I just wanted to say that I am so thankful. I'm thankful to God for giving me such a wonderful church family. For giving me so many loving people. For giving me friends. For bringing certain people in my life that He knew I needed... even if I didn't. For the diversity He's created in His children so we challenge each other and things never get boring. For each characterstic in all of us that makes it easier for us to come to a deeper knowledge of Him by the reflection of Him we bring to one another. For His omniscience. For His goodness. For His never ending love and mercy.


I'm just feeling so blessed today.

CLEAR THE PATH!

The Bible study this morning left me speechless. So much said, so little time to absorb it all.
I did make a choice this morning to discipline myself to get my homework done a little each day, as I'm supposed to do cuz I realized I'm missing out by doing it all at once. I think it would do a lot more good if I could have some time to chew on what I've learned, swallow it down and regurgitate it to chew on it some more before moving on to the next thing. Ugh! That just sounds so gross!

I really enjoyed the discussion before we watched Session 2. Btw, Beth, just to clarify what I was talking about when I brought up the Job thing, was not that I can't imagine ever shaking my fist in the face of God (I do that way too often for my own safety) but that I have a feeling if either of us were actually face to face with God, directly in the presence of the terrible Almighty God -unveiled, I highly doubt we'd have the audacity to mock Him like Satan did regarding Job.

Satan's one angelic mass of stupidity, alright. Beautifully ugly, and intelligently stupid.
I determined within myself today that this day would mark a turning point in my walk with the Lord. That session really convicted me and gave me a renewed hope. When she was talking about how God is right there, and at any time He could open the sky, or open the heavens to us...Wow. I guess when we think of God as this little being somewhere off in the far, far distance, we imagine Him as not only being distant and uninvolved, but also incapable of solving our problems or intervening for us in the wonderful ways that He wants to.
I left the church and got in the van thinking, God, You are right there. You are here, and You are so unbelievably huge, and You are sooooo able. How could I have forgotten that?! How have I forgotten the terribleness of the LORD?

So...I am now persuaded that God can and will intervene for me and my family when I clear the path and...uhum...shut my mouth. I know this is what God was saying to me cuz I keep asking Him when He will ever intervene for my family and through a sermon by Paul Washer He has already told me that if I want Him to deal with certain people in my life that are helping me to stumble, I need to...

"MOVE!!!! GET. OUT. OF. THE. WAY!"

And the suggestion sounded plenty more harsh than the way it looks here.

...I'm sensing God is quite grieved with me lately.

Goodness, am I ever thankful He loves me.
Yes. I've had a fair warning from my Father Who will chasten me if I don't shape up. If I want Him to run after and take hold of certain people in my life that I've been complaining about, I had better clear the path or He just might intervene and I'll be knocked down in the process. I don't know what it would be like to come into a collision with Jehovah God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, but I don't think I fancy finding out.

So I got plenty of practice of keeping the path clear on the way home. Every time I thought something was unfair or unjust I zipped it and urged God,

"See... Do you see?! IN-TER-VEEENE, God!"

Well, He said He wants me to come to Him as a child, and boy, don't I feel like one.

The other thing I just loved and took to heart was when she talked about the word consecrate, or being "treated as holy". This came as a fresh word to me this morning, although I've heard it said in plenty of other ways and it has never fell on me quite this way.

Man, I am holy. I am absolutely, 100% holy and believing any different is doubting the holiness of Jesus which covers me and the blood of God that cleansed me from all my sin.

Now...I just need to start acting like it.


EDIT:
I just remembered one more thing I absolutely loved from the weeks' homework.

It was heartening to see how the people who knew Jesus' family took offense at Him, not because of anything He had ever done, but because of who His family was. At least, that's what I inferred from this Scripture:

["Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?" they
asked. "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't
his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren't all his sisters with us?
Where then did this man get all these things?" And they took offense at
him.] (Emphasis mine)

Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but as Beth Moore said, there were at least 7 children in Jesus' home. I imagine His house was not very big either, and His earthly father being a carpenter, he would have worked long, hard hours.
Now I know Mary and Joseph were parents of faith, but let's face it. They were only human. Anybody who has several children should be able to relate when I say, there are definitely times when frustration, anger, noise and chaos, bickering and sibling rivalry, coupled with living on a tight budget (which they did), can produce some pretty shameful and guilt-spawning situations. The Lord knows, if any of my children ever grew to be mighty men or women of the Lord, people would definitely question how that could be.

Aren't you the son (or daughter) of Will? Isn't your mother Desley? Aren't your brothers and sisters... etc., etc.? How can anyone from that family turn out godly? Where did that man get such knowledge? Certainly not from that family.

You get my point.


As if God hasn't the power to prevent our dysfunctional habits and sinful shortcomings from infecting e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e in our home.

Besides, it would be just like our God to use the foolish things to confound the wise in this aspect as well.

It's a good thing God can show His wondrous works through anybody from any family, eh? I don't know about anybody else, but I find myself praying for God to minimize the damage I've caused my kids from my reactions to stress, frustration, and anger...and yes...my neighbours have many times heard an ear full coming from our home. I'm sure they anticipate the day my kids all turn into delinquents.

But God is merciful and powerful and wonderful.

Awaiting My Time

Two things...

First, I'm a dope.

Second, God is faithful.

