FEELING FORGOTTEN IN THE FIRE

When asking God to make you who He wants you to be, it is tempting to say, “Be careful what you ask for.” But that might suggest that you should reconsider or think twice before saying that prayer. That is absolutely NOT what I want to say. When you are ready to surrender your life to Christ, and truly allow Him to be The Lord of your life, do it. Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. Don’t let Satan fill your head with lies, and your heart with fears. By all means, give yourself over to your loving God. BUT…be prepared.

Taking this leap of surrender will not mean hopping from one mountain-top high to another. It isn’t possible to physically climb from one mountain peak to another without going through a valley. And it isn’t spiritually possible either. The moment you turn to your Heavenly Father, and say “I’m yours Lord, do with me as You will. Use me for Your glory. I want to serve You,” you have landed on a mountain top. You are going to want to do nothing more than spread out the picnic blanket and sit down with your Lord to enjoy the view. But you can’t just sit and soak. You must prepare for battle. You see, the moment you surrendered to Jesus, red flags went up all over the enemy camp. Satan jumped to attention and ordered his demons to seek and destroy. But do not be afraid! God is with you!!!

While you are basking in the presence of the Son and filled with His Holy Spirit, you will do battle. Do not let your armor slip. Stay in the Word. Pray without ceasing. Keep your eyes focused on Jesus. There is no greater thing than to know that you are doing the will of the Father in your life. That He is directing you, calling you, to His service, and you are understanding, obeying, and witnessing His hand working in your life, and through you in the lives of others.

As you learn to humbly be used by God, you will begin to recognize when Satan is attacking you, and you will begin to learn how to fight and defeat him. This is so important. It is a time when your faith is made stronger. Your relationship with God becomes more and more important to you, until it is soon your first priority. You are able to truly understand the Psalmist when he said that yearns for The Lord as a deer pants after water. You will hunger and thirst for time spent reading God’s Word, and for time in prayer communing with Him. You will realize that you really do NEED Jesus living in you, and you can’t live without Him. It is like an addiction, but of the best possible kind.

At some point you will notice that you have begun to descend into the valley. You may feel more and more disconnected from God. You will need to rely on your faith during these times. That faith that God worked to strengthen while you were on the mountain top is going to be so very important. You will need to believe that the Holy Spirit of Jesus continues to be with you, even though you can’t feel Him. Believe it. Do not give in to the lie that He has left you. He has promised to always be with you, and He will never break His promise.

While you were on the mountain top, you learned to recognize spiritual attack. While in the valley, you will learn to recognize something else, the refinement. The time when you are not under attack, but you might think you are because it hurts. This is the time when something big is going on. The battle is huge and it feels as though you are being sucked through a bottomless pit of quicksand. No, it doesn’t feel like a battle. That would end quickly. It is more like a war that goes on and on.

There is no way I, or anyone else, can tell you what battle, or war, this will be. It may be disease, or some sort of loss. It may be more of an internal battle. The most important thing you can do is to continue in the Word, and continue in prayer. Seek God with all your heart, and trust that only He, in His infinite wisdom, and perfect love, knows what is best for you. You may not see it at first, but God will eventually reveal to you that this is the refining. God is purifying you. Rejoice!!! He has not forgotten you, though it may feel like He has. HE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN, OR ABANDONED YOU…HE IS CHANGING YOU! He heard your prayer of surrender, and He is accepting your offering, your sacrifice. Do not give up during this time. It will not last forever. God will again bring you out of the valley to the mountain high. When He does, you will be a more effective servant of the King.

Isaiah 48:10 (NKJV) – “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”

Isaiah 49:14-16 (NCV) – But Jerusalem said, “The Lord has left me; The Lord has forgotten me.” The Lord answers, “Can a woman forget the baby she nurses? Can she feel no kindness for the child to which she gave birth? Even if she could forget her children, I will not forget you. See, I have written your name on my hand. Jerusalem, I always think about your walls.”

Even in the refining, when God feels so distant, He does not forget you. In fact, your name is written on His hand, and that very hand is busy forming and shaping you for God’s glory. It will be painful, but it will be worth it in the end.
Praise The Lord!

ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING…& THAT DOESN’T SAY ENOUGH!!!

Genesis 1:1 – In the beginning God created….

Snow. I know. It doesn’t say snow in Genesis. But if you believe God created the earth and the sky and everything in them, then you believe God created snow. Snow conjures up all kinds of images and emotions from people. Whether you love it or hate it depends on your personality. Some sit and wonder at the beauty of a new blanket of snow, while others hunker down indoors and try to forget it is outdoors!

What is snow? My official scientific answer is that it is cold, white, wet, and bright. I believe I was told in school that each snow flake is different. Like a human fingerprint, there are no two snowflakes alike. I wonder who decided to take the time to study enough snowflakes to come to that conclusion?

This morning a fellow blogger (http://www.christyfitzwater.com/), shared a link on her post. Since she only shared it, and did not write about it, I feel at liberty to share it as well. I will do that in a moment.

