Pain

I would have lost heart unless I had believed I would see

the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Psalm 27:13

     Pain- an inevitable part of life.  What I've learned is that hiding it from God is not.  What I do with my pain will depend on what I believe God thinks about it.  The devil wants to make us believe God is mad at us or disapponted with us because we hurt.  It's a lie to keep us from turning to the only one who can heal our pain.  Our pain is not the result of not loving God enough or not having enough faith, our pain is a result of being human and living in a fallen world full of other humans. That we hurt isn't a measure of our spirituality like the enemy wants us to believe. We don't need to be ashamed of our pain or feel guilty for it but I acknowledge that unfortunately too often this is what is conveyed in some churches however unintentional and this is the reason so many people have learned to put on their 'It's Sunday I am going to church' mask'. God is not put off by our pain or our disappontment that some things in our lives didn't turn out the way we expected.  To be sure He only is the way to healing and wholeness. 

     The enemy wants so much to sabotage any expression of Gods image in our life.  It is the image of God he hates us for.  If he can conceal it under pain, guilt and shame he will.  The only way he can is through deception, making us think God feels about us the way we feel about ourselves and our pain. What a lie! The key is to guard our heart so we don't allow our pain to cause our view of God and His heart to be anything other than what lines up with the truth revealed in His word, regardless of external circumstances.  Our circumstances are not the truth and neither is how we feel in the midst of them.

     I have found God is the safest place  to express what I'm really feeling, He doesn't love us any less for it.  We think that He does because we've been conditioned to love ourselves less for it or to love others less for it, but God's love is based on who He is, not what we are which is why it never changes, ever. God is love. His love is eternal because He is eternal. Imagine....there has never been a time when God did not exist, He has always been.  

Abide In Me

Abide in Me and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
John 15:4-5

 

     One of the things I have learned in my walk with God is that there is no doubt He is for us.  He wants the very best for us.  I have also learned over the years that what we might assume that means and what it actually does mean sometimes are very different.  Unless we learn to see from His perspective we will certainly lose heart somewhere along the

way. We must come to understand the necessity of getting us to realize our nothingness apart from Him.  Yes, God is for us and because He is for us He will take us down. How we respond to that is our choice, and our response will be according to how much we have renewed our minds according to His word. 

 

      Apart from Him we truly can do nothing, all of our fruitfulness comes from abiding in the vine and He will remove every aspect of our self life in which we have put our hope or learned to draw our worth and value from to get us to learn this. The sad thing is that sometimes this process often causes us to misunderstand His dealings with us unless we have built an intimate relationship with Him and have come to trust His heart.  If not what usually results is a pseudo Christian existence without the life of Christ flowing out because we were not willing to die to the false sense of worth and value we found before coming to Him in the first place.  This in part is what Jesus meant when He said, “he who seeks to save his live shall lose it, but he who loses his life for my sake shall save it”.  Jesus is the Truth, the Life and the Way.  Any truth, life or way we think we may have found outside of Him is nothing but a lie and a deception taking us further and further away from the only one who loved us enough to die so we can know the Life that is truly life. 

 

 

 

Abide Poem

Follow Me

The problem with me is that I want the adventure of living by faith but I am not always so thrilled about the risk.  Recently we made a decision that was really a step of faith.  After seeking the Lord we felt certain it was what He wanted us to do.  The problem is that after the fact a situation arose that caused us to question if we had missed Him.  I stayed unsettled for too long as far as I am concerned until the Lord showed me what was wrong.  He told me you want to come out on the limb with Me but at the same time you want Me to promise you I won’t saw it off. If you are going to trust me to get out on the limb then you must trust what I chose to do once you are there.  You see once I find a level of uncertainty I am comfortable with Jesus always comes along and says go further. 

 

When my relationship with Him becomes obscured it is often because I am not walking in agreement with where He has me at a given point in time. Maybe you can relate.  I am always amazed at how simple it is yet why I could not see it before I do not know.  It’s like yes I want to follow you but ….. How many examples are given in the word of those who wanted to follow but with conditions attached? In one instance Jesus said, "He who puts His hand to the plow and looks back is not worthy of the kingdom". We don't like to think about that much, but Jesus just has a way of cutting to the chase as they say. Obedience takes faith, period.  You can walk by faith or walk by sight but you can't do both.

 

Following Him must always be about who we are following and never about the outcome. Because we have lived in the world so long sometimes we are deceived into thinking this is reality when that is a lie, and so are all the ways of this worlds system we use to justify our disobedience. To be sure our loyalty to Jesus will be put to the test in a number of ways because He wants to know what is more important to us, our relationship with Him or a false sense of security.

 

More often than not I have found the thing Jesus is after in me is getting me to be still and trust and not think that I have to do something. Waiting can be so hard sometimes. I have yet to meet anyone who finds it enjoyable.  Doing nothing can be hard because that is not the way of the culture in which I grew up.  Again, there is that dying to self thing.  Geez, it never goes away.

