This Ain't Happening

And yet.. we still choose wrong at times. We sin, filled with the Spirit of God.

Christ promised the disciples that the Spirit was with them and would be in them.. and then at Pentecost the Spirit descended upon them, not as a dove but as tongues of fire.. either way, it was a filling of our spirit and our mind and our bodies.. it was the arrival of the Holy Spirit within us to help us discern right and wrong on a greater level. When we are walking in obedience and our conscience is clean for a moment before God.. we know that incredible peace with God.

But we are all human and have sin in our life at all times.. not that this is an excuse to sin.. rather it is the Spirit of God that brings each sin to our attention as we are able to bear it.. and he works with us to clean it up and to change. One sin at a time. We are commanded to be perfect.. knowing that we will never be perfect in this life.. but the true exhortation of that command is to SEEK to be perfect.. meaning clean up as the Spirit of God guides you to.

Sounds easy, but it is often a lengthy process to recover when you are devastated by someone elses sin against you or your sin against them. In such times, it often requires a great deal of love and mercy to bring healing to your spirit and your mind and your life. God's love is so patient in such matters.. ppl are not. God's love brings the right measure of discipline, always with love.. ppl do not. Not in my experience. But I have learned that it doesn't really matter how ppl or the church or anything or anyone handles me in such matters, whether they hurt me more or help me along.. what matters is God. Getting to him, hearing him, cleaning up to please him.. everyone else is gonna fail me.. everyone else is gonna abandon me.. everyone else has their own walk to figure out along the way.. and there is good and bad in that.. too much to sort out the right and the wrong of it really.. but that's not the focus. They have to work out their own salvation as Scripture declares... tho our lives remain connected and interdependent in ways as family.

My experience is my experience.. the God I know is the God I know. Ppl are important, but they are not the focus. They're gonna love you and then hate you in the next minute.. they are just as messed up and mixed up as I am and you are. They matter but they are not the LIGHT. Love them but don't follow them. Relate to them but don't idolize them as more than God made a man or woman to be. Christ is center. And no matter how much leaders and pastors and religious ppl and family/spouses demand your obedience and submission, you owe them nothing except what God declares..

otherwise, you have made them an idol in your heart.

The Spirit of God is in you as a believer, as one baptized by his Spirit.. he is in us to keep us from becoming comfortable with our sin. When we embrace sin and allow it to take up residence in our life as tho we are married to it.. we lose the peace of God because the Spirit of God says.. "this ain't hap'nin.. that thing has got to go!" And he begins to help us to understand why, to comprehend the threat of death involved, whatever it takes.. a nurturing mothers heart or a fathers discipline across our backside. It is a miserable thing to lose the peace of God in your spirit and your life. Thank God that he refuses to be silent and passive when we let that wolf or that lie or that evil thing into our heart. Thank God that when we have been devastated by someone's sin against us, weak and crippled and bleeding, that he is patient in nursing us back to health no matter how messy our walk might be. Thank God he pushes us (as we are able) to get back on our feet and to run despite the pain, so that we can become stronger and overcome that thing that hell threw at us by using ppl we love against us.

When you think about it.. the only thing we really must have in this life or the next is peace with God. Jesus came to give us that, sent the holy spirit to remind us what he said we needed to do to have it, and the rest is up to us. We are miserable when we lose it.. but God works all things to help us to find it again. We just gotta make up our minds that we want it.

Remind Me One More Time

Was thinking about the baptism of Jesus the other day.. and how that John the Baptist told Jesus that it didn't make sense, that John needed to be baptized by Jesus.. but Jesus said it had to be this way for now because he was setting an example, making a trail for us to follow in how to live out all that God was asking of us. Water baptism is an essential statement to those around us that we have died to who we were and made alive again as a new person by the mercy and cleansing power of God.

I wondered at the Holy Spirit descending upon him like a dove, and how exactly that was for our example seeing that everyone present witnessed it as well as the voice that spoke from heaven declaring that he was the son of God. And the most sense I can make of it is that it was again for our example in what we should follow and live out. Jesus was fully man and tempted in every way that we are, even tho he was fully God at the same time. He laid down his glory and power and took on flesh. That flesh was just like ours.. and needed a filling of spiritual power to equip us to resist the temptations of the flesh. The baptism of the Holy Spirit.

