We love the story of the prodigal son because we too were welcomed back with a robe and a ring. But sometimes we don’t feel like He is celebrating us each day" We know Jesus said He would be with us and that God’s unmerited favour is upon all His children, but we don’t feel it.

Once when I felt like this, I discovered the problem was in my imagination and not with God. Our imagination creates our feelings and affects our behaviour. The Bible says, "As a man thinks in his heart so is he."  The imagination creates its own reality, and even if something is not true it can still affect you. If you think you are a grasshopper in the face of giants and therefore can’t enter the Promised Land, you will be right.  Or even if God is favouring you but you don’t think He is, you will live in fear and insecurity- a crippled and stilted life. Our wrong thinking doesn’t change the fact that God is with us, but it changes our ability to feel it and enjoy our Father. But if we imagine the truth; that He is in us and walks with us and has His loving arms about us all day, we are confident and enjoy beautiful fellowship with Him.

God gave us our imagination to be a meeting place with Him, so the enemy of our soul tries to fill it with memories of inadequate fathers, wrong images, or seeing our lives as small and inconsequential.  In the end, the One who gave us the imagination as a sanctuary in which to meet God and walk together with Him, is squeezed out of His meeting place.

Friend, reclaim your imagination and fill it with true thoughts of our Father’s presence and favour toward you. Close your eyes and imagine Father favouring you, loving you, coming to you, embracing you and helping you.  For that is all true; anything else is a lie - imagine the truth and let faith arise.

David was to lead a nation. He was a man with passion and a promise, but there was little in his circumstances, that looked like he was being positioned for kingship. But God achieves His purposes, in ways that a man would not think.  God doesn’t develop a person’s reputation but their character so that their life is consistent with the message they are to carry. Our ability to represent Father in the world is determined by the degree that the message or the Word has become flesh in us. 

David’s overarching conviction was that God was his Shepherd and was leading him in life.  David knew that contradictions and opposition, couldn't decide his destiny.  David may not have understood everything, but he believed God would accomplish His plans in spite of everything. Through hardship, enemies, trouble and dishonour, God was working out His plan to make David more than a king. A timeless message of worship, honour and trust in God, to reach countless generations.

Friend, if we love God, he is ordering all the steps required to forge His message in us too. Don't look at other people and wish you had their steps, or envy their “blessed life” Your steps may be enjoyable or not, understood or not but the message God is forming in you, is perfect to touch all the people that He plans to reach through you. He is writing your story for His glory and people’s blessing, including you and yours!

Jesus was born from heaven but lived in Nazareth.  He was born royal yet birthed in a manger.  It is not where you live that makes you royal, but it is who your Father is. Good things can come out of Nazareth, and from where you live too!

Hebrews 2.10 says that God is bringing many sons to glory.  That is, He is bringing you and me into His full intention for us! We are not divine but the Person within us, is. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. God so loves the world, that He continues to give sons and daughters.

“Seeing” our sonship should affect the way we live.  and until we know it in our hearts, we will live below our dignity and our destiny.  Some behaviour is beneath those that are birthed from above. When the prodigal son remembered who he was, it changed the way he lived.  His condition was changed only after he remembered his position as a son.

Friend, you have been born into the world and into your city, from above. The sons are back in town!  Don’t live beneath your status or your purpose. You are royal, you are secure and you are filled with power to give away. There are people all around you who need you to live as a son and daughter.

As Elijah sat in the cave amongst the mess of his life, he couldn’t see God in his circumstances. God wasn't doing what Elijah thought He would do.  His cave was not just a geological place but a spiritual and mental place God never planned for him to be in. Elijah didn’t think that God saw him as valuable. He had even asked God to end his life. He had gone into a cave but God would not leave him there. " And there he went into a cave, and spent the night in that place; and behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and He said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

The great honour of God speaking was lost on Elijah and he blurts out his depression, paranoia, and hopelessness. “I have been very zealous for the LORD God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and killed Your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they seek to take my life.”  (1 Kings 19:8). The prophet Elijah felt ineffective and a failure. Sometimes we get our sense of worth from the perceived value of our effectiveness and circumstances. We are tempted to derive our worth from our busyness or profile in the body of Christ, but we are valuable to God because we are His special creation.  When we realise that we were created on purpose for a purpose, we can be assured that every situation we are in, is crafted by Him or will be used by Him, even if others have made it hard for us. 

Friend, you are of great value to our Father, and both your and your circumstances are part of God’s workmanship. Don’t equate your value with your circumstances. Jesus’ life was strewn with difficulties and trouble, yet he was loved intensely by His Father. So are you, and every trouble Jesus endured brought him a step closer to the crown and the joy that was set before Him. God brought Elijah and Jesus out of their cave into their purpose and He will do the same for you. Listen is He calling you to come out?

