The Family of Christ - Giving Your Best [In Love]

John 3:16 says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. God gave his very best-his son. He does not ask us to sacrifice our children, but he does ask for our best

We live our lives trying so hard to please everybody, and the truth is we will never be able enough to please everybody. We can never fully please the people around us, that we have to live with, or that we meet in our lives. Matter of fact is we do our best for other people trying to get some if not all of their attention thereby being attention seekers which is actually very dangerous and we always get disappointed because that is just the nature of people. Instead of trying to give people our best we need to give it to God who not only demands it but deserves it! Malachi 1:6-14 We are the family of Christ and in everything that we do, we should give our best and our best is grounded, founded, established, and centered on Christian love!

Christian love is Christ’s commandment

What is at the heart of Christian love? Jesus said by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another (John 13:35) John inspired by the Holy Spirit once wrote we know that we have passed from death (spiritual) to life because we love the brethren he who does not love his brother abides in death (sin) (1 John 3:14) And by this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments for this is the love of God that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:2-3) when we love our Christian family members we give them our best; this is not an option it is a commandment.

Christian love is not a feeling it is a lifestyle

So what do these scriptures regarding Christian love really mean! Is it a warm and fuzzy feeling? I have a friend who is always kidding me about my warm and fuzzy feelings but you know what I don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings for everyone I meet Christian otherwise and warm and fuzzy is certainly not the biblical definition of love.

What Do You Have In That Bag? Part Three

Bag of Fear

“…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…”. These are some awesome, thought-provoking words that were spoken by President Franklin Roosevelt on March 3, 1933.

            There is an enemy that lurks within us …that enemy is fear.

            Since September 11, 2001, we have become a nation of fear. We live with the constant threat of terrorism, global warming, nuclear disaster, and horrific crimes being carried out on the home front. We, as President Roosevelt said, fear, fear itself. When things are going well, we are well. However, when the enemy has us in his grasp and we are too afraid, or don’t know how to break lose; we lose sight of God’s promises. Remember what Joshua said to the children of Israel when they were getting ready to cross over into the Promised Land…”Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:9) Oh how wonderful it would be if we could just take solace in those words! However, that human part of us can’t see beyond today. We just cannot grasp the brevity of any situation.

            When fear takes hold of us, we become virtually paralyzed; we cannot move forward or backward. We are stuck in a place where we don’t want to be, but feel powerless to do anything to change. The past holds us captive and the future terrifies us! We all have “issues”, but how we handle them has a great impact on how those “issues” affect our lives. Being in an abusive marriage greatly increased my proclivity for fear. I feared getting out of bed each day because I feared what the day would bring and how I would be to able cope. I feared nightfall because I knew that I had to stay awake until my husband came home from work. I thought about what John said in 1 John 4:18-19 and I knew that something was terribly wrong with that picture. The love of the Lord and each other should have negated any fears that I was experiencing, and since that was not the case, where was the love in the relationship? I was a Christian and God did not give me a spirit of fear, but one that would help me to overcome those that wished to do me harm as found in 2 Timothy 2:7

            After so many years, I asked myself: how do I overcome the fear? How do I regain control enough to rely on the Lord? There were so many examples in the scriptures that I could learn from. Even from the beginning, the Lord gave us hope against fear, as we can see in Genesis 15:1; he told Abraham to not be afraid “…I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward,” and He is! In Isaiah 43:5, God told his people to “fear not…” With assurance, David lets us know that “the Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1); to combat fear, we must trust, and that trust should only be put in the Lord! “In God (I will praise His word), in God I have put my trust; I will not fear; what can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:4); we must remember that trust works along side hope. We have to hope in the Lord and know that no one can do anything against us, whether real or imagined. “…The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:6) When you trust in a person, you put all your confidence in that person. You feel safe when that person is around you, as if you are a part of their space; and you have a calm contentment surrounding you. Those are the very same experiences you should have in the Lord; for only the Lord will be there forever! Trusting in God casts out all fears. (Mark 4:38-40) You can be in the midst of a raging storm, but if you trust in the Lord you will have no fear because you know that He will bring you through it. Consider your life a series of raging storms; as each one abates you thank the Lord for bringing you through it, knowing that another one is enviably on the way and the Lord will bring you through that one as well.

