One and Done.

Therefor we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Heb. 12:1-2

     There is so much rich truth in this one very long sentence.  The part I would like to share on is the bit in yellow.  I have been newly impressed and a touch depressed with the idea that I am such a sinner!  I have been diligently lately to keep my precious extra time that I have to myself, in the World of God.  When all three of the babies are occupied through out the day I have been listening to sermons.  The pockets of time are not always long but with these smart phones I can listen to a sermon while its quiet and hit pause when its not.  All this to say the more I am in the word the more clear cut my sin is.  I am grateful to see my sin so clearly and have to constantly remind myself that when I see something new or something old again I am under no condemnation.  The goal is to see it, confess it, do what ever needs to be done to make it right and move on. 

     For the first 5 years of parenting I was shocked that my kids needs continually changed. I have to confess I was also put out by it.  I had no intention of continuing to grow my whole life. I wanted to simply get it right and bask in my perfection.  Absurd I know but when I got habitually frustrated with the change I found this was my secrete rotten heart's desire.  An idol if you will.  The same has been true for myself in my walk with God.  I want to get it right and be done with the whole mess.  I'd like to be perfect and not deal with this sin issue ever again in my whole life! 

     Since this is not the reality of the human experience my desire now is to bask is thankfulness that I even see my sin and have been given the power to not choose it.  Laying aside the weight and the sin is such a privilege.  Is it work, yes!  But, it is a work that is made lighter with the perspective that it is profound grace on God part that I get to run this race at all. 

     How does this affect my everyday?  Well, my every day is spent with 3 little sinners and a chocolate lab.  I have been given the duty to train these babies up (ages 5,3,1 1/2).  I find myself at times...well most days being disillusioned with the same problem.  I want to train my kid in a manner that Paul (my husband) calls "one and done!"  When I am focused on my own comfort and desire (idols) for peace and obedience I get frustrated that my kids aren't getting in line with the plan.  One and done!  I teach you once and we shouldn't have to teach it again.  What a double standard when my Lord has patiently walked through out my life with me teaching me to trust and obey time and time again. 

     Lord, help me cast of the weight of my idol and the sin of worshiping them instead of You.  Help we raise my babies in the same manner that you continue to raise me. Consistent, gentle and full of grace.  I pray that if there are other Mommy's that read this blog that struggle in this area that you would strengthen them to lay aside their idols and cast of the sin that entangles them.  To run after you and bring the babies with them!  We love you Jesus.  We need our existence to be abiding in you to produce the fruit we desire to honor you with in this life!  Amen. 

God of Hate.

     Can you even handle that title?  I couldn't until recently.  In church there has been a gradual shift from teaching about God's hate to mostly teaching His love.  The wrath of God is even offensive to us if we don't understand it.  I have been studying, well listening to a study of ROMANS. I was a little taken back by how much was taught on God's wrath but if you listen to it you will hear a very simple truth as I did.  The "Good News" isn't as good until you hear the bad news.
    The bad news is this in a nut shell: We have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  He is only righteous and can not in any way shape or form mix or have anything to do with unrighteousness.  This is what is so safe true and constant about Him.  A righteous, holy God must have a reaction to unrighteousness, sin.  His reaction is judgement.  I said it, God hates sin and judges it!  EEK!  Maybe it is so offensive because we are hopeless on our own to mix or be with God.  This is the reality of life apart from God.  Judgement death and Hell for eternity after death.  So not exciting.  When we really get it that God isn't going to just let everyone into heaven in the end and that there really is existence after death it makes the gravity of righteous judgement weigh more.
     Good News!  God and Jesus before the creation of the world knew mankind would not make it to eternity with Them on their own.  They planned for Jesus to come to earth, humble Himself to live like us, be tempted like us with out sin and die a brutal death.  There wasn't a currency in existence before Christ's death to buy us.  His blood is the currency the only one of its kids.  God continues to hate sin to this day but because Christ died the consequence of sin (death) has been taken care of for those who Abide in Christ. WHAT!
     I have been on a wonderful journey to better understanding of grace in the last few years.  I used to treat grace like left overs.  I would eat them but I just want something new.  Grace is not left overs.  It is a feast we don't deserve to even look upon and we not only get to look at it we get to smell it and taste it and be filled by it.

     I have always loved the truth in John 15.  This chapter of the bible is were the title for this blog came from. Abide!  Thus far in my salvation I have been abiding in Christ  but it feels like just recently I am getting to know who I am abiding in more fully.  I would be so uncomfortable with scriptures that talked about God's judgement.  I was trying to make God like man.  I was trying to understand who God is through my experience of who man is.  This should not be done.  We are made in His image not the other way around.  The God of scripture is a God of Hate and a God of Love.  If this is still offensive to you, I encourage you to ask Him to reconcile to two aspects of His character for you.  I trust that you will find that it is not an offence but the safest most wonderful truth.
     When we see God for who He is and not just the comfortable fluffy comfort and love part then grace becomes so much more valuable.  If it is valuable how could we not share it with the world.

