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.  

The Wings of The Wind

     Recently my family walked through an unexpected crisis with my husbands health. I will probably be sharing on an ongoing basis some of what I have learned as I have walked through this with the Lord. 

     One of the most prominent things I learned is that we have to chose what to look for in a crisis. We can either focus on the enemy or we can focus on what God is doing in the midst of it. Fortunately for us we chose the latter and found God at every turn.  It may seem like the darkness is overcoming us and I don't think we are to ignore the presence of it in the midst of what we may be experiencing, but there is light and the more we focus on that, the brighter and brighter it will become. We can be victorious or we can be defeated, that will depend on what we chose to exalt in our crisis.  We can exalt Jesus and the truth, or we can exalt the situation and our feelings. God has given us the ability to chose the former, but He won't chose for us.

     Out of that I have learned that when we find God in the midst of our storm not only does he reveal himself to us but he reveals himself through us as well.  We talk all the time of His power being made perfect in our weakness yet at times despise what he allows in order for his power to be seen.   We often refer to going through trouble as being in a storm which usually involves wind sometimes very strong hurricane force winds at that. The word says......  He makes the clouds his chariot and rides on the wings of the wind.  (Psalm 104:3) it  also says He has His way is in the whirlwind and the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. (Nahum 1:3) but do we really believe that? If I had any doubt before I don't any longer after what we have witnessed.

     For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 2 Corinthians 4: 6-7

     We have to quit despising our humaness, it is the way He has chosen to reveal the light of the knowledge of His glory in Christ to those still in darkness.

Christ in you, the hope of glory. Colossians 1:27

Beware

     Beware when you say, "Oh, if only I didn't have this to deal with or that to deal with what a good Christian I would be!" If you have never thought that then you are rare indeed.  How I have been guilty of thinking how much easier it would be for me to fulfill Gods destiny for my life if I wasn't dealing with this or that yet all the while it is a lie of the enemy masquerading as an angel of light to get me completely off course. So it is with all of us.  

    We may desire with everything in us to fulfill Gods purpose and destiny and at the same time fall prey to the deception of thinking how easy it would be if we didn't have this  situation or circumstance or this  person to deal with.  You know we all have them, that one thing we would give anything to change or that one person we think causes us to be less of what we think we are suppose to be.  If we are not careful we may even feel sorry for ourselves on account of it, when all the while that very situation or circumstance or difficult person is being used by the Lord as part of the process to conform us to the image of His son in order to grant us the thing we desire most.  We will bemoan the things God is using if we lose sight of the truth that as believers He is our righteousness (always) in every situation.  If we will continue to gaze upon Him at all times, eventually He will manifest through us in the one thing we thought it impossible for Him to do so.  His grace is sufficient...no matter what.

For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Romans 5:17

God's Discipline

      I stood in my closet feeling frustrated because I realized I would have to put off some things I needed to do for at least another day and instead pay a bill because a check we were expecting had not come in.  My daughter was coming in from out of town in a few days and I felt like I was running out of time....   But before I turned to the Lord for help He met me with His finger on a place in my heart I was not aware of. There is no mistaking the finger of God upon ones heart because nothing else feels the same way.  All of the sudden I found myself standing there crying telling Him how sorry I was for an attitude I didn’t even know I had as evidenced by my frustration.

     God I am so sorry for thinking it was OK to put you to the test to fix a situation.  For thinking I was entitled to get away with not doing the ‘right’ thing (do what I want to do first and pay the bill after the check comes in) since Lauren is coming  and that because of everything we've been going through (financially) you would look the other way.  Forgive me for thinking you wouldn’t pay attention or that somehow because of my past you would require less of me. That kind of thinking  comes  from a victim mentality that has no place in the heart of those who belong to you, how foolish of me.  It isn’t even about the money it’s about the attitude of my heart and about my erroneous perception of you, who is a holy God.

     I wish I could say it was a one time incident but the truth is, this attitude had caused me to feel frustrated a lot in recent months but this time God had had enough.

 Hebrews 12:5-11  “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,  and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his child.”   Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? ⁸ If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate children at all. ⁹ Moreover, we have all had parents who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! ¹⁰ Our parents disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. ¹¹ No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

    Although I don't consider myself to be one with a victim mentality, at least not compared to how I used to be (which is probably why I was not aware of the root of my frustration), later as I pondered all of this I realized this can cause a lot of problems. It allows us to justify actions and behavior that doesn’t have any place in our lives as believers. Our standard isn’t what the guy down the street is doing, or even ourselves at an earlier time, our standard is Christ himself.  Being a person of integrity means doing what is right in the eyes of God all the time even when it hurts and no one else would be the wiser. We are foolish if we think God is going to let us get away with anything if we belong to Him.  We are to endure hardship as discipline and be glad that we are being treated as a child of God.  

     My Pastor said recently concerning life as a Christian, “Not everything about it is glorious”.  He is correct, at present it isn't all glorious.  If you were led to believe upon giving your life to Christ it would be, I am sorry.  But Paul says, 

    

"I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us”. Romans 8:18

  At the time Jesus was in the garden of Gethsemane fighting his flesh to surrender his will in order to fulfill the Fathers will, it wasn’t glorious, the glory came after the cross. The sooner we come to terms with this, the easier it is to walk in obedience. Obedience must be unconditional, I think that is where we get tripped up sometimes.     

     One of the biggest problems with a victim mentality, no matter how minute, is that it keeps you focused on your past rather than your future.

Be Sober Be Vigilant

1 Peter 5:5-9

Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.

Sober:  to be sober, to be calm and collected in spirit also to be temperate, dispassionate, and circumspect.

Vigilant: to keep awake, be watchful, to watch.  Give strict attention to; be cautious, active.

     Many think because they don’t drink alcohol they’re sober and vigilant but yet are intoxicated with other things. The enemy is looking for those who are not vigilant; you can’t be vigilant if you’re not sober and you can’t be sober if you are intoxicated with anything other than Jesus.

     I am not here to judge the scriptural legality of whether one should drink or not drink, most would agree that being in a drunken state isn’t something that glorifies the Lord. In this day and age there are plenty of things we can use to inebriate ourselves without ever touching a drop of alcohol.

     I find it interesting that the instruction to be sober and vigilant is written with the idea of there being suffering involved. Suffering is usually what precipitates becoming intoxicated in the first place in order to numb oneself to the pain they are experiencing.  If we don’t handle our pain correctly we end up being the one the devil can devour. Given the scriptures preceding verse 8 I think humility is definitely a key ingredient in handling pain correctly. Contrary to what the devil wants us to believe, God isn’t mad at us because we hurt. 

Verse 9: Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brethren in the world.

According to the verse above, we are strengthened in knowing we are not alone in our experience; another one of the enemies tactics is to make us think we are.