What Do You Have In That Bag? Part Two

Bag of Loneliness

            It is said that the most common illness of the soul is loneliness. Whether rich, poor, single, married, teenage, mid-lifer, or senior citizen, we have or will experience the affliction of loneliness. It settles upon us like a shroud, intensifying in its duration much like the permeating heat from a blazing summer sun or the freezing arctic blast of winter’s fierce iciness.  It burns into our minds and freezes our hearts. No one is immune to the devastation it can wreak in our lives.

            We don’t have to be in an empty room or faced with solitude to be lonely. Loneliness can occur in a crowded room, in the midst of a swarm of family and friends. Loneliness is a feeling of utter “alone-ness”.

            For me, loneliness was looking around and feeling like there was nothing for me. In this huge expanse of universe, the only existence for me was me. There was no one upon whom I could lean on – lean into, and rely upon to help me conquer my doubts and fears. When I walked in the sunlight, I cast no shadow; when I looked into the mirror, there was no reflection. My world was black and white; there was no color to help define my joy for there wasn’t any. I felt forsaken by God, by family, by self.

            There were times in my life when I was so lonely until I would sit or lay and cry for hours. I’d pray and pray, and ask God how long I would have to endure such loneliness. I would reflect upon the scriptures and remember that He said He would supply all of my needs, yet here I was, so very lonely. Was companionship not a need? Where was God, and why had He abandoned me yet again? How could He go back on His promises to me? Didn’t He know what I was going through? Of course He did! Jesus knew what I was going through. I know he had his share of loneliness; after all, He became a man and shared in our emotions on our level. Hebrews 2:14 confirms, “Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Christ was both human divine, He is well aware of our needs. His “humanness” allows him to identify with us as found in Philippians 2:5-8.

            David shares so much with us to remind us that God is always with us, no matter what we are going through, including the overwhelming pain of loneliness. Sometimes loneliness is the result of a broken heart (Psalm 34:17-19) and in that God is there for us; we but only need to call out to Him. We are told in Isaiah 41:10 that the Lord is with us, and He will strengthen us! Again in Matthew 28:20, Jesus himself lets us know that He will be with us forever. Also see Hebrews 3:5. James tells us to “draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8) 

            In times when you feel alone, draw near to God and meditate on His word. If we focus more on drawing near to God and seeking His kingdom, He will supply all our needs as found in Matthew 6:33. If we spend that time focusing on God, we will have very little time to focus on our state of being.

What Do You Have In That Bag? Part One

The “Stuff” Bags are Made Of

When I was younger, riding the bus to work or school, I would see countless women carrying, in addition to their purses, a least one other bag. Some women would have more than one, and I would always wonder what in the world did they have in all of those bags. Then I grew up and got a few bags of my own!

It is absolutely amazing how much “stuff” we can amass and cram into those bags. It is the same way with our lives. We amass a lot of stuff over the years that we separate and put into those bags. Every time something happens in our lives, whether good or bad; especially the bad stuff, we find a way of holding onto it by stuffing it into the pouches of our minds until they are just overflowing. So much of that stuff, no doubt most of it, should be put into the dumpster instead of constantly finding bags to hold that useless contents. Why do we want to hang onto it? What satisfaction does it bring us when we open those bags to look inside? We already know what’s inside of them; pain and suffering, loneliness, and fear! All of the kind of stuff that we tend to want to hold onto can be separated into those three compartments. That is the very type of stuff those bags are made of! We should not want to hang onto it, but we do!

I too, carried around a lot of stuff in my bags. Once I knew what the bags were actually for, I started cramming them to the top! I carried around the pain of past hurts; the loneliness brought on by those pains, and the fear of letting it all go and living without the bags. Okay, so I still have a few bags. We all do! But I am learning to get rid of them and give them to Christ to dispose of. I just don’t have the courage or knowledge to let go on my own.

We have to learn that by carrying around all of those bags, we are holding onto stuff that weighs us down. We cannot even move because the weight keeps us pinned down in one place, a place that we do not need to be! A place that we can escape from if we would only give those bags to Christ, He can handle them in a way that we cannot!

Let us together explore those bags and see how we can properly dispose of them forever!

