In order to overflow there must be a pouring in. What’s inside of you will be released but the question is, what are you pouring into your life? What are you doing on your day to day that is filling you up throughout the day because at some point what you are filling yourself with is going to come out.

We need to be careful with the things we allow in our hearts.

“Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” [Matthew:12:34]

If I were to spend a day with you… what would it be like? What would I hear coming out of you? Passion? Life? or would it be depressing and pessimistic remarks? What you allow in your heart will be revealed in your speech and actions, because what is in you is what rules you. How much do you Value your heart that you would protect it? To what degree would you go to keep away the things that hinder you from living at your fullest potential and giving the best from your heart?

Fill your heart with what you want to release to others. If you want to release negativity, then by all means… think your negative thoughts and never look for the positive in anything, I’m pretty sure when you get around people you will point out the negative you see in their positive. But if you want to be positive, then change the way you think, take your thoughts captive and look for the positive in every situtaion. If you want to be loving, then practice by intentionally being loving. The list goes on and on… you know what to do.

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” – Proverbs 4:23

Our hearts needs to be taken care of and looked after, we can’t so easily allow our hearts to be immersed in things that can cause harm to it. From this ONE heart, we do life. What you allow IN you will eventually come OUT of you. So fill up but make sure what you are filling yourself with… is worth it… only pour in what you want to release, don’t contaminate your heart ♥ It’s so precious and someone is in need of it’s best that it has to give 🙂

Prayer:
Lord, help us to be mindful of the things we are allowing into our hearts, of the people we surround ourselves with and allow to speak into our lives, help us to filter out the bad that may contaminate our hearts… and only allow IN us only what YOU approve of and say amen to. We want to release our best, help us to  rid the things that hinder our best from coming out 🙂 amen.

.MarthaInez.

Have you ever heard someone say, “If you can’t love yourself… you can’t love others” or ” “How do you expect others to love you, if you do not love yourself?”..?? Anyone? Well I have and I’ve heard it several times throughout my life and quite frankly…I’ve NEVER believed it. I would hear that and want to vomit as I thought to myself, “That’s horse rubbish! I can love others just fine… and I don’t love me… so… that’s a flawed statement!”

True story… I’ve thought this for years.

I’m 27yrs old now, no I’m not lying… but thank you for the compliment as you thought to yourself, “oh my gosh… she’s that old? she doesn’t look it” , very sweet of you, HAHA!

So I’m 27 and have JUST BARELY realized what a horrible lie I have allowed myself to believe. Perhaps, in my mind, I felt that my thoughts were true … as some sort of justification for my actions. Well maybe not so much a justification per se… but in my mind I felt that “this is just how I am”… and because I believed that, I felt there was nothing wrong with me and the way I loved otheres, therefore there’s nothing I needed to change because I was fine and it was ok to not love me and give love to those around me. I don’t know if I’m making much sense.

I’ve had issues with loving myself for years! Where does this come from?  Well I believe from several different events in my life that have hurt me emotionally and therefore I have carried them with me and telling myself that this is just how I am.

Such as elementary, I was one of the chubby girls, you know.. the thicker ones with super cricked teeth.. no, I mean SUPER BAD! So bad that neighbors would ask my dad or even give the suggestion “Hey, you should think about getting Tita some braces… when are you going to get her braces” etc. So when I realized I wasn’t the pretty girl, insecurity creeped in and I guess it never really left. 6th grade to 7th grade was a drastic difference if you were to look at my school picture. I had lost weight but… it never seemed enough to me. My friends were size 0’s and I felt that my 3/5 was huge compared to their tiny bodies. With this weight loss and now having braces and learning to do my makeup.. I had become friends with the “popular girls”.. so then the thoughts of “am I even cool enough to hangout with them” came in.  It seemed as though insecurity after insecurity after insecurity founds its way into my thoughts… ruling nearly every decision I made. Insecurity, fear, worry, not trusting, etc… are all a part of the same family. The family of LIES.

There was a guy that started to pursue me after high school… I can remember one night when we were on the phone… “Martha, you’re beautiful… but if you worked out… you would be gorgeous” I felt so gross and ugly and not worthy to be liked by this guy that I held on a pedal stool. There was a guy I was dating who ended it with me because of my insecurity and then went on to say he was dating me and another girl at the same time, so of course I felt dumb and not good enough. For years I’ve allowed my negative perception of myself to stay in my mind and take residence in my heart, it was mighty fine with me because I thought it was normal and ok to feel this way… to not like me, but allowing this mentality to rule only makes the love you give to others completely unfair. Why? Because when you show them pieces of your heart with fear behind it, a fear that they will not love you back? Well that alone confirms the thoughts you have that say… “they just don’t love you, you’re just not that important.” I would really think this of people… I believed lies so easily, Bill Johnson says “when you believe a lie, you empower the liar”….oh man, looks like I did lots empowering because I would just eat up any negative thought I had of me.

