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.