when I’m down and out or questioning

In our arsenal of melodies, unfinished

scribbling, gently hidden

Ballads from me to you

The Holy Spirit,

collaborating all these poems

right back into the vessel of my soul

Like food to eat

A melody so sweet

as I’m writing for a ear that hears

And eyes that Seek

He’s writing Love Sonnets between the letters that I speak.

-A.Lock 4/15/2024

The narrow road lined with trees

Pebbles and boulders along the steps of my feet

He’s taken me out of sight.

Invisible to the blind eye

With every step we take together

To a place no one’s gone

No matter how far we travel

In Him, I’ll always belong

Among the dying plants

I’m the only blooming flower

So Yes. I will

For everyday still

No matter the weather, heartache, fall or pressure

In the woods,

on the roads less traveled

me and the Bountiful Master

I have been away quite awhile due to the Spring Term of College. Yet, this is good as much more will spring after spring has sprung ! We have uploaded a new poem by the title of ‘In The Yellow Forest’. Inspired by one of my favorite poets in my middle school years of Poetry Club, ‘Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.’ I like to think of it as a modern holy remaster, lol ! ;)

I’ve come also bearing more good news ! Of why and how we carry on in this industry of writing and art for believers, bringing forth a journal entry I’d love to express to you all as we are friends and family with a joined Love for Jesus in this space.

If someone had to ask, ‘What’s the point? Of writing poetry about Jesus’ or designing Christian apparel or creating nail designs inspired by scripture?’ (WINK, WINK!)

My reply to a simple mind would follow this cadence;

“God made me a creative being.

As I grow in Him, He reminds me that He formed me before He called the world into existence.

Since He chose to instill in me the versatile need to create; the Hope and Desire to bring Life into the industry of artistic expression, through art and literature. It only makes sense that my heart desire’s to do just that, through His Grace and Mercy.

To share with the world how sonnets allow you to dance with the Savior. How a pencil and a page can bring your spiritman to the Foundations of Genesis One. How color and Light can bring forth the sacrifice and Resurrection Power of the Cross.

Through the form of Creation, I desire to bring to the world,

‘The ULTIMATE CREATOR.”

A. Lock April 13, 2024. 12:37pm

Have you ever undergone surgery? Ever had to dissect a frog in high school? Or the likelihood of playing the doctoral game of Operation?

As an art student I recently encountered what I’d like to call an example of surgery and how something in my everyday life related to the surgery or pruning we undergo with the Lord.

John 15: 1-6 [Jesus, The True Vine]

(1) “I am the true grapevine, and my father is the gardener. (2) He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. (3) You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. (4) Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. (5) “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. (6) Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned.

I work partly hosting the art room on my college campus, and we have 3d printers there. The process can be rather simple or rather extensive depending upon the magnitude or purpose of the object being printed. Well in this case I printed two items for my leisure. One had a functionality for my desk, and it’s design while it appeared simple was not. Another item I selected to print was a vase, very plain and simple.

The process of printing is based upon many things from the size, to the detail, to ultimately an items purpose. Think small functionality, small process. Large functionality, longer process. Can you catch my drift? No? Let’s continue on then. First the item is given a purpose, search among a database, created into a file and then edited through it’s blueprint. This all occurs before ever being sent to the machine’s queue or womb. Before the Machine is aware of the work allotted before it, a print has already been assigned and orchestrated behind the scenes. Once the 3D Printing Machine receives the model’s blueprint, it must heat up. It recaches a few hundred degrees which isn’t hot to One’s Hand. It isn’t until the machine is fully reaches hot enough temperatures can the model begin creating or being printed. Remembering that there is a process during this time frame. Take for example the functioning piece I created to hold my pens. It’s model is simple, cute, small and detailed. This particular item only took six hours for completion. Whereas a detailed, taller vase took nearly twelve hours.

In our walks with Lord God, we forget a very important part of this journey the process. Got it? Have we reached a unisonous page in the book? Yes? Great, allow me to enlighten you. After these models had completed printing, they have what we in the art department call ‘supports’. This allows the model to build among a foundation that enables to retain its structure once it is removed out of the printer. The Lord Jesus Christ is our Support. We are the models; our trials, tribulations, and pruning are the Machines or fire which God, The Creator of our blueprint, puts us through.

