He Will Restore Your Name

Study The Word

Galatians 5:19-21 (NIV)

“The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

If you have ever been the victim of a false narrative, you already know how deeply it cuts. Listen, there is a particular kind of pain in being misrepresented, in having a version of you circulated that simply is not true. And what makes it hurt even more is when others begin to believe the lie. You can feel it happening, can’t you? Hearts quietly turning against you, people’s view of you becoming distorted, all because of a story you did not write and cannot seem to correct.

Let me show you something from the Word that brought me so much clarity here. Many of us imagine witchcraft as someone hunched over a pot, chanting curses in the dark. But Scripture points to something far more ordinary, and far more common, than that. Look at the list above. There, sitting right among the acts of the flesh, is “witchcraft.” Now watch what happens when we compare translations. Where the NIV says “witchcraft,” I love how the Passion Translation renders that very same word: it calls it “manipulating others.” Do you see the connection? At its root, this is about manipulation: the turning of one person’s heart and affection against another.

That one reframing changes how we see the whole thing. The spreading of a false narrative is not a small social misstep. It is a work of the flesh that God takes seriously, because it manipulates relationships and poisons the way people see one another.

So let me speak directly to two different hearts reading this.

To the one who has been lied about, slandered, and had false narratives built against you: may the Lord Himself heal you and restore you. I know the urge that rises up, that desperate need to defend your own reputation, to set the record straight with everyone who will listen. But resist it. Remember that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself stood silent in the face of His accusers, entrusting His name to the Father rather than to His own defence. And can you imagine all He endured here? They gossiped about Him, they slandered Him, they abandoned Him. He understands exactly what this feels like. So you can do what He did. You do not have to fight for a reputation that God is more than able to vindicate. Let Him be your defender. He is far better at it than you are.

And to the one who has perhaps been caught up in spreading false narratives, in turning hearts against another: may you receive the mercy and the forgiveness of the Lord, freely. His grace is real, and it is for you. And in that grace, may you continue in this behaviour no more.

Because the call of the Word goes both ways. We are told plainly, “a false witness will not go unpunished, and whoever pours out lies will not go free” (Proverbs 19:5). But hear me, there is a second danger that is just as real: buying into the lie when it reaches our ears. “A wicked person listens to deceitful lips; a liar pays attention to a destructive tongue” (Proverbs 17:4). So never simply swallow a narrative someone hands you about another person. Get to know people for yourself. Form your own honest view, rather than inheriting a borrowed, poisoned one.

So there is a simple, holy discipline in all of this: guard your mouth, and guard your ears. Guard your mouth, so that you never become the voice that distorts how someone is seen. And guard your ears, so that the manipulations of the enemy find no easy entrance into your heart. In a world so quick to spread and so quick to believe, the healed, whole soul learns to do neither.

And if you are the wounded one today, the one the story was told about, let me pray this over you right now: may the God who sees the truth of you heal what was wounded and restore what was stolen, including your good name. Hallelujah. He sees you, even when others cannot.

Pray The Word

Heavenly Father, You see the truth about me even when others believe a lie, and I bring my wounded name into Your hands. Heal me and restore me where false narratives have hurt me, and give me the grace to resist defending myself, trusting You to be my defender just as Jesus trusted You. Where I have listened to or repeated a distorted story about someone else, forgive me, and teach me to guard both my mouth and my ears. Make me a person who refuses to manipulate and refuses to be manipulated, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Speak The Word

I trust the Lord to be my defender, and I refuse to fight for my reputation in my own strength. God sees the truth of who I am, and He is restoring my name. I will not pour out lies, and I will not lend my ears to them either. I guard my mouth and I guard my heart against every work of manipulation. I am healed, I am whole, and I walk in the truth of God, in the name of Jesus Christ!

Digital edition

Soul Wellness: An Introduction To Receiving Healing In Your Heart

Paid

$2.99

 

• Formats: PDF
• Total download size: 249.25KB
• 1 included file

Let Gratitude Be the First Sound

Study The Word

1 Thessalonians 5:18 (KJV)
“In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

Praise the Lord. There is nothing quite like gratitude. It is one of the gentlest forces I know, and yet it has the power to completely rearrange the way you see your life. Listen, it does not change your circumstances first. It changes you first, and from there, somehow, everything begins to look different.

