Coming in from the Cold

I peered through my windshield at the monsoon outside. Cold painted fingers, nose. Assault of wind and rain and cold stood between me and the front door of the oasis of warmth I knew awaited me.

And still, I couldn't bring myself to open the car door and step out into the wind and rain.

I was already cold. The car heater fogs up the windows, impairs visibility...so I hadn't turned it on. The freezing temperature outside, consumed the inside as well.

I filled my lungs with air, held it there, opened the door.

Feet consumed by frigid waters. I walked to the door, swung it open and stepped inside. And wondered why I had taken so long to make the journey.

Warmth immediately consumed me. Glow of fire. People I love gathered around laughing and singing and . . . unphased by the storm raging outside. Each had their own lively story of how they came to be there, warm and unaffected by the storm. Basking in the pleasantness of temperature and dry clothes. We laughed at each others stories as we gathered around the fire.

I looked around and pondered the stark contrast of this beautiful moment with how it felt to be in the cold. Alone and willing to live in the cold to avoid the wind and rain, even if it meant being cold for a longer amount of time.

It reminded me of coming to God. How good it feels to bask in His warmth and light. And how long I spent willing to live in the cold.

God's love feels like being in a warm oasis when there's a blizzard outside. Coming to Him feels like walking in from a storm, to fire, friends, warm blanket, bowl of soup. Living in his will is the utter contentment of sitting in front of a fire, utterly untouched by the cold and wind and rain billowing outside. The cold and wind and rain still rage, but there is really nothing they can do to touch me. Their power is gone.

When I come to God, the storms don't stop. The difference is, they lose their power over me. The worst they can do to me isn't comparable to the good God does for me.

Nothing can separate me from the love of God. Not death, nor life. Not angels or demons. Not the present or future. Nothing in all of creation.

Being in God's warmth and light is an amazing place to be.

Are you there? Or are you negotiating a life in the cold?

40 Days Difference

Since I was a child, I believed that God created me to be a villain in His story.

When I finally realized that that probably wasn't true, I prayed for God to show me my gifts. To help me understand what He wanted from me. I felt stifled and trapped and restless. I can't even count all of the times I prayed that prayer.

In the last few months, He opened my eyes. He had already shown me my gifts. But I denied them. Suppressed them. I thought those things were among the long list of things that made me a villain.

A little over a month ago, I shared my mission statement and what I am praying for this year. I determined to pray this prayer for 40 days. I am not going to stop even though I have reached the first goal, but this is a point where I am looking back and rejoicing over where God has brought me from and where he's taking me. As a part of that process, I am sharing the first prayer I recorded in this specific prayer theme, and the last one.

(I have removed parts that referred to specific people, other than my immediate family.)

1. 1/13/2018

Father, I submit to you. I surrender. Father, please forgive me of my sinning. Please forgive me of my pride and unkindness. Father, please help me to focus on the things you want me to focus on. Please settle my heart and help me to keep my eyes on Jesus. I want to be who you want me to be. Please help me to know and believe that you love me, that Christ died for me, that you chose me so that I can serve in your Kingdom with confidence and purpose. Please fill me with your Spirit so full that your Spirit flows through me and into other people so that I can love others fully and purely and provoke them to a deeper, richer relationship with You and each other. Please make me reverent in behavior, to use wholesome language that builds up and edifies, please help me to not live as a slave to food or drink or anything else. Help me to teach what is good, to love my husband and children, to be self controlled, pure, working at home, kind and submissive. Father, please help me to invest in my children. Father, I have failed to foster closeness with them, please help me to do that. Please help me to change to promote that.  Father, please show me how to love my husband and children in a way that they can receive it and feel it in the most effective way. Father, I am not a good listener to my kids. I am a lazy parent. I give in to what my selfishness wants instead of what would serve them. I have been a selfish mother. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Please make me altruistic. Please make me focused on You and not myself so that I can love my husband and children fully and purely. Father, I thank you so much for my home. I thank you for my husband and children. Thank you for Michael. Thank you for Caleb. Thank you for Nathaniel. Thank you for Lilla. Thank you for Elisabeth. Thank you for Uriah. Please help me to love each of them in the individual way that they will receive it best and most efficiently. Please make me kind. Thank you for mine and Michaels jobs. Thank you for our church family. Thank you for bringing me here. Father, I thank you for music. Thank you books. Thank you for our fireplace and our Narnia lamppost. Father. You are so good. I trust you. Thank you for what you have done for me. In Jesus name I pray, amen.