Hydrologists at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland use a Low Temperature Scanning Electron Microscope to study snow flake crystals for water content. They use liquid nitrogen to freeze the crystals to temperatures that cause me pain at the thought. Once in this frozen state, they can study them for long periods of time without worry of them melting away. They have published a number of intensely magnified images of snow crystals on this link: http://twistedsifter.com/2013/03/microscopic-images-of-snow-crystals/

God is mind-blowing!!!! Consider all the snow that falls all over the world in an entire year, and all the snow flakes it takes to make up all of those blankets and piles of snow! And our God creates each flake with detail that cannot be seen by the naked eye, in fact, can’t even be seen with a normal microscope. He designs each flake with awe-inspiring detail! Did you see the hexagons? And the perfectly straight lines?

While my spirit is flooded with emotion for God that cannot be expressed, I have to admit my human, always busy, mom-brain briefly thought, “How does He have the time to do that?” What a silly girl I am! Because He is GOD! Infinite! All-Knowing! All-Powerful! Omniscient! GOD! We tend to lose the sense of awe and wonder at who HE really is. HE IS GOD!! He created the universe and everything in it, and He has the time to intricately design each and every snowflake, and still take care of the entire world. His mind can handle it! Mine can barely handle what happens in a day, let alone a week. Yet He knows every thought, every pain, every fear, every spoken word, every action, every everything of every person through the history of the entire earth, past, present and future…and He still has time to design snowflakes! And if the capacity of the mind of God is this great, and the care He has to make the unseen snowflake worth looking at, the snowflake that melts on your fingertip in seconds, what is the capacity of His thoughts towards you? You, who are created in His own image. What kind of detail has He designed into your life? And who are we that GOD…GOD, would pay attention to us? GOD sent His Son to die for me. THAT IS SO HUGE!!!!! GOD! I wish I could write His name as big as He is. There is just no way for us to comprehend how big He is, how powerful He is, How capable He is…and certainly how enormous is His love for us.

A snowflake has left me with awe that my words are completely inadequate to describe. It is no wonder that no one can see God and live! And no wonder we will need new bodies and minds that will be able to tolerate being in His presence in Heaven!!!  I look to the skies and say, “Come Lord Jesus, come!!!!”

May GOD remind each of us who He is every time we see the snow, and may He receive all the glory and honor He is due!!!! Amen!

Do I Disappoint God?

I’m not often disappointed by people. Well, not to the point of frustration anyway. I have learned over the years that just as I need the grace and understanding of others, they need it from me as well. Once in a while, though, I have higher expectations for someone than I should. And when that happens, so does disappointment. Then when disappointment happens, frustration, anger, bitterness, resentment also tend to rear their ugly heads. This is exactly what happened to me this week…and on more than one occasion, with more than one person! I was setting myself up for a fall, and worse, I set them up for a fall!

When it was all said and done, I had some confessing to do. And it took me a bit to figure out how to talk to God about it all. I was hurt because of the actions of the people who disappointed me, so there was that to deal with. But I knew that I didn’t handle it as well as I should have either. So here I was with a wall between me and God. I hate that feeling! There can’t possibly be anything worse than feeling that distance between you and God, and not knowing how, or where, to begin getting back to Him. It took a lot of work, but eventually I was able to start praying about everything. As I prayed about the disappointment that I felt, I thought, “I must disappoint You all the time.” But how can God be disappointed?

Where does disappointment come from? High hopes. We expect more of people than it is fair to expect. We expect perfection from imperfect people, and then don’t offer grace and understanding when they don’t live up to our expectations. We expect them to be something they are not…infallible.

When I thought of how often God must be disappointed in me, He corrected me. God is never disappointed in me! He doesn’t set up high hopes and delude Himself into believing that I am more than I am. He knows exactly who I am, what I am capable of, and what I am not capable of. He knows I am not perfect. Not only is He not taken aback, surprised, or disappointed when I fail Him, He knew it was going to happen before I did it. God knew what He was getting when He called me to Him in the first place. So it is impossible for me to disappoint God! But there is more.

God knew exactly how I was going to react to those who disappointed me this week. He wasn’t disappointed in me. That doesn’t mean He liked it. But He loves me. He offered me grace and understanding…and forgiveness. But the thing is, the forgiveness was mine before I sinned! Hebrews 10:10 (NCV) – “And because of this, we are made holy through the sacrifice Christ made in his body once and for all time.” Once and for all time. Long ago I accepted the free gift of salvation through Christ. When that happened, my sins were forgiven…past, present, and yes, future! God is not disappointed in me because He knows me; because He understands me; and because, through the blood of Jesus, He has already forgiven me for what I will do! This is not an excuse to go do as I please. Instead it is a blessed reassurance of His unconditional love for me. And my praise and thanksgiving seem so inadequate in comparison. What do I have to give in return but myself. It is all I have to give, and I give it freely to my God who loves me.

Blessed Assurance by Frances J. Crosby, 1873

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Refrain:
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.