Suffering produces perseverance....

Hello my fabulous community of amazing people! I hope this post finds each of you doing very very well. I'm sorry I've been absent these past few days. God has been doing quite a work on my heart and it is finally today that I am able to be able to comprehend what he is doing well enough to now be able to express to all of you what exactly it is. So, these past few days, I would say that the Lord has been working out those things which have hindered my witness to others and it has actually been something that has been present in my life for golly, years? What this was, was having more dependence on people or the things of this world over that of my God. How and why would I ever allow myself to do such a thing? Happens. Through becoming busy or letting time in the Word slide by the wayside, happens. For quite some time now, God has constantly been teaching me this lesson: Renewal of the mind. Renewal of the mind. Oh, did I mention.....renewal of the mind? But first, before diving into this, I want to talk about how these past weeks have been excruciatingly painful to the core of my very being. And I am not being dramatic. Some extremely tough life lessons have been presented to me and wow. So, let's chat about the header for this post, "Suffering produces perseverance..." This passage can be found in Romans 5:3-5. Here it is in full: " Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." Incredible. Suffering that is done in us and around is....we have hope that this WILL RESOLVE always with God's love which is the absolutely most beautiful thing in this life. It is. Look these passages up if you don't believe me. Romans 5:8; Romans 8:37-39 ; Jn 3:16; 1 John 4:9-12. Just cut and copy these into Google browser and take a looksy...Go on now...then come back to finish this post. Welcome back. God's love. Pretty sweet huh? I'd say so! Now back to suffering. Suffering might look different for everyone...but lately for me...I would say that suffering comes due to my lack of transforming my mind. Negative thought patterns being allowed to take root. Our thought life will determine our actions. And depending on what thought patterns take root...your actions could be pretty poor. In Romans 8, Paul lays out an incredible equation about this. Let me share it with you: a. Mind on the flesh=life according to the flesh which will result in being made captive to the things of this world and therefore we will not be walking in the freedom that God desires each of us to walk in...a freedom characterized by unremarkable peace because we are one with a holy God. Now, b. Mind on the Spirit=life according to the Spirit which will result in being alive and at peace. We please God when we set our minds on the Spirit, who is the very element of that which is life. Life that Created the Heavens and the Earth (Gen 1) and life that was able to raise Jesus FROM DEATH into LIFE! (Romans 8:11). So, I have to beg myself the question: What am I going to determine of myself to do with my thought life? Do I want to be held captive or do I want to be free? Hmmm....shouldn't be too difficult to decide what I want...but when the rubber meets the road, folks, its easy to choose captive. BUT, this does not have to end here. Instead, what I have now set my mind to doing is to will my mind to strain towards allowing my mind to be upon the Spirit than that of the flesh. Difficult. You bet. My natural tendencies as a human being are to be negative, selfish, fearful, lustful, immoral and you name it...and I want to do that naturally all the time. BUT, because I have chosen Christ as my Savior and to live like Him, I have now the "power option" as I like to call it, to choose freedom by putting to death my "natural" tendencies, so that I might become alive in Him and in the Spirit, and therefore be an incredible witness to others! To be able to pour into their life as if Christ himself where here to pour into their lives. I want nothing more. I desire no great destiny than this. It takes focus. It takes strain and it feels very much as though I am suffering....and I am because I am having to kill, murder, put to death, choke out (you get the picture) those things that feel as natural as an arm or my heart! But again, because I choose Jesus over that of my own desires, I will suffer and know that this suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.... Beloved, if you are going through a rough time, know that if you stand on his promises that in the suffering he is near, know that you will get through this. For in Christ, we do not have a God who can not sympathize with our suffering, rather we have a God who stepped down from his glorious thrown room into our broken world. We have a God who died a criminal's death so that we might be able to know that he understands what we are going through in this world when we struggle. And there is hope in this God, for he promises that at the end of it all, He will bring us close to him for eternity...free of suffering and alive in Him.

