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About the episode:

Jaime Luce’ testimony has daunting personal mountains and treacherous financial valleys. She was trapped in day-to-day stress and couldn’t see a way forward. But how she started is not how she finished! And she wants you to know God has a plan for your life too, no matter how tough it seems. Today, Jaime has been married to the love of her life for almost three decades, owns two companies, and has become an author and podcaster. God’s way is always the blessed way!  Learn more.

Related reading:

• How To Heal Through Responsibility and Faith
• How To Use Your Kingdom Authority In Prayer
• Plug Into A Warfare Prayer Source
• Have a Different Spirit
• Be A Good Gardner

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Full Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated and not perfect. We hope it blesses you.

0:00:03 – Jaime Luce

Welcome to the Jamie Luce Podcast. I’m your host, Jaime Luce. Thank you for listening today. All of my blogs, social and YouTube links can be found on my website, jamieluce.com. If you enjoy this podcast, you can support it by liking, subscribing, getting notified and sharing this podcast. Another way you can help is by rating and reviewing on Apple Podcast. My hope and goal in every episode is to give you tools found in Scripture, either by teaching, discussions, testimonies or interviews that encourage and equip you as you navigate living a real Christian walk in a difficult world. I would love to hear from you Whether you have a comment, question or prayer request. You can email me at mail at jamieluce.com. If you’re watching on YouTube, drop me a comment. I’d love to partner with you on your journey of faith. If you’re listening today on any podcast platform, take a screenshot and tag me and I’ll post it to my Instagram story. And now join me for today’s episode. Welcome to the Jamie Luce Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me tuning in today On this podcast.

My hope is always to take us into the Word of God and find something fresh, some fresh bread. We all need fresh bread. I love croutons on a salad, don’t get me wrong, but there is something about fresh baked bread. Not only does the smell get me, but, boy, I love the taste of fresh bread, and maybe you do too. You know Jesus’s birth was in Bethlehem, and Bethlehem was the place of bread, and we want us. Jesus is our fresh bread, right? He is what we nourish ourselves on. The Word of God is our bread. It is the bread of life.

And today I want to be able to impart something to you that I think might be fresh, maybe seen with some fresh eyes. I’m going to read a familiar passage of scripture out of the book of Ezekiel, and it might be familiar to you. It was familiar to me, but I felt the Holy Spirit stirring me to look a little deeper, to maybe not allow myself to see it with the same eyes that I’ve seen it before. Do you ever come to the Word of God wanting to? You know you’re going to read a passage you’re familiar with, but you feel like you know, if you’re not careful, you’ll just read over it. You really won’t read it. You won’t enter the text because you think you know already what it has to say.

And this particular passage really does have a familiar meaning, and I’m not necessarily bringing you a different meaning, but I think maybe the perspective that I want us to look at it today may be different than what you’ve looked at it before, and so, if you will get your Bibles out, I want us to do a really good Bible study on this passage. And we’re going to be in Ezekiel 47. This is the last book, or see not the last book, last last, the second to the last chapter I’ll get it right of Ezekiel before he finishes his book, and he is encountered by God several times in the way that he receives, as a prophet, the Word of God. Each time he is just so overwhelmed by what he sees and when he recognizes the presence of God that he just falls on his face and the Holy Spirit will take him into this vision and show him things that are so powerful. And they have their literal meaning all the warnings to the different nations. But this particular passage has some literal meaning, but it has a lot of spiritual insight and meaning that goes beyond just the natural, if you were to look at it in the natural, and as I was reading this and we’re going to read this in just a moment, but as I was reading it, I came upon the realization that there are two ways that we live, places that we live spiritually. One of those places is the river of life. It’s the river of life where life is teeming. You find life everywhere, you find abundance, you find health. And then there are the places that are the marshes and the swamp, and we’re going to read that in the text and so, if you will today with me, in fact I’m going to pray before we begin. I think it’s important that we come to this text ready to see, you know, if we’re going to evaluate life, our lives, correctly.

Jesus made it clear that we are to remove any planks in our own eyes before we are able to rightly see a speck in someone else’s eye, and it’s important for us to be able to see clearly. You’ve got decisions to make. You are facing things. You have decisions with family, personal life decisions. You might be wondering am I supposed to live here physically? Am I to move my location? Am I to enter into this business deal? Am I to be in this particular ministry? What am I supposed to do with the circumstance in my family and in my relationships?

