Tag Archives: Emotions

What’s Old is New Again

12 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Encouragement, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman

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What’s Old is New Again

I have always loved the freshness of this time of year. Opening a brand new appointment calendar. Flipping through the stuck together pages of days-to-come thrills me. It’s a clean slate open for endless dreaming, new ideas, and things that have not yet been.

However, this new year brings circumstances that I wish could have been thrown out with last year’s trash. I wake up in this first month of 2017 and my mother is still battling Alzheimer’s and well, it’s complicated and difficult to know what this never been traveled before terrain should look like, much less feel like. Am I doing this right, God? I often hear myself asking. She’s alone now; a single mom who independently ran her life and remarried at 57 losing her second husband five short years later.

Layer this family situation with my one sibling, a brother who is a year older than me (53) and struggling with mental health issues. It’s been a 15 year struggle. He’s managed to lose everything, wrecking every relationship in his life, which when speaking about ours, is a difficult and complicated loss. This is the one single piece of reality that still stuns me enough to feel like it’s not yet real. But wait I’m awake. It’s real.

So I sit with the anticipation of fresh newness all around me and circumstances that don’t reconcile with anything remotely close to fresh and new.

I have a confession to make, though and it’s completely counterintuitive. You would expect me to say that I’m one hot mess. I can’t stop worrying, feeling sorry for myself (fill in the blank of ways that would seem natural to react). It’s the opposite though. I actually caught myself smiling to myself earlier today. This is the mystery of Christ. His nearness. His peace changes things, it changes everything. Not around me, but inside me where it matters most.

He’s got this. No really, HE’S GOT THIS! He’s the God of our victories and the God of our disappointments. Especially our disappointments.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

OK breathe. And say it again. Now close your eyes. And surrender.

Whatever you may be facing today … don’t fret it. God is here. Those three little words are life altering. He is here. With us. Emmanuel. It’s his first and most important promise. Think about how precious this Jesus – front-and-center with every breath – really is.

Shift the prayer from, “God please make everything in my life workable,” to “God I trust you and love you in the midst of my chaos.”

And then wait on the Lord who will ring in this New Year bigger and brighter than anything you have seen before. Because with surrender comes peace and with faith comes joy. And with love comes a worldwide of new possibilities.

Happy 2017!

Becky’s Testimony

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Testimony, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman

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“And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.”  (Revelation 12:11 ESV)

I have heard people that were raised in  Christian homes claim that they don’t have exciting testimonies. I don’t agree, at all. I have often thought anyone who thinks that about their own testimony does not understand how sinful or how needful of God’s grace they really are. Here is a great testimony of God’s grace to a young woman who was raised in a Christian home. Her name is Becky, and I love her dearly- I especially love her tenacious love for God. Here is her testimony, I am sure that it will greatly encourage you- especially, if you think that your own testimony is boring because you were raised in a Christian home.

Becky’s Testimony

Ever since the first time my parents held me in the hospital I have been privileged to hear the gospel but it wasn’t until I was about twelve years old that the Lord started working the miracle of salvation in my heart.

