I don't feel like being a Christian today. Part 1

Well...It is the truth!!

 Today started fairly like any other...well maybe not.

  Last night I dreamt that I created an altar to an unknown god. At this altar, the lady who attended it basically told me that this was a secret altar. It immediately caused anger to stir up in me! And against the grain of what I felt was right in my dream, I violently destroyed the altar! I woke up with the belief that this was a dream from the Father.

So as I prepared for the day I felt like He would reveal a "high place" in me that was secret. And I asked Him to reveal it! (If you ever want to grow, sometimes it takes this, no matter how earth-shattering it may feel like!)


DID HE EVER ANSWER!!!!!!!!!



I had a situation with a fellow worker within 5 minutes of entering the job I work at! Normally it would have just been an irritation, but today it felt as if I was a liar for claiming that I was God's. I didn't feel like being who I was! An Overcomer! I wanted to dredge around in rage and spew on everyone! Don't know if I did leak any but for the longest time I hated the restraints of being who I was really carried.  But you can probably glean from my dream explanation that I do often "go against the grain" of my feelings. I asked some brothers to pray for me. If an verse could explain it the best it would be James 5:16. It was so true! Within 30 minutes God gave me peace to believe again. Being a disciple is beyond feeling like you are.

What is your foundation in Christ? A feeling? Someone else's faith? I've been in both of those. Both lead to great disappointment.

You see...like the parable  of the two houses, God sends the Adversary to test our foundation. Hopefully before it is too late, but all the same...

Like both Job and Simon Peter.


With Job, God allowed the Adversary to take everything from him. To give him one thing. Himself.  He was the most blessed man in the land. He, like many of us are very blessed. The adversary basically beat his body physically and mentally, till he finally called out for an explanation of why he was going through this. I've  actually been to this place many times with God. Job's friends told him he deserved what he got. His wife told him to curse God. Basically to throw in the towel. God then showed up and told Job that he needed humility in coming before Him. He openly rebuked Job's friends and told them that their only salvation was to give Job animals to sacrifice and ask for Job to pray for them.   Job prayed...and because of the one possesion he obtained, he was given increase for giving.

See I don't feel like being a Christian today-Part 2for the rest

Cheese and Crackers

 This story is a repeat from my Teen challenge group by the lead Facilitator:

 Once there was an old man, who wanted to go on a cruise before he died. So, he spent 4 years saving up and afterward bought his ticket. Since this man had very little money  he could not afford to buy the fancy dinners on the cruise, so he packed his suitcase full of cheese and crackers. During the cruise, while everyone else sat inside eating luxurious dinners of steak, seafood,and many other delicacies..the old man ate his cheese and crackers. 


On the last night of the cruise, as the old man sat eating his crackers..a man walked out to see him from the dining room. 


The man asked the old man why he would not come eat with the everyone else. He exclaimed "I haven't enough money"


The man then said "The meal was a part of the ticket price..you were supposed to eat with everyone"












How often do we just sit outside being settled with eating our "cheese and crackers" instead of entering into the fullness of Christ? He paid our ransom from sin and we are okay with just floating along. 


Instead let us seek his fullness no matter what it may cost.

Our lives? 


HE IS NO FOOL THAT GIVES WHAT HE CANNOT KEEP TO GAIN WHAT HE CANNOT LOSE
-Jim Elliot 




Our reputation?




He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.


ISAIAH 53:3 








Family?


If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even his own life--he cannot be my disciple.


Luke 14:26






When we follow Him and enter into His fullness, he adds to us: His Life, His reputation, and His family which are all eternal. 


Lets not be satified with even the place we are now with God, but go FURTHER UP AND FURTHER IN!

Fragrance and fruit

I'm writing this post so late at night..well it's 1:45 in the morning, so I hope it is coherent. 


Song of Solomon 

¹³ Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates 
   with choice fruits, 
   with henna and nard, 
 ¹⁴ nard and saffron, 
   calamus and cinnamon, 
   with every kind of incense tree, 
   with myrrh and aloes 
   and all the finest spices. 




These are the words of the Lover to the Beloved. The scent of the beloved attracts the Lover. 

Christ created in each of us a garden. A place in which we can walk with him in the cool of the day. 


A tabernacle of the Most High. 


In this place, fragrant aromas are wafted out. They bring many into the place of worship. Is your life fragrance Love? The aroma that comes  from a drying, crushing, and a burning in most cases of your very being. 


 Through those trying times in which Christ seems to have turned his back, you feel pressure from all sides closing in, and those times you feel absolutely spent. Out of those times, the greatest fragrance can come. Those times give us something to draw out of both while in the circumstance and the fragrant offering afterwards. 