It was during the process of removing the supports on each of these models that I came through such a encouraging understanding. When you are in what I like to call ‘The Spiritual Puberty of it All’; you are just trying to get in all together. Trying to see what fits, what works for you and what is God trying to do in your life. Just like three-dimensional plastic figurines, we need support of Our Lord and Savior, and the saving Grace of His Spirit to grow to maturity. When a model has infill and supports removing the impurities, the framework around the model can be a very, very, very challenging task.

You are likely to damage the model, scrape or cut yourself as well as scrape the model. Which causes the perfecting of this process a bit more extensive. The vase model that took an entirely long time to print did not experience can extensive pruning of supports on the ‘outside’. It would appear that removing the slander, or lying from it’s life; taking away the false idols of it’s former ways was quicker to someone watching this process being completed. It was a few large elephants in the room, a few moments of nipping away with the clippers. Yet, the model that took less time to print in processing encounter so much tender love and care, so much uprooting and digging; that I had nearly six different surgical tools to bring this model to right standing.

I say that to say this.

The process of working out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12) can look a lot like extensive surgery and spiritual puberty. Yet, it is in this place, in the valley, in the heat and fire of trying faith, in the uprooting of false support and impurities of your old nature that a mighty blossom can occur.

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Jesus transformed a simple encounter, a day to day car ride, a trip to the grocery store, a walk in the park; into a deep and soul-winning conversation about Salvation in Him. In your everyday tasks, in the routine, alongside the hustle and bustle of twenty-four hours could it be that you have missed your divine appointment. Your heavenly encounter?

We long for a quenching of direction, of purpose; for hope and security that is only fulfilled by drinking from the Fountain of Jesus Christ. A life without Jesus is an eternity in the desert. Dry, hot and desperately desiring the one thing that is removed. Living water.

During the most divine and transformative year of my life, I was going through hell and high water. I was receiving the rod of discipline and judgement for my sins, and I was tired. I was tired of mischief, of substance abuse, of this evitable dark cloud that hung over me. It became that I was so consumed by the cloud around me that I fell into desiring the dead things. I knew very well drinking, drugging, and unequal yolks during ungodly hours would kill me; but my flesh, the desire to do wrong, continuously overpowered me. I had spent that entire year crying, could you imagine? The turmoil of continuously weeping from guilt and shame? To read your Bible and feel the evidence of your own hard dead heart that even while His Hand was visibly upon you, your sin blinded you from the Lord’s Power?

It was on a day of struggling. A day where I was pressing with uncertainty and sheer hope, tired from the warfare that I came to a shift in my circumstance. On many of those rough nights crying, I’d prayed for something simple. Nothing grand or an extradentary miracle. I present God with a minuet trouble and after waring for awhile, God answered me. So abruptly, so unexpected was the instance that I saw myself in the reflection of an underserved blessing. God was so clearly before me, an ever present help and I was clueless! This angered me. I was mad at myself for getting so off track that I dropped my things, locked my door and got down on my knees. And this time I didn’t let up. I gave all of what I’d carried in those tears, in that angry outbursts, in those needing moments of rolling and choking. I gave God the rawest, ugliest, most lowest part of myself in that moment that made this day different then those other moments when I read His Word.

This brought me to a particular passage (that til’ this day and forevermore humbles me before the Lord), it was my life, my sin, my thoughts looking back at me. I read them with such a sensitivity to my spirit, that even as I covered my mouth in amazement and tears, the Word of God even declared that after all I had done He was a forgiving God. Further than He was going to restore me from before sin corrupted me! Ain’t God Good!

It brought such conviction and humility and even in the discipline of His word, that I felt blessed that He even knew those things. That He even convicted me. It was on this day, my lowest point; the deepest wound and uprooting that I gave my life to Christ. It was in this moment, I knew that if it were just Him and I for the rest of my life, I would never be the same. Period.

