"OF THIS WORLD....I THINK NOT"

Father, Daddy, Holy One, Heavenly Father, Worthy, Peace, Joy, Grace, Mercy, Thankfulness, Wisdom, Forgiveness.

I went to Wednesday night service last night and during prayer, those in attendance were throwing out words they thought of when thinking of God. After I had the chance to let the evening and my day in general sink in, I had so many thoughts that were running rampid in my mind.

First and foremost, I had the opportunity to have lunch with an old college friend of mine. The person’s name is not important but the journey both he and I have been on is. I can only speak to my experience and what little I know of his. What I can affirm is that for many years the ways of my life were not the ways God had in store for me. Nor were they for my friend. One thing I knew way back in the day was that my friend had so many great ideas but really had not leaned on anyone but himself and those that were not good for him to get those ideas implemented. This friend I speak of, I am even more proud to know than ever. And I think he feels the same about me as well because we continue to learn and build into each other…only now it is done through Christ and not the ways of this world. Like me, he has an incredible passion for our youth and the orphan child. He has an incredible talent for speaking truth by using his experiences in such a vulnerable way that you can’t help but become passionate about the things that God has placed on his heart and how God is using him to minister to our youth. So, suffice it to say my afternoon was incredibly blessed. Never in a million years would I have thought that God could take our brokenness and our sinfulness and put us across the table from each other 20 years later and we would be praying in the middle of Panera for each other….AMAZING and HUMBLING!

God had much to teach me yesterday...I followed up that very blessed lunch appointment with an evening of worship, communion and reflection. During Communion, people had the opportunity to speak to our band members if they felt like God was telling them something in the midst of prayer. Our worship team took these thoughts and right there on stage wrote a song. We sang it as a congregation and it turned out to be a beautiful, heartfelt song to God.

Part of my journey is how God has used my problems and sinful nature in my life to build my character and bring me closer in relationship to him. It is all part of the journey. He has used my walk in life to direct me, inspect me, correct me, protect me and perfect me. This is a never ending act of love. I can rest in peace knowing that he will continue to do these things for me to bring me closer to him. I know this because it is PROMISED!

One of my favorite verses in the Bible comes from the book of Romans 5:3-4. It says "We can rejoice when we run into problems... they help us learn to be patient. And patience develops strength of character in us and helps us trust God more each time we use it until finally our hope and faith are strong and steady."

My relationship with God and my character is all I will be taking with me when I leave this world…I think about that a lot and when I do everything else seems so “OF THIS WORLD.”

"It's OK To Question"

Being in relationship with God can sometimes be very tough. For those who have lost a family member or a child prematurely or for those who have suffered from cancer or some other life altering illness, a relationship with God can be like being in relationship with your worst enemy.

In January of this year, I lost one of my best friends, Amber Perry, to suicide. My relationship with Amber began in 2000 when we were both working on the Department of Energy Cleanup Site together. Amber was cute, funny, smart and she had the most infectious laugh. I can still hear the sound of her laugh in my head sometimes. I hope I never lose that sound. Amber moved away to Georgia for another job a few years ago so our visits were limited to just a few times per year. I was blessed to be able to share time with her and her mother a few months before her death. I don’t know why she did what she did. I can speculate but I will never truly know what was going on inside her head. What I do know is that I went through a period of guilt. I still have her last voice mail exactly one week before her death on my phone where she told me what a great friend I was and how much she loved and respected me. While I should feel good about THAT…I don’t because what I remember is speaking with her 10 days before her death where she shared with me how sad she was about her job loss in Georgia and how she hated driving back and forth to Knoxville and how she felt she would never meet anyone special to share her life with. I told her she had so much to be grateful for…a great mom, a beautiful daughter and even a job even though it was not the job she wanted. I scolded her for not recognizing how blessed she was.