When you think about it.. the persons of God visit us at different moments/dispensations and perform specific roles. At this time, Jesus came as Sacrifice for the atonement of mankind.. he will come the next time as Messiah and King to establish his rule on the earth in a new and powerful way. The Holy Spirit comes to mankind as "divine paraclete: one called alongside to help." He brings all that Christ and God has said to our remembrance.. reminds us of right and wrong in those moments when we are tested or tempted or weak. It's like a cheat sheet in our conscience of all the right answers, given by God, so that we can cheat sin and the second death.

The dove descended upon Christ to endue him with power in the flesh before he was led into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan.. he was given the cheat sheet.. and he chose to use it against the enemies attempts.. it is one of the first and most famous scenes that displays the quoting of Scripture/the Word of God to empower us to choose what is right and to overcome our sin nature. We must still choose to do what's right, just as Christ chose as a man.. but the Holy Spirit whispers to our heart and our spirit and our mind what is clearly right and wrong, black and white, life and death.

Pretty cool ♥

Self Check Out

I think my kids were like elementary school or jr high or so when they first implemented self check out lanes.. I would never use them because I was intimidated by the technology.. yes, I know.. you may laugh at me.. but after waiting in long lines for a few items, my kids began grabbing my hand and dragging me to the little computer (which no one was using I might add because my entire generation shared the same intimidation).. they literally fussed at me as they walked me through all the steps to check out.. and in minutes each time we were done..

eventually I picked up on it.. and became a pro at one of the most simple of tech advancements in the modern day grocery.. and so went our journey through technology through the years as my children led me along and became my teachers.. I still call them when I run into anything new.. totally freaking out.. but now they don't so much fuss any more as giggle at me under their breath, but just loud enough for me to hear them..

they love telling stories about mom.. and I have given them many to tell much to my regret.. hahaha.

Suffer the Children

~ The Jesus I know is so unlike many superspiritual teachers and preachers today... I remember when we were young parents and James was only a few months old.. we were invited to the big prophetic Bible Study thats still in town.. it was at a doctors house at that time but was led by a guy named Glenn.. a friend invited us and said we could bring the baby... my friend and I sat in the floor in a connected kitchen between an island and counter.. our husbands sat in the livingroom where they were having the study.. James cooed once or twice.. but most ppl there didnt even know he was there.. had he gotten upset there was a bedroom used as a coatroom I could have taken him... but after the study Glenn told my friend to tell me that we could come back but not.to bring the baby.. that babies were a "distaction"

We never went back.. will never go back tho they still meet here and there and consider themselves The Prophets over our city and are endorsed by many churches... I am sure they meant well and did it by mandate of God in their minds... but that wasnt the mandate my Jesus gave me. I wanted my child with me... had he become a distraction I was accountable to God and the ppl in that group to soothe him or remove him and myself... thats the call of motherhood... thats why many children lack discipline because they are never in an environment to use self control and parents never have to practice disciplining in love...

~ It is not cruel or mean or unreasonable to expect a child to use self control in a boring setting for an hour or two... time a bottle feeding for halfway through (beastmilk or formula), bring books or drawing pad, and let them be bored part of the time.. plan ahead, create a discipline of expectations for ur child and yourself... be ready to miss part of the service should it be a bad day and you have to excuse yourself and your child to sit in the nursing room where you are both bored... parenting is sacrifice... but the rewards of good parenting will be reaped by your child no matter how much they never fathom the depth of your sacrifice... they will see it in glimpses and phases of life... God lets no sacrifice of love go unrewarded... rewarded 10 times over in most cases... why 10 times you ask?... because numbers are significant to God and 10 symbolizes a time of testing in Scripture... we expect good behavior from our children tho their bad behavior ceaselessly shows itself... but we as parents are tested by God as well.. he expects us to parent well.. following his example of parenting us... 