And we are looking for answers. We need to see clearly what God is saying to us. So let me begin by praying If you’ll just in your heart’s bow before the Lord and let’s just open ourselves to his searchlight to show us what we need to see, maybe to remove some scales that might be on our eyes where we are blind, and come honestly before the Lord this morning or this afternoon, this evening, whenever you’re watching this podcast but or listening, heavenly Father, we just come to you knowing that you hold every answer. You are the creator of everything that is seen and unseen. You are the author. So, lord, we bow our hearts and our eyes before your word, this today, and we ask that you would open our eyes, that you would allow our spirits to be free from anything that would entangle us, that our minds would be free and that we could dive into your word and receive fresh bread today that gives us the strength to not only live, but to live in abundance and live in power, to live in your authority and our callings and in the place that you have asked us to be, to make the decisions you are calling us to make and to do it and strengthen in faith. We ask for your anointing over this text today, over my words, lord, I pray that it be your word and not mine, that your agenda be accomplished and not anything that I would want, father, that you have. You have something you want to say to your people. I pray that I get out of the way and that you are able to communicate to your people today. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the sustained word that your word is life, and it is a life forever. It doesn’t change. It will accomplish what it was set out to do and I thank you for that today. In Jesus’ name, we pray amen.

Okay, so get out your Bibles. Let’s go to Ezekiel 47. I’m going to read verses one through 12 to get us started. Okay, one through 12. I’m going to read this first portion out of the new living and a little bit later I’m going to read out of the ESV, a different portion of scripture That’ll be in the book of Revelation when we get there. Let’s start with verse one.

In my vision, the man brought me back to the entrance of the temple. There I saw a stream flowing east from beneath the door of the temple and passing to the right of the altar on its south side. The man brought me outside the wall through the north gateway and led me around to the eastern entrance. There I could see the water flowing out through the south side of the east gateway, measuring as he went, he took me along the stream for 1,750 feet and then led me across. The water was up to my ankles. He measured off another 1,750 feet and led me across again. This time the water was up to my knees. After another 1,750 feet it was up to my waist. Then he measured another 1,750 feet and the river was too deep to walk through. He asked me I’m sorry, I skipped a verse and the river was too deep to walk across. It was deep enough to swim in, but too deep to walk through. He asked me have you been watching, son of man? Then he led me back along the riverbank. When I returned I was surprised by the sight of many trees growing on both sides of the river. Then he said to me this river flows east through the desert into the valley of the Dead Sea.

The waters of this stream will make the salty waters of the Dead Sea fresh and pure. There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows. Fish will abound in the Dead Sea, for its waters will become fresh. Life will flourish wherever this water flows. Fishermen will stand along the shores of the Dead Sea all the way from Hengedi to Egliem. The shores will be covered with nets, drying in the sun. Fish of every kind will fill the Dead Sea, just as they fill the Mediterranean, but the marshes and swamps will not be purified. They will still be salty. Fruit trees of all kinds will grow along both sides of the river. The leaves of these trees will never turn brown and fall and there will always be fruit on their branches. There will be a new crop every month, for they are watered by the river flowing from the temple. The fruit will be food and the leaves for healing Boy.

I just, I love this passage. There are a couple things I want us to notice before we really kind of dive into a particular direction. One of those things and I mentioned it here at the very beginning that there are two different flows. You have the flow that is purifying, the flow of the river, and you have the dead sea, that dead sea that it’s going into. Well, I’ll wait on the dead sea. We’ve got the marshes and the swamps, okay. So you have the dead sea. The river flows in the dead sea, brings life to everything that was in a dead sea, and then you have the marsh and the swamps. What I found so interesting was, in the middle of the description of everything that is alive and flowing, we see the mention of these swamps and marshes, and then we go right back to the flourishing of everything that’s happening. That interruption there, I think, is very intentional. I think that there’s a reason it is stuck right in the middle of that text. I kind of want to deal with that a little bit. I want you to think in a little bit of contrast with me today, and I wanted to ask you this question. I want you to be thinking about this as we talk about this.

When we begin in verse three it says that because we’re going to look at where do we live, the question of where do we live, where do you think you’re living right now? Do you see your life? Do you see your relationships? Do you see the workplace, your business? Do you see your ministry? Do you see your own spiritual life, your relationship with Jesus Christ? Do you see that as a river of life teeming with life, life coming in every form, on every side, in every depth, in every way. Do you see life abounding all around you continuously, every month? Do you see healing in places that need healing? And I’m not just talking about physical healing, I’m talking about in your heart, places that need healing. Do you see that happening? Are you living in the flow of the river or are you living in the marsh, in the confusion, in the crowded confusion, messy, dirtied waters of marsh and swamp?