Before I came to know the Lord I had a constant thirst for sin. I often meditated on sinful thoughts and I enjoyed watching things that I knew where sinful and God would not be pleased with. However, what God was pleased with made no difference to me, I did whatever would “gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16), i.e. whatever made me feel good at whatever time I wanted it, I chose not to think about the possibility that what I was doing was only storing up wrath for me. Whatever made me feel and/or look good was what I set my mind to do. I read the Bible daily and quickly prayed before I started my day, but I saw devotional time only as a duty. I didn’t think, whatsoever, about the Word in depth, and I never even paused to think about who I was praying to. There was no joy in spending time with God. As long as I could check it off my to-do list, I was set. I wouldn’t say I thought I was a good person, I knew everyone was a sinner and I knew God hated sin, but I never stopped to think about myself personally. I assumed I was already a believer, at least until I was about eleven. Around that time, I went into about eight months or so of a spiritual depression. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but I began to have terrible thoughts about the Lord Jesus come into my mind. I tried fighting them with all my might-  but I couldn’t seem to get them out of my mind. It was because of this that I thought God hated me. Worse than that, I thought He detested me. I tried over and over again to beg for his forgiveness, but no matter what I did I felt filthier and more depressed as the days wore on. I felt a heavy, heavy burden on my soul that was far more weight than anything I could ever explain. I thought for sure God would not forgive me, I was His one exception. No one else could ever be as wicked as me and my thoughts were. It was because I knew God was perfect and He demanded perfection that I thought He would most definitely reject me, for I had ruined my only hope. I constantly bore the overwhelming feeling of what I thought was God’s anger and rage towards me, it was as though it were a thick fog, always all around me and all I could see in front of me. I can remember times just lying awake at night crying myself to sleep, thinking about what my eternity would be like. But God never ordains anything without a purpose. My weakness and helplessness before a holy and almighty God led me to finally bring my depression to my sister. She encouraged me to go to God- to get up early to daily read the Scripture and have a prayer time- not to just do devotions for the sake of checking it off my to do list, but to really spend time with God. So I did.

I was also able to finally bring my depression to my parents and specifically, my mom.  God used these things mightily to bring me to Himself. The Lord used many people and things to lead me to see Him as He really is, not how my puny, sinful mind portrayed Him to be. I came to realize first that God will save anyone He wants to, you can’t out-sin God’s grace. As Daniel 4:25 says, “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and He does according to His will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and no one can stay His hand or say to Him, ‘what have you done?’” I also realized that He is the One that places the desire to know Him in us. I came to realize I was hopeless, wretched and deserving of eternal torment, and that was exactly what I was going to get, except for one reason and one reason only – Jesus Christ. He is everything to the believer, He is everything to me. He is the only one that took away my sin and wicked deeds on the Cross. He died because He loves me, not because of me- but because of Himself. And He rose again so that I can have new life, eternal life, in Him. I also came to realize a little bit about spiritual warfare. The Scriptures say in Ephesians 6:12, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The Enemy is really at work in this present darkness and the only One who can defend us is God, we are indeed weak.

Through all of this I’m not exactly sure what moment God changed my heart from loving me to loving Him, but I know I started to see a lot of changes in my life, mind, and heart. I started enjoying my time with the Lord first of all. I now look forward to being able to pour out my heart to Him and thank Him for His work. I love reading Scripture and I get excited when God gives me an insight in His Word. During those prayer times I started confessing sins and bringing them to the Cross. I started being able to actually encourage and talk to others about the Lord from my own experience with Him. I started meditating on the Lord instead of immorality. One of the most joyful things for me was when I found myself actually joyfully anticipating the second coming of The Lord Jesus. These things didn’t come simultaneously but God did work and He is definitely still working.

Since coming to know Christ I have had sustained, immovable joy in God. The joy I have in Him is sustained and immovable because He is the one who saved me. I can and could do absolutely nothing to save myself I was dead. But Christ raises the dead. He saved me and “He who began a good work will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6) The more I think about it, the more overwhelmed I am at God’s kindness to me, He is so good. Now, I have a joyful eternity in front of me because of Jesus. Luke 11:20 says, “Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”. I can now be a part of bringing glory to God – that is perhaps the best gift of all that we receive in Christ. To sum it all up, Ephesians 1:11-12 says, “In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the council of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.”

 

 

Endure in Faith by Looking to Jesus

31 Wednesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Boasting in Weaknesses, Call to the Cross, Edification, Encouragement, Exhortation, Faith, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman

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“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Peter 5:10-11

Jesus lived and died believing God, and so should we. Jesus lived by the truth that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). For example, it was His belief in the faithfulness of His Father to answer His prayers, that motivated Him to forego the luxury of sleep, in exchange for hours of uninterrupted prayer with God (Luke 6:12). It was also the Lord’s faith in God that sustained Him for forty days of fasting and testing in the wilderness (Luke 4:1-2). It was Jesus’ trust in God’s wisdom to ordain His cross-suffering and His trust in God’s power to deliver Him through resurrection, which gave Him the ability to submit to God’s will and endure the horrors of Roman crucifixion for His people. Jesus endured all of the afflictions of His earthly life and especially the afflictions that He suffered on the cross by believing in the promises of God.

