I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on.
Hello everyone!
Good to see you all!
It says that I admitted everybody, but not everybody popped in.
Everybody is here!
I'm really excited for today.
It's been a while since I've been.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on.
I didn't talk about business.
It's good to see everyone!
I have everyone just so that everybody knows.
I have everybody on mute because I have noticed that there is tremendous feedback
coming in.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on.
It goes out through your computer or whatever.
It will come back into the feed.
I have everybody on mute.
I'm really excited that since we can't be in person,
we can all see each other and feel like we're all participating.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on.
There are multiple people praying specifically for y'all.
I had seen posts that I was going to have a coaching program this weekend.
They have been messaging me this morning saying that they are praying specifically for y'all, that they're excited.
These are people that have already gone through some of the conferences or coaching programs or whatever.
Anyway, they're very excited for y'all. I'm very excited for all of us.
I'm going to go ahead and turn it back on.
I always get to be enriched and encouraged in my faith when I teach these things.
Again, I teach what it is.
I'll be talking about this today because it's something I'll be encouraging y'all to do in your business or ministry or anything you do in your life.
I teach what it is that I actually live.
I'm not trying to devalue the gifts from the Lord that he gives us.
I teach out of what it is that I actually live.
When I articulate it in English, my faith is renewed.
When I articulate it in Spanish, my faith is renewed.
When I articulate it in English, my faith is increased by the hearing of it.
I get very excited.
I feel like a participant.
I love it.
I've had multiple teachings, but one big long teaching or coaching session over this many hours outside of doing it in March.
The way that I'm the what it is that we're going to be doing today and how it is that I'm going to be talking about business from rest is in a way that I've never done before.
It's a way that I've never done before.
He began to flesh out what we're doing this weekend.
He began to flesh that out for me when I was in Naples
about, I don't know, three, four weeks ago.
So today is a big day.
I'm very excited.
I'm stepping out in obedience when the Lord said,
hey, Ashley, why don't you do something different?
I'm like, but what does different look like?
This is different.
I'm very excited.
And anyway, so we're gonna be going, like I said,
there was no prerequisite to this particular,
to this particular coaching program today
because what I'll be doing is in four and a half hours
with the Lord's help,
we'll be going from the beginning of knowing nothing
about what rest is all the way through
how to actually apply it in business.
Not just the idea of, oh, this is how it looks in business,
but how to actually take actionable steps
to incorporate it in business
because that's where all of the power is.
The power isn't just in the knowledge
and in the under, and in the learning of,
oh, well, there's this idea that I could take advantage of.
It's, yeah, but how do I do the dagger thing?
When, because it's hard.
There's a reason why we haven't done it.
And it's beyond the fact that, oh, well,
I just didn't know, or I didn't understand.
No, there's an element and there are certain aspects
in which we knew what to do, but we couldn't do it
because there was so much resistance
that would rise up within us because it is hard.
And God has walked me through so much
of that crossing over that hard threshold
in a variety of ways that he began to teach me
how to articulate to others,
how to traverse the hard part that we get to like,
okay, this just feels hard
and I don't know how to keep going through hard.
I don't know how to actually push through it
where it's actually effective.
And I actually moved through it
as opposed to just continuing to like,
kind of like staying in the valley of the shadow of death.
How do you actually progress?
So that's what's on my heart today
is for this to be practical.
So, but we are gonna start all the way at the beginning
because if we don't understand these things,
these things are the foundations
of whenever we're struggling to shift into rest,
whenever you have something very stressful
and that brings up a lot of anxiety,
in your situation in business,
whether it be a very difficult relationship issue,
I don't know if it would be like a partnership
that you have in your business
or it'd be difficulties with clients,
or if it's that you have no money in the bank
and bills are due for your business,
what do you do in those stressful and anxious situations?
Well, it's important for us to shift into rest
because if we're stressed and anxious, we're not in rest.
And that's where the rubber meets the road.
That's where we really do need to be in rest.
And if we're struggling to do that,
in order to know how to move through it,
it's going back to these foundational things.
It's us not agreeing with
or believing these foundational things
that is setting us up for being in unrest.
So we have to go back and come into agreement
with those things in order to shift into rest.
So these things might sound irrelevant,
but they're the actual accusations
that we're having against God
if we're finding ourselves in a state of unrest.
So these are the things that actually have to be dealt with
that we actually have to come back into agreement with.
Okay, so first of all,
what I wanted to mention is
y'all are more than welcome to take notes if you would like,
but I do recommend that you don't.
So you can listen to my thought process on this
and decide whether or not
that this is something you wanna do.
It's about already practicing being in rest
because we'll be fleshing this out a little bit more later,
but the 95% scientists say,
or psychologists, I don't remember
which branch of science it is,
but they say that 95% of everything it is that we do
comes out of our subconscious.
It's subconscious beliefs that we have
and subconscious decisions that we're making
that actually dictate all of our actions.
And then it goes, this is like a fractal principle
that we can see all over the place.
Like the fact that we don't tell ourselves to breathe,
we don't tell our heart to beat, et cetera.
God created different aspects of creation,
including our own bodies
or including our mind and our subconscious
to function without us constantly having to micromanage them
and give them instruction.
Like, look, I'm learning how to shift into rest.
And so I have to remember all of this stuff
and micromanage all of the different parts of me,
my spirit, soul, and body, and how to shift.
And we don't have to do that
because God actually created all of this.
those things to know how to do it on their own.
So it doesn't require, so that's a measure of rest,
is thinking that, is understanding
that we don't have to work for something.
We don't even have to work to shift into rest.
Ironically, the way to shift into rest is to stop.
It's to actually be, is to choose rest.
And we'll be talking a bit more about that later.
But when we're taking notes,
sometimes what we can do is we can detach ourselves
from allowing ourselves to experience the moment
and allow our spirit and soul
to start shifting on their own.
