Four empowering AND freeing words

December 8, 2013

Maria Prayer, Romans , , , , 1 Comment

Paul prayed to God to allow him to travel to Rome and visit the believers there.

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Almost obscured, but smack-dab in the middle of verse 10, Chapter 1 are these words:

…somehow, by God’s will……

I love it for two reasons!

First – Paul doesn’t seem to worry about how God can make this happen.

Yet consider the world Paul lived in:

  • hazardous (bandits, armies, weather)
  • unpredictable (no schedules, no infrastructure)
  • hostile to Christians (they killed Christians!)
  • disconnected (no internet or phone service)

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So here is Paul’s desire:  he wants to travel to Rome to meet Christians whom he doesn’t know personally.

He doesn’t know how that would be logistically or physically possible.  But he prays anyway.

Second – Paul doesn’t know if a journey to Rome is part of God’s plan for him.  Yet he prays anyway.  Not only does he go out on a limb and share with his ministry colleagues his desires  and the fact that he is asking God to make them happen, he actually writes them down as a permanent record of his intentions.  He is going out on a trust limb, not angsting over how it’ll make God look if the answer to this prayer request is ‘NO’.

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So how do these 4 words affect us?

  • If Paul isn’t worried about the seemingly insurmountable details, then why should we? I keep telling myself that God is the ‘out-of-the-box’ provider.  He is creative and has at His divine disposal all the resources of the universe in multi-dimensional form!
  • If Paul isn’t worried about whether it is God’s will for him to travel to Rome, then why should we let our similar lack of certainty about God’s will stop us from asking/praying?

Therefore, helped by these 4 ‘middle-of-a-verse’ words – somehow, by God’s will – I continue to pray for:

  • that first client for Mike
  • continued income to pay our bills
  • direction about where to plug in at our new church
  • and a host of other needs of friends and family

Question:  What can you boldly pray to God for, trusting His divine ‘somehow’ and whether or not your request is in line with His will? Be bold and leave a comment so we can pray along with you!

Pity, Pride and Promises

December 1, 2013

Maria 1 Corinthians, Attitude, God's Sovereignty, Hope, Romans, Trinity , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Several of my dear friends have been struggling with the very real and insidious satanic snare of: 

  • self pity – look at how terrible my circumstances are!
  • pride – these circumstances should not be happening to me!

The trick of Satan is to mask his role in promoting these depressing and self-righteous feelings!  Instead, we think they are OUR true assessment of reality.

One friend is struggling with her marriage and wishing it were otherwise.

The other friend is struggling with his vocation and wishing it were otherwise.

Who can rescue them (and us when we are so attacked) from this downward spiral that seems unending?

One version of an endless cycle

Thank God that He exists and has come that we might have life.

The other day I, TOO, felt that descent into murky grayness as I was meditating on some difficult circumstances. But before I hit dark despair, the Holy Spirit brought to mind God’s promise in Romans 8:28:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Then I recalled

  • the FACT that God is sovereignly controlling all my circumstances
  • the FACT that God is always doing 10,000 plus things in every circumstance that touches me
  • the FACT that God predestined me to work, to help, to pray, to give, to worship, to trust in activities and projects of His own choosing
  • the FACT that God chose to give me life today for His purposes
  • the FACT that I can trust God of all ‘people’ to be consistent and true to His Word

All those thoughts got my mind OFF of my circumstance and reversed the trend of my feelings.

So dear friends, I am praying that the Holy Spirit will remind you hourly:

  • that you can trust God
  • that God is close to the broken-hearted
  • that He is allowing this circumstance, at the moment, because He has good in mind for you, for those involved and others about whose situation you might not know

So……relax, trust and remember how He has come through in the past and what He promises for your future.

1 Cor 2:9

Could it be that bearing fruit is really about looking up?

November 24, 2013

Maria John, Love, Obedience, Sanctification , , , , , 2 Comments

John 14: 15  – 17 “If you love me, you WILL (emphasis mine)  keep my commandments.

