Jeremiah 29:11-14

I truly love being on the mountain top and this past weekend was one of those experiences.  First I took a huge faith step on Friday (well big for me anyway) and I learned how passionate and trustworthy God truly is.  Both of these have led me to a renewed love of my savior and a desire to know more about Him and what He wants for me.

On Friday, after being encouraged from several different directions, I signed up for E-Harmony.  Before I did this, I came to the realization, that it wasn’t necessarily God telling me no, but my fear of rejection that was holding me back.  So I jumped in and thankfully God caught me (like He ever doesn't!).  After taking this step, I unplugged from technology for 24 hours and went to my church’s women’s retreat. 

The theme was the Passion of the heart.  Not my heart but God’s heart, and the fact that He doesn’t just love me He passionately loves me.  Chris taught us what it means to love Him with all my Heart, Soul, Mind and Strength.  She explained that to love God with your heart is with all my emotions, including the ones I have locked away (scary right!).  To love Him with my soul is to put Him in the center of my desires, my personality, the very essence of me.  To love Him with my Mind is to love Him with all my thoughts (wow I fail here!!) and then with my strengths is to love Him with all my actions (ok another fail)! 

Of course I am a sinner and I fail miserably at all four.  But God is so amazing, He didn’t berate me He showed me instead that He is truly trustworthy and I can hold onto that promise.  During our quite time, I was reading Jeremiah 29:11-14 and I began to pray it back to him, this is what I came up with.

Lord, you will rescue me from captivity, for you are not hidden from me.  I will be found by you because I seek you with all my heart.  And you will hear me when I pray to you and call upon your name; for you have mapped out a future for that is full of hope.  I can trust you to protect me and to prosper me.  Because each day is designed by you and I am not an accident.

Through this God showed me that I was locking my emotions away from Him by not trusting Him enough to find me a husband.  I was instead relying on my defense mechanisms to continue to scare men away.  I am also hurting Him by trying to change who He has made me to be.  the funny thing about E-Harmony is it has allowed me to do that.  In the past I have been more than willing to overlook certain things in a man just because my options were so few.  But as I released this whole dating thing to God He began to show me how many passionate, God fearing SINGLE men there really are out there.  The most amazing thing as happened, I am now more secure in what I want and what I need from a mate!

God has shown me that He alone is the rock that I can stand on, the man that I can trust in, the true lover of my soul who knew me before I was conceived, and loves me completely because He has created everything in me!

Hmmm

For years I have struggled with loneliness.  A deep ache that I constantly carried around inside me, an emptiness that I though another person could feel.  I can praise the Lord and say that I no longer feel THAT loneliness.  It is a different kind of lonely that I am experiencing now.

I have a hard time saying that I am lonely, but in reality I am.  Either that or just bored I cant figure out which.  But for the first time in my life I long for an imperfect man, who won’t complete me but I hope will compliment me.  I long for a companion that I can walk this journey with.  I think the hardest thing about being single is the hope of that relationship.  If only  God would take that desire away, I could fully enjoy this time in  my life.  Or would I really?  I always like to blame something for why I don’t step out in things I enjoy.  But the truth of the matter is I am scared.

I am scared of success, I am scared of God doing AMAZING things through me!  I long for these things yet I am scared of them.  Just as I long for a companion but I am scared of the pain that comes with an imperfect relationship.  At least where I am now I can pretend that someday my life will be amazing(there I am wallowing in that good again).  However, as I dream of the future, a new day dawns.  If I don’t crawl out of the pig sty soon and quite wallowing in good, the mud may dry and I will be stuck here forever!

Do I really want great

I really feel like I have been neglecting my blog lately.  Not sure neglecting is the right word, more like avoiding!  I am really struggling with not doing the things I love to do, instead settling for brain numbing activities like TV or solitaire! 

There are so many things I love to do, exercise, cook, take pictures, create random things from scraps around the house.  I have so many great ideas in my head.  And instead of spending time getting the ideas out of my head, I try to shut off my brain and ignore them.  In a book me and some friends are reading, the author mentions giving up the good for the great.  So why is it so hard to pursue the great!  Right now I am pretty sure I would settle for mediocre.  In some areas of my life I am kind of scared of what I would settle for!  So how do you keep your focus on great, when good is so comfortable?

This seems to be a constant struggle for me.  I have everything I need at my disposal to succeed with great, but I spend day after day wallowing in the good and the busyness of life.  So where is that fed-up-state where the good is no longer enough.  I think I am getting there and I am praying it is soon, because I am getting pretty bored with good!

My thorn

A friend of mine posted this question on Facebook today and it really hit the nail on the head of what I have been struggling with. 

“How does one conquer their fear and near resentment of success; as well as stop sabotaging themselves?”

Wow, how do you do that, when your whole life you have done this.  I truly do fear success, and not just in my career, or financially but in any form.  If I didn’t have to continually fight my own self-sabotage, I would be a size two by now!!  But seriously her question led to one of my own.

Is low self-esteem, i.e. self-sabotage a sin.  I am in fact degrading what the heavenly Father has created and brought into being.  I am saying that He is big enough to make me whole and I fall back into my old patterns of self-medication with food and purchases.

So if I acknowledge it is a sin, and I release it to the Father to heal why does it seem to always come back.  It is like the thorn in my flesh.  I had to apologize to someone today because on Monday they were complimenting me on my weight loss and I wasn’t very nice about it.  My excuse, I was having a bad day and I didn’t feel good.  So, it doesn’t mean that I didn’t accomplish loosing almost 30 lbs.  But I don’t feel like I accomplished anything.  It is quite sad really, I am watching the weight creep on lb by lb and I feel powerless to stop it!  But, I’m not, so why does that voice always end!

HELP ME!!!

Truly a Good Friday!

Several months ago as I was dealing with all the emotions from leaving the house and starting a new chapter in my life I had someone approach me about sharing my testimony with a group of teenagers.  These teenagers are home-schooled and for the most part come from very grounded families, so my first thought was what could they possibly learn from me.  Then on the heels of that thought was could I even handle the emotions of giving my testimony in the midst of leaving the house.  So I agreed to pray about it.  And as God always does he opened up a day on His timing that I was off of work and could go and share, that was today.

Usually I dread giving my testimony because there is so much of it that I almost get bogged down in the details. So many God moments amidst the pain that I hate to leave anything out.  Not to mention the pain and the agony is usually so fresh that i plummet into depression after reliving that part of my life.  But this time was different, this time I was truly looking back.  I was standing on the other side of the journey I have been through and able to say I AM A NEW CREATION IN CHRIST!  What an amazing feeling!

Then to share my story and see the same feelings I was sharing reciprocated in someone’s eyes.  To have a teenager break into tears because she has found someone who understands what she feels and then to be able to look her in the eyes and promise her with surety that Christ can and WILL carry her through this pain.  There is nothing like it, after that how could God possibly bless me more!  Well, He is God, so He did!! 

We had our good Friday service at church tonight and it was more of a time of reflection.  I one corner there was a video of pictures from the movie the Passion of Christ playing.  As I approached this area so did a young girl who is very dear to me, who had never seen the passion.  So I sat down with her and we held each other as we watched images of our beaten Lord flash on the screen before us.  I could feel her shake as the images drove home for the first time the reality of what He truly suffered.  My heart broke, I was so blessed to share this with her and all I wanted to do was cover her eyes.  I wanted to protect her from the horrors of what we as humans can do to other humans.  But I restrained and in doing so, I feel this young lady grew closer to Christ tonight and I was privileged to be present for that.  What an awesome God that not only would He move in my life but He would use me to move in others.  There is nothing like it.

To finish a good work

God has really been moving in my heart this weekend.  I spent some time with friend who happens to struggle with many things that I do.  As she was sharing her struggle, my heart screamed “I do the same thing”!  I have a hard time finishing anything!!  There are times that God puts a passion in my heart, I don’t respond quick enough, and the passion slowly ebbs.  Usually my passion fails because I dont think He is big enough, or I begin to question when the road gets hard.  One of my favorite quotes right now is by George Lucas.  “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you.  If you don’t have that kind of feeling for what it is you are doing, you’ll stop at the first giant hurdle.”