It takes one encounter. One Divine Appointment. One Word, One Scripture, one moment with Jesus Christ to change our lives forever. The greatest thing about that one encounter is you can’t help but testify about the Man that knows every secret thing you’ve ever done. That Loves you despite how anyone has ever treated you. That cares about every hair on your head and knows the number of each. (Matthew 10:28-31)

There was a woman that was transformed by discovering Jesus and His Omniscience. The woman was doing what she always did, drawing water in the middle of the day. She would arrive when no one would be around to judge or persecute her because of her lifestyle and mistakes. Her doing the mundane everyday thing she did caused Jesus to have an intentional, private and intimate conversation with her.

This was her life altering divine appointment to learn of the Messiah from Himself.

The story of the Samaritan Woman.

Could you imagine? Standing before Jesus unaware that it was truly the King of Kings before you? Truth being told, we in our evil nature at one point did just as this woman has. Unaware of the gift of Salvation, denied, rejected or refused to acknowledge that there is undeniable satisfaction in a life lived, devoted and saved by Jesus Christ.

I love the way Jesus responds to the woman. He tells her anyone who drinks of the water from a well will surely thirst again. The well can represent countless things in this life. Our sin for one, we think just one more time; or when I get older, I’ll get it together. Or this life is all there is, so why do I need saving? Unaware that every time we sip from the cup of sin, we will fall into the cycle of life’s deception as it will never satisfy our soul. Your flesh will feel good for a fleeting moment and eventually it will need more and more. Your Flesh resembles an addict, and the abused drug is sin. When you are actively abusing a substance of any kind; drugs, food, sex, alcohol, gossip, pride, vanity; the first time may be the greatest height of that occurrence and you are tricked into chasing that encounter each time you try again. Each time you say to yourself God will forgive me this time, I can do this or that and no one will know.

You will always thirst again without the Saving Grace, Promises and Salvation of Jesus Christ. As He is living water that will always satisfy beyond whatever you thought was the rim of your glass, He will pour over each and every time.

It wasn’t until I experienced the joy of the Lord that I can feel joy on a greater level each time He blesses it upon me. Even when He delivered me from the bondage of depression and mental health; I can experience greater Peace in His Presence that makes me forgot I ever experienced those things. There is no height, no ceiling to the height of how long, how much, or how purely we can Praise and worship The Father. He has no end. There is no ‘you have arrived’ when it comes to Christ. Even when we go to Glory to lay at the feet of the Father, an eternity continuously mesmerized by His Majesty infinitely times over.

Jesus then commanded the woman to go and retrieve her husband. Jesus knew the Truth. He is The Truth. While knowing the answer, He posed a question to the woman to present His Glory of being Omniscient, knowing everything. Jesus’s question was to cause the woman to confess with honesty her sin to the One and Only Savior. Even though she had no awareness of the magnitude He held before her, her integrity presented something for God to work with.

Jesus deliberately chose to detour the typical route taken by commoners just to meet this woman. The conversation between the two of them is one of the longest conversations in the Gospels, as Jesus was a man of few words and much momentum. He engaged her over something as mundane as a drink of water. Which held a two-fold provoking her to think on things, revealing her immoral lifestyle never for shame but to present her ultimately with His purpose of running into her. Her Salvation!

When we come to Him wanting Living Water, wanting the Truth, The Way and The Life. He requires the sincerity of our hearts. The integrity of our sins, without shame without guilt and with the fullness thereof. One thing this taught me is that God desires the truth of our lives from us. To hide your sin from God is literally one of the most foolish things you could do. No matter if you're a babe in Christ, if your well-seasoned. Repent means to seek forgiveness and to never do it again.

Regardless of what you have done, be the most honest you’ve ever been in your life with Jesus. Asking first for his forgiveness and accepting Him as your Savior, acknowledge in your heart that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. He rose from the grave on the third day and is seated at the right had of The Father, Lord God. (Romans 10) Salvation is for everyone. Jew and Gentile. A person with one husband or five. Salvation is for the robber, the fornicator, the murderer, the lost. Salvation is for the weak and low in spirit.

