Disclaimer: Distortions Abound

(photo courtesy of wordoverpixels.com)

Don’t confuse my personality with my God.

I can be withdrawn. I can be rude. I can be oblivious to your problems and concerns.

But don’t allow that to cloud your perception of my God.

I can be cheerful and complimentary. I can be caring and attentive.

Don’t allow that to influence the picture you have of God.

Though I was created to reflect the image of God, I can warp that image tremendously, because He’s given me the freedom to do so.

I can manipulate what you see; I can persuade you to drop your guard.

I can also drive you away or draw your focus to things that appear to be unfair.

As a human being, unconditionally loved by the God that created the universe, I have the advantage of a gifted mind and the good I’ve gleaned from what I’ve gone through in life, but I also have the flaws brought on through human experience and emotional roller coasters.

The bottom line is – I’m not God.

But, I’m not the only example of His love; He’s surrounded you with His beauty and grace and mercy and compassion and forgiveness. Remove your hands from your eyes and your fingers from your ears. Look. Listen.

Surrender.

To surrender to love is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean you lose, it means you win! When you yield yourself to all the good you’ve ever longed for, you become immersed in God Himself.

I’m not making excuses for my failures; just pointing out that your answers are not found in me or in any other Christian, but in Jesus Christ only.

John 14:6 - Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (KJV)

The Real Me - Part 3

So I was pondering so many thoughts at once, I had to find a word picture to describe how overwhelmed I felt. Word pictures help me sort things out and remember things. I could see myself in a house that I was attempting to build. Materials had been provided for me, but my skills as a builder were sorely lacking. I’d no sooner put a beam up over here, and a wall began to fall over there. I ran to brace the wall and something else gave way. I was basically running around trying to save the work I’d already done instead of being able to build more.

Scripture indicates that when we build His house, He’ll build ours. (Read the book of Haggai, it’s only two chapter long.) Just as this verse rolled through my brain, it struck me, I’m actually building God’s house. I am His temple, His dwelling place! But I don’t remember it being so hard to concentrate and put the pieces in place when I was younger. I hate “chalking things up to getting older” – that line is getting, well, yes, old. But what’s changed? Why is it getting harder to multitask and get on with the building of the building?

My mortar is missing! It occurred to me that the mortar that holds all my materials together is praise – and worship. And though I do praise God for all the blessings in my life, and I worship Him for being God – I don’t do it as  often or as joyfully as I did when I used to sing. Singing allowed praise and worship to roll from my tongue as easily and nearly as often as I drew breath.

But, I seldom sing anymore. That’s what’s changed. That might be what’s missing.

That knocked the wind out of my sails.

To be continued….

The Real Me - Part 2

The other night at church the speaker (Ivan Tait) said that we can make God say anything. By that, we can prove to ourselves that God is okay with something we want Him to be okay with…. Ivan told us not to look for deception. There will always be a scripture we can take out of context, and loving friends that will agree with what our mind and our flesh cry out for. This hit home for me with a resounding clamor of an iron hammer on a God-sized bell. No wonder peace seems just out of reach.

Ivan also said that Satan will find the candy that we like and provide it for us…. I won’t repeat his whole sermon here, but he also pointed out that morality is just an educated choice to avoid consequences; that unbelief is spiritual abortion; and that doubt and unbelief are often veiled as “being practical”.

That “being practical” thing reverberated with the clang of the hammer on the bell again. There are things that God has spoken or that I/we have dreamed about that my practicality says to be humored by, but don’t expect them. Ewww-that means I’m now admitting to the doubt and unbelief that holds me back.

I need to kill every idol in my heart. I heard something about that last night, too – but I’m not sure if it was the speaker, or one of the times God interrupted him in my heart. But before I can kill the idols, I have to identify them. That means looking for them so I can call them out.

The devil, called the accuser of the brethren for a reason, accuses, confuses, distorts and condemns us in attempts to disqualify us, to make us ineligible for heaven. He even goes so far as to accuse God’s own Word, to try to disqualify its effect in our lives. God breaks the pointing fingers in our minds. And yowza, when we start agreeing with the enemy, some of those fingers are our own…

To be continued……



The Real Me

“This doesn’t bother the real me. This is just an illusion.”

God showed me this the last month; that all the struggles I wrestle with over my father-in-law aren’t bothering the real me at all. But Satan wants me to believe that they bother me to the point of bringing me down and shattering the thoughts in my own head. He wants me to believe that this one man will bring me down, push me over the edge, and tempt me to run away. He also wants me to believe that it’s okay with God if we find alternate living arrangements for this old man.

While reading I came upon a statement, “He knows this isn’t who I am.” God knows who I am far better than I know who I am. For me it’s about discovery, for God it’s about revelation.

This isn’t who I am – but I’ve been duped into believing it is. Yesterday I played with my granddaughter in the wonderful world of Hot Wheels. There was a play piece that you put a Hot Wheels car (or other toy) into, behind the door to a cylinder that could be rotated with the turn of a handle. It didn’t even turn all the way around. But while turned, our view of the car was distorted; we couldn’t see all of it. There were plastic bars hiding it from us. Instead of seeing the pretty yellow sports car we’d been chasing across the room, we now saw a yellow “something” hidden by the bars. When turned back, the car could be released to race another day. My point to ponder right now is that I am the same whether my view of myself is distorted or not. I’m turning around, to be released to live another day.

To be continued….. but ponder, perhaps: Are you seeing/being the real you?