Tag: gratitude

Quiet Moments can Change Your Perspective

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It’s been a busy few months! I haven’t done much writing and honestly I have rushed through my morning quiet times, prayed on the run and kept a pace that if I am honest; I am just not comfortable with how it’s been going. Lots of changes, transitions and at least one or two small meltdowns and today I found myself sitting quietly in the early morning pouring my heart out to the Lord. I began prayer time as I normally do. Acknowledging who God is and sharing my gratitude, praying for family and others. Then I was reminded of Saturday. Saturday was a good day, informative, helpful even. It also presented me with a challenge for which I wasn’t sure I was ready.

Long story, short: I spent some time bouncing it off my sweet and patient husband, questioning my reluctance about the challenge and vocalizing some sentiments about my life that I have scarce allowed myself to consider and have never shared out loud. Needless to say, it was emotional but was also healing. Honestly, they were the type of things I would only share with the Lord during my prayer time. As I spent time with Him this morning, I realized I had never entirely shared those things with God; so I did. It was very cathartic and healing. Then, as I opened my Bible and wondered where I should read this morning, Psalm 113 came to my mind. I think someone had mentioned it yesterday, so that is where I began. What a beautiful reminder of who He is and how much He loves us!

Psalm 113: 1-9 (Message)
“Hallelujah!
You who serve God, praise God! Just to speak his name is praise!
Just to remember God is a blessing—now and tomorrow and always.
From east to west, from dawn to dusk, keep lifting all your praises to God!
God is higher than anything and anyone,
outshining everything you can see in the skies.
Who can compare with God, our God, so majestically enthroned,
Surveying his magnificent heavens and earth?
He picks up the poor from out of the dirt, rescues the wretched who’ve been thrown out with the trash,
Seats them among the honored guests, a place of honor among the brightest and best.
He gives childless couples a family, gives them joy as the parents of children.
Hallelujah!”

God is gracious and loving, and He is enough! He can handle our concerns, our frustrations, and even our meltdowns; small or large. In fact, I truly get the idea that when we do share them with Him, it is almost as if He says, “I know, thank you for being honest and sharing them with Me. I knew you were struggling and longed for you to tell Me; to share your heart and your concerns with Me. Now, we can begin to work it out.” God made each of us to be unique, one of a kind. We all share commonalities, but we are each uniquely created and uniquely gifted with the capacity to grow and change when yielded to Him. As we grow and change in Christ, He will take us from glory to glory.

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. ” (2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV)

 

 

Then my eyes crossed the page to Psalm 116. As I read this encouraging Psalm, my heart was full! He hears our voice and our supplications. He inclines His ear to his children! Yes, even when we feel the cords of our circumstances, challenges, or even death choking us; when in sorrow and distress, He knows. He cares! We can always cry out to our Heavenly Father! He hears us; He answers!

David describes God this way: “I love the Lord because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy. Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live. The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, I pray, deliver my soul! Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, he saved me. Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears,
my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed even when I spoke: “I am greatly afflicted””
(Psalm 116:1-10 ESV)

In Him, may you find grace, encouragement, and peace as you go through your day!

Days of Grace- Day 5

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     Let’s look at a slightly different view of God’s grace, His grace shown through one of His own people. This particular example of grace comes on the heels of tragedy and much sorrow at a time when its recipients are feeling alone and burdened, perhaps even a bit forsaken. To begin, a little back story is in order.  Israel was in a time of famine, people were suffering. A man named  Elimelech decided it would be prudent to take his wife Naomi and his two sons into the land of Moab. While they were in Moab, Elimelech died. Naomi’s sons also each took for themselves a wife from among the people of Moab; their names were Orpah and Ruth. After about ten years, Naomi and her daughters-in-law suffered the death of her two sons. Naomi by this time had heard that conditions in her own homeland had improved, and being a widow in a strange land, she decided to return home was her best choice for survival. Naomi spoke to her daughters in love and encouraged them to  “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the LORD deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. “May the LORD grant that you may find rest, each in the house of her husband.” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.” according to Ruth 1:8-9 (New American Standard). Both young women declined and opted to return with her to her homeland but as time came for their departure, only Ruth traveled with Naomi. Scripture tells us that at this point in the story, Naomi was feeling old, used up and feeling that the hand of God was against her. Ruth was dedicated to Naomi and very loving toward her. They began their trip back to Naomi’s homeland.

