power – Dan Lamos

Prayer to Banish the Fearful Spirit

King Jesus, love the world through me. Banish the fearful spirit and cast it far away from me. It is no match for your power, love, and stealth wisdom. And, because you live in me, the fearful spirit is an evil intruder.

Expose all of the disguises it has supplied for me to wear. Bring them all into the light so that I can throw them out with the garbage.

Provoke me to Life in all that I do. Teach me the art of complete love. You have broken the chains and set me free. Animate my day with your living presence and fill it with the agenda of your kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. – Amen

“After all, the spirit given to us by God isn’t a fearful spirit; it’s a spirit of power, love, and prudence.” 2 Timothy 1:7 “The Bible for Everyone”

Jesus’ Word to You When Dread Approaches

I love the living, active, grace (ability) that comes from the Holy Spirit to prophesy to each other. 1 Corinthians 14:3 reads, “But the one who prophesies speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort.” For me, it’s all about building up, stirring up, and cheering up.
There is a dread creeping in on the world due to COVID-19. But, there was and is a MASSIVE network of people and communities united and connected in Jesus across that same space. We are one in the Spirit and we are united in Christ’s glory and love (John 17:20-26).

Today, I declare Jesus’ prophetic word to stir us up again. He still shows up when the thick clouds of dread creep in on our communities. He says, “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. (Matthew 5:14-15)

We have a powerful advantage of hope with which we can bless people who come into our place and space today. We don’t need to hoard it. It actually increases the more we share it. That advantage is the living word of the Lord. The light that will drive away dread is actually the living presence of God released in us and through us as we choose a grateful, thankful attitude.
No matter what threats arise (real or just hype), Jesus’ word over us is, “You are the light of the world.” Be bold in love, genuinely encourage people, and trust Jesus to shine more and more through you.

In Christ, you are a blessing!

God’s Vindication Assumes God’s Government

I have learned that God’s agenda for me is freedom. Legit freedom that breaks every restricting chain of control away from me. There are weapons forged against me. But, in Christ, those weapons are not effective. My defense is the vindication that Jesus provides by his presence in me and with me. Vindication is the action of clearing someone of blame or suspicion. The prophet, Isaiah wrote, “no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the Lord. (Isaiah 54:17) In Christ, I am cleared of blame and suspicion.

Jesus is present in me according to his promise to come in, stay with me and to do life with me. (Revelation 3:20) His presence with me governs me. I have been captured by the goodness of his kingship over me.
He trains me day by day to freely surrender to his ways. There are days when I cooperate well with the training and others when I tend to resist. Jesus disciplines me and calls me higher on those days. A good day is not always a fun day with Jesus. But, he reminds me endlessly that in him I am vindicated (cleared of blame and suspicion).

I am learning to trust his vindication of me more every day. He is showing me the ways I foolishly take that vindication and use it to get what I want. Freedom doesn’t work that way. The more I let him govern me from the inside-out, the more I experience his release from fears of blame and suspicion. The more I trust his vindication of me and not my own, the more courage I find to live in true freedom.

I pray the same for you in Jesus’ name.

In Christ, you are a blessing!

The prize must be won

Do you think you have arrived? I dreamed last night of playing in a soccer match. As the left-winger, I was watching myself play. It seemed like I kept missing passes. My timing was off and worst of all, I could not seem to summon the burst of energy at that crucial moment to finish the play and ultimately put the ball in the net. Do you think you have arrived? I dreamed last night of playing in a soccer match. As the left-winger, I was watching myself play. It seemed like I kept missing passes. My timing was off and worst of all, I could not seem to summon the burst of energy at that crucial moment to finish the play and ultimately put the ball in the net.

Finally, after staying in the game and fighting through the disappointment in my own performance and my stubborn lack of drive to finish strong, I was able to scrape together a score. To my amazement, my coach flipped out with excitement over me and my ability to be in the right place and the right time and to FINISH the play.

