reminders

That old cliche ' What a difference a day makes ' - is so true. I woke up this morning still feeling yesterday's cloud. But the Lord had different plans for this day - new mercies, and new undeserved gifts.

There are times I still get caught up in old habits - yesterday - and really most of last week were like that. Getting lost within myself, feeling self-pity, feeling like God is far away and has no intention of keeping His promises. Which lead to me looking inward for answers - but of course my flesh has nothing good to offer - so I start handing people all my crap instead. I get angry, selfish, grouchy, and I look for a place to hide - not only from God, but from myself. I also keep myself locked away from my family so they don't have to bear the brunt of this mess (though they did anyway - just less of me.)

I get so focused on myself and my ugliness I forget to worship. It's that reverse pride - not the pride that says look at me I am so great - I have all the answers, but the pride that says look at me - I am so awful - I am such a ridiculous mess - please gawk. Pride in either form is destructive. It takes my eyes off of Christ and puts them on me.

So today the Lord brought perspective. Psalms that spoke to my heart, a prayer from the Valley of Vision - that felt like it came from my heart, and a reminder that God has amazing plans for me and my family.

And really I need to be on the lookout for the reminders that God gives everyday - I know they are there - but some days they are more obvious than others. One came the other day... as I was praying in the morning asking God to send His Spirit - to take over my mess ... He gave me a rainbow. I looked up out my window and there was a rainbow - reminding me that He does keep His promises - and that He will give the Spirit to those who ask! Luke 11.


May this be the prayer of my heart today and everyday!

Morning from the Valley of Vision:

Let me this day know Thee as Thou art,
love Thee supremely, serve Thee wholly, admire Thee fully.
Through grace let my will respond to Thee,
 knowing that power to obey is not in me, but that Thy free love alone enables me to serve Thee.
Here then is my empty heart, overflow it with Thy choicest gifts...

evil hands

I feel like shit today. I have been running from God most of the day.

Flesh has a way of reaching out any way it can. Fasting ... it has been really hard this last week - like really hard. I want to eat, I am hungry, temptation has been awful. I have continued in my obedience with food, but the rest of my flesh wants to get out. It's like evil hands reaching out from within me trying to grab at anything - trying to gain control, trying to be heard, trying to do what it wants.

I have been awful to my family. I have resented my kids and my husband. I am angry or irritated constantly about everything and nothing. I have to correct my kids constantly and I resent it. I hate cleaning up after them. I hate getting them going in the morning. I don't want to clean, or do any chores, or cook. I have just been miserable.

How can I yield everything all at once? I want to. I don't want this. I hate this.

As I was praying this morning, I felt the Lord saying - 'you haven't been serving ... you have been serving yourself.' All the cleaning has been for me - because I want it clean - so I can relax - it's not for my family. And then I resent them when they mess up my clean. I haven't been pointing my kids to Jesus - I have been pushing them around (not literally) - trying to get what I need them to do - so we can be done - and I can go be alone.

Alone, sometimes feels like the only safe place ... then I can hide and I don't have to keep being so shitty to everyone.

I don't want this, Jesus - please kill my flesh, please put this shit to death in me.

I want to worship you, I want to serve my family, I want to bring You glory. Please save me from my flesh. I want my whole self to serve You.

obedience

I've had a thought running in my head the last couple of days. Here it is... 'obedience is not legalism'. I heard my pastor say it in a sermon sometime in the last year or so. And when he said it - it struck me, and in the last few days God has brought it to my remembrance. Here is the difference between the two - legalism is when we add rules on top of/or instead of what God has laid out for us to do. It is work, it's striving to make our sanctification happen without God. And obedience is listening to God's desires for us, and actually doing it with His power and leading.

In the last year I have been trying really hard to get my flesh to do something it just did not want to do. I was trying to get my flesh to follow the rules - my rules - to want to eat healthy, to want to eat less, to enjoy being hungry all the time. I wanted my flesh to obey me. None of these desires are bad necessarily, but I was not letting God lead, I was trying to make it all happen without His power - and use mine instead.

The really big problem with my plan is that flesh does not want to obey ... and it can't obey... it's flesh... and there is nothing that can be done to get it to obey. Flesh wants what it wants. Flesh is deceptive and corrupt. Flesh is full of sin. But I kept asking my flesh to obey me anyway, and it just kept on saying 'no'.

