I haven't posted anything in a while because I really didn't think anything mattered anymore. I have spent the last few months falling deeper and deeper into a cesspool of hurt and anger and bitterenss and even on occasion hatred. Directed at God's "people" and myself (hey at least I am honest enough to know that I am guilty too). My heart broke literally this summer followed by my heart being shattered figuritavly in the days weeks and months that followed. I got to a place where I could forgive them, but every time some piddling thing happened and they jumped to bring people meals and stuff I find myself right back in that whirlpool of hurt and hatred.
I received a note recently from a friend who was telling me that she had to be corrected by God on how she was viewing her life before it could change and today's sermon seemed to be on how we are just screwed if we are not right where God wants us to be and I believe the words were...if you don't believe in what you are praying for, don't bother" at least that is what I "heard". So I was feeling hopeless and I got the picture in my head of being abandonded on a ship at sea in the middle of a ragin storm that was litterly beating the ship to pieces around me. I was standing on the rail ready to jump into the water and just let the wind and waves take me because the ship was coming apart around me and God said..."HOLD ON." And the image He sent was of me tying myself to the mast to face the storm because God was coming and not to abandon ths ship but to hold on. I am so scared to believe that this actually means that God is going to rescue me. I am so scared to trust Him to actually rescue me, but at the same time I know that there is nothing in this world or life that has meaning or worth apart from Him. So, although I cannot do what the pastor say to do by saying I am blessing and have God's favor when I do not believe that to be true (even if I want to believe it) but I CAN say that although things are very bad right now, I will HOLD ON! And that is ok because that is what God told me to do. He understands that I have tried, He understands what happened and how it broke me, He allowed it all and He has a plan and today He just reaced out to remind me that He is still here, even when He is silent and that He is coming, just Hold On.
So I am going to hold on until he comes.
Showing posts with label Revelations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Revelations. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Chapter 21 – A Rare Road and The End
Dr P brings her book to a close by reflecting on what she has learned while walking her “discovery beach” and reflects on the current lives of the women she continues to meet occasionally. She says that Love is a self giving attitude and action that runs counter to everything our culture respects and admires as well as our very human nature. But, she reflects, it endures.
She ends the book with 1Cor.13:13...”And now these remain.......faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Love she says, leaves a legacy that reverberates through time.
Love never fails.
Love is the only part of our reality that continues into eternity. Everything else will fade away, except love.
And because I am doing my best – no matter what age, stage, or location I am in – to live my life full of love, then I am making a difference that will endure through all time into the very presence of God Himself. And THAT is why I matter far more than I think I do. That is why all of us matter more than we think we do. Everything else we do on this Earth, is finite and will one day end, except the love that we share with others. God's love for His people, ALL His creations who live upon the Earth. For He loves all of us, those who accept and acknowledge him, and even those who don't. And those the ones who don't ever accept Him or His gift to the world must someday face the consequences of their own choices, God loves them still.
She ends the book with 1Cor.13:13...”And now these remain.......faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Love she says, leaves a legacy that reverberates through time.
Love never fails.
Love is the only part of our reality that continues into eternity. Everything else will fade away, except love.
And because I am doing my best – no matter what age, stage, or location I am in – to live my life full of love, then I am making a difference that will endure through all time into the very presence of God Himself. And THAT is why I matter far more than I think I do. That is why all of us matter more than we think we do. Everything else we do on this Earth, is finite and will one day end, except the love that we share with others. God's love for His people, ALL His creations who live upon the Earth. For He loves all of us, those who accept and acknowledge him, and even those who don't. And those the ones who don't ever accept Him or His gift to the world must someday face the consequences of their own choices, God loves them still.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Chapter 19 & 20 Seeds and Barking Pigs
Chapter 19
Dr P began this chapter talking about how she felt she never had the stick-to-it-ness that women who “made a difference” had. She observed that women who made a difference always stuck with the task they were given no matter what. No matter that it might have seemed impossible or had constant obstacles.
This was when I realized that throughout most of this book I kept finding all the things that I did not have that I would need to be successful at life, but suddenly I have something. I have something that Dr P once felt that she needed. I have stick-to-it-ness. I have the strength and perseverance to keep going even when things get hard. What an amazing realization. I have one of the basic commodities that allows someone to be a person who “matters”. Just imagine what I could do if I felt the overwhelming love of God for His creation with the strength and perseverance of someone who continues, no matter what.
Dr P then talks about how the qualities needed to be a person who makes a difference emerge as we began to make our difference. It is like the fruit of the Spirit. We don't have to TRY and reach for it, we don't have to struggle to find it, it will just come as a result of stepping into the role we choose to step into.
So, the reference here is that if I just start to reach out to “make a difference” then the “love” that I need to feel with come.
Dr P also states that we should never be afraid to feel inadequate. God says in the Bible that it is when we we are at our weakest that He is the strongest. She also reminds us that when we do make a profound difference it is not because of what we have done, but because of the gift He placed in us. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!! It is NEVER what we do that makes a difference, it is the Holy Spirit in us, the gifts given to us by GOD to minister to the world.
The next thing that jumps out at me is when Dr P talkes about a dream where a woman walks up to Jesus and He asks her what she wants and she replies peace, joy, happiness, and the freedom from fear; not only for herself, but for the whole world. Jesus looks at her in the dream, smiles and says, “I think you misunderstand me. We don't sell fruits, only seeds.” This is what making a difference is really all about. We cannot create the fruits of our gifts, we can only plant the seeds. If we are very lucky, we may be allowed to see some of the harvest that comes from the seeds we planted, but even if we never see them, they are there. Because WE did not make the difference, we just shared the gift God gave to us and HE will make the difference.
Therefore, our whole purpose in life, the total focus of everything we do and say, is to become as Christlike as possible. The qualities that will produce fruit in our lives and the lives of those around us regardless of what “path” we walk will grow independently of anything we do or do not do BECAUSE it does not depend on us.
This is my answer to seeking compassion for others and on how to love. God will have these things “bloom” in my life without my having to work for it. All. ALL I have to do is seek after God with all my heart and everything else will come to me.
Chapter 20
Dr P opens this chapter by talking about how Cinderella's real job was to sit around and wait. She was not a participant in her own life. Then she talks about how an elementary school class puts on a play about Cinderella and one little boy, who was... different... and how he decided that he would be a pig in the play who followed Cinderella everywhere she went with no words only mimicked everything she did. When the teacher told him there was no pig in Cinderella, the small boy replied, “Well there is now.” At the end of the play, Norman, the pig, barked once and then received a standing ovation. It turns out that Norman, the pig, WAS the Cinderella in the play.
Well, there is now. What a life changing statement. After my heart attack I began to process my life and found that I have been “sitting” on so much of WHO I am because I didn't want to take a chance on offending anyone by being who I really am. Because I have been rejected so often by just exposing a piece of myself. What would happen if I truly exposed myself. But after my heart attack I found that I am no longer afraid of being who I really am.
I am different. I march to the beat of a far different drum and there will be an overabundance of people in my life who cannot accept that, but it is time for me to say, Well there is now!!
Dr P also asks if we identify more with Norman, the pig, or the teacher who made a difference by allowing this little boy to be himself and rise to shine. We are both. Sometimes we are the little “different” Cinderella wanting to make a difference in our lives that requires that we say... “Well there is now!!”. And sometimes we are the teacher providing the permission and encouragement and support for someone else to be Cinderella and change their world by saying.. “Well there is now.”
All of us have a Cinderella moment in our lives at some point or another. But it is time to get up off of our hearth, waiting passively for our “prince” to come an rescue us from a life of not making a difference. It is time to recast ourselves as the barking pig and become a participant in our story. As a side note, it is also well established that it is usually when we are in the middle of living that our “prince” whatever that may be, will find us.
Dr P began this chapter talking about how she felt she never had the stick-to-it-ness that women who “made a difference” had. She observed that women who made a difference always stuck with the task they were given no matter what. No matter that it might have seemed impossible or had constant obstacles.
This was when I realized that throughout most of this book I kept finding all the things that I did not have that I would need to be successful at life, but suddenly I have something. I have something that Dr P once felt that she needed. I have stick-to-it-ness. I have the strength and perseverance to keep going even when things get hard. What an amazing realization. I have one of the basic commodities that allows someone to be a person who “matters”. Just imagine what I could do if I felt the overwhelming love of God for His creation with the strength and perseverance of someone who continues, no matter what.
Dr P then talks about how the qualities needed to be a person who makes a difference emerge as we began to make our difference. It is like the fruit of the Spirit. We don't have to TRY and reach for it, we don't have to struggle to find it, it will just come as a result of stepping into the role we choose to step into.
So, the reference here is that if I just start to reach out to “make a difference” then the “love” that I need to feel with come.
Dr P also states that we should never be afraid to feel inadequate. God says in the Bible that it is when we we are at our weakest that He is the strongest. She also reminds us that when we do make a profound difference it is not because of what we have done, but because of the gift He placed in us. THIS IS IMPORTANT!!!! It is NEVER what we do that makes a difference, it is the Holy Spirit in us, the gifts given to us by GOD to minister to the world.
The next thing that jumps out at me is when Dr P talkes about a dream where a woman walks up to Jesus and He asks her what she wants and she replies peace, joy, happiness, and the freedom from fear; not only for herself, but for the whole world. Jesus looks at her in the dream, smiles and says, “I think you misunderstand me. We don't sell fruits, only seeds.” This is what making a difference is really all about. We cannot create the fruits of our gifts, we can only plant the seeds. If we are very lucky, we may be allowed to see some of the harvest that comes from the seeds we planted, but even if we never see them, they are there. Because WE did not make the difference, we just shared the gift God gave to us and HE will make the difference.
Therefore, our whole purpose in life, the total focus of everything we do and say, is to become as Christlike as possible. The qualities that will produce fruit in our lives and the lives of those around us regardless of what “path” we walk will grow independently of anything we do or do not do BECAUSE it does not depend on us.
This is my answer to seeking compassion for others and on how to love. God will have these things “bloom” in my life without my having to work for it. All. ALL I have to do is seek after God with all my heart and everything else will come to me.
Chapter 20
Dr P opens this chapter by talking about how Cinderella's real job was to sit around and wait. She was not a participant in her own life. Then she talks about how an elementary school class puts on a play about Cinderella and one little boy, who was... different... and how he decided that he would be a pig in the play who followed Cinderella everywhere she went with no words only mimicked everything she did. When the teacher told him there was no pig in Cinderella, the small boy replied, “Well there is now.” At the end of the play, Norman, the pig, barked once and then received a standing ovation. It turns out that Norman, the pig, WAS the Cinderella in the play.
Well, there is now. What a life changing statement. After my heart attack I began to process my life and found that I have been “sitting” on so much of WHO I am because I didn't want to take a chance on offending anyone by being who I really am. Because I have been rejected so often by just exposing a piece of myself. What would happen if I truly exposed myself. But after my heart attack I found that I am no longer afraid of being who I really am.
I am different. I march to the beat of a far different drum and there will be an overabundance of people in my life who cannot accept that, but it is time for me to say, Well there is now!!
Dr P also asks if we identify more with Norman, the pig, or the teacher who made a difference by allowing this little boy to be himself and rise to shine. We are both. Sometimes we are the little “different” Cinderella wanting to make a difference in our lives that requires that we say... “Well there is now!!”. And sometimes we are the teacher providing the permission and encouragement and support for someone else to be Cinderella and change their world by saying.. “Well there is now.”
All of us have a Cinderella moment in our lives at some point or another. But it is time to get up off of our hearth, waiting passively for our “prince” to come an rescue us from a life of not making a difference. It is time to recast ourselves as the barking pig and become a participant in our story. As a side note, it is also well established that it is usually when we are in the middle of living that our “prince” whatever that may be, will find us.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Chapter 17 & 18 – Compassionate Witnesses Anyway
Chapter 17
“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.” Neil Simon.
This is the quote Chapter 17 opens with and Dr. P begins to talk about taking risks. At first, I thought of my self as a risk taker. I mean, no one else I know has the guts to leave everyone and everything they know to fly across the world all alone to a different country. But then she redefined her definition of risk taker as someone who is not afraid to receive a critical comment or not afraid of offending someone. I do not want to be rejected, exposed or hurt so when it comes to my heart I am not a risk taker.
Dr P talks about a person, who was basically a stranger, who went FAR out of her way to just be there for her at a difficult time in her life. I realized then, that once upon a time I was a risk taker. Growing up, my heart was huge. I remembered every birthday of every person I knew, I remembered every major event and knew exactly what my friends and family liked and didn't like in gifts. I gave and gave and gave and no one ever gave back. Before you get the wrong idea, I didn't give to get, (well, mostly :)) but the highlight of what I am describing was my 21st birthday when I invited everyone on our college bus to come to a lakeside party and no one showed up. That was the beginning of the end of my risk taking I think. I just remember sucking it up and hanging out with two friends and not letting them know how I was bleeding inside. I don't think I was rejected as much as I perceived it growing up, being so consumed with depression and self-hatred, but somehow, through the years, the perception became the reality. Perhaps because I began to push people away and put a wall around my heart. And now, I am no where near as closed off as I used to be, but I am still a long way from trusting anyone not to hurt me and after this heart attack I am terrified of letting ANYONE ever again have the power to shred my soul and shatter my heart. But with that desire to protect myself I am struggling to forgive selfish behavior and I have lost my compassion for others.
Dr. P talks about feeling so hurt by other's responses that she didn't want to reach out anymore. She also talked about being so disappointed that she wanted to give up because someone knocked her down because they misread her intentions and motives, but then she said she eventually picked herself up because she realized that God knew her intentions.
That is where I am right now. So hurt and damaged by others that I don't want to do anything except crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in over me. And I have been looked down on by others and misunderstood and misread by people for so long that I don't even know what to do anymore, much less loosing any desire to do the work required to change those perceptions not to mention that I do not think it is the place of the person who is damaged to have to heal themselves. If a person has broken legs, you don't tell them to get up and walk, but people think that they can just demand that people with severe depression “get over it.” If you want to help a disabled person learn to walk, you get them the right tools and provide motivation and encouragement. Why do people find it so hard to do the same for those with broken hearts. I don't have an answer, I just find it sad that both I and so many others are left to grieve and hurt alone when we need tools and motivation and encouragement to face our darkness and overcome it.
Dr P ends the chapter with a quote that I like.
“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good people, will accuse you of selfish ulterior
motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true
enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas
can be shot down by the smallest men and woman
with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor the underdog but only follow top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed
overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you
do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get
kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
Chapter 18
This chapter is about the need we have for compassionate witnesses. This is not people who will indulge us, but who have made the effort to really get to know us and that we have given “permission” to speak into our lives when a strong word is necessary. Dr P notes that the adage that 'Time heals all things' is not quite true. Time only heals the wounds that are shared and understood. NOTHING can make a greater difference than a friend who not only cares, but really listened and gave positive perspective.
The other important detail Dr P says is that a compassionate friend MUST be available, even when it is not convenient or easy. I figure the only way to be a compassionate friend is to also be aware of the concerns and hopes and fears and MUST be willing to step out and make the first move and extend the hand of compassion and understanding to be able to impart the truth of direction. Without the relationship of trust and compassion, offered words, ESPECIALLY harsh or negative ones (even if they are true) will be rejected because they are spoken outside of love.
I began this with the “righteous” anger of someone who has been betrayed by those I thought were my friends and Christian family, but the truth is that this lesson is for me. When God helps me get my compassion back I want to be the person who goes out of the way to be there for others, like I wished that someone had been there for me. I am not alone in my aloneness, there are others out there who also need people to care, I want to be one of those people not one who is too busy with my own selfish concerns that I leave them out in the cold alone and hungry after saying be warm and be feed. And yes I know there is still tons of poison and bitterness in that, but I am trying to give it to God if for no other reason than I NEVER want to be like them.
Which ultimately means that I HAVE to forgive them truly because THEY are broken and damaged. Their damage is not in their heart but in their minds, they are allowing the world to dictate their lives, not God and therefore I need to be strong for them. I need to make sure that I am in a deep and close relationship with God and listening to whatever He directs me to say and do.
