Spiritual Conflict

"Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Be self-controlled and alert. " 1 Peter 5:7-8a

This past year, I have grown a lot in the Lord and I have learned a lot about who I am as a person and who God is.  This is not to say that I have not made mistakes but rather I am now looking and seeing my mistakes through God's grace and my sinfulness.  Self-control is something that I personally struggle with and is something that I have worked hard at developing.  Every day, I make a conscious effort to make sure that my life is in line with God's word and Christ's example.  I love the imagery in 1 Corinthians that Paul uses of a race, and how he talks about everyone who participates in a game  under goes strict training.

"They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." 1 Corinthians 9:25-27

There is a struggle that takes place when you try to follow God.  There are times when I feel like I have to beat my body to make it a slave not only to me but to God.  There are times when I don't want to go to church and when I don't feel like reading my Bible. There are times when I don't want to volunteer to help someone in need and there are times when I feel like being lazy.  However, it is during those times that I have to push those thoughts and my feelings aside and look at the bigger picture. It's not about me.

"Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering." 1 Peter 5:8b-9

Our minds is one of the biggest battle grounds that we will ever face in trying to resist the devil.  It is in our minds that he wants control but we have to resist him and be self-controlled and alert.  Satan does not try to destroy your life all at once, no he does it over time.  Like, "oh I am going to read my Bible tomorrow, not today". Then two weeks later you still have not picked it up or every time that you were about to something just came up, coincidence I don't think so.  I have found that the times when I am not in God's Word, is the also the times when Satan tries to attack me the hardest.  I then start to get really down and strangely enough things just keep going wrong, one right after the other.  It is at those really low moments, that I dive back into God's Word it is like a wake up call, "What in the world have you been doing, see what you have been missing out on".  Sometimes we need help from others to keep our minds oe the right track.  Reading the Word is so important, we need to stand firm in our faith and build our foundation in order to resist the devil.

Family

  I went home this past weekend and I started to think about how important family is to me.  For me, there is nothing like coming home and being greeted by the ones you loves.  I love going home and spending time with them.  I love everything about my dysfunctional but some how manageable and lovable family.  We are all far from perfect but no matter what either one of us does or how much trouble we get into, we always know that our family is there for us.   I know if something ever happened to anyone in my family there would be a long line of people there ready to help out and tackle any problem that needs to be solved.
  It just amazes me how God is able to put a family together.  Growing up, I never doubted my parents love for me.  My parents and I were talking the other day about how wonderful our family is and I was wondering how did God create such a great family so I started talking to my parents.  During our conversation my dad said, "Your mother and I gave both you and your brother our lives".  I started laughing and told them, "Who are you kidding? We are your lives," and then we all started laughing, because we all know it is true.  After our talk, I realized that the reason why this family is so great is because of the love that we share with God, one another, and others.
  Like an excellent parent, both of my parents have given up their lives for their children and there has never been a moment when I doubted my parents love for me.  I know that no matter what happens I always have them to lean on.  My dad is the greatest man I know and, besides my grandfather, the hardest worker I know.  My mother is one of the funniest and craziest people I know and my best friend.  My brother is just awesome, he knows what he wants, works hard, and is very smart.  We all are not perfect but we still love one another. 
  I remember when I first came to school at Lincoln Christian University and I was surprised that there were so many people who did not have a close relationship with their parents or family.  It just amazed me because I never thought there was anything "abnormal" about my family's relationship with one another, I just figured that most Christian families were as close as us.  However, I quickly learned that my family was different, we are close and we get along with one another, not all the time, but the majority of the time.  Then when we were talking as a family the other day, I realized how cool my parents really are and how even when I was in grade school, I had the coolest parents.  I had the best room parents in elementary school and even now my friends still continue to tell me how awesome my parents are. 
  According to world standards, my family has every reason to fall apart and be broken.  Not all of us are related by blood and my parents have two rebellious children.  However, we are able to stay strong in our relationships with one another because my parents encourage me and my brother to do better in life and they love us more than they love themselves.  While growing up, I had the parents who would tell me I would have to be home before all the other children and still even when I was a senior in high school I had the earliest curfew.  I can still remember my mother saying, "there is nothing good that happens after dark".   I can't count how many times my father would show up to a friend's house and embarrassingly take me home because I never called to let them know where I was or who I was with.  I just look back on those moments now and laugh, I thank God for giving me parents who love me enough to make sure I stay on the right path and who love me enough to "make me" go to church.  Without their parental guidance, I don't know where I would be.
   Building a strong family is not easy but even with all the hardships it is well worth it.  My brother and I still joke about our parents but both of us know that we would do anything for them any day and we both love them both dearly.  

