21. The Lord Shows Up for Battle 11.01.19

21. The Lord God will always show up for you to help you battle any opposition or challenge you may face. He always shows up for you. He will never let you down. The Lord God will never forsake you.

Isaiah 41:10 New King James Version (NKJV)
10 Fear not, for I am with you;
Be not dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you,
Yes, I will help you,
I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.’

Jesus always finds a way to show up for me when I least expect it with these experiences, visions and words. He reminds me of my purpose and of scripture and sets me back on my path. I believe it’s all to share my journey with you to help as many people as I possibly can along the way.

Proverbs 3:5-6 New King James Version (NKJV)
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And lean not on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He shall direct your paths

Most recently he had to show up and remind me that I’ve been slacking in my excellence and to challenge me to step it up. I’m one of those people who gets really excited about things in the beginning and then lets “life get in the way” and my dedication will slack. I often use stress as a reason to over eat or buy sweets to comfort myself when really I need to get my face back in the Bible and find the scripture I need to get though the day.

Living Sacrifices to God
12 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

My most recent example of life was signing up for a fit for fall group with a wonderful beach body coach that I am friends with. We received a menu for meal planning for the entire week. The meals were a great variety and easy to prep and make and we would all engage and talk about our progress and the meals etc. I was stoked. I needed new meal plans, needed to interact with new people, needed to cook for my family more and to step it up in the domestic kitchen area of my life.

This will be a great step toward excellence. So I get the menu and the grocery list and that same weekend my bank account has an auto draft I thought I cancelled and boom extra grocery money gone. I had cancelled all my credit cards (because of my compulsive spending to seek approval and love from people by spoiling them) around the same time I took out the TiVo, so cant get them that way. I can call and ask for money from the baby’s dad but we have groceries here these were just extra for that group menu week and boom the devil sent a demon off to me to make me feel guilty and unworthy to ask for the extra help to get the groceries I wanted because I don’t deserve to get things I want, only what I need and I already had what I needed.

I’m not broke don’t set up a go fund me, this was more a lesson in Gods timing and the way the devil and his demons can take advantage of life’s every day situations and use that advantage to manipulate your thought patterns and cause chaos and frustration in our lives. That’s how they throw a wrench in things. Like that old Sega game Paperboy where the boy throws the newspapers at every house. Picture demons flying around throwing their black tar covered wrenches into every open area they can. They don’t discriminate because you’re a Christian. You’re still getting the same tar covered wrench chucked at your face as everyone else.

Back to my story, so I say I’ll get the groceries Tuesday instead of Sunday and I’ll catch up. Well Tuesday comes and goes, and I have to work Wednesday, Thursday and a trip was planned to go out of town so now I’m planning laundry and packing. It became I’ll get them Tuesday, no Thursday after work, no I’ll get them over the weekend and just do the whole meal week a week behind everyone else and then it ended up being me having a bunch of menus and a grocery list saved on my phone and going through the drive thru again. Don’t judge me, my kids get home cooked food from their grandparents and Nash gets it at daycare. It’s not like everything they eat every day is fast food garbage.

I used to cook, I tried to cook for a long time but when you’re constantly compared to everyone else and criticized for it not being as good as everyone else, you lose your desire to keep trying. One day I’ll get back to it, maybe one day soon.

Jesus likes to show up for me and chastise me when my flesh is acting up. This week it was surprisingly again in the Chick Fil A drive thru. I was jamming to my praise songs the way there and going to reward myself with a number 2 meal because work was chaotic. Now, keep in mind that I was doing this despite the clear direction from the Lord on the whole no meat thing. I was doing it knowing it was against what the Lord God wanted for me. It wasn’t illegal, it wasn’t immoral, it was just a direction from the Lord that I was ignoring on purpose and expecting to be forgiven for after the fact. Like the fleshy little Christian I am and will be as long as I’m on this earth. I need to work on that.

Galatians 5:24 New King James Version (NKJV)
24 And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires

So I’m almost next to order and like lightening boom Jesus is there trying to make himself comfortable in the passenger seat of my car. I’ve explained it a few times but it’s hard to describe how you don’t see things in a visual sense where it’s physically here in this earthly existence. It’s like a knowing, a sight through feelings and imagery in the upper part of my mind.

The experience and conversation goes something like this. Woosh of air, I look over and instantly feel both elated/joyful and ecstatic to see Him but also convicted like I know I’m letting him down. The Lord says “Hey Ash, what are ya doing?” and I see him trying to settle into the passenger seat of my car, kicking the water bottles and trash out of the way with his sandals so there is a place for his feet. He’s raising an eyebrow at me as he’s trying to sit down and get comfortable for a chat but he is unable to sit down on the seat because of some old clothes, a roll of paper towels, glass cleaner, my journal, my purse and knowing that it’s coming in a min, a new chick fil a bag full of food. He was doing that thing where you stand up with your feet on the floor of the car and you push your shoulders back against the seat, lifting his rear and bunching his pure white robe up to move everything out of the way before he could sit. As he sits down he does that thing where he wiggles his hips back and forth like he’s making himself comfortable on my piles of trash.

