I AM

I love reflecting on who God is, how powerful He is, and what He longs to do in our lives and through us. He is simply beyond amazing!! So much so, we can’t even fathom the greatness of who He is. So, I was reading an email that my friend, Shelly, sent me and you guessed it….my brain got to going on God as our I AM. What does that mean? Imagine it this way:

I am:
• The truth
• The life
• The way
• Your healer
• Your covering
• Your fortress
• Your King
• Your Lover
• Your Peace
• Your Creator
• Your Salvation
• Your help in the time of trouble
• Giver of every good and perfect gift

And the list goes on….

When we hold onto life’s difficulties, anxieties, worries, stresses, sin, pain, grief, confusion, feeling unworthy, feeling lonely…..it doesn’t allow God to be the I AM of your particular circumstance. Instead, your I am IS your circumstance.

What happens when we release our circumstances and allow the I AM to take over:

1. We take captive every THOUGHT that is not lined up in agreement with God’s word.
2. We demolish strongholds that seek to destroy our lives.

Surrendering your daily circumstances to God allows you to hear HIM better.

Check this out what a deep friend of mine, Shelly Trivette, who is our Children’s Pastor at The Bridge, wrote:

‘Anxiety sounds like a riot to our spirits...we cannot hear Him when we are anxious. Anxiety causes other things like unwarranted guilt. Anxiety is the worst of thieves. This is a command: Be anxious for nothing. How do we do that? We surrender (we believe Him) and we are thankful. We believe so that we can see. I am talking like I know that it is easy. I know better than that. I have so many irons in my fire that I don't know whether I am coming or going....and I have so many people that depend on me. I have had some times where things press on me so hard that I couldn't figure out how to surrender to Him. So as a symbol, I would grab it off my chest and offer it up to heaven. I would do it again and again and again. There was a particular day when...I cried out to God, “Help me, I don't know how to do this.” He took my mind to that story where He was able to sleep through a storm on the boat, dead asleep in the middle of a storm. I said, “Lord, how were you able to sleep in the storm?".... He slept in surrender to the Father. He believed in the Father so much that He could lay His head down in the storm and sleep like a baby. He was connected so deeply to the Father that He understood the authority He had been given to say "Peace be still to the storm." We have the same authority if we walk in the same surrender to the Father. So that when our hearts storm like that...we can sleep like a baby...because He is our Peace we can be thankful. It is a decision we make. We can walk on our fear like He walked on the water.’

This is long but I couldn’t keep any of it out!! Ephesians 1:3-14 MSG reads -

"How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He's the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son. Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we're a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.

It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.

It's in Christ that you, once you heard the truth and believed it (this Message of your salvation), found yourselves home free—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Holy Spirit. This signet from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life."

So, 2011 is only 8 days old….start it off by releasing the Great I Am in your life in a way you’ve never done before….and I promise you, by the end of this year, your jaw will be dragging on the ground in complete amazement as to how phenomenal God is. He is YOUR I AM.

So, what do you need today? He’s waiting….

Tracee and my friend, Shelly