Insulate

 

While praying for my children and their hearts, I heard the word “insulate” which means to protect something by interposing material that prevents the loss of heat or the intrusion of sound. Insulate means to cover and surround.

Thank you Jesus that their hearts are insulated with the Word of God. They know You and will keep on learning and knowing and loving You. They know who they are, their identities are safe and secure in You!

Your Word will insulate their hearts keeping the fire and passion of the Holy Spirit from losing heat in their lives. Your Word will insulate their hearts keeping out the voice of the enemy that would intrude with lies. The enemy has lost his voice and influence in our children’s lives. They know Your voice, Jesus, their Good Shepherd and they follow You while they flee from the strangers voice and his lies. 

Thank you Jesus for insulating our children’s hearts with Your Word!! We will keep pouring Your Word into them teaching them how to hide it in their hearts and declare it with their mouths! 

They are strong, the Word of God abides in them and they have overcome the wicked one. 

1 John 2:14

All your children shall be taught by the LORD, And great shall be the peace of your children. 

Isaiah 54:13

Only God is my Savior, and he will not fail me. For he alone is my safe place. His wraparound presence always protects me as my champion defender. There’s no risk of failure with God! So why would I let worry paralyze me, even when troubles multiply around me? God’s glory is all around me! His wraparound presence is all I need, for the Lord is my Savior, my hero, and my life-giving strength. Trust only in God every moment! Tell him all your troubles and pour out your heart-longings to him. Believe me when I tell you—he will help you! 

Psalm 62:6-8

Fervent Passion

The Lord highlighted the word “fervent” to me as I was reading Luke 22:15 recently where Jesus says to His disciples, “With fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I will no longer eat of it until it is fulfilled in the Kingdom of God.”

Fervent means: displaying a passionate intensity. Jesus intensely desired to commune with them. 

With fervent desire He longs to spend time with us in the secret place of His presence. 

James 5:16 declares that “the effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” 

According to Zephaniah 3:17, the Lord rejoices over us, that word rejoice gives the picture of circling around with violent emotion. It’s hard for me to picture what that looks like, but it sounds like passion and zeal. He is filled with passion and zeal for us!

We are devoted to what we are passionate about. I think of the quote from the movie, National Treasure “one step short of crazy, what do you get? Passionate.” 

When you’re passionate about something, you can’t help but speak about it. Your passion is what’s on your mind when you wake up. It’s what drives you, what your life is centered around. 

Passion for Christ looks strange to this world while passion for sports, work, or hobbies is totally acceptable and even applauded. Passion makes religion uncomfortable and passion for Jesus points people to Jesus. 

On the day we see Jesus face to face I do not believe any of us will say “I should have been less fervent in prayer, less vocal about God’s goodness, less passionate about Christ.” No, we will wonder why He wasn’t our one desire, our one passion. We will wonder why lesser things sat upon the thrones of our hearts instead of the King of kings. Why we didn’t see that He is worthy of any and all cost. He is worthy of any sacrifice, He is worthy of all our praise and worship. He is worthy of earnest and fervent time in prayer. He is worthy of our passion.

Father, forgive us for our misplaced passions, for allowing other and lesser things to take Your place. Bind our hearts to Your heart and fill us with Your passion. The cross is a picture of your passion for us. Break us away from everything that has distracted us hindering our walk with You. Thank you for Your endless mercy and compassion. May our passion for You drive us to be who You created us to be and to fulfill the callings You have placed on our lives. You will forever be our first Love. 

Amen.