Love in the Midst of Margin

Goodevening everyone! I hope this blog post finds you all ready for the weekend. I know that towards the end of the week (if you don't work retail, or are a Dr...or any other profession that causes to you work on the weekends), one may find that they are utterly ready for Saturday to come like its Christmas or your Birthday! So, welcome to Friday night! This week has proven to be an incredibly incredible week. Yes. Incredibly incredible. How so? Well, God has opened the doors to finding housing for the next 6 mos. Literally last week, I gave the entire thing up to him and in a matter of hours, he solved a roommate need and then just a couple days ago, he solved the housing need. So, in October, I will be a happy woman, relishing in the midst of a more spacious, brighter and a restorative living space. I am also rooming with a gal I graduated Seminary with (we Seminarians tend to be odd ducks) AND she is going to be the worship leader at a church. Talk about instant community with the Body. I. AM. PUMPED...and oh so ready to dive into deep conversations, late night sing a-longs praising the Great I Am.....seriously. Bring on Oct!! I truly, honestly, am fully anticipating with great joy the next steps God has for me in this move. God. Is. Good. And he does provide when we ALLOW him the space. So, that is a praise. I guess another praise would be that my view on love has grown this past week too. I mean, its constantly growing and changing and developing and gah-Love. It is active!!! But yes, my love towards God and love towards others-its being polished. Which brings me to two nouns found above: Love and Margin. I think we all have an good idea as to what love is....because when I mention it, I don't get any questions on what this is. Now, when I mention margin...the questions come. So, let me focus on margin first and then explain what I mean by "love in the midst of margin." In short, margin is that entity that exists due to the fact that we are bound by 1. time and 2. our humanity. We are allotted so much time in a day and also, remember, we are humans. We therefore, have x amount of activities that are able to fit into x amount of hrs. To try to live outside of margin is not the most healthy of choices. Because without margin, before you know it, you are trying as a mortal to fit 46 hrs of activities into a 24hr time span. Essentially my human friend, you as a mortal are trying to be Immortal. This cannot happen because, again, We...are...mortal. Not gonna change on this side of glory. Leave the Immortal of fitting in 1k things in the span of 1 min to God. Job filled. Case closed. Nuf said. Ok, so, creating margin is essentially saying no to somethings because you have already said yes to others. That simple. W/out margin, you're gonna go crazy. Plain and simple. Now, I want to now point out the love in the midst of this discussed "margin". Love is best known as this, "We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters." (1 Jn 3:16). Jesus gave up his life for us. To me, this is a perfect example of "love is not self-seeking." (1 Cor 13:5) Clearly, Jesus giving up his life would edify that he was not self-seeking. I mean...if you need to think about that for a bit, go for it..but yea...he gave up his life for YOU. And he was God too..who was perfect and could have said, "Nope. These people don't give two cahoots about me. I'm not dying for them!!!" But no, he walked the road of shame, then got nailed to a cross to die a death I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Yep. That's Jesus for ya! Love, love, love! Ok, now that we have all the pieces together, let me tell you what I have been learning about love in the midst of margin. There is someone I love very much who I have found gives pretty much their all to everyone around them. In addition to this, they are also striving to seek and find an opportunity in which they are able to use their God-given talents to help others. Constantly on the move, barely getting enough time to sleep some nights! This person, needless to say, has so much going on that there are times that margin is on the brink of being tossed out the window. And because this is a reality, and because I also love this person and do not want to be seeking what I want, there have been times in the past and also this past week where I have to be mindful of creating margin for this person because I know it is what is best for this person. And it is me loving this person, because if I were to pull at this person and also demand attention from them, it is highly likely that my pull could be the very tug that causes them to break. All because it was what I (!) wanted and what I (!) needed. But again, love does not demand its own way....Love creates a space where the other can thrive. Love is pursuing the needs of the other outside of the needs of self. Easy in theory...but my oh my try it in practice. Its hard. Its gut wrenching. There have been many times this past week where I have cried myself to sleep because I've wanted so badly to have my own way. But again, that is not love. And if tears bring me closer to embracing and better understanding this love that is spoken of in 1 Jn 3:16, then bring the tears. If the feelings of frustration and feelings of impatience eventually give way to peace and patience because of the discipline of actively loving another, then bring on the frustration and feelings of impatience. I'll be honest, its not easy...but the fruit that it will bring in my life in the days, weeks, months and years to come!! Oh the fruit of love...and being able to embrace more fully this love that Jesus has for all of us-this Divine love...I want the struggle now. As difficult and heart wrenching as it is, I'll take the struggle, because I know of the fruit that my Jesus promises me. Yes. I choose Love in the Midst of Margin. So, I ask these questions: Is there anyone in your life that you could love moreso by creating margin for them? Or helping them to create margin for themselves? Is there anything that you can do today that is sacrificing your own needs to mak better another's life? I promise you friend, when you do, you are so close to understanding the heart of the One who died for you. The One who gave his all so that you might know His Divine and Perfect Love. Step into the role of love by loving and helping another to gain margin, to then have them maybe understand and feel the presence of the Divine Lover, Jesus.

