You don't have to earn the right to hurt this much. Rest by faith, not by works. Hebrews 4:2,3
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Thoughts
Please don't hurt me for hurting.
I call this obedience and growth or deepening understanding. One shouldn't go without the other Psalm 111:10. Managers tend to be committed, but to what? Often their own positions as in Luke 16. This commitment, though, often begins to blind us to our true interests. We confuse our wants with our true desires. Our wants start out naively as objects of our desires but obedience turns those wants into desires themselves through intimacy. An example of this is meeting someone we think we want to marry. They become the object of our desire but the desire is to marry. We seek or hunt for the objects of our desires and the weapons we use to get those objects are the only things with which we tend to have intimacy, ie a hunter with his gun, a man with his humor, a woman with her beauty.
As we're drawn deeper into the relationship the real struggle begins. That struggle is a growing necessary intimacy as a covering and protection to the relationship. Zechariah 2:8
We men are to transform from hunters to protectors who hunt. Our weapons must be laid down (submitted) to our Father for His guidance of their use.
This intimacy transforms the object of our desire into our desire. That desire as in the above example is our spouse. To be my desire is profoundly deeper than to want you.
We eventually use and abuse objects of our desire which Christ warned us about in Amos 8. We learn to love sacrificially who is our desire. Learn me, not about me. Isaiah 53:11
The Scriptures reveal that we are Christ's desire, not the object. David's prayer to remember that was Psalm 17:8 and in Proverbs 7:2 we remember that truth and how to apply it in our own life with ourselves and others.
No longer trying not to fail. Romans 3:21
Getting my Mind around IT. The great attempt, putting God in a box, the mind lustfully flirting with the heart, forcing the heart to take the beautifully masked punches. But our head begins to hurt from the heart's wounds. The sore hands of the mind from trying to wrap itself around the Infinite, finally pull back, now, too tender. Without tenderness there is no understanding. Job 17:2-5
1/26/2005
Let it be rare that we get out of the kitchen half-baked because of the heat. Willingness leads to well done (Psalm 51:12,13)
We know the Scriptures "love your enemy" and "love your neighbor as yourself". Think also how often we've heard "you are your own worst enemy". So who is the first enemy to love? Is this the enemy written about in Romans 7? Or is "enemy" the wrong term to describe the corrupted form of our human nature called self that confuses us and makes it hard to love the enemies around us. It could even make us see friends as enemies and enemies as friends. We are to hate evil and even battle against it but today's use of the term enemy in our culture has confused us from the depths of the real issue.
We have learned to come together as Pilot and Herod in Luke 23:12 That day Herod and Pilate became friends—before this they had been enemies. We often rally around what we are against which depends on fear, hatred, and suspicion.
No wonder we call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20) when we rely on our own wisdom.
When my sweet Lord cast my sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19) there was no splash. It was done in the quietness and loneliness of death by the cross. But by His grace to me as John 3:3, my realization of this fact brought the splash personally and continually in the form of tears from my own eyes as he collects each tear in a bottle (Psalm 56:8) through my own suffering. The deafening sound and weight of each teardrop on my cheek transforms me through it's own unique gift of healing. We are not only not forgotten but brought closer through each drop (Psalm 34:18). Through stubbornness to willingness (Jeremiah 31:18) we are carried as on wings of eagles (Isaiah 40:31). A bottle full of tears weighs a ton (Psalm 56:8).
A bottle full of tears weighs a ton. All the weight behind the first one. To stop it requires an elephant gun. Like the first drop of rain we tend to run. Turning us upside down shaking the "changes" out of our pockets. Falsely transformed until water pressure freshly squeezes tears from our eye-sockets.
When someone is hurting, often many respond in some form to see what's "wrong" in order to help. The wrong is usually the first thing to be assessed as would a doctor with his diagnosis. When we respond to someone, we often appear as the doctor in our own mind ready to diagnose because we are highly emotionally charged when we recognize the call. While this is good in the beginning, this thinking blinds us often to the coming inconvenience that may overwhelm or overtake us even more than the emotions generated in our response and desire to help someone. This inconvenience is a delayed response or no response to the diagnosis or assessment by the one who needs the help. This can no big deal in the beginning because in the short time that has elapsed as in a car wreck, the one who is hurt will soon be well because we now probably know what is wrong. We probably even know the common sense simple answer to the problem.
Yet, often the number one thing necessary that is missed through the "doctors" thinking is to comfort. Understanding comes through comfort and not the diagnosis. Comforting just makes the diagnosis receivable. The inconvenience that can overwhelm us is that the event often not only reveals the problem causing the event but reveals a deeper wound of past experiences that may have never been healed because of the busy doctors around us. We have been so accustomed to receiving value in growing numbers of people, money, or opportunities to act that when someone needs help, we easily get frustrated when time is required to walk or sit alongside someone longer than we expected. We just don't have time.
We can become a danger to them in becoming more aggressive and direct in our demands to respond to the problem as we know it. The problem is we don't have a doctor shortage but what we really have is a shortage of comforting nurses. Much of our discernment needed to help someone is given us through our willingness to comfort no matter how long it might take.
As Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 2:7,8:
"But we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us."
As this reveals it may not be just an issue of doctors and nurses but mothers and fathers needed in the church. However the more we care for others the more relief we need from our cares. Cast them no matter how big or little on the Father because it matters to Him. 1 Peter 5:7.
Gentleness can break a bone so that it can heal. Proverbs 25:15