If you’re standing still in the struggle…START WALKING

I went on a walk to talk through some things with the Lord.

 

It had been one of those mornings of prayer that felt more like a war zone than Holy Ground.   Ever find yourself in the midst of praying the Word, meditating on it, repenting… and in those very moments of sincere prayer Satan is right there hurling accusations!!?

 

The Accuser says, “You’ll never be free of that sin, you failure!  Who are you kidding?  You’ll walk down the same path today that you do all the other days.  It’s in your gene pool.  It’s just part of you!  GIVE UP!”

 

Those are the times I wish I was in my car alone and could scream back at him in the authority of Jesus’ Name.  Ok, I really enjoy shouting the Truth about Satan’s defeat and Jesus’ victory when I’m alone driving!

 

On my walk, I told the Lord that if He’d please make my mind dumb and slow and retard my mental processes, I’d rather that, over sinful thoughts that won’t go away.  Then I tell the Lord that I would rather Him make me mute than to keep sinning with my mouth.  Can’t you just do that Lord and make me mute?? Please!!!??

 

He told me to look down at my feet as I was walking and said “Don’t you realize what you’re asking, my daughter?”.  He spoke Galatians 5 into my spirit: ” If you live by the Holy Spirit, then WALK in the Spirit.  If you WALK in the Holy Spirit, you will not gratify the cravings of the flesh.”

 

So I looked down at my feet and thought about the burn of power walking.  How different walking is from standing still.  How I feel my feet and my legs with every step.  I have to know where I’m going.  As I walk, I have to be very intentional and direct my feet where to go with a destination in mind.  This sounds silly to you perhaps, but it was profound to me.  I needed this insight.

 

See, I was kind of “standing still” in the struggle, praying and praying for help to surrender, but forgetting to walk.

 

A couple days after that, God set up a divine phone conversation with a friend with whom I was able to “confess my sins and pray for one another that you might be healed and restored”. (James 5:16, another blog for another time)  She  reminded me that “SUBMIT TO GOD” comes right before “RESIST THE DEVIL and He will flee from you”.  Before I resist the sin, I have to feel the burn… as I walk… one foot in front of another… putting action and obedience to my heart’s knowledge of what’s Right.

 

It seems to be a pattern in God’s Word, actually.  The yielding to God always comes BEFORE the resisting and turning from sin.

“Fear and WORSHIP the Lord, and turn entirely away from evil” (Proverbs 3:7)

 

I was reminded by my friend to spend less time praying for God to take certain feelings and such out of my heart, and to spend more time praying for God to FILL me with the good things….  to pray the Word constantly, and put one foot in front of another foot, WALKING toward the destination I want to arrive at.

 

My friend, I have a fresh hope of Victory in my heart that I haven’t had in a long time.  Please let me speak hope to you!!!  Your sin isn’t too big!! You’re not too far gone!!  God isn’t holding out on you, hiding the secret key that unlocks your victory.  ”You are complete in Him!!…And HE is the Head of all rule and authority in the spiritual realm!” (Colossians 2:10)  Since God says you are complete in Him, BELIEVE Him.  Believe the Truth of Hebrews 9:13 “If the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, HOW MUCH MORE will the BLOOD of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the Living God?!” 

 

It is done!  It is FINISHED!!! But friend, don’t believe the foolish lie that you can just stand still in your saved state.  Walking in the Spirit is just that… walking.  Going.  Determining.  Moving.  Focusing.  Using your muscles, and following where the Spirit leads you through the WORD of GOD, trusting that by obeying, you will yield the FRUIT of the Spirit!!!  What steps do you need to take today?

True love is a bed of blood, not roses

Can you see through all the flashy Valentines messages to the lies about love?

 

The lies are tucked tightly into the Hallmark cards and movies and commercials and advertisements and stories and novels and do you see them?  Do you hear them in the songs on the radio?

 

Ever find yourself thinking about what you’re not getting out of a friendship?  from a family member?  What you’re not getting from your spouse?  I do.  if I’m honest.

 

Our whole love story with Jesus is written in red, in a language of suffering and selflessness and sacrifice that cost Him everything, and we turn around and expect to write our love stories with glitter and magic and fairness and equality and fun memories and romance.