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother"- which is the first commandment with a promise- "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." - Ephesians 6:1-4

"Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." - Proverbs 22:6

GOD wants YOU to be HAPPY

  I can't imagine how parents feel when they watch their children go down the wrong path or choose a way of life that they know is going to cause them pain and suffering.  As a parent, I am guessing that you would do everything in your being to try to stop them or to help them find their way.  I wonder how much harder it is for God to watch His children continue to be disobedient and choose a lifestyle that causes them pain and suffering, and ultimately death.  God is continually reaching out to His children and trying to guide them and restore them, but even though God has given us all we will ever need, we continue to pull away from Him. 
  It hurts me to watch people make the wrong choices and settle for things in life that are less than what God has ultimately planned for their life.  I am not saying that I know what is best for someone's life but I know someone who does, God.  In reading His Word, I wonder why do we do all of the stupid things in life that we do?  Why would we settle for anything less than what God has planned for our lives?  Why do we settle for working at a job that makes us miserable?  Why do we choose to be in unhealthy relationships?  Why do we continue trying to convince ourselves that we can change people, when ultimately we believe that God is the only one who can transform someone's heart? 
  God never planned for you to be miserable or to hurt or to experience pain.  He never created you so that you would be left alone to fend for yourself. God loves you and wants you to be happy.  The only way that we can live a life fully alive is in Christ, by leaving our old sinful ways behind along with all of our sinful desires and thoughts.  God is always present and wants what is best for us.  This does not mean that God gives us what is best for us right away, sometimes we have to be willing to wait for it.  He always has our best interest at heart.  I encourage all of you to never settle for anything less than what God has planned for your life.  If you wonder about what God has planned for your life look at Scripture, pray, and seek out other believers to ask for help.  The answer may not always be clear but we can be sure that if we put our trust in God everything will work out for the better, even if at the time God gives you an answer you don't want to hear. Have faith!

Restless Heart

  For the past three weeks, I have not been myself. I have let my heart be burdened by the things in this world that I cannot change and by worry about the future. My heart is restless. I am constantly moving toward where I feel God pulling me and trying to leave behind the things of this world and not worry, for those of you who know me this is my biggest struggle.  I am called to leave behind the people (whom I love), the places I have lived, the places I have seen, and essentially my life.
  This sounds like crazy talk, right? Who would want to leave the things they love behind? However, over the years I have slowly but surely been able to give over pieces of my life to God and now I am coming up to the cliff where I have nothing else to give. All I have to do is jump off. This point, this edge is by far the most exciting and the most frightening. You know the feeling, you are on a roller-coaster up to this point you have just been inching your way up to the top and suddenly here it is. There is no turning back now....ahhh, there you go swirling around corners and turning upside down. Laughing and raising your hands most of the way through until you return safely back to your starting point.
  All that you have to do to enjoy this amazing ride is climb aboard and make it over that first high point and you are on your way.  But what goes through your mind at that high point? You have no idea what is on the other side, you have no idea how much farther you have to go to reach the top. However, what if you reached that high point, and the roller-coaster engineer stopped the ride and said. "Just wait here for a while and then we will start it back up again".  WHAT! Oh no, now you are really in for a treat. What do you do?  What's going through your mind now? Panic, anxiety, worry, etc.
   This is the season in my life where I am at, I am ready to jump, I am ready to go over that high point, but I am being called to wait. This is the weirdest scariest funniest feeling in the world,  and here I am. I am waiting for the Lord to guide me and to reveal His purposes for me in His timing, which when you are waiting let's be honest feels like a long time. Although, I trust in the Lord, I know that His plans for my life are more amazing than anything I could possibly imagine. I already know how the story ends thanks to His Word.

"It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eyes on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone." Ephesians 1:11 (The Message)

Conflict

I know it has been a while since I last wrote but to be honest I have just been thinking and reflecting a lot on conflict.  It is hard to love others especially when there is a personality conflict, but however hard it maybe you are still called to love one another.  I am not a person who likes to start a conflict and most of the time I try to avoid conflict at all cost or at least keep the peace to the best of my ability.  I am a peacekeeper and I don't like to make waves or disrupt order. 

Although, when you are in a position of leadership there comes time when you are going to make waves and conflict will arise. Being a peacekeeper is not an issue but avoiding conflict is.  You should not avoid conflict but rather embrace it and work through it, in a loving and gentle way to the best of your ability.  Jesus did not avoid conflict but rather talked about conflict and prepared his disciples to handle conflict.  Jesus knew that conflict would arise.  Take for example Paul and Barnabas in the book of Acts (ch. 15) they had a disagreement, they were in conflict with one another.  However, out of that conflict both of them parted ways and were able to spread the Gospel.  Do you not think that God can use conflict for His own purposes? 