The promises that Jesus relied upon throughout His life are found in the Old Testament Scriptures. All the books from Genesis to Malachi (the Old Testament) contain promises that God specifically made to the Messiah, who was the long awaited suffering servant of God (Isaiah 52:13- 53:11). For an example in Psalm 16:10 we read, “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.” In this verse, we see that God had promised Jesus He would neither abandon His soul to Sheol; that is, the grave, hell, or the pit; nor allow His Son’s physical body to decay in the grave after He died physically. It was Jesus’ belief in God’s ability and willingness to keep this promise (and other promises similar to it) that enabled Him to humble Himself in faith and become “…obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

When Jesus was on the cross He was thinking about God’s word. We know this because while on the cross, Jesus quoted from the Scriptures. Eyewitnesses of His crucifixion reported that when Jesus was being crucified, He cried out with a loud voice “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). This quote is taken from Psalm 22:1 where the death, burial, and resurrection of the Christ was foretold. From this, we learn that when the Lord felt most troubled in His Spirit, He held most tightly to His Father’s promises. We should be mindful that Jesus’ confidence in the faithful fulfillment of the promises of God did not diminish the painful realities of His crucifixion. Jesus really bled, really hurt, and really died on the cross. His trust in God to raise Him from the dead did not belittle His cross-work. Conversely, it magnified it. Christ’s reliance on the promises of God throughout His life, and especially on the cross, magnifies the truth that we also can rely on God’s Word throughout the duration of our lives, and especially in the midst of our own afflictions. Since the Son of God was enabled to endure the agonies of the cross through His faith in the promises of God; we are assured that we will be enabled to endure in the obedience of our own faith, in the midst of our lesser trials, by trusting God and by relying on His promises.

If we truly desire to see God transform our lives, we must endure in our faith in God. We need to look to Jesus “…the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:2); and be strengthened in our resolve to believe God. We must choose to persevere in our belief in God’s power to transform us, regardless of the many complex difficulties- which may be present in our lives. We need to rely on God’s ability and faithfulness to do all that He has said He would do for us, in us, and through us. God has commanded His people to believe Him. In all things- throughout the trials and afflictions of our live-  we must remember the promise of God that “…after you [we] have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” And, it is for this reason that we can all say, “To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen“

We Must Be Firm in Our Faith

30 Tuesday Dec 2014

Posted by in Boasting in Weaknesses, Call to the Cross, Exhortation, Faith, The Sovereignty of God

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“If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.” Isaiah 7:9

“We must endure in our faith; in our belief and our trust in God. For the Scripture says, “…My righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in Him” (Hebrews 10:38). We must endeavor to believe God and trust that He is always working all things (i.e., all the circumstances, all the relationships, and all the events of our lives) out for our good and His glory, even when this is difficult to do. We must trust God all the time – in the midst of seemingly overwhelming personal weaknesses, broken relationships, and even shameful pasts. We must stand on the solid rock of the promise of God: that He causes “…all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose…” (Romans 8:28).

Believing that God will cause all things to work out for our good and His glory can be difficult when those all things include abandonment, abortion, abuse, addictions, betrayal, chronic pain, divorce, mental illness, the shame of sexual and physical assault, or the insecurity that results from prolonged emotional abuse. But, regardless of how difficult it may be for us to understand how God will overcome our painful realities and transform us through them; the Lord still calls us to believe that He can and that He will do all that He has said He would do for us. Only He expects that we believe in Him. For we know that He has said, “…without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). Therefore, we must discipline ourselves to trust God and rely on His ability to work out His good will in our lives – no matter how impossible this may seem to be to us. In other words, we must be firm in our faith. For Isaiah 7:9 warns us, “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.”

