The Season of Lent

Day 6:   Enjoy Me – Your God

Ponder:  Enjoy God, what does that mean to me?  More importantly,  What Does That Mean to GOD?   I was surprised by the Thought ENJOY ME!  My mind started its rambling  -  God, don’t I enjoy You?  I read Your Word, I Pray, I stay on the lookout for how I can impact people by being available to be Your Ambassador.  What does Enjoy mean?  Uh Oh, I couldn’t find “enjoy” in my Biblical Dictionary.  OK, is it in the Bible?  Yes, there are 15 references but none about Enjoying God.    Well, where did the people who wrote the    Westminster Shorter Catechism No. 1get this thought? 

“Q. 1. What is the chief end of man(kind)?
A. Man(kind)’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

I look in the Greek Dictionary = Zero.  I look in the Hebrew Dictionary:  Voila: English Thesaurus: Enjoy – Receive pleasure or satisfaction from.  Have the use or benefit of!  I get excited and enter “Enjoy God” = Zero!  OK, last resort:  God, what does it mean to Enjoy you – TODAY?  Oh my, the 23^rd Psalm pops in my head.  The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures.  He leads me beside the still waters, He restores my soul.  He leads me in paths of righteousness - for His name’s sake.  Although I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.  Your rod and staff comfort me.  You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  You anoint my head with oil.  My cup runs over.  Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the home of the Lord forever.    I picture my Shepherd.  I picture what a well loved sheep experiences.  "Trust Me,"  God says, "it’s about Me not You."  A shepherd is in control of His sheep’s well being.  The sheep just has to follow the shepherd.  The shepherd doesn’t ask the sheep if it approves or is in agreement.  Oh wow, enjoy means to focus differently today.  I focus on my Good Shepherd.  Oh, that is why Jesus said: I am the GOOD Shepherd.  There are bad shepherds, but my Shepherd is the Good Shepherd so I can ENJOY HIM.

The Season of Lent

Day 5:       A Hearing Ear

Ohhh, this is being harder than I realized.  As I focus on my Heart, Solitude, a Gentle and Quiet Spirit and My Mouth, I am shown that all of this goes into a great big pot called my Spirit and it is bumping against lots of interior thoughts, ideas, desires, dreams, etc.  It is revealing so much of my thought life is about ME.   I am faced again with giving God what He wants each day as a Lenten Gift.  He is revealing my desires to have things my way, do it my way, stand and at the top of my lungs sing “I DID IT MY WAY.”  What does a hearing ear have to do with all of this?  I can’t have a Contrite Heart, experience Solitude, live with a Gentle and Quiet Spirit and have My Mouth controlled without my EARS being tuned to His Voice.  I never realized that my voice inside my head and heart was so loud.  He is revealing that it is easier to put on a façade than to have change come from the Inside to the Outside.  Uh Oh, I stopped to look up “hearing ear” in the Bible:  103 Times it is used!  

Proverbs 15:31 – The ear that heareth the reproof of life abideth among the wise.

I Corinthians 2:9 – But it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neigher have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.

Open my ears that I may hear, Voices of truth thou sendest clear;  And while the wave notes fall on my ear,  Everything false will disappear.  Silently now I wait for thee, Ready, my God, Thy will to see; Open my eyes, illumine me.  Spirit divine.

 (Open My Eyes – Clara H Scott 1841-1897)

The Season of Lent

Day 4:    My Mouth             

Why would God ask me to give Him my mouth today!  Hmm, could it be because of all the dental work as I have a Million Dollar Mouth?  Could it be because I think what comes out of my mouth is more valuable than what comes out of the mouths of people around me?  I guess I had better look up “MOUTH” in my Bible and see what God says.  I am astonished because Mouth is used 415 time in the King James version of the Bible!  It is used 68 times in Psalms.    This is BIG.   Checking out why  God wants me to give Him my mouth today,   I am told what God’s mouth does, what evil people’s mouths do but most importantly, what my mouth can do:  discourage, encourage, bless, curse, cause people to trust in the Lord, praise, sing. . .  However, there is a promise that if I open wide my mouth, God will fill it - Psalm 81:10.  OK, God has my attention!  Going through all the references in Psalms, I see why the talk shows are so popular.  People believe that their lips manage the world - Psalm 12:4.   I am told that I need to purpose with my mouth not to transgress - Psalm 17:3  Oooo How am I going to do that?  Psalm 141:3 tells me I can ask the Lord to set a watch over my mouth to keep my lips controlled.    My prayer today will be:

Psalm 19:14 – Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.

  Take Joy My King In What You Hear, May It Be a Sweet Sweet Sound in Your Ear.

The Season of Lent

Day 3:             A Gentle and Quiet Spirit

 I Peter 3:3-4 (The Message) What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition.  Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in.

Or in my words from King James:  It is the hidden person in my heart, which can't be messed with by the world and what goes on in it.  I am to  put on a meek and quiet spirit, which is very valuable to God!

I must focus today on having a meek inner disposition.  What does that look like?  Meekness in describing Jesus meant that His disposition was His power controlled by God.  Oh my, whether I want to admit it or not, I have power.  My actions can affect each situation I find myself in today.  I have Power to impact my husband, my children, my friends by how I allow God to flow through me today with His mighty power.   Ponder. . .Ponder. . .  How will my life be valuable to God today IF I choose to allow Him to be powerful in me in a way that others see a humble spirit?

Now, on to “Quiet”.   Gentleness [N] Sensitivity of disposition and kindness of behavior, founded on strength and prompted by love. .