It is Gods approval and mercy and reward we seek as parents... anything our children acknowledge that we did right is just icing on the cake, a bonus... but Dr. Dobson is right... that true appreciation of our children for us as parents doesnt fully kick in until betwn 23-26 years old... most children are thankful in some measure, but early/mid-20s is when the true depth of the sacrifices made is understood.

~ Dont think a baby can learn self control... just pick them up every time they whimper.. 

If it is so reasonable and easy to teach a spoiled mentality to a child.. why is it so unreasonable to teach a patient and self controlled mentality... how is training our children in positive behavior something seen as so negative?

Dont pick that baby up every time it whimpers... dont reward them with a snack or anything entertaining while you both have to sit out of service... dont take them outside to play when they refused to stop talking loudly or crawling under the pews during service... let them spend that time in time out until service becomes way more fun than a spat on the backside in the bathroom or sitting on the floor in the mothers room or a blank empty hallway for the last 30 mins of service...

It would be so much easier to throw our hands up and be sloppy, unconcerned parents who hand our children off to someone else every chance we have... but we curse our childrens futur in some measure when we do that.. and God will hold us accountable for bad parenting just as sure as he rewards good parenting. .. NO ONE SAID PERFECT PARENTING... IT JUST DOESNT EXIST.

and sometimes you do need to hand your children off to someone who will love and nurture them while you recharge... but if you are handing your children off more than 20% of the time... you may need to check yourself.

~ NO ONE CAN REPLACE MOM AND DAD IN A CHILDS LIFE... no matter how well meaning or loving or kind they are... its a spiritual thing.. a Godly assignment of authority and relationship that goes deeper than we realize... it is a model of our connection and family bond with God himself... he would never abandon us or hand us off as tho we are a chore... our model of parenting on every level must be the model God demonstrates toward us... what we measure ourselves to and what we sacrifice and reach for... the closer we can manage to get.. the more goodness is released for the glory of God and those who trust him.

Detective Mom

I thank God he made me a mom..

Got a call last night that baby boy was on his way home from girlfriends parents house out in the sticks.. went to bed.. was woke up this morning at being asked if he ever came home last night.. to which I replied as I sprang out of bed, "Oh God..."

Checked our phones.. no msgs.. but I had this vague memory of hearing microwave buttons about an hour ago in the kit...chen upstairs above my room... while waiting for a reply to our frantic txts to him, I woke his sister to ask if he had come home last night.. she had not heard from him...

Still waiting for a reply from him.. I went to his room to see if I could tell if he had been there in the night.. nothing out of the ordinary.. but I noticed a bowl of food by his bed... I picked it up and it was cold at first, but then I felt the bottom center of it and it was still faintly warm. Instant relief.. I knew he had made it home in the night... soon after he txt'd to say he had run to the store... 6am and he runs to the store... at 19 and constantly burning up the roads, he prolly hadn't even been to bed at all yet.

So add detective once again to my job description as mom... altho my heart freaks out pretty good at such moments.. God truly gives you a spider sense when he calls you into parenthood. There is so much you dont see coming at you and your family.. but he equips you along the way and makes you able to bear so much more than you ever dreamed you could.

Adult children still need family and home, someone watching their back, and a soft place to land as they stumble thru life like the rest of us.. you have to be that strong yet nurturing force when they are young.. but when they are grown, you get to let them make the decisions that guide their lives.. and you get to just love them ♥




 

ADHD.. *yawn...

So here is a quirky observation that may just confirm medical break thrus or reveal something about them.. but I have worked with children for many years and I have noticed a common thread with many ADHD children. When they are lovingly corrected, and they acknowledge the correction and try to change their behavior in that moment.. a common response is to yawn.

I know that sounds a little bizarre and quirky but.. you know me.. I am the queen of bizarre and quirky.. lol

But I have noticed the same reaction in the hyperactive dog that we now own. We have never had a small dog before.. but he is very belligerent and insistent upon certain behaviors or wants.. when I correct him or calmly but sternly say "no" when he is flirting around with certain disaster.. he often yawns.

