Fan or Follower

Fan or follower?  I just finished listening to a teaching from Priscilla Shrirer and that was one of the questions she posed.  She also directed me to the question from Jesus.   When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”  14 So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”15 He said to them,  BUT WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?" (Matthew 16:13-15)  I coupled this message with the woman of the week in our "Women of the Bible" study we've been doing.  We are studying the Shulammite woman of Song of Songs.  

This was quite the convicting message.  Some days I am definitely more like a fan than a follower.  And when I look at the Shulammite woman's longing and seeking her lover...I know I fall short of seeking my God that way.  Do I search for Him with all my might?  Does He consume my thoughts and heart.  Or do I like, Priscilla said, not allow Him to inhabit parts of my heart.  Do I keep them like treasures not to be touched.  

The thoughts of the Shulammite woman were consumed with her lover.  Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.  Who is more true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and worthy of praise then our Lord and Savior?  

In Luke 9:23, Jesus said: Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me.   Do we want to truly follow Him?  Then we must give up our own way, put His ways and plans first, meditate on Him, on His Word.  

A fan knows about Jesus.  Knows about God the Father, and the Holy Spirit.  A following knows Him.  Personally.  Seeks Him daily, moment by moment.  A fan attends church, maybe once a week, once in a while.  A fan makes his or her own desires and needs a priority.  A follower looks for fellowship with God and other Christians often.  He spends time with the Lord.  Puts God's plans in front of His own.  

I was convicted in this message.  Sometimes I act more like a fan.  I make idols of other things, like "downtime."  I put my own desires first.  This was a great question that cleaned out my heart.  

I'm so grateful Lord that You ask the tough questions.  I am so grateful that You work with us all the time to bring us upward and onward in the journey with You.  We so often need reminders and some heart sweeping out.  I love how You gently do that with Your probing, poignant questions and messages.  Thank You.  Please keep our walk with You moving forward and our hearts in the right place.  In Jesus' Name.  Amen.

Check your heart today.  

2 Corinthians 13:5   Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith.

Through the Eyes of Our Father

Isaiah 61:10  I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me in garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness.  As a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with jewels. 

Continuing on with this string of visits!  God is making jewelry for us again!  

As I was progressing on through the spiritual discipline study, I came to the chapter on memorization.  Dreaded and feared with great trepidation...Scripture memorization!!  Oh when I see those words, my heart freezes and my mind wants to run away.  I feel so inadequate of this monumental task.  LOL  But onward I wade into the waters of the memory.  

So the first thing I needed was a Scripture to focus on.  The book recommended something we were presently studying in our lives, or a verse that spoke to something we needed topically.  Like, if you deal with anger...then Scripture on that.  If it's addiction, then maybe something on how God breaks chains...You get the idea. 

Well, since this "way God sees me" thing has been so big for me, I wanted something that spoke to this area my Father was working on.  I knew that there was Scripture about our "robes of righteousness" and this is where I felt led to go.  What came up on my Bible Gateway search was Isaiah 61:10, the beautifully affirming verse above.  It's exactly what I wanted (or should I say what God wanted for me).  

I mentioned that it would take me some time to unpack this whole thing about how God sees me (and you) through eyes of mercy.  And this is part of that unpacking.  In order to move forward with soaking this all in, I need His Word to water the seed that was planted through the video and song of Chondra Pierce.  Matthew 13:23 But he who receives the seed on good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  I'm determined to have a heart of good ground, and even more determined that these God visits would bear good fruit to the glory of God.  

To that end, I will carry His Word in my heart, I will practice this memorization thing.  I may not be perfect at it, but I will do it anyway.  Jesus doesn't seek our  perfection, but our willingness.  I love how our Father is working this into the soil of my heart.  I hope and pray that it is happening for you dear readers as well.  I pray that you will start to understand (along with me) that we are seen through eyes of mercy not judgement.  Because of Jesus we are seen as beautiful and loved.  

