“Furthermore then we beseech you brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as you have received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, so would you increase in it more and more.” – (1 Thessalonians 4:1)

Hello to all on The Master’s Voice. I hope everyone is well and blessed. 

I’ve had a lot on my mind lately and I hope this topic I’ve been brooding on for a few days will be helpful to somebody. I know we have all things we want God to do for us right now, in fact now more than ever I think people of every persuasion have long lists of things they desperately need from God, petitions that get lifted constantly before Him in the hope that He’ll acknowledge them and grant our requests. I say “acknowledge” because acknowledge is different from “hear”; I believe God always hears our prayers, even the ones we never speak out loud for fear that they won’t get accepted.

In my own life I’ve seen solid evidence that even when I didn’t have enough faith to verbalize my requests I still sometimes received a miraculous answer to what I never asked for; by such happenings it became clear to me that God hears even the unspoken desires of the human heart. GOD ANSWERS PRAYER; He is a constant witness to the ebb and flow of the human story. God is a comforter and is moved out of His great love to answer our prayers simply for His own sake, because He is a merciful Father who loves us and wants us to be fulfilled in Him.

But recently I’ve been thinking of some of the better desires and requests that we don’t ask for as much: a clean life, a right and steadfast heart, a clear conscience before the Lord. These are not things that lend themselves easily to prayer and for obvious reasons – asking for these things requires us to first be aware that we need them: we have to become humble enough to admit that we lack them or that we are not yet perfect in our pursuit or practice of them.

Asking for such gifts from the Lord is a lot less common than asking for ‘lifestyle positives’- those physical or grace-filled gifts and blessings that we also need, desire and have a right to as part of our rightful inheritance in Christ. Asking for those higher gifts of necessity involves the matter of repentance, saying sorry to the Lord for our shortcomings, failings and errors. It is not easy to recognize and repent of our constant refusal to conform to His will in our lives. I was compelled to take a closer look at repentance all of last week and I’ve shared those insights in two videos I’ll link below for our benefit.

Repentance is something we really do not understand, and I say that for good reason. Repentance requires us to always keep an eye on ourselves, and that is something we by nature find very difficult to do. Our eyes are naturally trained OUTWARD, toward other people, even our physical eyes point outward so we can take in, assess and enjoy our earthly environment. Therefore it’s hard to keep rolling the spectrum INWARD at ourselves, to look at what we’re like, see where we fall short, and confess what we fail at so miserably.

Repentance is obviously then a work of the heart, of the “inner eyes” God has given each one of us which are better at looking at ourselves than the natural eyes. But if we are carnal or proud, or if we are prone to self-justification then even the inner eyes can be shut by pride and deception, allowing us to fall victim to our refusal to accept that we are sinful and need constant forgiveness from Jesus in order to be able to hold on to our coveted fellowship with Him.

It makes us uncomfortable to hear we’ve fallen short of righteousness; as a knee-jerk reaction the mind wants to defend itself or at least give reasons why the conduct being judged was justified.

Therefore it is a rare person who allows Jesus to be the final arbiter of whether they’re guilty of His commandments or not, it is an even rarer person who elects to STAY in the bright light of the Holy Spirit and say “Yes Lord, constantly search me, constantly review me, constantly rove your eye over the sum of my life and tell me honestly (through men or directly by your Spirit), what YOU think of me.”

Repentance is refreshing and beautiful only when you’ve understood it, when you’ve come to the place of ACCEPTING that you will always make mistakes, you’ll always need forgiveness and  nothing but the blood of Jesus Christ can atone for your transgressions against the Lord. Only when we understand, accept and stop struggling against these truths can we settle into the peace of knowing WHY WE MUST REPENT, and understanding the need for regular repentance, (which by the way is NOTHING like we’ve been told all along it is.) The blackness of sin, the murderous danger of it has been dumbed down GREATLY in modern society til it’s no wonder that repentance is no longer held in such high regard either. After all if believers think that sin is not so bad then they’ll automatically think that repenting is not so necessary, and that’s the reason why talking about sin and repentance has become such a cause for offense among us today.

The last dream I posted was from a while ago but it really shook me when I received it. I think what stood out most to me was the absolute BLACKNESS of sin. My goodness it was soooo black, so horrible, thick and disgusting, like a bucket of old blood or tar kicked over and left to soak into and defile everything, with nobody to clean it up. It was such a contrast to how I saw the Lord, carefully dabbing some substance on the world with that tiny, NARROW brush. Seeing that image I thought, “Is that your blood Lord? Are you marking people for salvation, for protection even as sin spreads without limit and threatens to destroy everything?”

I was sad to see how our world looks to God. RUINED. I’ve heard God say over and over “Judgement upon the righteous and unrighteous”, how can I assume that writing prophecy for God means no fire will fall in my city? Should I not take my salvation seriously and walk in holiness before God, more so as I see the times telling us where we are on the prophetic clock? It makes sense to me to study, appreciate and practice repentance now more than ever, because this blog is not my ticket to Heaven, but holiness without which none will see God, THAT is what God will judge me on. (Hebrews 12:14) 

I will continue to upload a few words from my archives. Check out the Repentance videos in this post (links are above), and God bless you all. Continue to stay safe out there. ❤️