God is Formatting Your Life for Better. Let Him Reset You.

God is Formatting Your Life for Better. Let Him Reset You. Last night as I lie in bed, the Spirit tapped me on my proverbial shoulder. He gifted me with a spiritual analogy: A book I recently published underwent a series of formatting protocols. It hadn’t occurred to me how similarly aligned the formatting process was to spiritual warfare and maturity in Christ as the book had to be…

bled– When you bleed an image, the idea is to bring it to the edge of a page. However, before truly being bled, it has to be scaled.

scaled– In order to scale an image to its appropriate dimensions, it must sometimes be stretched. Some images can be stretched without being distorted while others must be, circumspectly, enlarged.

enlarged – Enlargement provides a quality outcome of the imagery. However, the process doesn’t end there. There is a cutting away or peripheral extirpation.

cutting away– What cannot be seen (the border) is no longer necessary, and must be removed from the page.

remains– What remains is the finished product. With text is intact, away from the edge, and legible, the images uniformly display in quality. The best is placed on view for aesthetic quality.

Does this sound familiar?

Bleeding– suffering, spiritual warfare, and at the edge of a breakthrough. As witches shed blood to war in the realm of the spirit, believers plead the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ over our situations and ourselves which was shed on Calvary’s cross for the remissions of our sins!

Scaled and/or stretched– As believers experience spiritual attacks sponsored by the enemy, God purposefully uses a percentage of these attacks to grow us. The ongoing battles, the disrespect and betrayal of friends/family, push us to pray, as well as seek God’s face through searching scripture. Furthermore, as we develop in our walk with God, He begins scaling the size of our battlefields. You may notice contentions enlarging, battles increasing and the level of evil mounting. There may even be the addition of people, places and your past. The battlefield may include new territory like, the school yard, the office, the grocery store, or possibly your own church. Although, the devil seeks to distort our character throughout these attacks, The Lord seeks to re-new a right spirit in order to give us good character and a strong sense of His nature, not our own. While Satan tears down, God builds and re-builds.

Enlarge– After series of intense, arduous, battles, The Ancient of Days enlarges our rewards, spiritual territory, and mindset. The warring will never be fruitless.

Cutting away– Through the cutting away of our pride, doubt, unnecessary thoughts, reactions and behaviors, God regenerates our spirit allowing us to truly begin representing Him… where our identity aligns in Christ and mirrors His unadulterated image.

Remains– The pain and suffering yields a Christ-like image God so desires. What remains occurs with pruning.