Sad
I am very sad that the cancer that
Marisa is fighting has moved to her heart. This is very rare for cancer, so Myron says. I don't understand as she has so many people praying for her. I don't understand why it has gotten worse and not better. I do trust God. He is our only Hope.
Harm
I finished reading the 'Emotionally Healthy Sprituality' (Scazzero). The chapter on the Daily Office was particularly interesting to me as I had not heard of it before.
I am not sure if it started me thinking on the topic of hurt or if I started to think of it for some other reason, but anyway I was thinking of the scripture from Luke 10:19 Jesus says to his disciples that 'nothing shall harm you'. That seems to be in relation to their working for Him, but there are many other scriptures about how God promises to protect us from harm. But what does that really mean? In the Luke scripture, it doesn't seem to be referring to physical harm, but spiritual harm. And when you think about Paul, quite a lot of physical harm came to him, though it can be said that the Lord preserved him. Other than physical events, the next most harmful thing that people seem to experience in their lives is verbal harm. When people say not so nice things about you. When I was growing up, I was probably not very normal as I was not very relationally advanced. (I was academically advanced for sure) I didn't care too much what my peers thought and I certainly didn't want to be doing what they were doing, so I was pretty immune from peer pressure. I didn't care very much what people I didn't care about thought of me. But I think I did care what my friends thought of me, not a lot but a bit.
Present day, I don't really care what people think of me at work. I give 100% but if they don't like it, I'd be just as happy without my job(s). That wouldn't hurt me. There are a few friends who could hurt me, though I don't think they know it. If anything happened to James that would hurt so much, I can't bear to think of that.
Giving up
I think God has had a good laugh at me this week. I've been pretty funny, I think, anyway.
I decided about a week ago that I was going to give something up for God. Not because He asked, but because I wanted to and I thought it was the right thing to do.
For a few days, I did real super, but then I started losing the battle again. I did ok but not great.
And then I read
here this:
Why make the mistake, then, of trying to go it alone when you face the challenges and difficulties of life? Commit all things to God in prayer (Philippians 4:6 & 7)
So, yes, I tried to do it on my own. And, no, it did not work. So on my way home I prayed and gave it to God and I fully expect Him to do a better job than I did! I also tacked on a few extra things, since I was already asking, like how to love people who make left turns when the light turns green instead of waiting for the traffic going straight (like they are supposed to if there is no left turn signal). After Brandon's sermon, I try to bless them! But I need God's help to love them!
On Nov 20, one of the devotions I read with James was on 2 Corinthians 12:8-10
8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
and the devotion book (Making time for God by Susan R. Garrett and Amy Plantinga Pauw) said this:
Paul was suffering from some kind of problem. He kept asking Jesus to make the problem go away. But, instead of fixing Paul's problem, Jesus said "My kindness is all you need. My power is strongest when you are weak". Jesus knew that as long as Paul had that problem, Paul would keep on praying for Jesus' spirit to give him strength.
I see areas of my life where I am strong and areas where I am weak. I want God to be with me in all areas. I want to depend on Him in everything.
Where I get it from
I was talking on the phone with my mom and I mentioned that I was trying to pace my life with the exams (which I am 80% of the way through marking now- yay!). I was trying not to let them take over my life as I had in previous years. In previous years I also got some warning that they were coming. This year I had no idea on the timing. In previous years I cleared my schedule- I didn't go out of the house unless absolutely necessary. This year I think I've been out doing some activity every day.
But when I told my mom that I was not letting them take over my life this year, she was not very supportive. She was saying how important it was to get them done and over with. After that conversation, I had a better idea of where I get my maniacal work cycle from! And I thought it was my dad, until that conversation. Now I realize it is both!
Prayer in the winter
I find it harder to pray when it is cold outside than when it is warm. This is because where I like to pray is on our back porch. And now it is too cold to do that! So, where I had no trouble in the summer popping out of bed and popping outside, now it's hard to pop out of bed. And I like to pace while I pray so being out of the bed is helpful! Today there were an awful lot of things I wanted to pray for and so I started praying in bed and eventually had enough energy to get up and pace in my bedroom for the rest.
Emotionally Healthy Spirituality
I had a few moments today to read the first chapter of 'emotionally healthy spirituality' by Peter Scazzero and it looks to be an interesting book. One thing I see as a liability in my life is that I am not emotional at all. It makes me worry that my emotions are absent and that I am not living life in the fullness that it should be. That I am not fullfilling my supportive role as I cannot emotionally support people. I look at life linearly and logically. When I write emails, I tend to be straight to the point. Deal with the business at hand. So in reading this book, I thought I would fare rather poorly. However, after reading the first chapter, I do see a lot of the fruit of the spirit in my life, so that made me feel that I wasn't completely off track. He then lists 10 symptoms of a bad case of emotionally
unhealthy spirituality and I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn't feel I had much of the sysmtoms. But I may not have emotionally unhealthy spirituality if my emotional spirituality is nonexistant. Still, better to have none than a negative quantity, right?
I'm pretty tired now so will head off to bed!
Nursery
I woke up thinking about my friend Linda this morning. When I was in my early 20s she and her husband had been trying to conceive a baby but had no success for a while. Then there was a visiting speaker who came and prayed with her they they would conceive and shortly thereafter they did become pregnant. The labour was very difficult both baby and mom almost didn't make it. And the child was extremely difficult to deal with. I worked in the nursery at the church as well as went to their house to babysit and this child would really not listen to you! I think people in the church blamed the parents for the bad behavior- that they were too lenient at home. And they might have been, but I'm not entirely sure it made a difference. Every child is different and needs different amount of discipline. I am very blessed to have James who is a very easy child!
Anyway, Linda went on to have 2 much easier children after that and the first baby is now 16 and is a wonderful teenager- very caring with his siblings and no typical teenage problems. I am so glad that after all she went through, she finally has a good reward!
I posted sunday about how it
is important to see ourselves as good and I was reading in 'true faced' by Bill Thrall, Bruce McNicol and John Lynch something along the same lines:
In this life, we who have trusted Christ will always have sin issues, and we will always have the identity God gave us. They are constants. Unchanging realities. It's key that we ask ourselves: Which one of these two constants defines my life focus? Which one do I value?...To resolve our sin issues we must begin trusting who God says we are.
And then when James and I read his devotion as the end of the day it said
Trusting in God doesn't always guarantee a happy ending. But God is the only one worth trusting.
It's what I heard Lisa (Jess' mom) say at the end of Brandon's sermon: Trust. That seems to be what I'm hearing right now. Trust.
What you want
I posted yesterday on
best interest- how sometimes we think one thing is in our best interest, but someone with more knowledge may know that it is not our best interest! I trust God with my best interest most of the time, even if I don't LIKE what is in my best interest. I'm hoping that my grumbling about it doesn't bother Him :) I have surprised myself a lot in the last few months- seeing that I act as if on some autopilot, making the 'correct' choice even if it was not my choice. I shouldn't really be amazed that God is one step ahead of me, because He is God afterall! But He does require ALL from us and sometimes it seems easy and sometimes it feels like a child who is about to loose their teddy bear. Gripping it with their might, not wanting to give it up. But I must trust that God knows what he is doing, as He has a LOT more knowledge and experience than I. Trust is what it is about. Trust enough to give Him all.
