Archive for faith
June 2, 2008 at 3:09 pm · Filed under faith, growing in God, struggling with sin
I love that title, don’t you?
But really, please don’t feel sorry for me regarding my last post. I don’t feel sorry for me. When we are confronted with the not-so-pleasant details of others’ lives, we should remember that for that person, it is their life and so it’s never quite as bad as it sounds to someone else. It’s the “mud is always stickier on the other side of the fence” syndrome. I’d rather have my life any day than to suddenly be plopped down into yours. I am doing great, really! I don’t share my struggles to make you feel sorry for me. I share them because I want to share the examination process I go through with myself. I really agree with Socrates: The unexamined life is not worth living.
The more I can figure out the “whys” of my behavior, the more I can respond to the events of life instead of reacting to them. The more I can be ready to take every thought captive and give it to Jesus. I’m just not one to float shallow down the river of life. I know there are people who do that and who are very happy and living productive lives and growing in Jesus. I just happen to believe that for me, there is a whole lot more down under the surface if I am willing to do the hard work of digging and getting muddy. My life is truly a journey of discovery. Under the surface, beneath the mud, there are treasures to be found that I would never know if I just stayed in the raft.
With that said, I will probably have another post or two about the “whys” of some of my struggles. I hope that by sharing my struggles and the reasons I have them, others will be inspired to do some digging for themselves.
May 25, 2008 at 6:41 pm · Filed under Jesus, bible, faith, freedom, growing in God, ideals, paradigms, spirit, struggling with sin
Jesus tells us over and over not to be afraid.
Fear of the unknown can drive us to do many things to feel safe, not the least of which is to surround ourselves with unnecessary structure and rules and people to tell us the right things to do so that we never need make a mistake. Or if we do err, it is someone else’s fault because we have transferred personal responsibility. And once we have surrounded ourselves with this high towering structure that we can see and touch, we no longer need have faith. Because, as scripture tells us, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of which is not seen. We have an example of what can happen when we desire a king that we can touch - this is what happened to Israel. God wanted to be their king but the people wanted a king like all the other nations. Someone to go to battle for them. Someone to protect them. This grieved God’s heart. But he gave it to them. He didn’t come up with the idea, but he went along with it. That’s not the ideal.
Inserting ourselves into structures led by kings that we have asked for, which God has given us, is not his ideal for us. But this is what we choose because we are afraid of being unsafe. We choose the good instead of the best, in the name of safety, when all along we have been safe because we are in the hand of God. We choose to put mediators and messengers and vessels between us and God. We choose Moses instead of Jesus. We choose the law instead of the Law Fulfiller. We choose a veil, a curtain, to shield us from God’s glory, when God himself has torn that curtain so we might go directly by way of Jesus to him.
We expect God to be safe, when in fact he is not safe at all. God is good, but he is not safe. If he were safe, we would not need faith. Yet our spirits are safe in his presence, because of Jesus. Not because of a man or a church. But because of our faith in Jesus.
Worshiping God is not a matter of going to a certain place or doing a certain thing. That is how God operated before Jesus was sent. Jesus fulfilled all of the going and doing. It is left to us to believe and follow and worship in spirit. It is not our job to follow rules, but to follow Jesus.
Exodus 20:
18 When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance 19 and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”
Jeremiah 31:
31 “The time is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to [d] them, [e] ”
declares the LORD.
33 “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
“I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the LORD.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”
35 This is what the LORD says,
he who appoints the sun
to shine by day,
who decrees the moon and stars
to shine by night,
who stirs up the sea
so that its waves roar—
the LORD Almighty is his name:
John 4
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
John 6
63The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit[e] and they are life. 64Yet there are some of you who do not believe.”
May 24, 2008 at 1:16 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, family, fellowship, growing in God, ideals, struggling with sin
Many of us are victims of hurt from other women. Most of the time it comes from a childhood hurt. For me, it was rejection. Cold, unfeeling rejection from two girls that I thought were my best friends. Many years later, I realize it is possible that neither of them meant to hurt me. But their actions left a lasting wound that perhaps only now is healing.
Women are often suspicious of each other. I have found that whenever I talk about my former “issues” with women, it strikes a chord with other women, who tell me that they have given up and just decided to hang out with men.
The root of this is the kind of childhood hurts like I experienced, coupled with the messages society delivers about what makes women valuable. These messages literally pit us one against another in an endless competition to be the most beautiful, the sexiest, the youngest looking, the best dressed, the most well off, and to get the man. Even if he is someone else’s man. Even if he is yours.
So after we experience the sting of childhood rejection, then they pile on with the news that we have to watch out or some nasty but beautiful vixen is going to snatch our husband or boyfriend out from under our nose, especially if we are not thin, smooth-skinned, and large-breasted enough to continuously captivate our mate and any other man in our presence.
This is not a good environment for friend-making. We don’t trust each other. We’re insecure, and we think everyone else is making us look bad. Just drive to work and you’ll receive hundreds of messages designed to make you feel bad about yourself so you will buy something.
I am convinced that because we women are constantly receiving the message “not good enough,” we see other women not as friends, but as dangerous rivals. We put up our defenses, just waiting for the first slight. If someone else is having a bad day and snaps at us or ignores us or says something insensitive, we take it as a personal rejection. Many times we snap back, or take our hurt and go hurt someone else with it.
My prayer today for all my sisters is that we would recognize our need for healing in our relationships with each other, and our need to overcome the deadly message of Madison Avenue. I know you all think I am “smoking something” with my posts on stepping out of the matrix and not following the systems of this world, but let me tell you that you are better off without these things. Living the message of Madison Avenue brings death to the things that are really important - the things that, when we get to the end of our life, we realize are the things that matter.
I got to be 40 and realized I had this hole in my heart that was missing friendships with women. Since I have begun to heal from my past hurts, I have discovered the nourishing quality of relationship with the fairer sex. With my female friends, I can be mothered. I can also mother and mentor. With my girlfriends, I can be a child. I can be myself in a safe environment where I know they love me. I can grow. Oh yes, we step on each others’ toes sometimes and it hurts. But “wounds from a friend can be trusted,” goes the Proverb. When it comes to friendships with women, “Anger is cruel and fury overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” In other words, we will get angry with each other, but anger is born of true relationship. When we are envious of others’ status, that destroys relationship. Anger can make our relationships stronger, as long as we work through the anger and keep on trusting each other.
If you are one of those women who just don’t “do women,” I get you. I used to be you and I know that it feels safer to just avoid the issue of female relationships. I also know that there is an ache in your heart to experience the God-given blessing of healthy relationships with women. I am praying for you, my sister, to overcome your woundedness and reach out to that motherly woman who needs a daughter like you. Or to pick up the phone and call that mother who needs a sister, or that young girl who needs a mother. Don’t reach the end of your life and realize that in protecting yourself, you have missed what is really important in this life. In giving of yourself you will receive so much more. It really is worth the risk.
May 17, 2008 at 12:29 pm · Filed under creation, faith, fun stuff
Sometimes it’s the simplest things that bring me back to a place of wonder. We finally received our harvester ants in the mail yesterday. I’m sure the women at the post office were thrilled to place in our mailbox an envelope proclaiming “live harvester ants.”
We brought them home and tipped them out of the test tube into the blue gel of the ant farm. After a brief period of adjustment, the ants got to work doing what Dad created them to do: work. Apparently things like sleeping, eating, and relaxing don’t matter to ants too much.
They worked all night long tunneling in this hard, blue gel-like substance that was created by NASA scientists to house ants they took with them on space missions. They’d attempted to bring ants before, but the tunnels were always destroyed in the process of takeoff and zero gravity. This “space gel” solves the problem of collapsing tunnels and also provides moisture and nutrients for the ants.
It is fascinating to watch these creatures communicating and performing their roles, and so beautiful to see in the clear blue habitat. It makes me realize once again how creative and just amazing God is, and my heart is led to worship Him both for the creation of the ants, and the creation of people who design these wonderful little habitats where we can so easily observe the ants at work. Thank you Daddy.
May 15, 2008 at 2:19 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, freedom, growing in God, spirit
For me, it’s just gotta be heart.
How can we put God in a book and tell him to stay there?
Sure, there are facts we become aware of - they are few: Jesus, the Son of God, crucified for my redemption, resurrected for my eternality. But where we store these facts, where we plant those seeds, determines whether they will grow or not. The mind is rocky soil, mixed with so much thorny, puffed up and prideful proof of righteousness, that facts planted there often grow stunted and produce haughty fear-fruit, if they even take root at all. But the heart, what rich soil unhindered by vanity and the pretensions of intelligence, that produces a lush harvest of love for our brother Jesus. What trust, what longing, what unconcern for details, what abandon, that follows him even to death. The head cannot conceive of such unsafe behavior and instinctively condemns and shuns the rebellious, libertarian heart.
May 12, 2008 at 1:55 pm · Filed under Jesus, faith, freedom, growing in God, struggling with sin
Sometimes I use “not caring” about something as a defense mechanism. Not caring becomes detachment, which becomes a place that feels safe. For instance, we have to find a vehicle because my previous automobile was totaled out by the insurance company after we hit a deer. So in the process of looking for a suitable replacement, I have settled into a place of “not caring” what we buy. I have detached myself completely from the process, because several times already I have had car preferences that my husband has had to tell me wouldn’t work for one reason or another. In order to avoid the anticipation/disappointment cycle and possibly acting in an uncharitable manner, I have chosen simply to “not care.” I realize that this puts the entire responsibility for finding a car in his court. But to me, it feels like it was already his responsibility, (because he knows more about cars than I do and because mechanical concerns trump appearance preferences) so why not make it official?
I was thinking about the “not caring” thing this morning and comparing that to Jesus’ admonition to us not to worry. What’s the difference? I know there’s a difference, but I didn’t quite get it yet. But I think I may have hit on something:
The reason “not worrying” is right and “not caring” is wrong, is because worrying happens when I am not living in the moment, and caring happens when I AM living in the moment. To expound, worrying happens when I am thinking about something that COULD happen or MAY NOT happen in the future. Conversely, caring about an issue means that I am prepared to deal with making decisions IN THIS MOMENT, without detaching myself.
When Jesus tells us not to worry, I believe he is telling us to live in the moment. The evil in worrying is that in worry, I am never present. I might be living my entire life five minutes in the future, or years in the future. I am missing out on the only thing that is REAL, which is life right this moment in the presence of Jesus.
But caring means that I am facing this very moment and being present in it. If I stop caring about what this moment holds, I am placing myself into some other time or dimension, and once again I am missing REAL LIFE.
Today my life is a perfect practical application of this principle. Today, I seem to be bent on worrying about my relationship with my daughter, even though right this moment she is not here and there is nothing I can do about our relationship right now, and so my worry is focused on some nebulous concept of future events. Today, I also seem to be bent on detaching myself from the decisions that need to be made regarding purchasing (or not purchasing) a replacement vehicle, detaching myself from the work that needs to be done today, detaching myself from interaction with the people who ARE here.
With both of these behaviors, I am pushing myself out of the moment and out of real life.
So today I have learned why worry is wrong but caring is essential.
May 9, 2008 at 3:26 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, growing in God, spirit, struggling with sin
I was writing a prayer today and I was asking God to please take away this awful burden of self, these daily temptations and driven desires that make endless demands on me. Please take it away, I was begging with my pen, and as I wrote those words I heard him say, Please give it to me.
Huh?
Please give it to me.