     Safely back in Bethlehem, Naomi and Ruth settled in. Ruth asked permission from Naomi to glean wheat along the edges of a field so they would have food. It was the tradition of the day that the land owners would leave the edges of their field so that the poor could come and gather some of the harvest so their family would have some food. The field where she stopped belonged to Boaz who was a kinsman of Elimelech.  Interestingly, Boaz visited his fields that day and saw this young woman gleaning in the field, he first inquired about who she was from his servants. Next he spoke with Ruth letting her know she was safe in those fields and his servants would make sure she had water while she was working. He asked her not to glean in any other fields and left her to her work. When mealtime came, Boaz called her to eat with the others and when she returned to the fields they were instructed not to insult her and to intentionally drop some of their grain that she might find it.

     At one point, Ruth inquired of Boaz as to his great kindness and favor toward her because she was a stranger in the land. Boaz’s response is recorded in Ruth 2:1-12, “Boaz replied to her, “All that you have done for your mother-in-law after the death of your husband has been fully reported to me, and how you left your father and your mother and the land of your birth, and came to a people that you did not previously know. “May the LORD reward your work, and your wages be full from the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.” Ruth had left everything familiar because of her devotion to her husband’s mother after his death. Not only  did she leave her land and family, she had been so touched by this family’s devotion to their God that she wanted to serve God just as they did. Boaz’s kindness and these words were confirmation that she had chosen wisely.

     This beautiful story doesn’t end here, it is just beginning. Boaz and Ruth marry and from that marriage comes a son named Obed. Obed has a son named Jessie, and Jessie has sons, the youngest named David who becomes the best known king of Israel. Grace continues to flow and be traced throughout the generations, even among tragedy and sorrow, grace continues and is found in the new life of Obed. Ruth 4:16-17 says, “Then Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his nurse. The neighbor women gave him a name, saying, “A son has been born to Naomi !” So they named him Obed. He is the father of Jesse, the father of David.” Naomi, who had lost her husband and both sons now had a new start with this grand baby, the one who had previously said call me ‘bitter’ had hope, healing and joy through the grace of God shown to both her and her daughter through her kinsmen redeemer Boaz.

Frozen With Fear Or Standing Firm In Faith

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Like clockwork about three a.m. this morning, completely cooperating with the predictions of weather forecasters  over the last four days, the pinging of sleet announced it’s arrival. Most of Georgia is officially in a winter weather warning or watch for either an ice storm or heavy snow. For many this is a normal occurrence during the winter months, but not so for Georgians. I can count on less than two hands the times we have experienced any more than the occasional dusting of snow to possibly an inch or two. Of the few times we have had more generous amounts or actually experience the rare ice storm, 1973 stands out as the worst in my mind. I was barely eleven at the time and it made an impression on me in so very many ways. Many lessons were set before me that are still very precious today.

I will first share a little background about the storm. It began in early January and in a short time there was ice accumulations of up to four inches in some parts of northern Georgia. We lived just outside of Atlanta and not far from Hartsfield Airport. It was not long before the weight of the ice began to cause widespread power outages. There were as many as 300,000 people without power. Our family was without power for a full week, despite living only 20 minutes from downtown Atlanta, some further out in rural areas were without for longer. When I think about that storm, I can still hear those snap, crackle and pops of the ice dangling from those lines and trees. For a child, the glistening ice was beautiful-it looked like a winter wonderland on a postcard. It was also a bit scary, because in the quiet of the night with no street lights, no flood lights or porch lights it seemed that the crackling and popping ice sounded much more ominous as branches and limbs overweighted with ice began to break. As I said above, this storm made a great impression on me in a number of ways, and I am still very grateful for ’til this day for lessons learned!

Lesson one, we were blessed. Lesson two, be prepared. Our family lived in a small suburban home at a time when all-electric homes were becoming more and more popular. Our home was a little older, maybe about thirteen or fourteen years old and we thankfully had a gas stove before pilotless ignition.  We also had gas floor furnaces which required absolutely no electricity to run. We had a separate freezer and enough food in it to keep it cold until we could freeze jugs of water to add in to keep it cold and it was cold enough to freeze it outside! We also had lots of quilts, a couple of heaters, camping stoves and several oil lamps and lanterns for camping. We were equipped and were blessed with extra that we could share with a couple of families who had all-electric homes, one of which had recently returned home with their new-born. We were also blessed to have water longer because the floor furnaces kept our pipes warm, many were left with pipes burst and later water lines froze for many between the meters and the houses because of extreme cold.

