God, Here I am...Waiting.

This is a poem of sorts that I wrote during an especially trying time in my life. It seems another trying time is upon me at the moment and the Lord led me back to this. No matter what has happened in my life God has always been there. He understands me better than I understand myself. Reading back over this has given me a peace about where I am right now. My right now situation needs some adjusting but I know there is a plan in it. I just need to wait on the Lord and trust in Him to make the right adjustments. I hope this helps and blesses you as much as it did me.

God, Here I am...Waiting.

Ok God, here I am, I’m waiting on you.

I’ve done all I can and I’m just waiting.

Things are falling apart,

This storm is getting rough.

My mind is cloudy.

My heart is broken.

I’m fighting defeating thoughts.

God, are you there?

God, do you hear?

I’m not sure I can make it this time, Lord.

All really does seem lost.

I hear them doubting you, but I can’t agree.

You’ve come through for me so many times before.

I know you’ll come this time too God,

But what’s the waiting for?

I love you

I praise you

And I pray to love you more.

I pray for you to use me Lord,

But right now I feel abused.

I cannot understand this trial that you have put on me.

Could there really be a purpose for all this pain?

All the prayers for your will I’ve prayed;

This is what comes my way?

Oh God, I’m waiting.

I’m unsure.

I’m frightened.

But I will not pray that you take me out of this;

Only that you take me through this.

If this be your will for me;

I’ll walk until I can’t.

Then, dear Lord, I’ll just trust;

Trust you to carry me on.

Image from: http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2012/03/waiting-on-god.html

They Will Know We are Christians?

♫“So let my life be the proof,

The proof of Your love

Let my love look like You and 

What You're made of

How You lived, how You died

Love is sacrifice

So let my life be the proof,

The proof of Your love”♫

After hearing the lyrics of this song, sung by the Christian band 'For King and Country', I felt such a tug at my heart. My mind started recalling all the unbelievers I had recently spoken to. The most common thread among these people has been that they notice the behavior of Christians does not match the things they preach, teach and say they believe. Neither I nor they claim this to apply to all believers, but it does apply to far too many. So if we aren’t doing or acting like we are supposed to, how should we change and why?

Why? Because how else are non-believers going to become believers? Christians are supposed to be the proof of God’s love. Matthew 5:14 says that we are “the light of the world.” Verse 16 says “let your light shine before others,” It’s pretty simple to understand these verses; we are the light and we are to shine before others. Lights show the way through the dark. So basically Christians are to be the flashlights of the world, showing the way to those who haven’t found God’s love.

Now, how does one of God’s shining lights look and act? First we don’t do as the world does because you can't win them if you join them. If it is a blueprint for Christian living you are looking for I suggest we start with God Himself. 1 John 4:8 says that “God is love”. So we must start with love since that is the very nature of The One we want to portray to others. What is love and how do we show it? Fortunately for us, there is a chapter in the Bible known as “The Love Chapter” and it speaks of what true Love should look like.

1 Corinthians chapter 13 starts off by telling us that anything we do, that we do not do with love is as nothing. We can speak the Word of God to unbelievers and make every verse’s meaning crystal clear but if we aren’t speaking with love then the sounds coming from our mouths are useless. Sounds like love is pretty important, doesn’t it?

Verse 4 starts with “Love is…” Here’s where we find out if what we think we’ve been doing for God was done in love or if it has been useless. Love means being patient and kind; have you argued with an unbeliever? Love doesn’t envy or boast; wanting something that belongs to someone else, or bragging about what you have or what you’ve done. Love is not arrogant or rude; it does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. Love does not keep score. Love rejoices in the truth. Love protects, trusts, hopes, always perseveres. Love doesn’t end. Now we see what love is, does and doesn’t do. We have read it so if we don’t do it, it will be sin for us. (James 4:17)

All of those “love is…” verses may seem difficult at first but when we pray and ask God to help us see others as He sees them and love them with His love I believe we will see things change.