You know, if you live in the United States, the term over the last seven years that we have become very familiar with eight years, is the word swamp and the need to drain the swamp, wanting to drain the swamp. What do we mean by that? What are we saying by that? We’re saying that a swamp, in every characteristic, is bad, is evil, is muddied, is oh, what’s the word I’m looking for corrupted. There’s nothing good, no life that comes out of that. Everything bad is in the swamp. I mean, when you think of swamp creatures, we make films, the movie industry makes films about swamp creatures, the idea of zombies and the whole ridiculous thing that’s all over TV with zombies. It’s death walking around. It is swamp living, marsh living versus a river of life, life abounding, health. I mean. Picture the two drastic differences. They are so contrary to one another. There is nothing the same in both of those ecosystems. Nothing is the same. They are complete opposites. There is nothing. They share nothing familiar. They are two opposites.

And I want you to look at your spiritual life. I want you to look at your natural, external life. Where are you living? Where are you living right now? Where does it feel like you’re living? And I want us to address that, because this man, when Ezekiel receives this vision, he is living in exile. He’s not living in what looks like the bounty and the fresh bread of God. He’s not in his land. He has been exiled out of his land. He is receiving words of encouragement for the people to let them know that they are dealing with the consequences of the decisions that have been made and a refusal to do it God’s way, a refusal to conform to God, to conform to his ways, and look at our world the mess that it’s in it refuses to conform to the way that God says brings life. So if we understand that there is a way to live in the flow, we tend to think of the flow. Now, this is my personal. I’m just giving you my opinion here. You may differ in your opinion, but we’ve got churches. They might be named with River in their name. They may talk about having conferences with River.

I put on a women’s conference years ago with this very passage in mind. First to swim in was the name of it. And we love the presence of God, we want to be in the presence of God. Those are all wonderful things, those are good desires. The problem is we tend to think that from some outside source, that God is going to all of a sudden knock us over with this river, that he’s going to all of a sudden pour over us a river and there’s gonna be waters to swim in. But that’s not what the text says.

The text says, if we look at the beginning here in verse three, measuring as he went. So there is a process that this man that Ezekiel is being led by takes him and begins to measure. So this is a process. They go through a measuring and he took me along the stream. So he sees a stream beginning and he’s walking along and they measure 1,750 feet. Now that’s not a short distance. They go, this measure of distance and when they do, and he’s led across that river at that point, at that measurement, the water is up to their ankles.

And so I want you to think of your life when there is a beginning, when you recognize that God is setting something before you, all of a sudden there is a river that Ezekiel sees, something is before him and he’s being led to go look at this river. He is being led to go measure okay. And in your life you are called in a direction. If you are following the leading of the Holy Spirit in your life and you’re going the direction he’s taking you and he’s measuring out a distance before you and he says now we’re gonna cross right here. And when you begin to cross, and you’re in the beginning stages of that following, there’s water that you can walk through. It’s right at your ankles, kind of like. You know I don’t know if you’ve ever been to if you go to the beach I live by a beach and when you first go, you can just kind of walk right at the shoreline and your feet get wet. There’s just enough to get your feet wet. You know the wave will come and kind of hit your ankles and hit your feet. Or if you’re in a pool and you have one of those gradual pools where you can just walk in and you just kind of wade with your ankles you know if you even picture yourself at a pool and you just put your feet in. You’re just kind of testing the waters. We like to say, see if it’s too cold, see if it’s comfortable to feel things out. And this is the beginning stage. We’re on that road and we’re figuring some things out. We’re going in that direction.

There’s been some time, there’s been some measurement and we see that there’s waters up to the ankle. But our journey isn’t finished there. We don’t just wade in at the ankle, we continue to follow the flow of the river, we continue to be led. We have another measurement to go. The idea is that we are to continue to grow and to go into deeper places, not to remain in shallow waters.

My mother used to teach a message. We loved this that the comparison she gave to are you a guppy or are you a whale? Because guppies remain in the shallow water. They’re up there at the shallow water and they’re just all over each other. They’re happy to be there. There’s a ton of them and they’re just everywhere. But those little guppies are not going to survive in deep water.

And if you are a whale and you’re the kind who likes to dive very deep, stay down there for long periods of time. You want the deep things of God, you want to understand his ways, you want to follow him where he takes you, and you may not know where that goes. And it gets very deep. The darker you go. The deeper you go, the darker it can get. And you dive deep before you make your way back up. And whales cannot survive in shallow water. They will die. If you are a whale, you have to live in the deep waters. We don’t breach ourselves.

