Blazing Fire's Encouraging Blog

This past Friday and Saturday, we had a two day conference with Lonnie Ellis and Tiffany James called, “Strength & Vulnerability: Courage to be Real.” In a casual style all three of us told real stories of the goodness of God meeting us in our messed up, vulnerable places. It would be an understatement to say we went deep and many  expressed to me profound moments of breakthrough in their awareness of Papa’s goodness and tender care. This is always going to be the fruit of choosing to be a family that embraces vulnerability and the courage to invite Jesus into hard or scary places. I strongly encourage you to watch Saturday’s service here:     Saturday’s Service One topic that came up was how we’ve been adopted by our heavenly Father. While I’ve discovered redemptive ways of describing ‘adoption’ through the years, it always still had that ring to it that we weren’t God’s until some point when we were. Yet that didn’t jive with what I know from Scripture, that we...

Nothing about God’s love is conditional or transactional. He doesn’t love you because you do or don’t do certain things. God loves you because love is His very nature and He created you for the express purpose of including you in his perfect love.   There is a word in Hebrew, Hesed, that encompasses all that this love is, but it can’t be adequately expressed in any one-word translation into English. Hesed is a blend of love, loyalty, commitment and mercy. It is love that remains even when the other fails. It is love that commits forever, not because the other earns it, but because the one who loves has made a covenant. It is an active love that manifests in tangible acts of compassion, justice and protection.   Hesed is the merciful-steadfast-compassionate-faithful-grace filled-benevolent-covenant-lovingkindness of God!   This love can be visualized as God’s mercy-womb that continuously surrounds you. And how long will God be merciful? Is there an expiration date on the t...

The great exchange begins and ends at the cross when Jesus gave his life for ours. He opened the way for mankind’s surrender as He invites us to give up our lives in order to live forever as, He intended before the very foundation of the earth. And so, it is with Paul’s revelation of love in 1 Cor: 13. This love which cannot be lived in fullness until we exchange our love for His. Our compassion will carry us only so far, until we realize in the face of the great human suffering throughout the world, it’s not enough. We must see the world through His eyes of compassion in order to fulfill His servant’s calling on us and we are asked to exchange our compassion for His. The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray when they realized their prayers were not enough. He taught them the principles of prayer, which was still not enough until they exchanged their prayer language for the Holy Spirits on the day of Pentecost. Once again, He has a deeper place to call us into when He invite...