Lord, lead us I pray in Your love.  Let us walk, knowing how much we are loved and adored by You...so much so that You see us as beautiful and righteous every moment of our day.  You willingly and lovingly wrap us in Your arms when we fail, seeing our repentant hearts and knowing that we need growing not condemnation.  You bless us with correction, but never turn Your back.  Lord, You Yourself have provided the garments of salvation and the robes of righteousness.  We didn't earn them.  I praise and worship before You as the merciful, tender loving Father You are.  Help us to hold onto this truth so that we don't become discouraged, but continue to grow in You and abide in our Lord and Savior Jesus.  It's in His Name I pray.  Amen. 

Trust God's love.  

Psalm 31:21  Praise be to the Lord, for He showed His wonderful love to me.

Jeremiah 31:3  I have loved you with an everlasting love.

Zephaniah 3:17 The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. 

Blocking/Unlocking/Tearing Down

The morning after I wrote last week's "Beautiful" entry, me and my coffee went to sit with the Lord for a while before starting the day.  I try to remember to come before Him with thanksgiving in my heart and enter His gates with praise, because I have a habit of just jumping on the prayers to be said, study to be done or reading to read.  I don't want to treat my time with the Lord as an item on  my to do list, so my goal is to develop better "God time" habits. I want to grow my relationship with Him, sitting as friends sit, while still honoring Him as the Almighty Creator, Savior and King of the universe.  Praise and thanksgiving first!  That being said, I started thanking Him for the gift He had given me in the Chondra Pierce session from the ladies night. Right away, I started to feel the "you're not worthy, God can't possibly see you as beautiful....." thoughts start to arise.  The battle is on!  

The first thing I needed to do was to block these thoughts, these negative voices that start whispering the lies of Satan to me.  Whether they are coming from demonic forces, or even my own inner voice that's been conditioned to repeat the lies, I don't know.  I only know they are counter to what my Father has told me so they need not allowed to enter into my heart.  

Secondly, I needed to unlock my faith.  Sometimes I think faith is locked out of my heart.  I can have faith for others.  I can have faith for salvation.  But I cannot take hold of the faith to believe the good things God says about me, or how He sees me, or that He wants to bless me.  And that brings us to the wall.

The wall around my heart has been there a very, very long time.  Sure I've made some progress over the years chipping away at it.  I've also spent time rebuilding it.  A wall made up of guilt, shame, failures, sins condemnation, low self-esteem, low esteem of God's ability to love and forgive.  A long time ago a friend told me she "saw" Jesus outside this wall around my heart trying to get in.  I can "see" Him there as well, trying to be fully enthroned upon my heart, while my wall blocks the way to this throne.  So this wall needs to be torn down.  Completely.  Permanently.  And that time is NOW!

What are you being told, telling yourself and believing about you?  Where is your faith for you?  What are your walls made of?  These are all questions we need to ask ourselves if we are feeling stagnated in our walk and relationship with the Lord.  I believe God gave this visit to me to share with others, because I know I am not alone in this.  I also know I've been hearing a lot lately, the verse in Esther 4:14 For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”  The Lord needs people who know who they are and are strong in their faith for the times we are in.  As the days on earth grow darker, we need to be built up to be warriors in the kingdom of God.  We can't be that if we are wallowing in guilt, shame, self-pity, sin....I pray for all of us that we will be built up in the power of the Lord to be His light in this dark world where we are pilgrims and sojourners.  It's time for me, and for anyone who carriers negative baggage to leave that baggage behind and run the race God has set before us.  We have work to do!! 

Matthew 11:28-30  Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Lay down the junk we carry and take up the yoke we share with Jesus.  

Thank You Lord for this visit that reaffirms Your words to me.  We all need to accept that You see us through eyes of love and mercy and relish that truth, revel in it and let it heal us of the past, of guilt, shame and condemnation so we can be strong in You and the power of Your might.  Let us not dwell on our sinfulness, our mistakes or our past, but let us dwell on You, Your love, Your work of salvation, Your mercy, Your kindness.....Let us dwell on You!  Be glorified!  Teach us, lead us and equip us to be Your warriors and Your servants.  Humble and strong.  It's in Jesus' Name I pray.  Amen. 

