Jul 15, 2011
I’ve been having a really tough week and a half. A week ago I became horribly discouraged and worried. I couldn’t pin point anything that was wrong, so I didn’t know what to blame it on. When I was asked this past weekend if I was doing okay I replied that the biggest thing that was wrong and what was bothering me is that I was no longer hearing the Lord’s voice. I had stopped seeking just Him. I was seeking Him + His will for my life, Him + peace, Him + joy, but not just Him.
I decided during the weekend that I would take time to pray and to seek God. I asked Him to break me and to make me more like Him. I asked to hear His voice yet again. I prayed that night for quite a while and there was no answer. The next night I cried out to God just to speak to me. It didn’t have to be huge, it didn’t have to be nice; I just wanted to hear His voice.
Then, clearer than I’ve ever heard the Lord speak to me, His voice was there in my head. I sat straight up as He said, “I am with you in your pain. In your pain you will know Me”.
Pain? What pain?
You might be as curious as I was wondering what this pain was. For the next few days I was looking around for what was going to happen. I was waiting for a car crash, or wondering if I was going to be mugged. I was clueless but sure that if I would have Him with me – I was going to look forward to it.
Well yesterday I was going about my day when suddenly the Lord grabbed me and showed me an area of my life that was completely off track. I was confronted with a choice. Would I change – or would I stay where I was at and defend my self?
The choice really was a no brainer – why stay the same when we can change and become like Christ?
So, I realized that God wasn’t there to give me physical pain and help get me through it. He knew that I was going to have to deal with things for these few days. There have been multiple things – some good, some bad – that have happened over the past 30 or so hours. I am drained and battle weary. But may I tell you that God is faithful? He cares about you and He cares about me way too much to let us stay the same.
One prayer I can guarantee that the Lord will answer is if you ask Him to break you and make you humble. That’s His desire for you and He will be so excited if you are ready to work with Him in those areas. I know He answered my prayer quick.
Jul 12, 2011
It has been too long since I’ve posted a blog but I wanted to share a big thing God is teaching me through His Word in the book of 1 Samuel. I decided I wanted to do a character study on King David. But I don’t like topical studies as much and instead wanted to just read through 1 and 2 Samuel. But along the way, the Lord has changed my plans and instead I found myself looking at all of the other characters, including King Saul.
This book shows us that both King David and Saul started good, humble and young. Its the same when God callers us into the ministry, we started good, young, humble and full of zeal and passion and eager to do whatever God would have us do and to joyfully do what those above us ask of us. At least, this was how it was for me!
You probably know the story…Israel was a theocracy (God was their King and ruler). They rejected God as their king and wanted to be like all of the other nations who had kings. So God gave them what they wanted and gave them King Saul, Israel’s first king. He was not God’s idea for a king…he was what the people wanted so God gave them what they wanted. But it would cause problems and a downfall of the nation Israel into evil, corruption and all kinds of problems.
After Samuel’s anointing of Saul to be king, in 1 Samuel 9:21 it says, “Saul answered, “But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? Why do you say such a thing to me?”
As it came time for Saul to be chosen among the tribes as King over Israel, they tried to bring him out to show the people but he was not found. Finally, with the help of the Lord, the Lord showed them that he has been hiding among the baggage (paraphrased from 1 Samuel 10:20-22)
Those two passages show Saul was a humble man. The Lord was also with Saul and Saul had the Lord’s anointing on his life. This to me sounds like an awesome beginning for the leader of Israel and to lead the nation in godliness.
He started out so good! But it didn’t continue like that nor did it finish that way. Saul’s first act of unbelief and disobedience came when he waited for Samuel to come bring a burnt and fellowship offering. But after 7 days (the time set by Samuel) he took the role of priest into his own hands and offered up the burnt and fellowship offerings. Samuel finally came and upon seeing what Saul had done, he rebuked him and called him foolish. Because of this, God rejected Saul as king and Samuel declared his unfitness to being Israel’s King. From here, Saul went down hill.
Later on, Saul was commanded by the Lord to go completely kill the Amalekites because of what they had done to Israel. First of all, something I never thought of before is that the Amalikites is a picture of our flesh. God commanded Saul to completely take them out and leave nothing alive. In the same way, God calls for us to completely kill and crucify our flesh and leave no room for it. Saul disobeyed and spared some of the animals including King Agag, the Amalikite king. In this way, we are not told to change our flesh, reform it or in some ways spare certain parts of our flesh…we’re told to completely kill it! This was just a side thought!