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper,  to be with you forever, (that is) the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Do you know what happens to the ‘Dauphin’, the Heir Apparent, when his father the King dies and he is still too young to rule?  A wise, strong and capable regent is appointed to work with the young monarch.  This is what happened to the Sun King when his father, Louis XIII died.  Louis XIV was not quite 5 years old at the time that he assumed the reins with the Cardinal Mazarin at his side.

King Louis XIV as a boy

What does that have to do with us as believers obeying God and having the Holy Spirit as a counselor?

Today, I glimpsed a different way of looking at those verses in John 14.  I’ve always viewed them as an evaluative test of whether (or how well) I actually loved God.

  • You think you love God?
  • Then prove it!!!
  • Be obedient to all his commands.

Talk about discouragement!

I can’t even be ‘good’ for five minutes!

But what if we interpret the verse following the following logical flow of good news for believers in Christ

  • God loved us, so we are now capable of loving (1 John 4:19 – we love, because he first loved us)
  • If we love God, then we are guaranteed power to keep his commandments
  • Since once we are born again, we are babies in Christ.  It follows that we need a regent, a counselor
  • Jesus promised and then DID send the Holy Spirit to act as counselor
  • We look to King Jesus and we rely on our counselor’s prompting and we grow up in our faith.
  • We start to produce good fruit
  • But…if we take our eyes off of King Jesus and we look at the roiling waters, we sink at the impossibility of doing the very thing we are carrying out!

What good news!  We don’t have to prove something that we know for a fact is not true.  If you’re anything like me then you will probably agree that we don’t keep God’s laws and we don’t love him with a whole heart.  But we don’t have to – in our own strength.  We’re WELL encompassed by expert counsel and have the King’s favor.  He’s training you & me to be capable royal sons and daughters who will one day rule with Him.

What’s the take-away?  We WILL produce fruit to the extent that we keep looking at the King and relying on the Holy Spirit for wisdom, direction and power to grow into our role as a royal and holy priesthood.

Shoo away that horrid American philosophy, “If it’s to be, it’s gonna be up to me!” 

Overwhelmed and the choice to wallow or cast

November 17, 2013

Maria Anxiety, James, Luke, Peace, Philippians, Prayer, Trust, Worries , , , , Leave a comment

Feeling overwhelmed – you can identify, can’t you?

Too many things hanging over me and I don’t want to face any of them. But instead of obediently taking them to the Father, I choose to skulk around in my feelings- “I don’t want to DO anything, I just wish they would all go away and leave me in peace!”

So it was hard to stay focused in church this morning when my mind kept going back to that unpleasant list.

Yet I know the remedy!  God commands us, as a loving Father who understands us and can see exactly what is best:

  • Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns.   Phil 4:6
  • You do not have because you do not ask God. James 4:2b

The thing is, it feels like too much trouble to articulate what I want, so I let apathy and pathetic pity just hover like a grey cloud.

” Oh God, Help me!  You say that your mercies are new every morning!  If I woke up in a luxury hotel this morning and felt like I wanted something, or I needed something, wouldn’t I pick up the phone and ask for it, either from Room Service, the Front Desk or the Hotel Concierge?”

“Father, I’m not saying that You are a short order needs provider…yet..

You DO say that given a choice between WORRYING about stuff, or taking the time and energy to PRAY in specific words for what I need , (i.e. specifically and measurably) that we should come to You as a loving Father.  Not just once, but over and over again, like that annoying widow.”

  • Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit. Luke 18:1

” Okay, Dad, I will go off line from this blog for a few moments and invest the energy into making a list of all that is on my mind for this week.”

I’m back!  – I just typed up a list detailing everything that was waiting for me when I woke up this morning. I wrote each item as a specific request, with measurable phrases like these:

  • Guide me, Lord,  to write down exactly what meals to cook while the kids are here for Thanksgiving, to include the ingredients I need to buy.
  • Guide our prep this week at school so that the team members are closer to being ready for Mock Trial.  May all 7 students show up Monday as well as the double period on Wednesday.

