Stay the Course

It has been a while since my last posting as G-d is doing some amazing things these past few months.  The struggles and seasons of pain has accompanied the healing of past hurts.  I have found that G-d is in the midst of all of those seasons in our lives.  When looking at the 23rd Psalm and the first four verses we find some powerful promises when we face different seasons of life.  In the midst of these seasons it is imperative that we hold on to the truths in this verse and embrace them as you would a life preserver being used to save your life.  This verse has the power to impart strength and encouragement when you feel discouraged.  Let's take a look at Psalm 23:1-4 . . .

The LORD is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

He is my shepherd, He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me besides quiet waters, He refreshes my soul, He guides me along the right paths, I will fear no evil, He is with me, He will comfort me....all of these are truths that G-d himself shared with us that when we face life's difficulties we know what He thinks, we know what He is going to do, and we know what is required of us.  We must accept our circumstances and not deny them.  We must trust that G-d has a plan and he will take care of us even when we feel He is so far off.  G-d will never leave us he is right there in the midst of the discouragement, discomfort, or drama in life.  He understands the pain of rejection.  He understands the feeling of being abandoned and realizing no one really cares.  He understands that you just want to give up or questioning if there is another way.  When will the darkness fade, when will the hope and season of joy return.  The answer: When G-d says you have learned all that you need to learn in the situation you are in. Once you have righted the ship, changed direction based on the imparting of the Holy Spirit in your life speaking to you about certain things that need to be corrected.  Forgive, release those people in your life that have caused you pain.  Be free.  G-d bore your pain on the cross.  Vengence was already levied out on those that have hurt you.  Be free.  Let it go.  Trust in G-d. 

Reinvention

     It has been a while since the last post as God is working in a mighty way.  As an up and coming Christian Counselor, God is doing some deep work in my own life.  Shaping my character, removing, renewing, restoring, and reconciling my life to His.  It is an amazing thing to go through deep personal struggles and taking the lessons learned from those struggles and seeing how God is using them to accomplish His purpose.  The relationships that I have around me are enjoying the fruit of my labor with the Lord.  With this being said, I want to share some important principles that have helped me make those changes in my life. 

The word that has come to my mind is REINVENTING.  What does this truly mean? 

To reienvent:  invent something again: to invent something again, or bring something back into existence, use, or popularity after a period of neglect or obscurity  or to create new version of something: to change radically the appearance, form, or presentation of something or somebody.

     God is bringing me 'back into existence' he is changing radically the appearance of what my life stood for.  I feel, think, act, and behave in much healthier ways because of His reinvention of my heart.   Make a decision today to respond to your wife, children, co-workers differently. We need to be set free from those past dysfunctional behaviors and learn to see how God wants reinventing us.  This reinvention can be called sanctification.  To 'set apart."  God has a plan for each of our lives and in order for us to experience fully the reason for our existance is to grow and mature in every area of your life.  Leave nothing off the table.  Be open to criticism as often times we ignore the very things that are going to help us become healthy.  A consistent pattern of functional behavior is the goal here.

     Someone once told me that its not easy to reinvent ourselves.  Most of us are so committed to being who we are that we can't imagine being someone else.  Isn't this the great mystery of our salvation?  The great sanctifying work that God is doing in our lives or wants to do in our lives.  We are the only ones keeping ourselves from truly being happy, healthy, and whole.  There is liberty in our lives with God.  If we feel we are in bondage or in a prison in this life is because we probably are.  God holds the key to setting us free.  We are free.  The prison door has been open.  We just need to walk out.  It's risky.  It's scary.  But the joy and peace you feel is so worth the effort.  It will be hard.  It will be so easy to revert back to our old ways but keep focused and committed to the process and one day you will look in the mirror and like what you see.

    Isn't this why we seek counseling?  To discover those area's that are not in line with the righteousness of God and learn to live a holy, pure, separate life with God.  The key to this reievention starts with brokenness.  To be broken before God is to lay everything at the feet of the Lord.  We must sit before a Holy God and allow him to show us those areas that he wants to work and change or reinevent and allow him to do his work.  We must be willing to co-labor with God to make those difficult changes.  It's dealing with those core issues such as rejection, abandonment, unforgivenness, etc...God wants to make us whole.  He waits to be wanted by his creation.  The bible speaks of rocks crying out to God...we need to cry out before God and ask him to reienvent us...make us the kind of person that is functioning in life in a healthy way.  If you do not know what healthy is...ask.  Ask God, a counselor, a friend seek out a different way to deal with things.  In this process God will show you.  He has shown me and the fruit of my labor is peace.  If you say, "I cannot change!" It is a lie...you can change. 