Upon Saul’s disobedience to completely wipe out the Amalikites, Samuel approaches Saul with rebuke and says in 1 Samuel 15:17, “Although you were once small in your eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you as king over Israel.” That verse shows that Saul was once humble and small but is no longer. You see Saul then voicing a confession and repentance but I don’t believe it’s sincere, but rather that he’s trying to defend his position, title and fame as he says in 1 Samuel 15:30, “I have sinned. But please honor me before the elders of my people and before Israel;come back with me, so that I may worship the Lord your God.” Saul goes down hill and the Lord’s anointing and spirit left him. God had sought after a man after His own heart who would then be king of Israel, this being David a young shepherd boy.
As Saul grew to know David he saw that David was met with more success then Saul and his name became well known (1 Sam 18:30). In 1 Sam 18:20 it says, “Saul was very angry; this refrain galled him. “They have credited David with tens of thousands,” he thought, “but me with only thousands. What more can he get but the kingdom?” And from that time on, Saul kept a jealous eye on David.”
1 Samuel 18:12- “Saul was afraid of David, because the Lord was with David but had left Saul.” Saul was afraid of losing his position as king and someone else taking that spot.
As this story of Saul goes on, he gets worse and worse and spends the rest of his life bent on killing and getting David. He became jealous, took his eyes off God, and tried to defend his kingship!
Looking at my life I see that in many ways in ministry I have been a Saul at times. I’ve started out good and humble but I’ve found myself jealous of another brother or sister’s success and I’ve been worried about going to a different department in the ministry and I’ve been worried and jealous about someone else taking my position in my department. I have struggled with this and one day it got the worst of me and found myself falling, emotionless but yet just wanting to cry and I had to step out. Thankfully this hadn’t led to bitterness, anger and revenge like it did to Saul. I’ve been praying every day that I would stay humble and rejoice in others successes. Later on, God showed me that it was He that humbled me because of my pride and desiring position and defending it and being jealous of others’ positions and successes.
Thank the Lord he protected me and my heart as I gave it up to him and now it’s so freeing to be able to work together with my brothers and sisters at GFA with no hard feelings of bitterness and jealousy of their position or success. The Lord is the one who puts people in positions and makes people successful…I’ve been learning to praise and thank God for this! We’re a family and we’re the body of Christ but I find myself being like Saul or being like the 12 disciples and trying to be the greatest, when instead we should rejoice and praise God for each others’ positions and successes in the ministry and work together in love and unity realizing that God has everyone in the place He desires for them at the time. Maybe someday God will raise me but I must be faithful in the ministry to where He has me now! There’s freedom in this! After all, it’s God’s ministry and in the process of reaching the lost in Asia He gets all the glory!
We see that King David sinned badly and made huge mistakes such as murder and committing adultery. But after all this, God still kept him as King and called him a man after his own heart and even made Jesus come through his family line. Why did David still have this? Because even in his faults and failings, he still allowed God to work with him and he sincerely repented and chased God’s will, didn’t defend his kingship, unlike Saul who was the opposite! Ultimately, Saul dies and falls on the sword…such a wasted life to someone who started out good, humble and had so much potential!
So, it’s not about how good we start, it’s about how well we finish! This to me has been a warning to my heart which has helped me to stay in the ministry, following God with all my heart! I’ve been praying and desiring to stay humble and therefore I believe God has given me practical situations to practice it and it’s been a struggle, but He never gives more than we can handle!
I could go on and on about this topic and all the things God is showing me through his word. Praise God!
Jul 6, 2011
Last week, I went to the Christian bookstore and God told me to buy a Bible. I was a little surprised, but glad to do it. Let me explain…
I grew up being taught from the Bible in my home, sunday school, church, and even grade school (I was home schooled). I memorized complete chapters of the Bible. I won awards for how many Bible verses I could regurgitate. Actually, I have even been given a Bible or two for winning the Bible memory verse competition!
The Bible I won in that competition was one of many that I’ve accumulated. I got my first Bible from my parents at age 6. I got another at age 9 from my grandparents. At some point, I picked up the small, handy New Testament from church “to carry around.” I got one from my brother. And I think one from my sister too! And of course, the “grown-up Bible (aka the Bible without the pictures!)” when I was 14. And the list goes on…I can’t even remember how I got all of my Bibles, but I literally have a drawer full of them.
Funny thing…for all the Bibles I had at my disposal, I never read any of them. Not seriously. I read the Bible because my mother told me to and to disobey was unthinkable. I read the Bible at church when the preacher told us to read along. Every blue moon, I read the Bible (on my own!) because I knew that saved people were supposed to. I never once read it because I wanted to, or because it gave me life, or spoke to me, or comforted me. It simply didn’t mean that much to me…until recently.