 

Jesus A Man Of War

Nehemiah 4:20 “Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet,
 rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.”
 

This verse is taken from the story of when the Israelites were rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem under the direction of Nehemiah the prophet.  While the undertaking of the task was initiated by God it wasn’t without opposition as anyone knows who has taken it upon themselves to do what God has put in their heart. At times we can get discouraged as they did and at times our strength can wane causing us to wonder if we even heard from the Lord.  It is important that we don’t allow the presence of opposition turn us away from whatever God has told us to set our hand to. 

 

What catches my attention most are the words, “Our God will fight for us.” I am overwhelmed at the thought that we have a God who will fight for us.  Who goes to battle against our enemies who want to take us down.  Imagine:  the noblest fighting for the ignoble, the Most High fighting for the lowest. Sometimes it is hard to grasp that our God is a warrior who wars on our behalf, who protects us, delivers us, keeps us safe. While at the same time He is a loving Father who provides for us, who takes us up to sit in His lap and talks to us to help us understand things just like a parent would take their child and help them to understand that their perception of what they see and hear isn’t always correct.  We are no different. Sometimes our perception is skewed because of our level of spiritual maturity or lack of experience. 

Life or Death

God sets before us life and death.  The problem is I sometimes choose death because choosing life requires more of me than I am willing to give. Ouch!

Jesus said "Whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake shall save it".  Huh? You see, it may seem at first that choosing life will cost more than we might be willing to give, but the truth is, choosing not to die to ourselves will cost us way more than we thought.

 

The choice has always been there before us, but until we come to the cross we are helpless to choose life as Jesus offers to us because the life He offers lies beyond the cross. It is only in our surrender that we are empowered to choose life, and even then we will have to fight for it.  We have a formidable foe who is determined to keep us from life as God intended.

 

We might climb a mountain or go around it or even in some cases tell it to move, but for those who desire life there is only one way and that is through the cross because only those willing to die to themselves will find true life as that life is in Christ.


 

If anyone desires to come after Me let him deny

 himself and take up His cross and follow Me. 

 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it,

but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. 

 Matthew 16:24-25

 

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Immanuel

Born of a virgin, sent from above

Laid in a manger, the Son of God's love

To a people in darkness He freed long ago

Bet even with this they still didn’t know

He was the Messiah that was promised to come

Yet they doubted and questioned if He was the One.

He came in humility, meekness and love

Not what they expected at the birth of God's Son

They didn’t understand the reflection they saw

Of the heart of the Father in the face of His Son.

God's glory disguised in frail human flesh

to show us Gods love is why He was sent.

They looked for a hero who was great in their eyes

To wipe away tears and take away sighs

Groaning under the weight of their sin

Not yet understanding by faith we come in

To the kingdom of God prepared long ago

That will first reign in hearts before it will show

God kept His word and fulfilled what He said

For Jesus’ the seed that bruised satans head

He restored mans authority to rule and to reign

He took on our guilt and freed us from shame

We again walk with Father in the cool of the day

Through Jesus the Truth the Life and the Way

His name is Immanuel, God dwelling with man

In frail human flesh for this was His plan

To reconcile to himself all those who receive

The gift of His Son and chose to believe.

Jesus is the Messiah God promised would come

The radiance of God’s glory and only begotten Son.

King of Kings

     God has already made us what He wants us to be.  When He spoke to Abraham He told him, “I have made you a father of many nations.  I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you.” That was spoken to Abraham when he was still childless. In another place God tells him, “Blessing I will bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand on the seashore…..and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” Obedience is indeed an action on our part but action is preceded by agreeing with the one who gives the instruction in the first place.

     Notice that the word in italics above is ‘made’ as in past tense.  All that God has created us to be and do is already in us, but we must agree with what He shows us about who and what we are.  In the past so much emphasis was placed only on agreeing with God (confessing) about our sinful condition and to be sure we absolutely  must start there, but having been born again of the Spirit because of our confession or agreeing with God, we must also come to agree with Him on what comes after that by renewing our minds so that we know what His original intent was when He created us to begin with.

     We can’t keep agreeing with what we see, hear or feel in our flesh and expect to manifest the kingdom of God and have it be established in our life.  If we want the kingdom then we must agree with the King.

     Above where God talks of kings coming from Abraham, (now here is a test for you) according to Revelation 5:10 we are the kings He was referring to. So I ask you, what was your first reaction upon reading that you are a king? The thing is, our excitment about being a 'king' shouldn't come so much from us being a king as much as being able to serve the King of kings and to manifest His kingdom on earth.  When we truly understand our position, arrogance is hardly the adjective that someone should be able to use to desribe us anymore than it would have been used to describe Jesus.