In the Lord's Eyes

In a church message I received by email this morning, it talked about listening to the voice of the Lord instead of the alternate voices of the world, and not letting the world decide if we are good

enough - if we are attractive enough, spiritual enough, smart enough, talented enough, and basically, just plain good enough. Those same voices also try to coax us into blending in with the rest of the world instead of standing out like we were born to, and being a light of the Lord.

I ask you, what is more important, how the world sees us or how God sees us? Will we bend to emulate the standards of others or will we seek after the standards of the Lord? After all, the world can't save us from sin, nor cleanse us spiritually. But the Lord can. So, it stands to reason that the Lord's opinion and the way He sees us is far more important than the opinion of man.
We must remember that the natural man/woman is an enemy to God, and unless we are striving to be true men and women of God, there is rarely any importance in the natural man's words as pertaining to the things of God.

The voices of the world are extremely loud, but the whispering of the Spirit of God is far more powerful, and if we let it, His voice can, and will, silence the others.
May we all have ears to hear and listen to His voice always, then internalize the Savior's view of us instead of seeing ourselves through the blurry, unclean lenses of the world.

A New Heart

Despite my blatant imperfections, I pray for a renewed heart daily. The Lord blessed me with a new

heart years ago, and because of the sinner that I am, and because of the natural man (woman) in me, I now seek for a daily renewal. Striving to turn a life over to the Lord completely is no small thing. We are all weak and it takes constant effort. And because of this, I am always asking Heavenly Father to make my heart His, to align it with His, to change my ways to His ways. I pray to become so in tune with the spirit that all I do, say, and think will be in accordance to His will for me, and that I won’t seek after anything that is against it.

In essence, my longing for a renewed heart each day is a heartfelt longing to know Him–to truly be the person I was before coming to the earth, the person who walked and talked with the Father and the Son, the person who knew Them intimately. And I will never stop praying and pleading until I am that person again, until I can finally kneel before my Savior and know without a doubt that He is pleased with me, and my offering.

May we all pray earnestly for a new heart – a heart that can truly be claimed by the Lord.

The Shaping

Growing closer to the Lord during trials is more important than we know. We can allow our trials to shape us into the strong, righteous, holy people that God needs us to be, or shape us into the bitter,

stagnant, miserable people that Satan desires to have. One leads to spiritual growth and progression while the other leads to loneliness, despair, and regression. One road leads to God, the other leads away from Him. One is an upward climb, moving an inch at a time to heavenly rewards, the other, a slippery slope or free-fall into darkness.
Either way, the Lord's hand is there for us to grab and hold onto. Because that hand can pull us up the steep climb, or catch us before we fall down the slope. We just need to keep our eyes fixed - especially during dark times - that we may never lose sight of it.