He settles right in and I’m embarrassed and should feel shame but instead I’m almost laughing out loud. He instantly has made it aware to me in my heart that he already knew it was this messy before He got in. He laughed at me, shook his head and says “So, um, is this excellence Ash, I can’t even sit in here?” “No, Lord, this is not excellence” I say as I put my head down. The conviction that I feel is like the little kid that gets put to bed and waits till everyone is asleep. The child sneaks out of his bedroom so careful not to make a sound. The kid gets to the cupboard and pulls the handle and opens the door as slow as he can. That little hand reaching for the bag of cookies, grabbing it lightly not to make too much crunch with the wrapper. The child finally gets the cookie package open and looks around. Everyone is still asleep, it’s still quiet, and he thinks this is going to be amazing and just as he has that cookie to his mouth he turns around and BOOM mom is right there. That Aaaahhh! feeling of oh crap that was sudden and out of no where and I’m busted. “Did you do the thing, Ash? Did you cook all week and get Leah to try new foods like you said you would? Is that excellence, Ash, letting situations and excuses get in your way?” “No Lord, it is not excellence” I replied. “Well, you might want to step it up a bit, Ash”. “I will Lord, I’m sorry”. “So what are you doing right now, Ash?” “I’m in the drive thru Lord” “Getting what Ash?” “Getting spicy chicken Lord, and mac and cheese for Nash” “Ash, I dunno, I’m pretty sure I said no meat” and I’m caught red handed and I say “Um, yeah I know”. “Is that excellence, Ash?” Then the Lord God says this to me “Just because I am still using you and communicating with you when you eat meat doesn’t mean that you can just do whatever your flesh wants and that I’ll be there hanging in the background to catch up with you when it’s convenient for you to pick yourself up and dust yourself off.” He said to me “I’ll always be there for you in the sense that I’ll always have a good plan for your life. But the outcome of the plan for your earthly life is solely based on the effort that you are willing to put into the decisions you make to overcome the flesh and earthly desires of the world.”

The Lord said “I have a good plan for every single human being on this earth, and that good plan has a thousand twists and turns based on every single decision the physical embodiment of the spirit could ever make while trapped on this earth. I am always up there with a way to turn it all around. No matter what decisions are made, there’s a way to turn it around for good through Jesus.”

I’m being led to remind you that Jesus isn’t an ever seeing Santa Clause type figure. So many are turned away from Christianity with the thought of their every move and thought and word being judged by a magical creature in the sky. It’s not like that. Jesus isn’t going to come hang out with you and watch over you as you’re on the toilet, you’re not Elvis. Jesus and the Holy Spirit only come where they’re welcome or drastically needed. He hears your prayers, wants to help you make better decisions, he wants you to listen for him to guide you. We were put here to share the word, to love one another and do good works in Jesus name. To try to be better people today than we were yesterday. That’s it. It’s that simple. Come to Jesus, be forgive and keep trying to be a better person.

Like 12:8-11
Confess Christ Before Men
8 “Also I say to you, whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God. 9 But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God.
10 “And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven.
11 “Now when they bring you to the synagogues and magistrates and authorities, do not worry about how or what you should answer, or what you should say. 12 For the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.”

Then I was shown the vision of a board game. It began as a Y path on the board but the Y had zig zags going back and forth between the two arms of the Y. The concept was similar to life but looked visually to me like candy land. The beginning was bright and colorful and then you approach the Y. The board is split into two paths. Good and bad, light and dark, The Lord God’s path for your life and the Devil enemy’s plan for your life. Every decision your physical mind and body will make, is a step on the board. Once you go on one of the paths the of the Y you begin to travel farther and farther away from the other path. That is why it is so hard for those on the darker paths of life to get back to the light. The more dark decisions you make the farther from the light you become. Some get to dark that they are scared of the light, the darkness feels like comfort and they feel at home. They can hide with their sins, they can cover with their demons and lay with them in the predictability of the darkness. It’s also in the same realm to say that the farther on the light and pure path that you travel the farther away you are from the darkness. Some get so far on their journey with Jesus that they can’t even see a reason to look into the darkness at all. They never even try look into the darkness to see if anyone is close enough for them to be pulled into the light of Jesus saying that’s not my calling. I need to focus on my path to Jesus not the paths of others. Some on the light path don’t want to acknowledge the darkness at all.

