When We Don't Understand

Psalm 23:2-3 He leadeth me beside the still waters.  He restoreth my soul.

Sometimes the Lord has to bring us to the place of a broken heart before we will give Him our attention.  It is hard to understand why things happen especially when they seem extremely tragic or unnecessary in our opinion.  These are the times when we are grieving over the loss of a loved one or over something that seems so devastating that our hearts feel as if they may not beat another second.

If you know Jesus Christ as Savior, you can know how to survive.  He is there to give you comfort, to heal your broken heart.  Only He can do that.  We do not know God's purpose.  He is God not man.

"God's purpose is never man's purpose. Those things the Lord calls us to endure are part of His plan...The test is to believe that God knows what He is after.  The things that happen do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decrees of God.  God is working out His purposes" Oswald Chambers

Attempting to force God to act the way we think He should only leads to disappointment and frustration on our part.  He will never stay within the box we have designed.  Our lives will not be according to our plan. If that was so, how would we learn the majestic power of God Almighty.  He who has power to create the universe and all that is within it.  He who provided the wonderful plan of salvation that only He could provide.  We live in the moment.  God sees eternity past, present and future all at the same time.  We are bound by time and place.  Our perspective is limited.  Why then do we think we know best?

Is your heart broken?  Stop and listen.  God may be trying to tell you something. He is God...we are not.

Charles Stanley says, "Scripture tells us of the Lord's love, faithfulness and wisdom.  Whenever we cannot understand His ways, faith in His goodness must be our foundation."

Learning to Wait

Learning to wait is the hardest thing to do.  The word “wait” means to: stay in place in expectation, to delay serving, to remain stationary in readiness or expectation, to look forward expectantly, to be ready and available.

In a recent lesson in Genesis, Sarai (Sarah after God changed her name) gives Hagar to Abram (Abraham) to father a child because it seemed apparent to both Sarai and Abram that what God had promised wasn’t happening.  Knowing the promise and waiting for its fulfillment must have been difficult for a woman like Sarai who every day longed for a child.  Everyday she was surrounded by glaring stares and muffled laughter from other women who were fruitful.  It had been ten years since God had placed them in Canaan and had given Abram the promise to make him a great nation and now it seemed to them that it was too late for producing an heir together.  They both were old and past time for her body to produce children (or so they thought).

In Sarai’s day, the role of a woman was to produce an heir for her husband.  This indicated that God favored her.  If she did not produce children, it was thought to mean the displeasure of God.  So instead of continuing to wait, they decide to take matters into their own hands resulting in the birth of Ishmael.

What problems that produced in the family!  Bitterness, jealousy and quarreling were the results.  Even to this day, descendants of Abraham through Ishmael and Isaac don’t get along.  If only, they had waited.

But what about the results to our own lives when we don’t wait for God’s timing?  Does that produce bitterness, jealousy, quarreling and many other numerous emotions?  Of course, it does.  If only we had waited.

Oswald Chambers sums it up in the following:

“He works where He sends us to wait. “Tarry ye…until…”.  Wait on God and He will work, but don’t wait in spiritual sulks because you cannot see an inch in front of you! Are we detached enough from our own spiritual hysterics to wait on God? To wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told.”

Much like a child sitting in time out, we often sulk because we don’t get our way or perhaps we throw spiritual temper tantrums for the same reason.  God isn’t working fast enough to do what we want.  So we make plans of our own.

It never occurred to Sarai that God’s plan was right on time.  He was out to prove that He could take something dead and make it alive again even the body of an old woman to produce the promised heir.

While we are waiting remember that God is still the only certainty in this life.  He knows the past, present and future and as His plan unfolds, it will happen only one step at a time…not two or three steps.  Sometimes His plan requires no step at all but merely for us to stay in a place in expectation remaining stationary in readiness.

