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.

As the boat slipped effortlessly out into the harbour from the bustling docks at Joppa, Jonah sat down on a coil of rope. He felt pleased to be on board. His plan was working but in spite of the relief he felt, there was also a slight foreboding with in his heart. Jonah was running from the presence of the Lord.

Thankfully God prepared a great storm and a great fish to help Jonah succeed in his ministry. In 2 Tim 4.7 Paul said “I have finished my course..” (A sailing term) Paul the great pattern man and apostle, completed his course not because he had a perfect knowledge of God’s will but because circumstances beyond his control (storms) but completely within the control of God, blew him to the mark.  In Nahum 1.3, it says that God has His way in the storm. Many of the circumstances that came into Paul’s life were uninvited and unpleasant.

Mostly we don’t volunteer to go to the places where the growth and stretching of our faith takes place, but Gods faithfully blows us there in His storms.  In His storms, even people like the sailors who threw Jonah over, are unwittingly part of Gods plan to help us stay on course. Our difficult circumstances are all conspiring for our success. Most of all, God wants to reveal Himself to us in a way that He never could without the storm. The disciples in Mark 4.35-41 learned of Gods sovereignty over all and Jonah found out just how much God loves sinners. So right now in the midst of your storm, hold on because there is something more of God that He wants to reveal to you, that you can only see by going through the storm and you should know that when God planned the storm for Paul, he had already prepared a people for harvest and when he planned a storm for Jonah he had already prepared a fish to help Jonah end up a success.
Friend, I have found that God is at work in us and in our storms and He is preparing some thing great for you. (Phil 2.12)

It is amazing who God calls to be ministers.  If I was God I wouldn’t have chosen Aaron to be the High Priest of Israel.  The first day on the job didn’t go well the Aaron. In Ex 32.24-25, Moses had gone up the mountain to meet with God and was told that Aaron was to get the top job.  As the High Priest, Aaron was going to bring the sinner before God and God’s mind to the people. When Moses came down, Israel was dancing naked around the fertility god. Aaron had turned the worship service into a strip club.  He seemed the biggest failure ever.  If we were God, we wouldn’t have chosen him for the job but God is looking for people who can be touched with the feelings of the infirmity of others.  Aaron would now never be a self-righteous, judgmental or condescending High Priest.
Jesus was full of mercy to sinners of every type, even those who came to kill him.  When the High priest’s servant, who led the mob to arrest Jesus, got close enough, Peter cut off his ear. The servant of the High Priest was likely studying to be the next High Priest. Think Elijah and Elisha. However, the Old Testament forbade a person with a physical blemish, from holding a priestly office so Peters sword made sure he would never hold an office he didn’t deserve.  But Jesus “touched his ear and healed him”( Luke 22.51).  Jesus not only healed his blemish and restored his office but he gave the man an experience of mercy that qualified him to be a merciful High-priest to others.
Friend, doctors and nurses who have had injuries are the most empathetic. If you have gone through failure and pain in your life,  you will likely find that you can also be merciful and non-judgmental of others. In a way, your agony was necessary for your destiny.  We know well that we have received mercy from Jesus,  He has restored our ear to hear His voice and touched our hearts by His mercy. Now we are more likely to be a merciful “priest” to the people in our world. What a privilege! It is, after all, the Top Job.