Listen. If you child of God or someone who takes God seriously, you are in this for the long measurement, for the long haul. You are one who wants everything God has for you. You’re somebody who wants to live in the flow and the abundance that God has for you. If you are that kind of person, you cannot live in shallow waters. You cannot remain in shallow waters with shallow people. A whale cannot live with guppies. You’ve got to go deep. You’ve got to find your pods of whales who go deep with you, and those are smaller numbers. I don’t know if you realize that, but guppies are in huge numbers together, but whales travel in these families of pods and there’s not a whole lot of them together, but they are together and there are fewer of them. There are fewer whales than there are guppies, because fewer are willing to go into the deep Fewer, are able to sustain those deeper waters. But, child of God, listen to this passage, because I want you to see this, I want you to get a picture of this. He says in verse four okay, we’re going through this growing process. This is our. We’re entering into a different phase now because once the water gets past the ankles, you can’t just kind of splash around and wait around, right, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in water that has current.

A river has a very strong current. I used to go as a young girl with my aunt and her family to the river and we would take our tubes or just wear a life jacket and we would go, jump in at a certain part of the river and the river would carry us down very quickly and there was one section where we could hurry up and get out of the water and go right back up on the land to the spot that we jumped off to begin with and you had to swim with all of your might to make it to the side just in time before you pass it, because that current was gonna take you. The current was gonna take you and the river of God has a current. It’s powerful and strong, but you have to be one who understands how that works, because the further you go into the water, the less control you actually have, the more control the river has. So if you are wanting to live a life where God is in control, where God is the one who is designing the direction of your life, where God is ordaining where you turn and where you go, what stream you are in to nourish the area he wants to take you, the deeper the water, the more control God has.

So if we move in this measurement another 1,750 feet and are led across that water, this time the water is up to the knees. It’s harder to walk through. I’m sure you’ve done it. I’m sure you know what this feels like, the pressure that comes against your legs when you’re trying to move forward at the knees with water. Then all of a sudden you get to the waist. Okay, you get to the waist and I don’t know if you’ve tried to walk across water. You know we’re not talking about going in the flow right now. We’re talking about how he had to cross this water. When you’re trying to cross water, especially when water is at the waist, it’s slow, it’s a little slower going. So I wanna encourage some of you.

Today you feel like this process is taking a long time. This has been hard on you. This growth process hasn’t been as easy as you thought. But deeper water isn’t easy to maneuver. Deeper water takes more strength. Why do you think a whale is the size that? It is the size of the animal and the power of the muscle in that animal is to be able to maneuver in deep waters. So when you think of passing through waters and the slower that we go, that you just have to understand this process. Don’t be frustrated If you’re in the flow of where God wants you, even when you come against the weight of that water, the power of that stream and the resistance that comes. Folks, resistance comes. Water is weighty.

We just recently in the news had the accident that took place of the submarine and they call it a submarine. It was kind of a. It wasn’t a professionally made submarine, so I really don’t like calling it that, but they went down in their submarine these billionaires did and the submarine blew up. The water pressure and the amount of oxygen they had and the way it was made. They had no way to get out. They had no way. It was a death machine really. It had no way to survive. But they went down under the pressure and they exploded under the pressure. I mean that’s horrible to think about. It is the most tragic and horrible thing. Horrible to think about.

And yet that is when you wade into deep waters, the pressure will come, the weight of that call, the weight of following the Lord, will ensue, and you have to know that the enemy will bring resistance against you. But you, if you’re in the flow, if you’re in the flow, please hear me you are to be encouraged. Just know it’s part of the territory. Just know I have said yes to the Lord, I am following the path the Lord has for me and if I’m on that path, this is living water. This water is fresh and pure, purifies. This water brings life to everything it touches. This is a you wanna be in this water.

So, even when you feel the resistance, it’s kinda like adjusting your. Let’s pretend we are in a submarine. We’re gonna scope up right and we’re gonna look up and we’re going to see where we are. We’re gonna remember where we are. We’re going to know this is what God has for us, that we’re going to remember our perspective. God, if you have called me in this direction life is in this direction. You might be purifying me. I may be going through the resistance of purification. I might be going through a time where I am being made different, and we’ll get to that. I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself, but now let’s continue. Let’s look at the next verse.

He measured then another 1,070 feet. Do you see the progression? Deeper than deeper still, than yet even deeper still. And process and time to measure these things out. To the, where the river was too deep to walk across, it was deep enough to swim in. Now, the beauty of getting deep enough to swim in.

