Daily Devotion

In Uncharted Waters

 

"Your own ears will hear him. Right behind you a voice will say, "This is the way you should go," whether to the right or to the left."  Isaiah 30:21 NLT

 

Hey!!!!! Today is a great day.  It started off great, got a little bumpy, but its gotten better and I have to thank God.  This is a new place for me.  I've never been in a place of praying and trusting first, then acting.  I've always been a go-getter, a solve the problem and act type of person.  I admit I am a control freak, lol. I can fix everyone else's problems but I finally had to realize I could not fix my own...and that mess hurts!  Although this very seldom applies to me, because I have a great sense of direction, I have had the occasion of being lost once or twice.  Now I know plenty of people who cannot say the same.  But when you get lost, after you didn't follow the directions you were given, or if you were bold and went the trip without even asking, do you humble yourself and use your GPS/ask directions, or do you keep driving past the same gas station in arrogance?

 

Today I realize I am in a new place.  Its uncomfortable by every standard--I'm forced to be patient and wait, I'm forced to let go and let God, I'm forced to forgive and start over.  Yes, I have a choice in all of this, I could step out of God's covering and do what I want.  I could voice my opinions and desires and potentially lose a valuable friend.  I could ignore the pressing need for me to forgive and let go of all my hurts that stem from my father's passing, and potentially die from the negative effects of unforgiveness.  I could take all of my mess back from God and try to fix it myself, and put myself in a worse hole.  But I'm deciding this time to go God's way.  Why?  Because truthfully I am tired of running things, time to let someone else make all the decisions and I follow.  I'm tired of being that go-to person for every single person and feeling burned out when I get to my own stuff.  I'm tired of hurting after I tried to do something my way and got scarred when I fell down.

 

Now I can clearly hear God as I am in the midst of this storm.  It has the potential to be turbulent--in fact, it is turbulent, in my mind and heart as they are both heavy right now.  But the good thing is that God is steering the ship and He knows the course very well.  He knows where I am going and He knows how to get me there safely with everything I need.  Hopefully at the end of this leg of the journey, I'll be a much wiser and stronger person--but I can trust and rest assured that I will because trusting in God grows and stretches my faith.  It is tough, Lord knows it is, but I want to say I'm happy and at peace with where I am going, because I waited on God's direction.

 

"He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way." Psalm 25:9 NIV

Daily Devotion

Hanging on a Prayer

 

"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done."  Philippians 4:6 NLT

 

God has been calling to my mind and heart to do some things that require obedience, humility, and selflessness on my part, and all I can think of is that I love God more than these things, so I must be obedient to Him.  I have to let my love of God and my desire to do His will overpower my reluctance to act.  All I have had the energy and heart to do is pray.

 

God has shown me in the last few weeks that He hears my prayers and remembers them even when I don't.  He answered prayers I've had from months ago within recent weeks and all it served to do was blow my mind!  Have you ever had that experience of God answering a prayer so clearly?  It is a very eye-opening experience.  In light of that, God has been teaching me patience and above all else to trust Him.  The things that I'm dealing with right now require me to pray many times throughout the day to God asking how, why, and just trusting in His word.

 

At the beginning of the year when my baby brother got into a car accident in my old car (RIP Tina hahaha), I was in no position financially to get a new car.  In fact, Tina was soon to be paid off.  It hurt, to know that I, a problem fixer and solver, had no earthly power within me to solve my own issues.  I could not do anything.  I remember praying though, 'God teach me to trust you without a doubt.'  And don't you know God gets excited at these types of prayers, because they cause your faith and trust in Him to grow as the experiences will do exactly that. 

 

So I started this devotion 8 days ago, and never came back to it.  And how appropriate that I picked it back up today...God has been blowing my mind since I got on the plane yesterday.  Prayers I have been praying and thanking Him for the answers in faith for months now...He showed up for me in a major way within the last 24+ hours.  I went from various uncertainities in every area of my life to a place of unspeakable JOY as every thing I could ask for was revealed to me. 

 

All I can say is hang on to your prayers.  Thank God for the answers that He will reveal...yes, no, not right now.  And trust without a doubt that He will answer you and see that the Lord is good!!  Good night!

 

"In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight."  Proverbs 3:6 NASB

Daily Devotion

Love and Grudges Don't Mix

 

"It is not conceited (arrogant and inflated with pride); it is not rude (unmannerly) and does not act unbecomingly. Love (God's love in us) does not insist on its own rights or its own way, for it is not self-seeking; it is not touchy or fretful or resentful; it takes no account of the evil done to it [it pays no attention to a suffered wrong]." 1 Corinthians 13:5 AMP

 

I've been thinking a lot lately, well truly, God's been weighing some things heavily on my mind and heart.  The distinguishing factor between Christianity and other religions is supposed to be that we forgive.  Matthew 6:14 says 'For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.'  There are many other scriptures throughout the Gospels and the New Testament that drive home this point of radical forgiveness.

 

What I realized the other day is that holding a grudge is very much having unforgiveness.  I have to say thank You God because I used to be the queen of grudges.  If you hurt my feelings, I would never forget it and mull over it everytime I saw that person, resulting in a scowl or stank eye being thrown the way of the offender.  But God calls us to live a life of love, much like Jesus--in fact, He calls us to live exactly like Jesus.  To do this, we must first accept Him into our hearts and minds, and allow the presence of His Spirit to transform us.  But this love lesson is a hard lesson because it involves so many challenges.  Forgiving and turning the other cheek to every injustice, pain, and undeniable wrong that is inflicted upon you at the hands of another, that total complete letting go of ill feelings in order to bring healing.  It is hard! And if you are a grudge-holder like I used to be, it feels virtually impossible to give away that pain.  Its like taking a pr"ized possession that you have had for some time and giving it to Goodwill--all of the emotions associated with it begin to resurface and cause your heart to wrench.

