His love

My posts in this blog are usually about relationships, but more specifically they are about my relationship with my Heavenly Father.  The title isn't "Moments with Him" on accident, but today I was praying and thinking about other people's relationships with Him.  Generally speaking people there are three types of relationships with Him.  Your on fire for Him, you know Him and you don't know Him.  I think in most people's lives we have fallen under all of those categories at least once in our lives and not always in the order that would be the most obvious.

I know that in my life I have wavered in my relationship with Him and even for a while I ignored what I knew and forgot about Him.  I was convinced at one point in my life that I was so faulty and worthless, there was no way He loved me because He was the one that made me.  So I put 12 years of parochial school teachings out of my mind and went on my marry way.

The problem with relationships is that people have baggage from other relationships that hinder the new relationship and that is especially true about people's relationship with Him.  I know from my own personal experience that its very easy to imagine that He has or will abandoned you when it seems that everyone else has or that its easy to think that just because someone was vengeful or hurt you that He will too and its especially easy to believe that because other people judge you He will too.

In a recent post I talked about baggage, and how carrying two many suitcases through the airport is quite a hassle, but deciding what to bring and what to leave at home is a tough decision.  What are the important lessons we bring with us from each past relationship and what hurts are best left in the past.  I don't know if I can answer that question because I certainly don't leave much behind but as we learn about anyone, but especially our Heavenly Father our walls start to break down.

At least for me, there is a specific moment that I remember the walls coming down.  I don't know the exact date but I remember that I had all these conditions about going back to church after years of being away.  I remember the conversation I had with Him about all the things that needed to happen before I would stay in church.  I don't know if I would have called that a prayer but it was definitely a contract.  If these specific things happened, then I promised to immerse myself in church life and get back on the right track.

I thought I would jump from place to place waiting for all the signs and wonders that I was looking for.  I was sure that it would take many months of Sundays for the planets to align, the weather to be perfect and my heart to be in the right place to receive, but it didn't.  In fact it happened so fast that my head literally spun.  He had met all my conditions all at the same time and that's when I knew that He was listening and He knew better then I did about what I needed.

Last night at church I saw a young man that looked like he had the same experience I did.  Here he was just a long for some fun with some other people his age, and his whole life change in just a moment.  I remember the chill bumps and the warm fuzzy feeling I had at that moment.  In fact He still uses that feeling to remind me that He is at work in my life.  It was a sense of complete calmness, something that most of us never feel in our busy, stressful lives.  I felt held, comforted and at peace and of course I cried.  They were happy and sad tears all at the same time and they were happy and sad for all the same reasons.

That young man from last night had those same tears.  He realized that he was worthy of His love, not because he was perfect but because he wasn't.  He now knew that all the anger he had in his heart wasn't enough to make Him be angry at him and he had figured out that nothing he had ever done was bad enough for Him to not love him.  The planets had aligned for him just as unexpectedly as when they did for me.

Don't wait for aligning planets or signs and wonders before you look back up towards heaven.  If your carrying a lot of baggage, just start this new relationship like any other relationship.  Meet with Him and learn what He is all about.  That would be the first step in any relationship, right?  You would probably go to coffee because its to hard to escape during dinner and over coffee you would chat.  Maybe that's simplifying things but I think you get the point.  Just don't wait to do it, do it today.

The favor He shows

Last night I had a dream about my theme song, then the verse of the day was one that I have written about several times.

 "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

I have talked a lot about worrying.  I think I worry more then most people. I tried giving up worrying because it simply doesn't do any good and really all it does is make me sick but like all of us I worry.

I thought for a while that maybe I have more to worry about then most people, but the more I get to know other people the more I find out that worry runs rampant in our society.  Our worry makes other people rich.  In fact there are specific medications for people with chronic worrying problems.  Millions of dollars of research money has gone into finding that specific neurotransmitter that is triggered when we worry. Doctors see thousands of patients a year with ulcers and headaches and muscle tension all due to chronic worrying but the Bible specifically says not to do it.  In fact it gives us specific instructions on what to do instead of worrying and that is to pray, yet people will pay top dollar to get a few minutes of relief.

Why is it so difficult to follow the Bible's instructions?  The instructions are pretty straight forward: Pray.

I know first hand how great and effective prayer is but I also know first hand how scary it is to turn something over to Him. 

"Not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies,
But His smile quickly drives it away;
Not a doubt or a fear, not a sigh or a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey."

 I have been nursing a bum knee.  It hurts and the rehabilitation to fix the issue is painful as well. When I was at the Doctor the other day, he looked at me and told me there was no quick fix to my knee problem but the one thing I certainly didn't expect was more pain during rehab.  I mean it already hurts, why would I want to endure more pain to make it better?  So I have two choices...I can choose to not do anything and continue with the chronic pain or I can endure a few weeks of more pain and quite possibly not have any more pain.  It seems like an obvious choice, but its a very difficult one to make.  