So, today, I want to give a shout out to the ones who are staring down your day feeling the weight of disappointment and the dread of wringing out a few more drops of power to fight to the end. Heaven is filled with anticipation of celebrating you and the prize you are about to win. The Father and all who serve him know that the Spirit of Jesus is in you. They know that whatever giant stands in your way will not be able to withstand the mighty power that is going to outlast and put you in the perfect position to strike that giant down today.

This is your day because Jesus is with you and in you. The prize won’t be handed to you, you will have to win it. You have to show up. But, why wouldn’t you? You were made to not only have the prize but to seize it, to take the enemy out in order to get it, to WIN! THAT is who you are.

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:12-14)

In Jesus, you are a blessing!

Christ is walking where you walk

I was reaching out to friends of mine this morning with a “stirring up” word. After I sent the message to them, I realized that it is an important word for all of us. We have come into a time of unprecedented harvest around the world. We have been sent as his children to do the harvest work. We HAVE TO get it done with Christ.

Wherever you place your feet, Christ in you is also placing his feet. Because he is in you and you are in him every place you walk is a place that the kingdom intends to show up. The Spirit has me contending for greatly improved vision for the eyes of your heart.

You and I can’t let the stubborn resistance of the rebellious world we are living in outwit us as children of God. It will submit to us in Christ if we remain present and enforce the kingdom (in love of course) wherever we go. The very places that resist us or that we don’t feel we belong are places that will be transformed by the kingdom soon! Jesus intends to do this with us as his family if we will keep showing up.

In Christ, you are a blessing!

If you feel overwhelmed…

We are designed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies are created for the presence of King Jesus. God is intent on living in His family, His bride, the church. His church is people. It is you and me.

Something begins to happen as a result of surrendering our lives to Jesus. He starts changing things… changing us. The living Holy Spirit is constantly renovating and upgrading us BECAUSE we are the temple of the living God. For His glory to fill this temple, we need to be made ready.

God is right now renovating the church in all nations, preparing us for a more profound and intense manifestation of the glory of King Jesus. The challenging times and the unprecedented upheavals around the world are happening because all things must come into alignment with God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

As we, His temple, surrender to him we will shine with His glory and increasingly find others drawn to us to find hope. Lately, I have been experiencing more renovations in my own life. God has been aligning the attitudes of my heart and calling me to higher levels in prayer. He needs to do that in me because of what He wants to do through me.

Maybe you have been wondering why life has been harder than usual lately. In the middle of amazing times with God, things seem to be more chaotic. I want to encourage you. If you have surrendered your life to King Jesus, you are in his care and He is with you… not just surrounding you but within you.

He is not working on you out of frustration, but out of a passionate desire to prepare you to shine even more with the fire of His presence. I know it is hard and maybe impossible to find the courage to go on when you are looking at your own strength. We HAVE TO focus on Christ in us in order to find grace in our time of need.

I pray that right now, the eyes of your heart will be opened and you will hear from the Spirit of God that you are not alone. All of the perceived challenges in front of you are only there to make you more amazing for the glory of Jesus. You are not alone and today is a day when we win in Christ.

Unlimited Provision… Unlimited Systems

In the middle of a conversation yesterday with an apostolic friend of mine, a word rose up in me… Unlimited provision is waiting for unlimited systems. Prophesying involves taking action, sending a text, making a phone call, saying hello to a stranger, telling someone that you are learning to listen to God for the sake of blessing others, etc.

A system is “a set of principles or procedures according to which something is done; an organized scheme or method.” (Oxford Dictionary) For too long, the objective of our system for the prophetic has been to protect the exclusivity of who gets to prophesy. In other words, we approach prophesying as something reserved for those special ones among us. This has been so limiting to the kingdom of heaven being experienced on earth.

There is kinetic power in the prophetic. Kinetic energy is what a body possesses by virtue of being in motion.

This is what I have learned about being prophetic… the more outlets I create for prophesying, the more it flows from me. Prophecy is receiving AND declaring the living word of the Lord. The more you step forward and risk creating another outlet, the more results you will see.

We all have systems (ways that we operate on a daily basis). Do a gut check to see if you intend to release the kinetic power of the prophetic today. It could be as ordinary as choosing a name from your phone contacts, asking God to release an encouraging word through you to that person, and sending a short text to reflect what you received from the Father concerning his love for them.

