Jesus Loves Me Podcast: March 2023
Sharon and Jana touch base about revivals, past, present, and future. They hit on some controversy and let us know what they think we can expect moving forward.
We’re Talking Revival
Spirit-Filled Life Without Purpose
You Have God Inside of You
If you don’t know your calling and purpose in life, you are doing it wrong. You will not thrive and succeed without knowing, and living as the person you were made to be. Success in life here on earth means you’ve done what God had planned for you to do. Think of Moses, he was supposed to enter the promised land but wasn’t able to because of his rebellion. And what about King David being unable to build the temple? Everything you do must be done for the Lord. And everything you do must be working toward your purpose, and destiny, as you serve the Body of Christ. If you are an eye in the Body don’t waste time trying to be a hand. Do the thing you were made to do wherever you are at.
I understand this is all easier said than done. I may even be making you mad. But I’m telling you the truth. There is good news though. God wrote your Book of Life before the foundation of the world. He loves you and wants you to learn here on earth to prepare you for your life to come in eternity. You will be judged for what you’ve done with the calling, talents, and gifts you’ve been given. God gives us all enough grace to do what we can with whatever we are doing. Allow yourself to grow, mature, and discover your strengths. Reframe your mind to be okay with failure. Failure is merely an opportunity to learn. God gives you grace, so give some to yourself.
And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. -- Romans 8:28, New King James Version (NKJV)
I Discovered My Purpose & it Wasn’t Easy
My church had been going through Rick Warren’s book, “The Purpose Driven Life,” and I was determined to know my purpose. I went on a hike one day striving to know what I was supposed to be doing. I even wrote a book about it titled, “Hardwired for Purpose: Blazing Trails to Follow God’s Lead.” That book took years to write and process mentally and emotionally. I expected the hike to be a relaxing time with God in nature; sitting beside a babbling creek. I thought I was going to sit there and get my life purpose while doing a Bible study. I had a backpack full of supplies. I had a couple of Bible translations, a Concordance, water bottles, a blanket, pens and highlighters, and my journal.
So I drove to the mountain trailhead where I wanted to hike and found a wonderful spot to rest. God said to keep going. I kept hiking up the trail to another spot that I liked and God said to keep going. I hiked about five miles up that mountain before I could finally stop. The place God wanted me to go wasn’t even on the trail. It was straight up the shale mountainside to a single pine tree in the distance.
In my book, I share all of the details of that hike, including revelation I received. God is so good. It was a hard day, but I learned so much that it was worth it . And best of all, I found my purpose in the sum of Psalm 96. Now, I know what to do, and I just need to work out the details as I continue my walk of salvation.
I encourage everyone to find their purpose and calling. Knowing what God has planned for you offers hope and a future. You receive promises from God in your purpose for growth and joy, and you can be sure that if you are still here, He’s not done with you yet.
A Song of Praise to God Coming in Judgment
— Psalm 96, NKJV
Psalm 96 Oh, sing to the Lord a new song!
Sing to the Lord, all the earth.
2 Sing to the Lord, bless His name;
Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.
3 Declare His glory among the nations,
His wonders among all peoples.
4 For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised;
He is to be feared above all gods.
5 For all the gods of the peoples are idols,
But the Lord made the heavens.
6 Honor and majesty are before Him;
Strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.
7 Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
Give to the Lord glory and strength.
8 Give to the Lord the glory due His name;
Bring an offering, and come into His courts.
9 Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness!
Tremble before Him, all the earth.
10 Say among the nations, āThe Lord reigns;
The world also is firmly established,
It shall not be moved;
He shall judge the peoples righteously.ā
11 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad;
Let the sea roar, and all its fullness;
12 Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it.
Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice
13 before the Lord.
For He is coming, for He is coming to judge the earth.
He shall judge the world with righteousness,
And the peoples with His truth.
Can I Trust You, Lord?
Surprising Intimacy
I closed my eyes and settled into the silence. It started with a gentle kiss, a warm caress on my shoulder, then a more forceful embrace. The room in my mind was dimmed with red light symbolizing the perfect passion of Christās love for me (The same red light the enemy has stolen and perverted.). I thought of the Song of Songs and understood. The intimacy is remarkably blush-worthy. Jesusā love excites His promise in me that I will be healed. This love of the Lord is difficult for me to imagine and receive. Growing up I trusted the adults in my life and intimacy was defiled. I didnāt know how much intimacy draws people together in reciprocal trust and care.