Jesus first showed the woman a different perspective of life from the drawing of the well, to expose her to the fact that she could have water that will eternally satisfy her. When the woman gave consent, that she wanted Him. She wanted the Truth and the goodness of no longer struggling in the cycles that life presents us with when we are separated from God as enemies. Her willingness to experience a freshness invited Him into her life.

Jesus is a gentleman. He will never rob you of your will to choose. This is called free-will. People wonder why God allows or even send humans to hell due to judgment. You are given a choice. Ultimately if you don’t choose Him, you are choosing the ladder. If you straddle the fence, that is also a choice. In spiritual aspects, we are presented with the same choice, good or evil. God wishes that each of choose the goodness of the Lord.

[Proverbs 5:21 - For your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths."]

A life in submission to Christ Jesus, isn’t very appealing to the foolish; it’s a path that produces heartaches, troubles, disappointments, blessing, Peace and joy in the very same breath. It will always be the most beneficial option for your spirit’s eternal salvation. Then there is the ladder, the sweet treat, the way of death. That seems good only for a moment. But inevitably ruins your well-being, giving only temporal satisfaction with detrimental internal results.

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I commend you in all your living, 

or in the depth of your sinning;

 in the repeative Sundays that allow your weeks to flush together; 

You are called to the well of Living Water to drink from the ever-lasting fountain. 

Allow the Lord to catch you drawing your pale from  His Spirit. 

We do not own any rights to images featured in this blog.

Otherwise stated, all contents of this post are original and owned and cited as of 2023, 2024 by Just Jesus The blog’s Author and Hostess.

Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen.

During the preparation of my lunch for the following day, I came across a difficult stage of meal prepping. If you are anyone that finds the swimmers of God’s blue seas bountiful, you have skinned some salmon before. Hopefully.

As this is one of my most profound treasures to eat, a lot of revelation’s seemed to occur when I’m standing in the kitchen. Possibly as cooking is my most favorite hobby. As I attempted to prepare this salmon, I resorted to doing something I’d seen someone else do. A red flag in and of itself, I was under the impression that this process of pouring boiling water over the salmon will make the ripping away of skin much easier. Yet, when I went to do such, I encountered a few problems.

The water wasn’t hot enough. The tearing was nowhere close to easy, and I still had to cut away leftover skin, impurities and even bone even though the label declared it to be boneless. As I stood there slicing parts of this salmon, I recalled what I’d been told earlier that Sunday, in my former life and even during trials.

A time of pruning and a time of planting.

A time of dying and a time of birthing.

A time of dislocation and a time to limp away.

A time of great struggle, against…you guessed it, the Lord.

As I live out what I am learning, as we grow in Christ what cultivated change and growth in a previous season doesn’t always serve to be active in a new season. We’ll speak on the shifting of seasons another time, as this article highlights the beauty of struggle, of war, of wrestling as many of us do in our walking out of Salvation.

As we hear the saints say, if you aren’t changing somethings wrong. What is skimmed over is how difficult it can be when you struggle with the changes God makes. You get comfortable in the natural, you can get comfortable with the way you wear your hair, or the way you prepare a salmon or the way you wait on God. But complacency and comfortability are fine lines in the spiritual, which causes for some cutting away.

As I finally was able to skin this salmon to an edible standard, I realized that I was under the severance of the Lord’s knife just as Jacob had been. The story of Jacob is one I’ve heard but never reaped understanding until this particular day. Jacob was a man that at one stage in his life (the former life we all have lived) was described as the man who deceives. Imagine your life and the unholy trait you were known for; allow that to sink in as your relatable standard, if you were a thief that is how people addressed you, a lair, manipulative, homosexual, fornicator, and so on and so forth. Thank the Lord that is not the case, it is encouraging to know we serve a Forgiving God, glorifying God for His Grace and Mercy.

Well Jacob came into what we will forever encounter, a trail, a storm or a divine set-up.

