Submitting to the Divine

I have been talking so much about what the Lord has been working in my life lately regarding the sanctification (purifying) of my soul (takin' out the trash lol). But I really wanted to talk about the first and most important step in walking with the Spirit, and it isn't fasting, or praying or reading the Bible or any of that, and I am going to use my husband's amazing weeklong journey to do that.

My man is a packrat, God love him. I have to secretly give stuff away to Goodwill or we would have a house that looks like "The Messiest House In America." But because of how he grew up, he learned to stomp down his fears, and frustrations and even "non-acceptable" emotions. To compensate, he learned to live a quite hedonistic lifestyle, substituting pleasure for happiness. Now, he gave up the heinous forms of that years ago, but the underlying causes were still there and still are today. Through his strong-will he gave up the worst, but he could do nothing about the pain that drove him to it. Until now.

A week ago he started on a four day fast, which is unusual for him, but his heart was mostly in the right place. After two dreams, he realised that the Lord was calling him to confront his inner man through the workings of the Spirit -- he just didn't know why. He thought it would provide that long-awaited job. But the Lord always has something better in mind.

So the fast came and went and he got very sullen, because he saw no immediate results. I was shocked.

"How long has it been since you have yelled at the kids?"

He was taken aback.

"It has been days and not a peep out of you and the whole house has been peaceful. That is huge, you are looking for results that satisfy your cravings and are completely overlooking the miraculous things that are happening," and I recounted a few other big changes.

Well, he was shocked. He had been approaching fasting and prayer as a quick fix to get what he wanted, instead of looking at it from God's point of view. You see, he had never really understood the important Kingdom principle.

"Seek first the Kingdom of God and then all these things shall be added unto you (our worldly needs)."

So this morning he comes to me and tells me that God has shown him something very important about himself, and I helped show him how to submit to the process.

You see, when God shows us something He want to remove we can either (1) ignore it, make excuses for it, etc... (2) say, "MINE, MINE" or (3) admit we want to keep it but that are willing to give it up and that we really need Him to do it for us. The first two quench the Holy Spirit and will often stop us dead in our tracks, ESPECIALLY when we justify our own flesh and hide from the ugliness of it. And that is silly because, I mean, if that one thing is what is blocking the road and we refuse to let the Spirit remove it, then we are stuck idling -- and are we gonna shut down God and say, "I only do this because of X, so it isn't so bad." But if we let Him remove it, we can keep on going, simple as that.

But it is all about submission, submitting to the divine, to our God. It is about trusting Him enough (even though it may be a giant leap to do so) to realise that He never takes anything we need, He only takes that which harms us and others. Once we learn to do that, and if we are determined to stay the course, we will receive the goal of our faith, namely the salvation of our souls.
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Sweet Sleep

Nothing much to share today, I have been praying over 1 Peter chap 1 but as He has not opened it up for me yet I am not going to take guesses at what He wants to show me.

Sometimes we have rough days, especially when asked to do something we know will turn out badly (at least in the short run). And we may screw it up a little, a lot, or not at all, and His grace and love still covers us as He searches out our hearts. The whole day yesterday was unpleasant, and I was left at the end in my closet praying and begging Him to show me my sins, my soulish strongholds, and most of all, my secret motivations and an amazing thing happened. He showed me a few technicalities (it felt like I was being shown spelling mistakes) and then flooded me with His peace, which remained for the night and into today.

And even now He is teaching me more about the peace-stealers -- last week it was resentment, this week He dealt with worry and now He is beginning to instruct me in the soulish need for control.

Some control is subtle, mine mainly centers around wanting to control how people perceive me, that they understand my heart, where I am coming from, and how they will react to what I am saying. But that type of control is just an illusion. No matter how much I love someone, I cannot make them see it simply by wanting it. No matter how gently I try to say something, I cannot control someone wanting to take offense. I cannot plead, cry, or convince anyone of anything that they do not want to believe. All of those years living with my father should have taught me that much!

And so I am left with only one weapon, and that is loving prayer.

But in my soul, I truly wish there was something I could do in my own strength, I really do....
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Worry

The Lord has been delving deep lately and is having to do some serious excavation work on my worrying. I have worried about everything since I was a child, insecurities about having enough to eat, about what people are thinking about me, about what I was going to do if this or that fictional situation happened. Urgh, talk about a life-killer.

Nowadays it only rarely rises to epidemic levels, but for SOME REASON (the Holy Spirit showing me what a stronghold it still was)all of a sudden my mind went completely bonkers as I laid down my head to rest and for like 20 hours (well, okay it just seemed like it) I was just inundated with fictional situations. Each time I would say, "Good grief, Lord, I have heard of silly vain imaginations but this is absolutely ridiculous!" I would take my thoughts captive and then a few minutes later they were back, it was INSANE. Finally, I said, "Lord, what stronghold is this that is rising up more powerful than my ability to think sanely?"

