This concludes Season 5, The Marriage Season.

"Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him. And the Lord was sorry he had ever made Saul king of Israel." "Now the Lord said to Samuel, "you have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go to Bethlehem." (1 Samuel 15:35, 1 Samuel 16:1)

Sometimes God wrecks our lives, not to destroy us but for the impact to hit at such a great magnitude that your life is forever changed. Saul got hit with his life changing moment on the road to Damascus, the magnitude was so huge that it stuck with him. It had to happen for him to become who God called him to be (Paul).

I am in the stages where I am grieving things that I once wanted, I am having to feel what I need to fill & process everything so that I don't continue to mourn in a place that God has called me out of when the time comes.

Grief isn't just a thing when people pass away, it is also when things die in your life but they are still alive physically. Grief is unpredictable, and it comes out of no where & sometimes it comes when you thought you had processed everything. God is okay with us grieving, you just can't stay here in grief & that is typically what ends up happening.

Often times we don't process grief, we stay in grief & we continue to mourn over things that God has already made his mind up about. Its human to be sad, angry, hurt, confused etc but we have to allow God to guide us through those feelings and emotions so that we can process them & not harbor them. Being honest and open about what you feel helps you to come to terms with the will that God has defined for your life & as you begin moving forward throughout this journey it will become your power. You will have the courage to move forward in things that seem impossible because you will be able to reflect on the previous times where you had to stand up against hard things, yet you made it through.

Grieving the former things.

Grieving the things I wanted.

Grieving what I thought we had.

Grieving what I thought we would do.

Grieving the changes that have taken place in my life.

But grief wont hold me hostage, I'm grieving now so that I don't hold on to things that God needed me to process so that when I get where I am going my feelings/emotions aren't in the way of what God is trying to do.

The enemy is after marriage and it's because he knows God honors marriage. He knows how strategic God is & therefore he knows the consideration that God used when putting certain ppl together. He knows marriage is ministry & marriage is an assignment & if he doesn't do everything he can EARLY ON to ruin your marriage then it will become this power source that God had intended for it to become & through that comes other people being set free.

We play naive to how smart the enemy really is. We forget how he was in heaven which means he was exposed to how God operates which means he used that to strategize how he will operate; HENCE WHY SOME PPL CANT DETECT GOD FROM THE ENEMY. He was so convincing of who he was and what he could do to the point that other angels left heaven to follow him. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK HE WONT CONVINCE YOU IF HE CONVINCED OTHER PPL WHO WERE ALREADY IN PARADISE TO LEAVE A PLACE SUCH AS THAT TO GO SOMEWHERE THAT WOULD NEVER AMOUNT TO THE PLACE THEY CURRENTLY WERE. We get played by the enemy because we lack the tactics, tools, strategies, and discernment thats need to separate the real from the fake.

The enemy has studied you since you were born thats why he knows your target areas, he has studied your partner the same way. He pulled both of yalls files to see where he could operate at and what he could use to make his plan successful. THE ENEMY IS MORE CLEVER THAN WE WOULD LIKE TO BELIEVE. Marriages are sinking because we won't commit to the work that it takes for us to maintain them. IF YOU DONT MAINTAIN YOUR SOLE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD INDIVIDUALLY, THEN YOU WONT BE EQUIPPED TO MANAGE YOUR ROLE IN THE MARRIAGE. You cant have one and not the other, God is the one who teaches you who to be and how to be & therefore without him you begin navigating based off who you want to be & how you want to be & therefor the prophecy of a successful marriage never gets fulfilled.

Prophecies change because people never commit to the work thats required for the prophecy to be fulfilled. Marriage is work, its the most sacrificial assignment you will EVER have. You die to flesh, you die to self, you die to preference & you die to selfishness; you literally have to be in a place to love, care, surrender and sacrifice in the ways that Christ does for you.

Why is your marriage struggling? What areas have you neglected that the enemy has now used as his target area? What does your individual relationship with God look like? Are you operating to the best of your ability as the person God has called you to be in this season? Dont fall victim to the enemies schemes. Learn your traumas, your triggers, you struggles and own them so that they become your power because the enemy will use it as his weapon & if you have no power, you have no fight!

The same thing God wants to use, the enemy does too. God had to teach me the strategies of the enemy by showing me the very gifts God wants to use, the enemy wants to use as well. I heard a pastor once say, "Sin will take you further than you wanna go, and it will keep you longer than you want to stay." Self control is one of the fruits of the spirit and the main area I had to learn self-control in was my mouth. The old me would say whatever, whenever and however I chose to without an ounce of care for the other person. Through hard work with God and a few failed attempts & having to learn the hard way a couple of times I have now gained self-control in that area & this past season God needed to ensure I had the level of self control that he needed me to have so he turned things up a notch just to see. EXPECT GOD TO TEST YOU IN THE AREAS WHERE YOU HAVE MASTERED CERTAIN THINGS, AND EXPECT THE TEST TO BE HARDER THAN YOU COULD'VE IMAGINED. Sometimes God just wants to see if you truly free from the thing you claim to be free from. Watching yo mouth is so essential because the word saids "Life and death lie in the power of the tongue", "The tongue is a fire that can corrupt the whole person and set their life on fire. It is a restless evil that if full of a deadly poison." "From the same mouth can come both blessing and cursing, which should not be." Certain seasons of your life COST MORE than other seasons & I am in this season of my life right now where one wrong move will cost me everything God is doing in my life & I have to ask myself sometimes "is it the price I want to pay", and the answer is always no. I just dont wanna miss my mark. I just dont wanna miss God.