 

But we have to live this way, in order to show the world that Christians are who they say they are.  How can we call for the death of someone who violated or injured us--as a true Christian?  How can we dig up the past and relive the injustice--as a true Christian?  We are called to love all unconditionally, even those we personally feel are un-lovable.  We have to have compassionate hearts, which can only be created by the molding of God, and let everything go. 

 

This has been an especially difficult lesson for me.  But when we decide to allow God to have control of the situation, we must be willing to go forward at all costs, even if we lose those grudges and bitter feelings we take comfort in.

 

"Be tolerant of one another and forgive each other if anyone has a complaint against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also should forgive."  Colossians 3:13 ISV

Daily Devotion

A Lesson from a Child

 

"Did not He who made me in the womb make him, And the same one fashion us in the womb?" Job 31:15 NASB

 

Hi everyone!! I know, long time no writings.  Jury duty two weeks ago made it virtually impossible for me to write--only because I have not quite mastered writing these in the mornings.  But I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about life.  Most of my last writings focused on forgiveness.  And mainly so because that has been something God has been working on in my life lately.  You see, there are a great deal of people that I had not quite forgiven.  When I would hear or even see their name, I would wince at the memories of their wrongs to me.  But I heard a life-changing view point recently: life for the people who wronged me still goes on.  For these people, life has continued with some having new beginnings, new blessings, and new chapters to start in their lives.  Whereas, me, I have been stuck in unforgiveness and I have not allowed myself to go on from some of the things; as a result, I have not fully moved forward.  Even at the possibility of new relationships, I have shied away from the potential hurt because I have been afraid to trust and thus I have allowed my wounds to fester and not heal.

 

Then God spoke to me one day as I asked yet again what was I doing to not receive the things I asked Him for.  And as clearly as if you were standing next to me and spoke it, I heard that I have unforgiveness in my heart.  In the days and weeks that have transpired since, I had the favor of stumbling, literally, upon a great book on unforgiveness.  Now I have read on this topic before, and it helped me a great deal last year when I first brushed up on this topic after my dad's death.  During that time, I focused on the most prominent offenses I could remember, reaching all the way back to my childhood.  I can say that many of those things I no longer remember, having reconciled those things to the past and buried them once and for all, because I now have the wisdom and knowledge I need on those situations to let them go.  So on this second go-around, I can move on quickly and possibly help others in the process.

 

So I prayed and waited as God revealed the contents of my heart towards those people and how they have affected me still.  Some infractions have bruised me to the core and allowed me to become fearful in being too deeply involved in other relationships of that nature, where others have only served to be mortar and brick for the wall I already had up against my family.  But I go back to the statement above...how these people have gone on with their lives, while I still stayed in that broken place.  And no more I say!  No more will I allow the enemy to cripple my mind to that powerful gift God gave us through Christ, and that is the ability for forgive.

 

It is a known fact that there are learned behaviors and innate behaviors.  When a infant is born, it instantly trusts its mother.  In fact, even if a newborn cannot flat out say, 'that's my mother', it knows her based on her scent and her voice to name a few.  It relies on her for very survival.  Then as the child grows, he learns to not trust as a result of some action.  Example, we don't trust strangers because we are told not to by our parents.  We don't trust a faulty scale after it continues to give us the same weight even when we know we have gained weight lol. 

 

What I have learned from this experience, and truthfully in reflecting over the last 3 years, is that we are to automatically trust God and what He says.  But it is through these types of experiences, injustices from friends, family, and foe alike, that we become reluctant to trust God or anyone for that matter.  It is after we are wronged that we allow unforgiveness to cloud our minds and hearts.  We allow that unforgiveness to block from receiving whatever messages God has for us and even more critical, the healing that He holds for our hearts.  The enemy's tool effectively keeps us in a time warp, immune to any form of deliverance until we recognize what's going on.

 

I had to become like a newborn--in the aspect of trusting God.  Much like innocent until proven guilty, we are to trust God and others with that same mentality.  Although God will not do us like   I had to go back to the beginning of why I was hurting and acknowledge the feelings I had.  In one situation, I read the emails I sent that person and finally acknowledged how foolish I had felt in loving and trusting them, how I opened my heart and self in obedience to God's call for us to love unconditionally.  And instead of it being reciprocated, I was burned and discarded.  I realized it was those same feelings that I hoped to avoid in future relationships, which had been crippling me with being open and honest to others.  I had to go back and relive the same pains I felt at my dad's death to acknowledge how my family had hurt me with misplaced and inappropriate words to forgive them.  I had to be trusting of God that He would not allow me to experience that again, but instead, give me the strength and courage to give it to Him.  And now, I ask God to give me the strength to forgive each day, and I also pray for these people.  It hurts a little less each day, and hopefully soon it will be completely gone.  But it takes us being willing to have that undeniable trust in God--the God that knit us all together in the wombs of our mothers--that He is faithful.

 

"The LORD is my strength and shield. I trust him with all my heart. He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy. I burst out in songs of thanksgiving."  Psalm 28:7 NLT