Because what we're doing
is we're trying to rely too much on information
and we're taking on everything it is
that we're hearing as information instead of a spirit
and allowing it to transform us.
We're taking it on as information
and we're trying to funnel it through our consciousness,
thinking that that is what we're relying on
in order to be able to shift.
And so as odd as it sounds,
it's actually creating the very resistance
to being able to shift into rest.
There's nothing wrong with taking notes,
but if your interaction with notes
is the value of the knowledge,
is if you think, if I don't get this,
if I don't capture this, I'm going to miss this
and I'm not gonna be able to shift into rest or whatever,
well, then that's creating the very resistance
of being able to shift into rest
and not acknowledging that our spirit and soul
can do it without us,
without us pushing it through all of our consciousness.
However, some people take notes
because it's the only way they can keep,
it can keep their attention.
They have to be doing something.
They have to like, they have this energy
and it has to be going out somewhere.
So they think, okay,
we'll put it into something productive, like taking notes.
If you do that, I would just recommend
that you completely disassociate yourself from the notes.
So my whole point is immerse yourself completely
in just experiencing this
and allowing your spirit to receive this,
listening to your father's spirit talking to you,
because that's what's gonna transform your life.
I'm not, I absolutely no desire for anybody in here
to decide that they want to start operating in this
because something I said sounded logical.
That's no reason to step into receiving and obeying
something that I'm claiming is the father's message.
It will transform your life
if it comes directly from God's spirit into your spirit,
that's what's gonna change everything.
And so I recommend that you submit yourself to
and create an opportunity and your availability to the Lord
for all of that to happen,
which you can do taking notes,
but if you could disassociate from taking the notes
and just doing a mindlessly while engaging,
you will shift faster.
You will, you can, you can have amazing, amazing shifts
just being in this, in this series today,
without, how would I put that?
Without having much background experience,
you can just start shifting now because we'll be learning
it's who you already are.
So we're just trying to get out of our own way.
So that is just something that I would recommend
that y'all can do whatever you want,
but it's taking advantage of the fact that
we have the opportunity to be at rest
and God put that idea and that principle
already into creation and science.
And the fact that everything already knows how to function,
we don't have to micromanage it
in order for it to know what to do and what we expect of it.
So you can go ahead and practice it now.
If it was like, that's how I do it.
But then there were also people at the conference
that I did in March.
So I'm telling you what, they were,
they were writing furiously, like, my goodness,
I really hope that they're,
that they're disassociating themselves from it.
And based on the, based on the transformation,
sure enough, they were, they, they transformed.
And those were some of the people that transformed the most
because they were that engaged with the,
with the spirit of what was being spoken,
not in the information or knowledge
as something they had to capture
or a logic that they were trying to
allow themselves to be convinced by.
And that's very important to receive the spirit of the thing
because we're transformed by the renewing of our mind
and our real mind is deeper than our brain, so.
Okay.
Let's see.
Okay, the one other thing I would like to say in preparation
is that if I say something that you,
how would I write this?
That not to be worried that I'm going to say something
that you disagree with,
or that's going to take you off of track
of your own relationship with the Lord,
because I am not here to convince you.
I'm here telling you what it is that I believe,
what I love.
live, what I own in my own relationship with the Lord.
And I have to completely detach myself, even from other things
that I learned, from people that I have learned it from,
like if it's like doing certain things in the spirit
or whatever.
And when I've learned and been to conferences like that,
I have to learn how to detach it from them
so that I own it in my own relationship with the Lord.
So when I only teach what it is that I own and live,
if there's a certain measure to which I haven't lived,
I don't teach it.
So I'm just here telling you what it is that I believe.
I'm not here trying to convince any of you
that it's actually true.
I'm just presenting you a lot of stuff from the Bible
and then how it is that I've walked things out
and what I've noticed works for me.
And then you take that before the Lord
and y'all work together in your spirits
between you and the Lord to know what things that he wants
you to grab ahold of and what things that he's personally
revealing to you.
And the reason I say that is if I say something in like it,
you've never heard that before and it sounds scary,
don't worry about it because if you have chosen
that you're here following the Lord
and you're not trying, you're not sitting here waiting
to see what Ashley says and see if she convinces you,
you're in a safer place.
So it doesn't matter what it is that I say,
but the Lord might be wanting to show you something
and expand you into new boundaries.
And if you hear something that I say,
that just kind of like, okay, that's very new,
I'm really not sure about that.
I recommend that you don't reject it outright
because what that does is it starts inside,
it's like you start shutting down
and then it's harder for the Lord to begin to reveal,
to reveal new things to us and expand us into new territory.
And instead, what I recommend you do is
if you don't know how to receive it,
if you don't know whether or not
the Lord wants you to receive it,
do what you can do if you want what I do.
And I have what I call my Area 51 Warehouse
that I put things in that I don't understand,
but the Lord hasn't told me to reject it yet.
I just don't know what to do about that.
I'm like, I don't know about that.
I just heard that, I'm not really sure.
Lord, I don't wanna receive something
that you don't want me to receive.
I just, unless he tells me outright immediately,
that is wrong.
If he says that, well then yes, I recommend rejecting it.
But otherwise, just stick it in your Area 51 Warehouse
for the Lord to pull forward when he desires to
and to reveal to you whether or not,
reveal to you more fully whether or not
that needs to be rejected or received.
So later he might bring it up
and show you how you can receive it,
or he might bring it up and say,
okay, now that you understand this better,
then reject it.
But that there, I just wanted to present that to y'all
as a third option that you can take advantage of.
You don't have to accept or reject something,
you can stick something back there,
which is basically like giving it over to the Lord,
saying, okay, Lord, I'm open to this, if this is true,
and I don't know what you're telling me to do with it yet,
so here you go.
