In His Likeness w/ AntTBri

The very first thing I remember purchasing for myself was a bank.  I was eight years old in the third grade and excited to finally be able to participate in school spirit week.  The Catholic school I attended (St. Brigid) always ended the week with an indoor Carnival hosted by parents and volunteers for grades 3-8.  I didn’t know what to expect but I knew I could win prizes and purchase trinkets so I was ready to wheel and deal and work my magic. After perusing all of the different stations set up in the cafeteria I decided I wanted/just had to have this particular bank.  It was in the shape of a ship.  It was small and dainty…cute… and I could imagine the exact place I would put it on my dresser…it would add to the beauty of my décor. You see I absolutely love the marina, water, waves…watching the sun rise and set upon the horizon.  So this trinket would best appeal to my interest.  Life and love happens in motion for me on most accounts…so it doesn’t take much to paint a picture or find the creative flow.  Yes that bank symbolized what I identified as my feat.  At eight years old I knew I was meant to venture in uncharted waters…to experience life and love on the open sea… the sea of opportunity, possibility, and full imagination. Can you hear the turning of the tides…the crashing of the waves…smell the salt water breeze?  Can you see the land at a distance, the full expanse of the sky above us radiating the luminous sparkle of the stars and moon?  Yes this ship, this bank would hold my change in exchange for the hope (chance) it inspired for how I’d spend my time in the future.  Needless to say, I treasured my bank and valued my dream.

It was some years later but my symbol of hope became my hindrance…a hurtful realization that hampered my ability to dream.  It was not the vessel itself…nor was it what it had represented…it was what it had always been that was daunted, dashed, and destroyed: momentum for my time in an up and coming future…well it had been my symbol until I focused in on the wording…began to understand them in context.  Had I stumbled upon a self fulfilling prophecy?  Had I spoke death over my future mistakenly thinking I was seeing, speaking, and supporting my time…my life.  To my dismay what a disgruntled discovery I had embarked upon in the solitude of my room…in the silence of a hopeless moment… all those years I had been saying, speaking, and stating the opposite of my expectation. The inscription on the bottom read “one day my ship will come in and with my luck I’ll probably be at the airport”.  Do you know how many times I held that ship…quoted those words…wished and hoped…even prayed to that accord? It was my keepsake…my gift to me…my prized possession…sitting there on my dresser year after year until I understood it in its totality. I remember and can still relate to the panic that arrested my cognizance once I understood fully the implications of the statement.  Even now, there is a certain worry, wrestling, and wondering accompanying this train of thought. It has followed me…hunted and harassed my attempts of hope…and hindered my ability to believe God for my times in His hands.  It destroyed levels of dependency and darkened my perception of my ability while damaging strides of faith.  It has been a constant battle, bewilderment, and baffling of my emotional, mental, and even spiritual assertions, acclimations, and articulations because deep inside I’m always wondering, waiting, and even working to detect, determine, and disapprove that I have missed my time. Was I preoccupied or otherwise engaged when opportunity presented itself? Distracted, discounted, and dismissed from the abundance of life and love? Has that ship sailed? Have I missed my ship: blessing, purpose, destiny, career, and love…the life I’ve been waiting to live…optimistically expecting and anticipating?  Do I believe the Word’s inscription for my life and love or those words crafted on that bank all those years ago?

Maybe what we think in terms of ourselves limits our ability and willingness to try to attain life and love the way we originally dreamed. Maybe the original dream was God given…the standard His love set so you wouldn’t settle for the counterfeit…make believe exploits. Maybe you read something or said something to yourself that has convinced you that life and love the way God says you can experience and express it is far beyond your reach.  Maybe the words were packaged pretty…put in your world to alter your future explorations…to stifle your creativity and stop your ability to dream.  Maybe…you need to break allegiance with that symbol and pick up the symbol of life and love and begin to hope and believe again.  Jesus is not a symbol but He is the embodiment of life and love.  His love of and toward you becomes the symbol of what you should look for and replicate as you live and love.  He does not need a spot on the furnishings of life and love nor will He add to the décor of what you deem beautiful, opportunist, or the passing or docking of ships.  He is the real deal…the actual blessing…the gift that keeps on giving…teaching, talking, and telling us life and love is possible in and through Him.  Jesus is our safety, our security, and seg-way to life and love.  He sets the standard of what and how it should be.  He is the ultimate navigator…the captain of the sea…are you voyaging life and love with Him?

I have shipwrecked and witnessed a many shipwreck loves and lives without Him. Experienced and expressed seasons of hopelessness, inactivity, and wasted valuable time fearing what I couldn’t prove was a reality.  I thought myself out of opportunities, talked myself out of adventures and trusted myself to decide and do in conjunction to my feelings instead of traveling the path of faith.  I don’t want you to forfeit, fraudulently walk away from the opportunity and possibility of life and love the way God desires you experience and express it because you feel or think a thing in this moment that will not sustain you in the next moment. Life and love is an authentic reality rather you believe in it or not.  Feelings based living and loving is a sure tell sign of immaturity, impulsiveness, and improper handling of the plan, purpose, and promise on one’s life in God. You simply have to decide I’m going to trust Him completely with my life and love.  I’m going to live and love in faith despite what I feel.  As a matter of fact I’m going to bring my feelings into subjection to my faith…insist that it lines up…agree whole heartedly with the plan, purpose, and promise of God for my life, my love…my time… accepting, agreeing, and allowing Him to gift me with His heart toward me…trusting my times in His capable hands because He continually cares for me.