 

40.) 02/21/2018

Father, I trust you. I am being still because I know that you are God. I am strong and courageous and I am not frightened or dismayed because I know that you are with me where ever I go. You are real and I matter to you and you reward those who diligently seek you. I believe you. I believe that you are good and faithful. I believe that your wisdom is so far above my own that I can’t comprehend it. I believe you. I trust you. Please help me to believe you and trust you more. Father thank you! Thank you for what you have done for me! Thank you for Michael and Caleb and Nathaniel and Lilla and Elisabeth and Uriah. Thank you for our home. Thank you for not leaving me where I was, sick and sinful and lost. Father you are so good. I am overwhelmed by it. I am overwhelmed by the proof I see that you love me. I’m sorry that I sin. I am sorry for my pride and selfishness and codependency and judgmental-ism and jealousy. Please forgive me. Father, please change my heart. Please give me a heart like David’s. Please crucify anything in me that is not of you. Father, please help me to find my identity securely in YOU so that I can serve in your kingdom with purpose and confidence. Please fill me so full of your spirit that I am overflowing with the fruit of Your Spirit so that I can love purely and fully. Father, please allow me to provoke others to have a deeper and richer relationship with you and with each other. Father please make me reverent. Please make every word I say wholesome. Please make my words edifying and building up to everyone who hears them. Father, please make me a slave to you and nothing else. Father, I struggle with food. Please change my heart. Thank you for what you have been doing in me in regard to food. Thank you for accountability and friends who pray for me. Father, please make me teach what is good. Please show me how to love my husband and children and fill me with love for them. Father please make me self controlled, pure, a worker at home, kind and submissive. And please give me wisdom and discernment. Father, I surrender to you. I trust that you are going to show me how you want me to use the gifts you’ve given me. Please help me to be patient. I don’t want to be patient. I don’t want to wait, but please help me to wait patiently. Please give me supernatural contentment and joy in learning and growing in the meantime. Father, I would like to work in ministry full-time. I am asking you to provide an opportunity. Father, please make me courageous. Please open my eyes. If you have already shown me and I dismissed it at as an impossibility, please show me that. Please give me eyes to see. I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you. I do now. I know that you didn’t make a mistake or create me because you needed a villain in your story. Thank you Father. You are good and amazing and I love you. I want to be wholly consumed by you. Please consume me!! In Jesus name, amen.

I am meditating and thinking through the changes. And thanking God for where He's brought me from, where I am now, and where He is going to take me. He is good!!!!!!

 

What are you praying for? What is God doing in your life? What do you want Him to do?

 

 

Asking for Signs

I looked at what I believed was evidence. The tell-tale information that said I am not good enough. I don't belong here.

I started to listen to those lies. Should I be doing this? If I were supposed to be doing this, wouldn't __________ be happening? Wouldn't it look like ______?

And I asked God to give me a sign. Some direction. anything.

I thought of Gideon.

An angel (that he didn't know was an angel until later in the conversation) showed up and told him to go to battle for Israel. From human eyes and mind, he was a starving farmer. To God, he was a "mighty warrior". Not because he could bench press 500 hundred pounds or kill a hundred men with a pocket knife. A "mighty warrior" because God declared him one.

He asked for a sign.

Over and over he asked for reassurance that he was doing what God wanted him to do. And each time God gave it to him.

And then he asked again. Over and over and over God reassured him. And over and over and over he needed another sign.

I do the same thing. 

Over and over and over. I doubt. I listen to the lies. I believe them. And then I call out to God for a sign.

I look at the things I can see with my eyes. I see the people. I compare. I decide what it should look like with my own understanding. And when it doesn't, I doubt.

I lean on my own understanding of the world and people and myself. I only see things from a carnal perspective, I don't see into the spiritual realm. I don't see angels standing ready to fight my battles or the ways God is working it all for my  good and His glory.

But I know my God. I know he is faithful. I know He is good.