Jacob in a sense had spent most of his life fighting, i.e. struggling with God. The story is explained that Jacob was preparing for an arrival of Esau, his brother. They had a falling out and were on rough terms. A report came to Jacob that Esau was on the way to see him accompanied by 400 people. In Jacob’s waiting and preparing for his brother’s arrival, he had an encounter with a man.

Gensis 32:24-28 NLT

This left Jacob all alone in the camp, and a man came and wrestled with him until the dawn began to break.

When the man saw that he would not win the match, he touched Jacob’s hip and wrenched it out of its socket.

Then the man said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking!’

But Jacob said, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.''

“What is your name?” the man asked. He replied, “Jacob.”

“Your name will no longer be Jacob,” the man told him, “From now on you will be called Israel, * because you have fought with God and with men and have won.”

Initially, it is never told that Jacob was wrestling with The Lord. [Gensis 32:24-25]

From making up in your mind to follow Christ; to accepting and struggling in faith, to the struggles of obedience. Many times, these encounters don’t always look at first anything like Him or the good we expect to see. Sometimes they look unrecognizable as Jacob did fighting with a man unaware that he was face to face with God Himself in angel form. Jacob was the prime example of how-to terry in the tussle.

While God guarantees that we will be cut, pruned [John 15:2] and severed experiencing great hurt and loss; we are able to count it all joy because in the end it will be for our good. The cutting away will reap blessings and great fruit.

The word doesn’t simply stop there as my rereading blessed me even further.

Throughout the first read I didn’t quite understand, why would He fight with God? Why wrestle with the Father? If you’ve ever had an injury, for example my left knee’s dislocation from a car accident; when we live a life fighting with God, we will in turn wound up with the evidence to prove so.

He wrestled with God so heavily that the Lord struck his hip on one side.

But in Jacob’s fighting with God, he acquired not only an injury, a life changing aliment, but a blessing through this struggle. The ensuing limp rested as a permeant reminder to Jacob to walk humbly before the Lord as He’d lived a life of trickery and deceit.

This then caused me to examine myself. If I fought with God long enough, held on to His cloak for blessings; could I handle the strike? Could I handle His answers? Could I handle if I lost another person? If I had to start over in another area of my life? If I was fit enough to wait on His Glory in my life a little while longer? If your questions are anything remotely similar, I beg your ear:

Pray on just a little while longer. It won’t be long now. It just won’t be long now. So, Pray on just a little while longer.

In this season of tussling in your faith, I commend you to remember Jacob’s wrestling with God. This event transformed his life. God saw his resilience so much so that he changed his name to identify his true character, Israel; meaning he struggles with God. At any moment the all-powerful God could have overtaken Jacob, as at any moment He can do away with our disobedience, our stubbornness, or sin, but in order to teach us a lesson. In order to have a life changing encounter with God we must terry through the tussle.

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Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen. Thanks for reading JustJesusTheBlog’s Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I remember often a particular verse that can often be bittersweet:

James 4: 14 amp (italics & bold added)

Yet you do not know {the least thing} about what may happen in your life tomorrow. [What is secure in your life?] You are merely a vapor [like a puff of smoke or a wisp of steam from a cooking pot] that is visible for a little while and then vanishes [into thin air].

The Lord reminds me…you are merely human. I’ve encountered the smoothness of God’s favor. I’ve experienced the dryness of a deserted season. The treacherousness of deep valleys and even the unfathomable bliss of the mountain top. As these seasons occur and I trust in the Lord; many times, I forget that while I am the Lord’s Daughter and residing here on earth; I am still human.

It can be discouraging when you are doing all the things. You find yourself praying many times over, fasting becomes the default rather than the ladder, you're placing it all before the Lord and still your faith is wavering. Many times, you hear your faith will be tried and tested. What is overlooked is that the Lord tests your faith even when things are not in ruins. Even when all is well it takes faith to trust God with the good days.

We can sometimes forget that we won’t reside without adversity or challenges when we’ve been covered in the peace and stillness of the Lord. When that season changes from stillness to friction and God reveals to you the transition that is inevitably taking place, it can be undoubtedly uncomfortable. After blessings and mountaintops, in our learning we are exposed to the fact that we will have to go back down to the valley.