I can’t talk about how we should love and not say something about who we should love. Our enemies should feel the same love we show our friends. Those who persecute us should feel God’s love from us as well. (Matthew 5:44) Ouch! I know that’s a hard one to swallow but it’s in the Word and we should live by it. Love always perseveres, remember? I have found that walking away is sometimes the only way to show love. God is love, so to show true unconditional love to someone, especially when it’s difficult to do so, is to show them God.

Our goal as Christians should be to always grow closer to God and in doing so start to look and act more like him every day. The more we act like Him the more people will notice our “set apartness” and they will want what we have. Love attracts people. I am so confident in my belief that I will boldly say that if everyone who says they are a Christian would love like Jesus and strive to be more like him every day we would have a major decline in unbelief in our world.

Christian’s lives are the proof of God’s love. My prayer is that we all start loving with that uncommon love that Jesus showed, after all love is the best thing there is.

“But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13 MSG)

Useless Fear and Anxiety

Worry, stress, anxiety, fear; these are words our culture know all too well. Every day we find new things to fret about. We watch the news we worry, the bills come in we stress, someone questions our work and we need a nerve pill. These feelings of dread are nothing new, humans have dealt with them since Adam and Eve first disobeyed God. (Gen. 3:6)

At the moment of that first sin, fear came into the world. Before the sin there was no need for fear because everything was perfect. Sin created a need for consequence and we fear consequence; so started the history of our feelings of dread.

It is strange that we as Christians today still fear and worry and stress when we have so many examples of God taking care of those before us and some in much worse conditions than our own.

We see God deliver the children of Israel from the clutches of an evil Egyptian pharaoh. (Exodus 12–14) He knocks down the city walls of Jericho for them later. (Joshua 5:13-20). God created a clerical error that allowed Corrie Ten Boom to walk out of a Nazi concentration camp a week before all the women her age were executed. It is God’s hand that stopped a woman from killing her unborn child. God, who makes us wake up late so that we are not in the path of a drunk driver. He has done amazing things and is still doing amazing things, so why do we fear?

I have asked myself that question so many times without any answer other than, “consequences”. But God in all His infinite wisdom gave me an answer on one ordinary day in the form of my son screaming at a cartoon movie.

Matthew was watching the movie Megamind, which he had seen so many times before. It came to a part where Megamind, the villain, and Roxanne Ritchie, the damsel, were discussing what should be done about the newest terror of Metro City. Roxanne believes they should go in with guns blazing and save the city! Megamind however is bogged down by the fact that he has always been the bad guy and doesn’t even think to consider that he could be good. He says “I'm the bad guy! I don't save the day, I don't fly off into the sunset, and I don’t get the girl!” Well that was too much for my baby boy to handle, he screamed encouragement to the guy with the big blue head “You do save the day! You do get the girl! You do win! Don’t give up!” I laughed at this and continued with the laundry but after a minute or so it hit me. Megamind didn't know what Matthew knew. If he knew that he would win and all the details of how to get there then he wouldn't have hesitated to go get the bad guy. But he didn't know, and he feared the unknown, just as we do.

Matthew had seen the end and everything that lead to it, so he had full confidence in this character’s abilities. Much like God has seen our lives play out from beginning to end and he knows what steps we need to take next to fulfill the plan he has for us; to get us to our big victory scene. Don’t give up!

We are even one step ahead of Megamind, we know that in the end we will win, if we are faithful to our Lord. He gave us an entire book to let us know what we need to do to get to the “winner’s circle”.

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) Wow! What a wonderful winner’s circle that will be! Don’t give up!

So even though we know the end of the story, we know what we must do to be on the winning side and we know THE ONE who controls it all, are we still going to worry? Probably, but when we stop trying to do it all ourselves, turn our lives completely over to God and let him work it out, we can live fearless and  victorious lives. Listen can’t you hear God screaming “You do win! DON’T GIVE UP!!”

                              “..If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)