Lesson three, Philippians 6-7.  ” Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life!”. Remember those scary sounds in the night?? They got scarier! The crackling ice, breaking icicles, snapping branches, gave away to a huge snapping sound followed by an enormous thud, not once but twice during the middle of the night. Oh how I prayed that night, not one but two very good size pine trees uprooted completely and came down. Fortunately, neither hit our home or the home of our friends next door and damage was limited to the fence, the bumper of their car and the shell cover on the back of their truck. I was blessed to have learned at an early age to pray and pray I had done all through that night as the sound of falling trees continued throughout the night and throughout the week until the thaw finally came. Thankfully, most were in the woods across the street and caused no property damage. By the way, this possibly made the biggest impression to me as a child.  To this day when I hear of a storm coming, I begin to immediately pray! It doesn’t matter if it is ice, thunder, lightening, flooding, tornado or hurricane. Prayer changes things and fear is a waste of time. Be anxious about nothing, pray about everything! The peace of God which passes understanding will come if we stand in faith. Speak to fear telling it to go!! Pray, believe, if necessary pray for help with our unbelief, and STAND!

There were probably many other lessons learned that week such as how to have fun without electricity or t.v., get along with and help others, and it is probably where I began to love reading books and the Word. Reminiscing over it today, I can’t help but to think of how much our world has changed since then we have made some great progress since 1973 but we have also tended to become more busy and less connected. Many of us don’t know our neighbors like we did in previous years but only know them on the surface to say hi, if we even know them at all. We had a park over a block away and there were mommas on that road that knew me and the kids next door and if she saw us at the park she would ask, “do your parents know you are here?” Now we are hard pressed to let kids walk two doors down without us right by their side because we live in a much different world.

Imagine if everyone who has faith even as small as a mustard seed resolved to:

Pray for protection and provision for ALL those in the path all of the storms in life, especially the elderly and children and the many people who are working and on call to keep us safe…police, firemen, military, national guard, coast guard, public safety workers, EMT’s, doctors, nurses, transportation workers, and for their families. What if we did it daily, not just when storms are predicted or overwhelm us in their wake? What if we choose to take a few minutes a day to stand in the gap out of compassion and gratitude and believe without doubt that not only is god willing but God is able! Storms and trials may still come but how much better equipped to weather them would we be? How much easier to face them just knowing we are uplifting each other before, during and following the threats that come?

Ecclesiastes 4:9 Two are better than one because they have a good reward for their efforts. 10 For if either falls, his companion can lift him up; but pity the one who falls without another to lift him up. 11 Also, if two lie down together, they can keep warm; but how can one person alone keep warm? 12 And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

Ephesians 3:20-21 (AMP) Now to Him Who, by (in consequence of) the [action of His] power that is at work within us, is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams]—To Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen (so be it).

Releasing Expectations

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We all have expectations in our life, some met, others that are unmet and even a few that may never be met. Last night as I talked to a close friend, some unexpected and unacknowledged words came out of my mouth. I really did not think too much of it at the time, but as I lay down to go to sleep about an hour later those words came back to me. ” I am just tired of being the one trying to hold it all together!”

My next thought, or maybe it was His still small voice…”you’re not God, only He holds all things together.” Then I remembered another friend speaking recently on putting all our expectations in God and a Sermon about not drowning in the shallow water. Knowing myself well enough to know if I did not stop, there would be no sleep tonight: I made some notes and resolved that I can not fix anything, nor can I hold it together. I am going to pray and go to sleep, this will still be here tomorrow! And it was!

Yes, I awoke with the revelation that I can neither fix ‘this’ nor can I hold it together heavily resonating through my mind…time to pray! As I took this matter before The Lord, I was given a couple of reminders and a few things became clear to me:
God gave all of us a choice between life and death; blessing and cursIng.  Deuteronomy 30:19
We can not choose for another, only for ourselves!
He holds all things together! Colossians 1: 16-18
I am not Him, without Him I can’t hold me together! Acts 17: 27-29
We have been through a lot tougher things in our lives, compared this is shallow water!
Shallow water… You can actually stand up now and walk! Stand up, breathe deep and walk out of the water!!!
Yes, you are tired, exhausted even…BUT the Joy of the Lord is your strength!  Nehemiah 8:10
He who began a good work will see it through to completion!  Philippians 1:6
I can not change anyone or anyone’s mind, not even my own without Him!
Acknowledge unspoken expectations, let go of them and place all my expectations in Him! Pray!  (Thank you, Katie. Your words echo in my heart.)
Hold on to my dreams loosely, putting my faith and trust in God!  Hebrews 11:6
Walk in both gratefulness and in the rhythm of His grace in my life! Yes, even when it is tough!
Walk in expectation! What is next, Daddy?