The truth is that people donāt trust God because they donāt trust people.
Weāve all trusted someone and have been let down. Itās inevitable that trust will fail on some level at some point in our relationships. We can expect to be disappointed because people are fallible. People will fall short of our expectations, especially if our expectations are too high, miscommunicated, or unreasonable. It makes sense that weād have a hard time trusting again after weāve been hurt. When weāve been hurt over and over, trusting others becomes difficult. Which makes trusting God difficult too.
When weāve trusted and been hurt, we can give people grace and forgiveness to maintain relationships. God does the same thing with us ā He forgives us and gives us grace abundantly. God understands that we have a hard time trusting and He seeks our hearts anyway.
Godās compassionate agape love for us goes far beyond what we can ever imagine. God is trustworthy to say and do the very best for us. We can trust Him. God does not lie, so we can believe what He tells us in Scripture. God leads us in Proverbs 3:5ā6, TPT saying, āTrust in the Lord completely and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on him to guide you, and he will lead you in every decision you make. Become intimate with him in whatever you do, and he will lead you wherever you go.ā
Trusting God is an important foundation of our relationship with Him. If we donāt trust God, we will not easily enter our Secret Place. We must find the ability to trust Him to begin healing and growing in our relationship with Christ. We need to trust God and be receptive to receiving all He has for us.
Not Trusting is Not an Option
Without trust in God, we stay immature, lukewarm, broken, and fractured. We miss what is happening in the Body of Christ. Holding onto a lack of trust in God builds anger and resentment. Life becomes joyless, unfruitful, and stuck in cycles of destruction. Without trusting God, we stay the same, unchanged, with broken relationships, no purpose or vision, toxic, without identity, unsafe, and estranged from supernatural connection with Him. We suffer, remain discouraged, hopeless, scared, alone, and feel abandoned.
The truth is that when we trust God, He will draw us out of all the destruction caused by our sin and rebellion. We are in sin and rebellion when we donāt trust God because we are rejecting Him and all He has for us. God wants us to be free, whole, and healthy. He wants us to see the victory weāve been offered through Jesusā crucifixion and resurrection. God wants to permanently heal us, save us, and help us to know our identity in Him. With trust in God, we can find freedom in our Secret Place.
Trust Comes with Hope
God made us with a specific calling, purpose, and destiny we can only fulfill in our relationship with Him. Letās receive more of God for our healing and to fulfill our destiny. Letās live in our victory. Letās bring our lack of trust and all our other cares to Him. Letās surrender everything, even our lives to Him. It may be hard at first, and it may be a process, but we can find God our Secret Place. We can connect with Jesus deeply and enter His holy ground to receive everything He has prepared for us.
Everything we are looking for is waiting for us in our Secret Place. The desires of our hearts can be made manifest as we spend time with God. The exhilaration of freedom awaits us. Knowledge and understanding find us there. Thereās more to the Secret Place than we can understand.
Jesus Loves Me Podcast: February 2023
Sharon and Jana get back on track by recording the Jesus Loves Me Podcast for February 2023. Listen as they explore what we are worshipping or beholding in our lives.
Jesus Is Closer Than You Know
Jesus’ death on the cross was so we can have relationship with Him. He is not unreachable or too far away. In the book of John, chapter 3 verse 16, we see the intention of His death on the cross. John 3:16 ESV – 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” Next in verse 17, John 3:17 ESV – 17″ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him,” God’s will is for us to have life. Life with the Godhead, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit is real and tangible. He wants us to participate in the affairs of the Kingdom of Heaven through relationship.
In the book of John, chapter 17, in the following verses we see the conversation from Jesus to his Father. It is tender-hearted and insightful to Jesus’ intention about our life with God the Father and Jesus. I am bringing this up because in the next paragraphs we will look at what man thinks is important for relationship with Jesus. Not what the God head had planned before the foundations of the world. Here are some verses out of chapter 17 from the book of John.
John 17:22-26 ESV – 22 “The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
These verses are stating the very essence of the heart of God and what Jesus expressed to his Father about us. It states boldly, that he gave us his glory! The glory of God is His manifested goodness for us. He is a good God. I would recommend that you read that entire chapter. In this verse, we learn that, the word of God, (Jesus is the word) sanctifies us. The Truth (the word) are/is factual. It is the real thing. The more we read and take in His word, the more we become like Him and know and understand Him. We also become closer to Him. As we eat the word, just like food to our soul and spirit, it strengthens us and changes us into His very nature. We have a need to shed and have the old man changed. We have the ability to become like our Father.