Bag of Pain and Suffering

It is hard to put a painful past behind us...to look beyond the hurt and disappointments. We tend to hang onto them and erect barriers around our hearts to protect us against further pain. We find bags to hold our disappointments of the past; but by holding onto that extra baggage, we carry a reminder of what we have determined as lost hope. We constantly pick up those bags, look inside and become engulfed in the old suffering. It eats at us, pulls us down and sucks us up into that pain-riddled vortex until we are fully consumed. Don’t you know that God wants to help us get through the tough times in our lives? He has said in Hebrews 13:5, “I will never fail you, I will never forsake you.”

            I am reminded of a time in my life when I thought the pain was unbearable. My husband of more than twenty years had left me with four daughters to take care of alone and I had recently gone back to school to work on the degree I had given up to get married. So here I was back in back to school, working full time and part-time, and trying to take care of four girls; two teens and two “new” adults. In addition, I was placed squarely in the middle of my daughters’ constant fighting against each other, and me. My bag of pain became larger, heavier and more and more cumbersome. But I just couldn’t seem to empty that bag. I didn’t want to empty that bag! It was too familiar. I needed to have a constant reminder of how unfair life was and how angry I was at God for allowing me to suffer so unnecessarily. As we all do at some point in our lives, I asked the age-old question: “Why me? Why was this happening to me? What had I done that been so bad? Why was I being singled out?” I was drowning in pain and self-pity.

            We are often told that we suffer in life because of the choices we make, and that is certainly true. How could I have known that my choice in a mate would cause me such terrible, terrible hurt and grief? There had to have been signs! Now as I look back over my life, I recognize the signs. Signs that literally smacked me in the face but I simply refused to acknowledge them because I wanted what I. Guess what? I got just what I wanted! There is an old adage which most assuredly rings true: Be careful of what you ask for, because you just might get it! Had I just waited on the Lord; had I just let Him chose and lead, had I just sought His council, no doubt many of the things I endured would ever have happened. But that’s another story for another time...letting God lead, that is! None-the-less, that choice, among others is the reason I can confirm to you that God cares about our pains. We may not readily see the answer to “why me”; but sooner or later, it becomes apparent, even if it is years later! “And we know all things work together for good of those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28 NKJV)

            I am reminded of Psalm 22, in which David is experiencing so much pain until he feels that God has left him, as he cries, “My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me! Why are you so far from helping me and from the words of my groaning? O My God, I cry in the daytime, but You do not hear; and in the night season, and am not silent.” (Psalm 22:1-2) How many times have we felt the exact same way as David did? How often have we felt that God has abandoned us? There have been times in my life where the mental pain was overwhelming and it seemed the more I prayed, the worse things became. I was convinced that God had abandoned me. I became very angry; at myself, at my friends, at my family, and especially at God! I struggled with those painful demons that threatened to devour me alive! I believed that God was unfair. Here I was trying to be “good” and literally “going through hell”. Where was the justice? I sank into a deep depression while my girls continued to fight each other, and cut me into pieces with their harsh words. I felt a nervous breakdown knocking at my front door!  “To You I will cry, O Lord my Rock; Do not be silent to me. Lest, if You are silent to me, I become like those who gown to the pit. Hear the voice of my supplications when I cry to You, when I lift up my hands toward You holy sanctuary.” (Psalms 28:1-2)

            Also during that time my oldest became pregnant; a twenty year old who had no sense of what it took to be a mother. Then one day I was holding this this sweet little boy with huge chocolate eyes, pleading with me to get well so that I could take care of him. God knew! He knew that, that innocent, tiny being was going to need me. Was this my salvation? No, it was not the answer I was expecting or even wanted! But God does not always give us what we think we should have. His answers to our prayers can come in many unexpected forms. My question to you is: Can you realize the answers when you receive them?

Why

I’ve asked myself this question many times…why?  Because I have a story to tell; I have a wealth of experiences to share; I have a purpose to fulfill, and I have a destiny to meet. I want the opportunity to communicate with an audience larger than the ones that I am used to. I’ve experienced so much of life from the very bad to the very good – and who knows how these experiences will affect others looking for answers. So for me then, the “why” is simple… it is to be heard and to hear! I am woman, hear me roar? No I am a Christian woman; let us humbly converse about God, Christian living, relationships, and life.  So let us travel through life, and along the way, express our thoughts, our feelings, our fears and our hopes. Along the way let us examine spirituality and Spirituality! Express, Share, Feel