“If no one ever took risks, Michelangelo would have painted the Sistine floor.” Neil Simon.
This is the quote Chapter 17 opens with and Dr. P begins to talk about taking risks. At first, I thought of my self as a risk taker. I mean, no one else I know has the guts to leave everyone and everything they know to fly across the world all alone to a different country. But then she redefined her definition of risk taker as someone who is not afraid to receive a critical comment or not afraid of offending someone. I do not want to be rejected, exposed or hurt so when it comes to my heart I am not a risk taker.
Dr P talks about a person, who was basically a stranger, who went FAR out of her way to just be there for her at a difficult time in her life. I realized then, that once upon a time I was a risk taker. Growing up, my heart was huge. I remembered every birthday of every person I knew, I remembered every major event and knew exactly what my friends and family liked and didn't like in gifts. I gave and gave and gave and no one ever gave back. Before you get the wrong idea, I didn't give to get, (well, mostly :)) but the highlight of what I am describing was my 21st birthday when I invited everyone on our college bus to come to a lakeside party and no one showed up. That was the beginning of the end of my risk taking I think. I just remember sucking it up and hanging out with two friends and not letting them know how I was bleeding inside. I don't think I was rejected as much as I perceived it growing up, being so consumed with depression and self-hatred, but somehow, through the years, the perception became the reality. Perhaps because I began to push people away and put a wall around my heart. And now, I am no where near as closed off as I used to be, but I am still a long way from trusting anyone not to hurt me and after this heart attack I am terrified of letting ANYONE ever again have the power to shred my soul and shatter my heart. But with that desire to protect myself I am struggling to forgive selfish behavior and I have lost my compassion for others.
Dr. P talks about feeling so hurt by other's responses that she didn't want to reach out anymore. She also talked about being so disappointed that she wanted to give up because someone knocked her down because they misread her intentions and motives, but then she said she eventually picked herself up because she realized that God knew her intentions.
That is where I am right now. So hurt and damaged by others that I don't want to do anything except crawl into a hole and pull the dirt in over me. And I have been looked down on by others and misunderstood and misread by people for so long that I don't even know what to do anymore, much less loosing any desire to do the work required to change those perceptions not to mention that I do not think it is the place of the person who is damaged to have to heal themselves. If a person has broken legs, you don't tell them to get up and walk, but people think that they can just demand that people with severe depression “get over it.” If you want to help a disabled person learn to walk, you get them the right tools and provide motivation and encouragement. Why do people find it so hard to do the same for those with broken hearts. I don't have an answer, I just find it sad that both I and so many others are left to grieve and hurt alone when we need tools and motivation and encouragement to face our darkness and overcome it.
Dr P ends the chapter with a quote that I like.
“People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good people, will accuse you of selfish ulterior
motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true
enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest anyway.
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas
can be shot down by the smallest men and woman
with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.
People favor the underdog but only follow top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed
overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you
do help them.
Help people anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get
kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.”
Chapter 18
This chapter is about the need we have for compassionate witnesses. This is not people who will indulge us, but who have made the effort to really get to know us and that we have given “permission” to speak into our lives when a strong word is necessary. Dr P notes that the adage that 'Time heals all things' is not quite true. Time only heals the wounds that are shared and understood. NOTHING can make a greater difference than a friend who not only cares, but really listened and gave positive perspective.
The other important detail Dr P says is that a compassionate friend MUST be available, even when it is not convenient or easy. I figure the only way to be a compassionate friend is to also be aware of the concerns and hopes and fears and MUST be willing to step out and make the first move and extend the hand of compassion and understanding to be able to impart the truth of direction. Without the relationship of trust and compassion, offered words, ESPECIALLY harsh or negative ones (even if they are true) will be rejected because they are spoken outside of love.
I began this with the “righteous” anger of someone who has been betrayed by those I thought were my friends and Christian family, but the truth is that this lesson is for me. When God helps me get my compassion back I want to be the person who goes out of the way to be there for others, like I wished that someone had been there for me. I am not alone in my aloneness, there are others out there who also need people to care, I want to be one of those people not one who is too busy with my own selfish concerns that I leave them out in the cold alone and hungry after saying be warm and be feed. And yes I know there is still tons of poison and bitterness in that, but I am trying to give it to God if for no other reason than I NEVER want to be like them.
Which ultimately means that I HAVE to forgive them truly because THEY are broken and damaged. Their damage is not in their heart but in their minds, they are allowing the world to dictate their lives, not God and therefore I need to be strong for them. I need to make sure that I am in a deep and close relationship with God and listening to whatever He directs me to say and do.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Chapter 15 & 16 Whispers and Timing
Chapter 15
This chapter is about care. Dr. P defines care as a kind of compassion that allows a person to enter your world and feel your pain or joy. Care says that what happens to you, happens to me. Care says that your life makes a genuine difference in my life. When we care, we pay close attention to another person's experiences. We actively listen for ways to be helpful. We take notice and attend to someone else's world as if it were our own.
Caring, Dr P says is so germane, so essential to making a difference, that if often goes unnoticed, in fact if you ask people what matters most in making a difference, care does not often even make the list. But, when you put this quality on a list of traits and ask people to rate it's importance you will always see it near the top. Why? Dr P says that without care, difference making is not possible. The three words, “I don't care” are like a deadly bullet in the heart of any attempt to make a difference.
I will go one step further and say that any action that shows that you “don't care” weather you do or not, is exactly the same as saying “I don't care” and the bullet is still shot from the gun.
Right now in my life, I do not know a single person who shows the concept of care except for their own family or close friends. This includes me. No excuses, I have stopped caring about the people around me like I should. Weather that action feels justified or not, it is not the action that God expects from his people.
I went off last blog about how hurt and angry I was about how I was treated and the lack of “care” I received from my church family and friends, but this time I am going to talk about me and where I fail. She talks about how we need people in our lives to believe in us when we are stuggling to believe in ourselves. People who will encourage us and remind us of a better vision of who we are than the one we currently see. I don't have that and only had it in minute amounts from past friends like Wendy and I think that is a LOT of where I fail now. How much better would I be if I had someone in my life to remind me that I have worth and that God sees me as important. So, the message to me, is who am I providing encouragement to? Who do I provide a vision of themselves as successful to? Right now,I am failing BADLY at that. I have let anger and bitterness guide so much of my words and actions that I have not provided hope to anyone but harsh truth. Truth is good, but there are different ways of providing truth to others and it does not have to be hard and harsh, it can be done with kindness and love. In FACT, if Truth is not delivered with real love, then it will be more harmful than helpful. God NEVER sends His truth without His complete and total love.
Dr P talks about a friend that randomly buys the meals of the customer behind them at the drive through as a way of expressing care and another friend who know her friend was going from grief to anger and was not going to let her friend face that alone and without a way to express it which she desperately needed it. It is easy for us to offer “care” to those we naturally love... our families, and close friends, but how many of us offer “care” to complete strangers or casual friends. How many of us actually “love” the people around us.
Dr P ends the chapter with a reflection on anything being more important than a caring friend who cares enough about you to find out what you need and lavishes you with love? Someone who hurts when you hurt and is willing to enter into your world in order to say and do just the right thing? Which actually reminds me of today's sermon. Jack talked about our being willing to repent when we need to repent and how it is just as important to accept forgiveness when we need to accept that we are forgiven. When we need help, we must be willing to accept that help, weather it is a word of encouragement, a couple of dollars, or a ride somewhere.
Chapter 16
Dr P talks about how she shut out her father for over a decade and was afraid that it might be too late to rebuild the bridges between them after all that time and how it wasn't too late and the healing begin after over 10 years of bitterness and pain. Her point, it is never too late to began the process of care and rebuilding broken relationships.
She makes a point of saying that there is a process of grief and anger that usually has to be worked though before beginning to reconcile relationships, otherwise I question how you can truly work to reconcile relationships with love if you are still consumed with hate or resentment or anger.
She ends the chapter with a note that most of us if not all of us have a relationship loose end that needs to be mended or perhaps we closed a door too soon on an opportunity to do good for someone. She asks what tugs at your heart when we read this chapter and do we put off a difference making opportunity because we fear that we have missed out chance or that too much time has passed and she says that time is no barrier to making a difference and to reconciling a lost relationship.
This chapter is about care. Dr. P defines care as a kind of compassion that allows a person to enter your world and feel your pain or joy. Care says that what happens to you, happens to me. Care says that your life makes a genuine difference in my life. When we care, we pay close attention to another person's experiences. We actively listen for ways to be helpful. We take notice and attend to someone else's world as if it were our own.
Caring, Dr P says is so germane, so essential to making a difference, that if often goes unnoticed, in fact if you ask people what matters most in making a difference, care does not often even make the list. But, when you put this quality on a list of traits and ask people to rate it's importance you will always see it near the top. Why? Dr P says that without care, difference making is not possible. The three words, “I don't care” are like a deadly bullet in the heart of any attempt to make a difference.
I will go one step further and say that any action that shows that you “don't care” weather you do or not, is exactly the same as saying “I don't care” and the bullet is still shot from the gun.
Right now in my life, I do not know a single person who shows the concept of care except for their own family or close friends. This includes me. No excuses, I have stopped caring about the people around me like I should. Weather that action feels justified or not, it is not the action that God expects from his people.
I went off last blog about how hurt and angry I was about how I was treated and the lack of “care” I received from my church family and friends, but this time I am going to talk about me and where I fail. She talks about how we need people in our lives to believe in us when we are stuggling to believe in ourselves. People who will encourage us and remind us of a better vision of who we are than the one we currently see. I don't have that and only had it in minute amounts from past friends like Wendy and I think that is a LOT of where I fail now. How much better would I be if I had someone in my life to remind me that I have worth and that God sees me as important. So, the message to me, is who am I providing encouragement to? Who do I provide a vision of themselves as successful to? Right now,I am failing BADLY at that. I have let anger and bitterness guide so much of my words and actions that I have not provided hope to anyone but harsh truth. Truth is good, but there are different ways of providing truth to others and it does not have to be hard and harsh, it can be done with kindness and love. In FACT, if Truth is not delivered with real love, then it will be more harmful than helpful. God NEVER sends His truth without His complete and total love.
Dr P talks about a friend that randomly buys the meals of the customer behind them at the drive through as a way of expressing care and another friend who know her friend was going from grief to anger and was not going to let her friend face that alone and without a way to express it which she desperately needed it. It is easy for us to offer “care” to those we naturally love... our families, and close friends, but how many of us offer “care” to complete strangers or casual friends. How many of us actually “love” the people around us.
Dr P ends the chapter with a reflection on anything being more important than a caring friend who cares enough about you to find out what you need and lavishes you with love? Someone who hurts when you hurt and is willing to enter into your world in order to say and do just the right thing? Which actually reminds me of today's sermon. Jack talked about our being willing to repent when we need to repent and how it is just as important to accept forgiveness when we need to accept that we are forgiven. When we need help, we must be willing to accept that help, weather it is a word of encouragement, a couple of dollars, or a ride somewhere.
Chapter 16
Dr P talks about how she shut out her father for over a decade and was afraid that it might be too late to rebuild the bridges between them after all that time and how it wasn't too late and the healing begin after over 10 years of bitterness and pain. Her point, it is never too late to began the process of care and rebuilding broken relationships.
She makes a point of saying that there is a process of grief and anger that usually has to be worked though before beginning to reconcile relationships, otherwise I question how you can truly work to reconcile relationships with love if you are still consumed with hate or resentment or anger.
She ends the chapter with a note that most of us if not all of us have a relationship loose end that needs to be mended or perhaps we closed a door too soon on an opportunity to do good for someone. She asks what tugs at your heart when we read this chapter and do we put off a difference making opportunity because we fear that we have missed out chance or that too much time has passed and she says that time is no barrier to making a difference and to reconciling a lost relationship.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
You Matter - Chapter 9 Stars and Starfish
Dr. P starts this chapter off by comparing apparently different ways that women and men in general consider what it means to “make a difference.” I followed her logic and can see the value of her research into the idea that men and women, in general, see making a difference in the world as two different things, but I think she got sidetracked on the gender issue. Because in her little “band of sisters” none of them are single career women and I see a clear difference for that category that the “married” women don’t consider.
Dr. P states that men are more prone to seeing making a difference as of worldly or cosmic significance verses women who more often see it as a more personal relationship, like in how a person or friend made a difference in someone else’s life. She admits that this is just a general observation, but she also states that she believes that women are created differently by the creator because they have a different path (again, only in general terms) to making a difference than men.
However to add my 2cents, single women have a completely different path to walk than either married women or men. In general, we are not focused on raising families or running households, or taking care of our marriages. We work and think more in terms of the men around us. To us, making a difference is more on the scale of how men see the concept. I think it is because we do not have family needs directing our vision, however, because we are women we tend to think in terms of more personal relevance than the men around us and this is where a lot of disappointment and disillusion comes into our lives. Because we, as women, take things much more internally than men (in general) our “difference” becomes an aspect of our character and if we feel that we are not contributing to the “world” then we loose not only our vision for ourselves, but our sense of self-worth as well. We have no family to tie us to a vision of making a difference in the role of wife and mother, so we strive to “make a difference” in the world of men and all to often because we see it as such a personal quest, we struggle to feel that we make a difference at all, because based on the common belief of the world we work in, if we are not changing the world literally, then we are really not making a difference. Again, this is all VERY general and cannot hold up to specific examples of men and women, but it does make a very general sort of sense.
She then goes on to say that most of the disappointment that women feel about their lives is often because they feel they don’t “measure up” to the expectations of the men around them. Her example was one of her friends saying to her husband that during her day she got her son through 10 lesson plans, but compared to her husbands managing to move 20million dollars from one bank to another successfully, she did not feel as if she truly make any sort of real difference in the world. We are raised with this STANDARD of how to make a difference in the world and many times, our difference making does not fit in the parameters of that STANDARD, which was written by men. This is NOT to put either gender down, this was simply to express that the genders look at things differently and women have to be able to see themselves outside of the shadow of men to understand the difference THEY make on THEIR path less traveled. And although more often personal and perhaps even of small significance today, the differences that women make in their everyday lives are equally important to the world around them and perhaps even more important to the world tomorrow.
She ends the chapter with a note that often the difference that women make in the world is much more likely to be intangible and not something that is easily noted. Making a friend feel better about her situation, helping a child understand that 2+2=4, putting the shopping buggy up before leaving the grocery store, smiling at the bank cashier and blessing her day, taking the time to find the right gift, not necessarily the most expensive one for someone, etc…These are not always measurable or even viewable but they can make just as profound a difference in the world through the ripples of cause and effect as any world changing celebrity or “saint".
Dr. P states that men are more prone to seeing making a difference as of worldly or cosmic significance verses women who more often see it as a more personal relationship, like in how a person or friend made a difference in someone else’s life. She admits that this is just a general observation, but she also states that she believes that women are created differently by the creator because they have a different path (again, only in general terms) to making a difference than men.
However to add my 2cents, single women have a completely different path to walk than either married women or men. In general, we are not focused on raising families or running households, or taking care of our marriages. We work and think more in terms of the men around us. To us, making a difference is more on the scale of how men see the concept. I think it is because we do not have family needs directing our vision, however, because we are women we tend to think in terms of more personal relevance than the men around us and this is where a lot of disappointment and disillusion comes into our lives. Because we, as women, take things much more internally than men (in general) our “difference” becomes an aspect of our character and if we feel that we are not contributing to the “world” then we loose not only our vision for ourselves, but our sense of self-worth as well. We have no family to tie us to a vision of making a difference in the role of wife and mother, so we strive to “make a difference” in the world of men and all to often because we see it as such a personal quest, we struggle to feel that we make a difference at all, because based on the common belief of the world we work in, if we are not changing the world literally, then we are really not making a difference. Again, this is all VERY general and cannot hold up to specific examples of men and women, but it does make a very general sort of sense.