Taken from Walking in Newness of Life: Experiencing the power of God in Resurrection by Identifying with Christ in His Death and Burial, pp. 95-96

Trust God More Than You Trust Yourself

26 Friday Dec 2014

Posted by in Exhortation, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman, Walking in Newness of Life

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“Sometimes, we may feel as though we cannot trust anyone except ourselves. However, we cannot even trust ourselves as much as we can trust God. After all, our hearts can deceive us. Sometimes, we believe what we want to believe because it is easier to believe a lie than it is to believe a painful truth. We often believe what we think needs to be true, depending on how we feel, and despite what we know to be true. For example, how many of us have ignored the obvious unfaithfulness of a friend, because we could not bear the thought of losing the friendship? In those cases, we ignore the truth to our own detriment; and thus prove that we cannot trust ourselves as much as we can trust God.

Furthermore, we cannot trust ourselves, as much as we can trust God because we are fallible. That we are fallible means that we can make mistakes; that we are subject to error. Sometimes we make mistakes out of blind or willful ignorance. At other times, we make an error in judgment because we, simply, do not know what is best; for, as humans we are limited in our knowledge. We frequently mistake the motives or meanings of the words and actions of other people. And, often, our past situations and relationships obscure our ability to perceive our present realities (our relationships, situations, and circumstances) accurately. This is one reason that the Bible warns us that we cannot even trust our own hearts. God’s word says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Instead of trusting in our own hearts, we should learn to trust God to give us the wisdom that we need for all of the relationships, situations, and circumstances in our lives. We can trust God in all of these things because, unlike us, God is infallible (that is, God is not capable of making mistakes or being wrong).”

Taken from Walking in Newness of Life: Experiencing the power of God in Resurrection by Identifying with Christ in His Death and Burial, pp. 29-30.

God Always Keeps His Word- So We must Trust Him

22 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Testimony, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman, The Nature of God, Walking in Newness of Life

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“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” Numbers 23:19

Trusting in God is a necessary means to the end of experiencing the many graces of walking in new life in Christ. God is the only sure foundation for our lives, and if we are going to walk in newness of life, we must know and believe (deep in our hearts) that we can always trust God. After all, our new life is completely dependent on the trustworthiness of God to change us and make us holy. Of course, we begin to know that we can trust God when we start to think about God in the right way (as we considered Saturday). However, there is more to trusting God than simply acknowledging that He is real and that He is holy, even demons do that (Luke 4:33-34; James 2:19). Truly trusting God requires understanding that God is the only person Who is always worthy of our trust, and also understanding why God is the only person that is always worthy of our trust. Trusting God also requires understanding that we cannot even trust ourselves as much as we trust God.

Often, women who have been disappointed by people that they have put their trust in, feel as though they cannot trust anyone, including God. Perhaps, you are one of those women. I use to be one of those women. If you are, then this Scripture may help you, as it once helped me: “God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” (Numbers 23:19). That Scripture is very interesting, is it not? In it, we read that ‘God is not a man that He should lie’ – as if to say that all men lie. The Scripture also says that ‘God is not a son of man, that He should change His mind’ – as if to say all men change their minds. It is probably for these two reasons that, in John 2:24-25, we read about Jesus that He “… Did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men, and because he needed not that anyone should bear witness concerning man; for He Himself knew what was in man” (John 2:24-25). The Numbers passage above ends by asking a very good question regarding the trustworthiness of God: “Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?” Personally, I think that this question is the only question that matters when it comes to whether or not we can trust God. We must ask ourselves, “Has God always done what He said He would do?” If the answer to that question is no (which it, emphatically, is not) then we should not trust God. However, if the answer to that question is yes (which it, emphatically, is) then, we must trust God.

From The Depths of Woe – Indelible Grace

27 Saturday Sep 2014

Posted by in Call to the Cross, Cool Christian Tunes, Cross-Bearing, Encouragement, Music, On Prayer, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman

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From The Depths of Woe – Indelible Grace

The Words of this piece are from Martin Luther’s “Aus Tiefer Not Schrei ich zu Dir”-or in English “From The Depths Of Woe I Cry” (And no, I do not know German- that was a cut and paste). The hymn is based on Psalm 130. This rendition of the From The Depths Of Woe I Cry is distinct, intense, strong, and it has a ‘rugged beauty’- if you are in a season of waiting on God, if you are really feeling your need for His mercy and grace right now- this ones of you.