As Beth knows, for the last two yrs or so I've been "walking out of fellowship with God" and for the life of me I couldn't figure out why.

"What else must I do?!"

I've shouted at God. And then comes the panic.

"Just take my life now, God, cuz I'm just wasting my time here and I don't want my entire life to be for nothing."

And I meant it. In fact, for the last few months my desire to just keel over and die has been fueled by more and more fears, pressures, insecurities, temptations, and shortcomings that press down on me in herculean proportions, so massive I can almost see it...if that makes any sense. I've wanted to give up. I've flirted with the idea of suicide.

"I'm not doing any good here. My life is pointless. I'm screwing up my kids, and they'd be better off with someone else who can take care of them right. Someone who wouldn't hinder their relationships with God, etc., etc., etc."

It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. I've always known that since I knew Jesus I can endure anything that Satan throws at me. Anything, that is, except being rejected by God. My faith would not be shaken by anything else...So it's no wonder that I lost faith as soon as I stopped hearing from Him.

Yes... That's what I said.

Beth Moore's Bible study this morning answered so many of my questions, and relieved so many of my fears and anxieties. And I didn't even want to go. At about 9:15 this morning, I was laying in bed thinking,"what's the point in going? I'm just wasting my time."I wasn't going to go, but at the last minute I decided to.
You see, what happened was, initially, God told me to do something. It wasn't that big a thing. I had confessed my lifestyle of lies to numerous people already, and this was just one more, but I got discouraged.

"God, will you ever stop humiliating me? As soon as I swallow my pride and it takes every ounce of courage in me to confess my lies to one person, You bombard me with more. And more....And more! Aren't You ever happy? Will it ever be enough?"

I resolved within myself that I was NOT going to do it this time! A few months later, and after much battling it out with God, I did it. The problem was that I never heard from Him again after that -even until now- I could not understand it either....until now. Was He going to hold it against me forever? Was I going to be like Moses and spend the rest of my life toiling in the desert only to never have the chance of entering the promised land? And no later did God stop speaking to me and suddenly all these old things in me that I thought had been taken care of when I was saved started to resurface and wreak havoc in me, my marriage, my family, and now my friends. I thought it was because I was out of fellowship with God, and it would all go away again if I could just get back where I should be. Unfortunately, my beloved brothers and sisters in cyber space wrongly validated that assumption by telling me all would be well again if I would only pray more. If I would only get rid of the sin in my life. If I would only have more faith. It never occurred to me, and apparently to them, that this just may be God's will for me. So, I've been continuing on for this last two years believing God had abandoned me because I'm sooooooooo far from being sinless. And so I try and I try and I try to get it right so I will hear His voice again, but as any wise Christian knows, that's like trying to squeeze orange juice from out of an apple. So... I get angry and give up. Then I see all the damage this storm is inflicting on my family and I panic and think,

"if I could only just be taken out of the way..."

Well, just yesterday I went to see Joanne Minor and was telling her how I no longer believe God has "left" me because of my inability to be sinless. (hahahahaha... what a dope I am. Well, duh!!), but that He has just allowed some of the old stuff in me to come to the surface where I can see it's still there so I can actually confront it and deal with it. It was wrong of me to believe that just because I was saved all my baggage would disappear. God was just giving me time to rest from it all and is letting me know it's time to move out in faith and conquer these things a little at a time. --Baby steps.

I still don't know why God isn't speaking to me like He did before. He lets me know He's there. At times I can ever so slightly be taken by His beauty again and by this I know that His Spirit still lives in me. But I gotta say, I miss the bliss. When I'm so close to Him that nothing else matters. That there's no possible way I could be afraid or feel anything but joy. Perhaps that's why He's made the good feelings scarce.

"It can't always be bliss." Says Joanne in a rather amused tone. I guess at some point I have to come back down to the realities of living in a sinful body that lives in a sinful world. While it might feel good not to, that won't conform me to the image of Christ.

It's not that I'm going to stop worshiping God now, just that my worship is going to look different. It's going to look like me trusting Him and following where He's leading right now, to this place I so don't want to go.

"But," I thought, "How long will this take? I only have a short time here. I don't want to waste it all working on this junk when there's so much more that has to be done."

And then comes God talking to me through Beth Moore, telling me,

"Time has not gone and isn't going. It's coming. It hasn't escaped Me. Your life is not being wasted. You're just waiting for the fullness of time to come."

And I heard,

"I am Faithful. I am Faithful. I am Faithful..."


I've heard some Christians say that God confirms things. I'll take this as a sign, since He's still not talking to me.

On a side note...

After praying for God to show me what and how He wants me to teach Mitch right now, I came across a book study for Language Arts and we're reading Alexander the Great. Then, out of nowhere, I came across a documentary on the last 300 Spartans (not the movie), which emphasized the training of the great Spartan Leonidas, who trained Alexander. We've been thinking about how his dysfunctional family affected him (a whole lot in common there), and God has been pressing on me to get Mitch to really put himself in Alexander's shoes as a child and young man. I'm not sure why yet. What I did realize today when Beth Moore was talking about him, was how I could incorporate the Bible into our Language and history lessons and since Mitch has a spark in him for history, he may be able to better relate to the Jews of that time.
I'm gonna have to look into it more. Very interesting stuff.