Unlimited provision is waiting for unlimited systems. I am speaking that word into my own space today. Maybe that is a good word for you as well.

I truly believe that as your actions create more outlets for the prophetic, you will experience the kinetic energy of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

In Christ, you are a blessing!

Live worthy of the Lord

I’ve been doing some intense personal work lately. Over the past few years, I have been introduced to the Enneagram. It has been a great discovery. I am a Type 9 with a Self-preservation instinct. Basically, an Adaptive Peacemaker whose instinct is survival, physical safety, material security, wellbeing, and comfort.

God knew what he was doing when he created me. He was intentional and I first existed in God’s mind before I was even conceived. (Psalm 139)
I’ve been working on paying attention to my feelings of anger, dissatisfaction, and frustration. My go-to behavior in life has been to numb out to those feelings as quickly as possible. But, with the Holy Spirit’s help, I am learning more about what I actually believe in my heart and allowing the word of Christ to reform me.

There is a calling in the Bible that has for a long time pursued me. It is to “…live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God…” (Colossians 1:10)
This morning I was pressing in on the challenge of stoking my desire to live a life worthy of Jesus’ name. The jarring and fearsome truth is that because I have entrusted my life by faith in him, the Spirit of God now lives in me as spiritual fire. I don’t actually provide the fire.

My job is to fan it into flame. So, for me, my daily work has to include going to the desire that dwells in me because of Jesus. Honestly, if I hadn’t started this habit a few decades ago, I would still be numb and asleep to the furnace room of God’s desire deep in me. I realize now more than ever my need to shoulder my responsibility to do whatever it takes to craft a life worthy of the Lord.

Don’t hear me wrong, it is totally in submission and profound partnership with Christ who lives in me. But, there is no other human that is going to do my personal work for me. You and I are here, alive in this era, to go today to our plot of land in our Father’s vineyard and work it on earth for the glory of heaven. And, it begins in our hearts.

God sees you as worth every effort because of the One in you.

In Christ, you are a blessing!

Are you shading your light?

The Holy Spirit has been reminding me that I have the ability to either let my light shine before others or hinder it. We all tend to act like we don’t really have much to say about whether or not the light of the world will break out from within us to the world. But, that is not what Jesus has said.

This morning, I was reading Matthew 5:14-16. A mentor of mine recently suggested to me that I imagine Jesus sending me a note in order to encourage me. They asked, “What might he say to you?”

As I wrote in my journal, I realized that I should share it with you too. Let it encourage you as you start into your week. Read it as a message from King Jesus to you.

My joy is to shine with you and through you… as you. I am not playing games with your life, identity, or your well-being. Your place of security is always in life-union with me… “I in you and you in me”. You will feel much better in every way if you will forget about being safe as the world defines it. And embrace security as heaven sees it.

When you allow your light (actually my light in you and for you) to shine in front of everyone all of the time, my security will overwhelm and empower you.

The religious spirit tells you that you are offending me when you don’t hold back and instead let your blazing light fully shine. You have been deceived for too long that you are kept safe by shading your light. If you would only rest in knowing that I love you and I love shining with you and as you. The unique way we shine together is so fun for me. I do see your struggle to trust me. But, I won’t coddle you and let you stay shaded in your fears. I will keep insisting that you let your light shine. You were designed to let your light shine because your light is my presence in you.

So here is my invitation… Make this day a fresh start. Own your ability to open up in my name and “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

You are a blessing!

Say yes again

Dwelling on the open door of reconciliation that stands open forever because of God… Jesus came as the voice of God from heaven to earth. God has spoken clearly to us through the Son. And as he speaks, the invitation is always to receive reconciliation with him and with each other. The wild, captivating beauty of His Bride radiates with reconciling love. The power of our unity in Jesus is unprecedented. There is never a day or even a moment when heaven is not open for you and me to receive (eat and drink) eternal life in Him on earth as it is in heaven. Take a minute where you are and say yes again.

You are a blessing!