She then goes on to say that most of the disappointment that women feel about their lives is often because they feel they don’t “measure up” to the expectations of the men around them. Her example was one of her friends saying to her husband that during her day she got her son through 10 lesson plans, but compared to her husbands managing to move 20million dollars from one bank to another successfully, she did not feel as if she truly make any sort of real difference in the world. We are raised with this STANDARD of how to make a difference in the world and many times, our difference making does not fit in the parameters of that STANDARD, which was written by men. This is NOT to put either gender down, this was simply to express that the genders look at things differently and women have to be able to see themselves outside of the shadow of men to understand the difference THEY make on THEIR path less traveled. And although more often personal and perhaps even of small significance today, the differences that women make in their everyday lives are equally important to the world around them and perhaps even more important to the world tomorrow.
She ends the chapter with a note that often the difference that women make in the world is much more likely to be intangible and not something that is easily noted. Making a friend feel better about her situation, helping a child understand that 2+2=4, putting the shopping buggy up before leaving the grocery store, smiling at the bank cashier and blessing her day, taking the time to find the right gift, not necessarily the most expensive one for someone, etc…These are not always measurable or even viewable but they can make just as profound a difference in the world through the ripples of cause and effect as any world changing celebrity or “saint".
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
You Matter - Band of Sisters
Chapter 8
This chapter is about how Dr. P got together a group of 7 women with no real agenda except to become a group of women who interact and fellowship with each other. Not as a Bible study group or accountability group, just a group that meets once a month and discusses whatever question that month’s host poses. The chapter then offers up her question of, “As a woman, how do you make a difference in the world?”
Then she describes the conversation that followed and how it was obvious to everyone that each woman there made significant differences in the world around them, but often it seemed unclear or hidden to the woman making the difference. When surrounded by their sisters, the difference each woman was making was obvious and highlighted so that she could see it clearly because her sisters could see it so clearly. How often we go through life feeling useless and worthless because we don’t “see” or “feel” the difference we make in the world around us. What we need is a “band of sisters” who can show us where we are making that difference.
Especially in the south where we are taught never to “toot” our own horn it seems arrogant and prideful to acknowledge the ways in that we make a difference. I am reminded of the times when Jesse would tell me that I made a difference in the lives of the children I teach weather I see it or not and how hard it was to accept that he spoke the truth because I thought anyone can do what I do, it’s nothing special.
Sometimes, it takes the observations and insights of others to help us see how the pieces of our lives, when collected and displayed, are more beautiful and meaningful than we could ever imagine on our own.
It helps us in our difference making when we have a “band of sisters” who are on the same path who can discuss, support, and critique each other in our quest. A small intimate group of women who are thoughtful and committed to changing the world, one path at a time.
Then she talks about how each of us needs this small group of women around us and there I hit a wall … again. There is no small group of women that I can call friends. I see no one and I rarely talk to anyone. I live to far away for any of them to visit me and they are too busy after church on Sundays to make time for me there. In fact I have heard this complaint from several of the women I know in my church. “I wanted to do something, but I was just too busy.” And suddenly I am reminded of the recent past where I realized that we have let the world into the church. Not by bad deeds or harsh criticisms, or in any obvious way, but by allowing our lives to be so BUSY that we are not connected to each other outside of Sunday morning and a couple of hours two nights a month. Over and over I hear the apology and the explanation and I do understand that life is constantly happening, but where is the dedication to fellowshipping with each other? Am I the only one who desperately desires to fellowship and just talk about God in my life to others?
I miss it so much that I have even considered going to another church on Sunday evenings so I could get more of this fellowship relationship that I crave with other Christians. I “hang out” and am friends with people half my age because they are the only ones who are not consumed with their lives and living and family and etc.
I do understand that we have to live in the world and that requires work, but I don’t understand why no one wants more. Even with this book, there are those who have considered reading it along with me and getting together to discuss it. I don’t know if it will actually happen, because no one wants to fight to get closer to God. Why? I crave it like a drug that I desperately need. Both the fellowship and the closer relationship to my Father and I can’t help but wonder if I am the only one. I feel like I am. And then God just tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of the prophet who was complaining to God about being all alone and God told him that He had several thousand who were still His and had not bowed to Baal and the prophet just didn’t know about them.
So, all I know is that all I hear from the people whom I wish were part of my fellowship, were the iron that I need to sharpen iron, is silence. Perhaps it is because I live in another town or perhaps it is because they are too busy, regardless, why are we not a band of brothers and sisters? Why are we not coming together of our own choice more often so that iron can sharpen iron. I am not talking about Sunday School or the Ladies Meetings because those are more about learning from a teacher, I am talking about US, God’s people, coming together for interaction, for fellowship, for fun, for conversation, for seeking truth. Am I the only one who craves this enough to look for it wherever I can find it? The sad thing is the moment I stop fighting for it, it falls away again. I am tired of asking people who say sure, and then life gets busy and they forget or it just never happens. Not that I am perfect…. FAR FAR from it, but I know I have tried so many times to find someone to mentor with, to interact and hang out with, and over and over they fall away or life gets to busy or they just don’t want to spend their time hanging out discussing God when they “need” to be doing something else.
This, more than anything else is the REAL reason I desperately miss Reality Check, therapy, whatever you wanted to call our little group. It was a group of peers who simply wanted to fellowship together and talk about God. I miss it like a piece of my heart is missing. I miss the camaraderie and the friendship and the fellowship and how we cared about each other outside of the official meeting time and place and our lives intersected constantly. Perhaps that is the gift of singleness as well as the curse. We have the time and desire and craving to fellowship with others, but those with family seem to be consumed with living and interacting only with their families. They just don’t have time, I am told, but wish it could be different.
I truly don’t know what is what here. Perhaps it is just the way things are and I am crazy to think or wish for anything different. Perhaps that is the curse of living in a small town with few people and fewer still single and able to gather and fellowship without issues of babysitters and family dinners and laundry and etc. I just know that I crave that fellowship and I don’t know how to get it. The only people who seem able or willing are too young to be my peers and I am starting to feel my age.
This chapter is about how Dr. P got together a group of 7 women with no real agenda except to become a group of women who interact and fellowship with each other. Not as a Bible study group or accountability group, just a group that meets once a month and discusses whatever question that month’s host poses. The chapter then offers up her question of, “As a woman, how do you make a difference in the world?”
Then she describes the conversation that followed and how it was obvious to everyone that each woman there made significant differences in the world around them, but often it seemed unclear or hidden to the woman making the difference. When surrounded by their sisters, the difference each woman was making was obvious and highlighted so that she could see it clearly because her sisters could see it so clearly. How often we go through life feeling useless and worthless because we don’t “see” or “feel” the difference we make in the world around us. What we need is a “band of sisters” who can show us where we are making that difference.
Especially in the south where we are taught never to “toot” our own horn it seems arrogant and prideful to acknowledge the ways in that we make a difference. I am reminded of the times when Jesse would tell me that I made a difference in the lives of the children I teach weather I see it or not and how hard it was to accept that he spoke the truth because I thought anyone can do what I do, it’s nothing special.
Sometimes, it takes the observations and insights of others to help us see how the pieces of our lives, when collected and displayed, are more beautiful and meaningful than we could ever imagine on our own.
It helps us in our difference making when we have a “band of sisters” who are on the same path who can discuss, support, and critique each other in our quest. A small intimate group of women who are thoughtful and committed to changing the world, one path at a time.
Then she talks about how each of us needs this small group of women around us and there I hit a wall … again. There is no small group of women that I can call friends. I see no one and I rarely talk to anyone. I live to far away for any of them to visit me and they are too busy after church on Sundays to make time for me there. In fact I have heard this complaint from several of the women I know in my church. “I wanted to do something, but I was just too busy.” And suddenly I am reminded of the recent past where I realized that we have let the world into the church. Not by bad deeds or harsh criticisms, or in any obvious way, but by allowing our lives to be so BUSY that we are not connected to each other outside of Sunday morning and a couple of hours two nights a month. Over and over I hear the apology and the explanation and I do understand that life is constantly happening, but where is the dedication to fellowshipping with each other? Am I the only one who desperately desires to fellowship and just talk about God in my life to others?
I miss it so much that I have even considered going to another church on Sunday evenings so I could get more of this fellowship relationship that I crave with other Christians. I “hang out” and am friends with people half my age because they are the only ones who are not consumed with their lives and living and family and etc.
I do understand that we have to live in the world and that requires work, but I don’t understand why no one wants more. Even with this book, there are those who have considered reading it along with me and getting together to discuss it. I don’t know if it will actually happen, because no one wants to fight to get closer to God. Why? I crave it like a drug that I desperately need. Both the fellowship and the closer relationship to my Father and I can’t help but wonder if I am the only one. I feel like I am. And then God just tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of the prophet who was complaining to God about being all alone and God told him that He had several thousand who were still His and had not bowed to Baal and the prophet just didn’t know about them.
So, all I know is that all I hear from the people whom I wish were part of my fellowship, were the iron that I need to sharpen iron, is silence. Perhaps it is because I live in another town or perhaps it is because they are too busy, regardless, why are we not a band of brothers and sisters? Why are we not coming together of our own choice more often so that iron can sharpen iron. I am not talking about Sunday School or the Ladies Meetings because those are more about learning from a teacher, I am talking about US, God’s people, coming together for interaction, for fellowship, for fun, for conversation, for seeking truth. Am I the only one who craves this enough to look for it wherever I can find it? The sad thing is the moment I stop fighting for it, it falls away again. I am tired of asking people who say sure, and then life gets busy and they forget or it just never happens. Not that I am perfect…. FAR FAR from it, but I know I have tried so many times to find someone to mentor with, to interact and hang out with, and over and over they fall away or life gets to busy or they just don’t want to spend their time hanging out discussing God when they “need” to be doing something else.
This, more than anything else is the REAL reason I desperately miss Reality Check, therapy, whatever you wanted to call our little group. It was a group of peers who simply wanted to fellowship together and talk about God. I miss it like a piece of my heart is missing. I miss the camaraderie and the friendship and the fellowship and how we cared about each other outside of the official meeting time and place and our lives intersected constantly. Perhaps that is the gift of singleness as well as the curse. We have the time and desire and craving to fellowship with others, but those with family seem to be consumed with living and interacting only with their families. They just don’t have time, I am told, but wish it could be different.
I truly don’t know what is what here. Perhaps it is just the way things are and I am crazy to think or wish for anything different. Perhaps that is the curse of living in a small town with few people and fewer still single and able to gather and fellowship without issues of babysitters and family dinners and laundry and etc. I just know that I crave that fellowship and I don’t know how to get it. The only people who seem able or willing are too young to be my peers and I am starting to feel my age.
Friday, November 26, 2010
You Matter – Dr L Parrott - The Road Less Traveled.
Chapter 1:
I have always wanted to walk the road less traveled because I have NEVER wanted to blend in with everyone else. Thus I have always marched to the beat of my own drum. Early on, it was because I WAS different, now it is because I choose to be different.
Dr Parrott asks who would not want to take the road that “makes a difference?” Like her, I also find poetic value in the image of the two paths diverging in the wood. She goes on to say that we define that path less traveled by the famous and respected, like Mother Theresa or Franklin Graham, people who have “MADE A DIFFERENCE in the world around us that we can see. Dr Parrott talks about how we have lost our sense of idealism and determination to travel that different road and make a difference because we have had to focus on getting through daily life which leaves so little time left for dramatic acts that change the world for most of us.
That is ALL in our perception Dr Parrott says. She talks about how life bogs us down in our thinking and we began to wonder if anything we do makes a difference in the kingdom at all. This, she says, is where we start to get off track. The TRUTH is that we do make a difference in the kingdom! And the more we understand that difference we make, the more powerful that difference will be.
None of us are clones, we are each created individually by a creative God who fashions each of us for a specific role in His Kingdom. No one else on earth can do “our job” exactly like God created us to do it. He created Mother Theresa to do a specific task, fashioned her to be able to accept and excel at the obstacles she would meet as she worked on behalf of the Kingdom of God. We are created to do a specific task of living our lives as only we have the gifts and gracing’s to do. That is why we cannot compare ourselves to each other. Each of us is an original.
She then talks about how we do our BEST when we love and that ultimately everything we do and excel at will be powered by love, therefore the most important thing for us to pursue is love of our fellow man, like God loves. Each of us must find our personal pathway less traveled to expand and express that love and “that will make all the difference.” She then talks about a teacher who rearranges her classroom and makes sure that the shy boy is in the center of kids so he will be encouraged to interact and make friends. The teacher “loves” her students and has traveled a path that could possibly define the entire rest of the little boy’s life, because she made choices during her “everyday life” that expressed her love of the world around her and took a path (made an effort to specifically alter one thing while doing something else) that may make all the difference.
This woman and all others like her may not be making a difference on a world wide scale. They may not be on the front lines of social change and justice, but they are each making the world around THEM a better place. And no one but the Father can know if that seed planted might someday produce fruit that will change the world itself. Like the nameless men who lowered Paul from the wall in a basket, they share in every salvation and changed life that Paul influences from that moment on to this present day. We never know what lives we touch in our little worlds that ripple out to one day change the whole world.
This is where some of my friends seemed to have bogged down. They believe that they can only make a difference if they are living in poverty or serving mankind for the greater good. They “punish” themselves because they believe that living life without living for the greater good is not God’s plan. They err, not in wanting to live a life serving the Kingdom, but in believing that those who do not live this lifestyle is not walking their own God appointed paths less traveled. The road that makes all the difference is not, despite what many think, along the road to Calcutta or on the mean streets of the inner city, but a pathway of the heart. It is not so much about how you are living as the heart you express as you walk your path that makes it a road less traveled. The difference is in the wanting to make a difference and making daily choices in the life God has given us when we show more grace, compassion, understanding, patience, and empathy. Love. Love is not bound by borders or preconceived notions about difference making. It is not the segmental drivel found in a Hallmark Card, Love is hard work and not many live a life of love such as we have all been called to. It does not matter WHERE God has called you; Geography is irrelevant, as long as you are making the best use of your life WHERE you are.
I have always wanted to walk the road less traveled because I have NEVER wanted to blend in with everyone else. Thus I have always marched to the beat of my own drum. Early on, it was because I WAS different, now it is because I choose to be different.
Dr Parrott asks who would not want to take the road that “makes a difference?” Like her, I also find poetic value in the image of the two paths diverging in the wood. She goes on to say that we define that path less traveled by the famous and respected, like Mother Theresa or Franklin Graham, people who have “MADE A DIFFERENCE in the world around us that we can see. Dr Parrott talks about how we have lost our sense of idealism and determination to travel that different road and make a difference because we have had to focus on getting through daily life which leaves so little time left for dramatic acts that change the world for most of us.
That is ALL in our perception Dr Parrott says. She talks about how life bogs us down in our thinking and we began to wonder if anything we do makes a difference in the kingdom at all. This, she says, is where we start to get off track. The TRUTH is that we do make a difference in the kingdom! And the more we understand that difference we make, the more powerful that difference will be.
None of us are clones, we are each created individually by a creative God who fashions each of us for a specific role in His Kingdom. No one else on earth can do “our job” exactly like God created us to do it. He created Mother Theresa to do a specific task, fashioned her to be able to accept and excel at the obstacles she would meet as she worked on behalf of the Kingdom of God. We are created to do a specific task of living our lives as only we have the gifts and gracing’s to do. That is why we cannot compare ourselves to each other. Each of us is an original.
She then talks about how we do our BEST when we love and that ultimately everything we do and excel at will be powered by love, therefore the most important thing for us to pursue is love of our fellow man, like God loves. Each of us must find our personal pathway less traveled to expand and express that love and “that will make all the difference.” She then talks about a teacher who rearranges her classroom and makes sure that the shy boy is in the center of kids so he will be encouraged to interact and make friends. The teacher “loves” her students and has traveled a path that could possibly define the entire rest of the little boy’s life, because she made choices during her “everyday life” that expressed her love of the world around her and took a path (made an effort to specifically alter one thing while doing something else) that may make all the difference.
This woman and all others like her may not be making a difference on a world wide scale. They may not be on the front lines of social change and justice, but they are each making the world around THEM a better place. And no one but the Father can know if that seed planted might someday produce fruit that will change the world itself. Like the nameless men who lowered Paul from the wall in a basket, they share in every salvation and changed life that Paul influences from that moment on to this present day. We never know what lives we touch in our little worlds that ripple out to one day change the whole world.