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Circumstances, Grace, and Gratitude

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How fascinating when several avenues in our life converge and it results in a new understanding of who we are or of who we are meant to be, when they come together and totally change our perspective or our trajectory. Lately, I have been emerged in a study of Gideon, a Biblical hero of faith listed in the book of Hebrews. He did not start out that way! When first mentioned in Judges, he is hiding in a wine press threshing wheat. This is a very unconventional place to thresh wheat but Gideon is hiding in order to protect the wheat from the enemy who is oppressing his people. Meanwhile he is visited by an angel of The Lord with this message, “the Lord is with you, mighty warrior!” From our perspective, Gideon is fearful and hiding; from God‘s perspective he is declared a mighty warrior (Judges 6:11-12); and finally from Gideon’s perspective he is the weakest and the youngest (verse15). Whether we like it or not so is our lives. People see us from one perspective, we see ourselves from another, yet God sees us beyond those perspectives. He sees us for who we are, who He created us to be, and our unlimited potential in Him.

I don’t know about you but I am not that different from Gideon. I tend to be hard on myself and to be insecure, though some have said they see me as confident and strong, I rarely qualify. They only see the outside, my actions and have no idea what is in my heart unless I share it. Again, from God’s perspective, He sees the real me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. He also knows the destiny He created me for and the potential that I have, especially if I walk with Him. He has a plan and purpose for us; he also allows us free will to choose what path we will take.

Imagine our lives as series of roads, for this purpose we will picture if we can three roads. One is a beautiful road with flat places shaded by the covering of pretty trees at times, further along it meets with fields of flowers, rolling hills, and even the rougher terrain along the way is beautiful and pleasing to the eye.  We will call it God’s Grace. The next road is direct and straight for a long-span, it divides and goes different directions at a certain point and from there tends to meander and wind at times. It’s name is Circumstance. The last road is a perimeter like roadway, each of the other roads intersect with this road at some point and this road ALWAYS circles back to God’s Grace. This road is called Gratitude. All of these roads intersect each other at different places and each has an impact on the other.

Our lives are often lived in our circumstances. We are walking or driving along straight and smooth, something happens, a bump in the road, a sickness, or a tragedy and we are at a fork in the road. Which way will we choose to go? Will we go with the west fork or the east fork? For those of us who know God and have trusted Jesus, will we trust His promises? Will we see His grace and allow it to take us to gratitude? Will we take a turn on gratitude, knowing He is good and trust Him until we reach the path of God’s Grace. Will we possibly take the more winding path of West Circumstance taking the long way to God’s Grace and eventually finding our way to Gratitude. There is also the option of just staying on the road of our circumstance, east or west and continuing on their long paths and totally miss God’s Grace and Gratitude.

For me, I have chosen different options including the absolute longest roads back to His grace and to gratitude in a few cases. Trust me that one is not a healthy one!  After many trials and troubles and tragedies  it is my desire to take the shortest, straightest route to see Him bring grace and glory from both the good circumstances and the bad. Do I want difficult circumstances? Are you kidding me, no! Can I give thanks in a hard time? Maybe, maybe not. Can I believe that despite tragedy God is always good? Yes, He has proved it again and again. Can I believe He can take the worst circumstance and bring something good from it or despite of it? Yes, I have seen it and personally experienced it.  I write this today with a broken heart. Our small town has experienced tragedy today. While I was writing this, a wonderful man, a friend that owns our local jewelry store was viciously gunned down as four males decided that their desires and wealth or lack of was more valuable than his life. Three of them are on the loose. Tragedy!!! Heartbreak!!! Be assured, this does not change God’s Goodness!! This is a product of a fallen world and a culture that has come to value things and use people, a culture where wrong is accepted as right and right is judged as wrong. We can not blame God for these things when we are the ones who choose our own paths! We can strive to make good and right choices and teach others within our influence to do likewise.
I am not an artist, but they might look like this:

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