I realize that both of these words are in the context of “power and strength.”  Upon further searching,  it is talking about the kind of wife I am to be.  At this period of my life, God is not allowing me to get away from the focus of the kind of wife He wants me to be.  OK, there is a picture emerging here:  Quiet, Power, Wife!

In our crazy world where saying you are a "Wife" doesn't produce any hoopla or applause, I think God wants me to think differently from the world.  I'm off to have a gentle and quiet spirit as I navigate my day.  And that doesn't mean sitting quietly and doing nothing.  It means "Turn on the Power" the right way.

Confession:  Before I even got this published I have already blown it once!  That's ok cause I'm headed in the right direction.

Walking in Jerusalem where Jesus walked!  Focus: follow where He leads!

The Season of Lent

Day 2:  What is my offering today for Lent?  Quietness!  I have been focusing on one scripture for a year now and with my little hyper personaility, it has been a hard verse to get under my belt.

Isaiah 30:15 – This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:  “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is you strength, but you would have none of it.

Today I will stay in my sanctuary.  I will not have a Plan.  I will focus on hearing the voice of My Abba.
First, I must quiet all the other voices down.  I have such a need or desire to connect with my daugher, mom and friends.  I will make one more call and then the Adventure of Quietness.

The Quiet Adventure:  This produced a challenge as I became fiesty, restless, sleepy but finally a calm settled in .  I am reading 24 Hours that Changed the World by Adam Hamilton.  In the quietness I realized:
God watched His Son die for ME!             
 Am I confused by Jesus’ Words?     

       No Other Way – Jesus’ Blood

He Knows I Will Fail  - even when I don’t know!          

How Have I Betrayed Him?

 I was a Slave to Sin and Death                         

Jesus looks past my betrayals,  sins, & failures & calls me Friend. 

 Jesus needed Friends and  I  Need Friends – for this Journey

      The Mount of Olives and thinking

           Of What Jesus Experienced

The Season of Lent

Yesterday I began a 40 Day Journey.  I love experiencing 40 Day Adventures because I sense they are Biblical.  Growing up Baptist, I had never heard the word "Lent" and didn't feel too badly about it after going to a Baptist bookstore and asking for literature on Lent when the clerk asked if that was spelled "lint"!
 Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus.   The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, alms giving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

In preparation I pondered what I could give up:  chocolate, wine, sugar, etc. and nothing really registered because as I dug deeper, I realized I wanted something that I could check off each day and give myself a star and pat on the head.  As I prayed and searched my heart, it finally occurred to me that the adventure I was being called to was a daily asking God what would bless His heart.

Day 1:  God wants a Contrite Heart from me:

Isaiah 57:15 – For this is what the high and lofty one says - he who lives forever, whose name is holy:  “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him/her who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.

Isaiah 66:1-2 – “Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool.  Where is the house you will build for me?  Where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being”” declares the Lord.  “This is the one I esteem:  he who is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word."

Psalm 34:18 – The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves such as have a contrite spirit (those who are crushed in spirit).

Psalm 51:17 – The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit:  a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

 What did I accomplish in my adventure today:  realizing that when I hurt someone else, whether it is my family, friends or someone that I just ignore, I am breaking God's heart because He has asked me to Love as He loves and to treat others as I want to be treated.  Contrite doesn't mean that I'm just sorry but that I am broken hearted that I have hurt or wounded God's heart by hurting those He loves.

Courage To Change

Are You Ready to Change?  I thought I was changing so much because I was reading my Bible, having quiet time. teaching - all the things a "nice Christian Woman" does.  BUT, it wasn't until I started working the Twelve Steps of AA that real change began in my life.  I am so encouraged to interweave my faith with the Twelve Steps because many times we feel that "knowing" the Bible is what it is all about.  Getting wrapped up in "teaching", even at times dogmatically, what the Bible says is not what it is all about.  As I have read Romans for the kazillioneth time, the answer finally registered in this brain and spirit of mine.  Faith without actions = ZERO!  I have read and re-read Romans 7 and 8.  However, putting steps 5 and 6 of AA with that has produced the miraculous.  Romans 7 affirms that my heart's desire is to be all God wants me to be.  So I have tried, tried, tried and wondered what can be the problem.  I have associated "trying" with "making it happen!"  As Paul says:  "But I need something more!  For if I know the law but still can't keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help!  I realize that I don't have what it takes.  I can will it, but I can do it.  . . My decisions such as they are, don't result in actions."  Pooey pooey.  Then I go on to Chapter 8 where it says:  "With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved.  Those who enter into Christ's being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud.  A new power is in operation.  The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing me from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny . . ..  Then - low and behold - as I was reading Courage to Change I found I had worked Steps 1 - 4 but when I got to Steps 5 and 6 - Whee Hoo - it showed me that I had to Admit to God, to myself and to another human being the exact nature of my wrongs!  I don't mind admitting my "wrongs" to God but to another human being!  Yikes, that takes Courage.  But I put on my "big girl pants" and admitted to others how I had been wrong.   The Action that I was missing was Step 6 which is being entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.  I have tried tried tried to make myself do and be what I sensed was needed and now I wonder why it took me so many years to realize I CAN'T DO IT - ONLY GOD CAN.  The big question is do I have the Courage to accept Him doing it as a gift instead of keeping on trying so I can give myself "kudos" for being so wonderful.  I found the secret:  God is who He said He is and God can do what He says He can do.  I believe - just for today - I will accept what he wants to do and give Him the "kudos" or PRAISE and accept the fact that I don't have what it takes - but He does!! Hallelujah What A Savior.