This is where some of my friends seemed to have bogged down. They believe that they can only make a difference if they are living in poverty or serving mankind for the greater good. They “punish” themselves because they believe that living life without living for the greater good is not God’s plan. They err, not in wanting to live a life serving the Kingdom, but in believing that those who do not live this lifestyle is not walking their own God appointed paths less traveled. The road that makes all the difference is not, despite what many think, along the road to Calcutta or on the mean streets of the inner city, but a pathway of the heart. It is not so much about how you are living as the heart you express as you walk your path that makes it a road less traveled. The difference is in the wanting to make a difference and making daily choices in the life God has given us when we show more grace, compassion, understanding, patience, and empathy. Love. Love is not bound by borders or preconceived notions about difference making. It is not the segmental drivel found in a Hallmark Card, Love is hard work and not many live a life of love such as we have all been called to. It does not matter WHERE God has called you; Geography is irrelevant, as long as you are making the best use of your life WHERE you are.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
November 7, 2010 New Life Fellowship Chris Strong
Today was a ‘kairos’ moment. A God appointed time and place for meeting when life and all that I perceive about it changed.
The lesson started with worship. With an open heart and hearing a call to worship like I have not heard since David left the platform. Instead of an entertainment group doing a song and dance, it was simple and to the point worship. I don’t know if it is I, or if it is some spirit within the church itself, but I truly have not felt this reaching out from God or the desire to reach back until today for several years. The songs were old, but full of life and power and the Spirit. Perhaps there is a spirit that prevents the way we once were called to worship, or perhaps my heart has just been so hard that I could not hear it there, but today I heard that call so clear. Today, I communed with God, and it was all that I remember and more.
The teaching today began with a note that we are being called to sanctification. Within the body, and within our personal lives God is calling us to cleanse and sanctify ourselves.
Isaiah 60
1 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. 2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. 3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Darkness means a lack of clarity and purpose. Darkness also means the loss in sin and death of the world. God is calling His church and His people to cleanse and sanctify themselves for He is preparing to shine His “light” into the darkness of our world and the way that He will do that is through His church and His people. The church will be the light; therefore the church has to learn how to spiritually eat.
How prophetic for me. I have had to learn how to eat as if from the beginning; a physical representation of a spiritual truth. I have had to learn to eat food to remain healthy even when I cannot see the effects, so too I must learn to eat healthy spiritually to remain healthy even when I cannot see the effects of my “eating”.
God showed me that the light coming to shine to the world would shine through His servants, not His heirs. Being an heir to the Kingdom of God is for our benefit, being a light in the darkness is for the benefit of the world, therefore we have to walk as servants, not heirs. For this is not about us, it is about what God is doing through us.
Acts 1:7-8 (NIV)
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Amplified
7He said to them, It is not for you to become acquainted with and know [b]what time brings [the things and events of time and their definite periods] or fixed [c]years and seasons (their critical niche in time), which the Father has appointed (fixed and reserved) by His own choice and authority and personal power.
8But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.
TRUTH!!!
We received power (defined by the amplified as ability, efficiency, and might) when we received the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I received the flowing power of the living God when I received the Holy Spirit. I have the ability and the might to accomplish whatever God sets before me.
I can be deceived. The Bible says the heart is deceitful, so my feelings cannot be trusted on matters of Spirit, but the Holy Spirit that resides within me will ALWAYS know the TRUTH. Therefore I MUST establish a close and personal relationship with the Holy Spirit if I wish to know the will of God and to be able to discern TRUTH in a world of false hopes and dreams.
Scripture can reveal something new every time you look at it, therefore the Holy Spirit can reveal what was hidden in the scripture and it can change how we see everything that went before. Revelations of scripture do not change what the scripture previously said, but reveals the hidden messages that were waiting for the God appointed time to be revealed.
We are to guard our hearts against deceit and despair. There are things that the God of Heaven does not WANT us to know before His appointed moment of revelation. No one on this earth can know everything God is planning, so beware those who would speak of the end times as if they KNOW the TRUTH. Only God knows the TRUTH and He will reveal it as He has ordained in the amounts that He ordained.
Even those who are in err in their “prophecies” or teachings; can still grant us revelations from God. God’s question to us is, “who is your (my) teacher?” If the answer is God, and not man, then we can learn from ANYONE, even one who is in error about some of their message. Again, this is why we have to have our own personal relationship with the Holy Spirit and the Father, we HAVE to be able to go to God ourselves or check in our Spirit to determine what nuggets of truth to keep and what to refuse.
One thing Chris said was that he was once told, “Keep all presented TRUTH from trusted individuals as ‘probably true.’” But we are to question and seek God’s counsel on our own.
In the world to come we will not always have a Godly counsel or friend to rely on.
I was very addicted to relying on others to clarify and speak to and from God for me in the past. During this season of my life, God has made sure to remove any possible crutches from me. Not because the people in my life were bad or ungodly, but because He wants me to come to Him and Trust Him and no other for a FINAL word. God was tired of my using others to build a bridge to His word and wisdom and used my situation to remove those crutches so I would truly see that men (and women) will ALWAYS fail. But He will NEVER fail and NEVER leave me to walk along, EVEN through the valley of the shadow of death and through the halls of death itself.
John 7:17 (NIV)
17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
Amplified
17If any man desires to do His will (God's pleasure), he will know (have the needed illumination to recognize, and can tell for himself) whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking from Myself and of My own accord and on My own authority.
Chris said, “The secret to knowing God’s Will is to know God.” Again, who is my teacher? If the answer is God (as it should be), then we must accept that God can teach us through anyone, or anything for that matter. Again, this is why we MUST have our own personal relationship to the Holy Spirit and God, because we must be able to ‘test’ the “Truths” given to us from ANY source, because God teaches using both the divine and the mundane.
A good personal example is Moco and Melody. God used Moco to teach me a lesson about faith. Moco who is most likely demon possessed, asked me the Spiritually inspired question about why I believe, when it didn’t seem to make me any happier in life, and taught me a very personal and powerful lesson in faith and the real meaning of salvation.
Now, based on the scripture given today:
I have POWER!!! Because I have been claimed by the Holy Spirit!
I have authority in Christ to claim in His name as well as to bind or banish according to His Will. All things in earth have been ordered to subject themselves to me if I walk and speak in the Will of the Living God.
This is all in the name of Christ who gave me His authority on earth and using the literal Powerline of the Holy Spirit. It is a time to renew and empower. The time of being a victim is over; victims don’t have the kind of power and authority that we do. Whatever we speak or claim in God’s name according to His Will, will be done. Therefore we HAVE to accept that when those things we speak or claim do not come to pass, that God had another plan and all is still working according to His divine plan, premeditated and preordained.
Revelation to me today:
My heart attack was a literal death to self. I have struggled with that concept my entire Christian life. I could not let go of the things “I” wanted to accept that God might have had another path because it was not the path “I” wanted. So, I followed a life that had consequences and suffered a heart attack at 44. But what life and the devil intended for evil, God intended for Good, for God works ALL things to the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Despite my unbelief and lack of faith and unrecognization from anyone around me, God HAS called ME to service. By definition of that verse, I AM CALLED according to His purpose, set aside and preordained for me to accomplish. If not, I would be dead, because there is no other point or purpose in my surviving and the circumstances surrounding my survival are too specific and obviously appointed to be anything else.
I have been allowed to “die” and be “re-born” to a new life to become whatever I will allow God to make me.
I was broken before. Broken by a sin cursed world that chewed me up and spit me out and I only longed for death. From my earliest recollections of around 13 years old, I have wanted to die. Life was simply too painful to continue to exist and I endured a lifetime of pain and suffering and loss because I simply did not know how to let go of myself. A lifetime of rejection and inconsolable despair eventually wore down into a broken Christian limping along with only hope for a future that I wanted with no real belief in it’s fulfillment.
Until God allowed my bitter, broken mind, body and soul to die, and now that I have pushed through the bitterness of the painful ripping apart of the life I was so entrenched in, God is beginning to reveal the process of rebuilding a NEW creation in me.
God is using this season after my heart attack to cleanse me of all my misdirected “ties and trust” in those around me and as I have learned about forgiveness He is beginning to show me the process of recreating something new out of the shattered pieces of the old. The old had to be completely shattered (like the Alabaster box the perfume which was used to anoint Christ for His burial was shattered) before I would actually let go enough for God to begin a new work in me. God knew I had to have NOTHING left before I would allow Him to begin to craft my life into His mold rather than the mold I had chosen for myself.
I have died to self. My heart literally stopped beating while they operated on me. The person I was, the life I have lived, the dreams and hopes that I held on to have died. It is a new day and I am being formed into a new vessel for a service that I have not yet been told, but I have no doubt that there is such a service because of the revelations that God has been showing to me as I open my heart and mind to His TRUTH.
Seeing the TRUTH about forgiveness while still understanding that the facts were not the TRUTH was the first of a major step for my re-birth. I had to be able to grasp that there were things that are facts, yet are still not TRUTHS!! A concept that has always eluded me until now, opening the door for the Spirit to rise up and truly begin a NEW WORK.
Our stuff is what keeps us bound. Our stuff, (our possessions, our hopes, our dreams, our fears,) these are the things that keep us bound up and inefficient servants of the Kingdom. It was only when God forced me to give up my “stuff” through a painful shattering experience that I am becoming able to allow God to begin to shape me as He Wills, instead of crying because He is not shaping me as I Will.
Acts 8 again says:
…you will be my witnesses…
Chris said, We (I) are called to witness the TRUTH of Jesus for the Kingdom of God. To Witness is to be master of, to accept our crosses, (burdens, debts, losses, unfulfilled dreams and hopes, singleness, etc…) with the peace of Christ.
It is not simply our words to the “lost” that make us witnesses; it is how we walk through everyday life that is our true witness. That is how we will be the “light” of God to the world.
How do I live with the burden of being single and alone? In the past, my answer was to cry and bemoan and pray and hold on desperately to the hope that it would someday change. But that ended with the old life. MY life is over, it died in a hospital in North Carolina, this new life is a gift from a Heavenly Father, not for me, but for those around me. (Trust me, this keeps blowing my mind every time I look at it). This life is not about me or the things I want or feel, but about God’s Kingdom and what He has planned for me to do in it.
My “death” is behind me now, both spiritually and physically. Everything going forward from this point on is a gift from God to the Kingdom. Weather I “feel” it or not, my dreams, hopes, joys, and sorrows died in Wilmington, North Carolina and from that moment forward I am living on God time and no longer my own. My time is over; God’s time is just beginning. Until God is through with me, I cannot die. There may be moments of struggle with old ghosts of feelings and thoughts, but that is all they are, simply ghosts of a person that was and they have no more substance than a whisper of a memory no longer valid.
And THAT is the biggest revelation to me of all. The gifts of the Spirit are all gifts, not to those with the abilities, but to the church and the world around us. Gifts are given to the Kingdom for the Kingdom’s use rather than for our personal gratification and use. God loves us, but that is a totally separate thing from the Gifts of the Spirit. For the first time in my life I see clearly that I have been “claimed” by the most Holy God. He “took” my life when it was over because of my poor choices and “gifted” my life back. But my life is no longer about me. I am not a “gift” for myself, I am to be a “gift” to the Kingdom and therefore I need to cleanse, sanctify, and allow God to rebuild and rebirth me in the image He has chosen to represent His light to His Church and to our dark and dying world.
Today was a ‘kairos’ moment. A God appointed time and place for meeting when life and all that I perceive about it changed.
The lesson started with worship. With an open heart and hearing a call to worship like I have not heard since David left the platform. Instead of an entertainment group doing a song and dance, it was simple and to the point worship. I don’t know if it is I, or if it is some spirit within the church itself, but I truly have not felt this reaching out from God or the desire to reach back until today for several years. The songs were old, but full of life and power and the Spirit. Perhaps there is a spirit that prevents the way we once were called to worship, or perhaps my heart has just been so hard that I could not hear it there, but today I heard that call so clear. Today, I communed with God, and it was all that I remember and more.
The teaching today began with a note that we are being called to sanctification. Within the body, and within our personal lives God is calling us to cleanse and sanctify ourselves.
Isaiah 60
1 “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD rises upon you. 2 See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you. 3 Nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn.
Darkness means a lack of clarity and purpose. Darkness also means the loss in sin and death of the world. God is calling His church and His people to cleanse and sanctify themselves for He is preparing to shine His “light” into the darkness of our world and the way that He will do that is through His church and His people. The church will be the light; therefore the church has to learn how to spiritually eat.
How prophetic for me. I have had to learn how to eat as if from the beginning; a physical representation of a spiritual truth. I have had to learn to eat food to remain healthy even when I cannot see the effects, so too I must learn to eat healthy spiritually to remain healthy even when I cannot see the effects of my “eating”.
God showed me that the light coming to shine to the world would shine through His servants, not His heirs. Being an heir to the Kingdom of God is for our benefit, being a light in the darkness is for the benefit of the world, therefore we have to walk as servants, not heirs. For this is not about us, it is about what God is doing through us.
Acts 1:7-8 (NIV)
7 He said to them: “It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority. 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Amplified
7He said to them, It is not for you to become acquainted with and know [b]what time brings [the things and events of time and their definite periods] or fixed [c]years and seasons (their critical niche in time), which the Father has appointed (fixed and reserved) by His own choice and authority and personal power.
8But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.
TRUTH!!!
We received power (defined by the amplified as ability, efficiency, and might) when we received the Holy Spirit. Therefore, I received the flowing power of the living God when I received the Holy Spirit. I have the ability and the might to accomplish whatever God sets before me.
I can be deceived. The Bible says the heart is deceitful, so my feelings cannot be trusted on matters of Spirit, but the Holy Spirit that resides within me will ALWAYS know the TRUTH. Therefore I MUST establish a close and personal relationship with the Holy Spirit if I wish to know the will of God and to be able to discern TRUTH in a world of false hopes and dreams.
Scripture can reveal something new every time you look at it, therefore the Holy Spirit can reveal what was hidden in the scripture and it can change how we see everything that went before. Revelations of scripture do not change what the scripture previously said, but reveals the hidden messages that were waiting for the God appointed time to be revealed.
We are to guard our hearts against deceit and despair. There are things that the God of Heaven does not WANT us to know before His appointed moment of revelation. No one on this earth can know everything God is planning, so beware those who would speak of the end times as if they KNOW the TRUTH. Only God knows the TRUTH and He will reveal it as He has ordained in the amounts that He ordained.
Even those who are in err in their “prophecies” or teachings; can still grant us revelations from God. God’s question to us is, “who is your (my) teacher?” If the answer is God, and not man, then we can learn from ANYONE, even one who is in error about some of their message. Again, this is why we have to have our own personal relationship with the Holy Spirit and the Father, we HAVE to be able to go to God ourselves or check in our Spirit to determine what nuggets of truth to keep and what to refuse.
One thing Chris said was that he was once told, “Keep all presented TRUTH from trusted individuals as ‘probably true.’” But we are to question and seek God’s counsel on our own.
In the world to come we will not always have a Godly counsel or friend to rely on.
I was very addicted to relying on others to clarify and speak to and from God for me in the past. During this season of my life, God has made sure to remove any possible crutches from me. Not because the people in my life were bad or ungodly, but because He wants me to come to Him and Trust Him and no other for a FINAL word. God was tired of my using others to build a bridge to His word and wisdom and used my situation to remove those crutches so I would truly see that men (and women) will ALWAYS fail. But He will NEVER fail and NEVER leave me to walk along, EVEN through the valley of the shadow of death and through the halls of death itself.
John 7:17 (NIV)
17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.
Amplified
17If any man desires to do His will (God's pleasure), he will know (have the needed illumination to recognize, and can tell for himself) whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking from Myself and of My own accord and on My own authority.
Chris said, “The secret to knowing God’s Will is to know God.” Again, who is my teacher? If the answer is God (as it should be), then we must accept that God can teach us through anyone, or anything for that matter. Again, this is why we MUST have our own personal relationship to the Holy Spirit and God, because we must be able to ‘test’ the “Truths” given to us from ANY source, because God teaches using both the divine and the mundane.
