After more thought....

After I read an article on Spark People about making New Year's Resolutions and how to make them successful, I have rewritten my Resolves for 2015.  Here they are:

1.  Keep a prayer/Scripture journal.  Keep a list of meaningful quotes and scriptures. Keep records of God’s speaking to me in Listening Prayer. Write responses to them in journal. Read small portions of Scripture and listen for God's voice.

2.   Read at least 30 minutes each day… Tackle the book on Church History or the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

3.   Memorize Scripture. Use memorization app and memorize one verse a week.

4.   Take care of my body by regular exercise (10 min/day) and eating well (follow ETL program) and getting adequate rest.

You will notice that I eliminated redundancy and in some cases combined two or more goals into one.(see goals #1 and 4)  And I have cut the resolves down to four instead of eight.  This is much more manageable.  I  intend to keep the rhythm of daily Scripture reading and prayer but do not need to restate that as a separate goal.  I kept and met that goal last year....so let''s go onward and see what God will do this year.

Today in my reading I encountered these verses.  They really struck me for this New Year.  Here they are:

Isaiah 43:18-19 (NASB)

¹⁸ “Do not call to mind the former things,
Or ponder things of the past.
¹⁹ “Behold, I will do something new,
Now it will spring forth;
Will you not be aware of it?
I will even make a roadway in the wilderness,
Rivers in the desert.

I believe that because Scripture doesn't contradict itself and that this is the meaning:  We are ALWAYS to remember God's goodness, his laws and his assistance to us in the past...and his miracles and the gift of a Savior.
Here though in context, God is talking about Israel's past sins and failures which led them to captivity by enemy countries.  God is saying, "Forget all that garbage and step into a new day.  See what I have planned for  you now...it's a whole new thing...Things that were barren and useless will now become verdant and filled with blessing, provision, and nourishment."

I know that is referring to the New Jerusalem....but might it also refer to this coming year? Forget your years of failure, confess lingering sins and receive forgiveness  and freedom from them.  I do not believe that this means you will have a year without hardship or pain.  In this Earth we know we will have tribulation.....But let God use those times to draw you ever closer to himself.  Learn the lessons of suffering and never EVER think that you are alone in those times. Remember God's goodness and how he has helped you in the past. Trust that the new things he has for us this year will be wrapped in packages of his goodness and strength which he willingly uses on our behalf.

Pray over what God wants you to do this year: the decisions you will make and the times he is eagerly anticipating spending with you.  Confess any garbage in your heart that is hanging around from last year.  Come to 2015 with a cleans slate and a hand held closely by your Savior and keep your eyes open for blessings and do  not fail to thank him for each one of them.

May God bless you in the coming year.

The Year Ahead

I have heard of some people instead of making New Year'[s resolutions, selecting a single word to focus on.  But today God pulled my attention to a verse.  Here is my preliminary analysis of the meaning:

Verse for 2015 is Jude 24

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless  (amomos) with great joy.(agalleasis)

Amomos is innocent, spotless (like the Pascal lamb), without charge or blame.

Joy : agalliasis (ag a lee’ a sis) – exultation   ESPECIALLY “WELCOME”, rejoicing with song and dancing. Gladness rejoicing. Anointed with the oil of gladness , means the highest honor among guests.

Chara is delight , the feeling in one’s heart.   Agalliasis is the demonstration of that joy.

Notice that the joy is on the part of God as he welcomes us to his presence…

Zephaniah 3:17New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁷ The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”

We see this here carried out.

If I were secure in the knowledge that I am blameless I might have this kind of joy but I think really it will be too much to take in.  I will be overwhelmed, in  wonder and awe. 

How does God keep me from stumbling?  I must have an attentive ear tuned to hear his voice.  He will post a warning in my heart and then it is my job to obey…to go the other direction from my intended path.  It requires an obedient, attentive heart.  Here enters the practice of listening prayer which is a discipline I intend to explore this year.

I think it will take me all year to unpack this verse and its implications.  I don't want to abandon my resolves for the year....but I do want to assign a verse to the year.  The following is my assessment of last year's goals and a list of what I am aiming to accomplish this year.

Resolves

Note that a lot of these resolves were also made in 2013 as well as 2014 but I was unsuccessful in keeping them in 2013.

1.   I have read the entire Bible this year.  I did miss some days but didn’t make the mistake of trying to catch up….I just picked up and kept on going.

2.   Pray at least 15 minutes.  This was one of my Spark Goals this year and it was a helpful reminder.  I have trouble focusing enough to pray for a solid 15 minutes but I have been praying much more in general so will say that I have met this goal.

3.   Memorize—I have an app on my Kindle that has been helpful to me to memorize. I have only “mastered” two verses…but it’s a  start

4.   Lose weight: well,  I have lost 17 pounds thus far on my return to ETL

So, overall I would say that 2014 was a success where for two years prior I had failed.