 

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Why Didn’t God Give Us a New Past?

12 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Boasting in Weaknesses, Call to the Cross, Cross-Bearing, Edification, Encouragement, Exhortation, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman, The Sovereignty of God, Walking in Newness of Life

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God gave us a new hope, a new Spirit, a new heart, and a new life, but He did not give us a new past: He decided to leave our pasts with us for the time being. God did this because He gets more glory by transforming our pasts than erasing them.

Taken from Walking in Newness of Life: Experiencing the Power of God in Resurrection by Identifying with Christ in His Death and Burial (p.98).

 

On Denial and the Sovereign Authority of God

04 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Boasting in Weaknesses, Call to the Cross, Edification, Encouragement, Exhortation, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman, The Sovereignty of God

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“When we live in denial, we create another world in our minds, a world that does not exist. A world that God chose not to create. It is a way to pretend that the world that does exist – never came to be. Denial is a form of idolatry. It is a way that we worship our own false reality; instead of worshiping the absolute reality of God and His power to create the reality that He has already created. We must be careful to remember that the Lord said, “I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45:7). That darkness, which GOD CREATED, includes our own dark pasts. Denial in our lives indicates that we either don’t believe God can resurrect our pasts or that we do not believe that God will do what is right by someone that we love (that someone could be ourselves or someone else).

Denial is a judgment that we make; it is a way that we judge God as deficient in His God-ness. We deny reality because we love what we want to be true more than we love the real truth that God has ordained into our lives. If you think about it, denial is a way that people try to be God and try to be the savior of their own little worlds. Denial effectually denies the Sovereign authority of God to be God.”

Taken from Walking in Newness of Life: Experiencing the Power of God in Resurrection (p.99).

Personal Red-Sea Experiences?

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

Posted by in Boasting in Weaknesses, Call to the Cross, Cross-Bearing, Edification, Encouragement, Exhortation, Testimony, The Believing 21st Centruy American Woman, The Sovereignty of God

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The cross is the  place where our weaknesses and God’s sovereignty make sense.  When we bring our weaknesses, brokenness, and messed up pasts to the cross of Christ, we can start to grasp the weight of the truth that Jesus, of His own volition, identified Himself with our frailty through the incarnation, and then willfully identified Himself with our brokenness on the cross, so that by sovereign grace, we can identify with Him in His powerful resurrection life. It is at the cross of Christ that we begin to understand that Christ is not the indifferent Sovereign Bystander that some assume Him to be. But that our Lord is the voluntary Sovereign Substitute, who has voluntarily identified Himself with our weaknesses through His cross. And it is at the cross that we learn that the Lord overcomes all of our pain, because it is the cross that leads us to experience the resurrection.

We find at the cross that the Lord is not at all the Silent Witness to our brokenness, neediness, and weaknesses, but that He is, in fact,  the Silent Lamb, who has been slaughtered for them, and that He is the Sovereign Lord who even now, by the power of an indestructible life, rules over them.  When we begin to understand the cross-work of Christ, we can begin to understand in a very personal way the massive and life-changing reality of the sovereign power and deep love that God has for each of His children. For, the cross is not the end of experiencing the redemptive power of God, but it is actually the means to the experiencing the resurrection power of God.  At the cross we  begin to really appropriate the awesome truth that God is most certainly and most emphatically sovereign over all things in life – working them all to the end for our good and His glory (Romans 1:4; 6:3,4; 2 Corinthians 13:4).

God has given each one of us our own personal Red Sea Experience – some life changing providence intended by God to lead us to a desperate need of experiencing the awesome power of God in resurrection. These events, as painful as they may be, are all part of God’s perfect sovereign ordering of our lives. Our personal Red Sea Experiences are the practical outworking of the sovereign grace of God in our lives. Each one ordained to the end that we would turn to Christ in saving faith; experience the powerful redemption of the cross, and know the depth of the love of God and the power of His sovereignty more intimately through our union with Christ. So embrace the cross and experience the sovereign power of God in resurrection.