 

That’s all a gift… it’s all wonderful.  But it’s not the essence of love.  We cannot forget.

 

For here is the essence of love:  “No one has greater love- no one has shown stronger affection- than to lay down, to give up, his own life for his friends”.   

John 15:13 Amplified Bible

 

The purest love ever seen on Earth poured out of nail-pierced hands and a sword-slashed side.  It probably spilled out onto His torturers and stained their shirts.  Why do we buy into the lie that love shouldn’t hurt?  Why do we strive to build and maintain relationships upon feelings that fade and wain?  Why do we withhold love when we experience pain and rejection?  Are we even remembering the Cross?  How could we forget?

 

Isn’t love felt the deepest when it is felt most undeserved?  I just think about the way it was when I experienced the love of Jesus for the first time… my sin stood like a skyscraper in front of me, making me most unworthy.  I was twelve.  I was so laden with shame and guilt.  But Jesus came to me in my filth and offered me forgiveness and freedom from the shame.  He promised me steadfast love forever… that would cover all my past, present, and future failures.  I wept and laughed and danced in the light of His Love that day!  I have never been the same!  My sin is covered!  My shame is gone!  I am loved because I bear His name, not because of what I do and don’t do.

 

Oh, to think about this love again as I write.  It makes my eyes fill with tears and my heart ache for the way I have lacked in love.  I say that I love my husband, my friends, my family, my enemies, my neighbors, the poor and the needy.  Do you say it too?

 

How far are you willing to go in that love?  How much weight do they have to pull to deserve it, really?

 

Before you can love your husband with all of his failures and sins and before you can love that friend who wounded you so deeply, maybe even gossipped about you and betrayed you,… you have to be “rooted deep and grounded securely on the love of Christ“… the bed of blood at the foot of the Cross, that you didn’t do anything to deserve and that bought you Life on earth and for eternity.    Once you uproot anything else your identity is planted in, and re-root yourself today in HIS LOVE, the Scripture goes on to promise that “you will have the power to apprehend and experience that love… that you will come to know it for yourself practically, through experience for yourself… that you will be filled throughout your whole being with the fullness of God!…and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself!!!”  Ephesians 3:17-19

 

Please don’t hear me say that romance and roses are false expressions of love… I am madly in love with a hopeless romantic.  But these alone hold no power for true love.

 

If you want to love powerfully today, you have to turn to John 15 and then to Ephesians 3, and root yourself in the Love that Jesus taught you on the Cross.   Learn from Him, dear friend… and watch Him fill you with fullness of God like never before.

the art of Entrusting

“I wonder… if the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see.

 

…to see through to God.

 

That which tears open our souls, those holes that splatter our sight, may actually become the thin, open places to see through our mess of this place to the heart-aching beauty beyond.  to Him.  to the God whom we endlessly crave.”

 

-Ann Voskamp, from One Thousand Gifts

 

I love Ann’s insight into suffering.  I read about Jesus, who I am supposed to learn from and follow by example, and I am astonished that He, too, embraced suffering as an opportunity to entrust Himself to God over and over and over and over again.

 

And not only did Jesus suffer more than any human on earth, but He told us to “take His yoke upon us and learn from Him” (Matthew 11:29).  Really, Jesus?  You are going to promise me a “yoke that is easy and pleasant, and a burden that is light”  (Matthew 11:30) ?

 

How is this possible?   What on earth makes suffering and torture and rejection and pain into a pleasant and light burden?   What is it that makes martyrs die a horrific death with songs of praise on their lips?

 

The Spirit of God whispered this answer to me through 1 Peter 2:23…

 

“and while being reviled, He (Jesus) did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously…”

 

If Jesus Christ, the Supreme Authority over all the earth, the God-Man who lacks no power, had to keep entrusting Himself to the Good Judge…

 

…I have to learn from Jesus.

 

He kept entrusting everything He was to the Father.  It was a continual entrusting, which means a moment-by-moment act of Surrender… of handing over.  The light burden, the rest, the blessed, pleasant relief was not found in Jesus’ suffering alone… but in the ENTRUSTING of Himself in the midst of the suffering.

