Cold and Calloused

Sometimes, it seems like my heart has callouses.  I've asked the Lord to cleanse my heart, remove the old oil--the bitterness--and fill me anew with the Holy Spirit. I believe He has done this, but still I know there are hard, crusty places that He needs to work on.  I still have a struggle with being hard-hearted at times.  In other words, sometimes I'm more like a cold-hearted snake than a caring, compassionate believer.  How did this happen?  I have a theory.

The cold and unfeeling state is my normal state if I allow genetics --the flesh--to be in control.  I never met my paternal grandmother, she died many years before I was born, but I'm told that she was a little on the hateful side.  In my younger days, I'm afraid I was pretty hard on her.  I didn't know how she could be so cold and still claim to be a Christian.  Oh the foolish words of youth!  I'm sorry I ever judged her, because now that I have experienced more of life I have discovered something about my grandmother from examining my own character.  Even though I never met her, I have a feeling that she was simply reacting to the storms of life.  She developed an edge because life ran over her, then backed up and ran over her again.  She had it really hard, in a time when women weren't treated with very much respect by our society.  She was a single mom and did the best she could with what life gave her.  She just ended up a little hard and calloused in the process.

How did I figure this out? The revelation came to me as I was praying a little while ago.  Lately, I have been asking the Lord to show me the truth, and set me free.  Well, the truth I saw tonight wasn't very pretty.  I saw that I have been living in circumstances similar to my grandmother.  She was divorced when my dad was a teen.  She lived with some of the same heartbreaks as I have.  She made the best of a bad situation, just as I have.  I'm sure she made her share of mistakes, as I have.  I am humbled by the picture I got when I realized this. 

I have a granddaughter now, and I don't want her to look at my life when she's a little older and say I am mean-spirited and bitter.  The hard truth is, in an unregenerated state, our flesh will repeat the patterns set in place from previous generations.  Without the Lord's saving grace and regeneration of my heart,  I would be doomed to live in a state of misery, not allowing the Holy Spirit to work in my heart to transform me and the end result would most likely be very much the same.  Thank God for the cross of Jesus Christ!  Because He took the curse of my sin on Himself when He died for me, I don't have to live in that cursed state.  

So, as I spend time in His presence, the hard, calloused places in my heart will soften.  I will be become more like Jesus as I spend more time with Him. It's a work in progress, denying the flesh and living in the Spirit, becoming a "new creation in Christ."  (2 Corinthians 5:17)

"Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.  For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship.  And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children." Romans 8: 12-16 (NIV).

My Hope Is You

¹ In you, LORD my God, I put my trust. ² I trust in you; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me. ³ No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause.~ Psalm 25:1-3 (NIV).

This is how one of my favorite scriptures, and perhaps my very favorite Psalm, begins. In earlier posts, I have touched on this Psalm and mentioned that it is very special to me.  Tonight, however, I am going to reveal a little bit of what this Psalm means to me. Anyone who has walked with the Lord for any length of time will encounter some scriptures along the way that have deep and special value for them.  It isn't usually a happy time, though, that causes them to become so special.

Adversity, pain, sorrow, brokenness--I could go on, but you get the idea.  Yes, the entire Bible is our love letter from God, meant to be our roadmap, our instruction manual, our final authority on life and how to live it.  But we are basically a stubborn lot; we seldom learn anything the easy way. So many times in life, it is those scriptures that we find ourselves clinging to for dear life, the ones that we use to hoist ourselves up out of the pitfalls we find ourselves in--those are the ones that have special meaning to us. And so it is with Psalm 25 for me. Let me explain how it came to be so personal to me.

When I was first saved, God showed me very clearly that He was calling me to be an encourager.  He often gave me words of knowledge and scriptures to encourage others.  He put the desire in me to write, and use writing as a tool to be this encourager He had called me to be. But the storms of life blew, I went through a divorce, and my world came crashing down around me. Instead of continuing to fulfill His purpose in me, I wandered into a spiritual desert, away from the calling He had put within me.  I justified to myself that I couldn't encourage anyone, since I was divorced.  I fell for the lies of the enemy, and I began allowing his venom to poison my thinking.  

