Ear pressed to chest
listening
heartbeat consuming
in moments known as “now”
all fades to dim
but the light of this space
the light of eyes
shining brightly with love
moved
breathing you in
sweet caress of hands lost in skin
in moments of you and me
drifting to dreams
nestled safe in arms
love reminding me that we are one
union of souls in covenant
forever combined
forever committed
forever one
I’ll never turn away
Perhaps I’m easily excitable. Perhaps I am always searching. Perhaps the promise of hope makes my heart beat wildly. Perhaps…
I utter simple prayers each day that God would take my selfish heart and expand it outward. I pray that I would truly love others and that maybe I could connect with another human in a way that’s meaningful. That in this massive stage where the tragedy unfolds, I might be able to play a part in the resolution. Where the Kingdom of God meets the longing of man, I would reach inward and help another to stand whole and restored.
Then I go about my day. sit alone in my office and do my job. I go about my life running from task to task and forget to stop and look. I sometimes forget to care. Then I crumble into the pillow exhausted after the day and feel as though there must be something more.
I love my job! I adore my family! I consider myself to be highly blessed and favored. Please don’t misunderstand the previous statements to mean I’m ill-satisfied with my life. I am most certainly not. But, I also realize that the deep longing of my heart to influence and reach others is born from the Spirit of God and his deep desire to reach men and women and show this his everlasting love and promise. It is inherent in the heart of a follower of Jesus to love others. It’s a consequence of a life surrendered. Perhaps I’m just a Christian.
I made a decision this week that seemed so unlike me and started a new venture with my husband. Here I am, this shy girl who has always struggled a bit making conversation with people I don’t know and I’ve started a business that requires me to communicate and share with everyone I meet in order to succeed. The funny thing is that despite the fact that it is so unlike anything I ever imagine myself doing, I KNOW with certainty that God is in it. He confirmed it in so many ways and I’ve been truly excited and completely full since making the commitment to run with it.
I made a decision that if I’m ever going to reach people, I need to learn to reach. I cannot remain stuck unable to start a conversation and expect relationships to spontaneously combust before me. I’ve spent the week thinking about my “why”. Why am I doing this? There are several reasons but the biggest one is that I know I’m called to be love to others. How can I ever help others if I don’t reach?
I’ve also realized that we spend our time spinning our wheels in the day to day. My husband is a business owner and works so hard. Often, 50-60 hours per week. I work full time as well. We have four children at home going in four different directions every day. We are the epitome of busy! I’ve found an opportunity to build a business that offers the potential of financial and time freedom. I desire to work smarter and build our dream of enjoying the time we have with our family and taking back our lives. Yes, it will take work and sacrifice for awhile, but the promise of time freedom is worth the work. Imagine what I can give back to the kingdom with financial freedom and time freedom in my grasp!
My “why” is simple. The ability to give. I desire to give of myself to others. I desire to give the gift of time to my family. I desire to give financially to those in need and to the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. I’m sure there will be those who think I’m crazy or think my goals are unattainable. That’s okay with me. Nothing good was ever accomplished by living life for the approval of others.
We are building a team in the US and branching out to Canada this month as well. I would be remiss if I didn’t put the plug out there that you can join us in our endeavor and find your “why” as well. Click here to find out about our business and join our team. Or visit our products page and support us by being a customer. Above all, pray for us and our new endeavor that God would build our team and expand our territory and be glorified first and foremost in all that we do. Thank you!
*Addendum: This post was in no way intended to be a shameless marketing ploy but rather an update on what’s going on in my life and an attempt to get you, my readers, thinking about your “why”. Why do you do what you do? Make everything you do count!