Romans 8:1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 10:4-5  For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

Beautiful

 August 9, 2024

Yesterday was an amazingly freeing and heart touching day for me.  God was so beautiful and so reflecting of His lovingkindness to me.  I am blessed and peaceful and feeling loved like I could not believe.

For many years I’ve carried the guilt of my past, and my present.  I’ve never realized until last night at the Neighborhood Ladies Meeting where we watched a Chondra Pierce comedy video, that a lot of what I was carrying besides the guilt and feelings of “never good enough” and unworthiness, was shame.  I see myself as shameful.  She talked about not liking what we see in the mirror, of even hating it.  And when I look at myself, with all my unbelievably dark stains of sin, and the way I still behave today….I really don’t like myself very much.  And so of course I transfer that way of looking at myself to how God Himself sees me.  

No matter that He told me years ago that I could never “out sin” His love.  That day in the car when He told me this I wept and repented.  I saw my wretchedness as bigger than Him, bigger than His love and bigger than the Cross.  He corrected me that day, convicting me of idolatry.   I’ve had trouble hanging onto this message from Him, still seeing myself as ugly in His eyes.  When I screw up, I let this truth slip from my grasp, reverting the the "I'm never good enough." refrain.  

No matter about 18 months ago when He told me through our BSF facilitator that He stopped remembering my sin, why was I still bringing it up.  This too, I have trouble hanging onto. 

Fast forward to yesterday.  One of the questions in a Bible study that I am doing was, “What are some things that might keep you from studying Scripture with others?”  Well, I actually like to study Scripture with others, but that doesn’t mean I open myself up completely, unashamedly.  I wrote as part of my answer that I am fearful of studying with others, or I should really say, fearful of sharing myself with others because if they saw the true me, the deep down, failing, and ungodlike parts of me, they would run.  They would judge and reject….just the way I myself do when I “look in the mirror.”  If they knew the things I’ve done, the unkindness that roams my heart….These are the things I hide behind the “Christian face” I put on. 

And so seeing myself that way, I assume that God, even though He loves me, does not really approve of me or see me as beautiful.  

But last night, at what was supposed to be a light hearted gathering of ladies, God reached me in the deepest way.  He even had Chondra mention the specific sin I feel most guilty about (the "big" ones, the ones I have so hard a time forgiving myself for).  That’s how I knew He was speaking to me.  She said, He sees me through eyes of mercy.  He sees me as beautiful.  He says I am His Princess.  His beloved daughter.  

She told a story of how when her own daughter was at that "awkward age," all acne faced and gangly looking, they went to a medieval times performance.  As the knights fought pretend battles, the one who was representing their section of the audience, won.  As he came to their section, riding his trusty steed, he reached up and bowed before her daughter.  He then took her by the hand, and placed her on his horse.  After parading around the arena, he brought her to a set of stairs leading up the royal “palace” area where the king sat.  The knight then walked her up the stairs and presented her to the king, who place a crown on her head and presented her to the audience.  

This is an amazing picture of Christ with me.  He picked me up after His victorious triumph over sin and death, and presented me to His Father.  The Father, instead of seeing a scarred, broken, and ragged little girl, sees HIS beautiful princess.  Me.  His eyes of mercy see me so lovingly, so longingly, so kindly.  Lord, I want to hold onto this.  Even as I drove away from my friends house last night I could feel Satan trying to steal this truth away from me.  Trying to talk me out of what I knew was meant to be a special message for me.  I was reminded of the parable Jesus told about the seed that fell on hard ground and how the birds of the air came and took away the seeds.  That’s what I felt he was trying to do.  I knew I needed to soften my heart to God AND to myself.  I was to no longer be denying myself God’s mercy and grace.  

I am so grateful that God doesn’t give up on me.  I can be so blinded by my own sin, that I forget His grace is greater still.  I forget His love is more then enough to cleanse me and cause Him to look at me with love.  He fights for me, even when I don’t fight for myself.  