As I wandered along in this wilderness, I lost sight of God's plan for me. I was a Christian, blood-bought and heaven-bound, but I was so full of pain.  I had been hurt so much by life, and the damage was probably fairly obvious to others.  Those were dark years, and at times I felt I was suffocating in the fog of depression and fear that surrounded me.  God sent people along the way to help me find my way out of the bondage and help me realize I was free in Christ, and I accepted some help here and there.  I was so severely depressed, though, that I lashed out at the very ones that were trying to help me, as is often the case with people in pain.  It grieves me to admit this now, but though I was called to encourage I allowed my warped perception of my life to affect my ability to hear from God.  Instead of lifting others up, I started inflicting damage with my words.  And so, the writer's pen turned poisonous. It appeared that satan had won, and had disabled me from ever doing any good again.

When I realized that I had used for evil the gift of writing that God had placed in me, I was distraught, and was determined never to write again. One day, I was at an all time low as I turned to God in my prayer closet seeking direction, asking forgiveness, trying to figure out where to go from there.  That day, in my daily Bible reading I came across Psalm 25. Suddenly it became alive, a Rhema word from God.  His Spirit was a very real Presence in that little closet that morning.  The words jumped out at me, and I realized I did have hope.

"In you, LORD my God, I put my trust, " I read.  Yes, I do trust You, Lord I told Him.  I knew He  was all I had. I was drawn to read more: "I trust in you; do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me." Yes Lord, I prayed, please, PLEASE do not let the gift You gave me be used by the enemy ever again. Do not let him win!

"No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, but shame will come on those who are treacherous without cause." HOPE.  The word "hope" went all the way through me in a flash.  I hope in GOD, and HE will not let me be put to shame.  There it was, the promise straight from God. Like a bolt of lightening, God's Spirit touched my heart.  Tears sprang to my eyes when the truth suddenly came alive to me. I was sobbing as I continued reading:

"Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long."I knew I definitely needed God's guidance and to be grounded in His truth. I was on the right path, at last. I knew the Lord was going to lead me out of the desert and do a miracle in my heart and mind.

I continued reading, and came across verse 15: "My eyes are ever on the LORD, for only he will release my feet from the snare."  Not only would He forgive me and not let me be put to shame, but He would untangle the mess I was in and get me out of satan's trap. "Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Relieve the troubles of my heart and free me from my anguish." Even though at that moment I couldn't imagine not having a troubled heart or being free from anguish, I took the words to heart and chose to believe them to be true.

I have never been the same since that day in my prayer closet.  Things didn't get better overnight, but little by little, God's redemptive work began to unfold in my life. It was several years before I had the courage to write anything again, but I am happy to report that I am once again writing, pursuing God's purpose for my life as He gives me words of encouragement to share.

But there's one more wonderful thing that God did for me through Psalm 25.  Not only did He touch my broken heart and start the healing process through His word, He did something very personal for me, something that I know He did to give me hope and show me that He was with me:  Our praise team started learning a new song that week at practice.  Perhaps you have heard it.  It is Third Day's My Hope Is You.  Years later, I still cannot sing that song without tears, and extreme gratitude to God for what He has done for me.

If you are hurting as you read this, let me encourage you to put your trust in God.  Your hope is in Him, and Him alone.

"No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame." Psalm 25:3

Helping the Hurting

http://www.crosswalk.com/blogs/joe-mckeever/reach-the-ugly-woman-in-the-balcony.html

This article that I have posted a link to here really spoke to me.  I saw myself in this; not as the one doing the helping, but as the "ugly woman."  I know how it feels to be that hurting person, one who told people to stay away by my countenance.  Because of the emotional pain I was in, I was firmly and safely inside a shell of my own making.  I might still be there today, except that God sent someone to me, someone who was listening to the Spirit and kept reaching out to me.  That person didn't give up on me, and I allowed God to deliver me from my bondage because of them. 

I want to be that compassionate person who allows the Holy Spirit to work through me to help the hurting. I pray that in 2012, I can begin to allow God to work through me to reach that hurting person who is in the same kind of bondage I was in.  He has His work cut out for Him with me, but "with God ALL things are possible"(Matt. 19:26).  He can do it.

Soaking in His Presence

The oil in my heart that needed to be changed in my last post had been changed—and yet some residue remained.  This past year has been hard on me, and some of the hard things in my life have affected me adversely.  God continued the analogy that He showed me a few weeks back.  A few days ago, He revealed another part to me.