We could never appreciate Peace, Love, Joy without going back down into another trial to be refined by another test. The Lord God described it to me as climbing up and down mountains with a foreshadowing that there are many on the journey up ahead. Though we are called to growth, in this new place with the Lord I can testify the importance of the strain and effort of fighting for your life. What isn’t often talked about is the friction of maintaining Faith even when we feel His Presence. Even when we know that He fights, cares and is faithful to His children.

Mark 6: 48 amp (bold added)

Seeing the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them, at about the fourth watch of the night (3:00-6:00am) He came to them, walking on the sea. And [acted as if] He intended to pass by them.

While we as Christians many times get comfortable in the verbalization of professing our faith; living out those challenges, don’t always roll off of our backs as easily as it may be perceived. We get very use to His answer that when He is silent usually with intentions of His purpose, we may grow weary in our strain forgetting that He remains in front, behind and alongside.

For instance, in this week’s pastime, I’d been so bottled up from the trials I’d been war-ing in for months, that I wasn’t much use to keep up with my class assignments, my friends, or blogging. The questions began to plague my Spirit as I wondered if my life was a sweet smell unto His nostrils.

The highs and lows of trail-error, joy and peace, grief and sorrow that waved through my life brought on an unimaginable result: blessings. The tiny blessings always amaze me because we take our true, disguised heart’s cares to the Lord and the way that God meets the simplest of needs is awe-inspiring.

This deep need for the Lord’s closeness far beyond His Spirit or the way I must experience Him was my reality. In turn, I prayed for something simple. I was upset that God couldn’t descend and hold me. I was frustrated at my human state, that I could only know Him in this way currently, when I wanted so badly to be eternally in His Presence. I begged God with the midnight hour of my tears.

I was at a crossroads with separating humanity from the spiritual, from the daughter of The Most High God to my mother’s child. The distortion from student to teacher, from assistant to leader. The lines of the positions I’d gotten use to were vaporizing into new things and the blurriness of change, disruption, flesh and spirit were testing my faith, placing me in an awkward position. Where I’d been obedient in prayer and fasting, zealous while going through; I felt uneasy when the Lord called me to remember that I must remain human without losing my faith. Trusting Him even when His answer, His voice, His Spirit is watchful and gently silent.

On this journey, many times we were once accustomed to the way to which we handled things. Your mind gets use to turmoil and rejects Peace. Your heart adopts worry instead of faith, even when our Spirit testifies for the better. The trouble of being refined in the fire is our expectation. Our flesh expects death, expects you to give up, expects you to curse God. But we remain firm, standing strong even though our knees may quicken, and our tears may fall.

It’s great to have faith in God providing houses, or a promotion; of course, you can trust God for the biggest of things, the miracles, the monetary value.

But never let your faith overshadow the prayer of the little things, the faith to ask for Peace, share love amongst family, for better friendships, for communicative marriages, for blue skies, for hugs and comfort.

In an age where the momentary is motivation,

Trust God for the smallest of things that are here today and gone tomorrow.

We do not own any rights to images featured in this blog.

Otherwise stated, all contents of this post are original and owned and cited as of 2023, 2024 by Just Jesus The blog’s Author and Hostess.

Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen.

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Have you ever retrieved a cup or plate with leftover residue from the cupboard? The ghastly response is horrific almost. Your entire atmosphere in the midst of one task, becomes plagued with concern over this one dish. How long had it been dirty? Had it begun to contaminate other dishes, or the worse realization is had bacteria begun to grow? Jesus tells us in Matthew 23: 25 (Italic emphasis added), exactly how we relate to a household item as simple as a cup and a dish.  

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” 

One bountiful Sunday morning, I was met with a single dish in the sink with a few utensils fallen alongside. I’d done what most people do, the pot had been left in hot water overnight; the attempt to make the cleaning process easier. With the sun rising and a fresh merciful horizon, I stood over the sink washing my way through a greased pot. I’d spent several minutes dealing only with the clumps of grease that had collected at the bottom. With patience and with much determination, I began the process of soaking the dish. Though it had spent hours in water, the residue was stuck, contaminating the clean water that was running through it. Pouring hot water in, parts of the grease would fall out; still so much residue and grease remained. Before I could bring the sponge and dish soap into contact with the pan's interior, I did this over and over again. It wasn’t until I could see that the clumps or roots of the grease were completely removed, that I was then able to scrub the residue from the inside of the pot.  