So, I took Gideon as a sign. :) 

A sign to trust God. To say yes, and trust that He will give me what I need to follow through. To trust in the Lord with all of my heart and not lean on my own understanding. In all my ways to acknowledge Him and depend on Him to make my paths straight.

Knowing God

Some of the people in my life have known me a long time. And some have known me well. The former does not necessarily preclude the latter.

Sometimes people who have known me a long time, assume they know me well, when that isn't really the case.

I feel trapped and frustrated by those relationships.

Or, they have known me well in the past and make no room for growth, and so they know the me from 10 years ago, but not the me now.

I feel trapped and frustrated by those relationships, too.

Knowing me a long time doesn't necessarily mean you know me well. And making the assumption that you know me well because you have known me a long time, is a barrier to actually getting to know the real me.

The thing is, I think that sometimes because I've known God for a long time I make the assumption that I know Him well. But that's not any more true with God than it is with people.

Sometimes I approach my relationship with God assuming I already know who He is and what He wants, and that places a barrier in the way of actually knowing Him well.

Maybe you do know Him well. And maybe I do too. But what if I have missed out on an amazing God, because I have shoved Him into a box I thought he belonged in?

Let's ask God to reveal any areas where our pride and assumptions are in the way of knowing Him well. Let's open our minds and hearts and make room for the real God and not just the one I think He is.

Knowing Him a long time is not good enough for me. I want to know Him well.

Good News!

Spiritual body emaciated. Starved. Stomach distended from malnourishment. Eyes dead with despair. Lips dry. cracked.

Deceived.

Poisoned food. Dirty water.

I thought pursuing Him was a checklist.

I didn't know . . .

. . .  that He loves me.

I didn't know that He wants me.

I didn't know that I can have a relationship with Him.

Suspicious. Afraid of poison. dirty water . . . unaware that I was already consuming it.

. . . refused to eat Bread of Life or drink Living Water.

I needed the Gospel.

So . . .

He pursued. He loved.

answered misguided prayers. worked for my good. sent people.

They told me about a God who loves me. Who chose me.  And who is happy He did.

They told me about a Savior who died for me while I was lost in my sin. He died for me while I was lying, cheating, immoral . . . hammering nails into His flesh.

They showed me how to stop hammering the nails into His flesh and start nailing my sins there instead.

They. belong. there.

Stopped eating poison, drinking dirty water.

True Food. Living Water.

Recovering Spiritual body. No longer emaciated. Full. Beautiful. Thriving. Eyes full of hope. Lips quenched, tell the good news.

Stop drinking Satan's poison! Your spiritual stomach shouldn't be distended. Body emaciated or lips parched. There's a God who loves you, a Savior who died for you.

Stop nailing him to the cross!

Your sin belongs there. 

You can recover. Full. Beautiful. Thriving. Eyes full of hope. Lips quenched, YOU tell the Good News!

What I am Praying For This Year

I forced my fingers to type the email my spirit determined to send.

My flesh wanted the fun and excitement of working full-time in a high rise in downtown. But my spirit knew it wasn't right.

The battle exhausted me emotionally.

I go from thing to thing. I have always looked at it as being open minded. Being willing to rethink things and learn and grow and change my course accordingly.

And maybe it IS a good thing at least some of the time.

I am constantly on the prowl for what God wants me to be doing. Something comes along and I pounce on it like a puppy on a new, squeeky toy. And then, in the middle of working on the first thing, something else comes a long and I am like "Squirrel!" and I drop the first thing and move on to the next. Sometimes I go back to the original thing, but then I see another squirrel and the same pattern repeats itself.

So, this year I am determined to break my gypsy cycle. So I met with a counselor and got some great advice. And I looked up how to write a mission statement, and I wrote one.

Apparently my lack of attention span is discontent related to strained familial relationships, a lack of gratefulness and not living and working within my calling.

So, for the next 40 days here is what I am praying

My Mission statement
Titus 2:3-5
The Sermon on the Mount
and for wisdom

I am surrendering. Seeking God with all my heart. Adding some structure into my daily life. Pursuing relationships. Being intentionally grateful. And believing the truth that God tells me.

This is a graphic I created for my mission statement. It makes me happy!