Father,
Thank you for caring about us enough to help us change.  Thank you for the suffering we encounter as you use this to show us areas we need to change.  Allow the Holy Spirit to show us and help us make those changes in our lives that will set us free.  Amen.

A New Year

   First, Happy New Year to all!  May the Peace of God be with each and everyone this next year.  I often look at the New Year holiday with hope and anticipation as to what will come of the new year.  I am spending the New Years eve, in church, around believer's who love God.  I am posturing my heart and life openly before God, confessing all known sin and asking God to reveal the unknown.  Taking hold of my true identity in Christ and learning more and more about my true self.  This true self is the person that wants to live a life impacting the kingdom of God while working towards a life of purity and freedom.  God has the power to do both.  God has the motivation of grace to get me through the healing process.
    As I look to my friends and family, my prayer for some is that they would be saved.  Other's I pray that God would reveal to them that they need healing and no longer need to deny the fact that they are hurting.  Only by the grace of God can we breathe another breath, speak another word, or walk another step.  God made us.  God wants a deep, personal, intimate love relationship with all of us.  Our job is to position our lives so that this relationship has the freedom to work as it should.  Intimacy with God is the secret to peace in our lives.  If we could only truly get this powerful truth. 

     So as you look to 2011 and make those resolutions, I pray that those who have not met God would find him, those that know God would return to Him, and those that do have a love relationship with God would grow deeper and walk along the journey helping those who need a hand. 

Father,  my heart grieves over the sin of the past and present. They are against your holy name.  Please help me to seek humility, embrace reconciliation wherever possible,  forgiving those that have hurt me, grace for the hurt that I have caused others and peace for us all.  Father, I pray that my relationship with you would begin to grow deeper by the day.  May my soul would  thirst, yearn, seek afer your Word and allow it to do the work in me that it was meant to do.  Let me get out of the way.  Father, I thank you for your forgiveness and allowing me to walk clean and righteous before you.  Restore to me the joy of my salvation.

Love
Terry

By His stripes we are healed

I have been a Christian for quite some time and have always had a difficult time assimilating the Word of God into my life in a real and practical way.  It is easy to look at the Word of God and believe it in my head and heart, yet find it difficult to apply it to my life.  In the season of confusion, hurt, anger, and pain we read to take it all to the cross.  God will heal you.  What does that look like?  How do you do this?  Do you write a note to God?  Do you just simply tell God?  Doesn't he already know?  These questions plague us as we struggle with the heaviness we are experiencing in our current situations.  Let's take, shame for example.  This is a core issue that many of us struggle with.  Shame can be good and it can also be bad. 

Psychologist Robert Karen defines shame as, "...crippling, because it contains not just the derisive accusation that one is a wimp, a bully, a runt, or a fag but the further implication that one is at core a deformed being, fundamentally unlovable and unworthy of membership in the human community.  It is the self regarding the self with the withering and unforgiving eye of contempt.  And most people are unable to face it.  It is too annihilating." 

(Robert Karen, "Shame," The Atlantic Monthly February 1992) 42-43.

What a great discription of the pain and heaviness our souls feel when we have this struggle with shame in our lives.  When we encounter the cross and read how Jesus suffered, we can summize that shame was definately one of them.  Yet, sinnless, Jesus suffered deep rejection and bore the shame our sins deserve.  In order to take the Word of God and apply it to our lives, we need to confess our shame before God.  It can be a simple prayer or a deep heartfelt cry to God.  He wants to hear it.  He wants you to experience the freedom that unconditional love and grace has to offer.  It's there waiting for you.  God will not force it on you.  You must position your heart open and bear before the living God and be ready to confess all known sin and repent of it.  A Messianic Rabbi once said that repentance means to, "Admit it and Quit it!"  When we struggle with addictions or other difficult issues like anger or resentment it takes time and accountability to work through these issues but you still do not have to own the shame, God knows that you are working through a process of healing.  By His stripes we are healed.  All of our sin was paid for by His death on the cross.  It doesn't matter what you have done, what you have said, or what others have done or said to you.  You are loved by the One who created you.  You are forgiven by the One who died the horrific shameful death on the cross.  You job is to deal with the sin.  Get help and continue the spiritual disciplines while relying on the Holy Spirit to make those changes in your life.  God wants you to be holy.  You are not to compare your life to anyone but that of Christ.  He alone is your measuring rod.  Before you know it you will be walking in righteousness, forsaking the past issues and living a peaceful life.  My prayer is that God will begin the healing in you. 