As I said in the last writing, I had allowed bitterness to creep into my heart.  There were several factors in this, and there’s really no need to list them right now.  Because I hadn’t been casting my cares on Jesus, coming to Him as He says in Matthew 11:28 and bringing Him my burdens, they attached themselves to my heart.  Like the residue left on a baking dish or the crud left in a car motor, they were in layers in my heart.

Two of their names were anger and bitterness, which are very closely related.  Actually, I had already been shown about the bitterness, as I said in my earlier post.  Bitterness creeps in as a result of allowing anger to stay —they came as a result of me feeling like I had been overlooked and forgotten, that God didn’t love me as much as He does others. I felt that if He did, He would have given me a good marriage like He has given so many of my friends. Then there’s resentment.  This crept in behind anger and bitterness, and fed off them.  I started to resent people who seemed to have better lives than I do.  Anger, bitterness, and resentment decided to stick around since I didn’t take them to Jesus.  And stick they did.  My heart became hard and crusty with all the negative emotions that were hanging around.

The Lord showed me that I had done right in asking Him to drain all the old oil and let Him fill me back up with the oil of His Holy Spirit.  It was definitely a step in the right direction, but I needed to let Him do a more in depth work in me. When I cried out to Him and asked Him why He didn't often give me words like the one in the last post, He reminded me I had not been spending a lot of time in His presence.  Recently, though, I had become more sensitive to His presence and lingered after prayer and Bible reading.  I spent time in corporate prayer with the rest of the Heaven or Hell cast at church.  Because of this, He was able to get me to hear Him.  He said I needed to soak in His Spirit to get the negative emotions to come off the walls of my heart.  Only time in His presence and in His word would soften my heart and get the ugly crustiness off.   

Although I wasn't aware why, for the past few weeks I have played the same 2 or 3 worship songs in my car everywhere I went, and I have spent more time in prayer and in God’s word.  Little by little, the negativity that was encrusted on my heart has dissolved and has been washed away by the blood of Jesus.  The very intense presence of God at the prayer time before the Heaven or Hell drama tonight caused the last of the bitterness to melt and leave.  None of that can stay in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I broke and was unable to stop crying through the whole drama.  I slipped out and went to the bathroom instead of working at the altar tonight because I needed to talk to God myself.  I sat in the stall and just poured my heart out to Him.  Then I slipped out and came home.  I know some things in my life will be different, and that’s ok.  I know God is in control, and He has plans to prosper me, not to harm me. I just have to remember to bring my worries and cares to Him every day.  He's the only one who can do anything about them anyway.

"Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you." 1 Peter 5:7 (NLT)

Change the Oil

It's been a while since I have written. I’ve really wanted to write more, I’m just not getting anything. 

I was praying at church the other night, and I asked God to help me.  I know that part of it is I don’t spend enough time alone with Him and in His word.  I have to be more disciplined in that area.  He did show me something, though, after I prayed.  He showed me that I had some jealousy and envy that I had to get forgiveness for. This particular snare was causing me to become bitter. I felt like I was not being treated fairly, and when I got to the bottom of it, God was there.  He was ultimately who I was angry with.

Ever been angry with God?  You might as well level with Him, because He knows it anyway.  Getting those feelings out in the open can help you see what's at the root of it, and help you let go of it; help you to ask for forgiveness.  I had been mad at God--though I didn't realize that I was--because He moved all my kids to locations far away from me. I didn't understand.  Why would He do that to me?

Then I remembered that God supplies all my needs.  All of them. Whatever I need, He provides.  If He doesn't provide it, then it isn't a need, it's a want. I don’t understand it in this particular incident, but that’s the truth of the matter.  I have had to give this to God.  If I trust Him, then I have to believe that He knows what is best for me. I have to take Him at His word and remember that He has "plans to prosper me and give me a hope and a future." (Jeremiah 29:11). 

And of course, I also have to realize that it’s not all about me. *Ouch*  We don't like to hear that, do we? 

It’s not always going to be easy, but I have to do some things that God has called me to do, and it may mean sacrificing some things. I have been given a very specific path that God has continued to confirm in my life. One of them is the college degree I'm working on.

