Denial?

Striving for that perfect body? With new year resolutions abounding, many of us have jumped on the weight-loss bandwagon. Most of us won’t stick to it, but many of us will learn a new lifestyle that proves powerful in our physical bodies. I hope to be one of them.

 

But even those of us not working toward the perfect body, most of us would like a great body. And those of us not willing to put in the hours at the gym, at least want a healthy body. Our health is to be treasured, but so often we fail to take care of ourselves when we’re young, living to regret it as we get older, feeling trapped in the bad habits we’ve accumulated.

 

There is help out there if we seek it. But all the help in the world won’t help if we don’t implement it.

 

Often times we neglect the spiritual aspects of our life far worse than even our bodies. But just as often, we think it shows more on the outside, because people can see the shape we’ve allowed our bodies to get into.

 

Do we seriously think they can’t see the mess we’ve gotten ourselves into spiritually just as easily?

 

I think that’s called denial; and that’s a river we’ve all floundered around in at one point or another in our lives. Whether it was over how we were raising our children or the relationships we were avoiding or the success we were running from or the inches being added daily to our waist – to the emptiness that fills our souls because our spirit is hungry.

 

Why do we deny our spirit the nourishment it needs? I suspect for the same reasons we don’t take adequate care of our bodies or our relationships.

 

Denying there’s a problem goes a long way. The scary part is that so much of the time, we don’t recognize the denial; we don’t believe (at least on a conscious level) that we’re doing anything wrong.

 

This year, launch: Self-discovery! Look inside and discovery what’s hurting, what’s lacking and find the strength to overcome. It’s all in there, because God made us to flourish and rebuild the broken places; He made us to reflect His glory, and we don’t do that as well when we’re in denial.

 

“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” – Matthew 6:21, Luke 12:34 (KJV)

 

“For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” – 1 John 3:20 (KJV)

In Christ

Are you in Christ?

 

Is Christ in you?

 

Many of us call ourselves Christians without realizing that this means that Jesus Christ actually lives inside of us, and through us, and that we are instructed to live in Him.

 

Our flesh is merely the clothing we wear in this world, the tent we reside in. We are spirit beings, made in the image of our heavenly Father, created to reflect His glory, while being one with Him. Until we recognize this, we give more importance to our flesh, often denying our spiritual needs. Our soul dictates what we do and the decisions we make. Our soul is made up of our mind, our will and our emotions. Just as God is three parts, with innumerable facets, so are we. Most of us recognize God as God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. He is Spirit (the Holy Spirit), made flesh (Jesus) with a mind (the Father) that knows everything.

 

To yield ourselves to God, we submit our spirit to His, we give ourselves to His authority, but also to everything else that He is. We essentially hide ourselves in His identity by allowing Him to reside within us.

 

Can you imagine “pulling Him out of you” when you want to do something you know He wouldn’t approve of? Sort of setting Him aside so He won’t see… that conjures up a funny picture.

 

Once we’ve invited Him in, we “take Him” everywhere we go, to do everything we do. Not that He isn’t always there seeing everything that goes on in the first place, but now you’ve invited Him to go along.

 

When I look for contentment and fulfillment outside of Jesus, that’s when I sin. When I feel that my life is lacking in some area, and even if I don’t recognize what it is that I’m lacking – I need to be looking for it in Christ, or I’m creating my own god to worship and love; a false god.

 

Where have you been looking for fulfillment?

 

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. – John 15:5 NIV

 

I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  John 17:22  NIV

A New Year, A New Season

Another year comes to an end. Already.

 

I think this past year has been a year of waiting; sometimes not even knowing what I was waiting for. Sometimes waiting for a break from caring for my father-in-law, some of the time waiting for new grandbabies to be born and yes, another is due in a couple of weeks!

 

But here lately I’ve been feeling more thankful to God than ever, for all the wonderful blessings in my life.

 

On a good hair day, when you’re on time for your appointments and the perfect parking space opens up everywhere you go and people actually smile at you – it’s so easy to be thankful for your life.

 

But on those days when you have to hide your hair under a hat, do your best to cover a gigantic pimple, sit carefully all day because your jeans are too tight and you’ve got a case of the clumsies and everything you touch falls apart – it’s too easy to forget about all we have to be grateful for.

 

Why is that?

 

My friend Stacy Voss has the perfect reminder for me – the beautiful coffee mug (pictured above) that bears the tag line, Seize the Gratimoment! (Contact her here to get your own.)

 

Sometimes we need to purposefully look for gratitude in the moment. We need to focus on what we do have; we need to take our focus off the things that are bringing us down or “ruining our day” – and seize the opportunity to turn things around with our attitude by finding something to be grateful for.

 

This year, I promise myself to be more thankful and to discover what it means to “live in the moment”!

 

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. – Isaiah 43:19 NIV

Gardening

 

Some of us love the feel of moist, rich soil crumbling in our hands, pulling at it with our fingers, knowing what can grow there. Even the smell of it tickles our senses.

 

While praying this morning for someone I love dearly, I began to pull away at the roots of bitterness and anger. I’ve had issues with anger myself, so I began praying for myself, as well. In my mind, I could see the roots being lifted out of the dark, rich soil. The fact that the soil was so fertile blessed me, knowing good things can grow and are growing here, too! Like when I was a child, weeding the garden back home on the farm, I shook off the dirt from the large and tiny roots, alike. But instead of tossing the weed into a weed pile, I threw it over a cliff, into a fiery abyss was completely destroyed, never to grow here again.

My fingers dug deep into the ground, breaking up the soil as I prayed over it and asked God to bless it and fertilize it and plant His seeds there, the seeds of the fruit of the spirit, seeds of love, joy peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance… (Galatians 5:22-23 KJV). Then I realized that these seeds have already been planted here and I excitedly began to look around for the fruit of those seeds.