I heard something like, "Lilies, sparrows," and immediately Matthew Chapter 6 came to mind. Of course, it is WORRY! Dude! Okay, now that we know what it is it can get dealt with. So I apologised to God for still having all that worry inside me, told Him that if I could get rid of it I would but that only He could do that so I needed Him to do it for me, and that He had my totaly cooperation no matter how much it hurt.

Well, WHOOSH! I have only had a few situations in my life where a release was so physically powerful that it felt like it exploded from my gut outward, but this did. That is a big stronghold, darn it.

And you know, this is not to say I will never worry again, I am so darned human! (And even if I didn't, I have so many other faults that they will more than make up for the loss) It just seems that the demonic stronghold, the unshakable foothold that was beyond my ability to control (outside of fleshly mind over matter) is gone.

Now, in the past, many years ago I would have gotten up and gone to the computer and typed in "worry, christian" into a search engine and so just for kicks before writing this I did.

DUDE there is some wickedly unmerciful judgmental stuff out there about how you cannot serve Jesus and worry, how Jesus says that worry is a great sin, and how worry amounts to a total distrust of God. You would think these folks overcame worry simply by being superior to all of us idiots who don't trust God and are a living insult to Him /rolleyes

Whenever I read that passage in Matthew, I can't help but see the Teacher at His finest, gently consoling a bunch of people whose lives were so uncertain, whose bellies often went unfilled, who languished from diseases and under the constant cold glare of religion, and who often had to walk down streets lined with crucified men. I hear His voice as the calming reassurance that yes, there is a God who desires, more than anything, to be their loving Father, and where they can return to that peace that rightfully belongs to a child resting safe in their daddy's lap.

There was no finger wagging, but there was compassion. Those who sat and learned from Him came to find rest under His wings, and were later willing to die, not for a cause, or out of religious arrogance, or the belief in oodles of heavenly cash and prizes, but because they had found a place where they could die knowing that they did not need to worry when they did, because they had already found a place of peace and love.
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Halfway Forgiveness

I have been taught, over the years, three levels of forgiveness and each (well, except for the first) was pretty useful to me at the time.

The first, which I was taught in a Southern Baptist Church was what I call "cheap forgiveness" and the reason I call it that is because, truly, it was a pretty pathetic standard. Namely, someone hurts you and you are to be holier than they are and just let it go.... well, that is just pride mixed in with denial!

The second, which I learned about four years ago is what I call "halfway forgiveness." It was better, it taught a lifestyle of forgiving from the heart, because forgiveness, "takes your hand off someone else's throat and allows God to deal with them." DUDE! The lifestyle of forgiveness from the heart is great but the latter is too subject to the flesh -- "ok I forgive you and now you have to deal with MY DAD!" You kinda get these visions of you removing your hands and letting God put His hands there instead.

Then we come to "godly forgiveness." This one separates the wheat from the chaff, this one is tough. It requires love, and permits no fantasies about what ill will befall the perpetrator. Quite simply, it is the follow Jesus' last teaching.

"Father, forgive them...."

Wow, now that is forgiveness, and it requires mercy, compassion and humility. In short, you have to:

(1) not desire that anyone suffer judgement;
(2) understand that they really are not very different from what you are/were, or could have been; and
(3) decide that no one, NO ONE deserves to face the agony of judgement over what they have done to you.

This is a hard one, and I am the first to admit that no one has ever done anything to me that ever arose to the level of brutally raping me, murdering a loved one, or anything like that. I cannot and will not judge anyone according to my understanding, or demand that they conform to this. But I do know that, in the end, if we are to truly live as free of those people who have brutalised us, we must come to a place where we can, or they will always be sinning against us every moment in our minds. Forgiveness is the only freedom there is on earth.

Every night now, and it is easier now than at first, I pray:

God, with my whole heart I freely forgive all who have harmed me, and I ask that You also forgive them because no one deserves eternal judgement on account of me.

And I know it is difficult, especially when you have people in your life who are difficult and will offer you every justification in the book for it but never an apology, who take, take, take and only slap you in return. I am not always capable of this kind of forgiveness, and sometimes I have to wrestle my soul like jacob wrestled God, in order to get it to just submit to God. But the relief is always worth it.

Just felt like sharing that today.
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Please pray for Aria

One of the children I tutor in reading at school, Aria (2nd grade), just lost her daddy today to very early onset alzheimers. She also has a sister named Leah and her mom's name is Laura, and if you could remember them in prayer I would be grateful
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A Painful Vision

I was deep in prayer with the Spirit tonight, asking with my mind as my lips prayed,

"How does the sanctification process work? How do You rid us of all the wretched character flaws and why does it hurt more the deeper you delve?"