Meanwhile, I have lots of things to be thankful for, like some wonderful deep relationships that God has given me.  These friendships enable me to have that loving family relationship right here at home in the absence of my own, biological family.  I also have a good job where we are a family, which is a  wonderful source of strength and support. 

In the end, God gave me an analogy to help me understand what unforgiveness and bitterness would do to my heart and my life.  He showed me that the bitterness in my heart was like oil in a car, way overdue for a change.  Just like the oil has to be changed or the motor will be ruined, the bitterness—the old oil—has to be drained from my heart.  I believe God supernaturally does this, taking the old oil out like in an oil change.  Then He replaces the plug, so to speak, and fills me up with the Holy Spirit.  I have to go back to Him regularly—ideally, daily—to stay full of His Spirit. 

I'm not sure why the oil change example, but that's the picture I got when He was speaking to me during my time with Him the other night. I have asked for forgiveness and for Him to "change the oil" in my heart, "transforming and renewing my mind" as He says in Romans 12. 

So here is my prayer tonight:

"The bottom line is, I trust You, Father.  Fill me with Your Spirit. Use me to encourage others in their walk with you.  Give me strength to walk the path You have set before me. In Jesus’ name, Amen."

Under Construction

Life at times is a series of ups and downs; lately, it's been more downs than ups.  I'm tempted to look at the negative aspects of my life instead of the positives.  Without going into details, let me just say the future looks bleak and lonely for me. I can't see how things will ever change. Of course, I know I have to walk by faith and not by what I see.

However down on myself I may get at times, though, I choose to believe what God SAYS over what I FEEL:  "For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil. 1:6, NASB) He's not done with me!

So, there you have it:  I'm under construction; I'm a work in progress.  To quote Joyce Meyer:  "I'm not where I want to be, but thank God I'm not where I used to be."

Tonight, even though it is taking all my energy to do so, I am thanking God for that.

In the Wilderness With No GPS

"Hear my prayer, O LORD, Give ear to my supplications!" (Psalm 143:1). I have turned to the Psalms tonight, in an attempt to encourage myself, as David did.  Ironically, these are David's words here in Psalm 143. A lot of the time, David was literally running for his life.  I am so thankful that he was a writer as well as a fighter, because we have most of the Psalms as a result.  In the not too distant past, I have practically lived in the Psalms, reading over and over of God's faithfulness. Tonight, like David did, I have started out my prayer like this chapter starts:  "hear my prayer!"  

"For the enemy has persecuted my soul; He has crushed my life to the ground;
He has made me dwell in dark places, like those who have long been dead.
Therefore my spirit is overwhelmed within me; My heart is appalled within me." (verses 3-4).

I find myself crying these very words out to God on my behalf tonight.  Sometimes the battle gets so intense, I feel I can take it no longer. These are the times I run to my Father, who is truly faithful. "I stretch out my hands to You; My soul longs for You, as a parched land. Selah" (verse 6).  It's not only hot outside these days, it's hot in this spiritual desert where I find myself.

There are no highway signs, no GPS to guide me through this valley.  Just the loving guidance of my Father, and I cry out to Him, with David's very words:   

"Teach me the way in which I should walk; For to You I lift up my soul.
Deliver me, O LORD, from my enemies; I take refuge in You" (verses 8b-9). 

There's a lesson to be learned here.  I am always greatly enriched by these times, though they seem so lonely and desolate while I'm in the middle of them.  I trust in God, though, and He is always faithful. 

"Teach me to do Your will, For You are my God; 

Let Your good Spirit lead me on level ground.
For the sake of Your name, O LORD, revive me.  

In Your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble.
And in Your lovingkindness, cut off my enemies  

And destroy all those who afflict my soul,
For I am Your servant" (verses 10-12).

Some of you might think I'm weak, and lack direction, since I go running to God crying so much.  I would answer you, yes, I am. I am weak, and I can't find my way sometimes.  But He--my God--is strong, and He alone knows the way through this wilderness.

Before GPS, we had to pull over sometimes and ask for directions, if we weren't too proud.  While I might be able to use my GPS to navigate in this earthly realm, God alone can navigate me through the hot, dry desert I sometimes find myself in spiritually.  

I'm not too proud to ask anymore. 

New American Standard Bible (NASB) Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation