He Will Stand and Defend You

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I wish there was a way to describe how incredibly good God is to me.  He cares so much for me. He provides for me in absolutely remarkable ways.  He comforts me with His presence.  He surrounds me with the support of His community of believers.  He even speaks to me through His Word.

But despite His goodness and despite His love, I have in myself a constant battle to trust His goodness and His love.  I have to ask myself, "Why can't you just learn this?  Why can't you just let it go to Him?  He's never failed you.  He's never messed up."

I'm left dumbfounded looking for an answer because, quite honestly, there is no answer.  I have no logical reason why I can't trust God with everything in me.

This past week, my devotions found me starting the book of Job.  I've read the book several times and I've heard the story on even more occasions, but if you haven't read this book, I'd encourage you to do so.

Job was a man tested by the devil.  God allowed him to be tested.  All of his procession were stolen.  All of his sons and daughters were killed in a natural disaster.  Job's own body become inflicted with boils.  Job's friends condemned Job believing that he must have sinned.  But Job knew his heart.  He knew his actions.  He knew that his heart had never strayed for God.

Job's own wife displaced the value of his human life.  She told him to curse God and die.  His life, to her, had lost all value.

He was a man that felt completely deserted by every living person around him.  The Bible says in Job 19 that he honestly believed everything was against him.

But despite all the adversity in his life, Job said this, "As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand on the earth" (Job 19:25).

Here a man who had every "right" to have a lack of faith in God, His creator, still looked to heaven and with faith, hope, and promise in his heart believed that his Redeemer still loved him. That He still cared.  He believed that God still saw him.

It's so easy to look at the situations happening around us and to be overwhelmed.  Life can be overwhelming and consuming.
      The bills always keep coming.
      There always has to be gas in the vehicles and food on the table.
      Sometimes the dog has to go to the vet.
      It's flu season!
      There are difficult people in the world and sometimes we live with them.  

It just never stops.

Those hardships that put pressure on us have a way of making us better people.  Hardships grind us down to nothing, but they fuel or dependence on God.  Somewhere in the midst of these overwhelming, all encompassing problems we recognize in our own strength and in our own wisdom we can do nothing.

Where is the good news in all this?  There has to be some kind of hope that helps us hang on to life.

"[We] can do all things through Christ who gives us strength" (Philippians 4:13).

Today, be encouraged.  God sees you.  He is your creator.  He is your Redeemer and His plan is always to restore.  Take courage because you are not alone and you are not forgotten.

When you feel like giving up remember this.  Your Redeemer lives and He will stand and defend you.

Linking Up WithHeart + HomeUnite LinkyTitus 2 TuesdayDoing You WellInto the WordLiving Well Wednesday

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Closing the Week

Just two months from today, I will be in Paris for the very first time.  I'm extremely excited.  I can't wait.  I've never been to Europe so you can imagine the measure of my anticipation.

As I look forward to September, I find that there is still life happening around me.  A lot of life is like this...a looking forward to the future and forgetting to enjoy the life we have right now.  It's so easy to do.  I struggle with it all the time.  But I must remember that while the future is full of possibilities, the present is full of hope.  And without hope those possibilities will never come.

I so ofter just expect to wake up one morning and find that my entire life has changed.  Like in The Little Princess when Shirley Temple wakes up to find untold treasures from her beloved India.  Yet, life is not like that at all.

We become.

In everything we do,
we think,
we say,
we become our future.

As my weekend begins, I'm choosing to become.  To become more than I am and to enjoy today.

Here's what happened on the blog this week

I cooked up an Old Fashioned Shrimp Boil and I also crafted with some sea shells.  They're now my favorite color: gold.  I wrote about writing stories with our lives and sharing them with other people.  And, on top of all that, I introduced one of my favorite companies, Noonday.  I love their products, but I also love their purpose.

Share with me your favorite post for the week.  Leave a link in the comments and I'll check it out.

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a Surrendered Life

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When I think of the word surrender more often than not I envision an army surrendering to another army who just gives up.  Sometimes I think of a person surrendering to the will of someone else.  But instead of thinking of the word "surrender" as a verb--as an action--I want to challenge you to think of surrender as an adjective.

I know that this goes against every rule in the English language, but hear me out.