And at least it's much more open in the spirit for the Lord
to move us into new things.
But without us feeling afraid that we're receiving something
and being corrupted by something that might be wrong.
So anyway, that's a third option
that I just wanted to present to y'all,
and that's what I've done,
and that has helped tremendously,
I mean, tremendously in helping me to move
and shift faster with the Lord,
because I approached it from that perspective,
because it kept me open instead of shut down.
We're talking in just a minute about the fact
that whenever we shut down or we begin to stifle things,
and it brings death, and death is the opposite of life,
death is the opposite of spirit,
death is the opposite of rest, so.
Okay, so just really quickly before you get into anything,
wanted to talk about what rest is.
So rest, as many of y'all heard me say multiple times,
is not inactivity.
So we're used to associating rest
with something like vacation,
or sitting on the couch watching Netflix or whatever,
or sleeping, but rest in the way
that the Lord is talking about rest,
in fact, that it's part of our inheritance,
rest is not inactivity, and it doesn't mean
that everything around us is going smooth.
What it means is that everything it is
that we're involved in can be effortless,
as opposed to hard, full of strife, full of work.
Whoa, sorry, I have my, I have a do not disturb on my phone,
but for whatever reason, a call came through anyway,
which I'm really not pleased with.
And.
Uh, so it's, it doesn't mean that everything in our life is smooth.
In fact, for me, it's the opposite because, well, I don't want to say it's
the opposite, but because I, in my relationship with the Lord have chosen
to help establish rest on the earth.
I'm very, very often put in extremely in, in situations that create extreme
unrest within me, because then I'm called to overcome, but I have to have
something to overcome, so those things come at me, it's not fun, they come at
all of us, but I just mean that there are just certain ways in which he has me,
uh, just certain situations that he has me in, in which those unrestful
situations come up because I told him, Lord, I make myself available to you
in my relationship with you, that I would like to establish rest on the earth.
It's like, okay, so you're going to be in very unique situations,
particular to unrest in order for you to overcome.
So rest does not mean that, um, uh, that, uh, that doesn't
mean that everything goes smooth.
I mean, look at Jesus's life.
Things didn't go smooth, not just when he died, but even during his ministry
years, but rest just means that everything's effortless and we can receive
from the Lord and we don't have to work for anything, there's nothing that
we're earning, there's nothing left to do.
We'll be talking today about the extent to which that's true.
Cause we all know that it's like, oh, of course that's what the Bible says.
But if our lives aren't manifesting the fact that we have truly received that
inheritance from the Lord, because he said so, then there's apparently
something, some connection that we're not making in the extent to
which we can claim rest in him.
So rest actually instead.
So we've talked about what rest isn't.
So rest instead is actually choosing that we are completely provided for
protected, identified, loved, liked, and comforted by God, that he is the
sole source of all of those things.
And nothing, not even business is, uh, is our means of protection or provision.
Business is not even God's means of providing for us.
So it has nothing whatsoever to do with providing for us at all.
Nothing.
It's rest is to that degree.
And to that extent that we are solely completely devoid of anything in the
environment or, or anything, any aspect of our flesh, we are completely and
solely dependent on the fact that God is all of those things for us and
provides all of those things for us.
Um, and he doesn't even use things as a means by which to provide for us.
Well, we'll come to that more later, but that's what rest is where we've
received everything from him already.
And there's nothing left to do.
So now that there's nothing left to do, we are free of the burden, the
weight, and the responsibility of having to create a particular result because
God wants us to rely on him for all of the results.
So we don't have to do any of that anymore.
We are now free to just be able to actively participate and partner with
him in developing relationship and the development of that relationship.
I'm introducing all kinds of ideas.
What are we talking about?
And flushing out later, but, uh, the development of that relationship is
manifested on earth in various forms, including in business.
That's that's the development.
That is the manifestation of the develop of the point to which our
relationship with God has developed this far.
Is, is our, how, um, how our business looks, how we're
interacting with our business, et cetera.
That's what that is.
Um, so that's what rest is in a nutshell.
So now that I've just kind of mentioned that now we'll go into
the foundations of how we can actually shift into rest and whenever, so
that we can know whenever we're not in rest, these are the things we need
to come back into agreement with.
They're very basic.
They're very simple, but there's a reason why we found them challenging.
And I would like us to, um, to, to know that they don't have to be as
challenging as we feel that we've been threatened to believe that they were.
Or I, or I have might just be speaking to myself.
Uh, okay.
So why are we resisting?
If, if rest is actually in God himself, rest is the place.
It's not something that, um, it's not something that we do like, well,
I'm working or I'm resting rest is actually a place, which is why I
always like to capitalize it just to kind of help us, um, uh, help us
differentiate it and rest as a place.
It's in God himself.
That's what rest is.
So if rest is a place that.
place is God himself. So if we're not in rest, it means that we're, that we're not acknowledging
that we're in God and allowing ourselves to enjoy just being in God. So if we are,
why are we not in rest? If we are not in rest, meaning that we think that we're not in God,
then, you know, according to scripture, which we'll be mentioning the scripture in just a second,
then it means that we're actually actively resisting God. We're resisting rest. If God
says that we have it and he says he's already given it to us, but we're not there. Well,
then it means, and we're not feeling it and it's not manifesting in our life. It means that we're
actually actively resisting rest. If we're resisting rest and rest is in God, it means
we're resisting God. So why, if we all love God and we're all pursuing him so passionately,
why are we resisting him? We're resisting him because we don't feel safe with him.
