Self-Perception

Passionate...assertive...controlling...unrelenting...critical...

These are all words that have been used to describe my nature. As someone who is passionate about being a witness for God, I never want my weaknesses to be a stumbling block in someone else's relationship with the Lord. Controlling and critical are the two areas I want to discuss in this blog.

Critical
I am well aware of how easy it can be to identify wrongs in someone else and point them out. I am well aware of the need to only speak a word of truth into someone's life when urged by God. It has been my experience that sometimes I don't know when to be silent and let God handle things in His own time. I find myself wanting to correct and prevent certain actions in an effort to spare a loved one from unnecessary heartache and pain. However, what God has continually been trying to reveal to me is that I don't know what those things are...I only have a limited perception of the events in someone's life. Although my intentions may be good...they may also be out of alignment with the will of God.

Controlling
I need to lighten up. There is no simpler way of stating it. Although this is an area in which I have seen God work miracles, I do recognize that I have a long way to go. Sometimes I feel like I am wound so tight that fear begins to grow in the pit of my stomach at the sight of the slightest bit of imperfection. My mind recognizes, of course, that it is ludicrous to pursue perfection from imperfect beings. However, this does not stop the madness that persists sometimes in striving for the correction of perceived difficulties or wrongs. God has shown me that my control is imperfect, but His control is perfection personified. If I let go...and let God...how can things not go right.

It is my prayer that as I mature in my spiritual journey, that God will continue to reveal when I need to speak and when I need to be silent...that He continues to shake loose my attempts at control. And I also pray that my friends who see me as critical and controlling will understand my intentions and recognize the desire of my heart to align myself with the will of God.

Disturbence and Discomfort

On Monday, my sister sent me a devotion written by Pastor Marvin Williams titled “Lord, Disturb Me”. I read through the content taking in every word on the surface but not really allowing much time for introspection.

I pulled the content of that devotion up again today from my email because of a conversation I had last night with a friend. Apparently, I had read enough to allow a key piece to invade my thoughts and cause me to seek out the content again.

I follow the Radical Rabbi named Jesus, but I am too safe, too comfortable, too undisturbed…I hang the Do Not Disturb sign on the door of my life because I don't like my comfort, safety and status quo living being interrupted by the turbulence of big dreams, the deep waters of radical obedience, the rough seas of suffering, and the dark nights of uncertain adventures.

How many of us are too comfortable as Christians? How many of us welcome the turbulence of not resting on our own abilities or welcome the uncomfortable feeling of trusting the potential of God in us? We as Christians claim to trust in God and claim to believe in His ability to equip us to carry out His will, but the minute it becomes too uncomfortable for us, we don’t just retreat…we go into full self-preservation mode—often times trying to completely run away from something we know to be a blessing in our lives. I am convinced that God loves us, but that He also is not concerned with our mediocre/limited definition of comfort. The comfort of our lives should be the relationship we have with God. It should never be our own perceived abilities or limited understanding of our potential. Turbulence, discomfort, and sometimes fear are not enemies to those of us who believe and have a relationship with the Lord. These are tools of faith and opportunities to draw closer to God.

Think about the last time you felt extreme discomfort or were unable to navigate a situation. Did you withdraw or run away from the experience? Or, did you say “Lord, I lean on You…I trust in You…show me the way.” It is high time we ask God to disturb some areas in our lives and then look forward to the growth and wisdom that will surely come on the other side of the discomfort.

Here is an excerpt from the prayer in the same devotion written by Pastor Williams:

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly, to venture on wider seas where storms will show your mastery; where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars. We ask you to push back the horizons of our hopes; and to push us into the future in strength, courage, hope, and love.

The rest of my day will be spent in reflection and prayer over this content. It is my sincerest desire that those reading this blog will also ask themselves...in what areas of my life do I need to ask and welcome God’s disturbance?