Pain like time is relative.  The chronic pain in my knee is pretty minimal if you compare it to the birth of my first child or my ruptured disk but it keeps me from doing the things that I enjoy and eventually it might keep me from doing much of anything when the arthritis sets in.  The pain during rehab is minimal compared to those things as well but compared to the initial pain its really quite terrible.  I need to retrain the muscles of my upper and lower leg.  I need to stretch some and strengthen others.  I have to wear a neoprene brace in the middle of the summer to hold my knee cap in place while the muscles tighten around it.

But yes, I chose to go through rehab to hopefully fix the issue and I continue to turn things over to Him each time I feel worry coming on.  Some people might think I am pretty crazy to endure more pain to fix something minor but when you choose to turn your worries over to Him your pain is usually short lived.

Rehab is all about taking two steps forward and one step back and turning worries over to Him is the same.  We turn it over and move in the right direction but then slowly we let the worry creep back in and we have taken a step backwards, but prayer is pretty powerful.  When we continue to pray about our worries our thinking starts to change from our problems to His power. 

I love the verse that talks about how He takes care of the lilies and the birds, so why wouldn't He take care of us.  He knows the number of hairs on your head, He formed you in your mother's womb, He knew His plans for you before you were born.

"But we never can prove the delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor He shows, for the joy He bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey."

I think that is my favorite verse of the song.  When we choose to endure a little more pain and turn things over He gets the chance to prove His love for us.  When we choose to trust and obey, He pours out His joy.  Sure we can take the easy way out.  I could choose to take an anti-inflammatory everyday for the rest of my life but that might rob me of my future, I might never be able to run. But choosing to hold out for better things is always worth the additional discomfort.   

 

His marks

I wrote a few weeks ago, a post entitled His Glory.  In that post I used the phrases, "Don't put a comma where He has put a period. and Don't put a period where He has put a comma."  As we all know punctuation changes the meaning of the sentence that they are added to.  Just like any good story, your story has punctuation added here and there.  My story has been "interrupted" by commas and periods and several times entire chapters have ended suddenly, but punctuation happens, without it we wouldn't know the meaning of chapters in our lives.  A good grammar teacher will tell you that run on sentences are confusing and sometimes nonsensical.  Punctuation is important, it helps us make sense of what is happening around us and to us.

Now I can say all that but I know that most punctuation hurts.  Actually to be blunt "it sucks". Very rarely are we looking for that period, so when it happens we are in a state of shock.  We feel like our hearts have been ripped out of our chests.  We, if only for a moment, lose hope.  We are often angry and even the best of us, might look to seek vengeance.  But as the days pass and we start to recover from our initial shock, we start to realize that it really might be for the best.  We are still not exactly sure what to do, but we start walking forward.  Putting one foot in front of the other.  We sometimes have to remind ourselves to breathe but our heart keeps beating and we keep going.

"So now what?",that was a question I asked myself many times during my journey.  I'm walking forward, but "Now what?" My advice is to keep walking.  Eventually you will know why that period came when it did, but you won't know if you don't keep walking.

So that's what I did I kept walking.  I walked and I walked wondering what would be around the next corner.  Sometimes I walked in circles and other times I walked right to the edge.  I often thought about turning back and sometimes I stomped around loudly but I kept walking.

What's great about walking is that you get to connect with new people who appear on your path.  If you were to sit still, you'd never know who or what was waiting for you around the bend.  I know I mentioned how important your "great cloud of witnesses" were in His Race, but when people enter into our lives, it might just be time to put away our sadness and celebrate.

As the pages of our story turn, people appear and reappear on each page and like I've said before even those that stay only for a moment really can make an impact, but it's those that stay with us with each turn of events that really make the greatest impression.  Old friends that might have been gone during some chapters of our lives may appear when we least expect it.  New friends that have their own story to tell may walk along with us for a while and those that have seen us through for years continue to walk beside us.

I think one of the hardest parts about changes in our lives is that we start comparing our past lives with our future lives.  We compare new people to old people and sometime our hurts are so deep that we don't even give others a chance.  We are sure because someone did something to us that other people will do as well.    We begin to insert periods in our lives and in the lives of others.

I know, we do it to protect ourselves and like you I am guilty of comparing the new and the old but I read this quote the other day, that gave me a different perspective.  "No one ever flew forward in life, looking backward. Therefore, the scars are just a reminder of where you have been, not where you are today."  We can't walk forward, while looking backward.  We can't be always anticipating the next punctuation mark.  

I know I've talked a lot about commas and periods, but don't forget about the question mark and the exclamation mark.  Again the same sentence ending in those two punctuation marks mean something totally different.  What if instead of stopping the beginning of a new relationship with a period, we inserted a question mark?  Question marks could mean proceed with caution. Or even better yet we inserted an exclamation mark, now instead of anticipating hurt we are anticipating excitement!


Remember the most important period in our lives was His Son's death, but the greatest punctuation mark was the exclamation after...He is risen!