Paraphrasing Brennan Manning

We must never allow books, institutions, or leaders to be our primary experience of Jesus Christ. We need to experience Him personally. If not, then we become unpersuasive, even to ourselves. We become travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never been.

A dot falls to the ground

There is a wonderful book written by Max Lucado called “You are Special.” The story is about a young boy who lives in a town where people receive stars of approval and the opposite of stars are dots. Everyone in town is walking around with stars and dots attached to them. The young boy, no matter how much he tried could not receive a star from anyone. His body was filled with dots. In the end of the book, he visited the man who made him and learned that his maker loves him and that the stars and dots mean nothing. As he leaves the maker’s home, one small dot falls off his body onto the ground.


It seems at times that we spend a lifetime seeking the stars but in fact it sets us up for the dots. I would like someday to say the stars don’t matter, but just for today, a dot falls to the ground.

Today

I had an encounter today with someone who was intoxicated. Even though I tried to help and spoke softly, I could not break the barrier of the liquid courage. No matter how hard I tried, everything was an act of aggression to her. I was surprised that I became so angry inside. I remember, asking God to help me see her as He sees her. The flesh and blood and not this thing she had become under the influence. She never knew I harbored such thoughts, but I was never able to see her as God sees her. Do we look at situations like these as failures? I think not. I think that God is pleased, when we try.

Quote: Thornton Wilder

“Without your wounds where would your power be?"

My first thought was that I had found a purpose for my life in helping others through my wounds, by the lessons that I had learned and continue to learn. With deeper reflection, I would not have known God. I am ashamed to admit that I only reached up because I had exhausted every other avenue. I am, where I am today because of all that has happened in my life, both good and bad. To go back and change one thing would change everything, and that, I am not willing to do.

      

Nouwen Quote

Whenever you feel that a little praying can’t do any harm, you will find that it can’t do much good either

Henri Nouwen

Thomas Merton

The Spiritual life is first of all a life. It is not merely something to be known and studied, it is to be lived.

Quote by "William Barclay"

In the beginning, the crowds came, but they came because they wanted something out of Jesus. They did not come because they loved Him. God is not someone to be used in the day of misfortune; He is someone to be loved and remembered every day of our lives

From Chapter 9 "Mind Games"

So the decision to turn my will over to His care begins by desiring to replace my thoughts with His thoughts. The war of our affliction began in the mind and now the outer shell reflects the way we think. Change requires going to the source and like the undesirable vine in our garden if we only clip the leaves the vine will appear dead but the root will produce the leaves again when the time is right. We must uncover the root to destroy the vine. It is my prayer that we find the root of our undesirable vine.

We have the power to make the decision to change but we do not possess the ability on our own to make that change.

Genesis 4: 7 (NIV)
7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." 

In Genesis 4:7 I believe that God is saying to me, you must master your sin by calling on Me and I will deliver you. I am knocking at your door but you must make the choice to let Me in. The ability to open the door is on your side.

A private thought made public

At times I find it difficult to share what I have found. The old self, with its old behavior, reminds me of my thoughts when someone tried to tell me about God. How do I keep from sounding so heavenly that I am no earthly good? I still have so many unanswered questions but I am choosing to believe in spite of the miracles. Some would call me foolish. Then foolish I shall be.

God as an afterthought

When God becomes an afterthought, the last one I look to for help, the last one that I turn to for rescue, and the last one I seek to comfort me in the storms. I have swapped a diamond of great wealth for fragments of glass.

Quote (Henri Nouwen)

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of our spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved."

Truth

A woman commented to me that she had given the power to her abuser to continue to shape her life even after the family member was dead. The abuser was someone who should have cared and protected her. Her value was based on the opinions of the adults in her world never imagining that they could be dysfunctional. She was abused both physically and mentally but the mental stayed with her long after her abuser had died. She began to believe the lie that she had no value. In her adult life she had lived so long with the abuser’s message that it became truth to her.

Jesus spoke repeatedly the words “I tell you the truth,” and on one occasion he said “the Truth will set you free.” I believe God lives in us and that His Spirit, which has been called the counselor and comforter, can deliver us from the lies we believe. During that uncomfortable battle within us between what is real and what is an illusion, it is our responsibility to ask for the wisdom to overcome the lies of the deceiver. I believe we can start the healing process by asking and believing that God can expose the lies we believe and asking for Him to guide us in His truth and His ways.

Hard to imagine

C. H. Dobb wrote, “Prayer is about redirecting our desires according to the mind of God.” My prayer life and my relationship with God that I am striving for, is said best by a philosopher named Epictetus, “Have courage to look up to God and say, deal with me as you will from now on. I am yours. I flinch from nothing as long as you think that it is good. Lead me where you will; put on me what clothing you will. Would you have me hold office or refuse it, stay or flee, be rich or poor? For all this I will defend you before men.”


His will not ours. Easy words to say but difficult when we have scars that are the result from a lifetime of suffering that we have asked God to remove and yet they remain. I am learning how to live with those scars by acknowledging them to God and asking for His strength to see me through. I have prayed for healing and there are times my prayers seems to fall silent. It’s hard to imagine that a thorn in my flesh sometimes is to be endured.

Quote (Unknown)

The measure of a man or a woman is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy.

Quotes...Richard Rohr

"You will never know the fullness of God until you bring Him your emptiness."

What is 1 Cor 13:11 saying to you?

1 Cor 13:11 (NIV)

11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.


When I was a child I developed defenses that would protect me and the mistake I made was bringing that protection into the adult world and expecting it to work. As a child I found that isolation equals safety. If I did not stand out then I could not be hurt. I was taught that I had no worth so to protect myself I never took a risk. I always strived for average for that was obtainable but feared moving beyond that comfort zone because if I tried and failed then it would only confirm those voices of unworthiness and I was trying desperately to hold on to what little worth I had left. I never gave myself permission to fail and did not understand that kind of thinking produced the very thing that I feared which was failure. My defense mechanism had become my enemy and worst of all I could blame others for my life and until I began to take personal responsibility things were destined to remain the same.

Proverbs 15:33 (NIV)

33 The fear of the LORD teaches a man wisdom,and humility comes before honor.

Fear (Respect, reverence, and piety (Respect = high regard) (Reverence = high regard felt or shown) (Piety = the state of devotion to worship)
Teaches (Discipline = training that corrects, molds or perfects moral character)
Wisdom (Skill = the ability to discern (insight) with or without the experience.)
Humility (Meekness = enduring injury with patience’s and without resentments)
Honor (one’s who worth brings respect)

I was once confronted by a client that said, "Why should I believe in a God that asked me to fear Him?" She was making the same mistake that I was guilt of at times. She was defining the word based on her understanding. There is a great site for checking the Greek and Hebrew defintion of words, it is the Blueletterbible.com

A conversion with God using Isaiah 42:16 (NKJV)

Lord I have eyes but I cannot see.
I will bring the blind by a way they did not know;
Lord I have no knowledge of what I do next.
I will lead them in paths they have not known.
Lord all I see is darkness with no hope for the light.
I will make darkness light before them,
How can I recover from being so broken?
I will make crooked places straight.
Lord, help me, stay with me.
These things I will do for them, and not forsake them.