What I shoulda, woulda, coulda done was…..LISTEN! While I am not pretending to know what it is like to lose a child or a spouse…I do know what it is like to question God and how he can let bad things happen to good people. I definitely have been that girl who has stood in the middle of the living room and professed hatred for my FATHER. And I am pretty sure that was me not to long ago on my knees asking the why questions with tears streaming down my face. What I also know is that God likes that….it’s called a relationship. While I may not always understand, and I may even get mad at God to the point I need to ask for forgiveness, I have decided that especially in trying to reconcile my guilty feelings surrounding my relationship with Amber that I have to trust God for not only the good, but also the bad in my life. Only God knows all the purposes behind catastrophic events. I have to trust Him to have known these events and if I were guilty of any harm, to claim His forgiveness, then forgive myself.

I think what most of us struggle with in the area of forgiving GOD for awful things that happen in this world like, death, starvation, rape, murder etc. is that when we forgive our enemies for harming us in some way…they may still be our enemy…it is very tangible because you can see it and feel it. When we reconcile with God, we may not hear anything but silence and we are left having to grasp for the good that this life has to offer and having to rely on our faith that he loves us. I mean he must LOVE US as he sent his ONLY son to die for us. He was not selfish when he sent Jesus to die on the cross….. Life is not fair or easy. It was not meant to be so. There is no place in the Bible that says life is fair and quite frankly I don’t want it to be. It also does not promise us that life is going to be easy. Life is an experience…a learning experience….one lesson after another. For some of us, learning can be very painful and can feel hopeless, without explanation and without a reason as to what that lesson was all about or what it was trying to teach us.

God’s reconciliation of me to Him through his Son is the answer to the hurts I can not comprehend. Forgiveness will not take away yours or mine extreme pain and sadness . It also will not take away our suffering right now. But, suffering and pain is temporary and will end. Paul wrote to the Christians on the subject of pain and what God wants for us when dealing with pain and suffering. It comes from the book of Colossians 2:2-3. “That your hearts might be comforted, being united in love, and to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

I am a cancer survivor. We all know many people that were not quite so lucky. I could be angry about why God would let me get cancer at all but I prefer to look at the glass half full vs. half empty. I am thankful for not dying right now but if I ever become terminally ill, I will choose to still thank God for letting me eek out a few extra years to continue with my life lessons. I will sometimes still question God’s methods and actions. And I will admit to often not understanding them….but I will stand on this scripture when I am having a difficult moment with God…a come to Jesus meeting shall we say….“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9.

God will not punish you for being angry or even questioning because that means you are having a relationship with HIM even if it is just yelling and crying. It has to start somewhere.

"Death Becomes Me"

It has been so long since I have put the proverbial pen to the paper…or simply laid my hands on the keyboard to write what is going on in my head. I have had so many heavy things on my mind as of late but the one thing I have been struggling with is that the farther I go out on this limb to follow God and ask even more of him…the more the Devil presents himself…. and he really is hitting below the belt. He attacks by using people that mean so much to you or who have the potential to be a part of my life in a meaningful way. My prayer list continues to grow longer and longer. Back in the day my prayer list was more like a Christmas List of my needs. Now it is a death list…meaning when I pray, it is for all the things I must die to. And there are many because even though I try very hard to follow God every minute of every day I understand that I am not perfect.

Living with the God I am in relationship with through Jesus is giving me the opportunity to seize the true freedom to be the person that God created me to be. I am really beginning to realize for the first time in my almost 41 years that it is such an amazing and undeserved blessing that God is ordering me to willingly turn away from this world’s dead-end ways in order to gain and hold on tight to the life Jesus wants for me.

It is because of this knowledge that I hold right now that I am being pursued by a dark soul. I have had hatred spewed on me as of late by people that I care about. I have had situations cross my path that I thought could be good for me but I had to really evaluate and walk away from those situations because I realized they were not from Him. Then, there have been moments recently where I have had to ask HIM for forgiveness once again for something I have done or something that I have thought of doing.

Friends, I am here to tell you that the closer you get to God, the more the Devil will try to engage you in a footrace. It is the days that I feel like I am losing the race that I pray the hardest to die…It is this knowledge that gives me the most hope because when you begin to die to self this is what happens….the good you do is spoke of from an evil perspective, your wishes are ignored, the advice you hand out can be ignored, your thoughts and opinions are ridiculed. In those moments I am REFUSING to let anger overtake my heart or to avidly defend myself. Instead, I am PRAYING about patience, endurance and loving silence during those times… and it is in those moments that I DIE!