Chondra sang a song called “Mercy Saw Me” that just blew me away.  

I can’t put into words the way this message and song reached me last night.  I can’t put into words the amount of gratitude, no words at all, with which I can say thank You to my Father.  I’m still digesting this and want to bury it in my heart as a seed to bear fruit that pleases my Lord, that brings Him glory, that helps others who are stuck like I was.  I know that this will take time to bring the healing my heart needs, but like the song says, God sees what I could be.  I pray that this message can mean to others what it meant and means to me.    

Last night I vowed to God, that I would not let this go.  That I would not let Satan steal it from me.  That is why I have typed this out.  And I pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, through Jesus my Savior that I hold on to this with every part of my being.  Praises to our sweet loving Father, who sees us through eyes of mercy because of Jesus the Son. 

 

Time

I feel like I go through stages.  I have months where I am seeking God, spending lots of time with Him.  My heart is focused and I am enjoying sweet fellowship with the Lord.  But then there are other times....ugh, I get spiritually lazy, over busy and the desire to spend time in God's Presence is clouded out by all negligent habits. 

I've been in one of those times.  Part of it is I've been away more in the last few months.  That definitely puts a hampering on the time I spend with Jesus.  I need to figure out a way for that to be a non issue.  Whether it's getting up earlier, before everyone else starts moving, or using my time before bed to be in the Word, I'm not sure.  But I know that God will give me the solution and the energy.  

My friend and I started a study called "Growing in Grace.  Knowing and Loving God Through Spiritual Disciplines"  We found this little book in a local shop and it is put out by The Daily Grace Co.  It's a gem!!

This is what started me to evaluate my time.  In the first chapter there is a calendar broken down into days and half hour time slots.  It asks you to map out what your week generally looks like.  Boy, was mine an eye-opener.  An uncomfortable, convicting eye-opener!  

Well, I needed this God visit desperately.  Just the way I need my time with Him.  Lazy and neglectful is not the way to strong spiritual growth or a joyful, peaceful life.  

This isn't the first time God has had to correct me in this area.  But I am praying it is the last.  I don't want to take my days and hours for granted, thinking, "I've got this." or I'm busy and I'll get to it later."  I don't want to make excuses and fill my hours with time away from God.  Yes, I can pray as I go through me day, and I do.  But there's more to "God time" then that.  There's worship.  Celebrate our Father!  There's study.  Get to know Him and His heart.  Read the Book!  Learn and grow.  There's memorizing Scripture.  Hide His Word in your heart that you might night sin against Him and have an answer to give to those who ask the reason for the hope in us. Not to mention knowing His promises when you need a life preserver and the strength to take another step!   There's fasting.  Focus your heart away from the physical realm and onto the spiritual.  Prayer and fasting go together like birds of a feather!  I always feel much closer to God when I fast.  And it could be more than just food.  What about phone time, tv time....Go to church.  Listen to good, solid teaching.  Spend time with Christ's people.  We learn from each other, encourage one another, hold one another accountable and build each other up.  Be creative in your time with God.  Just do it.  

I always feel so adrift when I neglect my time with Jesus.  And that is how I've been feeling lately.  But there is something I noticed and it scared me.  I started feeling more comfortable with it.  Like I didn't need it.  This had never happened to me before.  That is terrifying to me.  I'm so grateful God grabbed me before that became the normal way of life for me.  

Lord, thank You for pursuing us, for never letting us go.  It amazes me that You desire our fellowship and I am forever grateful for this.  I confess my neglect and spiritual laziness.  Keep us close to Your side.  Let us let go of excuses.  Let go of the worldliness.  Let go of the things that rise above You in our hearts and become idols.  Make this behavior so abhorrent to us that we run into Your arms every minute of every day.  Lord, we always need You.  No matter what the world says.  No matter even what our mind says.  Keep that and Yourself front and center in our hearts each day.  We love You.  In Jesus' Name.   Amen. 

Lose the excuses.