It's almost like they take control of something inside themselves and flip a switch to turn off some certain behavior.. and that stress or release of stress that allows them to do that reveals itself in the form of a yawn. I am no medical expert.. but perhaps there is some link or key to ADHD that is associated with the part of the brain that is affected by sleep or boredom or whatever it is that inspires a person to yawn.

I don't know what I am saying.. it was just an observation that I have noticed through the years that kind of culminated in an ah-ha moment of sorts tonight.. so yeah, I will leave it to the analytical minds out there to make a connection of some form to help treat or cure ADHD without drugs.. maybe thru some form of sleep manipulation.

So there you go.. chew on that one =)

Dead Worship

~ Flashback:  Midnight Special.. so great.. live performances.. so much greater than the staged videos of later music shows like MTV and VH1.. had a more intimate feel with the artists than the mass produced music industry that followed... all the digital this and that... technology has really smothered something in music..

~ same thing with worship music... we've lost an intimacy with all the staged and technological super shows.. Satan was over music.. it was a sensual, intimate thing that reached into the very being of ppl.. a spiritual/religious experience.. originally sposed to be with the same God that created the sexual experience between a husband and wifey.. "then it all went wrong"

~ not that it has to be accoustically driven.. but the scripted, staged, hype-man/woman is kinda nauseating.. and it has become the norm... everyone talks of being undignified like David.. but few go there on a personal level.. and worship leaders will never take us there until they go alone, whether anyone goes with them or not... those are the leaders that release that authentic aroma of worship of our God.. when they go to those intimate places of worship unafraid of who or what system they offend...

~ Everyone makes it about the issue that David danced naked.. like his nakedness was the hinge and focus of that moment of authentic worship.. or that he told his wife off with an arrogant rant about being undignified.. that wasn't it at all. It was David expressing something that had eaten him up inside and spilled over into his physical man, uncontrollable, offensive, uncaring of anything or anyone except the God that overwhelmed his heart and very being. It was an act of desperation, and a cry of exhiliaration, in that one moment when everything in him threw off all weights and stumbling blocks that stood in the way of complete intimacy with his God...

~ For David that was an unrestrained dance that led to an honest and truthful wardrobe malfunction.. he unintentionally shed his clothes in the middle of a church/worship ceremony... for you and me, it will look very differently.. it will be personal, it will be just as offensive to onlookers in the church and outside the church, but it will take us to a place where we experience God in a way that we have never imagined. Just as sex is such a personal experience.. so is worship.. only it is your spirit that reaches that place of zoe.. for God is a Spirit.

Just a China Teapot

This is what's left of my mom's china.. I kept it wrapped in clothes in a suitcase I used to use when traveling around as a kid. I was shuffled around alot, and it is by the grace of God that it survived all my travels. When my oldest brother got married, and I was going off to college, I gave it to him where it would be safe. He keeps it displayed in the foyer of his home with my fathers ring.

They are precious to my entire family and I love seeing them each time I visit his home. My mom had lots of beautiful glassware, we were small when she died, and it all got lost in the shuffle. The cool thing is that my brother didn't even know I had kept it. We had to flee our home as kids and it was one of the few things of my moms I managed to hide away. I was visiting my brother my last year of high school and he made the comment one night as we were talking how much he wished he had mom's teapot of all her things.. I had no idea it meant as much to him as to me... when I took it from my suitcase to show him.. he was so moved by it, that I gave it to him to keep safe for our family. Funny how those split second thoughts as a kid are so guided by God, even concerning things that would seem so insignificant as a little china teapot.

It's old and prolly has a reasonable monetary value.. but no one in my family could set a price on it. It is one of the few remaining possessions that our mother's hands had handled with such care and tenderness. It's so much more than priceless ♥

~ The other great thing I forgot to mention is that my oldest brother had left home years before me.. he had taken the creamer dish from her dishes that we had salvaged as kids.. he was showing me the creamer dish that night that we were talking and was remembering drinking tea with my mom as a boy.. then I dug the teapot from my suitcase and gave it to him.. I love that some of our fondest memories of my mom were so similar. What are the odds that we would both hide away pieces of her china without knowing that one day as adults we would bring those pieces back together. Such a picture of how God keeps his promises.. he watches over the fatherless and the motherless.. he heals and restores the things we think are lost forever. 