 

All of us who love plants, love watching them grow and produce. Scientists love to watch their projects progress, artists love to see their masterpieces morph all the way to their unveiling. So, too with God, as He watches us learn to love Him and trust Him with everything He’s given us. He’s watching us grow up to conform to His image, the image in which He created us in the first place.

 

God has given us the authority to pull up the snares (Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like… Galatians 5:19-21 KJV), to make room for the fruit of His Spirit to grow abundantly in our lives.

 

Time to do some gardening?

 

Holy?

God is holy. Be ye holy as He is holy.

 

Last night in church the question came to mind, Can one be very holy? Or super holy? Or exceptionally holy? Or just a little bit holy?

 

Then the response, No, you’re either holy or you’re not.

 

It’s like salvation. Either you’re saved by grace, or you’re not. You can’t be a little bit saved; born-again. You can’t be 99% saved. You’re either saved or you’re lost, no gray area. If you believe you’ve given 99% of your heart to God, in reality, you’re clinging to 100% of your heart, trying desperately to figure out what to do with it.

 

There’s only one safe place for your heart and that’s in Christ. There’s only One Who can fill the voids in your heart, that’s Jesus Christ. To continue to refuse Him entrance there commands that you continue to live life without meaning and purpose; searching. And it’s great that we search, but too often we run around the world looking for the treasure that’s found in our own backyard.

 

At dictionary.com we find one definition of holy that reads:  specially recognized as or declared sacred by religious use or authority; consecrated.

When we give our whole heart to Jesus, we become holy. Not just a little bit holy, simply holy. Consecrated (set apart)  for Christ, by Christ. We are recognized as holy by God’s authority; not because we live good lives or say good things, but because God Himself declares us to be holy, because He declares us to be His.

 

When I go out and purchase something for myself, it becomes mine. When Jesus suffered and died on the cross, He paid the price for our sin, He bought us with His love and with His blood. We belong to Him. But He doesn’t lay claim to our love until we give it to Him. He gives us the right to withhold that love from Him, to try to fend for ourselves in a life He created to be lived in His power. Without Him, we are lost; we are unholy.

 

What holds you captive? What holds you back from giving your heart to the One Who created you and loves you and provides all the power you need to live abundantly?

 

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Leviticus 20:7 Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be ye holy: for I am the Lord your God. (KJV)

Focus and Magnify

Magnification becomes more important to me the older I get. I need to magnify the words I read through the glasses on my face, now more than ever. Without the help of these magnificent image enhancers, I’d miss out on so much, especially words. The lenses clear up my misconceptions about what I see without them.

 

Magnification doesn’t actually make anything bigger, accept the appearance of what we’re looking at. Through a microscope, we can more clearly see microbes found in a drop of water, they appear larger so they’re more easily focused on, and seen as they truly are.

 

So make sense with me, of the cry of the psalmist, “O magnify the Lord with me, let’s exalt His Name together.” (Psalm 34:3)

 

My experience and ponderings lead me to believe that the more I focus on God, thus magnifying Him, the more clearly I see Him and what He’s doing in my life. The more I focus on my problems, the more magnified they become. So I can either play up my problems to the point where I can’t see anything else, or I can praise God, lifting up His Name in my home and in the marketplace and see Him move on my behalf.

 

When I magnify the Lord, as the psalmist invites, His presence appears larger to me, His image enhanced and His blessings more recognized; my purpose becomes more focused and aggravations that assail me fall to the blurrier parts of the picture, often falling off into oblivion.

 

Since I began wearing glasses some years ago, I notice more and more when driving down the street, how little I actually look at along the way. My car can take my mindless self to where I intended to go, occasionally, I admit, with some minor backtracking, almost as if I engage some sort of autopilot feature. What else do I miss out on when I’m not looking at it, or for it?

 

Come focus on the Lord with me, let’s lift up His Name everywhere!

Texture!

Texture. One of the things I love about nature is the vast array of textures we can discover if we take the time to look. My cell phone gallery holds a small treasure of my “texture pictures”.

 

While exploring a field with three of my grandsons, I beamed with pride as my ten year old exclaimed, “Grandma, look! Texture! Take a picture of it!” His “find” was the dry, cracked earth pictured here. Other discoveries that afternoon included a few clean bones, a rusty blade from an old plow, a variety of sticks and rocks, and some concrete and gravel cylinders they cracked into disks. Yes, they’re all now on my cell phone. The disks provided abundant entertainment as they repeatedly rolled them down a steep hill and raced them to the bottom. As I stood there on the hilltop in a jacket, shivering, they ran and laughed and bonded, wearing short-sleeved t-shirts, insisting they weren’t cold at all.

 

Another mystical attraction that I suppose demands the attention of most young boys: mud. Lots of thick, deep mud. If they were my own little boys, they’d have been wearing cheap, old sneakers. But they’re grandsons who wear Nike running shoes. I cautioned them not to step in it; their moms might not have appreciated the fun we were having as much as we did. As I wound up a short phone call, I turned to see that one of them just couldn’t resist the temptation. He planted one foot and then the other right in the middle of the rich, deep mud…then he grinned from ear to ear. It slurped up over his shoes and threatened to suck his socks off. I shook my head and tried not to laugh.
 

We shaved off a few minutes of fun so we could run back to my house before I took them home. I washed the pricey shoes in my kitchen sink after we scraped off the mud with sticks. Fortunately, his mom took it in stride and all was well.

 

God loves our childlikeness, in it we become Christlike. Let your sight be tempted today. Go for a walk – do a little exploring of your own, even if you don’t step in the mud. Look for texture. Maybe take pictures.

 

For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. Romans 1:20 (NLT)