When you abandon that you cannot walk this way anymore and you must be forced to swim. There’s a beauty in that, because to swim is easier than to walk in that water, to abandon yourself to the flow of that river. You find your buoyancy, you find your ability, you find the muscles you have and able you to swim instead of walk and force against it. There is an ease that comes to flowing with the river Water to swim in. Folks, the Lord has for you a path that, if you will abandon yourself to his ways, the ways that the river takes you, if you abandon yourself to what God wants, to his ways, you will find that the road you walk is easier. You will be fighting less. You won’t have the struggle will not be so deep inside.

It’s why Paul can sit in a prison, chained up, and yet sing the praises of God. Why? Because he was free. Though his body was going through an imprisonment, though he was chained, though there were bondages on the outside, though there were hindrances on the outside, inside his spirit was free, he was free. He was so free. The entire jail was made free. Then the jailer and his entire family were saved. There’s a reason that we are in the flow. We are in. It’s being willing to abandon ourselves to that flow, being willing to give ourselves over.

Folks, you’ve got to think about what is God asking you to do? How is he asking you to do it? All of Ephesians? I believe it’s Ephesians. Is it six? It’s three? I believe it’s three.

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That everything we do, it’s Christ in us is what I’m looking for. Christ in us, and what? Everything that we do when we have Christ in us, the hope of glory, christ in us. If everything we do is done in Christ, then everything we do is done from the place of Christ right. We are to be conformed into His image. So whenever we are wanting to know how should I approach the situation, how should I deal with what I’m dealing with? How am I going to change what I need changing, it has to be done. If you’re going to do it, living in the river of God, in the flow of God. That means doing it the way that Christ enables you to do it. That means doing it in His image. That means doing it the way Christ would do it. The old, what would Jesus do? Right, it’s knowing that, as a saved, sanctified, holy servant of God, there is a way that looks like Jesus, and I need to do it the way Jesus would do it. And sometimes that means Jesus did.

He confronted people, he corrected people, he loved people, saved people, he allowed people to deal to be well. How would I say that? There was times when he said he’s not condemning you. There are times, though, when he called things out with people and told them they were of their father the devil, letting them know what their condemnation would hold. You don’t serve the God of this universe. You’re serving a false God. You’re serving a manipulator. You’re serving a liar. You’re serving a. I mean, we can serve all kinds of things, but he would call it out.

Jesus wept. He went through emotions. He was hungry. He said he had no place to lay his head. He talks about being tired. He needed to pull away to rejuvenate with his disciples because he was exhausted, always giving out so much. Jesus had real emotions. He dealt with his family not believing who. He was, dealt with betrayal and he handled each thing a particular way. And if you don’t know how to act, we need to get into the word and see how did Jesus handle this situation. You know there were people who were angry.

Jesus told the parable about hiring someone to work and then paying them at the end of the day and throughout the day he’d go out and hire another person and agreed to pay them the same price. By the end of the day he’d pay them the same. Well, he gets to the end of the day and that last person he found at the very end he paid him just as much as he paid the first person. Well, the first person comes to him and accuses him of not being fair and just and saying you only paid me this and you paid that other person who only worked this amount of time the same amount. And Jesus tells the man I didn’t. In his explanation he’s saying you’re wrong. You’re acting like I sinned against you, that I’ve done something against you. I’ve done no wrong and I’ve not sinned against you. I’ve done exactly what I promised you. We agreed upon that. There’s nothing evil or wrong about that. The one who has sinned is you. You have envy of somebody else and what they have.

Peter sort of went through this. Jesus corrected him when Peter was wanting to know what kind of death that John was gonna have. And Peter said what is that to you? Your relationship is with me. Your relationship isn’t through this other person in me. Our relationship isn’t based off of my relationship with that other person. Your relationship with me is based off of your relationship with me, what I’ve done for you, what you and I have agreed upon. And we have to get our eyes off of what other people do, what other people want, what other people expect, and we have to say Lord, what do you want? What way do you want to take me? What do you expect from me? That’s the way we need to walk. That’s the direction we need to go. That is the depth that we need to learn to walk in, that’s, the waters that take us deeper into God, to not be moved by what’s happening around us, not be moved by the people, by the circumstances. Like I said, I’ll go back to Paul Not making a decision in prison, to complain and to have bitterness and not trust in the Lord because he’s sitting in a prison and in chains.

He wasn’t jealous of other disciples who were not in prison. He had no. His whole frame of reference, his whole attitude, his whole perspective was that he loved the fact that he got to suffer with the sufferings of Christ and everything that he did. He did it unto the Lord and if the Lord had him in prison, so be it. If you allowed me to be here, then your will be done. He’s singing praises to God and the Lord is so pleased. The Lord is so pleased that his chains fall off.