 

Maybe without suffering, there can’t be this experience of entrusting.  And without this moment-by-moment art of Entrusting, we can’t experience the lightness and rest and peace and relief of soul that He promised to share with us.

 

Jesus, I want to learn from You.  I will follow close behind You on the road of any and all suffering, entrusting myself to the One who judges righteously…

 

And I believe that You will let me share in the yoke of sweet rest and peace with You.

A boudin ball of ponderings

“And Mary kept within herself all these things, weighing and pondering them in her heart.” 

 

Luke 2:19

 

This simple image struck me profoundly over the holidays, and I haven’t been able to get Mary out of my head… sweet little Mary, her entire life turned upside-down in a matter of months, from Gabriel’s appearance and her humble surrender to God’s will (“Behold, I am the bondslave of the Lord… let it be done to me according to your word”) to her delivery, to the surprise visitors that kept bringing prophetic words about her baby boy.

 

And I picture her holding her newborn after all of this craziness, an exhausted young girl sitting by a window alone like I so often do, eyes fixed somewhere past the distance, just soaking in the words of the shepherds and the angels and slowly, silently submitting to the mysterious ways of God.

 

Mary’s pondering spirit challenged me to do a lot of pondering myself.  During Christmas, I spent lots of time pondering God’s work in me in 2011…the things He spoke to me, the lessons He taught me, the gifts He gave me.  Have you thought lately about how far God’s brought you?  Have you worshipped Him for His faithfulness?

 

So, from here, nothing I have to say really goes together, at least not on purpose.  I wanted to have a theme like I usually do, but I’m over that.  There’s too much going on in my head.  So I hope my recent ponderings end up kind of like a boudin ball for you (something we eat inLouisiana) – random ingredients that combine to create a tasty surprise in your mouth.  :)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Psalm 103: 4     “…who redeems your life from the pit…who beautifies you with  loving-kindness and tender mercy.”

Beautiful because He loves me.  I’ve heard it said that “you can always tell a well-loved woman when you see one”.  So what a profound truth- that my beauty comes from being a well-loved woman… adorned from head to toe with the steadfast love and tender mercy of my God.  My own goodness, kindness, unique personality, or popularity with people isn’t the source of what makes me beautiful.  It’s the FACT that I am well-loved, fully forgiven, daily sustained by mercy from the God of the universe… that casts that golden glow of beauty around me and fills me with confidence and value and worth… that frees me from the fear of rejection.  I want to shine beautiful as a woman who has been truly, deeply, permanently affected by love and mercy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trusting God’s best for me as it’s imparted through my man’s leadership. One morning recently I was about to write a prayer in my journal for God to change Patrick’s heart about something rather meaningless in the eternal realm, when the Holy Spirit spoke to me, “Why don’t you pray for a submissive heart that trusts that his leadership is ordained by God in your life?”  Ouch.  I almost laughed out loud… because the Holy Spirit is just so awesome.  He’s quicker than my hand getting pencil to paper.  I never want to stop listening for Him… I never want Him to stop speaking to me.  I’m hungry for His discipline.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

God’s patience with me. The patience of my family has taught me about the patience of the Father.  Sure, my husband’s got that impatience directly related to his stomach (I’ve created and often diagnose a syndrome that all men experience when they’re hungry… I’ll explain it another day), but he’s got incredible patience with my weaknesses, I think because he loves me so deeply.  Speaking of a specific sin of mine, I recently asked “How long have you seen this in me?” and his reply was expected… “for as long as I’ve known you”.  Well, God’s known me a lot longer than Patrick has, and somehow He still hasn’t turned over the dumpster of my unconfessed and unknown sins on top of my head.  It would ruin me.  Destroy me.  My mom and I recently had a similar conversation.  Like Patrick and Mom each waited for the right time when my heart was soft to receive the truth, God has and is growing me patiently, disciplining me with a loving timeliness I am only now beginning to realize.  Oh, how I love You, Abba Father!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~

To die is to live.  Most importantly, the Lord is teaching me to lay my life down.  How to die to self, so I can truly live (Christ’s Life).  How to give up on making sure I’m loved, and just love.  To bury the desire to be known, and reach out to know and understand others.  To throw off the chains of self-protection, self-analysis, and self-judgment and keep my focus on Jesus, because WHO HE IS matters infinitely more than who I am or who anybody thinks I am.  Much more to come on this topic.