By the way, for fellow tech users, here is a link to an app that Mike and I use daily.  We like it for many reasons.  But one handy feature, is that you can type your requests, save them to Drop Box and then import them into PrayerMate on the iPhone.   App for PrayerMate

Okay, I feel a bit better.  I’ll let you know how God came through.  I know He will; He always does.  He’s that kind of heavenly Father.  Furthermore, He has resources at His disposal that I can’t see or even imagine.  He is the God who operates out of OUR limited box.

Freedom that comes with honest self-appraisal

November 10, 2013

Maria Uncategorized , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I heard the concept of hope described as the golden feeling

of having something to look forward to.

If you’re like me, you enjoy having something new in which to hope, to anticipate, to savor, or to find relief from pain or the mundane.  Something like an event, a trip, stuff or a transition.

We can also place our hope in people – – to meet our needs.  The kicker is when they don’t live up to our expectations, when they disappoint.

Among many intermittent friendships with other Christian women, I’ve enjoyed one long and sustained relationship. For over ten years, this gal and I met weekly for coffee and fellowship at Starbucks, until I moved away this past June.

Our weekly hour of spiritual and life catch-up covered both years when we read & discussed books together, to seasons of just plain keeping up with each other’s interests and needs.  Twice I betrayed her trust by divulging a confidence.  And our friendship endured and strengthened.

This was a new experience for me, to have a strong but elastic friendship that neither of us dismissed or dropped at the first encounter with unmet expectations.  It would have been easier to drift, to claim a season of ‘busyness’.  But we would have missed the blessings.

I am, by my fallen genetic make-up a prideful person.  I tend to think I’m pretty good.  Of course, once I became a Christian at age 23, God slowly but steadily took my blinders off so I could see more and more of the sin that had been there all along.

By the time I sinned against my friend the second time, I was ‘mature’ enough to confess to her something that went like this:

  • I could promise that I will never again break a confidence, but I know me.
  • And I don’t trust myself.  
  • I will probably, no..not probably, I will MOST assuredly sin against you again.
  • I don’t want to, but I also don’t want to delude either you or me. 

I hadn’t planned on announcing that fact; I think the Holy Spirit just opened my eyes to that truth at the moment.

You know, it is FREEING to acknowledge that my bent is STILL to sin.  What makes me different from the non-Christian, is that Jesus already paid for all my future sins.  And I am well loved by God.  His grace doesn’t give me license to sin, but it does remove my need to cover up my sins.

I revisited this lesson yesterday on the Appalachian Trail.  Mike and I had planned another Saturday hike. Normally these are physically and emotionally restorative.  This one turned out to be painfully and spiritually revelatory.

Three times over the course of the 5 hours (should have been only 4 – our normal limit at our age 56), we got side-tracked (aka – lost). Twice it was my fault –  due to my strong will, selfish desire to reach a spot on  the trail and my distrust of Mike’s Ranger training.

He sinned too and during the drive home, we processed.  After reconciling, I remarked:

Mike, as much as I am truly sorry for hurting you today by not trusting you and not thinking about how your ankle must have been hurting, I want you to know how thankful I am that we have a covenant marriage that is both strong and elastic enough to survive our deliberate sins against each other.  Most assuredly I will hurt you again and you will wound me.  We’re sinners. May we continue to offer one another grace and ready forgiveness.

Now that is liberating. Mike’s hope is NOT in a perfect partner and neither is mine.  That releases us  to overlook much and chalk it up to God’s sanctification process.

Mike’s face clearly illustrates God’s gritty, sandpapery sanctification process in the midst of our hike yesterday.

But what I see in it …..is the face of my beloved husband, a fellow sinner, committed to me and to God.  May God give us BOTH the strength and the desire to love well with plenty of grace when we don’t feel like it.