It reminds me of the three Hebrew boys. They were thrown into a fiery furnace not because they did anything wrong. They were thrown into that furnace because they refused to do the wrong. They refused to serve the gods of this world. They refused to bow to a false God. They refused to do it a different way. They were going to serve God, god’s way. They were not going to care about the persecution that came against them and because of it they were persecuted. I mean, the word tells us that’s what’s going to happen. We’ll get to that later, but that’s what’s going to happen.

And the beauty was that here they were bound In the natural. They were bound and they were thrown into a fiery furnace for standing up for what was right, for doing what was right. The weight of going deep into the river of God was heavy upon them. The weight was heavy, but the beauty was that in that fiery furnace it says that a fourth man, like the Son of God, was there with them and their chains. They were unbound and when they came out of that fiery furnace they had no, nothing that bound them on them. The fire did not burn them. Instead, it removed the hindrances. When they gave themselves with all of their heart to the ways of God, when they gave themselves to the weight of the river of God, the chains that bound them fell off. They went from walking in the river to swimming in the river. The weight will feel different. I want to encourage you with this today. The weight will feel different. The chains and the shackles will fall off if you are willing to go deep into the river of God, if you are willing to say God, I want to know you, I want to know your ways. I’m not satisfied to stay here in the shallow ground. Take me deeper, lord. Cause me to follow you as deep as you are taking me. I want to go as deep as you will take me.

I was reading some commentary on this and it was interesting because it implied one of the commentators was saying that to go this deep, it’s not just the unknown, it’s going so deep and you don’t know the way and you don’t know how deep it is. It just you know. It lends itself to confusion for some because they would worry, they might worry I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what to do with this, I’ve lost kind of controls. But the beauty is to go with God, to follow him into his depths, to see what we could see, things that are unknown to us, because there’s so much that’s unknown to us that we could never go, will never be able to exhaust the depth of who God is, and it will have all of eternity to try, but we will never be able to exhaust his depths, there’s always more to measure and go. There’s always a place he’s leading us. We don’t stalemate. That’s the. Let’s go to that. Let’s go to the contrast, because the contrast here we see.

Have you watched? Have you been watching, son of man? Have you been watching the way I’ve been taking you, that I’ve led you? Have you watched how the waters are increased? Have you watched that I’m there’s a depth and a change? Have you? Have you been paying attention to what I’ve been showing you? Are you really looking with eyes that can see? And he says then he led me back along the riverbank. When I returned, I was surprised by the sight of many growing trees growing on both sides of the river. He’s saying you don’t even realize the growth. Have you seen? Have you really been watching I’ve taken you? Do you realize what I’ve done when you follow me? Have you really looked at the beauty of what I’ve done? Have you really seen the growth and the life that is now happened because of following me in these depths? Have you looked at your life? Child of God, I’m asking you this question have you looked? Have you looked back to see when you have followed God with all your heart, when you’ve abandoned to his ways to the river of God. And you have seen, all of a sudden, when you look back, where did all these trees come from? Where did all this growth come from? Where did that come from? How is this? Wow, because that is what happens. That is the result.

He says there will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows. So if you need life today, he’s telling you, if you will stay in the river of God, stay with the flow of God, in the presence of God. And I’m not talking about when we say you know, there are many churches that emphasize just spending all their time in what they call the presence of God, and they may do things and say things that look, you’re not sure if that’s God or not God. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about living a spirit led life. I’m talking about living in the spirit, not moments you have in a church service. I’m talking about being led your life, producing life, because you are following what God has called you to do. You are going the direction he’s telling you to go and you are doing what he’s telling you to do.

And here we see, the waters of the stream will make the salty waters of the dead sea fresh and pure. So he’s saying that there is, and I love this. You know what? I skipped a verse. I want us to read it because this is important. Then he said to me this river flows east, through the desert into the valley of the dead sea. God’s river may take you through desert and valley. That’s not bad. That’s not God abandoning you. If you feel like you are in a desert place and you are in a valley, you have to know that the river of God will go through. You won’t stay, you’re not stuck there. The river of God will go through the desert and through the valley. And so now let’s go back pick up that verse again the waters of the stream will make salty waters of the dead sea fresh and pure.