Now for this year:

1.   Read some shorter Scripture passages and meditate on them (lectio divina) and journal them….as well as study them using my Key Words Bible.

2.   Work on extending the time that I spend in prayer.  Don’t focus so much on intercession…rather work on hearing God’s words to me. Follow the process in the book “Listening Prayer”

3.   Keep a prayer/Scripture journal.  Keep a list of meaningful quotes and scriptures. Keep these on 3x5 cards for file and write responses to them in journal.

4.   Spend more time reading.  Read the book on Church History.

5.   Memorize Scripture. Use memorization app and memorize one verse a week.

6.   Lose 50 lbs this year. Hopefully I will lose more but again, being gentle with myself.

7.   Do ten minutes of exercise/day.  It can and hopefully will be more, but at least ten.

8.   These goals are too self-centered.  Find some area of usefulness in the church. If it is “merely” to pray, then be honest and pray daily for the needs there.

 I'm sorry for the length of this post.  I would challenge you too think seriously about the year past and what you want to accomplish in the year to come. Remember the quote: "He who aims at nothing will meet his goal"

Prayerfully set some goals.  Make them specific and measurable.  Put them in a place where you see them often and will have them to look at in 2016.

A Reprieve? Or a Healing?

For the past four years I've been grounded by pain.  I've had five joint replacement surgeries....and daily I am awakened by pain during the night..not once but many times.  I have been unable to walk in a store like Walmart or Lowes and have to use a scooter.  Depending on my pain level any given day I will either use  a rollator walker, Canadian crutches or a cane. I can not tolerate standing even long enough to do the dishes.  I have to rest in the  middle because of the blinding pain in my sacrum. I had to give up driving....as pain meds and driving don't mix and also I could not turn my head to the side and had narrowly missed driving right into cars who were alongside me as I attempted to change lanes.  Not driving has changed my life.  And not for the better.

Every morning I'm stiff.  I get to my recliner and rub my hands and neck and knees.  I would rub my ankles but can't reach them due to my artificial hip joints being tight..  It takes me several hours before I am able to start my day.  Fortunately pain wakes me early so I have plenty of time to get my body going before anyone else is awake.

I also am "grounded" by severe asthma.  Just walking across a room causes breathlessness to the point where I cannot talk.

But recently a lot of this has changed.  I've been on steroids and Arava. (a DMARD). Steroids always do wonderful things with my pain.  When I'm in  the hospital on IV steroids, my pain dissipates. I do not know if it's the steroids or the ARAVA that is helping me...but I'm pretty sure it's the steroids because initially I didn't want to be on steroids and I took myself off.  The pain returned like gangbusters.  When my rheumatologist saw my hands I thought he was going to cry.  He insisted that I take them.

So I did.
And now I find myself playing an altogether different ballgame.
I'm sleeping better.  It is true that my ankles are in very bad shape and they still hurt like heck as does my neck.  But my hands, my shoulders and elbows are markedly better. They still put up a fuss for a few hours here and there....but still overall it's nothing like what it was.  And the steroids are doing wonders for the asthma....Today I rode my recumbent bike for 15 minutes and still had the strength afterward to do a five minute core strengthening video..  I got the recliner I was using at church brought home because the one I had here previously was broken (and completely uncomfortable). So now there is no recliner for me in the church.  I think I will try a normal chair on Sunday and see if I can sit through a service without crying in pain.

All of these changes, whether or not they are temporary, leave me trying to assess what it is that I'm capable of doing.  Dare I go to Walmart and not use a scooter?  What would happen?  Should I try to clean my house?  Could I???  Fatigue is still an issue so no matter what  I do I won't be able to do it for too long.  When you have defined yourself (or rather your limitations have defined you) in terms of pain and exhaustion, having only a handful of spoons....and running out of them way before  the day ended---it is very hard to change gears and to suddenly find that you can do more than you could before.  It's all an unknown.  And it is causing quite an identity crisis.  And I know that it will throw a huge monkey wrench in to the way people at church view me.  They will either think I was faking before or they will think that God has miraculously and permanently healed me.  If I tell them that this improvement is only temporary...that my joints are still disintegrating....that it's just the inflammation that is being reduced by the steroids.   They will  wag their heads and cluck their tongues saying "oh ye of little faith."

Do I have faith?  I certainly have hope.  I HOPE that the pain won't return.  I HOPE that I won't need work done on my ankles elbows and other shoulder.  I HOPE that the heart issues that come along with RA won't "get me".  I HOPE I do not lose my sight because of the glaucoma I have.

