Dear GodSippers,

Reaching out with some exciting news. Thank you for your patience with me in my absence from blogging since January. My news is also my excuse, but I have used my writing time to finish my Communion Revelations book and submit it for publication! It is a huge project that has taken quite a lot of time and effort. My admiration is deep for every published author ever. Here is the post I attempted the end of June and never finished until now. Thank you for praying for my book and for hanging in there with me! This is both a newsletter kind of update with a word of the Lord for you.

Moving from June into July, I felt a more restful peace in my spirit. My mom passed April 25th following Dad into heaven by just a year and a half. Her transitioning was a beautiful thing to witness and I am thankful to have been with her in her final hours on earth. Everything since then has been a strange mix of peace and urgency to complete unfinished things, but now I am grateful the peace of God has settled over me as I dedicate myself to finishing a couple of overdue projects. I last posted to my blog in January, so the break has been a season and a half of needed time. While I prioritized my mom, I also have been putting in real work to finalize my book on Communion. I look forward to sharing that with you soon. God is in the timing even when we think we’ve missed it. I am a living testimony to that, for sure.

The Lord has spoken many things to me over these last few months. I hope you receive all God has for you in this message.

On June 30th, I heard the Lord say, The end of Pride and the beginning of Freedom. What is it to be proud, but destruction?

If there is a proverb everyone knows, it is probably this one. Young or old, scholar or unbeliever, most people will repeat the truth of pride coming before a fall. Most translations of Proverbs 16:18 say, “Pride comes before destruction and a haughty spirit before the fall.” A couple of translations use the word ‘disaster’ in place of ‘destruction’ but The Message translation expounds by selecting the word “crash” for “fall” and adding the word “ego.” it provides more of a conversation than simply an acknowledgement when it says, “First pride, then the crash – the bigger the ego, the harder the fall.” Proverbs 16:18. It gives ‘the bigger they are the harder they fall’ aspect of the destruction pride brings. We may use this proverb reference in an assessment of individuals. When we meet the obviously proud type of person in a social gathering or see those who are featured on various platforms of celebrity, we might shrug and say, “Well, pride goes before a fall…” But for me, the real humdinger is when Pride became a parade. 

A parade of Pride. Consider this is exactly what it says. PRIDE on display, parading, leadng the way straight to destruction. The theme of being proud of one’s sexuality is secondary to the root of the problem. PRIDE is the real trap. Why a person feels compelled to feature themselves parading down the street based on their sexual desires has always been confusing to me. What is the purpose of that? What is the need being expressed by those creating and participating in events centered around anyone’s sexuality?

The Holy Spirit has given me insight to some answers. The parade of pride in one’s sexuality is simply an expression of the need for identity. Once a person secures an identity in any way contrary to the perfect will of God for their life, they will have a need to justify that identity. Pride is a happy escort in the parade of an identity contrary to the image of God because every strategy of the enemy is to distort or destroy God’s image, thus, His image-bearers. If our identity rests in our sexuality (no matter what our sexuality is) it falls short of the full identity God has for us. This unbalanced emphasis on a partial and perverted or faulty identity based only on our sexuality creates a need within us to justify ourselves.

Romans 3:19-21 There is No One Righteous.  “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be justified in His sight by works of the law. For the law merely brings awareness of sin. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been revealed, as attested by the Law and the Prophets.”

The Lord has said to me, When a person rejects the Justification I give, he is left to justify himself. 

There is no justification outside of Christ Jesus. How does a person justify himself?

“For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.” (Romans 4:2).

Freedom comes only in surrender and humility, in knowing our true and complete identity is indeed in Christ. As pride comes before destruction, could it be that God in His complete mercy and grace allows the destruction in order to bring the humility necessary for freedom? When are we in deepr humility than after a fall?

Could our God be this good that He would allow us to go so far that we come to the end of ourselves, crash and burn, in order that we might realize our need for Him? Waiting for us to receive His justification and our new identity of freedom in Him is a demonstration of the depths of His goodness. Yes, disaster may signal the end of pride, but disaster can also create the necessary posture for the beginnig of freedom.

I pray the Lord shows us His goodness even as our destructive patterns of living signal defeat and our new beginnings of life and truth give us the understanding of our identity as we were always meant to be.

Love is pure in Christ and there is no other means of justification. He resists the proud because pride destroys. It is not His nature. This is the work of the enemy, killing, stealing, and destroying. But Jesus came to give life and abundant life! His justification is true and sure.

Lord help us in our weak attempts to achieve our proper identity. Let us understand You provide all, with You we can do anything, and of ourselves we can do nothing. In Christ. Always.