A good personal example is Moco and Melody. God used Moco to teach me a lesson about faith. Moco who is most likely demon possessed, asked me the Spiritually inspired question about why I believe, when it didn’t seem to make me any happier in life, and taught me a very personal and powerful lesson in faith and the real meaning of salvation.
Now, based on the scripture given today:
I have POWER!!! Because I have been claimed by the Holy Spirit!
I have authority in Christ to claim in His name as well as to bind or banish according to His Will. All things in earth have been ordered to subject themselves to me if I walk and speak in the Will of the Living God.
This is all in the name of Christ who gave me His authority on earth and using the literal Powerline of the Holy Spirit. It is a time to renew and empower. The time of being a victim is over; victims don’t have the kind of power and authority that we do. Whatever we speak or claim in God’s name according to His Will, will be done. Therefore we HAVE to accept that when those things we speak or claim do not come to pass, that God had another plan and all is still working according to His divine plan, premeditated and preordained.
Revelation to me today:
My heart attack was a literal death to self. I have struggled with that concept my entire Christian life. I could not let go of the things “I” wanted to accept that God might have had another path because it was not the path “I” wanted. So, I followed a life that had consequences and suffered a heart attack at 44. But what life and the devil intended for evil, God intended for Good, for God works ALL things to the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Despite my unbelief and lack of faith and unrecognization from anyone around me, God HAS called ME to service. By definition of that verse, I AM CALLED according to His purpose, set aside and preordained for me to accomplish. If not, I would be dead, because there is no other point or purpose in my surviving and the circumstances surrounding my survival are too specific and obviously appointed to be anything else.
I have been allowed to “die” and be “re-born” to a new life to become whatever I will allow God to make me.
I was broken before. Broken by a sin cursed world that chewed me up and spit me out and I only longed for death. From my earliest recollections of around 13 years old, I have wanted to die. Life was simply too painful to continue to exist and I endured a lifetime of pain and suffering and loss because I simply did not know how to let go of myself. A lifetime of rejection and inconsolable despair eventually wore down into a broken Christian limping along with only hope for a future that I wanted with no real belief in it’s fulfillment.
Until God allowed my bitter, broken mind, body and soul to die, and now that I have pushed through the bitterness of the painful ripping apart of the life I was so entrenched in, God is beginning to reveal the process of rebuilding a NEW creation in me.
God is using this season after my heart attack to cleanse me of all my misdirected “ties and trust” in those around me and as I have learned about forgiveness He is beginning to show me the process of recreating something new out of the shattered pieces of the old. The old had to be completely shattered (like the Alabaster box the perfume which was used to anoint Christ for His burial was shattered) before I would actually let go enough for God to begin a new work in me. God knew I had to have NOTHING left before I would allow Him to begin to craft my life into His mold rather than the mold I had chosen for myself.
I have died to self. My heart literally stopped beating while they operated on me. The person I was, the life I have lived, the dreams and hopes that I held on to have died. It is a new day and I am being formed into a new vessel for a service that I have not yet been told, but I have no doubt that there is such a service because of the revelations that God has been showing to me as I open my heart and mind to His TRUTH.
Seeing the TRUTH about forgiveness while still understanding that the facts were not the TRUTH was the first of a major step for my re-birth. I had to be able to grasp that there were things that are facts, yet are still not TRUTHS!! A concept that has always eluded me until now, opening the door for the Spirit to rise up and truly begin a NEW WORK.
Our stuff is what keeps us bound. Our stuff, (our possessions, our hopes, our dreams, our fears,) these are the things that keep us bound up and inefficient servants of the Kingdom. It was only when God forced me to give up my “stuff” through a painful shattering experience that I am becoming able to allow God to begin to shape me as He Wills, instead of crying because He is not shaping me as I Will.
Acts 8 again says:
…you will be my witnesses…
Chris said, We (I) are called to witness the TRUTH of Jesus for the Kingdom of God. To Witness is to be master of, to accept our crosses, (burdens, debts, losses, unfulfilled dreams and hopes, singleness, etc…) with the peace of Christ.
It is not simply our words to the “lost” that make us witnesses; it is how we walk through everyday life that is our true witness. That is how we will be the “light” of God to the world.
How do I live with the burden of being single and alone? In the past, my answer was to cry and bemoan and pray and hold on desperately to the hope that it would someday change. But that ended with the old life. MY life is over, it died in a hospital in North Carolina, this new life is a gift from a Heavenly Father, not for me, but for those around me. (Trust me, this keeps blowing my mind every time I look at it). This life is not about me or the things I want or feel, but about God’s Kingdom and what He has planned for me to do in it.
My “death” is behind me now, both spiritually and physically. Everything going forward from this point on is a gift from God to the Kingdom. Weather I “feel” it or not, my dreams, hopes, joys, and sorrows died in Wilmington, North Carolina and from that moment forward I am living on God time and no longer my own. My time is over; God’s time is just beginning. Until God is through with me, I cannot die. There may be moments of struggle with old ghosts of feelings and thoughts, but that is all they are, simply ghosts of a person that was and they have no more substance than a whisper of a memory no longer valid.
And THAT is the biggest revelation to me of all. The gifts of the Spirit are all gifts, not to those with the abilities, but to the church and the world around us. Gifts are given to the Kingdom for the Kingdom’s use rather than for our personal gratification and use. God loves us, but that is a totally separate thing from the Gifts of the Spirit. For the first time in my life I see clearly that I have been “claimed” by the most Holy God. He “took” my life when it was over because of my poor choices and “gifted” my life back. But my life is no longer about me. I am not a “gift” for myself, I am to be a “gift” to the Kingdom and therefore I need to cleanse, sanctify, and allow God to rebuild and rebirth me in the image He has chosen to represent His light to His Church and to our dark and dying world.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
New reflections forthcoming
considering the state of mind I was in last night and where I was today in church, I am gratefull that God was willing to speak to me about some stuff and the Holy Spirit has given me a measure of peace for the moment.
I will post more later
Becca
I will post more later
Becca
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Waking from the venom.
Over the weekend I had some amazing time to spend with some friends that I don’t get to see all that often and just talk. Talk about life and events and spiritual concepts and revelations. It was iron sharpening iron and the first revelation God sent me this weekend was just how much I have NEEDED that. God as clear as day just dropped it into my head that I have been starving for a very long time now. This is why I was seeking churches in my town to visit to try and find something to feed that empty consuming hole. I have been starving for Christian interaction, not just a good sermon, not just fellowship and fun, but debates and sharing insights and in my case many of the things God reveals to me are in verbal revelations. I will be talking out a concept when it just clicks and I understand what God is trying to tell me. That hasn’t happened in a long long time.
The first drought was when Reality Check ended. There was NOTHING to fill that empty place where so MANY of us found refuge. Not that I don’t understand the adults ending it because they had been doing it for YEARS and I understand burnout, but the church let us down by destroying our one place to sharpen ourselves under the careful oversight of a trusted elder and not proving ANYTHING to take it’s place. How many of those kids were cast adrift on the wind because they weren’t members of “our” or even any church and when their support network fell eventually, so did they. They hadn’t had enough time to build their own support and when the structure that was holding them together was dismantled they had nothing and eventually, all of them are gone now. ALL of them are gone! Truth, is that I could even have seen a temporary discontinuing as a positive thing because I don’t think we knew the value of what we had, but what happened still makes me sad.
Then, after YEARS of nothing and empty lonely wandering in the desert alone, God provided home groups again. And one of those groups was made for people like me. People who are bound by love to this church but don’t live in that community. People who cannot afford to come several times a week to Marianna, but could hang out in town on Sunday to meet that evening. In fact, I HATED the teaching tape that we had to watch at the end. I (and I honestly think most of the people were not in a place to listen or even understand Dutch Sheets). I could have, but for the most part just kept an ear open and did my own thing. I was there for the interaction with my Christian family. I was there to listen and give my thoughts about concepts as we talked them through. I learned VERY LITTLE for the videos (not really a video learner) but I learned a LOT from the conversations and revelations afterwards. It was such a special time, some of us didn’t want to leave and would linger as long as Tammy would let us.
And then, the home groups ended. And now there is a bible study group that meets on a weekday afternoon that does not allow those of us who REALLY want to be there to go. It just is not a physical possibility for us at the moment. Then I get a bit annoyed with some of the attitudes I see now that were not there 15 years ago. We haven’t met on Sunday nights for years? WHY??? Any other church considers it standard operation to meet on Sunday for general sermon and Sunday night for specialized training or learning. But I have heard that people get upset when their “family” time or their only “free” time is taken away from them on Sunday night. I don’t understand that attitude AT ALL!!!
All I want to do is “eat”. I have been starving for so long that I cannot imagine not wanting to be in the house of God if I am physically able to be there. Even if Sunday nights were just congregation ministry to each other nights and had canned CD music, or even better, let some of the people who want to sing but never get the chance to take a mic. These are just ideas, but they are born of frustration and desperation.
I am so tired. And before I say another word, I want it known that I am as guilty as any other person if not more so because God has shown me where we are failing. I hate that when trouble comes to our members there are plenty of people offering to pray but offer nothing else. And I am working very hard to not be bitter and hurt but I am not always succeeding when I think about the fact that 3 people called me while I was in North Carolinia. No excuses of we didn’t have the number or didn’t want to bother you, or any other excuse they have because they are NOTHING more than excuses for not having to actually give of their time or heart. Plenty of people were talking on FB and the Reduced, but NOBODY was talking to me. Then, when I was asked “what can we do to help you?” I was too proud to ask for money and couldn’t think of anything because I didn’t know how much my life would have to change, I asked only that people come and see me because I would be so alone and isolated. Do you know who showed up. 1 person. 1 person who also happens to be one of my best friends from church. No other single soul could be bothered to comfort or visit or even help do a little cleaning for a member of their church family who desperately needed it.
I know I am ranting at the moment and some of it may be unfair, but it is all I know. If I have learned nothing else from what happened to me, it’s that I can depend on very little in this world besides God and myself. But there have also been about 3 people who have been there for me and blessed me with their time and money and to them I am so grateful. They gave without asking me if I needed it becuase they knew there was need. I ask the God bless them abundantly 100 times what they provided for me.
The second thing I learned is that even the people I have always called my best friends in the whole world. Friends that I would willingly die for, didn’t care enough about me to even call me back on Saturday to see if I lived through the night. So if the people who are closest to me can’t be bothered it is stupid of me to expect anyone else in the church to do so.
Now, to the heart of the matter, now that I have gotten all that off my chest. I love my church. I love the fact that they accept my weirdness and I don’t get strange looks or have to explain myself when I wear a pirate jacket during the winter or indigo moccasins with a short skirt and Victorian top, or a renaissance gown to the Christmas party. I honestly don’t want to go through the hell of establishing my personality again with people that may or may not think I am crazy but the odds are may considering the area of the country I live in. Most people here are defiantly NOT global thinkers.
The truth is that we (YES, I am as guilty as ANYONE) have allowed life to swallow us to the point that we have lost contact with each other and even to some extent God. God showed me this morning (I think because I had been watching all those utube videos on snakes LOL) that life is like a jungle constrictor. And the snake, or devil, as often referred to in the bible has been biding his time patiently waiting for us to lie down on the path of life. When we lay down to take a nap (spiritually speaking we took our eyes off God) and the snake used its venom to inject a paralytic to keep us passive and quiet as it slowly begins to swallow us whole. Unless something snaps us out of our passivity, we will eventually wake up to find that we are inside the stomach of the snake being devoured from the environment around us. The snake is the ways of life, it is the reality of the living in this world that we have to do because we are a part of this world too. As a church we have allowed the snake (life) to paralyze and consume us.
Perhaps we allowed it because we were so tired of fighting, perhaps because we feel like we have SO MUCH that HAS to get done today. There is housework, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, going to school, getting our degrees, work, keeping our spouses happy, etc etc etc…. and the list goes on. These are all things that have to be done. They are a part of life and we are living in this world, but what we have done, is to become so consumed with living that we no longer make time to minister to others and the ministry we do, feels more like a duty that must be done as part of our everyday living chores, not because we want to bless or minister to the body. We are so focused on our own visions of where our lives should be going that we no longer go to the Father to ask for His visions or even if we do, we don’t have time to sit and wait on Him to provide it if He can’t do it within a set time parameter. Or perhaps we feel unable to assist anyone due to our own economic situation and yet, I am in one of the worst in our church at the moment, but I still find .53 cent to get me a cup of coffee. That same .53 cent could be used to bless one of my brothers or sisters with a mailed card, of course that would require that I actually take the time to write a note or letter and find an address and mail it.
The point I am trying to make is that we have allowed the world into the church in such a subtle and insidious way that we think we are being so pious and helpful when in truth we are giving ourselves permission to not have to actually spend time or money on someone other than ourselves.
Of course this does not apply to every one and even every point does not have to apply to any one person, and I also accept that there may be acts of “charity” going on that I never see or know about. All I do know is that when I was truly and desperately in NEED from my “family”, they failed me very very badly. They left me to drown alone in an overwhelming flood and think nothing of it. It hasn’t crossed their minds that they left one of their own, abandoned to face the wolves of this world alone. Thank you Father God that you are the good Sheppard and You NEVER left me. You are always there even when I fell like I am facing the storm alone, You are still there. But your people are failing to be the instruments of Your hands. Your people, who are called to be in Your image, are not just making human mistakes and showing their human failings, they have become so consumed with their one personal lives that they never even looked outside to see the little match girl dying in the snow. How many of us are feasting on good spiritual food while spiritual children are dying around us starving and freezing from the world they live in not knowing, or thinking they are not allowed to come inside to the table of God.
So, there is a lot of rant here, which I needed to do to release the hurt and the anger and most especially the loss. Am I better, not yet, but I can do nothing about how anyone else acts or thinks, all I can check is my own attitude. Anytime I don’t want to bother because I am depressed, I am letting the snake win. When I don’t want to be nice because I am angy, I am letting the snake win. When I choose not to give that last dollar to someone in need or even ask God to show me someone in need to offer it to, so I can get my morning coffee, I am letting the snake win. When I give up trying to make a difference in people’s lives because I am tired or discouraged, I am letting the snake win. And when I say “I’ll pray for you and be blessed,” but I don’t get off of my ass to offer anything else that I am physically capable of doing, then I am letting the snake win. And it ultimately doesn’t matter what anyone else does or does not do, it is time for me to take a stand and kick my way free from the snake, then turn and chop it’s head off.
So I just ask God for an abundant blessing of His Grace and Mercy, even though I don’t deserve it, so I can get free from this snake that is the world I live in. I ask God to help me remember to find QUALITY time with him not on a set schedule, but whenever I face a decision that could a little spiritual wisdom instead of just making a choice because I am so familiar with the ground I am standing on. Help me Father to see the world through Your eyes. Help me to see Your children as You see them. And help me God to not allow life to consume me and help me keep my focus and my eyes on You so I don’t get lost in the sadness and depression of the world around us.
The first drought was when Reality Check ended. There was NOTHING to fill that empty place where so MANY of us found refuge. Not that I don’t understand the adults ending it because they had been doing it for YEARS and I understand burnout, but the church let us down by destroying our one place to sharpen ourselves under the careful oversight of a trusted elder and not proving ANYTHING to take it’s place. How many of those kids were cast adrift on the wind because they weren’t members of “our” or even any church and when their support network fell eventually, so did they. They hadn’t had enough time to build their own support and when the structure that was holding them together was dismantled they had nothing and eventually, all of them are gone now. ALL of them are gone! Truth, is that I could even have seen a temporary discontinuing as a positive thing because I don’t think we knew the value of what we had, but what happened still makes me sad.
Then, after YEARS of nothing and empty lonely wandering in the desert alone, God provided home groups again. And one of those groups was made for people like me. People who are bound by love to this church but don’t live in that community. People who cannot afford to come several times a week to Marianna, but could hang out in town on Sunday to meet that evening. In fact, I HATED the teaching tape that we had to watch at the end. I (and I honestly think most of the people were not in a place to listen or even understand Dutch Sheets). I could have, but for the most part just kept an ear open and did my own thing. I was there for the interaction with my Christian family. I was there to listen and give my thoughts about concepts as we talked them through. I learned VERY LITTLE for the videos (not really a video learner) but I learned a LOT from the conversations and revelations afterwards. It was such a special time, some of us didn’t want to leave and would linger as long as Tammy would let us.