Pers - Mike at AT sign

How to be a little kid in God’s kingdom

November 3, 2013

Maria Fear, Matthew, Prayer, Weakness , , , Leave a comment

Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14

Two lines of thought occurred to me about this verse.  One springs from the the question:

How do little kids act around a good daddy whom they love?

  • they run to him when he comes in the door
  • they want to hang on him and snuggle up close
  • they trust him
  • they cling to him when afraid
  • they don’t try to impress him, they are totally real
  • they are content just to be with him
  • they don’t fear losing his love
  • and when their daddy has to be stern about something, they take him seriously

The other is this:

How does our daddy train us?

  •  his arms are around us as we swing the golf club those first few times or as we handle a T-ball bat or steady a pistol at first.  It’s totally him, but we are physically and  kinesthetically learning as he guides the motion.

  • And the times we DON”T feel his presence, we’re like the small child jumping off the diving board into the waiting hands of Dad in the pool. He’s got us totally covered and protected even though we’re alone on that board.

Martin Luther cried out to God in a written prayer, deeply desiring His reassuring presence the night before facing the Diet of Worms. this brave child of God knew he was facing death and felt alone.  Here are a couple of excerpts.  The entire prayer can be accessed at this link –   Luther’s prayer the night before

O God, Almighty God everlasting! how dreadful is the world! …. . O God! O God! O thou, my God! help me against the wisdom of this world. . I have no business here . . .  I would gladly pass my days in happiness and peace. But the cause is Thine . .. My God! my God! dost thou not hear? My God! art thou no longer living? Nay, thou canst not die. Thou dost but hide Thyself. Thou hast chosen me for this work. I know it! . .

Lord – where art thou? . . . My God, where art thou? . . . Come! I pray thee, I am ready … O God send help! . . . Amen!

Apparently Luther never FELT God that night but proceeded the next day, nonetheless, to draw a line in the sand and stake his life and beliefs on Scripture.  Was his heavenly Father absent or present with him?  Of course God was there – His nature is to be unchanging and God has promised that He’ll never forsake us.  God’s felt absence was part of His training plan for his servant, Luther.

Like the daddy in the pool, even if we can’t see him, he will NOT let us drown.  We might plunge deeper in the water than our comfort level dictates, but all is under His complete care.

My take-aways?

  • Just stay a child in how we trust and relate to God
  • Expect Him to push us further than we want to go
  • He has already assured the results and invites us to ‘help’ Him just like your son might help you mow the lawn

How do you know if God has answered your prayer?

October 27, 2013

Maria James, Prayer , , , , , Leave a comment

I heard a pastor explain James’ critique of believers’ envy and back-biting as symptoms

of PRAYER-LESS-NESS.

  • What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. James 4:1-2

Hmm, that caught my attention!  We fight because we want something someone else has?  Instead we could actually ask God?  Who’d a thunk!  Question is: why don’t we ask God?

Maybe because we are embarrassed by our requests?  They aren’t spiritual enough?

….or maybe it’s because we haven’t learned to form MEASURABLE requests.

Excuse the following humorous/non-spiritual cartoon that illustrates the idea of measurable:

The point is, it does little good to just say, “Dear Lord, please bless this situation.”  How do we know if He has blessed it?  How do we know if and when God answers that petition?

I learned in Bible Study Fellowship to formulate prayer requests in this specific way:

  • Dear Lord, please give me wisdom so I can make a decision about X by Tuesday.  May I not fret while I’m considering alternatives, but trust You.  Superintend the whole process and once I have come to a decision, remind me NOT to second guess my decision.  And if the decision I make is not what You would have for me, then shut the door definitively and guide my steps.  I am trusting You when You say that we plan our way, but You direct our steps. (Proverbs 16:9)
  • Dear Lord, please make Mike’s calls fruitful this week.  May his contacts with potential clients result in encouragement for him and a new next step he can take.
  • Dear Lord, may our son and his family make their connections tomorrow as they travel from Podunck to Big City. May the little ones be calm on the airplane and fall asleep.  Seat around them kind passengers who like little kids.  May their luggage arrive on the same plane. Give them a spirit of flexibility for any unplanned events.  May they retain their sense of humor.