IMAGINATIONS

 
      I have been undone in God's grace this morning.  I want to share because this in a game changer in any human life and very much so in mine.  If you have known me or have had a single conversation with me you may have thought to yourself at one time or another, "Man, she is intense."  I am.  I know that some of the intensity is God given and a good thing.  I have been told I am like a spiritual "Elf."  I get excited about Jesus like the Buddy the elf gets excited about Santa in the movie Elf.  There is another side to the coin or my intensity.  A battle being fought constantly in my thought life.  Thinking is something we do more than anything else during out time on earth!  No matter what we are doing physically we are thinking all the while.  Now I have heard of the ability to "zone out."  The brain not really having any particular thought going on.  I have not personally ever experienced this.  My entire life it have felt like my brain is on over drive.  Some of this has to do with the Perceptual Motor Issues I experience and some of it has to do with trust.  Its the TRUST issue I'd like to share about today.
     I have been in relationship with Christ since around age 7.  I have been a student of the Word of God since the year after high school graduation.  13 years.  I have studied the bible for 13 years now and in that time I have come across many verses that SEEM powerful but just haven't been to me yet. There are two very familiar verses that became powerful to me this morning for the first time.
 
Phil. 2:12-15 
   Therefor, my beloved, as you have always obeyed not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Do all things without complaining and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.....

2 Cor. 10:5
     Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God and  bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 

     Sunday night, the end of the weekend I was doing the dinner dishes and I got louder and louder.  As I handled the kids my tone became harsher and harsher.  Paul, asked me what was going on and after trying to dodge the question several times I finally got to the bottom line.  "I'm angry that it all starts again tomorrow."  We are in a season right now that has seemed to me to be long and there is not grantee of change or relief in sight.  Paul works 50 at his factory job and volunteers another 10-20 a week for the fire dept.  The goal is to have a fire job some day which would provide more time and money.  The thing I care about the most is time.  Just recently I felt like I had a break through in my heart and was settled into the circumstances.  In meekness I said and lived to the Lord, "OK, this is it. This is the season and I'm going to worship God with my life in this season weather its enjoyable or not."  And of course it became more enjoyable with that perspective.  As I slammed dishes around last night I realized I am no longer in that frame of thinking.  I was back to the destructive thinking of entitlement, being done, hating the circumstances, and not wanting to do it all over again tomorrow.  Paul encouraged me, I calmed down and got through the rest of the night.  I woke this morning still angry at God about our life.   He whispered to my heart "what did I tell you in church yesterday."   Yesterday, He had told me that contentment can be mine.  He reminded me that I can worship Him in the midst of anything and it will change my perspective on everything.  I knew that I wasn't impressed with Him right now and that I need to be to live life fruitful today.  I told Him, "Lord, I'm not impressed.  Can you take my hard angry heart and impress me with yourself this morning."  Well, He said yes, now finally getting to the point I will share how He impressed me this morning. 
     
      My whole life I have read Phil. 2:14 "Do all things without complaining or disputing," in reference to my relationship with other people.  In context there is not as much being mentioned about other people as there is our relationship to God!  This scripture is saying do your life with out complaining and disputing it with God.  Now of course you can be real with God and tell Him things that are in the deepest darkest places of your heart that you would be modified if another person knew.  He wants to hear it all.  I am speaking on a continual complaint or dispute over something in your life He has not seen fit to change at this time.  Sunday night I was in a place to complaint and dispute over or life circumstances.  God is not changing them right now so I have the choice to make.  Complain or worship.  Complaining in the Greek means a grumble or murmuring.  Disputing in Greek is a discussion that is internal and externally a debate, dispute, doubt, imagination, reasoning or thought.  My discontentment with God over our life snuck in to my thinking.  It was all internal for a while a murmur to myself about how I don't like my life and then it turned into an outward dispute as I slammed the dishes and yelled at our kids.  Discontentment never hits us like a Mac Truck, it always sneaks in the back door of processing life with out the filter of thankfulness. I thought it was interesting that disputing with God had in its definitions the word imagination.  I have always thought of the word imagination as something you use as a child to make a fun wonderful world in your head.  It is, but in this context it is as 2 Cor. 10 says a high thing that exalts it self against the knowledge of God.  When I don't like my life circumstances the first high (imagination) thought that comes to mind is that God doesn't have my best at heart.  He isn't good or to be trusted that He doesn't want me to be happy.  This of course if false.  We know that God works all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rom.8:28).  Any thought that tries to exalt itself against that truth is an imagination or dispute against God.  We are told to bring every thought of that kind to the captivity of Christ! 
     As I feel my heart lean towards murmuring and complaining I have to snatch it and put it were it belongs.  It belongs in the captivity of Christ.  Christ not only died for our sin to allow us to be right with God but He is an active part of us living fruitful lives now.  He will take those thoughts if we would be discipline to give them to Him and hold them under guard where they can not destroy our thinking and render us fruitless and slamming dishes.  
     I have spent so much time in my walk with God trying to "figure things out."  All in the name of "its my personality to process deeply."  Really, I have wasted time and energy on fruitless thought.  I have replace trust with imaginations.  Imaginations in the Greek from 2 Cor. 10:5 means computation and computation means an act of processing or a method of computing, calculation.  I have try to figure things out instead of trust my Lord to handle the things that concern me.  His ways are higher than ours. There is a place for processing and evaluating life and then there is a time to let it go and trust that even if it doesn't all add up in the limited perspective we have this side of heaven, we can trust God who is calmly in control of EVERY aspect of our life. 

This is my favorite mug. It joins me in most of my big life lessons.