Let me clue you in to my process of hearing from God each morning to bring you a new devotional. First, I work on a very tight timeline. I have one hour from the time I sit down to write until I go live. I find this restricted amount of time gets my squirrel chasing mind to depend fully on God and focus on his promptings. A time constraint gets me out of the way so God can do his work. I only begin writing after I have prayed. My prayer is always the same, “Lord, you know who will be listening today, and you know what they need to hear. Please use me as your vessel to speak to each of them. I am available and I am listening. Please lead me to the right topic, the right scripture, give me the right stories and the right energy. Flow through me. Let your words be my words and my words be your words.” Then, I pray the same two scriptures: * Lord, you have given me a well taught tongue, so I know how to encourage tired people. You wake me up each morning, you open my ears to listen and I am ready to take orders. You are my champion and we are taking this stand together. (Isaiah 50: 4-9)* Lord, you have put your words in my mouth and covered me with your hand in order to plant the heavens. You have called and anointed me to remind them they are your girls. (Isaiah 51:16) And finally, I sit down. Right now, I live on the island of Key Largo, so I always sit at a table on the back deck overlooking the water. And this is where I spend the next hour, as the sun comes up, furiously writing whatever God speaks to me. Over the years I’ve learned getting started is the hardest part. The first sentence takes 10 times the effort as the other sentences. But if I never push through that first sentence, I forfeit the message God has specifically for that day. Today, God led me to a page in my Bible where I had written in bold blue letters “CUT IT OUT”. That seemed like a heavy statement to begin the week, so I thumbed over to the next page that naturally fell open, and there I had highlighted in bright pink “RUN FROM THEM.” Wait, God … what are you saying because it seems quite incredible that the first two things I see this morning fit so perfectly together, yet are 300 pages apart in my Bible. And this is where God’s Spirit within me said, “Yes, this is what my girls need to hear today. Let’s go for it!” So, here I am, going for it with a God who loves you wildly and has something he wants to talk to you and I about today. Matthew 5: 29-30, “If your eye – even your good eye – causes you to lust, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your hand – even your stronger hand – causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.” This is part of Jesus’ teaching known as “The Sermon on the Mount”. Jesus had climbed onto the side of a mountain as the crowd gathered, and he taught them humility, forgiveness and love. Although these teachings are over 2,000 years old, they are precisely what our world still needs today. In that day, just as today, there was a moral problem causing problems in the lives of God’s people. And Jesus’ solution to the problem was very clear, CUT IT OUT. (Not a literally cutting off of your hand or gouging out of your eye, but whatever is CAUSING the problem, get rid of it.). Whatever is causing your thoughts to be wrong needs to be absolutely eliminated from your life. No sugar coating necessary, CUT IT OUT.