He showed me a deep clay pot, with a cactus stuck down inside that totally filled up the radius of the pot with nasty thorns. In fact, the thorns had grown even into the sides of the pot. There was no way to remove the cactus with a spade without doing irreparable harm to the vessel and so began the painstakingly loving process. I watched as the ones on top were easily pulled one after the other, often without the knowledge of the "earthen vessel." (hint, hint) But then there were no more left on top, at all, so the Spirit was forced to pluck the ones that were stuck inside the edges of the vessel and the vessel cried out in pain. Sometimes the vessel said, "NO WAY!" And sometimes the vessel put up with the agony. Once those thorns were removed there was a great relief. But it had gotten to the point that, without cooperation, the Spirit was completely unable to remove any more thorns. No one looking at the now baldheaded cactus could see those nasty things, but believe me, they were there, gouging into the vessel, doing unseen damage while every oohed and aahed over the remarkable physical change in the cactus. But it was still a cactus! And thornless cactuses look like bald men from Mars, with pimples.

The earthen vessel, of course, is our physical body, the part of us that suffers for the deficiencies of the soul, our inner self, represented by the cactus thorns. But nothing can be done to completely subjugate the soul, bringing it into alignment with our spirit, without removing those nasty prickly meanies. At first it is an easy thing to do and the Holy Spirit barely even needs much cooperation because when we are new Christians we are very pliable. I had stopped cursing like a sailor immediately after surrendering to Christ, and it was so painless that I didn't even figure it out for a few weeks! My TV viewing and interests changed without my even trying to curtail them. Easy peasy, since I entered into the Kingdom with the faith of a child.

But then came the thorns in my side (hint, hint) -- gossip, strife, unforgiveness, bitterness, resentment, the desire for revenge and vindication. Those hurt coming out, it hurt badly, but each time I was given a choice to go on living with it or purge it, so I surrendered that soul to the workings of the Spirit and gritted my teeth. It still hurt, but usually not as badly as I thought it would, although sometimes more than I thought I could bear. And definitely not as badly as it would have to live with knowledge of it. Now I have thorns all over my soulish backside to get rid of. I can feel them, but they are so deep down that I often cannot identify them, I can only manifest the painful symptoms of them being there. Problem is, when I want them gone, I have a feeling that the next step (the one I was not shown because I am not there yet), is to uproot that soul altogether now that the loving spade of the vinedresser can safely slide down the sides of the vessel. And He is going to have to dig deep down, past the roots, to claim my soul away from the very root of my turmoil and my sin -- which is my soulishly selfish self-interest. But I know that once He does, He will be able to deposit my tamed soul, clean and whole, back into the rich soil of my own spirit.

And hpefully it will have been transformed into a Tree of Life, because dang, I am sick of the stinking cactus ;)
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Guilty or Caring?

Guilt is a wretched little emotion, mostly because it is so very easy to mollify or shove down. Guilt is a tool of the evil one, it is a manipulative little bit of witchcraft -- leading us a bit of ways down the right path, but just long enough to take us right back off of it before we do what truly needs done. And whether we respond because of guilt or caring reveals a lot about the condition of our heart.

Caring, on the other hand, is a rather permanent thing. Whereas guilt can be quickly dealt with through shallow gestures or private repentance, caring goes the extra mile and actually does something meaningful and then goes on caring. But perhaps that is a bit too esoteric so I will give a few examples.

Those commercials that show starving kids really know how to manipulate those heartstrings -- they aren't designed to make you truly care (only the workings of the Spirit can do that), they are designed to induce guilt. That guilt, once it gets painful enough, will drive us to the phone -- not to save a chaild, but to get rid of the pain! We call, we pledge and then we no longer feel guilty about the other kazillion starving children. All is right with the world and we send in our monthly pledges because if we don't we will start feeling guilty again.

Caring is an entirely different thing, a caring person does something out of love, not guilt. They see the pain and they are moved to rectify it, but their heart does not stop caring. They pray, they do as much as they can and they pray to do even more. And I am not saying that they live wretched, miserable lives thinking about nothing but these poverty stricken children, but they are invested, they care, they love. And love hopes.

Another example -- we do something completely wretched to someone else publicly or privately and then we feel guilty about it. The barely regenerate heart takes it privately before God and feels better about repenting (phew, glad that is over). All the while the injured party is in pain, but that isn't the guilt-driven person's problem, they are right with God and will come up with some twisted scripture proving that they only sinned against Him. And often, when they do apologise, it will be preceeded by "I am sorry, BUT.." and proceeded by, "If you just hadn't been an idiot, I would have never... so it really is your fault too."

But the caring person, they will not only be moved by the Spirit to repentance, but to give vindication. "I was wrong in how I treated you." No disclaimers, no excuses, no if's ands or buts, because God has touched their heart with the reality of this person's humanity. And once a person becomes human to you, it becomes hard not to care about them. And if the person was wronged publicly, the caring person desires to vindicate publicly (although this is wretchedly hard to do!).

In the end, we will answer not for the humility it takes to care, but for the guilt that made us care only for ourselves.
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