……………………………
Oh, you mean I’m holding on to this thing and asking you to wrest it from my white-knuckled grip, when instead I could just hand it over to you? I thought about that for a moment and then the questions started. He probably expected that. He was probably shaking his head and chuckling a little bit as I ranted: How can I just let go because I started to do that a few months ago and look at where I’m at now. It sure doesn’t look like you’re handling it, Jesus. I don’t think you took it away, this burden of self, because right now I am buried even deeper in it. Look at me, I’m struggling and I’m questioning and I’m feeling really stuck. I must have been doing it wrong but I don’t know how to do it the right way and I’m scared.
And he said, Just trust me.
So I changed the subject for a little while, because the thought of just letting go of all of that, ceasing to be concerned about it, and living in the moment with my life directed completely toward him above everything else, was just too risky.
Now, after a morning of consideration, I am feeling brave enough to confront that idea again. And I can see that in constantly begging him to take my burden of selfishness and self-concern away, I don’t have to trust him with that burden because I am still holding on to it. Trust means letting go of the crap voluntarily, not waiting around for him to rip it away forcibly. Trust means not judging the outcome of letting go according to my own desires or vision. Trust means opening my hands and my heart and keeping my eyes completely and only on him, and following with all my strength. Trust means giving up control because I want to, not because I have to.
May 8, 2008 at 7:28 pm · Filed under Jesus, dying to self, faith, freedom, growing in God, struggling with sin
Jesus takes away my sin nature, but what about the rest of me? Does he completely change my entire nature? Or is it just my sin nature that has to go? If he changes me completely then what of being fearfully and wonderfully made? What of being created in Dad’s image? Does this mean I completely suck as a human being and need to be made into something completely different? That he thinks the Tina he made was a mistake? I’m thinking not. I am made new by the sacrifice of Jesus. New doesn’t mean different, it means clean and fresh, which can certainly be different than sin-stained, but it’s not a different me. The old sin nature is dead, but the unique creation that Daddy loves so much is still here and still cherished by him.
May 8, 2008 at 4:00 pm · Filed under dying to self, faith, ideals, struggling with sin
I think that just the act of trying to live by my ideals makes me more vulnerable to hurt from others. Have you ever asked for forgiveness from someone, in a heartfelt and repentant way, only to have them act (in a really snotty way, I might add) like they don’t know what you’re talking about? It definitely hurts to get smacked by your own sincerity. Oh well! It’s not about me and my feelings.
May 8, 2008 at 1:54 pm · Filed under faith, freedom, growing in God, ideals, spirit
I have been ignoring this blog because I have allowed things to motivate me and lead me that shouldn’t be motivating me and leading me. Consequently, I haven’t been following my passion, which is to write about my spiritual journey and the things that I believe Dad is showing me.
The most recent distraction has been money. I have been all about finding a way to make more money using my God-given writing gift. This, even though I have clearly heard Spirit-voice telling me it is time to stop using my gift for what I can get out of it and start allowing myself to simply be a conduit. How could I possibly make money writing about my passion? So I have been focusing on other things, like a Web site about telecommuting that could draw lots of visitors and therefore ad dollars. Something that is completely without passion for me.
Another thing that has distracted me is the fact that people from time to time have such a strong reaction to the things I write. So I have blocked myself from expressing what I hear Spirit-voice saying to me because I have been worried about what people would think or if they would be offended. I tried to explain it to myself in pious terms. You shouldn’t be causing others to stumble, I told myself. You shouldn’t make it sound like you are pointing fingers, I said. Don’t express the things in your heart because you might hurt others. But these were really just excuses to play the martyr. My refusal to write the things God has put on my heart is a selfish act of the will designed to mitigate personal risk. If I don’t share my heart, then people cannot disagree with me or get angry with me. If I don’t share my innermost thoughts, then the resulting silence is the result of my own choice, not someone else’s choice to say nothing about the thing I have risked myself to express.
Of course, all of this is wrong thinking. I realized that this morning as I was journaling, a discipline I am working on separately from blogging. Neither money nor risk mitigation are valid reasons to abandon my God-given passion. So to hell with money, and if you are offended by what I write please do not make the choice to visit and read. I will not be co-dependent with the world.
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