The fruit we bear by taking in the light of the Son, is transformed into the nourishment of ourselves and others.This is a perspective of a good friend of mine who does that subject justice. (From-sunlight-to-food-or-aspiring-to-be-more-of-a-vegetable)




To  deny the process of converting Christ into a living example causes us to shrivel up.  Our life is connected to His. When we called on Him to enter our lives to be like Him..He makes us Him on earth.


Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 


Meaning now. We must now be Him on earth. Feeding His sheep and bringing the world back to Him.







OK.
  
That makes you cringe a little.


 Good. 


I myself feel my flesh rise up against it many a time. This body in it's self is about preserving the self. But I am owned by Christ. He is inside the garden and is illumining the darkness of my soul and causing a lot of shaking.






But also don't forget that God's mercies are new every morning. That you are His delight and He created you for a great purpose.(Not always grand in our eyes, for we are made of dirt!) Also most of all He lived and died so that you would have a path to walk out. 




I hope that you are encouraged more to be a fragrant tree that brings delight to the nostrils of the Lover.

Be Salty

 "You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Matthew 5:13




 What is food without salt? Some of it is very tasteless. 


Let me throw an aspect which I'm sure is not new to most of you. 


First , a common fact. Salt makes you thirst. It makes you crave liquid. Simple. 


We as disciples should, in our lives, cause people to thirst after the everlasting water of Christ. Our lives should not need to answer. Because the answer is Christ. We are a means to show others (together) what He looks like.

 Like a mirror.




 The "greatest" men and women in history have pointed to Christ as their strength.

If we as disciples lose our ability to point to Christ as our refuge and salvation..we become useless.

Francis Chan's thoughts/ New Book!

This is worth a look at. I watched it yesterday via a friend and thought it was VERY relevant to what is going on in discussions these days.

"Compliments" by Francois Fenelon

Don't let compliments you receive from worthy people go to your head. On the other hand,do not let false humility keep you from accepting God's comfort when He sends it through others.

God wants you to take what comes and not run after what doesn't come. Simply accept what is given to you. Look only to God. Learn to live without things God sees fit to take away  from you. There are certain things that God wants you to be detached from. Do you see that God allows people to respond to you in many different ways in order to mold you?

Trust God without fear. Learn to accept your weakness as you allow God to change you. There is no use being impatient or depressed about your faults. Make a habit of inwardly bringing yourself before God as often as you can during the day. Doing this can calm you down.

Becoming Needy

 How often do you think that everything in  your life is going how you would like it? You feel God is in control right? That you are in perfect peace with The Creator?

Or

Does it seem that your entire life seems to be on the verge of crashing down on you? That your good intentions seem to cause pain to others, and sometimes end up causing an inhibition of growth in your friends and family?


I tend to like the first option. To feel like you are always in God's will, always encouraging people, and you feel good about yourself. I mean, who doesn't like to be liked, have joy all the time, and to be full of life?

It makes you love to be a Christian.

But as we look at the life of Christ's disciples, we see that no one who follows the Father ever seem to have any life in this world. Peter went from being a fisherman to a "fisher of men (which wasn't a popular job as we can see in Acts)" and also denied the very one he swore under oath to protect, Paul became so hated that he was flogged multiple times, shipwrecked, and killed for his faith. Doesn't seem like a very fulfilling life, now does it?

Then there is God. He used Peter's experience in denying Him to cause Peter to learn to deny his own strength in himself. How often do I deny my own self and not know if I do love Christ and can only answer
Him  "only you know." That is when we feel the power of His love, when we are weak in ourselves.

He is our strength and help in hard times.

God  used Paul's experience before he ever  knew Christ. He made a way for Paul to really fear himself. He caused a major stir in everyone when he became one of the very people he persecuted. Paul mentioned later to people that were trying to become perfected in the flesh that he was. I mean, he did have everything before he became a disciple of the Way. He was highly respected by Romans and many Jews alike. He was good in the eyes of man. He'd  be the guy who thinks that he is doing God's work, zealous to do what he thinks is of God.....

Then, FLASH!

 The very person he thinks that he is serving he finds out that he is persecuting. I just wrote this  paragraph and automatically flashed back to my past. I was a "zealous" servant of God, looked good in many people's eyes(LOL),and went through an experience that I  thought made me a good person who God was proud of. Then, one day, I woke up to find that all of my zeal was gone, my love for others "mysteriously" disappeared, and I saw a little of the person who I was. He then chose to spread his cloak of Love over me.

The feeling of him is like no other thing. There is no human word to explain it. Now outside of Him, there is no life.

He should be our focus everyday.

I over heard a good friend say to someone the other day, "Don't ask if God will let you do something, ask if it would be pleasing to Him."