In the following passage, the verses state how Jesus was calling out the religious men of the day, that they thought that there ways were above and beyond God’s ways. They were clearly only interested tradition of men and not a relationship with Jesus. This exchange is in the following passage in the book of Mark chapter 7 verses 1-9.
Mark 7:1-9 ESV – 1 Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 7 in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ 8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” 9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
The Pharisees had made their own religious rules of how people should act or behave instead of relying on the power of the scripture (the word of God) to walk with Jesus. In the next verses, Jesus points out what defiles a person is what comes out of their own hearts. Jesus is all about our hearts. He is not about trying to keep ridiculous rules. Rules that are just performance based behavior. Jesus is more interested in us talking with him and knowing we want to be a part of his family. The Family of God.
I promise you all the religious traditions of the world will only frustrate you and your heart will not be at peace. Jesus is as close as inside of you when you ask him to come into your heart and life. Ask Him, He will make himself real and tangible. He created you. He knows everything about you! There is nothing too big or too small that he doesn’t care about in your life.
The Coming Freedom
Received May 10th, 2022
In the days to come, the Greater Glory will be blinding; dead men being raised from out of their graves to the restoration of all things.
In My Mighty power, I will take down My enemies, make them My footstool, raise up Heaven on earth and proclaim Victory! Victory!
Oh death where is your sting! I will make the path brighter and illuminate in the darkness.
Follow Me and come sit with Me!
Sit with ME!!
Come out of her My people! Learn My ways. Learn of ME. Know Me and know My heart.
Let Me show you the way. Let Me bring you higher. Come up higher. Come closer. Incline your ear. Do not despair in these dark times.
It will not last forever.
Wake up oh sleeper!
Arise!
Psalm 110:1, Revelation 18:4, Psalm 119:105, Isaiah 60:1, Malachi 4:2, Romans 13:11, Ephesians 5;14
Removing Blocks of Healing
Identify Your Blocks
Knowing what blocks to healing we have in our lives is important. We must know what we need before we can begin healing. It takes introspection and a strong sense of self to discover our fractured parts. Introspection takes courage. We must be brave and honest with ourselves about our character behaviors, shortcomings, and flaws. Knowing ourselves honestly and intimately will lead us into understanding our fractured parts.
We can identify our fractured parts by journaling, talking to a professional therapist, and asking a trusted friend. But our first path is always Jesus. Jesus and Holy Spirit should be our first āgo-toā Helpers when it comes to removing blocks to healing that we have in our lives. They know exactly what we are going through and what we need to be healed.
We must be able to hear the Lord and be sensitive and discerning of the Spirit to understand how to move forward. Below are several ways to get started on the process of healing.
Practice Self-Care
Preparing for healing takes self-care. When we care for ourselves, we are honoring the temple that God gave us to steward in this life. Self-care is for the mind, spirit, and soul as much as for the body. We must care for our whole person, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. When we are out of balance with our self-care we are out of balance with God. One of the best ways we can practice self-care is with love.
God lives in us when we love, 1 John 4:12ā13, TPT reads:
āā¦But if we love one another, God makes his permanent home in us, and we make our permanent home in him, and his love is brought to its full expression in us. And he has given us his Spirit within us so that we can have the assurance that he lives in us and that we live in him.ā
With God in us, we are able to heal. We must love ourselves in order to fully love God and others. Loving ourselves takes some work when weāve been unloved as a child, rejected, abandoned, or otherwise traumatized. Any form of child abuse will leave us unloving as adults. We become unloving because we feel unacceptable and unworthy of love. The truth is that we are worthy of love. God can show us how to love again through trust and patience. We must be willing to leave pain and suffering behind to love again.
While in pain and/or suffering, we are vulnerable to new traumatic events as well as re-experiencing past events. Itās a catch-22 that being ready to heal makes us vulnerable to more traumatic events and to re-experiencing traumatic memories or flashbacks of trauma. The very same vulnerability can work for us to heal but can also leave us open to new pain. Being vulnerable takes courage and hope that in the process of healing, even when we feel more pain, the hope can bring us through to the other end of it all.
Courage and hope lead us in the process of self-care and healing. The more we love ourselves, the more prepared we will be for our healing. We must find hope in our circumstances. Thereās a lot of hope in the Bible. Thereās hope in Jesus as the Lord of our lives. Jesus gets started on healing us from the second we believe in Him. And Jesus always finishes what He started. Jesus is the Finisher of our faith.