And then, the home groups ended. And now there is a bible study group that meets on a weekday afternoon that does not allow those of us who REALLY want to be there to go. It just is not a physical possibility for us at the moment. Then I get a bit annoyed with some of the attitudes I see now that were not there 15 years ago. We haven’t met on Sunday nights for years? WHY??? Any other church considers it standard operation to meet on Sunday for general sermon and Sunday night for specialized training or learning. But I have heard that people get upset when their “family” time or their only “free” time is taken away from them on Sunday night. I don’t understand that attitude AT ALL!!!
All I want to do is “eat”. I have been starving for so long that I cannot imagine not wanting to be in the house of God if I am physically able to be there. Even if Sunday nights were just congregation ministry to each other nights and had canned CD music, or even better, let some of the people who want to sing but never get the chance to take a mic. These are just ideas, but they are born of frustration and desperation.
I am so tired. And before I say another word, I want it known that I am as guilty as any other person if not more so because God has shown me where we are failing. I hate that when trouble comes to our members there are plenty of people offering to pray but offer nothing else. And I am working very hard to not be bitter and hurt but I am not always succeeding when I think about the fact that 3 people called me while I was in North Carolinia. No excuses of we didn’t have the number or didn’t want to bother you, or any other excuse they have because they are NOTHING more than excuses for not having to actually give of their time or heart. Plenty of people were talking on FB and the Reduced, but NOBODY was talking to me. Then, when I was asked “what can we do to help you?” I was too proud to ask for money and couldn’t think of anything because I didn’t know how much my life would have to change, I asked only that people come and see me because I would be so alone and isolated. Do you know who showed up. 1 person. 1 person who also happens to be one of my best friends from church. No other single soul could be bothered to comfort or visit or even help do a little cleaning for a member of their church family who desperately needed it.
I know I am ranting at the moment and some of it may be unfair, but it is all I know. If I have learned nothing else from what happened to me, it’s that I can depend on very little in this world besides God and myself. But there have also been about 3 people who have been there for me and blessed me with their time and money and to them I am so grateful. They gave without asking me if I needed it becuase they knew there was need. I ask the God bless them abundantly 100 times what they provided for me.
The second thing I learned is that even the people I have always called my best friends in the whole world. Friends that I would willingly die for, didn’t care enough about me to even call me back on Saturday to see if I lived through the night. So if the people who are closest to me can’t be bothered it is stupid of me to expect anyone else in the church to do so.
Now, to the heart of the matter, now that I have gotten all that off my chest. I love my church. I love the fact that they accept my weirdness and I don’t get strange looks or have to explain myself when I wear a pirate jacket during the winter or indigo moccasins with a short skirt and Victorian top, or a renaissance gown to the Christmas party. I honestly don’t want to go through the hell of establishing my personality again with people that may or may not think I am crazy but the odds are may considering the area of the country I live in. Most people here are defiantly NOT global thinkers.
The truth is that we (YES, I am as guilty as ANYONE) have allowed life to swallow us to the point that we have lost contact with each other and even to some extent God. God showed me this morning (I think because I had been watching all those utube videos on snakes LOL) that life is like a jungle constrictor. And the snake, or devil, as often referred to in the bible has been biding his time patiently waiting for us to lie down on the path of life. When we lay down to take a nap (spiritually speaking we took our eyes off God) and the snake used its venom to inject a paralytic to keep us passive and quiet as it slowly begins to swallow us whole. Unless something snaps us out of our passivity, we will eventually wake up to find that we are inside the stomach of the snake being devoured from the environment around us. The snake is the ways of life, it is the reality of the living in this world that we have to do because we are a part of this world too. As a church we have allowed the snake (life) to paralyze and consume us.
Perhaps we allowed it because we were so tired of fighting, perhaps because we feel like we have SO MUCH that HAS to get done today. There is housework, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, going to school, getting our degrees, work, keeping our spouses happy, etc etc etc…. and the list goes on. These are all things that have to be done. They are a part of life and we are living in this world, but what we have done, is to become so consumed with living that we no longer make time to minister to others and the ministry we do, feels more like a duty that must be done as part of our everyday living chores, not because we want to bless or minister to the body. We are so focused on our own visions of where our lives should be going that we no longer go to the Father to ask for His visions or even if we do, we don’t have time to sit and wait on Him to provide it if He can’t do it within a set time parameter. Or perhaps we feel unable to assist anyone due to our own economic situation and yet, I am in one of the worst in our church at the moment, but I still find .53 cent to get me a cup of coffee. That same .53 cent could be used to bless one of my brothers or sisters with a mailed card, of course that would require that I actually take the time to write a note or letter and find an address and mail it.
The point I am trying to make is that we have allowed the world into the church in such a subtle and insidious way that we think we are being so pious and helpful when in truth we are giving ourselves permission to not have to actually spend time or money on someone other than ourselves.
Of course this does not apply to every one and even every point does not have to apply to any one person, and I also accept that there may be acts of “charity” going on that I never see or know about. All I do know is that when I was truly and desperately in NEED from my “family”, they failed me very very badly. They left me to drown alone in an overwhelming flood and think nothing of it. It hasn’t crossed their minds that they left one of their own, abandoned to face the wolves of this world alone. Thank you Father God that you are the good Sheppard and You NEVER left me. You are always there even when I fell like I am facing the storm alone, You are still there. But your people are failing to be the instruments of Your hands. Your people, who are called to be in Your image, are not just making human mistakes and showing their human failings, they have become so consumed with their one personal lives that they never even looked outside to see the little match girl dying in the snow. How many of us are feasting on good spiritual food while spiritual children are dying around us starving and freezing from the world they live in not knowing, or thinking they are not allowed to come inside to the table of God.
So, there is a lot of rant here, which I needed to do to release the hurt and the anger and most especially the loss. Am I better, not yet, but I can do nothing about how anyone else acts or thinks, all I can check is my own attitude. Anytime I don’t want to bother because I am depressed, I am letting the snake win. When I don’t want to be nice because I am angy, I am letting the snake win. When I choose not to give that last dollar to someone in need or even ask God to show me someone in need to offer it to, so I can get my morning coffee, I am letting the snake win. When I give up trying to make a difference in people’s lives because I am tired or discouraged, I am letting the snake win. And when I say “I’ll pray for you and be blessed,” but I don’t get off of my ass to offer anything else that I am physically capable of doing, then I am letting the snake win. And it ultimately doesn’t matter what anyone else does or does not do, it is time for me to take a stand and kick my way free from the snake, then turn and chop it’s head off.
So I just ask God for an abundant blessing of His Grace and Mercy, even though I don’t deserve it, so I can get free from this snake that is the world I live in. I ask God to help me remember to find QUALITY time with him not on a set schedule, but whenever I face a decision that could a little spiritual wisdom instead of just making a choice because I am so familiar with the ground I am standing on. Help me Father to see the world through Your eyes. Help me to see Your children as You see them. And help me God to not allow life to consume me and help me keep my focus and my eyes on You so I don’t get lost in the sadness and depression of the world around us.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
cynic but true
I have just had THE most amazing realization. People will ALWAYS do what they really want to do. It’s cynical and it’s correct. For example, take a missionary. This is someone that people see as self sacrificing and to some extent they are, but ultimately, they want to please God enough to do whatever it takes, so even if the requirement is something distasteful, they do it because they want to in their quest to please God.
Another example is people who phone and crowd around you when trouble strikes (perhaps more of a southern thing). They all claim that they want to help you if you need it you only need to call. They don’t really want to help you, they feel it is their Christian obligation to help you but they are given an out by saying to themselves that if you need help you will call them. The truth is that most of us would never ask for help and we all know that. The true Christian heart gives without being asked. Everyone else isn’t suffering from Christian charity, they are only afraid of what “duty” they may be asked to perform in the name of charity.
I am not saying that it is all selfish, not really. People who make choices to give up things to help others are defiantly not being selfish, but they are still making a choice. In their case, the choice is to do whatever God asks of them because they find their ultimate happiness in obeying God.
So, my discovery is that people will always do what they REALLY want to do. The difference between Christians and non-believers is that Christians SHOULD be making their choices based on the desire to please God consuming their lives rather than their own personal wants or needs and the non-believer is making a choice to do whatever it is that makes them feel good about themselves or feel happy.
We do ultimately want we REALLY want to do. It is the motivation that is the difference. Someone who truly wants to please God will follow His dictates the others will simply say, call me if you need anything when they KNOW there is need.
Humm, yes, this is a bit biased based on recent events, doesn’t make it any less true and I don’t blame anyone for their choices. I am as bad if not worse than everyone else, because with understanding come greater responsibility. My choices now carry a much greater weight because of my knowledge. Is what I am doing, self satisfying, or making me feel good about myself or is what I am doing an effort to please a loving Father because I love Him?
Another example is people who phone and crowd around you when trouble strikes (perhaps more of a southern thing). They all claim that they want to help you if you need it you only need to call. They don’t really want to help you, they feel it is their Christian obligation to help you but they are given an out by saying to themselves that if you need help you will call them. The truth is that most of us would never ask for help and we all know that. The true Christian heart gives without being asked. Everyone else isn’t suffering from Christian charity, they are only afraid of what “duty” they may be asked to perform in the name of charity.
I am not saying that it is all selfish, not really. People who make choices to give up things to help others are defiantly not being selfish, but they are still making a choice. In their case, the choice is to do whatever God asks of them because they find their ultimate happiness in obeying God.
So, my discovery is that people will always do what they REALLY want to do. The difference between Christians and non-believers is that Christians SHOULD be making their choices based on the desire to please God consuming their lives rather than their own personal wants or needs and the non-believer is making a choice to do whatever it is that makes them feel good about themselves or feel happy.
We do ultimately want we REALLY want to do. It is the motivation that is the difference. Someone who truly wants to please God will follow His dictates the others will simply say, call me if you need anything when they KNOW there is need.
Humm, yes, this is a bit biased based on recent events, doesn’t make it any less true and I don’t blame anyone for their choices. I am as bad if not worse than everyone else, because with understanding come greater responsibility. My choices now carry a much greater weight because of my knowledge. Is what I am doing, self satisfying, or making me feel good about myself or is what I am doing an effort to please a loving Father because I love Him?
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Little Alters
From Malachi:
* If God is my Father, am I showing Him the Honor of that position?
* Have I honored Him with my actions AND my lips?
* If a sacrifice does not cost me anything, it is not a sacrifice!
* The value of the things we do may never been seen here, but they WILL be seen
someday.
* God promises to return to us, if we return to Him when we go astray, but the
Holy Spirit NEVER leaves us, even when we sit in silence.
From Ezekiel 36&37:
* The valley of Dry Bones was empty and dead with no life when God breathed it
into them.
* It is not about healing a broken person, it is about recreation through the
breath of God.
* I can't make myself new, but I can make better choices in preparation of God
making me new and hold on to the faith that He will.
* The weapon being used is not important - it is the Spirit behind the weapon that
carries the power.
* It is not the "job" that I am doing that is important, but the Spirit in which I
carry out my duties that carries the power of God.
* Samson killed thousands with the jawbone of a donkey.
* Regardless of the ass's jawbone I am using due to the state's stupidly, how many
children can I help anyway because the Spirit of God is in me?
I am not here. I have a long way to go to make these a living part of my life, but seeing is the first step and accepting is the second, so I only have the 3rd step of reconciling to go. I accept, I repent, and I will try to change while waiting for God to recreate me. I have been hurt for so long and betrayed by those I loved most, and those things are not just going to disappear, but I have been given a vision of what I have neglected and I need to change what I can. I cannot change the actions of others and I cannot change how much it hurts, but I can focus on other roads and let God enter and not just heal my broken heart and soul, but recreate me by breathing His life into my dry bones.
I am a long way from where I should be, but I am not where I once was, lost in a dark and sinister world of witchcraft and bitterness and hatred. It has been a long road, and full of hurt and betrayal, but in the worst place it was still better than having no hope. Drifting in a dark nightmare is still hard, but with God, at least there is an anchor to hold on to while being beaten a battered by life. It still isn't fun, but you at least have the hope that it means something somewhere somehow.
* If God is my Father, am I showing Him the Honor of that position?
* Have I honored Him with my actions AND my lips?
* If a sacrifice does not cost me anything, it is not a sacrifice!
* The value of the things we do may never been seen here, but they WILL be seen
someday.
* God promises to return to us, if we return to Him when we go astray, but the
Holy Spirit NEVER leaves us, even when we sit in silence.
From Ezekiel 36&37:
* The valley of Dry Bones was empty and dead with no life when God breathed it
into them.
* It is not about healing a broken person, it is about recreation through the
breath of God.
* I can't make myself new, but I can make better choices in preparation of God
making me new and hold on to the faith that He will.
* The weapon being used is not important - it is the Spirit behind the weapon that
carries the power.
* It is not the "job" that I am doing that is important, but the Spirit in which I
carry out my duties that carries the power of God.
* Samson killed thousands with the jawbone of a donkey.
* Regardless of the ass's jawbone I am using due to the state's stupidly, how many
children can I help anyway because the Spirit of God is in me?
I am not here. I have a long way to go to make these a living part of my life, but seeing is the first step and accepting is the second, so I only have the 3rd step of reconciling to go. I accept, I repent, and I will try to change while waiting for God to recreate me. I have been hurt for so long and betrayed by those I loved most, and those things are not just going to disappear, but I have been given a vision of what I have neglected and I need to change what I can. I cannot change the actions of others and I cannot change how much it hurts, but I can focus on other roads and let God enter and not just heal my broken heart and soul, but recreate me by breathing His life into my dry bones.
I am a long way from where I should be, but I am not where I once was, lost in a dark and sinister world of witchcraft and bitterness and hatred. It has been a long road, and full of hurt and betrayal, but in the worst place it was still better than having no hope. Drifting in a dark nightmare is still hard, but with God, at least there is an anchor to hold on to while being beaten a battered by life. It still isn't fun, but you at least have the hope that it means something somewhere somehow.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Putting away childish things
The weirdest thing happened today. I got a rebuke from someone about something I had done, and I deserved the rebuke, but I did not deserve the sanctions and I replied to the email like a woman of God. I’ll admit I had to erase some words before I hit reply, (thank you Jesse for teaching me how I use words to hit back and manipulate people so I can watch for that tendency in myself). And I even called my mentor to ask her advice with willingness to submit to her authority if she thought I was in the wrong. But I responded eloquently and with respect to authority without being a floor mat. I accepted the rebuke and the sanction of the person with dignity and expressed my belief that she was fair in the rebuke, but wrong in her assessment and the sanction. And I did it all with submission to authority.
Perhaps not of extraordinary note to anyone else, but it was the first time in my life that I have stood as an equal and not the poor little screwed up girl. I am still pretty screwed up, but today I stood up for myself as a woman of God with talents and gifts from Him that are worthy of respect. Not as a child to accept punishment, but as a woman of equal standing in the Father’s eyes to accept rebuke for saying something out of place without feeling like a little girl that has just been slapped. For the first time in my life, I am seeing something God has placed in me that is truly of worth. Not because of CR exactly, but because of the things that CR has allowed me to express and participate in, I am seeing that I have gifts in both the area of music and in teaching from God and it is not my problem if those gifts are not accepted or encouraged by others around me. It is actually their loss. :)
I feel content with this.