In February of this year, I read through The Pursuit of God by A.W.Tozar. It was reading through the chapter on the Word of God that I realized that I needed to know what was actually in the Bible. It dawned on me that the Bible is alive! It really is the living Word of God! It lives because He lives and nothing about it has become old, lifeless, or irrelevant since it was put on paper! It finally made sense.
While I was growing up, I had this irrational fear that if I sat down to read the Bible, I wouldn’t know what to read. And rather than ask God to open my heart and mind to any and all of His Word, I didn’t do it all (if i didn’t have to). After reading Tozar, I began praying that God would give me a stong hunger to read the Bible and apply it’s truths to my life. And, it’s working! I actually want to read the Bible now, and that has never been the case for me.
The fact that God told me to buy a Bible last week was pretty significant for me. I have a drawer full of them, but that was the first time in my life that I bought my own…and I was thrilled!
Jun 29, 2011
Lately I’ve felt tired. Not just tired physically, as that is fairly normal in my life; but tired emotionally, spiritually, and mentally as well. So on all fronts. It’s not very encouraging. Although this is how I am feeling, I can see God’s faithfulness through it all. No matter how far I fall, God is always there to pick me up again, dust me off, and let me know that He’s there if I want to depend on Him. Thing is, I don’t depend on Him enough. I want to, and in my head I know that is what I should be doing, but I find it hard to trust God with EVERY aspect of my life. Which is silly; who am I to NOT trust the God of the universe, that cares about me so tremendously that He chose me; to serve Him with my life? He gave me my life, why shouldn’t I stop doing, and give that life back to Him to use as He pleases?
Today I was working on assembling a 1000 piece puzzle my mom got me for Christmas. It’s a tough puzzle, and hard for me to zip through like I normally do with puzzles. And as I was mulling over my thoughts of how tired I am, and how God has ALWAYS proven faithful to me, He gave me a thought. I had thought about it before, but I never put two and two together. Life is like a complicated puzzle. Can be frustrating, tough, and down-right tiring. Not to mention you can’t tell how this mess of pieces will fit together to make the promised image at the end. You just have to trust that as one piece at a time is placed in it’s rightful place, the end image will be, in my case, Starry Night by Van Gogh.
Life is like that. A big messy puzzle. As God places each of the scattered and broken pieces of my life (mind, body, spirit) back together, I have to trust that the end image will be like He promises in His Word (Phil 1:6-11, Col 2:10-14, Heb 13:20-21, etc). Even though all I see is each teeny tiny piece that is being placed, how strange and kinda ugly it looks incomplete, I can trust God. He sees the whole picture. He knows what it will look like in the end. All I need to “do” is stop worrying, stop trying to prove myself, stop trying to work in my own strength and believe God’s promises. I need to stop looking at all the empty parts in the puzzle of my life and start looking again at what God has brought me through, what He’s already built in my life. I can praise Him for that. That little bit of the full picture I see, I can praise Him that He will complete it. That the end result is something that I can’t even begin to imagine in the best of my creative thoughts.
How great is our God that He cares enough to put together my life! I need to stop telling Him where to put the puzzle pieces, stop telling Him not to place a piece in certain places, and I need to stop trying to put together my own puzzle! What chaos would it be if the puzzle I was working on, had a mind of it’s own and tried to put itself together?! It’s be a mess! I’d have to take pieces out, to place the correct pieces in. I’d move things around, and if the puzzle kept trying to “help” me, I’d probably get frustrated with it and give up! Thank the Lord that He doesn’t give up on me. So often I feel like that rebellious puzzle that tries to assemble itself without really knowing where pieces go, but so certain they go in this specific spot. Sometimes I’m so certain that a piece goes in one place that I’ll mush it till it fits, and then maybe glue it so it’s more secure. But that makes for a more painful “fix” for me when God comes in to put that piece where it really belongs.
I need to let God put my puzzly life together, and get out of the way.
Anyway, that’s my head at the moment. Thanks for reading.
Jun 21, 2011
God…
My Father…The Lord Jesus…The Holy Spirit…
How much of my life…of your life…should be surrendered to God?
What about your whole life?
Would you think it too far- if your entire person was consumed with a passion for Jesus?
Of course not.
But why is it so often we settle for a, ‘hotter than most’, ‘more passionate than the others’,..’no-one really goes that far’…’you can stop now, you’re a good Christian’– type of attitude?
I wanna burn for YOU LORD! I want to be a ‘burning-one’.
I want to be consumed with the love of Jesus.
I want to burst with the Light of the Gospel.
I want to decrease, I want the Lord to increase.
I had a revelation recently…a shift..
