Archive for Change
What Does It Mean to Have Your Soul Restored? (pt. 3)
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When I meditate on this topic, I have the feeling that this will be a long train running. Although my thoughts may be jumping around like popcorn popping, I hope and trust that when the popping stops, it will all fit.
One of the thoughts I have proposed in these blogs is that in the process of God restoring our souls, He uses difficult seasons of our lives and dark places like the ‘valley of the shadow of death’ and ‘the presence of our enemies’.
While I personally hate these dark places and resist them, God is not afraid of them. In fact, He is there with His rod and His staff to comfort me and guide me through them.
What happens during dark seasons that invites us into a deeper place of soul restoration?
I have found in my own life that difficulty has the potential, if I will but embrace it, to make me aware. Mindful. Conscious. Alert.
Job, a man who was declared by God Himself, to be His servant, with a heart like no one else alive on the earth at the time, blameless, upright, one who feared God and resisted evil, lived through a valley so dark that it leaves us struggling to explain God. One read through the book of Job either leads us to throw our Bible across the room or scramble to come up with a more palatable explanation of God’s ways than are evidenced in Job’s life.
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Surviving Your Winter Season
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I am yearning for springtime and yet just outside my window, snow blankets my world. It’s been a very unusual winter for those of us who live in northwest Alabama. I’ve lost count of how many ‘snows’ we have had this year. We normally don’t have ANY snow and can sometimes go several years without snow, but this year we’ve been covered again and again with beautiful, thick and heavy blankets of white.
As I sit and take in the beauty, I also find my heart longing for warmth, for the earth to thaw and yield sprouting daffodils and budding crepe myrtles. Springtime often arrives early here, and I am living with the anticipation that it could be any day now. But then again, in my mind, I regretfully acknowledge that if the tender signs of springtime burst forth too soon, winter will likely once again roar its bitter voice and destroy the early promises of spring.
Yet I find it hard to wait. Impatience stirs within me, but the seasons are out of my control.
So it often is in our lives. Winter comes without our invitation and brings death, or so it appears. The leaves that were once green and then later ablaze with autumn colors, fall away and leave nakedness. All visible signs of life disappear. The horizon of our lives looks barren and colorless.
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Are You Willing to Face Your Struggles?
Posted by: | CommentsWhat have you struggled with lately? Fear? Anger? Resentment? Unforgiveness? Pride? The list of human issues is endless, but the common truth is that none of us are completely “whole”. None of us have arrived at perfection.
We who are believers in Christ are on a life-long journey to become more like him. Along with David, we long for the day when we awake “satisfied” because we are finally in his likeness (Psalm 17:15).
There are many ways that we can choose to deal with our struggles, whether they are relational, financial, emotional, physical, mental or spiritual. Sometimes our “go to” mentality is that our problems are always someone else’s fault; we blame. At other times, we deny we have any issues. We try to ignore them; we push them down into our emotional abyss. Other times we exaggerate them or minimize them.
The more difficult and more honest path is the path of allowing God’s Holy Spirit to show us our “sore spots”. We could probably ask a close friend and they could name our issues for us! As a matter of fact, it is good to periodically check in with those who are close to us, those we trust deeply, about their observations of our life. Be sure you are ready for the truth if you do this, and then take whatever is shared to God and ask His opinion of it.
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Listening to My Heart
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Black Friday has arrived, and I am sitting at home. It’s 6:30 a.m. This is the first year in decades that I haven’t been out shopping for several hours by now.
Normally, I love the rush. Oh, not the crowds and the pushing and shoving, but the adrenaline rush I feel when I, yes ME, I get the good buy. I snatch the very last one of whatever it is that is a most amazing buy or a rare treasure.
My husband snickered when I said I wasn’t going shopping on Black Friday this year. “Yeah, sure.” After all, this is new behavior for me! But I just couldn’t find any desire to go this year.
Reason #1 – My daughter is in Texas for the holiday. She and I usually shop together on Black Friday. By this time, we’ve usually snagged some awesome deals and have driven through Chick-Fil-A with our coupon and capitalized on the buy one, get one free chicken biscuit deal and grabbed 2 cups of coffee to refuel ourselves for the next leg of the day.
But beyond that reason, I am just finding myself in a new stage of life – again. I feel differently about the holiday season this year. I almost feel an inner protest, but yet I suppose that’s not exactly the right description.
I am longing for the deeply meaningful.
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Are You Ready to Take a Risk?
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To live is to risk, and it’s been that way since day one. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden and gave them a choice. Religion often finds this uncomfortable at best and unacceptable at worst. Oh, no religious system would declare openly that God was wrong, but their practices and rules say that they disagree with God on this matter.
Herein lies one of the differences of religion and spirituality. As I explore God and others and my own life through spirituality, I can risk. I can expand my boundaries. I can look at you and draw the good out of you and your life, apply it to my own, and still not totally agree with everything you are and everything you believe.
Religion, on the other hand, says, “You must be just like me.” Religion narrows our focus and our ability to take a risk.
I know a few of you are already ready to throw rocks at me, but stay with me for a minute or two. Take a risk.
We as Christian say that we place the ultimate value on freedom, yet freedom often makes us very uncomfortable. If we allow people in our churches to be free, they might do something or say something or believe something that is WRONG, something that makes us look bad, something that stains our reputations. Duh, that happens anyway!
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