This kind of concrete praying makes trusting God an adventure.  And once God answers, you can rejoice and praise Him and pass on to others how God came through.  I was at Ingles grocery store on Thursday doing my weekly shopping.  I only wanted to spend $190 to stretch my grocery dollars.  So I prayed for restraint and God’s intervention in my choices.  And when the cashier, a high school senior, rang up the total, it came to $191.  “Not bad!” I thought.  But then my Ingles shoppers’ card did its thing and the adjusted total dropped to $186!!  

I immediately shared with the teen how I had prayed and how faithful God was to answer! “Isn’t that cool,” I finished up, “We can ask God for specific, every-day needs!”  Who knows if she is a believer, but at least God gets the credit!

Finally, for other tips to praying concretely, here is a blog post about praying LITTLE bite-sized requests.  I like what the author says.

Faith-sized Requests

‘Dem Bones’- what’s connected to your mouth ‘bone’?

October 20, 2013

Maria Heart, Matthew, Proverbs, Psalms, Thinking , 2 Comments

Knee to thigh to hip bone and so on

Jesus has harsh words about body parts and their connections.  And He isn’t talking about bones!

Matthew records Him directly criticizing the spiritual heads of the Jews –

        You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matt 12:34)

It’s pretty clear, what we put into our heart, comes out of our mouth.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably been horrified at the remarks that have slipped out of your mouth.  It’s like they bypassed the sentry at the gate, or the guard wandered off AWOL!

“Where did that expressed sentiment come from?”, you wonder.

Actually, from your heart.  What we think……. about we talk about. It’s pretty simple.

The Bible uses the the ‘heart’ to refer to our mind.  So it’s what we think about, that produces feelings that spill out as words.

How have MY thoughts damaged relationships?

  • I’ve uttered hurtful remarks to various family members and friends
  • I’ve divulged confidences and passed on criticisms ABOUT family members and friends…all because I was meditating on those thoughts
  • I’ve lost a potential  job because in the stress of an interview, I burbled something stupid that actually WAS in the background of my conscious mind (Note to self – you can’t push thoughts far enough back)

But we can’t help what we think, can we?

Yes and no.

  • Thoughts DO pop into our conscious mind unbidden.  When they are sinful, we need to yell out to God, “HELP!!!” What we can pray is something like this: Father, remove this thought from me.  It’s NOT kind or helpful or true.  Give me something to replace it – and PRONTO!”

  • We can practice ‘tasting and seeing that the Lord is good’ (Ps 34:8) and then thanking God FOR all His creation.  Today in church, Patrick explained that the remedy for NOT getting drunk on wine (Eph 5:18) was to move toward a positive action.  “Be filled with the Spirit” (i.e. the Truth).  Exhorting yourself to STOP DOING THAT BAD THING! never works.

I’m sure you can think of lots of verses that speak to how our thoughts, feelings, words and circumstances bear on one another.

My birth date Proverb is 23:7 (23 July) ….For as a man thinks within himself,  so he is;

……and I would add, so she speaks out to others without a filter!!!

What verses about the heart or thoughts or words are dear to you?

It’s good to be weak

October 13, 2013

Maria Grace, suffering, Weakness , , , , , , 2 Comments

 

Like Paul, I have prayed that God would remove certain difficulties.

This week, I took a baby step in imitating Paul when he confessed:

7 I will say this: because these experiences I had were so tremendous, God was afraid I might be puffed up by them; so I was given a physical condition which has been a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to hurt and bother me and prick my pride. 8 Three different times I begged God to make me well again.