Shafts of light fell through the small hole in the wall of the prison and John shifted his position on the floor to be in the sun. It felt good and, in his heart, he worshiped his King. Suddenly he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.   “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet, Saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last:” Rev 1:10  

Being in the Spirit brought supernatural change to what John saw and heard.  John was imprisoned on Patmos Island, but God took him into the Spirit and showed him how things truly were. Things he could not see with his natural eyes.  He saw Gods victory even though his circumstances were confining.  He could see that while he is limited, God works without limitation. Though John was isolated, he saw Jesus in the midst of the church. He saw Jesus moving even when his situation looked static.

In the Spirit, you can see that God is working everything together for good for those that love God.  It means to be able to see or hear what Father is saying in your situation or in spite of your situation.  We can be going through a loss and still see that God is adding something to your life; Have a really bad day but still see the blessing of God and good coming our way.  He was in prison but in the Spirit on the Lords Day. In the Spirit, it's always the Lords Day!

Friend, go into the Spirit today. Jesus is speaking to you there. See that God rules in your life, not your “prison guard or your prison walls”.  See the King sovereign and unshaken in His purpose. Being in the Spirit always trumps being in the prison.

The disciples were sitting on the floor for the meal, when Jesus stood up and took the towel to wash their feet. The feet of travelers were normally dirty from walking on roads littered with dung, left behind by passing flocks of sheep and other animals. At meals people would recline on the floor around the food, their feet not far from the other guest’s noses. I can imagine trying to fellowship with Jesus and the brothers, but all you can think about is your bad smelling feet near your closest table guest. You hope nobody notices but you are a little embarrassed.

The disciple’s feet may have been washed already, but either way Jesus is making a point. I am washing your feet, so you can forget about where you have been and enjoy where you are. I’m washing away the effects and any shame you feel abut your past walk. I want you to be Son conscious not sin conscious. While you are conscious of the past, you’re not able to hear what I’m saying to you now.

Friend, our acceptance with God is not based upon our performance but His, and our fellowship is entirely the result of what He has done, not what we have done. Why not turn our eyes upon Jesus and let everything we are and everything we aren’t, grow dim in the light of His wonderful face.

 As David lay back in the grass he became so aware of the feelings in his heart. He sought to find words that could express the sense of destiny and security that He felt in the hand of His God…. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life…” Divinely inspired words that mean today, tomorrow and next week there will not be one moment when God’s goodness and His mercy is not following us as well. That means right now, the goodness and the mercy of God is following you. The word actually means to pursue relentlessly and run someone down. 

We have to ask why God would cause His goodness and His mercy to follow us, rather than go in front of us and “fix” thing for us, before we walk into situations in life?

He never stopped Adam (or us) from sinning, but after he sinned, His goodness and His mercy moved to restore Adam again to himself. (Adam now understood how good and how merciful God is). He didn’t stop Abraham from abandoning his wife, but three days later His goodness and His mercy caught up with Abraham and Sarah was delivered from Abimelech, who sent Abraham out with many flocks. (Abraham was now humbler and understood the graciousness of God). Of course God goes before us as well but if He changed every difficult thing before we got there, we would never get to see His power and amazing love.

Even when God give us a promise, it usually takes time to manifest. We have to wait for His promise to catch up to you. Moses had been told by God to lead the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land.  When he got to the Red sea, it seemed impossible to cross but God said stand still.  As Moses waited, he looked back and saw the Egyptians hordes following him, but that was not all.  The goodness and the mercy of God were following Moses too, and it soon caught up with them. The whole nation was delivered as Gods power moved.

Friend, if it seems to be a hard time in your life, stand still, stand in faith and wait for Gods goodness and His mercy to catch up to you, because it will.

Israel stood on the edge of Canaan and although they saw and heard of the beautiful fruit of the land, they could not rise to the opportunity God gave them. They still saw themselves as slaves from their previous identity and they could not take the Promised Land with the mindset of a slave. We also can see a Promised Land before us but if we do not see ourselves as one who is able to enter it, we won’t.  Corinthians tells us that we are new creatures in Christ; a brand-new species and our potential is totally different from all of our family members before us. It’s not your haircut or clothes or address that changed, but you, your potential, your future and even the impact of your past.  You see differently at every level now as all of your life is new. Your perception of God has changed and how you see yourself must change too because how you see yourself is more important than how you see your future.

People do not necessarily grow into their potential; they only grow into what they think they deserve or what they think they are capable of.  The most important vision is not what you see ahead of you but what you see inside yourself. Israel had trouble in their thinking. They saw themselves as small and incapable. When we see ourselves correctly, we know we are more than able to drive out our enemies.

The problem is not with God. He can do exceedingly abundantly above what we can think, “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us,” (Ephesians 3:19-20).    The problem is with us.   Can we think about ourselves differently and about what God can do in us differently?   Have we neglected opportunities provided by God or left ministry dreams and ideas to somebody else because we never saw ourselves as able? Have we allowed enemies to be thorn in our side or vex us day after day?  

Friend, the fact is that if you see yourself rightly a new future, authority and freedom will appear.  God is able to make us able and if we want to inherit the future He plans, we need to see ourselves correctly.