Pondering…looking at the Wall

Ever find yourself still, staring at a wall? Can’t get over it? Can’t get around it? not sure how you even ended up here?

Been looking and struggling with this wall for quite some time..days have turned to months, months are quickly turning to years…

The need to evaluate, and re-evaluate is imperative.  The questions that come to mind are scary, and very transparent of the heart.  I’ve been shamed for being at this wall, accused of some horrific sin, dismissed as a backslider…..yet I am exactly where God wants me to be.  HE is shredding my legalistic views, HE is stirring my bitterness to eliminate it, HE is still in control…even here. Only when HE has finished with the extremely painful heart surgery, will HE see me to the other side.

Funny, how we are so quick to judge another at the wall. How quickly we dismiss what we don’t understand. So often we claim to know what God is doing in another. We even claim to know and understand God.  *sigh*

God is not created in man’s image, we don’t even have a conclusive definition of “Holy”, yet we claim it.  I absolutely hate looking at this wall…and at the same time…I believe HE has a plan that is more awesome than anything I could dream up.

HE promised to never leave me…

HE promised to finish the work HE started in me…

HE promised to never let go…

Simple promises. Holding on to them with all I got.  Hoping that when I get to the otherside of this wall, that my concept of HIM will have grown in huge proportions.  “I will wait patiently on the LORD”…HE is faithful, even when I am not.

Ever been here? what did you learn if you have been?  Maybe you are there now.  If so, how do you keep looking up?

“Therefore there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ”

Let God, be GOD

GOD works as HE wants according to the plan HE has! that is the bottom line… Can  any man really honestly say… “I know the mind of God, and the direction HE is taking?”

With in each heart, HE molds, rearranges, moves to create the person that HE already sees in the finished completed person.  Can your head even wrap around that?

HIS children run amuck, pointing fingers, tearing down, and condemning one another, all in the name of Jesus.  WRONG! We need to learn to let God be GOD, do we not have enough to love each other as HE has commanded us to do.

The negative can not out weigh the positive…not with GOD’s children.  We all cry out for unity, and Unity is here…but our pride tends to suffocate it.

Totally surrendered…God is GOD, I do not think like HIM, I do not plan like HIM, and HE is not created in my image, I am created in HIS.

My convictions will rarely be yours, and your convictions will rarely be mine…it all depends on where in the work of our hearts the Creator is at.. HE alone knows my heart, and HE alone knows yours. Let’s get back to  “Love the LORD your GOD will all your heart, soul, mind, and strength…and love your neighbor as your self..”

Seriously….we need to get over ourselves…

But I want! Psalm 23:1

Psalm 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd; I have everything I need. (NLT)

Psalm 23:1  The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. (NIV)

Psalm 23:1  The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want. (KJV)(NASB)(ESV)

(Strongs H2637 “i shall not want”  to lack, be without, decrease, be lacking, have a need)

As a child, I was taught everything from the KJV.   Being a child, I was at the mercy of my teachers to grasp application.  “I shall not want” came across to me as a command, instead a statement of faith to the goodness of God our provider, our Creator.

When I was a small child, memorizing the 23rd Psalm, was applauded. In my head, I could not get past “I shall not want”.  I wanted! There was no way to verbalize that at the time, and at any effort, the feeling of condemnation, guilt for wanting/needing paralyzed me.  It took me on a path of “not measuring up”, “not being what I was told to be by God”. This was truly my beginning of believing that God had not chosen me…you see…I needed, and I wanted…and it said.. “I shall not want”.

While looking over this with fresh thinking and seeing it all today in the Light of what I know to be true…its meaning is the faith that God will provide all that I need and give me the desires of my heart, as it falls together with HIS plan for me.  God wants us to give HIM our needs, and our wants, and HE loves us, all the while knowing how HE has planned to provide.  I was not a bad unwanted child in HIS eyes for needing, I was already chosen before the foundations of the earth were spoken into existence.

Wondering how many children, recite this, and are not taught to see the relationship? My God, My Shepherd…who keeps HIS eyes on me, doesn’t let me ever fall so far that HE can not reach me…knows when i need…then provides, sooo that “I shall not want”.

Good-bye Religion

Feeling jaded…struggling with what i thought to be my faith, only to find out religion has caused me much grief. Its taken me far from my Creator, and even caused much turmoil in my spirit.  For the last 10 years or so…all I really wanted was to be accepted by a people who had rejected me.  Oh I knew how to do it this time…I knew what to say, I knew how to look, and was brushing up on my theology. Accepted I was.  Let down, and confused I became. I am accepted in Christ, and that is enough for me.

Coming back from the pit that I lived in most my life, had changed me.  I developed the beginning of a relationship with my Creator, and the one place that I thought would rejoice with me, and help me to grow..did not…jaded…

It felt so good to be accepted with them…but my heart grew tired, confused, easily agitated..for the last two years, I wonder why?  I’ve been called “Critical”, “unloving”.  In all my questions, answers like this “you are judging the body of Christ, and bad things will happen to you”…the politics of religion…legalism…do it like this…look like this…don’t talk so much about relationship, its not teachable…

After spending what seems like an endless amount of time…asking God over and over…”why can’t i get back to where we were in this relationship? I miss you.”

There is no room for religion in this Relationship!  Great! but that is scary in itself.  Learning to let go of my religion, in order to grasp the relationship.

I am going to start posting my fresh new look at scripture that  I have memorized, and go deeper with the Lord, in the way they apply to me… Believing God and making it a life style is not a religion, its a relationship.

Blogged Bible Study – Galatians 2

Reading this chapter, fresh was the way to do it this time for me.  I have read it many times and heard different leaders speak on it, and still something bothered me about it.  The LORD is good to shine new lights, and HE knows how my brain works!  In the past I have watched people take this book and bash Peter, and do it by saying they are following Pauls example. (Remember, Paul heard, then he saw, then he confronted – this is not how I see many confrontations taking place.) The problem I have with that is God also had Peter write two books of the Bible and I can’t excuse them as its a whole book from cover to cover.  SO my question to my self before GOD was, “what am I supposed to make of this?” and “doesn’t there have to be more to this than just confrontation?”  Here is what I came up with…

It does not matter how much you love Jesus, or how very much you are setting out to serve HIM, there will always be something there that will cause you to think “well maybe this will apply as well”.  I see Peter that way, and he fell to Legalism, as do many many well meaning Christ Followers.  Then I look at Paul, and it was right for him to call Peter on it.  This particular chapter is not just about “False Teachers” as whole.  This chapter is following up the verse in chapter one that I started this study with.

Gal. 1:4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of God our Father…

Gal. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I know longer live,but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of GOD, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Do you see the theme? Jesus death on the cross was enough! Its finished, HIS words not mine.

This chapter is about knowing your freedom in Christ, and what the blood of Jesus has done for each of us, and allow no man to alter that in the slightest way, the result in this instance was bondage to Legalism. (Which in my opinion, is the strongest bondage in the Body of Christ today! point fingers at someone else, judge unjustly, tell someone how to dress for church,anything that adds to the Gospel message for human gain..Legalistic!)

Once you are bound by something, it seems to be easier to fall to anything.

What do you believe? Does your belief system work for you?  In this chapter I see two loved very much by Christ, both serving HIM, and a confrontation needed to help one out of the bondage that has started to consume him.  Can you relate to thinking you are on the right track, only to find later deception was trying to tie you down?  It happens, pray that it does not happen to you?  I am praying for the same thing for myself.  Let’s not bash Peter, and let’s not put Paul on a pedestal.  But look at the application, we will soon enough be on both sides of it in some point in our life.