God wants us to move past this action of surrendering into a surrendered life.  In other words, God desires us to move past the process of surrendering every problem as it arises in our life.  He wants us to move into a new realm of trust.  He deeply desires us to always live in this complete trust state.

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Trusting completely without reservation is difficult, but when we recognize who God truly is and when we step into a realization of His sovereignty, trust does come much easier.  Nonetheless, this comprehension can only be achieved when we leave our understanding of God on an intellectual level and cultivate heart knowledge of who God is.  I love what J. I. Packer says in his book Knowing God.  He writes, "A little knowledge of God is worth more than a great deal of knowledge about Him."

I feel so deeply that God is calling His church, the very Love He died for, back to Him and back to a knowledge of Him.  Not who He is or what He did or what He's like or even what He can do.  He is calling us back to Him.

In Revelations 2, Jesus is speaking to the church at Ephesus.  Jesus commends the church for their love of good deeds and for their perseverance but Jesus says this, "I hold this against you.  You have forsaken the love you had at first.  Consider how far you have fallen!  Repent and do the things you did at first" (Revelations 2: 4, 5).

I hear the voice of the Holy Spirit saying the same to us today.  "I love how you love the broken and hurt.  I love how you show my compassion.  I love how value the poor and the needy.  You're doing a wonderful job at showing my compassion.  You're doing a great job at not giving up.  But you've forgotten to love for Me."

The Holy Spirit has put a hunger in my heart to know God again...to return to my first love.  I find myself missing Him and His presence.  I know who God is and I know what He's done.  I've seen Him work miracles and I've experienced His power.  But all of these signs of God are pointless without an understand in my heart.  I what to know Him.

Tonight I'm finding myself praying as the psalmist of Psalm 42 prayed, "As the deep pants for streams of water so my soul pants for you, my God.  My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.  When can I go and meet with God."

It's here, in this place of a surrendered life, that we can truly know God not for what He is, but for who He is.  And for that, my soul lives.

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Fighting Hard

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"Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein of their tongues deceive themselves, 

and their religion is worthless.  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: 

to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

James 1:26, 27

I've found this passage speaking to me quite strongly over the past  few days mostly because I've found myself failing miserably in the execution of the verse.  Normally, I would not call myself a judgmental person.  I'm opinionated, for sure, but judgmental..usually not so much.

I've tried to pinpoint the source of my
aggravation   I feel that if I could just discern what's leading me to these terrible thoughts about people I could change them.  But instead, I'm finding myself become more and more judgmental, bitter, and hateful.

I realize this is not God's way for me.

God wishes for me to love justice, act mercifully, and to love relentlessly.  God wishes for me to be humble before Him and for His love to flow out of that humility.  God desires for me to set aside every pollutant in my life and to seek Him wholeheartedly.  But I, unfortunately, I seem to chose to remain bitter, cold, hateful.

How do I change this?  How can I change my opinions--my judgments--when I'm so certain that I am correct?

At some point or time you have had similar feelings.  Perhaps today you are feeling this same way--stuck in the rut of disappointment, pride, and bitterness all of which lead to a judgmental attitude.  The good news is there's a way out and God wants to help you find the way out of this dark place and into His light.

1.  Ask for prayer for other believers.

James writes, "Is anyone among you in trouble?  Let them pray.  Is anyone happy?  Let them sing songs of praise.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord...Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective." (James 5:13-16).

I'm sure you know the saying, "Confession is good for the soul."  Somehow that's true.  There is something about confessing our shortcomings that helps us.  Maybe it's that we know other people will be watching us or maybe it's just that the shortcoming is no longer a secret but confession changes our hearts. 

2.  Submit yourself to God and the authority of His Word.  In other words, live for Him.

In James 4 he writes, "...Don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity agains God?...Submit yourselves, then, to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Come near to God and He will come near to you...Humble yourself before the Lord, and He will lift you up."

It's only by submitting (obeying) the Word of God that the enemy flees from us.  We must learn to sacrifice our own desires and line ourselves up with His Word.  He says forgive.  We must forgive.  He says love.  We must love.  He says turn off the television and spend time with Me.  Then that's what we do.  

It's that simple.  And it's that difficult.  Every time we sacrifice our own desires for God's we are killing our sinful nature again and allowing the Holy Spirit to have control of our life.

3.  Walk the walk even when you are forcing yourself to do that.

I know what you're thinking.  That's legalism.  I must have faith.