To Lose Your Soul

Human beings are double-minded. There is no other way to explain how we long for something eternal, but try to fill that longing with something temporary. Endless books, television programs, movies, music, internet sites, electronics and the pursuit of other pleasures (material and physical) pull at each of us every day for our attention. We not only freely give ourselves over to these things, but we do so without thought of consequence. These things by themselves aren’t inherently evil or destructive, but the way in which we approach them and our actions regarding them can most definitely be both.

“… What shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26)

There are few Christians that set out thinking “how will I avoid God today” or “how can I spend my time today without God”, but yet it happens. Some of us go days without prayer, worship, thanksgiving or praise being lifted up to Him. It seems as if we want to identify God as just another thing or item we can come back to when the mood hits. It would seem we have failed to realize God is not a thing, but instead is the Supreme Being who is the Creator of all. How is it that we Christians have become so flippant about His very nature? Where is the reverence? Where is the acknowledgement that all life is sustained by Him? Where is the desperation to be with Him, walk with Him, and talk with Him?

I am angered not only at the Christian community, but also with myself for allowing so much of my time to go unchecked. “The lusts that captivate us and the thirst for unbridled pleasure, success, or material things have certainly taken on far more importance to many people than any considerations of eternity” (David C. Egner). Just as with any relationship, the quality time spent with the other individual is what allows for continued growth and closeness. No relationship can flourish or be nourished by spending only 2 or 3 hours a week with the individual—church on Sunday. For those Christians that don’t even attend regular worship service, I shudder to think of when their time with God comes. I truly believe that we sometimes forget we are not promised any more than this moment. Moments through which we can choose to spend time filling our longings with an eternal God or filling our longings with distractions. To think of these things as anything other than a distraction is to not take seriously the consequences of the amount of time some of us give to each.

When we fill every second of our time with worldly distractions, the consequence is a life lived without God. He doesn’t need us…He wants us. The Creator of all life wants to be in a relationship with each of us. He wants to spend time with each of us, to develop us into wholeness and completion. This requires openness on our part, openness of mind, heart and time. If the distractions of this world are preventing you from daily quality time with God, please reconsider the amount of time you devote to each. “It’s not worth the cost of your eternal soul” (David Egner).

Sustenance

READ: Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you —Matthew 6:33

When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary that human ears have ever heard. ". . . seek first the kingdom of God . . . ." Even the most spiritually-minded of us argue the exact opposite, saying, "But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed." The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.

". . . do not worry about your life. . ." ( Matthew 6:25 ). Our Lord pointed out that from His standpoint it is absolutely unreasonable for us to be anxious, worrying about how we will live. Jesus did not say that the person who takes no thought for anything in his life is blessed— no, that person is a fool. But Jesus did teach that His disciple must make his relationship with God the dominating focus of his life, and to be cautiously carefree about everything else in comparison to that. In essence, Jesus was saying, "Don’t make food and drink the controlling factor of your life, but be focused absolutely on God." Some people are careless about what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, having no business looking the way they do; they are careless with their earthly matters, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship with God first, and everything else second.

It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into absolute harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.

--Oswald Chambers

Good Enough...

Let me start by saying I am a fan of Oswald Chambers. To date, I have not read a devotional that speaks more clearly to my life. With that being said, the content of my post relates to yesterday’s devotional from My Utmost for His Highest--

"So often we impair God’s designed influence, which He desires to exhibit through us, because of our own conscious efforts to be consistent and useful. Jesus said there is only one way to develop and grow spiritually and that is through focusing and concentrating on God."

As an individual who desperately wants to be of use to God, not out of some vain conceit, but out of my feeble attempts of showing love to Him, this statement knocked the wind out of my sail. If many of you are readers of Chambers, you know that usually the most impactful of his statements are the simplest ones. (And how many times are most truths found that way?) Statements like this always seem to reorder my worldview and allow me to see my part in the grand scheme.

Nothing I do will ever be good enough.