We don't feel safe with him because we have, I'm just shocked at how quickly I'm having to
move through all of this information, but we, I'm sorry, I'm trying to like squeeze 20 hours
into like four and a half. So here we go. But it's basically, y'all may have heard of things
like mother wounds and father wounds. So a father wound develops in the, in the physical. If ever
people have a, an issue with the masculine in their lives where they, the masculine in their
lives did not allow them to feel protected, provided for, or identified. And so they have,
if that, if that happens and they, and they didn't have that masculine from those,
from them in those areas, it's referred to as a father wound. And what a mother wound comes from,
if the, if the feminine, if the feminine aspect in their lives that was supposed to give them
certain, you know, provide for certain needs, didn't make them feel loved, liked, and comforted,
then they can develop what's referred to as the mother wound. Well, we project mother and father
wounds onto God. So we believe that he's not providing for protecting, loving, liking, or,
or that we can expect to be comforted by him. So we're afraid of him. We don't feel safe with him.
He's not a safe place. We like him. We want to be around him. We want to feel him, but we don't
want to be in him. And we don't want him to be in us, but in him is the place of rest. But he says
that he's loving. He says, he says that he's love. He says that he's goodness. He says that
he's righteousness. He says that he's freedom. He says that he's all of these wonderful things,
but if he's that wonderful, why don't we, why don't we want it? Because we don't actually think
it's true, or we don't think that it's true to the extent that he says that it is. And that
is why we're resisting. And that's why we're not in rest. So to sum all that up, we're not in rest
because we don't believe that God actually is who he says that he is and that he loves us,
likes us, et cetera, to the extent that he says that he does. And, and therefore we don't feel
safe, therefore resisting him, therefore we're not in rest. To be in rest, we have to choose
that God really is love and submit ourselves fully, very vulnerably to that place that currently
doesn't, that we don't feel safe in. And I want to help people, let me see if there's any,
okay, so there's, there's one thing that I want to mention really quick about like
the types of love that God can be to us. Obviously he can have a very tender love towards us,
sheep, shepherd, parent, child, all those things sound really wonderful, very tender,
very gentle. We like to talk about all of those all the time because it's safe.
Not much is required of the sheep to be loved by the shepherd. Not much is required,
isn't like a loving back of a child with a parent, especially if the child is very,
is very young child, just, just is in a state of being. And then the parent gives it all of
this love, all this attention, no matter how the child acts out, right? We love those ideas,
but there is an, in order to go into greater intimacy of relationship with someone,
one has to mature to the point where they actually have a contribution in the relationship,
which is what happens in the, as a human being matures and can finally get into, get to the
point where they can develop a lover relationship with another human being. And in order to have
that type of, in order to be able to enjoy the benefits of that type of intimacy, that type of
emotional intimacy with someone else, it requires complete vulnerability on both sides. So not just
from God's side, you know, or if we want to compare it to men and women, not just from the masculine
and the man's side, but also from the woman's side, the bride of Christ side, in order to go.
to the level of intimacy that is given as an opportunity to step into.
So, and that's scary, right? It's very, very vulnerable. In order to receive that benefit,
we have to be vulnerable. We have to expose ourselves, and that can feel very scary,
but God has said that that is the type of relationship that he desires to mature his
children into. We don't have an opportunity to read this particular passage, but I recommend
that you look up Ezekiel 16, six through 14, because that describes God's love during our
lack of it. It describes that he just saw us on the road kicking about in our blood. It was a very
gruesome picture that he painted, kicking about in our blood. And then he spoke over us and he
said, live. And then he said that he allowed us to grow and mature. And then when he saw us again,
he saw, quote, that you were old enough for love. So that we were developed to the point that he
could have a particular intimate relationship with us, as opposed to just giving us everything,
giving us life, giving us, pouring all of this out. We now have the opportunity of greater intimacy
with him in union, but that will fight our own vulnerability. But anyway, he said, okay, they're
now old enough for love. They're now old enough, not only for me to give it, but for me to receive
it from them, for them to give it to me, for them to allow themselves to be that vulnerable with me.
And then he says that he took us and that he, you know, rate us with amazing garments.
And he goes into this really great, very long description of what it is that he, of how he,
how would you put that? That he gave us all of these things that were a reflection of how he
saw us. So they weren't making us more, more beautiful. They weren't making us more valuable,
all these clothes and raiments and jewelry and everything that he said that he put on his bride.
They weren't making us more valuable. It was a declaration of who, of the value that we had in
his eyes. So in looking at that passage in Ezekiel 16, six through 14, you'll see that it only talks,
and here's one of my main points about mentioning this passage. It only talks about God's response
to us, not our response to him. So our, our response is not, and our contribution is not
required to receive God's love. If we come to him very vulnerably though, that finally allows the
intimacy in which we can receive greater, deeper benefits, such as abiding in rest, but it's not
required of him to love us. And the reason that's important is God always initiates and he wants us
to know, Hey, I require nothing of you for me to love you. So it gains our trust. Like, okay,
well then maybe I, maybe you're safe enough for me to finally open myself up and be vulnerable
so that finally we can share a particular intimacy and union that we couldn't before when you were
just loving me, but I was hating you. Just remember what Jesus was saying where he says, you know,
that God says that he, that he died while we hated him. He died for us while we hated him.
So in thinking about how, how we have struggled to believe that God is loved to that extent. And
so therefore resisting and shifting into arrest or resisting moving there. How do we get over that?
Cause all this sounds good, but I don't want us to ever hear anything that I say at all today
in condemnation whatsoever. It's all towards greater love and freedom that God is always,
that God is always, is always pouring into us and reaching, reaching out to us.
And so I want us to, to, to not just know all of these things, not just hear all these things
as, okay, well, that's what we shouldn't be doing. And apparently we're not doing it. Okay.
Yeah. Now I feel really good. No. Then what do we do? How do we change that? We all know that
we need to love God more, but we don't know how there's a reason why we're saying no.
There's a reason why it, why it's scary. There's a reason why it doesn't feel safe.