Perhaps not of extraordinary note to anyone else, but it was the first time in my life that I have stood as an equal and not the poor little screwed up girl. I am still pretty screwed up, but today I stood up for myself as a woman of God with talents and gifts from Him that are worthy of respect. Not as a child to accept punishment, but as a woman of equal standing in the Father’s eyes to accept rebuke for saying something out of place without feeling like a little girl that has just been slapped. For the first time in my life, I am seeing something God has placed in me that is truly of worth. Not because of CR exactly, but because of the things that CR has allowed me to express and participate in, I am seeing that I have gifts in both the area of music and in teaching from God and it is not my problem if those gifts are not accepted or encouraged by others around me. It is actually their loss. :)
I feel content with this.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Seeking
I am actually not complaining (this time LOL), I am just trying to figure stuff out. I was thinking today about good marriages and how in a good marriage a husband or wife will seek out her other half to make sure they made it home, got dinner, are not cold, etc… you get the picture. And I got to thinking about why exactly I get so lonely and sad all the time and I realized that the bottom line is that I don’t have anyone who “seeks” me out. There is no one in my life that is “looking after” me. No one to care if I am cold, or stuck in the woods with a flat tire, or short of cash, or even just need someone to talk to. It is all about the seeking. When we love people we seek them out. We find ways to integrate ourselves into their lives, unless of course they don’t want us in their lives, but that is a different issue. We call, we email, we text, we send notes or cards. Just to let the people in our lives know that we care about them. The problem is that there is no one who seeks me out. Well, no one other than God.
God seeks me out every single day, and if it weren’t for Him I could not function at all. But God also made me a social creature that needs the interaction of others. There are those who are perfectly happy existing alone and need no one else, but I am not one of them. I was made to be a part. Now, the question begets itself… of what? Where do I go? No matter where I go or whom I think of, I am the 3rd and therefore the extra. It is simply a fact of life that pairs work but odds do not. I know this is rambling, well so am I at the moment.J
There is also a parallel here about seeking God. If you love someone, you seek them. You seek their company, you seek their happiness, and you seek to please them. We say we love God, but do we truly seek Him? Do we ask ourselves if what we are doing is pleasing to Him? Do we think about His happiness? I drown in a sea of loneliness because even my friends have abandoned me for other lives, but is that what I am doing to God? Abandoning Him for the loves I dream of on earth? Not that bad, but still you see my meaning. We seek so many things in our lives, but do we seek the attention and pleasure of our Heavenly Father? Do we seek His presence like we seek to find someone to love us?
This is all so mixed up in my head at the moment J I feel abandoned by my friends because they don’t seek me out and I can’t help but wonder if God sometimes feels abandoned by us because we don’t seek Him out. I would do almost anything I can think of if those I cared about didn’t ignore all my interactions and me like I was less than worthless, and I wonder if God feels the same way about us? Does He seek us out only to be rebuffed by our “busy” lives and “other” loves? Is He sitting up in Heaven watching FB and wishing that someone… would call His name? Not because He has self-esteem issues (like me) but because He loves us so very much and knows that we are going so fast down the wrong roads and He wants to stop us before we are so damaged the repairs will be extensive.
So I guess I have to ask you(myself LOL) do I pretend to not hear God because I don’t want to hear what He is saying, like others ignore me because they don’t want to hear what I have to say? The funny thing is that the answer for both situations is the same. Honesty! Just present yourself (me) before God and say, I am sorry that I was not listening. I was scared of what you wanted me to do so I pretended to not hear you. This is one of those situations where a long and quiet detailed conversation will clear the air. Sometimes the answers are not what we want to hear, but it is ok, when you know that they are offered in love. We accept the dark days with peace if not joy, because under it all we KNOW that God loves us and we know that when we love we want only the best for the objects of our affection and God being so much greater than ourselves is the very definition of love and wants the best for us.
Ok, I am going now, because I don’t really even know where this is going or if it is going anywhere. I just know the concept of seeking, both my seeking, and the lack of others seeking me, is showing me a window someone to God’s seeking out His children and to our seeking out our Father’s face.
God seeks me out every single day, and if it weren’t for Him I could not function at all. But God also made me a social creature that needs the interaction of others. There are those who are perfectly happy existing alone and need no one else, but I am not one of them. I was made to be a part. Now, the question begets itself… of what? Where do I go? No matter where I go or whom I think of, I am the 3rd and therefore the extra. It is simply a fact of life that pairs work but odds do not. I know this is rambling, well so am I at the moment.J
There is also a parallel here about seeking God. If you love someone, you seek them. You seek their company, you seek their happiness, and you seek to please them. We say we love God, but do we truly seek Him? Do we ask ourselves if what we are doing is pleasing to Him? Do we think about His happiness? I drown in a sea of loneliness because even my friends have abandoned me for other lives, but is that what I am doing to God? Abandoning Him for the loves I dream of on earth? Not that bad, but still you see my meaning. We seek so many things in our lives, but do we seek the attention and pleasure of our Heavenly Father? Do we seek His presence like we seek to find someone to love us?
This is all so mixed up in my head at the moment J I feel abandoned by my friends because they don’t seek me out and I can’t help but wonder if God sometimes feels abandoned by us because we don’t seek Him out. I would do almost anything I can think of if those I cared about didn’t ignore all my interactions and me like I was less than worthless, and I wonder if God feels the same way about us? Does He seek us out only to be rebuffed by our “busy” lives and “other” loves? Is He sitting up in Heaven watching FB and wishing that someone… would call His name? Not because He has self-esteem issues (like me) but because He loves us so very much and knows that we are going so fast down the wrong roads and He wants to stop us before we are so damaged the repairs will be extensive.
So I guess I have to ask you(myself LOL) do I pretend to not hear God because I don’t want to hear what He is saying, like others ignore me because they don’t want to hear what I have to say? The funny thing is that the answer for both situations is the same. Honesty! Just present yourself (me) before God and say, I am sorry that I was not listening. I was scared of what you wanted me to do so I pretended to not hear you. This is one of those situations where a long and quiet detailed conversation will clear the air. Sometimes the answers are not what we want to hear, but it is ok, when you know that they are offered in love. We accept the dark days with peace if not joy, because under it all we KNOW that God loves us and we know that when we love we want only the best for the objects of our affection and God being so much greater than ourselves is the very definition of love and wants the best for us.
Ok, I am going now, because I don’t really even know where this is going or if it is going anywhere. I just know the concept of seeking, both my seeking, and the lack of others seeking me, is showing me a window someone to God’s seeking out His children and to our seeking out our Father’s face.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Setting my eyes on God
Well, first I know it has been a while. My Christian walk has always been a roller costar ride, but that only mimics my life lol. I fell into a valley and become more and more isolated and cut off from everything and everyone I knew until I was drowning in hopelessness and pain and bitterness. When I finely got numb and dead enough in my emotions, God sent someone to kick start me by accusing me of something I had to seriously think about concerning demonic spirits. Although it shook me up a little at first, I worked through all the religious legalism that was presented to me and was able to verify that the “helping hand” was wrong, but there was plenty of bits of truth sprinkled thought her speech that I needed to not only hear but accept as well.
I am not surrounded by demonic spirits that prevent any guys from ever wanting to get close to me because I like to participate in Middle Ages reenactment, (lol), BUT I have let life choke my spirit until it was no more than a ghost. Not wrong in and of itself, the reenactments were providing me with an escape from life and God does not want us to escape life, He wants us to live daily for His kingdom not spend all our time trying to escape. The reenactment hobby, like my daydreaming and reading habits are all attempts to escape a seemingly intolerable life.
Actually, everything in my life revolves around this issue. I have allowed my work, my job, to become my identity and God started shaking that up this year by pulling me from the work I loved and knew and threw me into a situation that is constantly changing (OCD people do not like constant but unexpected changes) where my sense of identify at work seems to be lost in translation.
Next He removed me from all connection to support from other people. Being an extremely social oriented person, I was crawling deeper and deeper into my hole trying harder and harder to escape a life that has become intolerably lonely. My church family distanced, my friends gone on with their lives without me, and my heart rejected and thrown back in my face… again. But, for the first time in my life, I actually see what my head knew but didn’t really understand.
I realized it while talking to a wise lady last night that what I am going through is death throes. My psuche (heart or soul) is drowning because it is the part of me that wants to remain in control of my life. It is like I am in that last desperate gasp for air in a drowning victim – trying desperately to claw, climb, struggle, and basically preserve that part of myself that I feel is mine. You know, the part that we are to give up to become sentient metaphors for Christ (inside joke lol). But in all seriousness, God requires that we seek Him only. The Bible is clear that a man cannot have two masters, and in this case, we cannot have God and ourselves controlling our destinies. If we give our lives to God, then we have to choose to let go of our dreams and hopes and even fears to walk through life being led by the Holy Spirit of God instead of our own soul. That is a desperate battle in the best of times, because being human we do not want to give up our sense of self, but I am coming to understand that until I can “suffocate” my own sense of identity I cannot become a reflection of Christ.
In my Christian walk I had come to the limit of what I could do in myself and I was walking round and round the mountain constantly looking at the promised land offered all around me, but unable to enter in. Not because I screwed up, or was a bad person, or for really anything that I have done or not done, but because I had not reached the point that God needed me to reach to be able to go where God wants me to go. And for the record, I am not there now either, but for the first time in a little over a year, I have a sense of peace and I feel like I know where I am going. Not a specific destination, but a state of being.
God had to remove everything from me to get me to a place where I could listen, because my heart was singing as loud as it could about how it hurt. Kinda like a small child sticking their fingers in their ears screaming lalalalala.
I get it. It’s not about me. And amazingly enough, that thought is no longer crippling. I can’t tell you why exactly. I know that I had to reach a point where I could actually accept that there were things in my life that I needed to change that I did not want to change. I know that I had to get far enough away from the pain of a broken heart with a numb sort of emptiness to be able to hear the distant sounds of God’s patient calling. (He wasn’t distant, I had just stuck my fingers in my ears). Am I miraculously changed and happy, I seriously doubt it lol, however, I am not consumed with the need to fulfill my perceived needs for the first time in a long time, if ever. I understand, it’s not about me. It is not even about what I can do for God’s Kingdom or how I can contribute. It is about God.
Now, I need to face each day with the constant reminder that I am at work to be who and what God wants me to be and do. It is immaterial if I make a difference in any child’s life (boy that freaks me out to admit) if it is not the purpose that God intends. My job is not about what I can do; my job is to be whatever tool God chooses to use in whatever circumstance God chooses to use to reflect God. It is my job to reflect God in everything I do. Such simple words, easy to understand and yet powerful words when filled with true revelation.
Am I a saint? Far far from it. Have I arrived? I just got on the right train. I remember in London once when I was headed for a flight out of Gatwick, I ran for a train leaving the station to just barely make it onboard only to find out I had taken the wrong train and it was an express to a different part of the country. Although I always padded my leaving times for the airport I was in a total panic when I realized that I would be miles and miles from where I needed to be once the train finely stopped. However, the conductor was quick to advise me of how to do a little train hopping and an estimated time frame to assure me that I would still be able to make my flight by rerouting. Throughout my Christian walk I have taken many different trains to many different distnations, and most of the time in the right direction, but I never seem to get where God wanted me to be. Now, I feel like I have been on that express that was speeding through my life without hope because I didn’t know how to reroute myself and it just seemed like I would miss out, but once I went to find the conductor and admitted that I made some mistakes, God simply reassured me that I would be fine and he would simply reroute my trip to get me on the right life train without fanfare or difficulty. It only required acknowledgement of the error and a true desire to find the right train. Rather than being a hopeless journey to nowhere alone in the darkness, it is now only a simple detour that allowed me to see a little more of the countryside.
Not sure the metaphor is complete LOL, but it resonates with me and that is all it needed to do. So, out of the emptiness and unbroken darkness, I find that I am drowning, but instead of that last desperate gasp and fight to survive, I am at peace with whatever is coming. Will I always be that way, hardly seems likely, but I am here now. Floating in a sea of peace that passes understanding. I just accept it and accept that my life is turning a corner into unknown waters, but waters owned by the Creator of the Universe and whatever happens is ok. Weather love ever finds me, which is still my desire, or not, I will be ok because I am not going to focus on my life. I am going to set my eyes on God and simply try and reflect His image all day, every day to the best of my ability and whatever comes will come.
I am not surrounded by demonic spirits that prevent any guys from ever wanting to get close to me because I like to participate in Middle Ages reenactment, (lol), BUT I have let life choke my spirit until it was no more than a ghost. Not wrong in and of itself, the reenactments were providing me with an escape from life and God does not want us to escape life, He wants us to live daily for His kingdom not spend all our time trying to escape. The reenactment hobby, like my daydreaming and reading habits are all attempts to escape a seemingly intolerable life.
Actually, everything in my life revolves around this issue. I have allowed my work, my job, to become my identity and God started shaking that up this year by pulling me from the work I loved and knew and threw me into a situation that is constantly changing (OCD people do not like constant but unexpected changes) where my sense of identify at work seems to be lost in translation.
Next He removed me from all connection to support from other people. Being an extremely social oriented person, I was crawling deeper and deeper into my hole trying harder and harder to escape a life that has become intolerably lonely. My church family distanced, my friends gone on with their lives without me, and my heart rejected and thrown back in my face… again. But, for the first time in my life, I actually see what my head knew but didn’t really understand.
I realized it while talking to a wise lady last night that what I am going through is death throes. My psuche (heart or soul) is drowning because it is the part of me that wants to remain in control of my life. It is like I am in that last desperate gasp for air in a drowning victim – trying desperately to claw, climb, struggle, and basically preserve that part of myself that I feel is mine. You know, the part that we are to give up to become sentient metaphors for Christ (inside joke lol). But in all seriousness, God requires that we seek Him only. The Bible is clear that a man cannot have two masters, and in this case, we cannot have God and ourselves controlling our destinies. If we give our lives to God, then we have to choose to let go of our dreams and hopes and even fears to walk through life being led by the Holy Spirit of God instead of our own soul. That is a desperate battle in the best of times, because being human we do not want to give up our sense of self, but I am coming to understand that until I can “suffocate” my own sense of identity I cannot become a reflection of Christ.
In my Christian walk I had come to the limit of what I could do in myself and I was walking round and round the mountain constantly looking at the promised land offered all around me, but unable to enter in. Not because I screwed up, or was a bad person, or for really anything that I have done or not done, but because I had not reached the point that God needed me to reach to be able to go where God wants me to go. And for the record, I am not there now either, but for the first time in a little over a year, I have a sense of peace and I feel like I know where I am going. Not a specific destination, but a state of being.
God had to remove everything from me to get me to a place where I could listen, because my heart was singing as loud as it could about how it hurt. Kinda like a small child sticking their fingers in their ears screaming lalalalala.
I get it. It’s not about me. And amazingly enough, that thought is no longer crippling. I can’t tell you why exactly. I know that I had to reach a point where I could actually accept that there were things in my life that I needed to change that I did not want to change. I know that I had to get far enough away from the pain of a broken heart with a numb sort of emptiness to be able to hear the distant sounds of God’s patient calling. (He wasn’t distant, I had just stuck my fingers in my ears). Am I miraculously changed and happy, I seriously doubt it lol, however, I am not consumed with the need to fulfill my perceived needs for the first time in a long time, if ever. I understand, it’s not about me. It is not even about what I can do for God’s Kingdom or how I can contribute. It is about God.
Now, I need to face each day with the constant reminder that I am at work to be who and what God wants me to be and do. It is immaterial if I make a difference in any child’s life (boy that freaks me out to admit) if it is not the purpose that God intends. My job is not about what I can do; my job is to be whatever tool God chooses to use in whatever circumstance God chooses to use to reflect God. It is my job to reflect God in everything I do. Such simple words, easy to understand and yet powerful words when filled with true revelation.
Am I a saint? Far far from it. Have I arrived? I just got on the right train. I remember in London once when I was headed for a flight out of Gatwick, I ran for a train leaving the station to just barely make it onboard only to find out I had taken the wrong train and it was an express to a different part of the country. Although I always padded my leaving times for the airport I was in a total panic when I realized that I would be miles and miles from where I needed to be once the train finely stopped. However, the conductor was quick to advise me of how to do a little train hopping and an estimated time frame to assure me that I would still be able to make my flight by rerouting. Throughout my Christian walk I have taken many different trains to many different distnations, and most of the time in the right direction, but I never seem to get where God wanted me to be. Now, I feel like I have been on that express that was speeding through my life without hope because I didn’t know how to reroute myself and it just seemed like I would miss out, but once I went to find the conductor and admitted that I made some mistakes, God simply reassured me that I would be fine and he would simply reroute my trip to get me on the right life train without fanfare or difficulty. It only required acknowledgement of the error and a true desire to find the right train. Rather than being a hopeless journey to nowhere alone in the darkness, it is now only a simple detour that allowed me to see a little more of the countryside.
