you are completely in for Me? When are you the most joyful? The most calm and focused? The most peaceful? When you are striving for what you want, or fully committed to what I ask? When you are swimming upstream in the river of selfishness or you have, as you have always liked to visualize, flipped over and are floating downstream on the currents of My leading? Your life, Child, is IN ME. Your real, authentic life, my sweet Child, is hidden in Me. I created you. Only I really know you. I am the author and finisher of your life, of your faith, of everything, really. So when you seek outside of Me – for whatever it is – pleasure, safety, peace, excitement, fulfillment, purpose – when you seek anything outside of Me, you are not seeking what will fulfill those desires. You are looking in all the wrong places. Your enemy would distract you, tell you that you have to do certain things to maintain your life, your safety, to provide, to move forward. I am here to tell you that you have to do nothing outside of Me. All outside of me is temporary, inauthentic, fleeting. Pneuma, Child. Breathe. I am the breath of life. I am the provider of all. I am your all in all. And when you seek elsewhere, you rob yourself of precious time – time to grow in Me, time to show Me to your lost and fallen world, time to become even more spiritually centered in a maelstrom of evil. Me. Seek Me. Let Me guide you. Let Me teach you. Let Me be what you focus on. Only your soul lasts- and the state of your soul depends upon the state of your relationship with Me.
Amanuensis 