I have not always known this. I remember seasons when I was so fixated on the perfect outcome, on things landing exactly the way I had pictured them, that a single change of plan could steal my whole mood. If it did not go my way, I did not just feel a little disappointed; I felt undone. And for the longest time I did not understand why disappointment hit me so hard. As I grew in Christ, I began to see the root of it. I grew up in an environment where things not going according to plan was catastrophised, where a setback felt like a disaster, because the people around me had never been given the capacity or the tools to hold something as ordinary as, “sometimes life simply doesn’t go the way we hoped.” Disappointment had no soft place to land. So I learned to brace, to grip, to need everything to be perfect.

But then something shifted. As I grew, I started to look around at my life, really look, and even in the hard, unfinished, not-going-to-plan situations, I realised I had so much to be grateful for. Sometimes the gift was simply that I was learning to do something differently. And the moment I let gratitude rise in me, my whole heart posture changed. Do you understand? Gratitude is not a mood. It is a spiritual principle. And the instant I began to actually enact it, it was as though a quiet miracle took place: my eyes were opened, and suddenly I could see so much more than the one thing I had been missing.

That is exactly what The Apostle Paul is inviting us into. Notice he does not say give thanks for every thing, as if we must pretend the hard things are good. He says in every thing give thanks. Right in the middle of it. Even mid-crisis. Because gratitude is the thing that lifts your eyes off of what is missing and fixes them back on Who is in control. The circumstance may not have an answer for you yet, but your God is still on the throne, and giving thanks is how you remember it.

And there is a beautiful secret hidden in the very word for thanksgiving: eucharisteō.

εὐχαριστέω eucharisteō give thanks – from eu (good) and charis (grace); at its heart, grace acknowledged.

Can you imagine? The same word that means thanksgiving carries grace right inside it. To give thanks is simply to turn around and recognise the grace that has been there all along: the grace you did not earn, the grace doing what you could never do on your own. That is why gratitude keeps us so wonderfully humble. Thanksgiving makes you realise, in the quietest and most freeing way, that it is God who does all things in and through you. He is the One who gives the grace. You are simply the grateful recipient of it.

This is also why gratitude is such a weapon in your hand when the crisis comes. The Apostle Paul tells us, “be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7). Look at the order: thanksgiving goes with the request, and then the peace of God comes and stands guard over your heart and your mind. Gratitude is not the denial of your battle. It is how you fight it well, and how your soul stays steady while you do.

So let me ask you the question I have learned to ask myself: what are you grateful for today? My own biggest point of gratitude right now is simply the ability to grow. Knowing that I do not have to stay the person I was yesterday, that His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22-23), and that He is not finished with me yet. Hallelujah, that is such a gift. Thanksgiving is the posture of a heart that has seen God move and knows the moving is not over.

So as His blessings keep overflowing in your life, would you let gratitude be the first sound from your lips? Not the complaint, not the comparison, not the worry, but the thanksgiving. Start there. And watch what it does to your eyes, and to your heart. What are you grateful for today?

Pray The Word

Heavenly Father, thank You. Thank You for the grace that does in and through me what I could never do on my own, and thank You that I get to be the grateful recipient of it. In every thing, even the things that have not gone according to my plan, I choose to give You thanks, because You are still in control. Let thanksgiving be the first sound from my lips and the posture of my heart, and let Your peace stand guard over my mind. I trust You, the One who is still moving and is not finished yet, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Speak The Word

I give thanks in every thing, because my God is in control of all things. Gratitude is my weapon, and I wield it boldly, even in the middle of the crisis. I refuse to fix my eyes on what is missing; I fix them on the One who holds it all. Thanksgiving is the first sound from my lips, and the peace of God guards my heart and my mind. I am grateful, I am humble, and I am growing, in the name of Jesus Christ!

Digital edition

Soul Wellness: An Introduction To Receiving Healing In Your Heart

Paid

$2.99

 

• Formats: PDF
• Total download size: 249.25KB
• 1 included file

There’s No One Quite Like You

Study The Word

Galatians 6:4-5 (KJV)
“But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden.”

