Really, Really? A Butterfly?

Beauty in spite of sin. That is what I see in one of my best friends. I know that she struggles and yet I see God's grace in her life. I have been struggling a lot myself lately. I keep coming back to the same sin areas in my life because I do not want to let them go even though I know that it would be better for me if I did. I am weak. I desire the things of the sinful nature I have not fully resolved to believe what God has said about me and having a new nature. All I see is the caterpillar not the butterfly that it should become.

Honest Grace

This past couple of weeks I've been dealing with sin but I have also seen how there is freedom in honesty. When sin enters someone's life and they have the courage to not hide that sin there an awesome opportunity to extend grace to them. I have felt God's prompting in me to say things to people and I feel that it's God's words that were being spoken through me to that person. It's such an amazing experience to feel Him at work not just in my life but in the lives around me. I hope that I was able to extend grace like Jesus did. Part of me wonders though if I could have handled things even better than I did. Did I say the right things? Could I have said something else? Was there something that I should have said and thought about saying but didn't because I wanted to make the other feel better even though what should have been said was the truth? I want to know so when another situation comes up I know that I'll be able to handle it better than the last time something like this comes up. I do know that I need to memorize scripture more. I needed to use scripture because it isn't truth according to me but it's truth according to God. But no matter what happens, I am so thankful that it is God who changes the heart of people and it's not my doing or saying or not saying anything that causes changes of heart.

Caterpiller's need and Butterfly's Trust

This week has been a lot better. I felt better because I shared what was going on in my life and was more transparent with the people around me. Trust is soooooo hard!!!! Trusting God for who he says I am and trusting the new nature I have is difficult. One of the key points of The Cure is that we don’t see ourselves as we truly are. If we have accepted Christ’s redeeming work on the cross than we are as righteous as we are going to get. The example from the book is a caterpillar and a butterfly. The DNA of the caterpillar is the exact same as a butterfly even though the outsides look nothing alike. When we accepted Christ to save us from death, we were changed. In that instant we became righteous, period. We did nothing to change ourselves, God did. 2 Corinthians 5:17 NLT “…those who have become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!” Like the caterpillar it grows and eventually matures into a butterfly. It does nothing to change itself. God is working in us and changing us from the inside out. It isn’t our work that is changing us. Philippians 2:13 NLT “For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.”

Trusting others and earning others trust is a hard thing to do. Letting people love me by trusting them with the “true me” is something that I haven’t allowed. I build up walls and fortresses around my heart to protect it and to keep others from hurting me as badly as before but they also isolate me from having my needs met. It is a lack of trusting God to meet my needs that I put up walls and wear masks to appear that I’m ok. In The Cure they says this, “The spiritually immature are not loved well, but it is not because the fail. They are not loved well because they fail to trust the love of another. Because they trust no one, their needs aren’t met.” I have been trying to understand how to love others because I know that I can’t love others the way they should/need to be loved. I know that it is only through God’s love that I could ever hope to meet other’s needs and love them the way that Christ loves us. But how can I love others when I haven’t fully accepted God’s love of me? One thing that really resonated with me from Chapter 6 was this “Needs give us the capacity to feel loved. We know or experience love when our needs are met. Every day we need to be loved. Every day our God is committed to meeting our needs for attention (God’s servant love); acceptance (God’s unearned love); security (God’s committed love); trust (God’s faithful love); guidance (God’s directional love); protection (God’s jealous love); and significance (God’s affirming love).” So do you trust God to meet each of these needs in you? I know that I don’t yet.