Do I have faith?
To a realist faith doesn't come easily. Faith is Hope's answer. What is faith except that it is believing that which is invisible is real?  There you have it: realism, right smack in the middle of the definition of faith.  If I claim it is NOT real...then I cannot call myself a Christian.  But honestly whether or not I still am going to have to endure horrific pain....That is not a condition my faith must meet, is it?  I have never really felt that it was in God's plan to heal me.  Why? because I've prayed with tears that he would.  I've sat in the center of the whole church as they prayed for me.....and I was not healed.  Now it is true that sometimes (ok -- all the time) God does things in his own way by his own schedule.  We cannot force his hand.   I confess that I am afraid to believe.  I am afraid to proclaim that he is going to or has healed me.  Because what  if that is not his plan?   I have heard it said that it is wrong to pray "if it is your will" because that implies a lack of faith. I disagree with that.  To pray "if it is your will to heal...."gives God room to be God and do things his own way.  Some people say that you have to pray and determine God's plan before you pray it in to being.  Who knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man within him?  Who knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit within him and WITHIN ME?  Does that mean that God is compelled to reveal his plans? I say "Only if he wants to."  There were many things that Jesus did, that left his disciples completely in the dark.  He did not explain them and they did not understand them until they were filled wth the Spirit and looked back from their new vantage point...and THEN they understood.

What am I trying to say?
1) God will only reveal his plans if he wants to.
2)  it would greatly help us if we knew the mind of God via his Spirit.
3) we can pray for discernment.
4) If I believed that God is in the process of healing me---and he didn't---I would be crushed.
5) it is an act of self preservation (and possibly a lack of faith) that keeps me from running around cheering and claiming to be healed.
I guess I am like Thomas.  Lord, unless I am off of all medication and put my hands in the holes in your hands I won't believe it.  What did Jesus do?  Did he rebuke Thomas?  No, he gently stretched out his hands and said "See? Touch, Thomas. Go ahead"  What makes Thomas's lack of faith different from Zechariah's (John the Baptist's Father) when the angel announced that he and his elderly barren wife were going to have a son?  Zechariah questioned the angel and was struck dumb for the 9 months of the pregnancy. 

Maybe Jesus knew that Thomas was grief-stricken and exhausted.  Maybe he was on his last drop of gas.  He had lived with Jesus and loved him.  He'd witnessed miracle after miracle....and when he heard that Jesus was again alive, he just didn't have the hope left in him to believe.  He was crushed by the cross.  And Jesus was gentle with him. I think he smiled kindly at Thomas as Thomas fell to his knees exclaiming, "My Lord and my God!!"

I think I am kind of like Thomas.  I'm exhausted from this battle.  I am scared to believe yet again that I am being healed.  If I have  to go by what my spirit is telling me, I would have to tell you that it is not God's will to heal me.  Not until I enter his Kingdom.  And I hate saying that. I would much rather yell "Hallelujah thank you Jesus!" and go out dancing. People call me faithless.  But let me tell you it takes a heck of a lot more faith to face another day of this horrible illness than it does to be healed.  And that is God's honest truth.

Sad? Despairing? No Merry Christmas?

It is morning on the eve of Christmas.  My heart is heavy....for those who are estranged from family.  For those who are in crisis. For those who are missing. For those who's loved ones are in the ICU and that has been their "home" as they held the hands of their loved ones.  And for those who are sad--maybe by the breakup of marriage....or the lack of family....or by their own chemistry that makes them depressed.  I know someone in each of these categories.  And it is for them that my heart is aching and for whom I feel the call to pray.

I have spent numerous Christmases in the hospital, both psychiatric and medical.  I know what it is like to miss out on the festivities and to be locked inside of your own mind or your own body.  There's a lot of "Falalala lalala" --nurses wearing Christmas scrubs and maybe an institutional turkey dinner.  But none of that erases the pain.  The loneliness.

I read a blog post today by Micca Campbell (http://proverbs31.org/devotions/devo/god-is-with-us/)
And she discusses there her first Christmas after losing her husband while she was pregnant with their first child.  She talked about her despair and loneliness.  And then she read the Scripture where God's Son would be called Immanuel meaning , "God with us."  This morning when I read that it really didn't hit me.  My mind was on our family's dinner this evening when I will be so happy to be with the ones I love.  But it hasn't always been that way.  And it is not that way for some people I know today either.  But that phrase came back to me as my heart was bowed low under the weight of empathy.  "God with us".  He is,  you know.   Whether you are with family---or you're sick and alone.  Or grieving. Or lost in sadness.  He is there....with you.  And he understands.  He was "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief."  And the Bible tells us :

Isaiah 61:3 New King James Version

To console those who mourn in Zion,
To give them beauty for ashes,
The oil of joy for mourning,
The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

 and

Isaiah 42:3 New Living Translation

 He will not crush the weakest reed
    or put out a flickering candle.
    He will bring justice to all who have been wronged.