Use Love & Kindness
Satan and his minions hate to love, so love is what we must do. When we are down, depressed, anxious, or in any other bad place, we must love God, ourselves, and others. When we are not doing well and we are kind to others, love increases and the darkness leaves. Thereās instant freedom for us as we practice love for ourselves and one another.
Practicing love for ourselves and others sows love into our whole being. Remember, according to Scripture, we reap what we sow (See Galatians 6:7). If we want more love and kindness in our lives, we must love and be kind. Being loving and positive will prepare us for healing. When we are positive, we are more open to processing painful events and memories. No matter what we sow, we must keep our eyes on the Lord.
Focus on The Lord
We must keep our eyes on Jesus and everything He is teaching us as we prepare to heal. Peter learned above all the apostles to keep his attention on Jesus. Once, Peter courageously walked on water with Jesus. Hereās what happened: Peter took his eyes off the Lord, began thinking on his own, and feeling frightened he sank. In Matthew 14:28ā31, TPT, we read:
āPeter shouted out, āLord, if itās really you, then have me join you on the water!ā āCome and join me,ā Jesus replied. So, Peter stepped out onto the water and began to walk toward Jesus. But when he realized how high the waves were, he became frightened and started to sink. āSave me, Lord!ā he cried out. Jesus immediately stretched out his hand and lifted him up and said, āWhat little faith you have! Why would you let doubt win?āā
Peter doubted what he was doing and sank. We learn here that doubt is one of the biggest ways we can turn away from the Lord. When we arenāt focusing on Jesus, it focuses us on the world and our flesh. Yet, Jesus is never far away from us. Listen to what Mark 1:15, New King James Version (NKJV) says:
āThe time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.ā
Jesus and the Kingdom of God are never farther away from us than our own hand at armās length. We are the ones that keep Jesus away, but Heās always near to us. Jesus is always ready for our repentance and reconciliation. Jesus wants to heal us, but we have to let Him into our lives in order to do so.
Pray & Prepare for Healing
Pray for healing. We can prepare for our healing by continually praying for ourselves. Praying for ourselves readies us for healing by opening up our will to align with Godās will for us to be healed. When we pray for ourselves, we are asking the Lord in intervene on our behalf for healing. Itās advisable to pray as much as possible until the healing has happened, or weāve been set free. Praying in the Spirit, in our angelic tongues, helps heal us even more.
When we pray in tongues, we are praying in a language unknown to us, unless we are given the interpretation. According to Galatians 5:16, we are to walk in the Spirit, rather than the flesh. In order to walk in Spirit, we must be set free from the enemy of God. Praying in tongues can free us from what we donāt know we need freedom from. Praying in tongues is a proactive approach to healing. Tongues give us a direct connection to God. If you donāt have tongues, just ask Holy Spirit to give them to you and/or get help from a Spirit-filled friend.
Use the prayer model below or pray on your own:
Lord God, I repent for having blocks to healing in my life. In preparation for my healing, I repent for allowing false idols to enter the life that has kept You away from me. I repent for allowing false idols to sit in Your position in my life as the One True God through Christ Jesus. I repent for ____________ (name as many false idols as you feel you have used, such as a person, career, possessions, etc.). God remove these false idols from me. Lord, remove from me all of the ungodly false idol gatekeepers I have put in place. Wash me cleanly in Your blood. Cover me and fill me in the areas I have fallen. My desire is to be healed fully mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
I Just Published My Creativity Book
Hardwired for Creativity: Art Supplies for the Mind
A Handbook of Godly Wisdom, Strategies & Freedom
Available here at Amazon.com
Hardwired for Creativity is a teaching memoir and educational workbook, focused on encouraging and supporting growing creative students before and beyond the knowledge of formal art principles and techniques. Creativity is expressed in a variety of ways, like painting, writing, performing arts, crafts, woodworking, business management, and employee development.
This book is divided into two Sections. The first Section is divided into four parts: cultivating creativity, developing creative work, thinking differently, and acknowledging others. Section two is full of creativity-related topics, such as brainstorming, project management, critiques, research, intuition, and procrastination. All these topics are important to developing creative work and a creative lifestyle.
Emergent students, artists, and creatives need tools of everyday understanding to successfully sustain balanced lives of creative structure and freedom. This book is dedicated to the exploration of these everyday topics through a variety of pedagogy, like qualitative research, and the creativesā life experiences.
Just Sharon & Jana 
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