Seriously…these images were ALL AROUND me! EVERYWHERE. The saying on the photos was irrelevant (rarely fitting what I heard from God). So, I edited them and placed wording on them that God spoke to me.
Back on April 27, 2016 God began 
surrounding me with images of Lions and Tigers.
The searing images are what God used to speak to me…instantly… deep within my soul. I am small, but HE is the Immense, Regal, Powerful, Protective Lion within…embrace what He says about you and allow the shadow of Him, the reflection of Him, touch the lives of all you encounter. “Denise, let Me have all of you. Let Me reign in every area of your life. BELIEVE all that I say about you. Then, your simple human form will reveal the Mighty Ruling King you serve. Let Me reign within you and God’s presence will be known”
Sitting in AWE.
Does He hit you from all directions, too?
I love it when this happens! When He drives home a point. Encountering Him like this is beautiful! I’m always left craving more.
In addition to the images, He surrounded me with music that He used to tie all the photos up beautifully with…like a magnificent wrapped gift tied with a silky red bow waiting for me to unwrap all that He had for me.
God spoke clearly each time that He is the Lion within me . . . How do I see myself? Challenging me, “Denise, believe what I say about Me and what that means for you.”
How do you see yourself? Choose to believe the truth!
Claiming what God has made true about me because of Jesus in me will be a life long journey. The reality of it is that the thief, the prince of this world, the serpent from days past, comes to speak lies with his forked tongue… you are unworthy, you are good for nothing, you are useless because of the things you struggle with or the things you’ve done in the past, you are unforgivable, you are poor, you are ugly, you are fat, you are too skinny, you are this, you are that, you are . . . — you fill in the blank with whatever the enemy whispers in your ear to tear you down. Those are lies! Believe in God’s truth about you. That’s what matters.
These lies that torment me come from many places. The world has warped my thinking; the enemy has used bullies, a critical parent and harsh people to tear me to shreds; as well as, my own faulty perceptions twisting me in to knots. Fighting against these lies and replacing them with God’s truths takes diligence to change the voice within my mind and transform the pattern of my thinking. With God’s help this is possible!
This entire year, God has been chiseling into the flesh of my heart His truths about me because of His Son. I’ve KNOWN them in my mind, I’ve READ them for years . . . but many times I don’t EMBRACE them and then my behavior doesn’t portray them accurately because they haven’t traveled to my heart. I have to repeatedly REMIND myself Who I belong to and what that means about me.
I read a timely devotional on May 1 . . . clearly God had some words for me during these past 5 days. Read below and see what it says to you?
What you are about to read ties in with a past post I wrote when God downloaded my identity a fresh. Check it out here: Identity in Christ.
Sharon speaks of much of what my heart has walked through.
April 27, 2016
You Are Who God Says You Are
Sharon Jaynes
Today’s Truth
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! (1 John 3:1 NIV)
Friend to Friend
I became a Christian when I was a teenager. But even after I made a commitment to follow Christ, feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and inadequacy clung to me like a spider’s sticky web. The dirge of “I’m not good enough” was a song I couldn’t get out of my head. The lies of the enemy created limitations in my life. They were the barbed wire that fenced me in and kept God’s best at bay.
The problem was, I had no idea who I was, what I had, or where I was as a child of God. Oh, I understood that I was going to go to heaven when I left this earth, but what I was supposed to do until I got there had me stumped. I felt that I was always disappointing God, and I was certainly a disappointment to myself.I tried the best I could to be the best I could be, but always fell short.
Eventually I joined the ranks of thousands of Christians before me who settled in the land of in-between: saved from my Egypt—the penalty of sin in the hereafter, but worlds away from my Promised Land—experiencing the abundant life in the here and now. I settled into a stagnant faith, a safe faith, the stuck faith with other defeated believers who falsely saw themselves through a filter of past sins and failures, rather than through the lens of their new identity as a child of God.
After high school I went to college where I met and married an awesome Christian man. About four years later, I became a mom. Life was good, except for this termite-like gnawing in my gut that I just didn’t quite measure up to all the other church moms with their smiling faces. (I wonder if you’ve ever felt that way too.)
I walked around with the fear that one day I would be found out—that one day folks would figure out that I wasn’t all I was cracked up to be. I lived under an undefined self-imposed standard of approval.
Childhood echoes of “you’re so ugly” and “what’s wrong with you” and “you can’t do anything right” left me feeling congenitally flawed. I sat in Bible study groups like someone in a hospital waiting room: hoping for the best but expecting the worst. My greatest fear was that I’d be no closer to being free of the insecurity than I was before the study began.
When I was in my mid-thirties, I sat under the teaching of an older woman in my church, Mary Marshal Young. She opened my eyes to the truths in Scripture about who I was, what I had, and where I was (my position) as a child of God. I had read those verses scattered throughout Scripture before, but when she encouraged me to cluster them together into one list, God began a new work in my heart.
You are a saint.
You are chosen.
You are dearly loved.
You are holy.
These truths were right there on the pages of my Bible in black and white and a few in red.
You are reconciled through Christ’s life.
You are justified by Christ’s blood.
You are free from condemnation through Christ’s death.
You have the mind of Christ.
You can do all things through Christ.
I knew the verses were the infallible Word of God, but I felt rather squeamish hearing them, reading them, believing them.
They didn’t feel right.
They didn’t sound right.
They made me downright uncomfortable.
And all the while I was studying about my true identity, the devil taunted me with accusations. Who do you think you are? A saint? Are you kidding? This stuff might be true for some people, but it certainly is not true about you.
One day God asked me an important question—one that He is asking you right now. Who are you going to believe?
I was at a crossroads, one you might be standing at this very moment. Was I going to believe God and begin seeing myself as God saw me, or was I going to continue believing the lies of the enemy and the echoes of my past? Was I going to remain stuck in a stagnant faith because I was too insecure to take a step toward the abundant life that Jesus had promised, or was I going to march confidently around the walls of my inadequacies until they came tumbling down?
Finally, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. “God, I’m going to believe I am who You say I am,” I prayed. “I don’t feel it. I can barely think it. But I’m going to believe Your Word is true for me and about me.”
And that’s what I’m challenging you to do today. Let go of your insecurities and take hold of your true identity. Will you join me? If so, click over to my Facebook page and say, “I’m taking hold!”
I encourage you to pray with me —
Heavenly Father, I bring myself before You. I thank You for choosing me to be your child, for calling me Your beloved, and loving me just as I am. Today, I ask that You loosen from me all the lies I have believed and ask that they no longer be part of me. Help me choose to believe that I am who You say that I am—a holy, dearly loved, child of Yours who is equipped by You, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and enveloped in Jesus Christ. Father, when my faith waivers, and unbelief sneaks in, quickly remind me that I am who You say I am. Lead me not into the temptation of doubting, but deliver me from my wrong thinking, from the lies the enemy throws at me and replace the deceitful words with Your truth about me. Enable me to be the child You’ve created me to be! And in the process of changing the patterns of my thinking, may I bring glory to You!
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.
Here is the song that just pierced my heart! Enjoy!