Living by Faith-Moment by Moment

I don't know about you but it is hard for me to live in the moment.  I have a tendency to want to know what the next day will bring.   I guess this comes from many years of schedules of appointments, meetings, and conferences, etc.  When I taught, I lived from bell to bell. When I worked on the job, I lived from meeting to meeting, workshop to workshop, appointment to appointment, project to project.  As a wife and mother, I scheduled doctors appointments, events concerning my children and husband, dinner time, bath time, church and on and on.  My calendar was full of things to do and places to be. 

Now that I am retired, I find it hard to transition into letting go of the schedule and just let things happen. What it really means is I have to let go of control.  I will admit, I don't like that very much and I am sometimes frustrated when things do not go according to my plan.

On a deeper level, it is a matter of faith in allowing the Lord to use me at any moment. When I am preoccupied with what I think I am suppose to be doing, I miss what God intended for me.  In other words, I am working out my own plan for my own purposes instead of following the divine plan. It is a matter of listening and being still.

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest, states:

"God's purpose is never man's purpose...The things that happen, do not happen by chance, they happen entirely in the decree of God.  God is working out His purposes...A Christian is one who trusts the wits and the wisdom of God, and not his own wits.  If we have a purpose of our own, it destroys the simplicity and the leisureliness which ought to characterize the children of God."

Listening to what God tells me and embracing the opportunities He provides is something I desire-living by faith moment by moment.

"Be still and know that I am God"

Crashed!

On a Monday night, my computer crashed.  It crashed at 5:00 pm.  How do I know the exact time?  I teach an online class at 8:00 pm and I was preparing for the class.  Panic set in.  I had to grab my trusty laptop and was very thankful I had already uploaded the files I was using for the lesson that night to the website.  It worked OK but just wasn't quite the same as my desktop.

It had been acting strange, taking a little longer than usual to boot up, download files, etc.  I did a virus check but I stopped it at 70% of my files with no reported viruses.  The virus checker checked 1.7M files with no viruses.  Even a MAC can only be pushed so far.

Yes, I am hard on computers. Ask the tech guys I worked with over the years. Even in the early days of computers, I pushed a computer to the limits.   I make and edit movies as well as doing photography so I need a computer that has a large hard drive and memory.

Life is like my experience with the computer.  We are comfortable with our life and expect nothing will change.  Comfortable with things around us.  Everything works the way it's suppose to and we are happy.  Then when we least expect it...crash! The old things are gone and the new must come.

Why does the Lord allow those kind of things to happen-the changes to take place? Perhaps, so we will grow and expand into areas He has already prepared but knew we would not do them while we depended on the old comfortable ways.  Perhaps it's so we will appreciate what we have and not become so complacent that we expect it to be the way we want it all the time.  Perhaps, it is to grow our faith in order that we will look to Him and not ourselves for the next step.

Change is never comfortable-never.  But He expects us to meet it with expectation of the new things He has prepared and to remember that we are not alone in the next step.  So whether or not it is an expected change or an unexpected one, He has already prepared the way and we can do all things through Him who gives us strength.

Philippians 4:11-13...I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

The Road Ahead

Walking through life is not always a smooth road.  There will be stones in the path to cause you to stumble, bridges washed out causing us to change direction, strong winds to blow us off the path and of course there are those dreaded deep pits that seem to trap you and keep you from traveling forward. 
We may lose our way for a time but we can trust God to guide us in the right direction. We are assured that God is faithful to guide and protect us regardless of where we are on the journey no matter how far away from Him we are.  Remembering that we are the ones who moved and it is comforting to know that He has always been there waiting for us to notice.

When we became a Christian, He did not promise the road would be smooth without pits or stumbling stones.  He did not promise there would be no hurts, no trials, no torrential rains to wash away our life's plans.  He did promise He would be there to hold us up and give us strength. He promised in Roman 8:28
 "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose." 

Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest stated "God's training is for now, not presently.  His purpose is for this minute, not something in the future...It is the process, not the end, which is glorifying to God...God's end is to enable me to see that He can walk on the chaos of my life just now"

We live moment by moment. Trust Him now and each moment.  It's the process of trusting that will take us closer to a maturing faith in Christ Jesus. Give Him the opportunity to walk on the chaos of your life this minute.

Casting Shadows

In the cool crisp early morning light, I saw the sun casting shadows upon the ground of the Bradford pear trees on our road.  I had noticed their beauty before but on this particular morning I stopped to observe each shadow as it fell. The shadow drew a glimpse of each tree as a dark form reflecting the source of light behind it.  Each shadow was slightly different.  While the shadow was not a full image of the tree, you knew what the image was suppose to be.  It was a tree.  Depending upon the direction of the sun, the shadow would be full or slender, long or short.

We are a reflection to others based on the different values and character traits that make us who we are.  We reflect goodness, kindness, love and compassion based on the source of light behind us.  If the light we are reflecting is based only on self, we reflect self.  If, however, we are reflecting the fruits of the Spirit because we have the Spirit of God dwelling within us then Jesus Christ is who we reflect.

So the question is this.  What do you reflect? Are you a reflection of self or do you reflect the Son shine?

Matthew 5:16
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

Surviving Turbulant Times

 Sometimes life feels so out of control that you don't know when or how you will ever survive.  Often there are warnings about what is to be expected as in the diagnosis of a disease like Alzheimers.  You know what the end of the disease will be but you hope against hope that will not happen to the one you love.

As a Christian, I know that God knows the plans He has for each life.  And when He brings pain or hardship, I know that He is still in control.  He still loves me no matter what and He has purpose for everything He has placed in my life.
   
This summer I lost my Mother to Alzheimers after a long eight year struggle.  Had my Mother been in her right mind she would have been horrified about the way this diseased caused her to act.  In fact, she had told me numerous times before the disease not to "let" her act like that when observing some one that was acting inappropriately.  My Mother was a Southern lady and acted like a lady.  Until--the disease.  She then exhibited behavior unbecoming a lady being violent when someone tried to help her dress or assist her with personal hygiene.

One of the most horrible things about the disease is how it affects your memory.  It robs you of your personality and the memories that make you who you are.  Mother never completely lost all her memory.  She had little bits and pieces of it.  She didn't remember who her children were but knew she was suppose to love us.  She would often say the words and I was never sure whether she knew who I was or not.

Now her battle with the disease is over and she is whole again and dancing across heaven with my Dad.  I can reflect on those turbulent years and know that I only survived with my Saviour's help.  His Hand guided me and held me up when I could not do so for myself.  I can tell you that without my faith, my own strength to face this situation might have been different.  My peace only comes from Him.

You never imagine you will be in the midst of turbulent waters.  Life seems to go smoothly and then all of a sudden that quiet gentle stream develops fast moving currents that become violent turbulence all too fast.

During a recent trip to Colorado, I was reminded how rapidly waters change from headwaters where the stream flows quiet and smooth and then changes into a rushing turbulence of swift whitewater.

I observed rafters at the Royal Gorge trying to navigate through the swift violent water.  Sometimes they made it through successfully and sometimes their kayak would turn over thrusting them into the swift current. Struggling to survive a watery grave, the rafter would grab whatever was there in order to pull himself up.

AR River headwaters on valley floor

Yes, the waters of life seem to flow smoothly at times but all to soon these waters flow more swiftly to the point of becoming turbulent.  Life is like that.  But it is during those times when we must know who is our anchor.  That anchor is Jesus.  We can grab onto Him when turbulence wants to pull us down.  He will pull us up.

Because my Mother was a child of God, the Holy Spirit dwelt within her and although her mind was eaten away with the disease, the Spirit of God still dwelt within her.  He never forsook her and He never left her alone.  And now she dwells with Him forever.  Someday, I will be reunited with her and other loved ones that have gone on before me.

Arkansas River at the Royal Gorge

Rafter Struggles to stay afloat

Coming out of turbulent waters