Now I’m bringing this up because, if you understand, I did a little bit of looking into salt being too salty. Have you ever eaten something that is just way too salty? Or have you ever met somebody and your response after talking to that person was they’re just a little bit salty. Have you ever been a little bit salty? What do we mean by that? Have you ever eaten something that is just way too salty, the very first thing I’m going to need is water. I’m not just going to need the water, I’m going to desire the water. I’m going to be. I’m going to earnestly go after getting water. You are compelled to get water. Okay, if you’ve ever had something too salty, you immediately need to drink water because you need the fresh to affect that saltiness. Why, if you are so salty now? We are the salt of the world. We bring flavor to the world, but we’re not too salty. What that reference is that you are bringing taste. Just like I’m saying that you can have something that is way too salty, you can also eat something and know there is no flavor here and I need to add a little salt.

I’m not talking about adding a little salt. I’m talking about when a dead sea is so full of salt. The salt content is so high that no life can live there. Only death resides there. No fish can live there, no plant life can live there. In fact, you cannot go deep because the salt gives buoyancy and keeps you up, so you cannot go into a flow. It’s dead. There is no flow, it doesn’t flow anywhere, it just sits. It’s dead. People go in to over to Israel now and they go into the dead sea now and they float on top with no effort. The amount of it’s and the smell of sulfur and death is look, I mean, you gotta be willing to do it Now. They say there are healing properties because of the salt. I, you know, I get that. We know salt is a preservative. I’m not negating the benefits of salt. I’m talking about a dead sea.

Folks, if you are not living in the river of life, I want you to look. Where are you living? If you’re not seeing life and teeming around you, where are you living? What’s going on? Is it simply the resistance? It might just be the resistance you’re in. Then take courage, know that you’re going the direction God has and he will continue to push you through and you will bring life to those dead places. If you find yourself in a valley or in a desert right now and you are bringing life, the river will bring life to those places for you. But if you are living in a dead sea where there is no presence of God flowing, where there is no river of God flowing, that’s death, that’s destruction, there’s no hope there. That is the place where we will be if we refuse to be in the flow of God.

It made me think of Lot’s wife. She was a pillar of salt. A pillar of salt, full salt. What did that represent? She was hardened. She wanted what God said you need to leave behind. She wanted the whatever she had in Sodom. She wanted the old life. She was hungering for things that were old. That God delivered her from was delivering her from. She wanted what was familiar back there, but that was death. What rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah? Why did she turn to a pillar of salt? Because the sulfur and salt that God rained down on Sodom and Gomorrah was their punishment. That death was their punishment.

This is serious, folks. It’s serious Whether you see the confusion and the muddiness of a marsh and a swamp. You need clean, fresh water to come through and flow and bring that purification and that beautification and healing and life to come into those places. The only way you’re going to receive that new healing and life is if you get into the flow of God’s presence, that you’re willing to live in the deep waters of God. Now he’ll take you gradually. He won’t overwhelm you. He won’t give you more than you can carry at a time of him. It’s a lie to say that God won’t put on you more than you can bear. People are not reading that scripture properly.

We go through things we can’t bear. That’s why we need Jesus. Hello, I’ve been through things I could not bear on my own. I needed Jesus. He bears them up for me. He carried my cross for me. I could not bear my load of sin. Jesus had to bear that for me.

There are things that we cannot bear. I’m talking about of him, what he gives us, of him the blessing that he gives us. He gives us what we can carry. He’ll test us along the way. He’ll take us to the different measurements and say are you looking? Are you paying attention? Did you see that? Are you growing with me? Are you learning? Are you staying with me? And we need to do that. We need to be looking at those checks and balances in our life to see. But the opposite of that will happen if we do not stay in the flow of life, the flow that God has for us, if we are not hungering after his fresh water and we’ve gotten too much of the salt of the world. Folks, we need to be purified.

Where the river goes, he purifies the reason that this text, and I’m getting back to this now. But the reason that I think that this text finds itself in the middle and then goes back to the beauty of fruit trees growing all along the side, but that these marshes and swamps are right in the middle, is because we might be in the flow of God and we might be going in the direction we know God is telling us to go. But there may be an area of our life that it’s over on the side. There, that river isn’t touching the swamp, that river isn’t touching that marsh. Let me read you this passage. I want you to hear this again Fish of every kind will fill the dead sea, just as. Let’s see. I wanna tell you so you can read it with me. Let’s start. No, let’s go to 11. Let’s go up verse 11. But the marshes and swamps will not be purified, they will still be salty. Fruit trees of every kind will grow along both sides of the river. But what did it say in 11? But the marshes and swamps will not be purified, they will still be salty. I want us to turn. I want you to see this in Revelation.