I don’t know where these thoughts came from of just NOW realizing that loving yourself is SO KEY to loving others, ok had to be God telling me, Duh! haha!  The bible says to lovers others as yourself…

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these. -Mark 12:30-31

There’s no way you can purely love others when you have remnants of insecurity or even portions of you that cannot trust others, its flawed love and can cause your character to look questionable. I’m no expert but I now know that in order to love people… I need learn to how to love me and give no room for lies and no room to operate from those lies.

Loving yourself = Freedom to love others. I say freedom because if I have still have some insecurities or areas where I do not trust… then I’m enslaved to those negative emotions and lies I have believed which are NOT from me but from who else? Who hates God? Who was cast out of heaven because he was so mad that he was not greater than God therefore had to be cast to Earth where he had to sit and watch MAN be MADE IN GODS IMAGE? The Devil. We are hated because we are made in the very image he isn’t… and the devil HATES that about us… and will do anything he can to destroy us and I have a feeling a part of his tactic is getting us to not love ourselves, to think so negative that we don’t move or go very far in life because we sit and are so convinced that we just suck at the very things God has gifted us in.

And until we are free from those thoughts that we have believed, those lies will continue to stay alive within and therefore we become a slave to them. The goal is Freedom, the goal is to LOVE others from a place of Freedom… not from a place where you justify your negative thinking to continue living the way you do yet “love on others” and call it Godly. It’s not Godly, its a lie you believe, and it’s unfair to those you are loving on… to give them a love that is flawed all because you are not happy with yourself, all because you really truly believe you suck and are not worth much. Who thinks that of you? Only ONE, and he’s just a jealous mc.nasty trying to get you on his level.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.- Galations 5:1

Many thoughts we have of ourselves… are not our thoughts, but we receive them and believe them to be from us. I was watching a video by Dan Mohler on how to resist the devil, he said something that struck,  “Who’s ever thought something that bothered them? It wasn’t you, it was interjected, it was lie trying to grab your identity and sell you cheap… as soon as you accept it as you, you give things a place”

Do not give a place to thoughts that do not belong to you, recognize where it is coming from and then Get FREE!! How? Fall deeper in love with the ONE who created you… ask Him to reveal things about you that you didn’t know before or have seen before… ask Him to tell you who you are and listen as He talks about Himself, because you’re made in his image… expect to hear ONLY remarkable things. We owe the world a genuine real love, but we have to take our thoughts captive and close the space we have made to give a place to the negative lies we believed of ourselves. 

There is NOTHING wrong with YOU… my prayer for those in this same boat as I, is this:
Lord, help us to see ourselves the way YOU see us and to deflect the lies that we are not good enough, that we are not lovable, that we cannot succeed, that we suck at what we love to do etc. and most importantly, Lord help us to fight off the thoughts that we believe and have allowed to stay and take residence in our hearts… we declare our minds to be FREE from any lie we have believed where we have spoken ‘this is me, these are my thoughts, this is how I am’… we rebuke lies in Jesus name and we declare LIFE over our hearts, joy, peace and pure love!

-MarthaInez

You are not where you were… celebrate every step you make ♥

The other night I was out with people I highly respect…

and after spending time with them… one of these people helped me realize something… that I have come pretty far.

It’s interesting to step outside of your situation and realize that you have come farther than you thought. It seems as though many times we feel so tired and beaten that we fail to even realize we how much we have moved forward from our situations and pressed on no matter what… it may not have been humongous leaps forward but nonetheless, movement has been made. You are stronger and wiser than you realize… celebrate every step forward you take…whether its an inch or a mile… you’re making progress.  Most of what we face in life is a “process” and I myself am embracing it and learning to grow from it rather than allowing it to keep me down 🙂 Climbing a mountain won’t be easy but I’m pretty sure the view from up top is worth it and spectacular, it makes no sense to beat myself up and stay low… when I’m born to go higher.