Would I be like Job?

Goodmorning all you fine people. I am excited to share what has been going on in my life these past few days. Soo, without further adeu... I want to first point out that just yesterday, I was lead to read Job. And...with saying that, I'm going to lead us down a necessary rabbit hole for those of you who might not quite understand what I mean by "lead". Now, when I say lead, I'm want to be honest and tell you that I'm truly not quite sure how this all works. I know that it's not a "ooga booga" type thing where I felt this amazing feeling by Holy Spirit to open up the pages of the Bible and go to straight to Job (or any other passage in the Bible for that matter); rather, being lead feels like eh more or less, me thinking about what I've gone through in my life and then thinking about those persons in the Bible who God has purposefully placed in the Bible to teach me about Him or Him through their lives. The Spirit, I believe, works in my devotional life this way. When Holy Spirit wants to teach, he makes me use the brain that he gave me to observe the life that he continues to sustain me with, and then leads me to those passages he finds will bring about the most goodness in my life. So....that is what I mean by lead me to read Job. Good? OK, outta the rabbit hole and back on track... So, yesterday, I was reading Job and the verse that stuck out to me were these: "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity although you incited me to against him to destroy him without reason." Job 2:3. So much in here. Essentially, Satan has at this point in Job's life, caused him great havoc. Feel free to read Job 1. Its awful what happens to this man. If I ever have a bad day, honestly, I should just open up to Job and read! But in summary, Satan has taken Job's livelihood, Job's children---yet through it all, Job does not curse God. Nice. Eat that Satan!!! Ahem. But because Satan thinks that God is incorrect about Job and thinks he weak in his faith like many other humans, Satan thinks God is a liar and that Job will indeed curse God. But with confidence, God knows Job's heart (as he does all of our hearts) and states that he is "his servant....none like him....blameless...upright man...fears God...turns from evil..still holds fast to his integrity..." Amazing. As I look at all these attributes that God states of Job, I am forced to examine my own life in light of Job. If Satan were to go to God and ask for my life...what would God say in response to me? Would he say that I am blameless or that I turn from evil or fear the Lord? Especially fear the Lord (!)....that is one attribute that really stuck out to me. I was lead to think more on this "fear of the Lord" and recalled Proverbs 2:1-5 which is a passage that talks about what the fear of the Lord looks like. Here it is: "Receiving His words and treasuring them up...making my ear attentive to wisdom(which means inclining my ear to God's commands or His words found in the Bible), inclining my heart to understanding (studying the Bible. Like study y'all. Putting it to memory)...calling out for insight (asking what God's opinion about a certain matter is vs. making a rash decision all my own)..." with a reckless abandonment in search for the understanding of who God is and who he has revealed to us about him in his Word. Fear of the Lord is such....and am I doing such with my life? Do I savor his word so that I understand what I need to do to be blameless...have integrity and to be His servant? Honestly, in of myself, I fall short of attaining all of these attributes. As it says in Romans 3:23, "For all have fallen short of the glory of God." All of us are full of blame, lose our integrity in the midst of adversity and sometimes even allow our eyes to fall on evil. But this my friends is not our end! There is One we get to look to, again, for our blamelessness and integrity if we chose. It is Jesus. And when Satan comes to incite for our soul, there is our Savior standing there speaking for us. "No Satan. You cannot incite against this one...for they are mine and as my Father claimed over Job, this one is 'blameless...upright...fears God...turns from evil..still holds fast to his integrity'; because of my work on the cross, you have no power here. Be gone." So...lots to ponder. Lots to work on in my own life so that I can all the more not only reflect my brother Job's character in the midst of adversity...but to continue to strive to daily grow more and more into the likeness of my Savior, Jesus, who daily speaks on our behalf. Be blessed. Strive to be more and more "blameless....upright...fearing the Lord...turning from evil...and in the midst of adversity, clinging to integrity."