Thank you so much Shammah.

 I hope that that would be true of all of us. 

Our purpose

I'm pretty full tonight. I just got through my first (of this year) "two people meeting" an hour ago. It was very enlightening. The facts don't matter of how I got there, the exciting thing is what I got out of it.
  
  First of all, I wanted to share something I've been thinking about lately.I have been wearing a ring on my wedding finger for about a week now. People ask me why, but until now I've held out. The ring helps remind me that the relationship that Christ started with me (others as well) is like a marriage. I am unmarried by the world's standards, but I'm joined to Christ in the standards that really count. I'm reminded to keep my thoughts about how I can please him. It's a radical idea, but big changes  are caused by little steps.

Anyways, back to what I learned. I was reminded how Christ called us not to live how we want to, do what ever we dream of, or even feel happy all of the time. He wants to totally destroy our lives, make us ask for death, and to hunger for him. When we truly are emptied of our reputations, pride,and emotional stabilities (for myself) he pours himself into us. We then find out that all of our pain,struggles, and hard times are for one thing. To rid us of everything but him. We are become like a child. The more time we spend with him, the more we are fulfilled. Separation becomes our fear. He becomes our all in all and we desire nothing else. Even in our low times, he is right there. It is such an amazing God we serve!

Called to live

If today were your last day, what would you say that you did with the life you were given? Did you truly live like God intended you to or did you just follow the crowd? A Francis Chan quote I have really come to like is : "God  is a creator, not a duplicator." Too many times I try to be this incredible person, I believe that I need to act a certain way, be just like so-and-so, and have to live just like the person I admire(Which happens to be Hudson Taylor). I'm not saying that having heroes is a bad thing at all. We all need to feel encouraged when we hear about people  who lived their lives for Christ alone.But lest we forget, the only way they were able to do what they did was though Christ. Hudson Taylor almost died early on in his life. The only way he survived was by a miracle of God. Can any of us say that we have that much faith? That we give up the security of being healthy to serve him? I can say I want to live a radical life, but will I live radically for Christ where I am? Sometimes we can forget that we were made for God's purpose, not our own. We get caught up in what we want to do for Christ with our life and end up missing the mission field in our own lives. God calls us not to live in the mountains but to bring joy down to the Valley of Despair. I saw a movie about a lady named Dorothy Day this past weekend. She started out wanting to further her and others agendas through political marches.She got introduced to the work of Christ through a Catholic nun. The nun ran a food kitchen for the poor. Dorothy saw that this lady was not getting anything out of the deal,so she got curious. To make a long story short, Dorothy made a place for the poor in her own  house. She eventually got so stressed with everything, so she went to her church and cried out to God. She wanted to see Christ in the people she served, just like Christ said "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me." She eventually did. Her love for those people is a shining light for all. Her ministry was called The Catholic workers. How often do we see Christ at our doorstep? In our homes? Inside our brothers and sisters? Let us live each day as our calling. We don't have to wait for God to "call us" to missions, he set us in one. It's called daily life.

Obsessed by God

Can you honestly say that the consideration of God fills every waking thought? I know that I can't. I tend to have things that are more important than God. Things that feel my day and push me further away from God. One of them is how much time I spend on the computer each day (Meaning this won't be a long post.).I consider time with God to be a chore. It is something I do to keep my day going well, to fulfill some "quota,"or only when I truly need something. Getting stuck in doing just enough is like what the Jews did with the law. We tend to strive to give God our "leftovers" in the words of Francis Chan. We give God only whats required, then wonder why we feel so empty of the Spirit. The goal of Christ was to call us higher. We can never give enough, be humble enough, or praise him enough to satisfy him. He wants our all. He wants us to be so obsessed with him that we have to trust in him for our daily necessities. when Christ called his disciples, he told them not to go back for supplies for their trip. No extra money, tunic,or walking staff. This type of devotion caused the disciple to be intimate with God. He was forced to trust that the Lord would provide. In the story of Abraham, he had to rely on the fact that God would provide. What would have been like if Abraham had killed his son only to be mocked by others for having faith? Are we so afraid to have faith that God will provide for all of our needs? I know I have many times. When hard situations arise, I tend to get really anxious, forgetting what Christ has done for all who had faith in him before me. Becoming obsessed with God means letting go of all our anxieties and focusing on him, making every experience we go through cause us to want him more, to fall madly in  love with him. Like we were meant to do.I pray that he would do this in me. He is our provider and we are his delight.When you fall in love, like everyone knows, you don't need to be reminded to think about someone, they are on your mind all the time. You will no longer serve God because you have to, but because you are so deeply in love that not serving him would be crazy.