 

 

In addition to writing more about “To die is to live”, below are the titles of my upcoming blog posts in 2012.  Thanks for bearing with me.  I hope to get back in the swing of writing consistently!

 

The great Commission according to HIS Compassion, not mine. 

Don’t let the sun go down upon your…conflict?

 

Titus 2 is a big deal, actually

 

Learning from Jesus: “He kept entrusting Himself”

 

Thanks IN everything.

 

Autumn: Fighting physical battles with spiritual weapons

“New” — a little poem

“Behold! I make all things new.” Revelation 21:5

Written in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Dedicated to my brother Nick.

 

 

 

Three new things today – new as a baby finding his fingers

I spit into the green and I see my spit link leaf to leaf,

like silk spinning, it stays strong through breeze-blown minutes

a moment of First

swaying, shimmering, silky spit string

I receive what is new and I smile

 

A distant trumpeting moments later, but music unfamiliar!

A swelling clucking chorus

I search the sky and I see geese encircling

singing with strange tongues over me, who is

so weary for hope, so untrusting of this moment’s newness

But it’s true- their singing is a second simple promise that there is still hope

So I receive what is new and I bow low

 

Tears spill over gravel and leaves, my own salt mixing with the dirt of the earth and

I believe in Name-changing, altar-erecting

I remember a veil torn, a final lamb, a promise from a burning bush

“I Am who I Am”.

 

See, nothing of hope is ever finished, with You.

I cannot meet You in the past.

You are not “I Was”.

 

You are “I Am” and I find You

I meet You-  can only meet You- here, where everything is new

I receive all that is new, and I am healing

 

 

 

A vortex of amazing energy…

….a “vortex of amazing energy”, as she put it, was part of a woman’s recent description to me of Sedona, Arizona.  She had just returned from a vacation to Sedona, and had the entire table of listeners mesmerized by her tales of the red rock, the fiery skies, the tarot card and palm readers and meditation everywhere, and the way everyone in that city was so vibrant and alive and full….so “mystical”…”well…it was just, like, this vortex of amazing energy”.

 

And I couldn’t help staring off across the living room, imagining this city known for its specialized New Age tourist industry, where the “Harmonic Convergence” was organized in 1987, where the spirit of mysticism and divination draws tourists from all over the world, and wondering what on earth would happen if all the Believers in a city were so controlled…so surrendered to…even possessed (yes, in the real sense of the word )… by the Holy Spirit of the Living God….  if it would be such a radically real Presence in and around them that a visitor to the city would describe the strange feeling to their friends back home.

 

Or on a smaller scale, what would happen if a family, or a group of friends, or a team of coworkers were all so committed to practicing the Presence of God, that their strong, banded-together “energy”, which Paul described as a “sweet aroma of the knowledge of God in every place” (2 corinthians 2:14) would be felt and recognized by the world around??

 

I think her word choice ( “vortex (n): a whirling mass, usually of water, smoke, fire, etc.”) was excellent.  Isn’t it interesting how spiritual things like giving in secret and love and peacemaking and compassion and forgiveness so often set in motion a whirling cycle?

 

I long for my family, present and future, and for my church and for my friend group to be a vortex of the felt-Presence of God.

 

But here’s the problem: A vortex is a whirling mass going in the same direction, like a tornado.  It’s not divided and confused and whirling out of control.  It’s not working against itself.  You and me and all God’s kids are sometimes very divided and confused and working against the force of glorious Calvary Love that spreads through our unity.  We can get all mixed up in drama and gossip and judgment and unforgiveness and criticism and thoughts and conversations that preserve self rather than crucify it.

