Life on the Knees

Today I found something I wrote on July 8, 2011. Thought I would share it.

Lord, I long to reconnect with You. I want to be obedient. Please help me to surrender to You, hearing Your voice rather than the voices around me, telling me I need to do this or do that. Lord, I am going through a time of trying to figure things out on my own that I should be leaving with You. Please help me to remember to hold my heart out to You, not my hands. Lord, please lead me in the right path for the rest of my life. Please help me to be fully surrendered to You. Being fully surrendered seems to me to have more to do with a constant state of a bowed heart that allows the searchlight of the Holy Spirit to continually scan for dark spots, and then allows the cleansing power of the Holy Spirit to wash those clean. It is a life lived on the knees, both repenting often to keep short accounts with God and asking for guidance in all matters in life. It is a life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit, as it is impossible to please God using human strength. It is a life lived with the continual knowledge that I need God to take every part of me and set all parts in order, to cleanse and make holy and set right my mind, my heart. The fully surrendered life is a constant awareness that life is about, first and foremost, making our lives and everything we are, a gift back to God who deserves it because He is God, because He is perfect, because He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It is first and foremost about worshiping and adoring Him, because He deserves it. As a result, He calls us sons and daughters and we enjoy His fellowship, which is intimate and sweet. He doesn't treat us as servants, though we serve Him in His power, but as beloved children.

I have not arrived here, friends and family...but it helped me today to re-read this prayer I wrote over a year ago. It reminded me of what I can hope for. It gave me new focus. I am very much humbled when I compare where I am now and where I can and want to be some day in my relationship with God through my savior, Jesus Christ, who opened the way to the Father for me and who paid on the cross at Calvary for EVERY sin I ever have and will ever commit. 

Faithful

It is so healing to me to recognize that Jesus Christ is in this room with me right this minute. I need Him. His presence fills every hole in my heart. It nourishes my soul. He has never left. He has never moved away from me. I have moved away from Him in so many ways on so many days, yet every time I turn to Him, He is there. His love gives me rest from my hard, hard journey in life.

The more I yearn to walk with Him, the more the challenges seem to roll in. I pray that I will be found faithful, but, even if I am not, He will be. He will be.

Shades of Loss Permeate This Life

The pain of loss. It's an aching, yawning cavern. It is a place where you feel that God cannot reach you. Intellectually, if you are a Christian, you know the Bible says that there is no place like that, either in heaven or on earth. Whether it's the loss of a child, other loved one, or merely the loss of a long-cherished dream, loss makes us feel wildly abandoned and utterly crushed, no matter what our rational mind says to the contrary.

Have you ever struggled with how to pray for someone who is experiencing a deep sense of loss? I have. Recently I struggled with how to pray for the familes who lost their young children in Connecticut. I was so overcome with the horror of what they were dealing with, I did not know what to ask God to do for them. I did not know what would work to mitigate their pain. I wanted to, as so many of you did as well, push a button and make those hurting people okay, make them whole again.

We say that we know that we are on a journey heavenward, that the most important thing in life is serving God. However, there are so many things on this earth that we hold very dear, beginning with our spouses and children and working outward to our other family members. We hold our vocations dear, because they are an expression of who we are. We hold our physical bodies dear, because they let us express ourselves and fit in with society. We hold our marriages close, because they are integral to our identity, our sense of being loved and accepted unconditionally. When any one of these precious possessions is lost or damaged, a person can feel as if they are thrown into a pit. Sometimes it feels as if one is falling for a very long time. While they are hurtling into the blackness, there is nowhere to put their feet on solid ground, no place to grasp hold of with their hands. It is just a continual falling. And very, very lonely. I have so many Facebook friends around the country who have lost parents recently. I have other friends who, like me, suffered the mind-bending loss of miscarriage. Loss is all around us, all of the time. Even if we are not currently in a season of it ourselves, we MUST carry other people's burdens, help lighten their loads through prayer and support.

How is it possible to recover from loss? That's a tough one, since there are shades of it going on all throughout a person's life. I do believe in praying and believing for a hedge of protection around those I love. I am not going to give up my faith that God is a good God and stop believing him for favor and a long, healthy life for me and for those I love. Not at all. However, what do I do and what do I encourage others to do when they are suffering so much that they feel disconnected, not only from the Lord, but from all of the rest of us, who seem so happy by comparison? First and foremost, I will cry with them. Secondly, I will beg God for his comforting presence to rest on them. Third, I will remember that no one ever got through loss alone. We need each other.

Maybe Today

I have a deep-seated hunger to serve God. To know, deep inside, that my life is about more than pleasing myself. Too often, however, I get into a rut of self-serving behavior, doing life for me. There are so many pleasures I enjoy indulging in, none of them wrong or immoral. It's just that the sum total of my life displeases me at times. I want to feel as if I am serving the Lord by serving others, that the pie graph of my time reflects the true priorities of my heart, and that those priorities are ordered by the Lord.

My prayer today is that my childish pride would be replaced by a childlike humility as I prayerfully look for ways to serve. It's tough not having decided on a church just yet...they provide a sturdy framework for service of all types.

Maybe today I will come into contact with someone who needs an encouraging word. That would be enough! Maybe today I will hear God's voice providing clear direction in a relationship where I would be his hands and feet, or maybe just speak His words of life and affirmation.

Not All Roads Lead to Freedom

I want to start your day (or end it, as the case may be) on a humorous note. Those who know me need no explanation here, but for those who do not, here goes. I frequently do not do the dishes after dinner. Sometimes it's lunchtime the next day. I have a longstanding love affair with the last minute, actually getting more done in the hour before Gary gets home than I do all day. (It's amazing, actually.) I used to have a hobby of leaving things on top of my car and driving away. Once, during the year I was a t.v. reporter, I left the videotape of that entire day's work on top of the news car and drove away. Back at the station, I realized what happened, retraced my steps and risked my life on a highway to retrieve the tape. One of my neighbors once approached me on my driveway with a stack of "Magic Schoolbus" books that he had enjoyed watching flutter down from my car roof as I drove out of the cul-de-sac in a happy oblivion. I am not the most organized and focused individual in the universe.

A few years back (not enough to avoid embarrassment at the revelation) I thought for a few fleeting moments that I might want to try one of the older Christian denominations known far and wide for their legalism (mode of dress, hairstyle, etc.). I was just that desperate for holiness, purity, and freedom from, well, MYSELF! My husband quickly informed me that I would be heading down that path WITHOUT him. I was reminded of my desperation just today as I read a passage in Philippians. Paul was a certified jew. He was steeped in tradition and rote religiosity (and pomposity) when the reality of Jesus Christ took his life by a storm. Listen to the feeling in this passage.

"If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more; circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.

BUT (emphasis mine) whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." (Philippians 3:4-11, NIV, 1984.)

If you try to take these words found in God's holy word and push them through a religious pipe they will not fit. So the key, my wonderful friends, is a living, breathing relationship with Christ. Pray continually, trust him, enjoy his fellowship. Watch your world change. Watch your heart melt, become pliable, and then take on the shape of HIS choosing! Happy Christian trails!!!