“Too often the cares of your day hinder your ability to trust Me. You look at the challenges before you and they loom big in your eyes. Trust Me! Trust My promises to you. I am faithful. Often I delay answers to make you turn your heart around to Me. When I am more important than your problems, answers will come. I love you! You are Mine. I will take care of you!”

Mark 4:18-19 AMP 

18) And the ones sown among the thorns are others who hear the Word;

19) Then the cares and anxieties of the world and distractions of the age, and the pleasure and delight and false glamour and deceitfulness of riches, and the craving and passionate desire for other things creep in and choke and suffocate the Word, and it becomes fruitless.

 2 Cor. 1:8-10 NIV  

8) We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.

9) Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.

10) He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us…

Father God is developing a bridal heart and the same character that Jesus has in those who will respond. We must be like Him in our hearts if we are to intimately walk with Him and live passionately for Him. Can you imagine Jesus coming for a church that is selfish, self-centered, and harbors murder in her heart?

Can you imagine Him enjoining Himself to one who looks to the delicacies around her that please her more than He pleases her? Does it seem possible that Jesus would function in a relationship where His bride would not have the same desires, the same motives, and the same purposes in all that they do together? To think so is ludicrous!

How then is Jesus going to form us, who need His character developed in us during these end days, before He comes?  He is going to allow us to see who we really are. He will allow us to face ourselves, so that we can come to repentance. He will do what it takes to expose our sin. Each time we repent, He will change us to be more like Him. It is an act of astounding love on His part. It is also our choice to respond or reject His efforts.

Make me who I need to be, Lord,

Jim Corbett