~ and he uses us in the process... pretty incredible.

Husbands and Wives: Next Gen Challenge

My challenge to the next generation... 

Husbands love your wives, not according to the example your parents and society set.. but to the example that Christ set as he died to himself daily for his bride.. even to the end, giving up all the glory that he was due, and suffered injustice on a cross until death in her place and for her sake, as undeserving as she was. 

Wives submit to your husbands, despite what the world says a woman's rights are, despite the arrogance of men and systems and even some that call themselves Christian, despite how badly they may lead, God will keep you and your children where ever you end up, whether in the ditch, plunging over the cliff to certain death, or in the opposite direction that you know God pointed.. if you submit out of respect for him, God will work all things for good because of your obedience and love for Christ. He promises, and we know that he is not a man that he would lie.

No one gets a perfect life.
No one gets a perfect marriage.
You gotta do the best you can,
and sort all things out with God out loud along the way.

Good luck with that ♥

In a Little Clay Pot

Why is it that when we talk about living for God we think of some great and world-impacting thing that we need to do?.. as though our lives have less meaning and purpose unless we lead a drove of ppl to Christ... 

and that is good, and that is the forefront of our walk.. but the numbers are not the measure.. the measure would seem to fulfill the purpose and calling of what God has ordered our steps to do. What if your entire life wasn't about traveling to other lands, or preaching to a crowd of thousands? What if your mission was to make a difference in the life of that little neighbor kid that everyone has overlooked and rushed by on their way to church every morning? What if pouring your life into your children, so that God can use them to reach that neighbor kid isn't being the obsessive parent the world criticizes you for being?...

What if God formed you and fashioned you to do the little things that no one else wants to do because there's no spotlight, and no one will ever know your name, and you don't get to travel to exciting places and do all the cutting edge ministry and adventure? What if the souls on your list to cross paths with and plant seed in their hearts are only one or only a few or in the quiet and forgotten places?

Why is it our nature to dictate to God what our Christian walk is sposed to look like? Why not let him lead and why not seek him to teach us contentment in the things that we deem so nothing and insignificant? Why not ask him to help us to see the ppl and calling and mission of our life as he sees it, rather than as the religious crowd and the world and the well-meaning see it?

Sometimes, a life is to be lived planted in a little red clay pot, on a window sill, in a tiny house, on a quiet road.. seen by only a few, but the most rare and precious fragrance to the God and the ppl that needed you to love them ♥

Alone in the New Year

So many friends are going thru difficult times... the loss of loved ones, serious sickness, or personal crisis that they cant really talk about... words seem so small to those watching and feeling so helpless... like glasses of water on a raging inferno... the world dances by celebrating the New Year and all the festivities, while you suffer a sense of loss and loneliness that is inescapable, and there are no answers or explanations...

I just want to say that as much as it seems that no one notices or cares... there are ppl who do... you are loved, and while our prayers feel so small and our words are few because we feel so helpless, our hearts hurt with you and for you... I pray that whatever the reason for the difficulty you are facing... or the lack of reasoning.. that God would in some way comfort you tonight... that he would bring direction and refreshing in how to walk that thing out...

I pray that he would send friends and even strangers that know him to come and be a shoulder to help you carry and bear that heaviness until you are stong enough to carry it as a token rather than a weight. Some things cant be shed in this life... some things remain but God changes us and equips us to overcome the pain that it inflicts. ..

I pray tonight that a rare and precious beauty emerges from the darkness that threatens you, from the evil that is pressing in upon you, from the ashes that have robbed you... so that the face of God leaves an imprint on you as it becomes a revelation of how very close and present he is... of how he stands between you and the enemies assault as your sheild and your very present help in time of trouble...

Love to you.. to my friends who have suffered much as this year has transitioned.. may you feel the arms of God around you in real and practical and intimate ways so that you are strengthened and assured that you are loved... and you are not alone despite how alone such things can make you feel. Love and hugs and prayers for strength. In the name of Jesus. Amen ♥