I’m not advocating that we don’t allow ourselves to feel what we feel in relation to life and love.  I’m simply suggesting that we check what we feel at any given time to the plan, purpose, and especially the promise of God for our life and love. Trust God with your feelings of inadequacy, “I’ve done too much…ventured too far…I’m out of reach of your blessings and favor…I feel like I don’t deserve it…cant maintain or keep life and love imaging what you intend it to be”.  Surrender your thought process…your plan…and allow Him his perfect work in you…let him be God and you become the you God desires…the you he designed and destined to live and love advantageously.  It’s not over for you…you haven’t missed it…you have been given another opportunity for authentic life and love.  God decides, determines, and delegates what will be.  We simply accept, agree and adapt to the Word He speaks to us through His Word.  What does the inscription of your purpose read?  How many times have you rehearsed it…do you know it without a shadow of a doubt? If we can come to believe the bad or negative statements about life and love can we allow the Holy Spirit to renew our hearts and minds to the original origination?

After holding, coddling and even cowering in response to the inscription of that bank for years I got the courage to throw it out…got rid of the constant reminder…abandoned that thought process and reasoning…that was working counter-productive to my faith and hope. What do you need to intentionally throw out or let go of? What will it take to change your mind and fix your heart for this new direction? Do it…it’s bringing you down…keeping you stuck, stationary, stagnate, STILL when you should be mobile in your ability to love and be loved.  It’s your time…say it with me…IT’S MY TIME to live and love…experience and express…my God given dream.  Learn the lesson of the little girl, growing woman who had hope, looked forward to life and love but was derailed by fear when the positive feelings of hope for the future were replaced with my own mental rationale that wrestled every trace of hope and faith.  To continue in the same thought process…to continue to feed on negative deterrents to life and love would leave both you and I in a miserable, unfulfilled, and lonely world of our own creativity and disillusionment. Let’s make a different choice…and decide to bank on what God says concerning us…to trust that his heart and thoughts are toward us…that He is our opportunity of life and love.  I trust we will find that life and love with Him is so much better than life and love without Him.  With God we always have hope…He is our expectation…our expectation of life and love is of Him…when we desire his heart toward us.  He is perfecting everything concerning you and I and working all things in accordance to the good He has planned, purposed, and positioned to be for our life and love.  Let’s trust Him whole heart. And most of all, lets believe and have faith in His infinite wisdom…trust that He knows exactly what and who we need to accompany us in life’s and loves adventures, voyages, and discoveries.

Because this is now my reality…I no longer worry, wrestle or wonder about missing my ship…opportunity, destiny…life and love as God allows me to dream it.  I eagerly, expectantly await the opportunity to live and love advantageously opposite what I may have believed and trained myself to think. All these years later… I rejoice in the fact that the plan, purpose, and promise of God is Yes and Amen…not dependent upon my efforts alone…nor my particular place of standing.  God knows how to bring it about beautifully if we move out of the way, stop trying to figure it out, and realize that our best plans of actions are His opportunities of blessing.  Maybe the thing in your heart to be, do, and give was God’s idea…His way of working the will to do what is His good pleasure in your life and love.  Maybe the way you are accustomed to thinking and feeling outside of fully understanding what God is planning for your future is harassing, hurting, and hindering your hope…gravely killing the possibilities of faith.  Maybe the very thing you are worrying about, wondering about, and wrestling with is the enemy’s attempt to make you give up on or forfeit your assignments of life and love…think opposite your reasoning and rationale.  You have not missed your opportunity…the ship of life and love the way God intends you experience and express it has not sailed while you were at the airport. It is arriving, embarking upon a up and coming future. Life and love in God’s likeness is not in comparison to the past but in conjunction in the present to the plan, purpose, and promise of God (not our self effort, good intentions, and need to control the variables).  So it does love and life a grave disservice to make an assessment based upon what we see, feel, and think about the words read, recited, and rehearsed seasons ago.  Seasons change…maybe all those other times it failed and didn’t work out because it was meant for this season…maybe you were at the airport because that particular ship wasn’t intended for you.  Maybe you’ve been distracted with what you thought it should be and how you planned it would be.  Maybe you were expecting a ship when God wanted to gift you with a plane.  Maybe you would have settled for the waters when you were made to fly.  Maybe the fear of the unknown is preventing you from experiencing and expressing love like you’ve never known.

Maybe your “ship” is greater, vaster…HUGE…Gigantic…ENORMOUS…tailor made and crafted for this season of life and love.  Maybe you cannot see it or smell the aroma of fresh air descending upon your weariness, worry, and even waywardness to the process…but the tides of life and love are changing…the waters of hope are troubled…moving and carrying the vessel God desires to use to show you a new beautiful depiction of the blessing that adds to you specifically, significantly, and sensationally is upon the horizon. Can you see it slowly coming into focus as you look through the light of the Son?  Can you hear the sounding of the vessel’s horn calling out your name? Opportunity, possibility, destiny is the treasured cargo waiting to expand your capacity to travel, journey, and voyage the waves of faith.  Dare to dream again…believe in life’s and love’s possibilities…hope against hope like Abraham who considered not the rationale of his own contriving but found God to be faithful that promised. Live and love to the positive and forgo all the negativity.  It matters not that the odds against you…the specifications of your preference…God knows all things…you can trust Him beyond your intellectual configurations.  His ways are not are ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts…He does it and brings it about the way he decides, desires, and designates so live in anticipation of life and love unfolding beautifully before you…be willing to go on the journey…take the voyage and enjoy the new discoveries…let God get you where you need to be… so you can finally say and believe My times are truly in Gods hands~AntTBri