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Thoughts
We often can see the small picture or the bigger one, but it takes wisdom to see both. Wisdom not only reveals but draws you into the revelation and keeps you there.
It's seeing the bigger picture and you're in it. Seeing the background while on the playground.
Content and context come together from willingness to hang in there repeatedly over time.
Don't get the "led" out.
Matthew 11:19,25
Ever heard someone tell you "Just get over it"? Often this is said through someone trying to help and encourage. However it is a very misused and ill-timed phrase. Spoken without wisdom can steal the emotional experience of shattered expectations needed to process what has happened that may have not only deeply affected you, but brings out the unresolved pain and hurt from the past. Proverbs 25:11
The Scriptural version says to overcome rather than get over it(1 John 5:1-5). I may never get over it and especially as fast as others prefer. But I can overcome the obstacles and still succeed with all the emotions besides only anger. To grieve is to heal and there is rarely if ever any anger without underlying grief.
Wasn't the message of the cross that no matter how much pain might be inflicted that we by God's grace may still by obediemce learn to continue to make righteous decisions in which we're being led? Hebrews 5:7-14
It seems we spend a great deal of our lives looking for the right answers to the wrong questions. That is why so many have to be right and kill many relationships around them proving that fact.
All questions can be good if not bound to finding the answer to that specific question. It could be at times of confusion that is the only way we know how to communicate and we demand the answer. If it is the wrong question, you are free to let the question be a step on the path to the right one and that answer will make you rejoice even if the circumstances haven't changed.
The storms in our life often reveal the surface questions that we have in the 1st step of the conviction process.Consider that the "perfect storm" might be our Father's way of loving us out of our immaturity(Hebrews 12). Or, simply perfecting us so that we will walk the talk, just talk, not talk, walk, or not. It's however we're being led and it often changes. Yet, the leading remains true to the Word.
As Randy Draughon of www.midtownfellowship.org often paraphrases John 16:33 "Cheer up. We're worse than we think we are".
You don't always have to gear up. Luke 10:40-42
It's interesting how often that we think we have to figure things out. The starting point is often confusion. Mysterious confusion. Deuteronomy 4:11,12 We are trained to believe we can know all the facts necessary and if all aren't known, we're weak. Didn't someone say knowledge is power? Did someone also say be strong?
However, figuring something out tends to abstractly decide how many facts must be known to declare we now know whatever "it" is.
To remove confusion and retain the mystery truth must matter. Not factual truth but truth as truly someone. This is simply acknowledging Him in all our ways or thoughts which replaces "figuring it out" with "listening to respond". Proverbs 3:5,6
Once heard, we know what to do next without having to understand or having it figured out. All of a sudden we're free to move forward.
Joy rises back to the surface and hope is restored by the Voice within. This is always about what He said rather than what we see or feel. Psalm 73:21-26
Simple living by faith rather than by sight.
Be sound if not strong. John 8:31-36
Tracks meet. John 4:30,42
Stilling the rising tide of expectations. Psalm 46:10
Peering inside as to what's going on intuitively. Proverbs 3:5,6
The imperfections in us are proof that to err is not only human, but essential in the discovery in us as the church. 2 Corinthians 4:7
It's important to understand why something is said even when what is said is misunderstood. James 1:19
Often we call our life of an "imprisoned self" discipline. However, discipline is a result of, not a cause of, death to self, not imprisonment. We are no longer enslaved slaves. It is not a dead self we have to fear but an imprisoned self which is infinitely more self-cantered than any other(Proverbs 19:2).
Imprisoned intensifies the focus on ourselves and demands even more from whom and what's around us.
A disciple or learner is taught death to self by knowledge of Him(Galatians 2:20, Isaiah 53:11) and the resulting discipline is an abundant life under the power of the Holy Spirit.
Romans 3:21-26
Man with a child in his eyes. Want to know the man? Look into his eyes. Boy, oh boy.
2 Kings 4:16, 34
Able to stir up a deep sense of recognition in others.
Follow the cloud, not always the crowd. Exodus 13:21, 23:2, Hebrews 12:1
As far as the I can see. Where could that be?
It always seems
to fall back on me.
As I reflect on
obedient unto death
instead of taking away sin,
it takes away my breath.
Do I trust in me
who is but a breath?
But the wages of sin
and the fear of death
originally by priests
taken out of sight
now by Christ
taken away by might.
His might makes
Him who he is.
The obedient Son
makes us His.
By His knowledge
with a now enlightened eye
it's not how far but so nigh.
As we come to each "fork" in the road of our lives, we often get stuck there. Stuck not always because of lack of insight as what to do next, but due to the unresolved emotional issues of the past experineces that this fork reminds us. The dark confusion of this often creates intense fear where words cease and what has been formerly said begins to unfold(Psalm 97:2). The cord of this experience must be cut or the dust shaken from our emotional feet(Isaiah 52:2, Matthew 10:14). That allows the shoes of peace(Ephesians 6:15) to begin walking past this place where growth ceased. Growth then restarts and continues that creates positive and lasting change.
This wild abandonement from our past and selves removes the spiritual arrogance and replaces it with a continuing fear spoken of in Proverbs 9:10 and Romans 11:20-22.
It's often easy to fight against something because that is our nature. But, we're rarely trained how to fight for something, i.e. faith, family, etc. The thin line between fighting for something vs. against is spoken about in Colossians 1:9.
The willingness to fight against something is not always enough to make up for what we're unwilling to fight for.
Been around the block.
Now in stocks on the block.
"Me first", words of a whore.
Now what's in store?
Will You restore
joy as before,
but much more,
wounds less sore,
on wings will soar.
In me You'll pour
Spirit to my core.
Truth, not folklore.
Allow the Holy Spirit to apply the lipstick called Silence when self-belittlement(criticism) fools us into a false humility. Self-belittlement is putting lipstick on a pig rather than a pearl. Psalm 144:12
Often when something has happened that is painful we feel we must scream or become deathly silent. But once we're allowed to talk through it, we begin to feel the healing reality of being knocked off balance by pain in the descriptions we use to describe such. Examples include "I feel like I'm talking in circles", "talking outside of both sides of my mouth", "rambling", or "going off on a tangent".
Once talking through this pain begins, so does the healing. The reason is that we have been met where we truly are by someone giving us this freedom as well as our true self being felt.
The experience of not being alone is being rich in its truest sense. I've been heard because someone is with me! Philippians 4:19
If the pain deepens as it often does when healing begins I picture in my own mind that I'm talking and feeling as if I'm on a tilt-a-whirl at the county fair, a feeling much more off balance than talking in circles.
But something about it touches the joy in me that is far deeper than anything I feel.
There is an excitement to this like I had going to the county fair in Murray, Ky. as a child.
I think I just need to go back to the county fair more often, watch the beauty contest(Psalm 27:4), and get another "ticket to ride".
My wounds, drawn from the well of grief, my brokeness, my anger, no relief.
Are these from the Father or the thief?
My heart? Dead, buried, or just broken?
Depending, is my reaction to what is spoken.
Or is the fact that I react,
when instead by faith I just act.
Shame distorts the well of grief
denying it to be the Mercy-seat,
a man of sorrows who washes our feet,
this holy affair where anger, we don't meet.
The cross, Psalm 85:10, doubly sweet.