So it was just me and my flesh duking it out, and flesh was winning. It had not occurred to me that God might want to be in on this, and that in fact He was the only way out. But I really wanted my flesh to obey me, so that in the end of it all - I would get the glory. If God took over, He would. But it just wasn't working my way.

I entered into this Lenten fast pretty lightly, meaning I didn't spend a whole lot of time debating it, or deciding. I just knew that I could not continue going down this same sin-filled path. And I hated where I was, I hated what I was doing, I hated that my flesh was winning, and I hated that I was filled with pride and wanted God's glory for myself. At the beginning of this new year I asked God to kill my addiction. I was at the point where I just couldn't live with my sin any longer. And in my spirit, I desperately want my life to glorify God, so I asked Him to lead me. So what to give up for Lent seemed obvious - food.

However, this time fasting needed to be different, it needed to be a matter of obedience. But what would my obedience to God look like? I had already tried to make my flesh obey my rules and failed. This time I had to try it God's way. I needed to learn what walking in obedience to Him actually looks and feels like as I eat. So, I am learning that it really has less to do with what I am doing and not doing with food, and is much more about which direction my heart is facing. I am learning to listen to His voice, to let His power flow in me, and then act out what God is saying. And when temptation rises, as it always does, I am learning to look for the way out that God has promised to provide and actually take it.

Food can no longer be the thing I run to for happiness. And for so long it has been ... as soon as I would slip a tasty something on my tongue I would get a rush of pleasure even if it was only for those moments that I was eating. The problem was I could always go back again and again, and food is always there - because I have to eat. Food, also, can not be the thing I center my whole life around. I was always dreaming of the next meal, or the next party or holiday full of treats, or the next time I got to go out for dinner - and it was all for that next great taste that I thought was going to make me feel so good. It is a true high, a real addiction.

I have to tell you this has not been easy - it is hard to turn away from a lifetime of thinking about food this way. It has been a daily struggle to not eat what the Lord has asked me to abstain from. But He keeps reminding me that salvation has to come from Him. Not just that one moment in time conversion, but the moment to moment salvation that is sanctification. He wants my happiness and joy and salvation to come from Jesus every moment of the day. He wants me to be obedient, not so He can thumb me down, but because He knows I will be happier when I am free of this and free to serve Him. So He keeps reminding me to turn my heart, face, mind, ears, and mouth back to Him.

At the end of it all, I want my flesh to die, I want this addiction put to death, I want food to be just food and not the idol I worship. And I can honestly say now, I want all of this, not so I feel good about me, but so that God will be worshiped and glorified in my life. He is the healer, He is the One who brings obedience, and He is the One who can break the power of sin in me. That is worth worshipping - He is worth giving glory to, because He is the only One willing and able - filled with power beyond all comprehension - to do this work in me.

Galatians 3: 3,4
How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort?  Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it?

fill me

Oh God - How I long to be filled with praise. Fill me with words - fill me with love to give You.

I long to throw my hands up, and my head back and sing out at the top of my lungs to You,
to dance and jump and get wild and totally free before You

To revel and glory in Your love and grace, to feel you all around to be drenched in You

I want my whole heart, every bit of my soul, every part of my mind, and every ounce of my strength to bring You glory

If only I could play all the instruments, and speak a million languages
I would use them all to bring You praise
Oh how I wish I could gather a million people to all shout praise to You

It would never be enough, never  You deserve so much more

Let Your beauty fill me
Let Your love overflow in me
Let Your light shine out of me
Let Your breath be what I breathe
Let Your words be what is on my lips
Let Your thoughts be my thoughts
Let Your heart flow into me

So that no matter what I do, or say, or think,
I can bring you glory
My great and mighty God
Oh how I long to give You praise!

feast

I woke up anxious again today.

People keep asking how I am - and for some reason when I say 'fine' it feels like I am being dishonest. So instead I say that I am feeling anxious. Then inevitably they ask 'why' and then I say 'I am pretty sure it's oppression.' It may follow with me saying something like, 'I have examined myself and asked the Lord - if it's me or any sin in me - and I come up with nothing, so...'

As I have prayed about it, I usually feel like God keeps saying for me to be patient. That I am supposed to learn to stand up under it. That He is here - whether He feels like it or not.

As I was singing in church today a line from a song we sing based on Psalm 23 stuck out to me ... 'You are my feast in the presence of enemies'. That line says a lot about where I am right now. Stuck in the presence of enemies - this oppression - yet I can still feast on the Lord. Especially in this season of Lent - where the Lord has asked me to give up so much food, to fast, and be present with Him - He is the feast.