Pain, Guilt, or Shame + The Cure and GOD = Healing & Forgiveness

So I’ve started to read through The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, and Bill Thrall, which I mentioned in my last post. It has been validated some of the things that I’ve been thinking/feeling, it has explained some of the healing process that I’ve gone through in Washington, and pointed out that I still need to go through the healing process some more. We sin. We sin against others, we sin against ourselves, and we sin against God. Sin is not something that we were created to deal with. It causes us pain when we sin and when we’re sinned against. We try to manage the sin and the results of sin (pain, guilt, or shame) but we can’t and it only winds up causing more problems. We’ll never heal the pain when we are trying to manage our sin on our own. There’s nothing that we can do to erase sin other than to accept and trust that Jesus paid the bill for us. Healing comes with forgiveness, but first we have to come to the end of ourselves and admit that sin has happened, either I’ve sinned or someone’s sinned against me. There are consequences for sin and we need to face up to those consequences, it’s the truth and we need to stop hiding the truth. We need to be honest and humbly tell God everything about it. It is painful and scary to confront my sin or the sin that someone else has afflicted on me, the consequences of that sin, and to honestly tell God everything about it, how I felt leaving no stone unturned. This process is hard and is a lot of work but the rewards are so much better than trying to hide the sin or burring the hurt, guilt, or shame. There’s a lot more than the little bit that I’ve talked about from the book and I know that I didn’t say everything that they said about forgiveness and healing, so get the book and read it.

"Reminde Me Who I Am" and "The Cure"

Lately I’ve been dealing with feelings of depression and suicidal thoughts. It’s been discouraging because I thought that I was passed this and that God had broken the hold they had over me. As I’ve been thinking through these thoughts and feelings and realized that it is true that God has broken my bondage to depression and suicidal thoughts. I felt that the suicidal thoughts weren’t mine or coming from me necessarily but they do come out of the human broken part of me that wants to take the easy way. These thoughts of suicide, the urging to take the easy way, is Satan attacking me because I am growing and maturing and that’s a treat to him.

Also, these thoughts find room to grow in the dark when they’re kept inside of me, when I’m trying to do it on my own. I shared with my mom the thoughts that I was having and how I was struggling the feelings and thoughts lifted. Sharing with my mom gives me another way of fighting Satan’s attacks on me because she can pray for me and she can give me emotional support.

The last couple of days I’ve been trying to work out why I’m going through depression again. I realized that there’s more stuff for me to deal with in my life and that I started on the road to healing when I went to Washington. Part of the healing that started was learning who I am, my identity. I like listening to Air 1 Radio and they air little mini interviews with artists about the inspiration/message behind a specific song of theirs. Jason Gray talks about his song “Remind Me Who I am” and how it’s about our identity. Read Jason’s post HERE. It goes right along with the first 2 chapters from The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, and Bill Thrall that I started reading. Both of these reminded me of one of the things that I learned (haha who am I kidding, I’m still learning this) in Washington. When I am centered in God’s love for me and allow myself to believe what he says is my identity then fear won’t rule my life, the fear of rejection, the fear of not measuring up to expectations of me, the fear of whatever it is.

1 John 4:18 from the New Living Translations, “Such love has no fear because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of judgment, and this shows that his love has not been perfected in us.” 

I’m still being perfected.

Mirrors, Silver, and Windows

 

So again I’m a day late but I’m here writing so that’s at least something. So I read from 2 Corinthians 3 and verse 18 talks about mirrors, which also made me think of silver and windows.

Silver is a great illustration because it needs polishing because it tarnishes and becomes dull even blackish in color. Silver left alone will tarnish and needs to be polished regularly to maintain it's beautiful shine. I need to keep work on myself and not just be lazy and do what I want to do. It's not healthy and it's for sure not very pretty.

 And of course windows, windows are great!!! They allow light to shine through and brighten the room you’re in. But they don’t work so well when they’re covered in crap. We go through life accumulating crap on our window so much that we can’t get it all off on our own. When we accept Jesus’ sacrifice for He gives us a gift in the Holy Spirit. He becomes our new spirit and works to clean up our window. Little by little light comes in and the beauty can be seen looking in and looking out from the window. Our job is to not add more crap to the window with God’s help and to allow the Holy Spirit to clean the window so that God’s beauty can shine through. (And yes I know that it's a doorway but we can all pretend that it's a window because the picture is too pretty to pass up!!!)

