Saturday, February 20, 2010

Real Renewing



Please absorb this awesome truth!  God has been dealing with me on the importance of our minds being renewed, and in that light, I share these words with you.

Renewing the mind is a little like refinishing furniture. It is a two-stage process. It involves taking off the old and replacing it with the new. The old is the lies you have learned to tell or were taught by those around you; it is the attitudes and ideas that have become a part of your thinking but do not reflect reality. The new is the truth. To renew your mind is to involve yourself in the process of allowing God to bring to the surface the lies you have mistakenly accepted and replace them with truth. To the degree that you do this, your behavior will be transformed.

Charles Stanley

So often, I have run ahead of God, and in my zeal for a transformed mind, layered over the old.  May the Lord, in His wisdom and strength and through His anointed word, break all lies apart, piece by piece, giving us a smooth layer on which to build His truth!

Thank you for the extra notes of encouragement left on the last post.  We all need encouragement, and your thoughts mean so much to me!  I had intended on spending more time on a post, but had a sudden interruption in my plans with a short hospitalization.  

I'm doing fine now, and I arrived home this afternoon after a two-day stay, having had some problems with low blood pressure.  Thank you for praying, for I know you will!  God has everything right in the palm of His mighty hand!  HE IS FOREVER FAITHFUL!!!

Much love to all,

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

LIFE WITHOUT BORDERS


"In the rush and noise of life, as you have intervals, step home within yourselves and be still. Wait upon God, and feel His good presence; this will carry you evenly through your day's business."

- William Penn

 We all live in the land of ordinary.  Our days begin the same.  Our sun arises, and we awake.  Our morning routine begins.  Our thoughts churn with the needs waiting for our hands, feet, and lips of clay.

The needs around us, waiting for the imprint of our lives, press us to our own need, often sending us to our knees, bringing us to the reality of our human hearts and will.  We know we are flesh.  Imperfect.  Flawed.  Limited.  Sometimes broken.

And in brokenness and limitation, we turn to the cross, and lift our minds to its reality:  grace, redemption, peace, restoration, healing, joy, life, possibility.  For all humanity, the cross works with its power.  For us, the truth of that power invades our mortal souls and kills excuse to cling to our limited flesh.

Our flesh can be His glory.  Our weakness can be His strength.  Our strongholds can be His deliverance.

Our unknowing can know God's omniscience.  Our pride can know Christ's humility.  Our need can know His grace.

Our limited can be God's unlimited!

Christ never lived in the ordinary.  Yes, He was a man as well as the Son of God.  Yes, he walked, talked, breathed, lived, suffered, and died as a human being.  But, Jesus never viewed His life as ordinary. 

He could not.  He would not.  For His life was not His own.  It belonged to His Father, and Jesus only lived to please Him.

What He did, everything Christ did, He did not do for Himself.  Jesus magnifed God the Father in all.

And, His desire for us is the same.  If "anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward" (Matthew 10:42, NIV).  Even a drink of water is not mundane to Jesus.  He looks at our hearts while we do the great and small. 

My friend Sonja, from http://www.bitsandpieces-sonja.blogspot.com/, sent me a beautiful biography about her father, Armin Gesswein, who was a mighty prayer warrior and man of God.  In that book, Everything by Prayer, the author, Fred Hartley, speaks of the way we often disconnect the mundane of our lives from the spiritual.  He tells that everything we do is spiritual when we are living as a servant.  Even cleaning up your child's vomit is serving God when you love Him with your whole heart.

Be encouraged.  In the great and small of your life, God is beside you.  With you.  In you.

Look for God's limitless in your ordinary.  Expect His power in your walk with Him.  Search for His hand in all you do.  Listen for Jesus, even when you are changing a diaper, digging up weeds, wiping a dish, or waiting for one so dear. 

Live your life without borders.  Live your life with His heart.  Live your life in God's unlimited!



Thank you for you patience in my limited posting!  I am diligently working on a slight change of scenery on my blog, per direction of the Holy Spirit.  Change begets change, and the life of the fire we had back in November has begun death of the ordinary in my heart.  With all things new, I so want to be a channel God can use.  Thanks again, and much love to all.