Wounds that Heal

     We all go through seasons in our lives where it seems as though our world is out of control and we feel as though no one understands what we are going through.  We think through the relationships we have experienced and are tormented by the judgemental accusations, critical words, and mistakes that we have personally made in those relationships allowing them to be used as rods to flog our spirit.  We beat ourselves up until our emotions are like soggy cornflakes (excuse the analogy).  When does this stop?  When will the beatings and torment be enough?  We tend isolate ourselves as if we are the only ones going through this nightmare and everyone else is happy and enjoying life.  We are wounded!  We are literally walking wounded.  Our body, soul, and spirit have been bruised, broken, and beaten.  It seems like the devil has accomplished his purpose.  So what do you do with the possible feelings of anger, resentment, unforgiveness, and rejection you must feel? How do you even begin to heal? 

There are some things you must do in order to begin the healing process.  This isn't exhaustive but to give us an opportunity to think through how we can begin this important process.

1.  Sit with God and confess your known sins. Forgive yourself and others.

* You know you have forgiven yourself and others when you do not respond to them according to what they have done to you or what you have done to others.  You treat them and yourself as if they/you have never done any wrongdoing.
* It is a process and doesn't come easy...this must be your goal.
* Forgiving someone is not an admission of guilt. It is the beginning of your healing.
* Forgiveness comes from allowing the Holy Spirit to enable you to pardon those without
conditions. (I will forgive you if....)  This is not forgiveness.

2.  Find a counselor/friend you can confide in and talk about your situation and construct a plan to deal with the issues that confront you.

* You have anger...it must be dealt with.  You have shame...it must be dealt with...you have sin...it must be dealt with.
*Notice that the counseling is about you...you can only change you!

3. Take care of your personal needs: eat right, exercise, sleep, give yourself permission to have some fun.

4. Stop talking negatively toward those that have hurt you, pray for them, asking God to bless
them.

5. Read your Bible, get on a Bible reading plan.

6. Pray, ask God to help you deal with your thoughts and feelings

Our ultimate aim here in this season of pain and hurt in our lives is to recognize where we have fallen away from God's will for our lives, heal from the pain so that we stop hurting those around us.  It's time to be honest, transparent, and take a healthy look at every area of your life and God will use this season to help you grow closer to Him and become healthy in how you relate to people. He wants to heal you and he wants reconciliation to come between you and Him as well as the relationships that you are in.  Again, this isn't easy but focus on you...focus on the issues that you can change.  A counselor shared with me a great principle and here is what he said:

I cannot change another person by direct action, I can only change myself!  Others have a tendency to change in reaction to my change.

I am personaly working through these types of things and trusting God that this journey will end with complete healing and reconcilation.  I am working through the issues of trusting God in all things and saturating myself with how God feels about me.  Ignoring the onslaught of negative and hurtful words of others.  A book that I am reading called "Wounds that Heal" by Stephen Seamands notes, "You have carried the grief and sorrow of rejection for years.  Now as you stand before the cross, hear Jesus saying, 'Give it all to me.  Let me bear your rejection in my broken body.  Let me absorb the pain myself.  Give me the hurtful words, the lonely times you were neglected, the occassions you felt let down or betrayed.  Give me the abuse.  Let me bear the brunt of your rejections.  Let my wounds of rejection touch and carry yours...because others reject us, we find it difficult to accept ourselves.  They consider us unlovable, so we consider ourselves unlovable too.  At the cross, however, God's opinion of us stands fully revealed.  We are of inestimable value to God.  Accepted in Jesus the Beloved, we are loved beyond measure, even worth dying for....the cross proclaims that when you and I are at our worst, God loves us the most...Accepted.  Beloved. Of infinite worth to God...no rejection, anywhere or anytime, can ever change that.'" (Seamands, 2003)

My prayer is that if you are in that season of real sorrow and grief, God will open your heart and mind to run to Him and let the Great Physician begin His work on you.  It may be painful at times but the result will be that of joy returned, happiness in your life, and most of all peace in your soul! 

