TODAY!

How many of us hear the whisper of the Holy Spirit telling us to call someone or drop her a note or even pray for him or her? Can you recall a time when the urging prompted you to reach out her tomorrow? Most likely not! The Holy Spirit lives and touches us, reminds us, fills us, comforts us in the present. Typically it is our humanness, our busyness that responds, "Yes, I've got to remember to do that. I can get to that tomorrow." The question is... does tomorrow ever come? From my experience, the Holy Spirit's promptings are forgotten as quickly as they come if I do not act on them when He tells me to.

I have been guilty more often than not in the past of throwing a little water on the spirit, which Paul warns us will eventually quench the spirit (1 Thessolonians 5:19). Friendships have always come easy to me, however the deeper and more faithful my fellowship with women becomes the clearer I see my laziness and relational faults. One of many is my laziness in continually encouraging those women around me that the Lord has allowed me to know are hurting or struggling.

The Lord is the greatest encourager, the only Hope, and the living, healing water. By His hand alone have I arrived in the place where I can see Him directing my path. Over the last 18 months, He has impressed upon me the importance of the words we speak; I began asking myself how many I actually spoke truthfully and in love (Ephesians 4:15). Not that I walked around lying, but when another woman asked a hard question, how often did I take the easy way out? the unloving way out? I'm sad to say that before God opened my ears, eyes and heart to hearing His truth and before He planted a passion for following this Voice of Truth, I ran towards the easy way out, especially in difficult or complicated relationships. He desires for us to mature in His word and to use it to sharpen one another's countenance, to call one another to repentance, and to live by it's instruction. We can measure the depth of love we have for other women by the amount of truth we speak to them and over them. His word is the only thing we can rely on to produce fruit.

So God has so lovingly and patiently encouraged me to seek Him and love His truth. Lately, He seems to be going before me, yet following me around with the same verse. Most recently in the prayer room at our last women's conference, my name was pinned to a page in the Bible with the HIGHLIGHTED verse! How much more obvious could He be, and still I ask, "Is this what You really want me to do?" The verse is Hebrews 3:13, "But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened thorugh the deceitfulness of sin."

God is encouraging me to love others more than myself and to call them to my side and comfort, exhort, beseech them with passion to repent and remain near to the only living God. And now I encourage you to do the same.

Romans 15:1-2 "We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbor his good to edification."