Love

In 2017 I started out loving others out of my Head but I had a misinformed mind and a broken heart. The love of Jesus’ heart gave me a starting point to reshape my character more towards a 1Cor. 13 heart. Following out His process I would encounter pain when I relied on my own understanding and history.

In AA they taught me not to dwell on my mean history nor shut the door on it. Gradually Jesus and I are dealing with my hurts. I started seeing how out of His love I can do all things is more than just a head thing, it is a heart lifestyle. He is teaching me to fly with the wings He is giving me. Through relationship with Jesus He is instilling peace, contentment, appreciation and Joy in my core identity.

Of the 500+ verses that contain LOVE they are far from being one concept. They describe many facets of a gem that I, as I let them affect me, change and each facet gains new depth. 

Heaven on Earth

After years of recovery, healing, deliverance and Joy building, part of me wants there to be an end of the suffering. I don’t fear suffering but I don’t like it. I always come out freer than when I started but I still don’t like it. I think about my youth as a care free time and long to return to that myth. I suppose when I come to the lord like a child I am to leave my stuff behind an be with Him. Actually, as I think about it they disappear when I am with Him.  I fight to believe I am OK when I am alone. I have to push arrogance and self-pity away from my heart when I am with other people. But then this miracle of His heart shows up in me when I am around someone Abba wants to minister to. They respond to Him in me and I have total unawareness of my sin. It’s just me and Him ministering to someone He wants to speak too. He arranges the time and place and the love comes from a place I have no control. It must be what heaven is like.

[I wrote this on 1/21/17, but it seems appropriate today]

He Is With Us

I am aware that the trouble in life is not looked upon as a good thing. The NLT Bible mentions trouble 254 times. Here are a few,

Job 14:1   “How frail is humanity! How short is life, how full of trouble!

Matt. 6:34    “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

I asked Abba why and He said “So you will talk to Me.” We talk but I couldn’t tell you percentages on who listens and who talks. The reason is, as a dismissive type person I can do selective listening, which means I don’t always retain what I hear. I digress, Trouble is when I tend to hear, submit and obey. I listen to a Father who wants good for me. 

I tried to understand why some do not understand that God is involved in hurt, sickness or trouble in general. 

Oswald Chambers puts it well, “God does not give us overcoming life — He gives us life as we overcome. The strain of life is what builds our strength. If there is no strain, there will be no strength.”

Now as to: does God make these things happen? That is trying to understand God from a worldly view. 

Rom. 11:33    Oh, how great are God’s riches and wisdom and knowledge! How impossible it is for us to understand his decisions and his ways!

He is showing me better ways to see.

Choosing Kingdoms

Since I am just starting my on-line journal my first posts will be historical (yes, possibly hysterical as well).

 As I come up on 60 years old (I am now 65) I noticed I have spent a fair amount of time concerned with our planet and the people on it. It’s not hard to find fault with government, society, religion, industry, or self. I have found myself ranting at times about self-serving government, greedy corporations and an apathetic public. I found the more I looked at the way we behave here on earth the more disease (a disorder of structure) I feel.

My left brain has no problem knowing that God is where my peace is yet I have a tendency to focus on the world.

Recently [remember, this is 5 years ago] a friend shared about looking at God’s kingdom government and not the world’s. I saw the picture, I was choosing the world over God. My pay-off was the dopamine rush of being right about how badly people were behaving. I was judge and convicted them. I noticed that by my thinking I was doing something righteous, forgetting what the Bible says about our flesh. Picture a control, rebellion, rejection dance with the devil.[1]

As I choose God’s Kingdom Government I begin to have enough of a heaven picture for the right brain to feel safe. I even feel included in the process. At times I have this picture that I have the capacity to stand in the fire and I will be OK, even able to sing in Joy.

The key difference in how I feel is that in man’s kingdom I feel hatred but in God’s kingdom I have compassion, grace, and love for my fellow man. It is in love that I can say what my Father says versus thinking I have the answer. If it was in our nature to govern ourselves in the best of times Adam and Eve would not have eaten the apple. In man’s kingdom I am limited to what’s in my left brain library and I end up in collusion or alone. In God’s Kingdom I co-labor with God and man. The end result is with God the relationship and process is where the true gold is.

[1] “Control, Rebellion, Rejection,” a concept named and developed by Chester and Betsy Kylstra. Stated in Restoring the Foundations 2nd edition, pages 339 through 352.

Jesus is Unavoidable

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.”

I believe that as you look for God you engage with Jesus. In that engagement I found myself on fire. The stuff God removes usually involves pain and, as the dross burns off, the gold of Jesus is revealed.

 I gave Him my life, He will never let go.