I want to talk to you about a thief. Listen, this thief rarely kicks the door down. It slips in quietly, usually through a screen, while you are scrolling through everyone else’s highlight reel. It even slips in amongst the closest relations, family and friendship circles included. It is the thief of comparison, and I have watched it rob so many beautiful people of the joy that was rightfully theirs.

Have you felt it? That subtle pressure to keep pace with what everyone around you seems to be doing. To launch when they launch, to arrive when they arrive, to bear fruit on someone else’s timeline. It can leave you feeling perpetually behind in a race you never even agreed to run.

But hear the gentle wisdom of the Word. Paul does not say, “compare your work to your neighbour’s and adjust accordingly.” He says let every person prove their own work, and then their rejoicing will be in themselves alone, and not in another. That little word “prove” is lovelier than it first appears:

δοκιμάζω dokimazō to prove – To test and examine until approved as genuine, as one evaluates gold to confirm its true worth.

Do you understand what that means for you? You are not called to measure your offering against someone else’s. You are called to bring your own work into the light, let it be tested and found genuine, and then rejoice over it, the real, golden, God-given thing that is yours. Comparison asks, “am I keeping up?” But the Word invites a far better question: “is what I am carrying true, and am I being faithful with it?”

And here is the freedom in that last line: every man shall bear his own burden. The word there speaks of a personal load, an assignment fitted to your own shoulders. You were never meant to carry someone else’s calling, and they were never meant to carry yours. Their pace suits their load. Your pace suits yours. There is no shame in that. There is only grace.

Because not everyone is in the same season. The Word reminds us that “to every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). What you are watching bloom so beautifully in someone else’s life may be the harvest of a season they walked long before you ever saw them. And the quiet, hidden work happening in your own life right now, the part no one is applauding, may be the very planting your future harvest depends on. Do not despise your season because it does not yet look like theirs. Every season has its purpose, and every purpose has its time.

And then there is the most freeing truth of all: there is no one quite like you. Can you imagine? The Psalmist actually stopped to worship over this. “I will praise thee,” he said, “for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). You were not mass-produced. You were carefully, intentionally fashioned: your particular gifts, your particular voice, your particular way of seeing and serving the world. What you bring to the table is an offering no one else can make in exactly the way you make it. So why on earth would you trade it to become a paler copy of somebody else?

So be proud of your own offerings, and of the pace at which you bring them, in keeping with your own God-given capacity. Stop apologising for not being further along. Stop shrinking your unique contribution to blend in with the crowd. Listen, not everyone has the same story. But everyone, including you, especially you, has an opportunity.

And while you are at it, would you do the thing your soul has been longing for? Enjoy your life. Enjoy this season, the one you are actually in, not the one you keep wishing you had already reached. Joy was never meant to wait for you at the finish line. Hallelujah! It is available right here, in the middle of your own beautiful, unrepeatable journey.

Pray The Word

Heavenly Father, thank You for making me fearfully and wonderfully, with an offering that is mine alone to bring. I lay down the weight of comparison and the pressure to match anyone else’s pace, and I receive the freedom to walk faithfully in my own season. Thank You that I do not have to carry another’s burden, only the good and personal one You have fitted to my shoulders. Teach me to prove my own work and rejoice in it, and to truly enjoy the life and season You have given me, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Speak The Word

I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and my offering to the world is uniquely mine. I refuse the thief of comparison, and I rejoice in my own work before God. I walk faithfully in my own season, at the pace my Father has graced me to keep. I carry my own assignment with joy, and I bear no burden that was never mine. I enjoy my life right where I am, because there is no one quite like me, in the name of Jesus Christ!

Digital edition

Soul Wellness: An Introduction To Receiving Healing In Your Heart

Paid

$2.99

 

• Formats: PDF
• Total download size: 249.25KB
• 1 included file

You Are Allowed to Grow

Digital edition

Soul Wellness: An Introduction To Receiving Healing In Your Heart

Paid

$2.99

 

• Formats: PDF
• Total download size: 249.25KB
• 1 included file