I’ve been trying to gather, collect, and horde the Lord- I want MORE! Give me MORE!…
But I realized that it’s a finite mind trying to capture an eternal God…
I stopped praying, “GIVE ME MORE OF YOU!”…
and started praying, “GIVE YOU MORE OF ME!”
When I honestly considered my heart, of what I wanted…I found that while it was true that I wanted God more than I knew Him–I just wanted what God wanted…and then I realized God just wants me!
Suddenly I realize how much more sense it makes to ask that God would give me to Himself…I am only so small- and He is SO ABLE.
So I want it all…All of me given to All of Him.
*LORD JESUS, come into this Temple and turn the tables over. Every dark place, shine Your Light. Consider me a burnt offering, a drink offering – Poured out and consumed. Give You all of me Lord.*
Jun 17, 2011
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7
Join us as we pray www.gfa.org/prayer
Jun 15, 2011
I just spent most of my day at Martin Memorial North a hospital in South Florida.
My morning started with prayer and afterward I planned what I do with the rest of my day.
Those plans were put to a stop with one phone call. Our family friend and sister in Christ Catherine T. had collapsed and was on her way to the hospital. Her family needed our support and so off my mom , sister and I went. Cleaning the kitchen and buying paint for the walls seemed so pathetic in light of it all.
Later that morning I drove to the hospital with food and liquid, my mom was already there and my sister had stayed home.
A short time later I sat in a chair next to her husband Matthew and listened as he talked about whatever. He was in a haze of heartache as he waited knowing his wife was in critical condition. Around me sat other families waiting for their loved ones to wake up or get out of surgery.
I can’t imagine how hard it is for all of them but what I do know is that they were not alone in it all.
God was with them and so was His Bride, the Body of Christ! That morning I texted all the people I knew. Many from my beloved Gospel For Asia, others from previous churches, and still others in different states. These people are all separated by space but we are one in Christ coming together in prayer for a sister. How completely beautiful is that?!?
Then at the hospital a brother in Christ-Will-he does the power point at church and drove down to support them
A little later our Pastor-Greg came, then another sister Jen (from a different church!!) came to sit with the family.
I sat there in complete awe of our God. No other family in that waiting room had non-family members come to sit and pray with them.
As we neared the end of our time there Elaine called and asked if she could do anything. Tonight she is bring all of us Chicken dinner.
Walking out to our cars we were met with Ted and Cindy Joe a couple who had come to encourage Matt and hug him.
Finally home we were met with a note from my sister who had left for work. She had prepared the house and bedroom for Matthew and his girls (he was too shook up to go back to his house). Crazy amazing!!
That my friends is the body of Christ at work. The Bible says they will know us by our love for one another-I praise God that we could function like we were supposed to.
I pray that it doesn’t always take an emergency for us to work like that.
Please pray for Catherine and her family.
Jun 12, 2011
Recently I have been thinking how silly it seems that I trust the Lord with my salvation and eternal life, yet, I feel I don’t always need to trust Him or come before Him with my day-to-day life. It seems silly in light of verses from the Word like that of Colossians 3:4, “When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.” Christ who is my LIFE…I take this to mean not just my eternal life, but also my new earthly life, purchased by His blood. I now cling to this verse. I never want to forget what my life is, or rather, who my life is. I should not live this life for myself, but rather, for the One who made it, gave it, and redeemed it in the first place.
The Lord has been stretching me so much since coming to Gospel For Asia. Every day he teaches me how to trust Him more, how to love Him more. I feel He is really working in my heart to show me the beauty of a life completely and totally abandoned of self and completely and totally surrendered to Him and His will. I am seeing more and more that Christ is enough—more than enough. Christ is my all in all, the desire of my heart, the love of my life. Because of this, my heart now breaks for those I know who are not living in the light of Christ.
Each day I am in the Gospel For Asia office, as I see the pictures and read the stories, especially those of the children in Asia, I feel more and more sorrow that they are living in the darkness of this world. So many people throughout Asia haven’t even heard the name of Christ; I still can’t really grasp this fact. However, the Lord is moving in a mighty way! Every day the workers out on the field are reaching people with the Gospel, and people are hearing the love of Christ.
Jun 6, 2011
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May 26, 2011
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there was one only.
This bothered me because I noticed that during the low
periods of my life, when I was suffering from anguish,
sorrow or defeat, I could see only one set of footprints,
so I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you, you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods
of my life there has only been one set of footprints in
the sand. Why, when I needed you most, have you not
been there for me?”
The Lord replied,
“The years when you have seen only one set of footprints,
my child, is when I carried you.”
Mary Stevenson
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