I’ve always felt a little bad for Job. Here’s this righteous man of God who’s so amazing that the Lord actually brags about him (Job 1:8 “8 Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”) yet everything that could go wrong goes wrong FAST! He loses everything and still remains faithful, a bit whiny perhaps, but faithful. His friends spend many chapters lecturing and criticizing him. I don’t really blame the friends though. Isn’t that our nature to decide that someone MUST have done something wrong to deserve all of the bad in their life. We are the first to jump in and criticize. Lord, help me to not be like Job’s friends. But I digress…
We know the story. In the end, God shows up and speaks out of a whirlwind revealing his awe-inspiring power and shaking earth and sky with his glory. Job, the righteous man, feels as though he is no better than the dust beneath his feet in the presence of The Holy One. Job laments that there is no mediator between this awesome God and lowly man. We read it and rejoice knowing that we have such a mediator now in Jesus Christ. The God who shakes the heaven and sees Earth tremble at the sound of His voice, loves us so much that He sent His son to make a way. That always blows my mind. Then God in His glory restores to Job twice what he’d lost to begin with.
I realized a little word I’d missed before. In Job 42:10 it says that God restored Job’s losses WHEN he prayed for his friends. Before Job was given back double, he had to forgive his annoying friends. This righteous man who would certainly be justifiably angry at his so-called friends who came against him the second calamity hit, had to be reconciled to them BEFORE his blessings came. I’d missed that little word “when” before.
If you desire the blessings and favor of God in your life, do yourself a favor and love your neighbor. When you walk in love, purity and forgiveness, there is nothing that can stop you! The blessings of God follow the believer. We don’t have to work for them or conjure them up. They are a consequence of a life lived in service. Don’t wait around and waste time looking for apologies or feeling justified having an attitude. Get over yourself and forgive and the rest will fall into place.
Okay, now the practical portion. I vividly remember being a young, hot-headed gal who thought it was a nice theory to forgive, but I couldn’t figure out how. It can be hard sometimes! Here’s my practical solution and Job demonstrated it perfectly. Pray! You may not want to. You probably won’t feel like it. If you are having trouble forgiving someone, pray for them. Keep praying for them. You don’t have to like them. You don’t have to continue to let them mistreat you. When you start praying for them, you loose the hold they have on you and forgiveness comes. It is a process. Be patient with yourself and when those feelings of anger start to rise up, push them back through prayer. It’s the most practical thing you can do. And as the Bible says in Job, when you pray, God’s blessings are released. You become free!
Reactive, by definition is the tendency to react or to be characterized by reactance. I think most people I know fall into the category of chronic reactors. We so often relinquish control to others or our circumstances. We see it in the lives of those terrified to move because they are so afraid of what others will think. We see it in our relationships as we react in anger. We are driven by words hurled toward us by careless humans, who unwittingly (or with intent), bite with condescension or malice. We are so easily wounded and broken. We are selfish.
Ben Carson says in his book Take the Risk,
“The more rights you think you have, the more likely someone is going to infringe upon them.”
“It wasn’t until I backed off enough to take myself out of the center that I realized reactions like that [anger/negative reactions] were not signs of strength, but rather indications of weakness. Such reactions meant I was letting other people, the environment, or circumstances control me, and I decided I didn’t want to be so easily controlled. But if I took myself, my rights, my ego, my feelings out of the center, I couldn’t be.”
“Once I was able to take myself out of the equation, to look at things from other people’s perspectives and not feel that all the rights belonged to me, the things that could make me angry were suddenly few and far between.”
When we are brave enough to stop thinking about ourselves and put others first, we may find that we gain the power and the freedom that we’ve been searching for. No one can hurt us if we don’t let them. All it takes is the wisdom to know that we are loved completely and fully by the creator and we can move beyond reaction to freedom and begin to go beyond “me” to “them”. Be free today!
Lord, let my hands be ever ready to serve.
Give me your eyes to see the broken and your balm to bring comfort.
Let the voice of my will be silent when your mouth opens
Let me guard my motivations so the outflowing of my heart and hands are pure
May I never be afraid of risk or movement
May wisdom lead as I submit to follow
Let love be my beacon, strength come from my weakness, truth be my anchor and peace go before me
You increase as I find myself hidden in the wonder of your grace
Take all of me and use me
Have your way as I remain forever grateful.
