I don’t know about you, but sometimes I genuinely feel like I’m failing, like I’d be better off if I just bowed out. The tears flow for me some days. I question if the Lord has changed His mind about His promises or if I heard Him amiss. But as I watched one season of "The Great British Baking Show" for the second time, the Lord spoke something profound to my heart.
As a recent situation in my life drove me to my knees – in pain and in prayer – I poured myself into prayer beyond the norm. I decreed and declared and renounced and repented. All of those things were good. However, I began to realize that a tweak, a reprogramming, of my brain desperately needed to happen when it came to how I did spiritual warfare.
Here I am, once again, mulling over a current pain until I’ve injured my heart. I may lay it at the Lord’s feet momentarily, but within the blink of an eye, there it is, its full weight in my hands as I preen the beast with a fine-toothed comb. What makes it continually come back to mind and heart? I’ve found two major barriers that keep my mind wandering back to handling the beast of pain.
Birth is so natural to us, clearly our expectation. But death? Death is different. Death is unnatural. We stand in the face of death with mouths agape, wondering what and why and how. No matter how expected, no matter how sweet the home-going, death’s finality and foreignness shakes us. Why? We can tell our intellect that death is as natural as birth, but why does it still grieve and bewilder?
Trying to hear our Heavenly Father often comes with real effort and practice to press in to feel that whisper stirring in our hearts. At other times, life seems to be collapsing at our feet or an immediate decision is required, but it seems we’ve suddenly lost our connection to the still small voice that guides us so gently. Why?
A couple years ago the Hubs bought me a telescope. Calibrating the “finderscope” that came with it, we had to make sure that what was a close distance away was perfectly in focus. Only then could we look into the depths of space. Very interesting and profound. Read the blog to hear how the Lord showed me the knowable things in life that made the unknown things clearer.
As is true for all of us, there was a war being waged over my childhood heart and mind: Whose words would I allow to shape and mold me in my formative years and even in my adulthood? I believed the words of others. I accepted the labels others plastered onto my identity. In the process, I betrayed myself, my true self.
Last year was an intense year of wandering in and out of brain fog for me. It’s better this year, as the Lord begins to heal and restore all that last year stole. But the lost feeling reminds me of another time I predictably feel a fog roll in: on the battlefield. I’m not speaking of a tangible battlefield, but the battlefield of my heart and mind when the enemy hurls his flaming arrows and the fog of war has me reeling.
All of us go through them; none of us enjoy them. Trials. We’re told to count them a joy (James 1:2). But we are also told that God, though He does not send them, will use them. He will turn them for our good (Romans 8:28). During my most recent trial, as I prayed and journaled with the Lord one morning, I made a list. I called it my, “Things I want to gain out of this trial” list.
Someone leveled some pretty gut-wrenching accusations at me. I had humbled myself and apologized for any conceivable culpability, but when I shared them later with the Hubs, he had told me the accusations were unfounded. How are we supposed to humble ourselves, but not let a false accusation dominate our own opinion of ourselves?
God calls us to be holy and perfect. How in the world are we supposed to do that?? If we know God doesn’t ask us to do the impossible, what exactly is He asking of us and how do we participate?
Jacob wrestled with God and God declared that Jacob prevailed. But wait! How did Jacob prevail? Isn’t he the one who walked away with a permanent limp? Wasn’t the wrestling match called on account of daylight? What made Jacob one who prevailed?
Embarrassingly, there have been times in my past when I thought that I was the chosen instrument of change in someone’s life. Read the blog to see how the Lord revealed His heart and showed me just how different His ways are from mine.
Honestly, I can think of no better gift to give you than the gift of freeing yourself and those around you from the baggage of disappointment, regret and relational pain. I’m tackling the biggest gap to get over: the gap between what I wanted for or from myself and what my reality is.
Suppressing our legitimate needs causes inner turmoil because we are telling ourselves a lie: that our needs aren't there. So what do we do with all these unmet needs?
There is a GAP. A distance between reality and what we have hoped for. And until we learn to forgive the gap, we cannot embrace the reality we have been given. Will you forgive the gap or live in a perpetual state of grief, disappointment and hurt?
On this week’s blog, I’d like to invite you to read a guest blog I wrote on the Modern Day Marys site!
When heartbreak and pain comes, we often can get by for a time by using an arsenal of coping methods to silence our pain. But what if God wants something more for us? What if He doesn’t want us to go on “coping”? What if healing is what we are missing out on by coping?
Life often threatens to pounce. I am often, way too gullible and unaware that “the game is afoot” and, in my ignorance, get tagged into running and chasing and left huffing and puffing. Learn what tools the Lord offers to keep us from the wearying, out-of-breath life!