Hurt within the Harvest

Hello to all of you beautiful and handsome people reading my blog (it's nice to get compliments right off the bat isn't it?) I hope that each of you reading this post today is filled with joy, happiness, peace, good will towards men-ya know, all the good stuff. And if you come to this blog with feelings far from the previous mentioned, know that I understand that today might not be a day you feel happy, but a day of great sorrow or frustration or hurt...however you are, know that you are being thought of by me right now--and I'm praying for joy to wash over you! So, today's subject, Hurt within the Harvest, it describes much of what my week has been since my last post. Hurt within the Harvest, when you think about it-is somewhat of an oxymoron. How can hurt or any pain produce anything that is good such as Harvest? Well, I guess it all comes down to once again perspective and hence some mind work. This past week, I have been flooded by the Lord with promises about how even though my life some days may be bleak, that he promises to use those bleak moments for his good purposes (Psalms 138:8), that my pain and hurt will not be in vain but will allow me victory because of the work HE is doing through me (Romans 8:28). Amen. God works overtime to produce and bring about his good purposes in my life and yours. I want to talk more about this notion of bleak days or those days that harbor much hurt and pain. As humans, because sin has entered into the world through our choice to disobey what God was telling us to not do so that we might not experience this sin (Genesis 2-3), we are now stuck with those days that house certain decisions that cause our spirits and hearts to be greatly wounded. Sometimes those decisions are hidden, and sometimes they are found in plain view of all to see. Either way, seen or not seen, the decisions we make affect us sometimes for days, weeks, months or years---but friends, this is not the end of our story! Tarry with me here: Because sin has entered the world, there created was this power over us that causes us to be less than what God intended us to be. It causes us to be stuck or feel ill about ourselves or burdened or cause us to not love our fellow man. But(!) because God did not create us to experience sin, He came decided to come to this earth as man (Jesus Christ) to die on the cross for humanity, so that sin might not longer have power over us within this world. Sin is no longer the only option or the only "power" over us humans. No no no there is a different "power-option" now--and that is one of freedom; because on the cross, Jesus bore all of humanity's sin once and for all and IF we choose to take him as our Savior, our sins have been taken upon his shoulders on the cross. NO LONGER do we have to live with them, but instead we get to give them to the Savior who "knew no sin and then became sin for the sake of us gaining HIS righteousness (his sin-less state of being) "(2 Cor. 5:21). How sweet is that? But folks, at the end of the day, it is up to us to run to this amazing Savior to give him our sins so that we might not bear them anymore. All this to say, because we still live in a fallen world, sin still will exist. And there are still going to be days where I sin, but I have the choice daily to take my sin, my pain, my filth and set this at the foot of the cross, where Jesus can bear them on his shoulders (poor guy. The weight of just one sin can be so heavy-can you imagine ALL of humanity's?!? But remember, because he is God and because he is love, he bears our sins willingly) and then I can walk away clean and free of my sin. This event is the Harvest! The event of taking that which is painful, ugly, and hurt to the foot of the cross where my Savior is, to then give him the hurt and pain, and from there be given by him the Harvest (aka HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS). Its a choice. Hurt or Harvest. Weakness or Power. Mire or Magnificence. Though some days it seems as though I am choosing the former of all these, I tell myself that I must strive for the latter of these. So, how am I today, Well, today, my spirit is dealing with certain wounds caused by decisions I've made and decisions that have been somewhat made for me. But today, I have a choice-I can do something with this hurt....yes...this hurt is so heavy, but wait, up ahead, there it is... the cross. And at the foot of the cross, there I see him with a gaze of sweet love and compassion, compelling me to come to him with my load. I have yet to move my feet towards him, so that I might enter into his sweet presence. I begin to pick up my feet and move towards him. It's difficult to move though--the weight is heavy and I'm ashamed of the sight I am-filthy, and my clothes are torn. But I press on. Finally, in his presence, I ask him, "Jesus, my Savior, here is my hurt and my pain that I have done to myself and also, hurt that has been done to me by others. I know that you will take this from me because I want what you have promised me----which is your righteousness. Jesus--I'm sorry. Please take these from me." And he answers me, "My sweet Bride, whom I love. Thank you for coming to me-yes, I will take these hurts and these burdens from you at once. I love you and condemn you not. Go and be free to live with my righteousness I desire you to have. Go and love others and also yourself as I have loved you-because now you are free of any hurt caused by others, and also that hurt you caused yourself. Precious daughter, always remember, come to me when you are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. I love you forever." In awe of his mercy and compassion, I hand over all that weighs me--and in an instant after the hand off, my spirit is full of His righteousness. No longer do I bear the weight and I look down to find that he has dressed me in splendor. Yes, " I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels." (Isaiah 61:10) This is the Harvest I have now received. And now I will go and tell others about how there, in the midst of hurt, can be a great Harvest! All of you who are hurting, go to the Savior...he is waiting and utterly willing to give to you His righteousness.