In leadership, you can never make someone do something that they do not want to do but rather you can try to work with them to the best of your ability.   People do not want you to do what you would like to have done to you, but rather what they would like to have done to them.  Not everyone thinks the same and not everyone acts the same.  Working with people takes the Fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

"Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity if the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit.." Ephesians 4:2-4a

Prayer

Do you ever find praying hard? Or find yourself dozing off or day dreaming while praying? Does prayer ever seem like a distant tradition? These are some of the struggles and questions people face when praying. I have had people come to me and ask me questions on prayer, and often find myself wondering about my own prayer life. How often do I talk to God? How long do I sit in silence to listen to God?

Prayer has always been apart of my life. Over the years, I have used a variety of different prayer "techniques," but no one has ever taught me how to pray. I just prayed, but not very well. Growing up I prayed before I ate and then before I went to bed. After I became a Christian, I learned that you could pray for people so I started doing that and then I started asking people to pray for me. I learned that you could pray for healing, safe travels, and a variety of other things in life. Later on, I learned about the importance of giving thanks and praising God during prayer.  Shortly after, I learned about the importance of sitting in silence and just listening (coming from a generation/culture of non-stop movement this was difficult for me).

Now I find myself wondering about prayer again. I talk to God daily all the time while doing different things but I need to learn to just sit still and pray and listen to God. I go and go and go and then I go some more but when do I just sit in silence and pray? I have my devotion time but prayer does not take up the majority of the time.

You see, I am not talking about learning how to pray for 5 minutes, I am talking about learning how to pray in such a way that it changes your relationship with God and becomes apart of your daily life.  How much time it takes to pray and how you pray differs from person to person, but has anyone ever taught you how to pray?  Well, I want to learn how to pray by talking to those who are wiser and farther along in their faith. Prayer will always be something that people talk about and something that people do, whether or not they really acknowledge God. In times of trouble or crisis, you can find the most unbelieving people out of desperation and the lose of hope turn to prayer.

Jesus teaches on prayer in Luke 11 and teaches his disciples how to pray. Along with Scripture, there are also a number of authors that can teach you how to pray. After having talked with someone I respect, I received the following book list on prayer which I would like to share with those of you who would like to learn more about prayer and how to pray...

Prayer  by: Richard Foster
Experiencing God through Prayer  by: Madame Guyon
A Dairy of Private Prayer  by John Baillie
Praying God's Word  by: Beth Moore
Beginning to Pray  by: Anthony Bloom
With Christ in the School of Prayer  by: Andrew Murray

Suffering

Today, I received the following e-mail from a dear friend and with his permission I would like to share with you his thoughts on suffering. Jim wrote this e-mail after coming back from visiting his new granddaughter with his wife Shelley...

In spite of problems we had a very good weekend enjoying our new baby.  At one point I needed to go out to the store and I turned on a Christian radion station, quite by accident (no such thing in life!).  It was a well known speaker and in the course of my twenty minutes or so with him he made a lot of points but one stood out.  He said:  "ALL suffering is redemptive!"  As I have been ill now almost six years, suffering (the word) has acquired a new meaning for me, and I have attempted to discover what it means from a biblical point of view.  WHEN you are suffering academic answers do little to help us understand.  But that phrase as he used it ("ALL suffering is redemptive!") was very significant. 

 

For me, pain simply HURTS and I don't like it, much less do I dwell on the thought and REJOICE in the fact that I'm in that situation.  For me I just want to ESCAPE THE PAIN and the situation.  Some time back I was studying 1 Peter and the whole theme of the book is "suffering" and presents to us the Christ who is the prototype of suffering.  He showed us the way to suffer, and we know WHY He suffered and the book goes further and says that since the Christ suffered we also should expect it and IN our suffering realize DEEPLY WITHIN ourselves that ALL our suffering has redemptive value and just as WE are healed by the suffering of our Lord, so, in our redemptive suffering, God will somehow use OUR suffering to heal others just as He used the suffering of His Son to heal us.  In a sense, AS we suffer, it's as if we're crawling up on the cross alongside our Savior and suffering with Him.  Scripture definitely teaches that we are chosen to do and be many things, but ONE of the things we're chosen to is to suffer with our Savior.

 

IF we are hurting deeply, but we KNOW deep down within ourselves that SOMEHOW that suffering is, in some mysterious way, maybe softening the suffering of our Savior on the cross, would that suffering then have any more meaning to us?  I think so.

 

In some ways what I say is heresy, and I know it.  On the other hand this issue of suffering is so deep, so complex and so mysterious, but I KNOW the scripture teaches that we have the PRIVILEGE of sharing in Christ's suffering.  If we suffer not then we shall reign not with Him.

 

That's heavy thinking for a Monday morning.  Have a good week as we share our journey with the One Who led the way.

 

Love you all..

Jim

Well said Jim, thank you for allowing me to share these words of wisdom with others.