Looking at this from a worldly perspective is disheartening to say the least. We all want to be useful in some way—to contribute, to know we have an impact. But a sentence like the one above does not allow room for our contributions in the conventional sense. However, looking at this from a spiritual perspective offers hope. Control of design and efforts are taken out of our hands and placed in the One who has true control and who should be guiding. This allows for more freedom in our spirit, because we don’t have to constantly be worried about how to structure our efforts so that they are the most useful to the Creator of the universe. When looking at the previous sentence, it almost seems silly that we would ever approach it from a worldly perspective as Christians.

How many areas of my life have I screwed up trying to devise a “plan of action” for a goal that God has revealed to me? (the answer—countless) Looking at it objectively, I see myself as the pesky little kid trying to help her father build something—only, I don’t know the complete design. My heavenly Father has revealed components, snippets of a complete design and I eagerly raise my hand to assist. This type of assistance is only useful when He guides me and devises the plan, not when I come up with one of my own. I often wonder to myself “what can I do to align my day as service to God?” Chambers begs us to ask a different question… “how can I focus and concentrate on God today?” God will use me, not because I have a grand or creative idea about something, but because I stay focused on Him. Bottom line—everything else flows from my focus on God. How easily I seem to forget this at times…

And the Journey Continues...

One of the hardest things to do is to be completely honest with oneself. I often like to think I am somehow “above” this pitfall, that I am able to reflect on experiences with candor and honesty. But alas, it is all a facade. I fall prey to this illusion time after time. Just when I have reconciled a thought in my mind, something happens to shake the very foundation of the “house” I’ve built. No one really wants to say they are still in love with someone who can’t commit to them or who has deeply wounded their soul. What we want to say is that we have recognized the lesson to be learned from the experience and that we are moving forward into what God has laid before us. Minimizing the effects of the hurt is one way to deal with brokenness, but it is not the best way. God desires our hearts which would involve the complete expression of the truth of what we feel and think.

Well…I will strip away all veils and barriers of protection to be real…I am throwing caution to the wind…

By the end of last year, I’d reentered the world from which I sought refuge; the relationship that was presumed to be dead started to show signs of life. Although, I had a “clear” idea that my ex-boyfriend and I weren’t right for each other and I had a “clear” sense of the lessons to be learned, here I was, being faced with the return of him into my life. I lasted for three weeks. Three weeks of telling myself “there was something better”, “that although I wished him the best, he wasn’t for me”, “that there was no explanation he could offer to justify his actions “and that I misunderstood what I originally believed God was urging me towards. After only three weeks, I was entertaining his phone calls and listening to his apologies. The truth of the matter is I love him and my heart is filled with hope (that I sometimes try to ignore). Although there were things that occurred in the relationship to move us off track, God's hand was involved in our joining. I can no longer argue against it or explain it away. The problem was that we did take over the navigation or our "system" and there is bound to be unnecessary difficulties when you move outside of God's navigation.

The present situation is one in which, I wish to be rid of the adversity. Where it seems easier to turn my heart against any hope or what I know to be true. However, the hope perseveres. I have "jokingly" told my friends that I want to pray for God to send him to someone else. But in this joke, I am boldly speaking against what God has identified as a blessing. I speak against it because it is easier to reason that this is not someone with whom I need to be attached. The beauty from this pain comes in recognizing that God still remains faithful even in the midst of my jokes and He continues to cover my heart and provide me with peace. My hope rests in the message of God and not in my interpretations or impressions of the current situation.

My world is ever changing along with my thoughts of the actions I need to take or my understanding of God’s guidance. What I am starting to realize is that I can no longer look to my experiences and current situations to dictate direction. I have to remain faithful to the message God has placed on my heart independent of my surroundings. I have done this countless times, God will clearly speak to me and deliver a message to my heart, but then, instead of holding fast to that message in the face of true adversity, I will look for His guidance on something He has already made known. I find myself starting to believe that He has changed His mind about something or that I misunderstood, no matter how clearly the message was originally presented.