Not sure the metaphor is complete LOL, but it resonates with me and that is all it needed to do. So, out of the emptiness and unbroken darkness, I find that I am drowning, but instead of that last desperate gasp and fight to survive, I am at peace with whatever is coming. Will I always be that way, hardly seems likely, but I am here now. Floating in a sea of peace that passes understanding. I just accept it and accept that my life is turning a corner into unknown waters, but waters owned by the Creator of the Universe and whatever happens is ok. Weather love ever finds me, which is still my desire, or not, I will be ok because I am not going to focus on my life. I am going to set my eyes on God and simply try and reflect His image all day, every day to the best of my ability and whatever comes will come.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
God answers
You know it is so strange to me, how God knows when I truly just can't take anymore lol. Here is the poem I wrote at CR this week and then refined during church today.
Riding the Merry-Go-Round
Broken dreams and hollow goals,
Hearts of stone and shattered souls.
Days that drift through empty years,
Lost on an ocean of endless tears.
Silent cries inside my head
Facing the future in sinking dread.
I stand alone in the same old place
What hope can live in rejection's face?
Unwanted, unloved, and tossed to the side
Praying for only an end to the ride.
Then, tonight, when I cried out to God. Not 5 minutes later, a friend that I thought no longer wanted me in their life called to say hi. The difference one phone call can make. Nothing else changes, but knowing that your friendship is valued and wanted can make all the difference in the world. And tonight, God sent me comfort, in the voice of a friend. And yeah, the saddness is still there, but right now, it has no power and I am content, even in the darkness.
Riding the Merry-Go-Round
Broken dreams and hollow goals,
Hearts of stone and shattered souls.
Days that drift through empty years,
Lost on an ocean of endless tears.
Silent cries inside my head
Facing the future in sinking dread.
I stand alone in the same old place
What hope can live in rejection's face?
Unwanted, unloved, and tossed to the side
Praying for only an end to the ride.
Then, tonight, when I cried out to God. Not 5 minutes later, a friend that I thought no longer wanted me in their life called to say hi. The difference one phone call can make. Nothing else changes, but knowing that your friendship is valued and wanted can make all the difference in the world. And tonight, God sent me comfort, in the voice of a friend. And yeah, the saddness is still there, but right now, it has no power and I am content, even in the darkness.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
And then God answered
Oh my goodness!!! Just one week ago, I realized how bitter the water of my life was, and today, one week later, God answered and turned the water sweet. I will post in a few days, when I get my head around it all, what God has done and how He has done it. I have been trying to copy a picture in a dark room for all of my Christian life and God turned the light on today. I am happy. And for me, that is a BIG deal!!!
B
B
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sweet and Bitter Water
I have been pondering again.
The origins of my pondering start with James 3: 11
7 People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, 8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. 10 And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! 11 Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? 12 Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty spring.
Now I know that this is talking about us speaking out of our mouths, but I was struck by another understanding from an entirely different perspective.
I began to think about the whole concept that everything in our lives is “Father Filtered” (thanks Brenda :D) and we cannot praise God for the good and then turn around and complain about the bitter, because from God’s perspective all of it either is good or can be used for our good, otherwise He would not allow it to happen. God does not deliberately allow harm or hurt on His children for no reason. He will allow the consequences of our own choices and He will sometimes allow the consequences of other’s choices to affect us, but always for growth or for teaching, or just to show His power, but never for our harm, always for good. For true Christians, everything that happens is allowed by the Father and therefore if not outright good, will be modified and used for our good if we accept it.
So, everything that life spills on us is always sweet, because it comes through the Father’s hands as a purifier. It is only our fleshly taste buds that perceive it to be bitter. The water from God never changes; it is only our perceptions of the water that changes because we “taste” it through the flesh of this world. If we could just somehow get a grasp on the truth that EVERYTHING is known by God. NOTHING takes Him by surprise. Nothing is an accident or coincidence, but everything we encounter has a purpose in God’s map of our lives and His Kingdom. If we could just get a grasp on the understanding that when life tastes so very bitter, it is still sweet. We just taste it with earthly taste buds.
If I could just get a grasp! :)
The origins of my pondering start with James 3: 11
7 People can tame all kinds of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, 8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is restless and evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it curses those who have been made in the image of God. 10 And so blessing and cursing come pouring out of the same mouth. Surely, my brothers and sisters, this is not right! 11 Does a spring of water bubble out with both fresh water and bitter water? 12 Does a fig tree produce olives, or a grapevine produce figs? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty spring.
Now I know that this is talking about us speaking out of our mouths, but I was struck by another understanding from an entirely different perspective.
I began to think about the whole concept that everything in our lives is “Father Filtered” (thanks Brenda :D) and we cannot praise God for the good and then turn around and complain about the bitter, because from God’s perspective all of it either is good or can be used for our good, otherwise He would not allow it to happen. God does not deliberately allow harm or hurt on His children for no reason. He will allow the consequences of our own choices and He will sometimes allow the consequences of other’s choices to affect us, but always for growth or for teaching, or just to show His power, but never for our harm, always for good. For true Christians, everything that happens is allowed by the Father and therefore if not outright good, will be modified and used for our good if we accept it.
So, everything that life spills on us is always sweet, because it comes through the Father’s hands as a purifier. It is only our fleshly taste buds that perceive it to be bitter. The water from God never changes; it is only our perceptions of the water that changes because we “taste” it through the flesh of this world. If we could just somehow get a grasp on the truth that EVERYTHING is known by God. NOTHING takes Him by surprise. Nothing is an accident or coincidence, but everything we encounter has a purpose in God’s map of our lives and His Kingdom. If we could just get a grasp on the understanding that when life tastes so very bitter, it is still sweet. We just taste it with earthly taste buds.
If I could just get a grasp! :)
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Promises and Inheritance
I apologize ahead of time for the rambling nature of this posting, I am working it out as I write and I hope it does not become too confusing. This is about inheritance and claiming promises.
This began with the video that we were watching at the Ladies meeting about how the daughters of Zelophehad asked Moses, and later reminded Joshua, that God told Moses that these 5 daughters were to receive an inheritance with their uncles because their father had no sons. Women of the day, who were considered property, who had the courage to go before their leaders and ask in humility, to be given equal inheritance with the men, and were rewarded by God and their leaders with a share of the promised land, as equals to the sons. Numbers 27 (1-7) and Joshua 17 (3-4).
There is a massive amount of revelation here, but I am dealing with the specific aspect of claiming inheritance and promise. During the video the speaker advised the audience to write down some of their promises from God on a sheet of paper and spoke as if he assumed that everyone in the room had specific promises from God for their lives. I sat and struggled to think of one thing that God has ever promised me, and I could think of nothing. I know many others have files full of the prophetic words and promises that God has sent you in various forms and different ways, but I could not think of a single time in my life when God has ever given me a specific promise. Don’t get me wrong, God has performed wonderful things in my life and provided for me in countless ways, but He has never, to my memory, told me He was going to do them. So I sat and struggled with the concept of how to “CLAIM” my inheritance, when I didn’t even know what it was. How do you fight for something you don’t know is yours?
I prayed afterwards and expressed my sorrow at my sense of loss of what to do or, but I still had no answer as to what I was for. What was my inheritance? So the week continued as always, but now with the knowledge that I was missing something important. I even received good counsel to focus on God instead of my seeming lack of future or worth, and although I acknowledged that was the right thing to do, I had no idea how to do it.
So, I was talking to Jesse and he said something that I didn’t understand at the time he said it, but as church progressed that day, it began to clarify and I began to understand more about my promise and my inheritance. (Actually it would be more correct to say, OUR promise and OUR inheritance), because what I am coming to understand is that my promise is the same promise that is given to all of us and my inheritance is the same inheritance that is offered to every single one of God’s people, men and women. But, as always, it requires a conscious choice.
What I was looking for was a promise from God for an inheritance that I wanted. I already know what my heart’s desire is and I have been waiting for many years (read all but about the first 12 years of my life LOL) for God to just tell me what I wanted to hear Him promise. Anything else was just not relevant to me, because I didn’t care about anything else. But what God opened up to me today was that I already have a promise and an inheritance, but I have to choose to accept it and claim it. Accept (as passive) because my inheritance is nothing I deserve or have earned and claim (as active) because there is that which will try to steal it if I allow it.
God has PROMISED us that we WILL walk in His POWER if we CHOOSE to follow Him and our INHERITANCE is the POWER of walking in the FAITH of an almightily GOD.
I know I know, you are thinking, well Becki, duhhhh. :) But if you have known me for very long you know that I have been seeking a long time for a place, a nitch, to call my own and this revelation was something I knew in the back of my mind, but it had no real substance to it. It was simply words. Today, it became living knowledge. It acquired substance and became real instead of just words and ideas. I realized I had been tricked as a child into believing that, and I quote, “People like us don’t do miracles. Things like miracles and healings and casing out demons is for God’s “special” people. Not us,” (meaning me). And although I have spent a lifetime rebelling against that idea, it was very firmly rooted in my soul. I have spent way to many years wishing that I was one of “those chosen few,” but, I never really believed that I had any worth to God or anyone else for that matter. So I never felt that God ever gave me any promise except that of heaven, because I could not change the world. I was not one of His “special Christians” and I was not worthy to call forth nations or miracles in His name. (We won’t get into the fact that none of us are worthy :) - different project). In this post I am talking about being worthy because of the blood of Christ, which is worthy.
My friends and I have talked about it being time to stop “existing” and start living with purpose. To combat depression most of my life I learned to exist. I learned to get through the day as best I could. Never think too much about the future because it seemed bleak and hopeless, so just close your eyes and plow forward and then do the same again the next day. You can live that way, but it is not what God wishes for us and we will never find joy if we keep our focus on just making the next step. There comes a point when you have to look up and make a decision, a choice, about your purpose.
Even though I believe that God has individual plans for each of us, our true purpose is the same. Our true purpose is to be the creation that God is molding us to be individually! Our PROMISE is that God is our Father and as His children we have an INHERITANCE of POWER. Like the daughters of Zelophehad went to Joshua and reminded him of the promise that God gave Moses for their inheritance, we need to remind ourselves that God has given us an inheritance of His Spirit and a promise of His Power when we follow in His footsteps, just because we are His!
It is like there is this massive reservoir of power flowing around us that we are oblivious to because we do not truly understand what it means to be children of the King. Not a power to use as we please. Not promises to receive what we think we want. But the responsibility and authority to act in the name of our Father and do His Will and His Work in His Kingdom, His Way.
The key to it all is that we MUST be willing to let go of our dreams and our hurts and our hopes, (crucifixion is not a fun place, but it is a place of power) and accept the real meaning of what it means to be a son of the living God. This is where we, as ladies, learn to be sons and step up to our inheritance. It is time to become mature Christians and to put away “childish” things like my dreams and hopes and desires for the greater reality of a living Kingdom that has more power than any sci-fi movie ever dreamed. It is time for the church to wake up and claim the power over this world that has been swirling around us for centuries to show the world Who it’s creator is.
This began with the video that we were watching at the Ladies meeting about how the daughters of Zelophehad asked Moses, and later reminded Joshua, that God told Moses that these 5 daughters were to receive an inheritance with their uncles because their father had no sons. Women of the day, who were considered property, who had the courage to go before their leaders and ask in humility, to be given equal inheritance with the men, and were rewarded by God and their leaders with a share of the promised land, as equals to the sons. Numbers 27 (1-7) and Joshua 17 (3-4).
There is a massive amount of revelation here, but I am dealing with the specific aspect of claiming inheritance and promise. During the video the speaker advised the audience to write down some of their promises from God on a sheet of paper and spoke as if he assumed that everyone in the room had specific promises from God for their lives. I sat and struggled to think of one thing that God has ever promised me, and I could think of nothing. I know many others have files full of the prophetic words and promises that God has sent you in various forms and different ways, but I could not think of a single time in my life when God has ever given me a specific promise. Don’t get me wrong, God has performed wonderful things in my life and provided for me in countless ways, but He has never, to my memory, told me He was going to do them. So I sat and struggled with the concept of how to “CLAIM” my inheritance, when I didn’t even know what it was. How do you fight for something you don’t know is yours?
I prayed afterwards and expressed my sorrow at my sense of loss of what to do or, but I still had no answer as to what I was for. What was my inheritance? So the week continued as always, but now with the knowledge that I was missing something important. I even received good counsel to focus on God instead of my seeming lack of future or worth, and although I acknowledged that was the right thing to do, I had no idea how to do it.
So, I was talking to Jesse and he said something that I didn’t understand at the time he said it, but as church progressed that day, it began to clarify and I began to understand more about my promise and my inheritance. (Actually it would be more correct to say, OUR promise and OUR inheritance), because what I am coming to understand is that my promise is the same promise that is given to all of us and my inheritance is the same inheritance that is offered to every single one of God’s people, men and women. But, as always, it requires a conscious choice.
What I was looking for was a promise from God for an inheritance that I wanted. I already know what my heart’s desire is and I have been waiting for many years (read all but about the first 12 years of my life LOL) for God to just tell me what I wanted to hear Him promise. Anything else was just not relevant to me, because I didn’t care about anything else. But what God opened up to me today was that I already have a promise and an inheritance, but I have to choose to accept it and claim it. Accept (as passive) because my inheritance is nothing I deserve or have earned and claim (as active) because there is that which will try to steal it if I allow it.
God has PROMISED us that we WILL walk in His POWER if we CHOOSE to follow Him and our INHERITANCE is the POWER of walking in the FAITH of an almightily GOD.
I know I know, you are thinking, well Becki, duhhhh. :) But if you have known me for very long you know that I have been seeking a long time for a place, a nitch, to call my own and this revelation was something I knew in the back of my mind, but it had no real substance to it. It was simply words. Today, it became living knowledge. It acquired substance and became real instead of just words and ideas. I realized I had been tricked as a child into believing that, and I quote, “People like us don’t do miracles. Things like miracles and healings and casing out demons is for God’s “special” people. Not us,” (meaning me). And although I have spent a lifetime rebelling against that idea, it was very firmly rooted in my soul. I have spent way to many years wishing that I was one of “those chosen few,” but, I never really believed that I had any worth to God or anyone else for that matter. So I never felt that God ever gave me any promise except that of heaven, because I could not change the world. I was not one of His “special Christians” and I was not worthy to call forth nations or miracles in His name. (We won’t get into the fact that none of us are worthy :) - different project). In this post I am talking about being worthy because of the blood of Christ, which is worthy.
My friends and I have talked about it being time to stop “existing” and start living with purpose. To combat depression most of my life I learned to exist. I learned to get through the day as best I could. Never think too much about the future because it seemed bleak and hopeless, so just close your eyes and plow forward and then do the same again the next day. You can live that way, but it is not what God wishes for us and we will never find joy if we keep our focus on just making the next step. There comes a point when you have to look up and make a decision, a choice, about your purpose.
Even though I believe that God has individual plans for each of us, our true purpose is the same. Our true purpose is to be the creation that God is molding us to be individually! Our PROMISE is that God is our Father and as His children we have an INHERITANCE of POWER. Like the daughters of Zelophehad went to Joshua and reminded him of the promise that God gave Moses for their inheritance, we need to remind ourselves that God has given us an inheritance of His Spirit and a promise of His Power when we follow in His footsteps, just because we are His!
It is like there is this massive reservoir of power flowing around us that we are oblivious to because we do not truly understand what it means to be children of the King. Not a power to use as we please. Not promises to receive what we think we want. But the responsibility and authority to act in the name of our Father and do His Will and His Work in His Kingdom, His Way.
The key to it all is that we MUST be willing to let go of our dreams and our hurts and our hopes, (crucifixion is not a fun place, but it is a place of power) and accept the real meaning of what it means to be a son of the living God. This is where we, as ladies, learn to be sons and step up to our inheritance. It is time to become mature Christians and to put away “childish” things like my dreams and hopes and desires for the greater reality of a living Kingdom that has more power than any sci-fi movie ever dreamed. It is time for the church to wake up and claim the power over this world that has been swirling around us for centuries to show the world Who it’s creator is.
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