Those are all very valid and we need to acknowledge that. So all that's, you know,
all that, just being what it is, how do I move from this situation to actually choosing that
God is as love as he says that he is, how do I shift? How do I finally receive his love as
opposed to constantly resisting it? So this is how I did. Cause I had tremendous accusation against
God. Tremendous. I did not feel safe with him at all. I did not feel or, um, or ultimately
believe that God loved me, even though I could talk it really well because I was in scripture.
My life did not manifest the fact that I believed I was loved.
And I remember telling the Lord up to even a few years ago, I say, God, I cannot.
I know that you tell me that you're loving on me. I cannot see it.
Even in the good things, God, that you're doing for me, I cannot see that as love.
And I'm sorry. I felt that this is all of my fault.
It's all my responsibility. You're loving me.
And I'm just, you know, it's I'm I'm not seeing something.
But at the same time, I had accusation against God because I'm like, God, you know, can you just show it to me better?
Because I'm just not seeing it.
So he walked me through a process where I was actually finally able to begin to receive his love.
And so that's what's important in rest, like everything else has to be received.
It can't be worked for rest being God and God being love.
Same thing with love. That love has to be just received.
So what I had to do was I had to stop the resistance. So here are some of the things that helped me.
I had to finally stop. I had to realize that that God did not make me obligated to love him back.
So I recommend that as you're trying to as you're going to the Lord to try to.
To try to position yourself so that you have faith to receive his love, that the very first thing that you do is what I talk about a lot in rest.
And that's whatever it is you're doing to stop doing it.
In other words, related specifically to love, that you stop trying to love him and release yourself from the obligation of loving him.
And I don't mean actively try to stop loving him. I mean, stop.
How do I remember that? Just stop. Stop trying. Stop thinking that. Oh, I should.
God does not does not put you under any obligation to love him at all.
And so release yourself from the obligation. It will feel scary. And what I'm saying sounds very heretical.
It will feel very scary because we're all of a sudden, you know, we've got all of these commandments and going through our minds like, well, God says to love him.
And God says that's the greatest commandment and all of this. But understand that is who you already are.
You were the new man. The old man has died. The new man lives. The new man always evades his father.
The new man always loves his father. The new man always knows that he's loved by his father.
You don't have to try anymore. The trying is the old man who thinks he's not something he thinks he has to do something.
But Paul says repeatedly, hey, look, you keep trying to resurrect the old man. He's dead.
You don't need to try anymore. You already are the thing. But if we keep thinking that we're the other, that's creating the very resistance because we're focused on this man.
It's dead. That's creating the very resistance to just allowing ourselves to be what God says that we already are.
God says that we already love him. So we need to stop.
Whatever it is that we're doing, that's trying to resurrect this old man, which is trying.
New man doesn't have to try. He just is. You don't have to try to be a man or a woman.
You just are. You're just born like this. I don't know. It's very easy.
It's the same thing with the same thing with the new man. You already are the thing.
So in order to start being what you already are, stop trying.
The trying is resistance. Whenever we try that effort, that's exertion and stop trying.
And you'll discover when you stop trying, which will sound very scary because we're used to think if I don't try, it's that old Calvinistic theological stuff that has infiltrated every single denomination.
That that idea that if I don't try, well, then I'm bad.
I'm ultimately going to find that there's nothing but evil within me, and that's what's going to take over.
So I have to put all my will and all my exertion into trying in order to keep from being bad because, oh, my goodness.
God said the heartful heart is deceitful of all things.
No, that that's not what God.
What it is that we think that he's saying, it's not what God was saying.
God was talking about the flesh. But remember, he says that we're the new man.
That's the seed of our identity. And we still have the flesh.
Yes, but we are the new man and we can choose who it is that we are, which overcomes the flesh.
So the first thing that helps me to finally start feeling loved by the Lord is to stop trying to love him.
And when I stopped trying to love him and when I chose that, if Jesus died for me while I was hating him and if Jesus died for me and others while we were killing him, that apparently I really am not obligated to love God.
Because he'll die for me out of love for me to have me back to him when I'm killing him.
So apparently I really am not obligated to love God.
But what he did is when I, when I chose him, he changed me so that I became the new man
who always loves him.
So if I stopped trying, I discover that I already love him in a way that is effortless
in a way that is deeper than any of my trying in my flesh could love God because I love
him in spirit and that's expansive and that's big and that's enriching.
And I hate that we are going through all of this stuff.
Actually I talked just about love for like an hour, but that is what I would recommend.
Here's another, here's an exercise that you can do.
I recommend that you go before the Lord and allow yourself and your situation would look
different.
I'm just going to tell you what mine looked like and what worked for me and then you can
morph it into what works for you to present yourself before the Lord, get to a really
quiet place.
I personally would often sit on my bed and then I would imagine Jesus, I would invite
Jesus like in my spirit, I would invite him to come.
In other words, I would, I would allow myself to be vulnerable of being in the presence
of Jesus because I found him scary or what's he going to say or is he going to look on
me in condemnation and oh my goodness, he can reveal something to me, you know, that
some sin that I have or whatever, I was like, okay, Lord, I invite you to come and to be
who it is that you are.
So Jesus would come in for whatever reason.
I personally would just imagine sitting in my bed and just looking at me.
And then what I would practice is I would practice making, um, uh, making eye contact
with him and not breaking the eye contact because I found out that when I was looking
at him and allowing him to love me, if that, that eye contact would get so intense that
I keep wanting to look away and in order to kind of like break the intensity of it.
So what that, what, what was happening is he was trying to love me and I was resisting
receiving it.
I was doing what it is that I could to keep it at bay, which wasn't allowing me to trust
him.
What wasn't allowing me to shift him to rest because I'm resisting and the place of rest
is in him and he's trying to give me him and I won't, and I, and I, I'm too, I'm too afraid.