I have found at the end of the days that I have fasted that I am still looking for food to be my salvation - instead of the Lord. Yet He is the One who has sustained me all the while.


Oh Lord - be my salvation, be the feast that I run to at the beginning and end of everyday.  Come, Spirit, and wash me clean - bring repentance - so that I may be free to worship You even as I eat.

tied together

My question from my last post is ringing in my ears? - God how do I stop trying to 'help' you? What in me still needs to be confessed... you know what? - it doesn't even matter...

I can ask God to lead me to repentance - only He can anyway. I can ask God to reveal my sin - and He will. Only God can fill me with the Spirit - and He has promised He will. Because we/I absolutely can not walk this life without His Spirit. It is impossible for man - but possible for Him.

Andrew Murray's book, 'Absolute Surrender' - has put all in one place - tied together all the loose ends - the journey that the Lord has brought me on for the last 2 years. I am grateful for his obedience so many years ago.

Galatians 3:3
How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect in the flesh?

If I leave any room for the flesh - it will take over and I will fail. It has to be entirely the Lord working through me in the Spirit to be worth anything. He does not fail. And if I fail in the future - which I know I will! - I will know it is because I have given room for the flesh - and I need to humble myself before the Lord again - and let go of whatever I am trying to hold onto.

Any failure - any sin - is because we have chosen the flesh over the Spirit - there - simple. Yet so not - because we/I don't always know we are walking in the flesh. And we don't know what it is truly like to walk in the Spirit - regularly.

My 6 months - my amazing summer - was the only time I have ever walked in the Spirit continually. 6 months out of my whole life as a believer of 20 years. That is not to say God hasn't used me at times - despite myself - but really - wow!

I don't want to get hung up on regret though - I could get lost in there for days ... this is where I am - this is where God is taking me now ... I just need to let go and let Him do it.

So I will wait - wait for God to bring repentance and the Spirit. He will. In the mean time - I will worship!

helpless?

So Lord - How do I become helpless - How do I stop trying to 'help'?

More from Andrew Murray:

Now comes the second lesson. “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”


I said a little while ago that there is many a man who has learned the lesson, It is impossible with men, and then he gives up in helpless despair, and lives a wretched Christian life, without joy, or strength, or victory. And why? Because he does not humble himself to learn that other lesson: With God all things are possible.


Your religious life is every day to be a proof that God works impossibilities; your religious life is to be a series of impossibilities made possible and actual by God’s almighty power. That is what the Christian needs. He has an almighty God that he worships, and he must learn to understand that he does not need a little of God’s power, but he needs — with reverence be it said — the whole of God’s omnipotence to keep him right, and to live like a Christian.


Let us look at this question. What has God given us our will for? Had the angels who fell, in their own will, the strength to stand? Verily, no. The will of the creature is nothing but an empty vessel in which the power of God is to be made manifest. The creature must seek in God all that it is to be. You have it in the second chapter of the epistle to the Philippians, and you have it here also, that God’s work is to work in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Here is a man who appears to say: “God has not worked to do in me.” But we are taught that God works both to will and to do. How is the apparent contradiction to be reconciled? ...


God allows that failure that the regenerate man should be taught his own utter impotence. It is in the course of this struggle that there comes to us this sense of our utter sinfulness. It is God’s way of dealing with us. He allows that man to strive to fulfill the law that, as he strives and wrestles, he may be brought to this: “I am a regenerate child of God, but I am utterly helpless to obey His law.” See what strong words are used all through the chapter to describe this condition: “I am carnal, sold under sin”; “I see another law in my members bringing me into captivity”; and last of all, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” This believer who bows here in deep contrition is utterly unable to obey the law of God.



God works to will, and He is ready to work to do, but, alas! many Christians misunderstand this. They think because they have the will, it is enough, and that now they are able to do. This is not so. The new will is a permanent gift, an attribute of the new nature. The power to do is not a permanent gift, but must be each moment received from the Holy Spirit. It is the man who is conscious of his own impotence as a believer who will learn that by the Holy Spirit he can live a holy life. This man is on the brink of that great deliverance; the way has been prepared for the glorious eighth chapter. I now ask this solemn question: Where are you living? Is it with you, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” with now and then a little experience of the power of the Holy Spirit? or is it, “I thank God through Jesus Christ! The law of the Spirit hath set me free from the law of sin and of death”?

I know the answer - but I have not felt the bottom of myself yet. I am still hanging onto - something.