As I silently cleaned, the Holy Spirit reminded me, we are in many ways like an over greased dish, with films of grease residing inside of us. These clumps of grease and grim are the roots of our lives. The choices, the false identities or perceptions that we’ve adopted that are hiding inside and each has the tendency to contaminate our spirit. While we claim to walk with God, residing closely with The Lord God; we are giving Him only the outer layer of who we are. We bring the surface of our lives before God with a hope that His blood shed on Calvary will clean us up just enough to look appealing. We bring our superficialities of life before His throne, leaving the clumps of grease (roots) buried deep within us.              

The End of 2023 brought this reality into my life. While, I thought that my tiny prayers, or my sleepless nights were somehow a significant resemblance of getting my faith together. I learned that, there are indeed levels to the intimacy we can find in Christ. He is only as close as we allow Him to be and we’ll only be as clean as we allow Him to cleanse us. As the year came to a close I could almost feel the grease and water of my soul and flesh mixing and pouring out; the tugging of roots from my old life and the pouring in of my identity in Christ Jesus.

I learned through this experience that I am still an over greased pot. While I won’t be Squeaky Clean like The Master, I am no longer the person that once lived a habitually sinful life, yet the stainless steel of my soul can only be recognized by the Creator, Our Savior. Sitting along side dishes that were rusted, or pearly white, I enter this year as I’m sure many others do, longing to be changed in a way that doesn’t feel the same. To go further than the former state I was once in and

to instead come from underneath the Rushing Waters of Yahweh and the sparkling Suds of Our Savior to resemble a dish never before seen.

Cleaner than any dish my hands have ever cleaned…                           

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Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen.

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We do not own any rights to images featured in this blog.

Otherwise stated, all contents of this post are original and owned and cited as of 2023, 2024 by Just Jesus The blog’s Author and Hostess.

Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen.

In a culture where are condition to joining any every bandwagon, trend or hype presented to use. In the Word of God we are called to be Set Apart, Transformed by the Renewing of our mind. During a time of shifting many areas of my life from what I watched, to how I engaged on social media to ending old habits; I came across a movie that really brought the current generation we are in into a great perspective.

The movie expressed how you can go from rebellious living to redeemed in the heart of the Lord by one person living an evangelistic lifestyle simply by the fruit of the Spirit working in their life. The main character went through a lot and his behavior brought him to lose this friend and in that loss he was brought into the arms of Jesus. after His Exodus and His monumental shift, the movie ended with a powerful statement: If your going to follow anyone why not let it be Jesus.

Many times in my life I found myself attempting to fit into molds that were never meant for me. It isn’t until I brought my pieces and my mistakes to the feet of Jesus. When He showed me the fragility, hardened and torn up portions of myself that I finally felt as I had a life to live, a story to tell or a difference to make. In a place where we are forced into boxes, and judged by our interactions or unsure of what example to follow.

Jesus Christ is the ultimate example. A man who knew no sin. The Son of God, the Father. The Way, The Truth and The Life. While discretion can be used to protect your exposure to being in the world but not of it; the one example we as Christians, new believers, babes in Christ or well marinated Christians is that if we are going to follow anyone; if we are going to be lead by anyone, if we are going to replicate anyone.

The Greatest Teacher to follow and obey is Jesus Christ.

Otherwise stated, all contents of this post are original and owned and cited as of 2023, 2024 by Just Jesus The blog’s Author and Hostess.

Feel free to visit https://justjesustheblog.com/ for upcoming articles, poetry and social media involvement. We are a Christian blog encouraged to Share the Good News of Jesus Christ through Writing and Creative Design. Thank you for your subscription and we hope to hear from you!

Stay Blessed and Free of Stress. In Jesus Name, Amen. .