faithful promise, new season •

izzy's playlists!
Show & Tell
🪼
tumblr dot com
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

Love Begins
KIROKAZE
taylor price

titsay

Kiana Khansmith
Game of Thrones Daily

pixel skylines
NASA

blake kathryn
todays bird

★
Misplaced Lens Cap
Cosimo Galluzzi
trying on a metaphor

seen from Italy

seen from Ukraine

seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Japan

seen from South Africa

seen from United States
seen from Philippines
seen from Australia
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from T1

seen from Australia
seen from China

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Canada
seen from United States

seen from United States
@j-ustbear-blog
faithful promise, new season •
The Hidden Promise of Trust (#wtsdevo belief)
The word ‘trust’ probably stirs multiple things in your mind. The word, by definition, is typically described as:
“A firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something.”
Entrusting literally means that we assign responsibility for something with someone other that ourselves. Trust is no small feat.
Jesus modelled trust better than anyone that has ever walked this earth. His final words on the cross are truly mind-blowing: ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit’ (Luke 23: 46). The reality of those words strung together, and spoken from what was the most painful and desperate context, are shattering. He breathed trust to his very last breath. He lived in and through it. From death to life, He walked in total surrender. Yet the Bible doesn’t even begin to touch the full magnitude of trust He had in His Father to lead and strengthen Him in all that he was while on earth. His trust was hidden in His oneness with the Father.
I believe this is who we are to follow; to entrust our lives to the God who formed us from dust and breathed the fullness of His glory into us. This is the ultimate calling for our lives.
Thank goodness His dependability and reliability have spanned throughout generations. In fact, He has a totally clean sheet with regards to faithfulness. His goodness exceeds and overshoots the skies, by an infinite increment. We live in the hands of a God who can be trusted.
Jeremiah 17 reveals a beautiful picture of what this life of trust looks like.
“But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.” Jeremiah 17: 7-8
The hidden promise contained within these verses is astounding: blessing flows when we choose to place and position our trust in Him. Do you know how many more times the words blessed and trust are positioned alongside each other in the Bible? I will let you discover that one.
There is something to be untapped in the realm of trust. When we place our trust in God, there is a significant exchange that happens. In surrender, we are planted and rooted, not with micro-roots, but those that reach deep into the water, roots that last. Surrender is not easy, but endurance and joy are blessings that follow deep trust. One of the most incredible things is that trust in Him supernaturally allows us to remain, even in trials. This is the upside-down nature of the Kingdom. Trust strengthens both who we are and our confident hope, hope that will not lead to disappointment. We offer Him trust, and He enriches our vision.
The by-product of trust in the nature and character of the Father is that fruitfulness doesn’t cease - in other words, life flows from a posture of trust. Why? Because He is fruitfulness and He is blessing, and when we entrust our lives into the hands of fruitfulness, our lives explode.
Trust allows something much larger than life - much more than the eye can see - to take place within us. Trust in Him actually moves us into oneness with His heart, and this oneness is what He has always longed for.
I dare you, right where you are, to live in the confident assurance and freedom in Him that you were born for.
_______________________________________________________________________
Devotional Series: Belief (#wtsdevo belief)
By: Ella // Personal // Walk the Same
Afternoon type - based on Bethel Music’s ‘It is well’. Go check out the album, it’s beautiful.
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/the-drop/you-make-me-brave
Leaning right back on this today:
“He hushes the storm to a calm and to a gentle whisper, so that the waves of the sea are still.” Psalm 107:29
- Brennan Manning
Long Before
Words by Ella Phillips
“Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.” (Ephesians 1 : 3-6 MSG)
Ephesians 1 reveals the nature of God in a way that I still can’t logically fit in my mind. I don’t think I ever will.
His affection and affinity for our hearts was so magnetic that He had to send His Son, so that we could wholly live in the love that He set before us at the very beginning of time.
He is a Father that has always had us in the forefront of His mind and the focus of His heart. This was a reality long before time. Let that settle in. His plan to give all of Himself through Jesus was and will always be the ultimate expression of His heart for you and I that the universe has ever witnessed. Think about that, just for a second. His love couldn’t be contained in Heaven. His affection and affinity for our hearts was so magnetic that He had to send His Son, so that we could wholly live in the love that He set before us at the very beginning of time.