The Lord showed me that there were paths that could connect the dark path and the light path. He showed me how short those paths were toward the base of the Y and how much easier it was to convert souls from the dark to the light of Jesus at that level. He also showed me how easy it was for the Devil and his demons to pull souls over to the darkness at that level because their roots were shallow in the word and knowledge of Jesus. I was shown how as the Y goes on and the two paths get farther apart the journey taken on the paths between dark to light and vice versa were farther apart and took more continuous deliberate steps in the right direction to get to the other path. The more light you have and the closer you are to Jesus the easier it is to take a few steps toward the dark path and turn right around to get back on the light path.

I feel that I was shown that some those on the light path and some of those on the dark path are just walking blindly, ignoring the other path all together. Like it doesn’t exist and there would never be an option to get over to it if it did exist. Some on the light are used as light helpers and they travel areas that are dark to spread their own light, helping others make the good decisions, helping to get them back to the path of Jesus. There are also the dark ones that go into the light paths and spread darkness as they sneak in with temptations of making just one bad decision, or one little step toward the dark, one step in the wrong direction cant hurt, you’ll be able to turn right around.

The next thing you know you’re too far gone and it’s too hard to turn around and go back. You carry shame thinking that you don’t even know what your face will look like in the light again. You feel too dark to turn around. That’s how the devil gets you. It’s not usually one bad decision. It’s many temptations, many close calls, many deliberate decisions that avoid the direction of the Lord in a row and the doubt that the devil sets in your mind thinking you can’t be pulled back into the light. You’re too far gone. I’m here to tell you that even though there are few light workers who search the darkness for souls in Jesus name, that I will always come searching for you. I will pray with you and for you where you are without judgement. We are all called to be light in this world in the name of Jesus.

James 5:19-20 New King James Version (NKJV)
Bring Back the Erring One
19 Brethren, if anyone among you wanders from the truth, and someone turns him back, 20 let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sins.

In board game fashion the more right decisions you made in a row the more treasures you were taking hold of on the way up both worldly treasures and wonderful earthly experiences. There were bonuses for souls led to Jesus, for serving in the body of Christ at church, for charity, for kindness, for helping others and sharing the words of Jesus.

The Lord continued to say to me “No matter how far off the good path you go, I’m still going to pull you back but the outcome is going to change based on your decisions. So yes Ashley, I’m still going use you. Yes Ashley I’m still going to help you in your life and help you make decisions. Yes Ashley I’m still going to do all these things through you and you are going to be an amazing vessel for me. But what you need to do is you need to kinda remember that I’m in the driver seat and the reason that I put you in this position was because you let me in the driver seat. And now, I’m trying to get in your car in the passenger seat and there’s no room to even put my feet on the floor. The difference in saving 5,000 and saving 500,000 is found in excellence.”

I feel led to add that it’s one thing to be in this world and as a Christian to be derailed a little bit by movies that come on or everyone celebrating Halloween. It’s one thing to say it’s this or it’s that, to say I’m too stressed so I’m going to dive into work for a week or two and pick back up with where the Lord left off with his teaching when I get time. It’s easy to say oh I just want to have a good weekend of partying for my bachelorette party then I’ll ask for forgiveness and get back to Jesus. To say I’m going to go through this experience or this issue and I’ll get back to the lord when I’m done. To say I just want to take three to four months off and then get back to the Lord. To say it’s senior year I just want to take some time off and relax and party for a while. Be careful saying I’ll get back to the Lord when I can. It’s fine to know that Jesus will always be there for you. Please take heed that when you are taking deliberate steps away from Jesus and you plan on coming back to Jesus you are missing out on having the bonuses and rewards that you’d have lined up for you in heaven. Rewards that you would have been bestowed based on continued dedication, passion and fire for Jesus Christ.

Matthew 6:19-21 New King James Version (NKJV)
Lay Up Treasures in Heaven
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Philippians 1:12-26
Christ Is Preached
12 But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, 13 so that it has become evident to the whole [b]palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ; 14 and most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

15 Some indeed preach Christ even from envy and strife, and some also from goodwill: 16 [c]The former preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains; 17 but the latter out of love, knowing that I am appointed for the defense of the gospel. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is preached; and in this I rejoice, yes, and will rejoice.

To Live Is Christ
19 For I know that this will turn out for my deliverance through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, 20 according to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed, but with all boldness, as always, so now also Christ will be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. 22 But if I live on in the flesh, this will mean fruit from my labor; yet what I shall choose I [d]cannot tell. 23 [e]For I am hard-pressed between the two, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better. 24 Nevertheless to remain in the flesh is more needful for you. 25 And being confident of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all for your progress and joy of faith, 26 that your rejoicing for me may be more abundant in Jesus Christ by my coming to you again.