The thing I am most passionate about is prayer.  I feel strongly that we should be a people who pray and seek His face, especially in the world we currently live in.  Yet in my down time, I don’t pray.  Well I don’t take time out of my life to pray.  I am crazy  good at the bullet prayers, and I even throw in a few praises here and there(that way I feel even better about myself)!  This past week as I have started those bullet prayers, the Holy Spirit has shut my mouth, my mind everything.  I have no words and I feel heavily convicted that I can’t even stop what I am doing for two seconds to pray for this!  But I have yet to really head that conviction so now He is making it blatantly  clear

When I came home today this is what I read.  “So here’s what I think:  The best thing you can do right now is to finish what you started last year and not let those good intentions grow stale.  Your heart’s been in the right place all along.  You’ve got what it takes to finish it up, so go to it.  Once the commitment is clear, you do what you can, not what you can’t.  The heart regulates the hands.” 2 Cor. 8:10-13 (The Message)  Ok, ok I get it, He has gifted me with a heart and a desire for prayer and I need to start using it as the sword that it is.  So if you think of it, keep me accountable, ask me how my prayer time is, and if you want join me!

Fisher’s of Men

Since I let Christ into my heart in 2004 I have struggled with what a relationship with Christ looks like.  I was raised in an environment that was more about earning our way to heaven, than being with Christ.  Because of this there is constant tension in my life fueled by shame and guilt, that I am not doing enough to please God.  Since I gave my notice at Saint Child, this struggle has become more evident.  I even realize moments I missed because I was too busy trying to earn Jackie’s approval instead of living for God. 

This new place that I am in God has made it very apparent to me that I am just to rest.  No ministry, no serving, just leaning into Christ and letting Him do the work.  Honestly, I have NO IDEA how to live this life.  So what do I do, I beat myself up for not reading enough, not praying enough and not spending enough time with other people.  So there is always a way for me to feel guilty.  Almost like I enjoy the guilt, it is my security blanket that God is trying to replace with himself, but I won’t let him.  I cling to the last shreds just as I clung to my first blankie when I was little (I still have it in fact-here’s a picture of it).

 

I have been asking God to show me what this life looks like, and in His loving way He did.  Yesterday my boss took all of us fishing on the Columbia River.  He arranged everything, a gorgeous day, low wind conditions and even borrowed clothes so I didn’t freeze.  I spent the day looking down river and Mt. Hood and waiting for a bite.  The bite that never came!  We were on the river for 6 hours and only one fish even took a nibble at five poles (I found it quite funny, even though my co-workers didn’t).  But God used this time to teach me what it means to fish for men.

In Mark 1:17 Christ calls the first disciples by saying “come, follow Me, and I will make you fisher’s of men.”  He doesn’t say, I’ll teach you how to fish and then it is all up to you how much you catch.  He says follow me!  As the fisher in the boat, we really have no control over whether a fish takes the hook or not.  we can try fancy bait, flashy lines and even different methods of fishing-which I heard all about yesterday :)!  But in the end, all you can do is prepare you line, drop it in the water and wait.  In the meantime you have two choices:  you can fret and worry about if everything is right or two you can sit back relax and enjoy the day.  the interesting thing about the second option, is in that relaxing there is still action.  You must be prepared to catch the fish.  You have to bait the hook, put the line in the water and be ready to reel it in if a fish takes the bait.

The same holds true I believe for our life with God.  We have two choices.  We can believe that if we find just the right mix we will build the kingdom of God and lead countless souls to Christ.  Or we can sit back in the arms of the savior, rest, relax, and be ready to answer when He calls us to pick up the line.    There is a lot of trust in that second option, which leads me to question how I view God.  Is He truly the God of the universe, who has created mountains to rise from the earth, and commanded the ocean to come here and no further.  Or is He the God that I continually box in by my need for control, or by my shame and guilt that I am not doing enough?

I need Him to be the God of the universe.  Truly I need Him to be big enough to solve my problems and to save those He has called.   Because I can’t!  I am to burdened by my blankie’s that I am still holding onto!