I’m gonna read this out of the ESV, but Revelation, chapter 22,. It says event to 17. Now the beginning of Revelation 22,. Revelation 22 is the last book, last chapter, last book of the Bible, the end, finito, the omega, the alpha and omega. Okay, it’s the last book, this is the last chapter, and if we were to turn there right now in fact I’m gonna look just so I can give this to you, because this is very interesting.

Here we’re reading Ezekiel 47. Let’s look at how it starts. Actually, let’s go to, let’s look at Revelation 22, verse one, so you hear this. Then the angel showed me now this is John. This is gonna sound like we are reading Ezekiel. This is John the revelator, revelation 22, verse one. Then the angel showed me a river with the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. This is exactly the reference that Ezekiel is making. It flowed down from the center of the main street on each side oh sorry, my page stuck together. On each side Of the river grew the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. That is exactly what is said in Ezekiel.

But let’s jump down to verse 11, because what we’re looking at is the marshes and the swamps, that they will remain. What did we say? They will remain, but the marshes and swamps will not be purified. They will still be salty. Okay, let’s look at verse 11. Let the evil doer still do evil and the filthy still be filthy and the righteous still do right and the holy still be holy.

Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their robes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things. For the churches, I am the root and the descendant of David. The bright morning star, the spirit and the bride say come and let the one who hears say come and let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who desires to take the water of life without price.

Folks, if we could just see that. I know that there are many tough things we’ve got to get through. I understand you might be facing very difficult circumstances, but if you are thirsty, if you want life, the tree of life, you want your bank to be there and you want to be there for you, the tree of life. You want your banks covered in the tree of life and fruit that bears every month. Know that if you’re in that desert or in that valley, if you’re in the river of God, you will come through. You will come through and you will be purified and all the salty deadness of the Mediterranean Sea will be purified and made fresh, everywhere that there was dead sea in your life. If you will allow the flow and the presence of God to take you where you need to go, those waters will be changed, where you live will be changed, it will be made pure, it will be made full of life and you will not be stuck in that death place any longer.

I want to encourage you today abandon yourself to swim in those waters. Abandon yourself to the presence of God, to the flow of God, to the ways of God, to the depths of God, and be made whole, healed, refreshed and made new, full of life, full of God’s abundance in his river. If you find in your life that there are hidden places where there are marshes and swamps, I’m asking you to turn those over to the Lord. Allow him to come and remove that salty death place and bring newness of life. He has better for you, child of God. I know we go through hard things but we can be like Paul and, regardless of the prison we might be dealing with, we can be singing the praises of God and watch life, teeming life, pop up all around us. That the purpose of God can be established in us and through us.

Let me pray for you, father. I thank you for every person who hears and is listening to this word today, and that they would see you in all of your glory, to see the beauty of who you are, all that you have created, all that you have planned and destined for their lives. That they would join you in your river and that they would go where you want them to go, if they’re being sent. That they go with the flow of the river, father. That they remain in you, that they grow in you, that they go into the depths of who you are, living this life the way that you have called them to live it so that life abounds all around them. May they feel your presence today, may they know your encouragement today. May they have the hope and the life that you have promised them today. May they know your nearness, may they feel your words of encouragement. May they feel strengthened today. May their hope be increased today, and may they take this life and share it with others as they do. Father, I pray that they see the evidence with their own eyes of life all around them. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your promise that your word cannot fail and it will accomplish what it says it will do. In Jesus’ name, we pray amen. Thank you for joining me today.

If this was an encouragement to you, I would encourage you to hit the little thumbs up. Give us a like. Help share the gospel, send this out, share it with those that you think might enjoy hearing it, or share it on your social media. If you would like to contact me, you can do that through email at mail at jamieluce.com. That’s J-A-I-M-E-L-U-C-E. You can also go to my website, jamieluce.com. You can get ahold of any other content that I have there, as well as my blog, and you can get ahold of my book. You Don’t Need Money, you Just Need God. If you’re dealing with financial circumstances right now and you don’t know how to get into the river to find that abundance, that’s what that book is about. It’s not about having the money. It’s about having the one who provides, the one who shows you the way, who will make the way where there seems to be no way. You can get that on Amazon, or you can get that from my website. Thank you again, so much for joining me and we’ll see you next time. Bye for today.

1:01:06 – Jaime Luce

Thank you for listening to the Jamie Loose podcast. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please rate and review the show on Apple or Spotify and subscribe wherever you listen. For more, visit jamieloosecom that’s J-A-I-M-E-L-U-C-Ecom. You’ll find a free chapter of her new book. You Don’t Need Money, you Just Need God and a fresh word from Jamie on the blog each week. See you next week.