Me and a Talking Donkey

I am late this week in posting. I am forever being challenged to CHOOSE to not indulge myself. Since starting 40 Days in the Word (40 DITW), I have not been consistently doing a quiet time. Oh I’ve been a lot better than I ever have in my life, but it’s still not a daily thing. I do well the first two days after my small group meets and then the weekend hits and I’m tired and I don’t want to make the effort to study God’s words. Though not always apparent, I do pay for it later some how. This week it was very apparent to me that I didn’t keep my focus on God over the holiday weekend. I know that when I’m not focused on God that I can spiral down in my mental health. One would think that it’d be a great motivator to do what needs to be done to stay mentally healthy but no the un-divine human side of me gets the better of me more times than I’d like. When I indulge myself too long it makes me feel like crap. As it is, it’s hard to be motivated to go to work let alone trying to go when I already feel crappy to a environment that doesn’t really make me feel any better about myself. Part of Pastor Ed’s sermon was about Balaam and his donkey (Numbers 22). What stood out to me was that God funneled Balaam to a point where he had to come face to face with what he was choosing to do. My self-indulgence and the subsequent crappy feelings is my funnel. I am thankful for a God who hears my prayers and helps me through my day even when I’ve gotten off the path and who funnels me back on the way I should be going.

Acting vs. Reacting

Ok so this is the first week of the 40 Days in the Word curriculum from Saddleback Church that my church is going through. It's teaching me how to study the Bible. I decided to share the thoughts that came from the second day's study.

ACTING, now this action not pretending to be something that one is not. Philippians 1:27a “Whatever happens, conduct yourselves in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” is the verse for the second day that I studied. This is what I got out of my study. Many times I go about my day and I'm doing my own thing and not paying attention to the things around me and then when something "bumps" into me and disrupts me I react instead of acting. Most of the time my reacting isn’t “worthy of the gospel of Christ” that it should be. I realized I needed to be acting instead of reacting. Reacting gives me the impressing that you’re not in control; it’s an automatic response to something around you. To “conduct [yourself] in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ” means that what comes out of me in my thoughts, actions, and words should be a reflection of the grace and mercy that I’ve received. I need to be controlled by Christ and not by my own self so that I can be assured that my “reaction” is worthy of the grace and mercy received.

God-
Help me not to be reacting but to be proactive when circumstances around me change. Help me to step aside and allow you to control my actions and words so that I can live my life in a way that is worthy of the grace and mercy you’ve bestowed upon me and to be able to point others to that same grace and mercy.

Learning to Let God Break the Chains of Slavery

I’m working through 1 Corinthians. I love reading the New Living Translation. It’s easy reading and written in a way that’s easy to understand. I have the New Believer’s Bible of this translation, which has little side notes on different topics. The one that had some good things for me to hear was on 1 Corinthians 6:12 “You may say, ‘I am allowed to do anything.’ But I reply, ‘Not everything is good for you.’ And even though ‘I am allowed to do anything,’ I must not become a slave to anything.” This is the part of the commentary that stuck out to me: “Yet, as a Christian, you should only want to be controlled by and under the power of Jesus Christ. We need to so treasure our relationship with God—and the ensuing freedom from sin it has brought—that we jealously guard that relationship, wanting no thing or person to get in its way.”

What’s being said here is that everything is a choice. I choose to allow things to come between God and me. Sometimes I am so week that it doesn’t seem like it’s a choice because I’m so controlled by my own sinful and selfish nature. I am so thankful that even though my selfish nature gets the best of me more times than it should, I can still run to Jesus and seek his help. I know that it’s only through God working in me and in my life that anything good that I do, anything good that I desire is because of Him. Philippians 2:13, “For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.” I rely on God to get me through the work when I dread going and don’t want to be there. I know that this is where He has me and He’s to teach me to rely on Him for my strength.

Challenge

I decided that I would follow the example of my cousin and do a challenge.

So here is my challenge:

     To post once a week an example of the grace that my amazing God has shown me during the week.

For me, this is a good thing because it’ll challenge me to be active in the Word at least once during the week. For now that’s all that I think I can commit to. Who knows what will happen as God grows me.

One of many areas that I’ve struggled in is my mental health. I have had depression and suicidal thoughts. By God’s grace, He has helped me to break free from depression and suicidal thoughts. He has also shown me that there is a war going on for my mind. Satan attacks me with thoughts of  “it would just be easier if I wasn’t here” or some variation of that which leads me to despair. There is so much power in the name of Jesus and there’s a difference in saying it aloud. I know when I claim my beloved-ness as a Daughter of the King and revoke Satan’s claim to my mind in Christ’s name, he flees and so do those thoughts.

So CLAIM what’s yours and use the power that’s available to you as a Child of the King!!!