Steady rain pelts, swift and monotonous, on the roof above me
I feel the water purify, washing away the old, carrying with it the promise of hope
Standing singularly like a monument on the horizon
Lingering long enough for me to reach
Long enough for me to believe
Hope, that droplet swiftly coming near
Waiting for me to see it
Impact, as it falls to form in my soul a place where ignition can take effect
As lightning follows the particle to the earth
A blaze begins with a solitary moment
Hope springs from the cleansing of past colliding with the promise of now.
There’s something about the promise in a morning. A new day peaks over the mountains that stood, ominous, dark, hours before. There’s opportunity inherent there. There’s hope that maybe today will bring with it all the things we’ve been searching for.
That’s why I’m making a diligent choice to sit for a moment, still, with coffee in one hand, treasure map in the other
seeking.
I may not know what adventure awaits me today but I know the means of survival are right here in my grasp, the living word of God, breathing before me
leading me.
It’s wisdom better than gold or rubies making me better.
Proverbs 8:10-11 Receive my instruction, and not silver, And knowledge rather than choice gold; For wisdom is better than rubies, And all the things one may desire cannot be compared with her.”
Hebrews 4:12 “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”
As I was cleaning up smashed strawberries and bananas off of the floor under my son’s high chair this morning, it hit me…not just the peaches he was chucking at my head…also the realization that life is messy. There’s really no way around this fact. Sure, I’m in the thick of it, with four kids at home and a full-time job and ministry obligations. There’s always something more to be done and some inner voice telling me I’m not doing it all well enough. But I think all of us have an element of “mess” in our lives. It’s that stuff that always comes back, the house, the bills, the relational problems, whatever it may be.
I, for one, tend to rail against the mess hoping if I grimace enough, it will all go away and sparkle in the radiant light of my annoyance. This approach rarely works. Go figure…The better approach would be to realize that the mess has purpose and accept it. The mess serves to make me better and if I’m better at the end of the day, then it was all worth it.
For me, the mess tends to ‘mess’ with my psyche. I am my own worst critic. Consequently, I can be so hard on myself when the mess is too grand for me to tackle in a day. Sometimes, I find myself on my knees in the morning scrubbing day old fruit like this morning, as today’s peaches fly like rockets. And that’s okay.
There’s an odd little story in 2 Kings chapter 2:23-24. Elisha was going about his day and some young dudes decided to mock him and call him “baldhead”. Elisha turns around and looks at them and curses them in the name of the Lord and bears come out of the woods and eat them up. Elisha just keeps on going to where he was headed. Weird right? I’ve heard a lot of commentary on this passage, and honestly, I never thought too much about this passage and just attributed it to Elisha being sensitive about his receding hairline. Plus, how dumb to mess with the man of God! Today, I’m thinking a little differently.
We all have those things that we are sensitive about. Mine is my inability to “properly” quell the messes that confront me. I fight with myself regularly as my internal accuser tells me I’m failing. Today, I’ve learned to stop arguing and just pull an Elisha. When the mocker comes, I can stare it down and curse it in the name of the Lord. I can do this because I know who I am. Elisha was so much more than a bald guy. I am so much more than my mess. So I can boldly stand at the edge of the woods that would seek to drag me down and bury me deep in shame and insecurity and I can call on something higher than myself to deal with the problem. I don’t need to fight my own battles, I need to rest in who I am in Christ and keep going.
I don’t know what mess is mocking you today. It could be flying peaches, anger or even addictions, but I do know this, there is a defender who loves you deeply. He will help when you call upon his name. You never have to face this life alone. I pray your day is filled with cleaning, smiles and bear calling…and those flying peaches may be sticky, but don’t let them bring you down.
When pressing upon me, the world appears, to express from my lungs a song
May divine word spring forth in melody rising far above the fall
Hello all! My church family has decided to release some original music we’ve produced. I invite you to check out this link and download our latest project. Hope you enjoy!
http://restorationmusic.bandcamp.com/album/restoration-worship
INSPIRED BY THE COMFORTER 