9 Each time he said, “No. But I am with you; that is all you need. My power shows up best in weak people.” Now I am glad to boast about how weak I am; I am glad to be a living demonstration of Christ’s power, instead of showing off my own power and abilities. 10 Since I know it is all for Christ’s good, I am quite happy about “the thorn,” and about insults and hardships, persecutions and difficulties; for when I am weak, then I am strong—the less I have, the more I depend on him.  (2 Cor 12: 7 to 10)

  • As Leia, our 17 1/2 year old cat was declining, I begged God just to take her life during the night – easily and quietly
  • 2 different times in the first 7 weeks of this school year my new principal has come into my classroom and shut the door.  With good intentions, she has reported some negative feedback received from certain parents about this or that related to my teaching (new school, new kids, new expectations)

A week ago I finally acknowledge that I felt depressed. Cornered.  Meditatively and prayerfully writing last week’s blog post, finding scriptures to cling to was life and light giving.

This week, I chewed on Paul’s words.  I nourished and encouraged myself with the following thought:

  • “His grace is sufficient to make me content that I am weak.  As I lean on Him and trust Him to guide me this class period, as I wait on Him for wisdom about our cat, I know that on the other side of each hour, I will be glad that my acknowledged weakness and dependency created the VOID necessary for Holy-Spirit-Power to rush in.  No space……. no divine help.  Lord, keep me dependent on You!”

So now it’s Sunday, a week later.

Leia close up on 7 Oct 2013

Leia is buried beneath our balcony overlooking the gorgeous hills of Western North Carolina.

I taught kids more French, trusting Him to help me to adjust to their needs and the expectations of my boss.

Do I still wish for a life without suffering?  YES!!!  I’m human, i.e. sinful and weak-willed.

But I will trust Him that His way is best for me.  After all, God alone is the happy Holy Father who has already proven that He loves me.  What more could He do than He has already done by adopting me into His Forever Family?

Suffering – a daily reality

October 6, 2013

Maria Deuteronomy, Fear, Isaiah, James, suffering, Trials , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Expect suffering every day”   – so says Tullian Tchividjian in his book Glorious Ruin – How Suffering Makes You Free.

Just that concept, that suffering is part of daily life, is liberating.   I have spent too much energy trying to ward off suffering, rather than relaxing in the knowledge that Jesus is with me in my daily trials.

Maybe you share some of these false ideas that I have entertained:

  • if my suffering isn’t as bad as starving children, persecuted Christians, languishing prisoners, tsunami-victims, cancer patients, then it doesn’t count
  • if I pray effectively enough, I can block or mitigate the suffering in the lives of those whom I love
  • suffering is to be avoided
  • if I’m suffering, then God is either absent, doesn’t care, can’t do anything or  just is not good

As I have written before, I wouldn’t have chosen or planned ANY of the suffering in my life, but I do see the blessings that have come to me from

  • eating disorders
  • anxiety issues
  • marriage problems
  • money crises
  • perplexing parenting decisions and situations
  • fears of POOR parenting
  • inadequacies I have seen and still see in myself
  • consequences of bad decisions
  • relational pain that I have caused friends and family members because of my sin
  • spiritual ups & downs
  • being fired once
  • receiving a poor performance review at a former school
  • pets and parents who have aged and died
  • lost dreams

And so now, in the present moment, as I currently suffer with

  • a dying cat
  • a rough start in a new school
  • a tighter budget
  • doubts about my abilities in all my roles with others

…….I remind myself that just as there were past blessings that flourished in the soil of suffering,  God has good (what the Hebrews call TOV) planned for me that will be revealed in the current pain.  Therefore,  I strengthen myself in the Lord with His promises of present help and future grace.  Here are just 4 of many, many great proclamations from our loving and all-wise Father:

  • Do not fear, for I am with you; Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you, Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10) 
  • No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly (Psalm 84:11b) 
  • Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,  because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.  Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1: 2-4)
  • Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of _______(whatever the circumstance) _______ for the Lord your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. (Deut 31:6)

What promises of God are YOU clinging to?

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