This wasn’t just an event. It literally changed everything. In His extravagant grace, we are now united with Him because chose freedom for us. He invited us into His family, into the celebration - one that bears the fullness of life and spacious hope. Ephesians 1 also confirms who we really are. Alongside and within the revealing of His nature, we are revealed. We are long-loved, wanted and fully celebrated people!
And our calling and our ransom is completely sealed from eternity to eternity.
In Jesus are declared to be fully, completely and wholly IN the family; because of nothing we have done, but because of all that He did. The greatest act of love the world has ever seen; one that now positions us as Sons and daughters, as righteous heirs. And because we are His, He is filled with uncontainable joy.
Living rooted + unshaken
Have you ever felt like you’ve been in a barren place? A place where joy seems a stretch, faith looks more like doubt, and peace doesn’t feel near. At all. I know I have felt like this, many times. I have been in seasons in which it feels close to impossible to even cling onto the fringes of truth.
But I have also come to know that in these places, we are called higher.
We are invited to set our feet on the unchangeable security of the Rock.
The Father’s greatest dream over us and for all eternity is a desire for real connection. Our lives were designed to abide in and only in Him. The place where all life is found; every good and perfect gift (James 1:17).
In Him lie hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Colossians 2:3). That means all joy, all peace. All fulfilment. Unless we are living from and within that place, we literally build on shifting sands. That can seem quite an uncomfortable reality. Hear me out.
It is His kindness is to remind us of this. Why? Because we are called to live lives that grow down deep. Lives that have more-than-surface substance, that don’t just bear impressive exteriors but are rich in intimacy with Jesus.
Colossians 2:7 says we are to ‘have the roots [of our being] firmly and deeply planted, being continually built up in Him, becoming increasingly more confirmed and established in the faith, just as we were taught, and abounding and overflowing in it with thanksgiving.’.
How do we have strong roots? By leaning on who He is and relying on His nature. By resting upon His word and clinging that which He has promised. Do you believe, today, that His words never return void?
He is all about making much out of mustard-seed faith.
Kingdom growth often looks a bit upside down. Often it looks like laying down, sometimes it even outwardly looks like losing. But know this, His faithfulness is steadfast, and there’s a strength that flows out of weakness and dependence.
David knew strength this well. ‘I saw God before me for all time. Nothing can shake me; He’s right by my side. I’m glad from the inside out, ecstatic; I’ve pitched my tent in the land of hope.’ (Acts 2:25-26).
In the midst of everything that David saw around him and in the tension he walked between the now and-not yet, there was one place worth placing all his hope, all his strength and all his trust. He pitched the tent of his heart in the land of hope.
Hope means that we trust and wait for what is still unseen. What is still yet to be.
Choosing faith above the natural circumstances that there will be fullness because we are connected to Fullness. The most amazing exchange happens when know Hope and when we build our lives upon it; we give it away, freely. When we choose to place our whole being, completely, totally on Him – hope spills over as an outflow of our abiding. We literally release it into the circumstances around us.
And this is His sure promise for us: that when we place our hope within His, and our lives are furnished with abundance, even in the most broken and barren places.
When we entrust our lives to the Sure Place, we remain unshaken. So where have you pitched your tent today?
http://moreprecious.co.uk/2016/02/20/unshaken/
“Having cancelled and blotted out and wiped away the handwriting of the bond, with its legal decrees and demands and which was in force and stood against us - this He set aside and cleared completely out of our way by nailing it to the cross.”
Colossians 2 v 14
Expectant beginnings • 2 0 1 6
Psalm 66 v 11-13 // And this is Your faithfulness; that our lives are furnished in abundance, that which You ensure even flows in the most broken and difficult and barren places. Unsparing, devoted, abiding and fervent - and You say that there is no limit! Hopelessness meets abundance in you. There will be fullness, there will be life and there will be joy - because that's who You are. That is Your sure promise.
Chimneys + chalk skies // DURHAM
Did I forget to mention how great this city is? •
Been won over, all over. South Africa, you're magnificent.
Now on Instagram!
Check out ellaphillipsdesign. Peace and love!
kicking back with gold companions + the ice cold sea
Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.
Katherine Henson (via bled)
"God is gentle with us, and we are his beautiful handiwork- but we are not finished handiwork, yet. And as long as there's breath in our lungs and days left to live, we won't be finished. When you're spinning a bowl/mug and try to thin the walls of it too quickly, you tear holes in the side of it and you have to start over. If you try and shape it harshly, the whole thing goes off center. And God knows this is true of us fragile humans too. He works slowly and precisely because he is gentle and good and wants to shape us into beautiful people." - Jessica Sklba My beautiful friend gave me this piece from her first ever pottery batch. But she gave me so much more with these words. He is the Potter, we are the clay.