A Reflection

Every seen your reflection? Of course you have, in a mirror getting ready for work or in a pond as you kneel down to feed the ducks.  Our reflection.  A perfect image of what we look like to ourselves and others.  What about our reflection to God?  What is it that He truly see's?  Does He see things we don't?  Of course He does.  We can only see the outward but God, He see's your heart.  "He said the them, you are the one's who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your heart" (Luke 16:15 NIV). We work so hard to reflect a perfect image to our friends, co-workers, and family but is this 'work' really worth it?  God knows your heart.  He knows that you have lied, cheated, stealed, manipulated, spoken harshly to to others.  He knows what you think, feel, see, perceive.  He knows the things that make you happy and He knows each and every one of those things that have caused us great pain.  He knows.  He feels the pain we have inside of each one of us.  Do you believe this?  If so then what does your true reflection look like?  Not the one in the mirror or the one in the pond, but the one in your heart?  Are you hurting?  Are you confused? Are you ashamed of the sin in your life that you have tried millions of times to stop, yet you continue?  

    What is your heart reflecting?  You ask, what does it matter?  Well, let me tell you.  It does matter.  What is in your heart governs what you say, think, and do.  If you are hurting, you will hurt others.  If you are angry, people will not want to be around you.  If you are unforgiving, you will not be forgiven.  God wants you to share your heart with Him. He wants to heal those hurts.  t may be something from your childhood or it could be something that just happened today.  He wants you to talk with someone, share the pain you feel and learn to deal with the difficulties in your heart in a healthy way.  God's ultimate goal is that your outward appearance is a reflection of your inward heart.  God wants you to be the same outwardly as you are inwardly.  He wants you to be made whole.  He wants you to know a heart that is healed.  He wants you to feel a heart that is mended.  He wants you to see the heart that is scarred.  God allows the scar to remain to remind us of what He has done in our lives.  The scar doesn't hurt anymore, but you can see it.  The scar on your heart is where God did his mighty work.  You can't see it but you can remember it.  Remember the cross where Jesus died?  You know, He still has his scars.  You know the one's in his wrists, the one in His side, and the two on his feet.  They don't hurt anymore but he see's them.  He remembers everytime He looks at them the pain they brought.  He also knows that it was temporary.  When you sin and rebel against God, He looks at his scars and remembers He died for you.  He wants you to stop trying to act like nothing is wrong.  Admit that you are hurting, angry, rejected, abandoned, and carry around a lot of unforgiveness.  Tell Him you still hurt.  He is the Great Physician and will mend you..just let him operate. Trust Him.  He created you.  He can and will mend your heart.  Tell me your thoughts.....

Why do we avoid the Bible?

I have often wondered why people avoid the Bible.  What is it that keeps, even believer's from reading God's Word?  To me, the core issue is two-fold:  Fear and Pride.  When we read God's Word we immediately are forced to examine our lives.  It is one of the only books that pierces the soul without much effort.  Read one passage of Scripture and you will see that God's truth is unavoidable.  If we are really honest with ourselves and really want to make changes in our lives we must read and obey God's Word.  There is an old hymn that says,

 TRUST AND OBEY

Hymn Writer ~ John H. Sammis, 1846-1919

Hymn Music ~ Daniel B. Towner, 1850-1919

When we walk with the Lord

In the light of His word,

What a glory He sheds on our way!

While we do His good will,

He abides with us still,

And with all who will trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there's no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

 

Not a burden we bear,

Not a sorrow we share,

But our toil He doth richly repay;

Not a grief or a loss,

Not a frown or a cross,

But is blest if we trust and obey.
 

Trust and obey, for there's no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

But we never can prove

The delights of His love

Until all on the altar we lay;

For the favor He shows,

For the joy He bestows,

Are for them who will trust and obey.

 

Trust and obey, for there's no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.

Then in fellowship sweet

We will sit at His feet,

Or we'll walk by His side in the way;

What He says we will do,

Where He sends we will go;

Never fear, only trust and obey.

Trust and obey, for there's no other way

To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.



Although it is easy to recite these verses, sing them in churches, but to actually do what it says is probably one of the most difficult tasks we must do in order to walk with the Lord with any success.  It is only by the power of the Holy Spirit are we able to accomplish this task.  We must be motivated to do this not because God says so, but because we want to show God that we really do believe He is the Creator and by doing what He says shows Him that we really do love him.  The more you obey the more closer to God you will be.  God knows best.