Well, yes, you must have faith, but James wrote, "Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds...as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (James 2:14-26).

It's mind over matter friends.  No, it doesn't always feel good, but it's the right action and God will honor that action.  It's kinda amazing how are actions start to change our feelings.

If you show love enough to a person you don't like eventually you'll start loving them.  If you show mercy to someone who doesn't deserve it enough eventually you'll become a person of mercy.  

Mind over matter.

I'm doing my best right now to change my mindset.  Is it easy.  Absolutely not, but I want my life to be pleasing before God and I want my life to be to be an example of true religion that God honors.

The great thing is God's hand of mercy and grace and love is always extended for us and He's never going to pull away.  When we follow our failures up with repentance  Christ forgives us...to the utmost.  He never remembers our shortcomings again.  

May we ever point people to His love by the love with have for one another.

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naked

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Three different things happened today that led me to this post. (here, here, & here.)  This is not something I want to write about.  In fact, writing about it puts me in an extremely vulnerable place.  I've chosen to live my life always keeping one thing in mind.  "Never let them see you sweat."

Tonight I'm going to.  I'm taking the veil down of the proud, strong, feministic lady (hopefully you think of me as that) and be open and insanely real.

I've always felt that the real test of friendship is when you can be completely naked with someone--not physically, but emotionally.  As a culture, clothing has become, in some ways, optional.  But those private places...the places that have to be revealed by choice...the internal dimensions of our mind, soul, and spirit are locked away behind the closed door of our own will.

In my life, I think I've only been completely transparent with maybe one person.  Even then, I'm certain there were thoughts that were left unrevealed.  Maybe because of wrong motives that just seemed too ugly.  Maybe just because...

But all that aside.  Here's goes nothing.

I love my life and I love being me, but I hate being judge for being fat.
I love my life and I love being me, but I hate being single.
I love my life and I love being me, but I hate the internal clicker inside my head.
I love my life and I love being me, but I hate being underestimated and overlooked because of my gender, weight, facial beauty and hair color especially in my profession.
I love my life and I love being me, but I hate feeling small, insignificant, unimportant.
I love my life and I love being me, but I hate all the financial debt I incurred in college and even after.

My parents taught me that there were no limitations and that God's plan for my life is bigger than I can imagine or think.  I believe they are right.  God's plan for me is bigger than I can imagine or think, but the limitations...they had that wrong.

When I look at that list of insecurities above, all I see are limitations.  All of them are keeping me from being completely who God wants me to be.
It's almost as if every single one of those limitations are staring, putting their long, nasty finger, and laughing in my face.

Truthfully, we do have limitations.  Some we put on ourselves.  Others are perceived limitations.  Still, others are limitations projected onto us by others.  The key here is not let the limitations limit us.  Oxymoronic?  Yes, but true nonetheless.

I'm reminded of the story of Moses, sitting in the hot, rocky hills of the desert.  It was there that God called him to go back to Egypt and be the deliver of God's chosen people--the Israelites   Moses had many limitations, that in his mind, should have prevented him from being the one to go.

But God had been preparing Moses.  He had spared his life from the mass execution of thousands of Hebrew baby boys.  He miraculous provided for Moses to be raised and educated in the palace.  He helped him safely escape Egypt after he had killed an Egyptian guard.  He had cared for Moses in that desert.  He even made a way for Moses, who had a speech impediment, to not have to speak!  (Who knows.  Maybe Moses was also fat, blonde, and handsome too.  Now that'd be ironic.)

All of these things seemed like limitations to Moses, but to God it was his preparation.

As I'm preparing to begin this new year (that's assuming that the world doesn't end on Friday), I'm prayerful considering what New Years Resolutions I'm going to take own.  There are a few that I'm certain, 100%, adding to the list, but then there are others that are a little more complex.  They are more complex because I feel like God is using them to lead me to into my destiny.  Those are not goals to take lightly.

More than I want anything, I want need the presence and power of God working in my everyday life.  I've got to have Him with me.

But besides that, I feel like I've got to remove the limitations.  (Maybe I should dye my hair brown...Just kidding.)  My insecurities are not an excuse for my destiny to be limited.

Will you join me?  I'm choosing to love life and to love the journey.  And to work desperately, as if my life depended on it, to not live in the limitations.

Funny thing...my life, the life I really want, does depend on it.

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