It took me awhile to get this attitude and new appreciation for process… because usually what I do is complain… and I do it a lot and I’m really good at it 😉
I would get upset when I felt I have made no progression in certain situations I found myself in, in most cases have given myself a hard time about it … but it took someone that I highly respect to look at me and tell me “Hey, look where you are… you have come so far… you’re not where you were…”, I had heard it before but this time it really sunk in and then it just hit me… Duh!! Movement forward has been made and I didn’t even notice it because I was too busy looking at where I wasn’t that I failed to see the progression upward I have made and how much growth I have actually done within myself. I had to step outside of this process I’m in and really take a look at it… and that’s when I realized that I have actually climbed a bit higher than I thought!

Here I was thinking I was still on the ground without even putting my harness on… but I’ve had the harness and the ropes, gloves, helmet etc.. and I’ve pulled myself up and began climbing!! It’s so cool, I need to stop focusing on what I feel I am not and remember who God says I am. Who HE says we are should be the loudest voice in our heads, anything that begs to differ or speaks opposite of that truth is a lie and not HIS voice but the enemy’s.

Going through something you wish you didn’t have to can SUCK horribly and take a toll on you …OR it can be one of the GREATEST life experiences and victories you have ever been through… but that is a choice that we decide to take, whether or not we learn to grow from it or complain the whole way through… We are the ones who choose whether or not we ALLOW process to suck the life out of us or allow it as a way for God to pour life into us… to mature us and mold us from it. Our mess is not intended to bring us down and drowned us… what the enemy intended for evil God turns it around for His good… He takes the mess we are in and He makes the OLD become NEW:

For if a man belongs to Christ, he is a new person. The old life is gone. New life has begun. -1 Corinthians 5:17 [NLV]

Many things we face will be a process and I don’t believe we will ever reach a point where we cannot grow anymore or learn anymore… there is always things we can improve on whether it be in the way we work at our jobs, how we are at home, in our friendships and relationships etc. there is always room to grow and improve on our character… we have to learn to value ourselves and raise the standard for the way we live, think, act, speak etc.  God expects our BEST in all that we do because, after all, we belong to him and WE are the ones who Re-Present Christ to those around us.

He surely knows I may not give my best at times but that’s an area I need to work on because no-one else can do that for me, but when we see that in ourselves… we have to WANT to fix those areas and not push them under a rug… it’s still there… and it’s still causing harm to you and to those you love. I myself don’t ever want to stop improving myself nor do I ever want to make up excuses to justify why I “can’t change”… because that is a lie that often times we buy into… why? I believe because many people truly feel it is just who they are, I used to be one of those people

We CAN change the things in us that we do not approve of, if we truly value ourselves and those around us… we will want take the right steps toward striping ourselves of the things God never intended for us to carry in our hearts or thoughts. We have to be people that are known by our fruit and the fruit of the Spirit:

 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.- Galations 5:22-23

We need to take any thought that say’s we are never going to get out of our “mess”, captive. We are better than that and better than the old self we have thought we were and we are far better than the negative thoughts we have believed of ourselves... they are simply not true. Speak positive, speak victorious and as Bill Johnson say’s “Stay Pure, Stay Powerful…and Stay In Love”

You’re Amazing, God made you one of kind. Be reminded… you’re a great person and will change lives with what God has given to you… or better yet… what He has ENTRUSTED to you.

Prayer for everyone who can relate:
Lord, help us to embrace Process and to not view this as something negative or as something that is “us”… we discredit any thought in our heads that we have agreed with where we said to ourselves “this is me, this is my mess, my junk, my issue etc. ” … Lord we do not make an agreement with that Lie, we understand that certain thoughts and actions have brought us here… but all of that was only because we may have operated out of character or from a place we thought was ours to take ownership of. We see that whatever action we have taken that doesn’t align with heaven is not where we were supposed to be… Lord, we take our thoughts captive, we surrender our hearts to you and we pray that you take away the things in us that we need to get rid of, strip us clean of residue that wasn’t supposed to reside in us and any emotion we have wrongly embraced to make us feel better and justified for acting and operating from the places we were not supposed to. All things not found in your heart that is found in ours… take it God, Papa we say the powerful name JESUS to our hearts.. and all things not of Heaven must bow to your most pure and powerful name. We thank you for taking us by the hand while we are here… thank you for teaching us something new and for molding us into who you have called us to be… We embrace where we are knowing that you are using it for your glory, we are staying positive and encouraged and excited to leave behind old thought process’s and mentality’s that were never intended for us to have to begin with… renew our hearts and minds lord… we speak Psalm 51:10 over our hearts ‘Give me a PURE heart O’God, and renew a steadfast spirit within’..thank you Papa God.. we love you, in your sweet and most precious name, amen.

-.Martha.Inez.