So I wouldn't allow myself to break eye contact, uh, even, um, I would allow myself to stay
in that scary place and to, to allow him and his love to break down all of my walls,
all of my resistance, et cetera.
The other thing that I would do is I tried to not, um, love him back for the same reason.
It's not breaking eye contact because sometimes are trying to love him back.
Now, if you just do it naturally, this is no big deal here.
Here's my point is what I found myself wanting to do is he was true.
He was trying to love me and I'm trying to practice receiving it without any effort on
my, uh, without thinking that I need to exert it in the effort and give it back to him.
So because I, I was, I was still, so I was struggling so much to disassociate, um, to,
to just how to fit for that, to disassociate me loving him with work because I'm trying
to do something.
I think I'm supposed to do, but God said it's a commandment and I'm going to, what would
that say about me?
If I didn't love God, I had too many bad things attached to it that I had to stop trying to
love God.
Um, and because that was creating my own resistance to receiving his love, because if he's loving
me, sometimes what I would do is I would start feeling so overwhelmed with the love and making
like, Oh, my word.
Lord is so wonderful.
Yes.
I love you too.
But the type of, I was so young and immature in my love for the Lord that I was doing it
so much.
And I only knew how to do it out of my old man and my old man was trying to resist the
overwhelm that I was feeling of receiving love without giving anything back.
That was hard.
Think of when people give you things in abundance, how much of a burden that that can feel to
us in our old man, in our culture, where we're thinking, no, no, you don't just retake
my goodness.
You know, that's, that's lazy or that's, um, that's selfish.
And so what we, we do and what we're programmed to do by society is, Oh no, there's, there's
give and take, you know, they've given to you, so you need to give back.
We do that with the Lord, like, okay, he's given me love.
I give him love back.
And that what we can find ourselves doing in that type of an exercise is when God is
trying to love us and we're, and we're trying to practice receiving it, we can feel so overwhelmed
with receiving it that we don't deserve it.
And we feel that, Oh, I need to love him back too.
And then we start, and then we start trying to intentionally love him back, which is actually
resisting the fact that God wants us to do nothing.
receive. Nothing but, but trust that we can get from him without giving him anything back.
And he wants us to believe that that's true. So there's no reason for you to be afraid that if
you stop trying to love God, that you're not going to love God. Because he said that you're
the new man who always, not sometimes and not as capable, no, always loves his father.
So it's who you are. So trust is one of the things that we have to have in faith. If God
says it's true, we have to believe it. And if we believe it, we have to act on it. If we don't act
on it, we don't actually believe it. James talks about that. You know, faith without works is dead.
Unless we actually act on it, we do not believe it. So if God says that we do not have to love
him back, act like it. And that will begin to heal. That will begin to help you love the Lord
because you already do. So what we're doing in that type of an exercise is you're training yourself
to practice stopping the trying. And that's a really, really big deal, which is a kind of
a thing that we'll be continuing to be talking about as we talk about other things in which
we need to shift and to rest about. That we need to stop trying because it's the trying itself
that's actually creating the resistance. And to stop resisting and to finally be in rest, stop
crying. It sounds really surprising, but I am telling you what, every single time it works.
I had nobody to teach me these things. And I mean, other people knew them. So I'm not saying that I'm
the only one who knows and other people knew them, but I didn't know those people who knew
these things and they weren't telling me this. So I had to figure all of this out by trial and error,
risking my relationship with God. And the reason I want to tell you that is the way that I learned
this is because I worked it, walked it out. It wasn't theory. I had, I did it and it worked and
it doesn't, didn't just work. It continues to work every single time I need to shift into rest. All I
have to do is stop trying, which is hard to do. It's hard to stop trying. But my point is that
that's all I have to do. And once I do it, I'm in rest. It's like, that's wild because I was always
taught, if you don't try, you're bad. If you don't try, you're lazy. You know, if you don't try, well,
then you're not an obedient God. And I was like, no, you already are all of the things. You don't
have to try to be them anymore. You have to trust that you are them. And then you finally start
acting like it because you're choosing that you are who I've said that you are. And you've been
changed into a new creature. Okay. So let's go to the next thing. We are just
going through all of this entirely too fast. Okay. That's the next one. All right. Now the,
another thing that's very important is, is a foundational thing, you know, choosing that
we're loved by the Lord. That is the most foundational thing. Do you know that if you
believe that you are loved by God, to the extent that he says that you are,
and that he wants that form of like intimacy and union with you, like, like lovers in order to
create that, that, that, that intimacy, that union in that, out of that vulnerability. If you do that,
you will shift into rest, meaning nothing else in this, in this, in this whole session, everything
comes out of, out of love, being able to choose that God is as loving as he says that he is to
the degree that he says that he is that, because in the reason I can say that so boldly is God's
love is so transformative. It takes over that, that shifts you into rest. If you truly, if we
all truly believe that God loved us as much as he says that he does, that takes care of everything.
Um, we, then we always believe our father and that's what rest is rest allow at rest is when
we believe that, that everything that he says is actually true to the extent that we act on it.
It's not just belief like, Oh yeah, I know that. And I can tell someone else, you know,
believing in, in the way that James talks about it, where he says, faith without works is dead,
where we believe that what God says is true to the point that we act on it. All of that comes
just by believing that we are loved by God, to the extent that he says that we are, which is
fathomless, absolutely fathomless, fathomless. Um, uh, and, uh, God subjects all of the aspect,
all other aspects of his character to love all of it, even his strength and his power,
everything in God's character is subject to is subject to his love. He subjects him all
aspects of his character to his love and that, and the object of love in the universe is you,
the object of that force of that greatest force in the universe is you. And that's all you need
to know. But, you know, in addition to that, you'd like to know something else that
we can do that really helps in being able to shift
into rest really helps us in our identity.
Is like whenever we feel, you know, threatened, anxious
for, because we're about to meet with someone
or wonder, can I do this in my business?