Do not blame God for your problems....to do so  is to cut off the one avenue of help that you may  have available.  As these verses demonstrate, God cares for those who are alone and grieving. And  right here. Right now  He is there  WITH YOU...and his heart aches with  yours....but he doesn't ache as one who has no hope of a cure. He IS your cure.  It was to destroy the works of evil that he came to this earth...To bring health instead of sickness.....to bring hope to the despairing...To bring freedom for those enslaved by habits or who are in a literal prison. 

GOD WITH US.  GOD WITH YOU and GOD WITH ME

Cry out to Him.  He is listening. He cares.  You are never truly alone. There is a whole unseen reality right where you are now.  The enemy is attacking you to feel sorry for yourself...Or to give up hope.  The enemy is a murderer and a liar. Jesus said those very words.  Satan would like nothing better than to drive you to desperation.

Today: as you face whatever it is that you are facing....cry out to Jesus.  I cannot promise that he will miraculously change your circumstance, but he will give you hope for the future and he will comfort you with his presence.  He can empathize with you more than any human can. 

The Day Approaches

Christmas is almost here...our day to commemorate the night when Baby Jesus, the Son of the All-powerful, omniscient, loving Lord of lords, broke into our world...he came, not with an earthquake, not with a shout, but with the groans of his teenaged mother and with a baby's first cry. All the splendor and power of the Almighty, crammed into a little helpless babe....whose arrival was only announced by angels to some shepherds on a hill top.  The Earth did not rock on its axis....but there shone a new bright star --the appearance of which alerted some scholars and wealthy astronomers in the far East, sending them on a journey which took approximately two years until the time when they first laid eyes on the baby King of Kings.

Christmas is the time when we focus in humility on the humbleness of God's Son who lay that night in his manger bed with the shadow of the cross falling on him.  Even in that time of wonder and joy, God's heart ached as he knew what lie ahead for his God-man Son.  And Mary had warning as well as she was told he would pierce her heart....but I'm sure she had no inkling of what that might mean.

What does the birth of the King mean to you? Is it some nice "story"? A fable? An event so far buried in years that it holds no significance to you, even if you do believe it's true?
To me, and to many like myself, that night, Hope was born.  It was a necessary precursor to the Cross where God would take on the powers of darkness and Evil and submit to the Father's will, and die the most painful, humiliating death possible....and there lies our Hope.  There lies our future when he covered us with the blood he shed that night and left no grounds by which Satan could accuse us before the Father.  Christmas is meaningless without Easter.  And Easter is impossible without Good Friday.

What was the view of heaven's occupants as Jesus bid them farewell and left to become encapsulated into a tiny embryo?  I'm sure there was sadness---as well as joy.  Did the angels understand the details of God's plan at that time? I don't know.  But I am sure that heaven rejoiced at the knowledge that God was about to undertake a rescue mission for those who loved and obeyed him...all the way from Moses to Simeon and Anna who stayed in the temple looking and praying for a glimpse of the Messiah....and all the way through the ages since that night on the cross..to.the faithful who came after that time--including me, and I hope, you.  To us, Christmas brings joy.  Because the victory of the cross and the empty tomb is completed.  All that is necessary for our salvation has been accomplished.  We need merely to believe and to obey....and even there we need help as well. Because you and I were born sinful and we require the call of God on our hearts and our hearts need to spring up in response with a resounding "YES!!!" and then we are transformed from being  enslaved by sin, into those who are Children of Light who now are empowered to obey. And when we need help with that, help is available because the Gift of the Son to us, his Spirit, dwells in us.

We can make Christmas complex.  Or we can make it simple with the simple faith of Mary and Joseph. The simple joy of the shepherds.  The simple conviction of the visitors from the East...who would not arrive on the scene until a couple of years later.

Christmas --whether it is covered by silent snowfall or in rain or in temperatures cold or hot---is a time of beauty and joy.  God gave the first Christmas gift and it is up to each of us to accept--or reject--that Gift and how we respond to that makes all the difference between heaven or hell.
I pray for each reader here...that God would move and knock  on the door of  your heart----and that you would respond in faith and invite him into the "control room" of  your life; that he would change your heart and bring you forgiveness for the sins that weigh you down with guilt. He would stamp each of those as you confess them with the stamp, "FORGIVEN" and he will break the power they hold over you.  They need no longer to imprison you or cause you guilt.

I am praying for you tonight, dear reader.  Make Christmas your birthday as well as the Baby Jesus'. Take from him the gift he is holding out to you.  The one that was paid for with his blood. The one that brings you Life. "For All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." and "God so loved the world (that means YOU) that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will not die but have eternal, everlasting life."  That last verse is the true verse for Christmas. God so loved us that he gave us life. Thank you Jesus for your obedience to the plan of the Father. Help us to be obedient in return. Amen.