 

The world is too hell-bound and hell is too horrible for us to foolishly weaken our own army.  We need to be “diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:3) and “as far as it depends on us, live at peace with each other” (Romans 12:18)  and “reap the fruit of righteousness by sowing the seed of peace” (James 3:18).  Tonight when you lie in bed, are you at peace with everyone in your life?  I don’t mean to ask if every relationship is conflict-free, but I mean to ask if you have done everything to make and maintain peace (Matthew 5:9)?  I ask this question of myself many nights and it’s not easy, but it’s what God wants.

 

It’s pretty straight-forward.  Are you aware of any offense a brother or sister in Christ might have against you, whether they’re right or wrong?  If they’re offended and you know it, God cares SO much about peace that He says “even if you’re presenting an offering at the altar, if you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there at the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering” (Matthew 5:23-24).  God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. (James 4:6)

 

Are you offended by a brother or sister in Christ? You have two tasks, and the Holy Spirit will always help us carry them out and give us wisdom when we ask Him for it!  ”If your brother wrongs you, go and show him his fault, between you and him privately.  If he listens to you, you have won back your brother” (Matthew 18:15) and ALWAYS forgive, because “If you forgive others their sins, leaving them, letting them go, and giving up resentment, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” (Matthew 5: 14)

 

My heart cries to yours, beloved friends, to stand as peacemakers in your own homes and families and friend groups and church groups, so the desperate world around us might experience Calvary Love.  It will only be felt on the outside when a vortex starts spinning from within.

Good morning, Gratitude

Oh, the JOYof a new journal!   The beauty of fresh, clean, empty pages!  The challenge and excitement of knowing that this unwritten future will become written history, with each prayer, memory, dream, drawing, and moment I record.

 

Thank You, Lord, for the joy I feel in my heart lately…and I don’t feel guilty for having it.  I might just be the most happy girl on Earth, actually.    Thank You for teaching me that GRATITUDE expels… extinguishes… excludes… discontentment.   Thank You for lifting my eyes to the Cross this Autumn, for helping me rejoice in my Salvation, among many other blessings.

 

Thank You for telling me the way to enter into Your presence… for showing me the posture I must have.

 

“Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, enter His gates with praise!!!  Be thankful, and say so to Him.  Bless and affectionately praise His name!”   Psalm 100:4 (the amplified Bible)

 

I am thankful for this perfect combination:  the perfect strength of coffee, sipped in the perfect cozy chair, which is positioned in the perfect spot by a window that lets in the perfect amount of natural light for me to read and meditate on Scripture by… a window which is cracked, letting in fresh air that happens to be the perfect temperature.

 

Then I whisper a prayer of thanks to my Father, who I really think might have created that moment in time JUST for me.  because He loves me.

 

And I watch my husband wake up, who is not a perfect man, but who is perfect for ME.  who loves me just exactly as I am, and tells me that every day, often multiple times a day.  and I get the privilege of whispering prayers for Him as he wakes up… and I am so thankful.

 

And I am loving Romans– reading about how I’ve been freed from bondage to sin and am now under the Law of Life!–, when all of a sudden I have to put my Bible down, because my husband is pulling me out of my cozy chair and into his lap… he is burying my head in his chest so he can cuddle me as time stops around us, because we just nestle up together in the best kind of loving, understanding silence.   And I am thankful to be loved so honestly and tenderly.

 

And after what feels like forever in our little cocoon, his voice right next to my cheek breaks the silence, as he pours out quiet prayers for me… for our marriage and future family… for our friends… for God’s glory to be manifest in and through our lives…prayers from one who is thankful to be called a “son” of the Most High God.  And as his prayers fill the room, enclosing me in a blanket of comfort and trust, I am thankful that Christ is the third cord Who will always hold us together.

 

And I’m thankful that a friend inspired my new journal’s theme: gratitude.  Every day, I will write at least one thing that stirs up gratitude in my heart.  And it will help me to remember that first thing in the morning, this is how I am to greet my God… with gratitude and praise and blessings.

 

Are you sad?  Are you troubled?  Are you discontent?    Right now, after you read this blog, open yourself to God and begin to thank Him for things He’s done for you, for blessings, for His presence, your salvation… and the Spirit will help you think of many more things.   There is no better recipe for JOY than this…. a grateful heart.