You know, can I, am I strong enough for this?
You know, God's given me this
but there's all these obstacles, can I do it?
A lot of it can come back to,
comes back to understanding our identity
and part of our identity can be understood
by the fact that we're one spirit with God, one spirit
not just conjoined with him, we are one spirit.
And it mentions that multiple times in scripture
which I don't have time to go into all of them.
So I wanted to make sure to give you the scripture
references so that you could look them up.
But first of all, wanted to say that in the union with God
that's where we started.
We started in union with God.
He found us in him, took us out of him.
That was in Ephesians three, verse four talks,
sorry, not three, Ephesians one, verse four
says that God chose us in him
before the creation of the world, in him.
So in other words, he looked inside himself,
saw us, pulled us out.
I used, when I first heard that, I was like
I don't know about that.
I've never heard that before, that doesn't sound right.
I mean, that means that like when God said
I was born of him that like I carry his DNA
and that just doesn't sound right.
That sounds heretical.
It sounds like they're saying I'm God.
We're not saying that we're God who created us.
We're not saying that we're, you know,
that we have the same preeminence as Jesus or anything
but God says that he found us in him.
He chose us in him.
And then he separated, he created us as our own entity
so to speak, and then he reunified us with him
which created the best of both worlds
because now you have relationship
which you can only have when you've got a separate entity.
You can only have, you have relationship
but now you also get the benefit of union.
So you have relationship within union.
If we weren't separated out, there's no relationship
because it was always together.
It was always unified.
It was always one, but you're separating it.
Now it's a separate identity in a way.
And then you reunify it back to yourself
but now that you're reunified
after it was quote unquote separated
and that may not be the perfect theological term for it
but just think of it kind of like that
that God created us as our own identity
and then reunified us.
Now we have the benefit of relationship, which is amazing.
That flow, that back and forth, that giving
that each giving to the other and investing in the other
and feeding on each other, get a feedback loop that way
which you don't get in union.
You get that, but you also get all the benefits of union
where there's no separation.
It's the absolute perfect scenario.
When I first heard this, I don't know
that that's theologically correct.
But then I realized that it's pictured all over scripture.
And we'll just mention a couple of them.
One is Adam, Eve was actually a rib, actual DNA
actual piece of Adam that was taken out
that was seen in Adam, taken out,
you know, and the side was open, taken out
and then made into Eve.
And then the two were reunified in, you know
in the conjoining of man and woman as one flesh.
And that's why Adam looked at her and said
you are bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.
That was a picture of the fact that God
has taken, had taken us out of him
and intended to reunify us back to him.
Then the second Adam, which is Jesus
pictured the same thing.
When he was on the cross, his side was opened symbolically
or all of this was symbolized when his side was opened
by the soldier who stuck his spear up into Jesus
through his heart.
And as we all know, when he drew the spear out
in order to see if Jesus really was dead
out came blood and water.
Symbolically, that was referring to the facts
that was picturing back to what had happened with Adam
where Christ's bride was being born out of him
so that he could be reunified with him
which is what was happening on the cross anyway.
Because remember that's when the veil was torn
in the temple, meaning that there was reunification
that there was ability for God and man to come back together
and for us to be able to have access to God
that happened at Jesus's death, not his resurrection.
So his side was opened.
The bride was born.
And of course with the blood
the covenant of marriage was paid for.
And then, so Jesus paid for his bride.
And then the water that also came out from his body
symbolized what it talks about in Ephesians
where it says that a wife is needed to
or a husband is called to wash his wife.
by the water of the word, I think is how it's phrased.
So it's a cleansing, it's a,
the whole thing is very redemptive.
The husband is providing everything for his bride.
He's paying for her and he's paying the price for her
and then he's cleansing her.
And so that's what Jesus was doing.
So when I saw all of that,
and I saw that in both of those pictures,
we started in him, that the bride started in
and then was taken out to be rejoined.
It's like, oh my word, so it really is true.
Ephesians 1, 4 really was talking about that.
He found us in him, took us out of him
in order to be reunified.
This is important because I always was so scared
because even though I knew that now I was unified
with the Lord, Jesus talks about it all through scripture.
We'll mention a couple more passages.
I thought, yeah, but at my beginning, I was separated.
At the beginning, I was created outside of him.
And I got that idea with the fact that Adam was created
at the dust of the ground.
Well, that was just Adam's flesh.
That wasn't Adam's spirit, which case in point,
if you look in Matthew and it talks about the genealogy
of Jesus, it calls Adam the son of God.
He was born out of God's spirit,
but his flesh was created from the ground.
But because I was only seeing things
from a fleshly point of view, I thought,
see, I was just, God showed, God pictured it in Adam.
I was created separate from him.
I was created from the earth.
And then he rejoined me and he joined me with him
and that's nice.
But at one point I was separated from him
and that bothered me.
That really made me feel very unsafe
until Ephesians 1, 4.
You mean that I came out of him.
It gave me such security.
That is a very core essence of our identity.
The way that I see our identity as our identity
is the point at which our spirit is unified with God's spirit.
It's not us as a separate entity and who are we
and what's our personality and all that.
No, it's because we can't be identified outside of God.
So an aspect and a definition of our identity
has to include God in it.
So the way that I can think of to describe it,
and I'm sure that the Lord's gonna reveal some more to me,
but this is just kind of like the crayon child's drawing
of me being able to understand
what is this concept called identity.
It's the point at which our spirit
is unified with God's spirit.
And you are unified with God's spirit.
I'm unified with God's spirit.
But think of it almost like we're unified
at different points or something like that.
It gives us a uniqueness in which we are,
we share, we have something very unique
and individual in our relationships with God.
We're all unified with him and we're all one body.
So we're all unified with each other,
but there's still a uniqueness.
There's still something that makes us uniquely special
to God, regardless of anybody else,
as opposed to him just like accepting you or accepting me
just because, well, you just come with the package.
I took the package and you happen to be part of it.
Well, that doesn't make any of us feel very special.
God says, yes, you are one whole
and you get to enjoy the benefit
of being unified with each other.
And we get to enjoy the benefit of all being unified as one.
But he also wants us to know that the specialness
and the uniqueness of the fact
that there is an individual aspect
at the very core of who we are,
which is our identity in our relationship with the Lord.
So when we know that we're loved by God
and we choose that we are loved by him
to the extent that he says that we are,
and we understand that in scripture repeatedly,
I'm gonna mention a couple more verses real quick,
that we are unified with God to such an extent
that we cannot be separated.
It's not like we're, well, we're just close together
and we're just, we exist in the same body as him.
No, we'll talk about it in a second,
where one is in there's no way to create separation at all.
So there's no fear.
That's the very essence of who it is
that you are.
It's not just a benefit that you got.
It now is the new you.
It is the new man.
It is that new creature.
And you can be assured.
And so you can, if you ever,
because it's doubting that,
that makes us doubt ourselves in circumstances.
When situations come up and oh my goodness, Lord,
can I do this now?
Lord, you told me to do this in my business.
And oh my goodness, Lord, this seems scary.
You know, do I have what it takes?
Or I'm feeling intimidated by a meeting
that I have coming up or intimidated by, I don't know,
just whatever.
The, you know, I have a phone call coming up
and, you know, do I have what it takes?
It's, we, it's important.
for us to remember, because we're doubting who it is that we are, because we wouldn't doubt God.
And we're that unified with him. That is a core essence of our being. It's not just something we
get to benefit from. So I wanted to mention some scripture verses here really quick.
First Corinthians 6.17 talks about the fact that we're one with him in spirit.
John 14.20 says that we're all one. He mentions all of them. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and us.
If we were to ever doubt whether or not we're just unified with Jesus, or if we're unified,
you know, with the others as well, it is completely dispelled by John 14.20. We're all one.
Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and us. We're part of the Trinity. We're part of the Trinity,
which doesn't make it a quadruple. We're part of the Trinity because we're in Christ,
and Christ is part of the Trinity. Remember, Christ always has the preeminence. He's the head
of the body. The head is part of the body. So we're one, you know, but he always has the
preeminence, always. And we honor him for that, and he always led the way for all of us.
And then my favorite passage, which we're not going to be able to go into it, it's so sad,
but I'll just give you the summary of it. It's Galatians 3, and I have here 15 to 25,
but I think it might just be, yeah, so yeah, I, for some reason, I think it's actually shorter
than that, but if you look at Galatians 3, 15 to 25 and 29, that's my favorite passage that talks
about our union with the Lord, because Paul says very specifically that a promise was given to
Abraham's seed, and he specifies, and he says, seed singular, not seeds plural. That's the,
that's the, the wording that he uses. He said not seeds. He said seed singular, not seeds plural. So
he said it's one. It's not two of them. Then he goes, then, and he said, and Christ is that seed.
So when God gave a promise to Abraham's seed, he said he was giving it, that promise to Abraham's
seed, which is Christ. Then in verse 29, he said, and you are that seed. So Paul had talked about
the fact, hey, don't take it as plural, because it's not plural. It's only one. I mean, he spelled
it out. We didn't have to infer that from scripture and realize, oh, well, you know what?
Some theologian realized one time, you know what? That's actually a singular word. Paul spelled it
out so we wouldn't miss it. He said, Christ is that seed, and you are that seed. Not, not plural,
but singular. Paul spelled it out. He wanted us to know that there is no way in which we're just
kind of conjoined or together in the same body or anything like that. He says, no, it's one spirit,
one seed. It mentions in 1 Corinthians 6, 17, like I mentioned earlier, that's where it references
how we're one with him. It said one with him in spirit. Spirit is the seed of our identity.
We have spirit, soul, and body, and we get confused and frustrated, and we have all kinds
of doubts in our, in how we interact with our world, if we think our identity is in our soul
or identity is in our body. But it's not. Our identity is in our spirit. So our very identity
is in the place that we are unified as one seed, not two, but one seed in spirit with Christ.
So we have this much solid foundation of his love and of his, and in oneness with spirit to be able
to, to be able to have a solid foundation from which to trust that we can, that to be able to
trust into the point where we can shift into rest, because all we're having to do to shift
into rest is to believe him, which we'll be talking about why that is in just a second.
But anyway, so those are two very, very important things. So those are the two foundations. I wanted
to give us maybe like a five minute break really quick. So I show that it is 1106. I think for some
of y'all, well, I didn't know about Hawaii. Sorry, Jeanette. I, who knows what it is in Hawaii right
now. Five minutes for everybody. I show that it's currently like 1106. And so five more minutes,
so we get like 1111 for central standard time for Yenny and I. So she and I are on the same time.
So oh, and Will, I forgot. I forgot Bill is as well. And then, and then Jean,
Janine, I'm like singing in my head. Janine is in Atlanta. So we're all in different times.
So just take like about five minutes, and we'll be back. And then we will be talking about
and two trees, which are two different ways in which we can operate in life. And we're two
different choices that we're constantly being presented with, which is rest and unrest,
so that we can recognize when we're when we have a choice.
and so that we can know, oh, this is what I'm supposed to, this is what I have the opportunity
to choose. In other words, in other words, clear the fog so we won't be so confused. Like, Lord,
what's going on? We have a bit more of a foundation. And then we'll be talking about
the three realms, which is spirit, soul, and body, and operating in each one of those.
And then after that, we talk about shifting into rest, which is always my favorite. Of course,
everything's my favorite, and I always say that. Okay, so I'll see y'all in about five minutes.
you