Category Archives: 4 Stream Blog

Ask Why or Fall on God

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As we all know, suffering and heartache are a part of our world.  In our fallen race as humans, we live a world where evil has been allowed in and as a result our daily lives are filled with anguish and trauma.  It’s inevitable in our world until Christ returns.  When something bad does happen, say you are someone you know and love becomes ill, a sudden death comes, a bad accident, someone falls to addition of any kind, and many other things, what is one question that so many of us ask of God?  We ask, why.  Why do these things happen?  Why did he have to die?  It’s a part of what we live with and something we all struggle with.

Do you know something, though?  Asking God why is such a selfish question?  It really is.  It is our attempt to interrogate God like he is the one that caused those things.  No, God didn’t cause my Dad to die.  He didn’t cause that young girl to get raped.  He didn’t cause that dear friend to develop cancer.  He didn’t cause alcohol, drug, or sexual addition.  Satan was gained dominion over this world and therefore chaos happens.  Suffering happens.  We can’t ask God why, because these are things we will never understand.  God didn’t cause those things, but I tell you what, He is still there, and He wants to use those circumstances to bring us back.  Not to understand, but to just trust in Him.

What does that famous Proverb say, Proverb 3:5. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.”  I’ve heard this recited many times over the years, yet still people easily forget about it.  They may trust for a short while, but then it’s right back to life as usual or the life of blaming God for circumstances or suffering.  Again, God didn’t cause it, but He wants to use what did happen to bring us back to Him.

C.S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” When we experience suffering God is right there trying to pull us to Him.  Those sufferings can be used glorious ways, if we are willing to get out of His way, stop leaning to ourselves, stop asking why, and just fall on God

Do not lean on your own understanding.  This is a key part of this Proverb.  We have to remember that we will never fully grasp why suffering happens or why anything happens for that matter.  There are so many glorious mysteries of God that are to remain mysteries to our human self.  We just lean to fall on Him.  Paul Claudel said, “Jesus did not come to explain away suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with His Presence.”

Many of you know the story of my Dad and how we lost him suddenly in a car accident over 5 years ago.  It was suffering like I had never experience before.  To have him ripped away so suddenly was traumatic and then the void left was immense.  I wondered why to myself quite often.  Tried to make sense of it all.  Even through time in Scripture and when I began to find my faith again, I still struggled with this.  I was still too caught up in self and not falling to God.

When God finally got me to let go and just lean to Him in this suffering, it was so amazing.  This was about a year and half ago or so about 4 years after his death.  My heart was not fully open, yet God never gave up on me during this time.  Since then, God has continually transformed my life and my family with each day that passes.  Yes, suffering and struggles still come our way and when I sit and think of my Dad’s death, a tear will sometimes fall, but I no longer try to understand for myself and rather fall on God.  Trust Him with it all. God has put this on my heart repeatedly, to just trust Him.  Let go and let God.

With all of this said, I am in no way diminishing the pain and anguish that comes with traumatic situations that come in our lives.  However, it is a part of our life because of the world we live.  The enemy seeks to steal, kill, and destroy us and our hearts and in these tragedies and struggles, that’s what he tries to do.  On the other hand, we have the power and glory of Jesus Christ to lean towards.  We have the armor of God, should we choose to put it on and then when we fully let God and trust in the Lord, we can deal with our sufferings so differently.

 

Sweet Victory That Can’t Be Taken Away

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I’ve been inspired about a word this week that is so very true for our lives, but for many it just is not grasped as important or they don’t really understand the depths of this word.  That word is ‘Victory.’  Victory brings about a great deal of thoughts and even emotions for people.  It’s associated with sports when a team comes out on top to win, particularly a championship like Duke just winning the NCAA Men’s Basketball title last month or the Patriots pulling off a last second Super Bowl win.  It’s also more associated with the battle field and war.  The dictionary defines victory as ‘a success or triumph over an enemy in battle or war.’  For the victorious, there is a great deal of joy.  A great deal of pride.  The triumph can mean so much to the victorious.

I’ve began thinking and meditating on this word recently and the thoughts about another victory.  One that many lose sight of.  Actually a victory that is more significant and everlasting than any battlefield triumph or sports championship here in this world.  That is the victory that we have in the finished works of Jesus Christ.  This is so significant to all of our lives, yet so many fail to really grasp the real victory that we have and the battle that was won through Christ.

We live in a world filled with darkness and chaos all over.  It’s all over the evening news.  Look at what happened in Baltimore this week with the riots that broke out.  Also we saw where more brothers in the faith were martyred by ISIS when they were marched to the cost and killed.  The faith is under attack by post-modern thinking that discounts our faith or diminishes pieces of the Word for their own purposes and demonizes believers for staying true to God’s Word.  It’s running rampant and throughout history our fallen world has been filled with darkness and chaos.

Some 2,000 years ago, however, something significant happened when Jesus was crucified, he was then raised to life, and ascended to the thrown at God’s right hand.  Jesus has won the ultimate victory for us in many ways.  Sin was forever defeated, death was conquered, and Jesus is given authority over heaven and earth.  Jesus’s blood paid the ransom for our lives.  He took everything we deserved having fallen so far from God and now we live under God’s undeserved grace because of the obedience of Jesus.  It’s quite a victory and nothing could ever top just how significant a victory it was and is.

1 Corinthians 15:57 says, “but thanks be to God, who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Jesus is victorious.  He has already won the battle and what a sweet victory it is.  What’s even more awesome is that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing can ever take this victory away.  The only thing that can happen is that we choose to turn away from it, but that’s our own choice in then end.  Jesus said in John 16:33 that we can take courage because He overcame the world.  1 John 5:4 tells us, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.”

I write about this because I feel it’s so significant to our lives.  Day after day we see suffering.  We see people that feel like there is absolutely no hope.  Not just in the news, but in our everyday lives.  They feel lost and don’t know where to turn.  I have seen this very close to home from kids to grown adults losing all hope feeling all alone. People just lose complete sight of the victory because of trauma and wounds they’ve experienced or just feeling like that they have no body.

The enemy sees this hurt and plants a foothold blinding them. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:4, “the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might now see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” Now this points to the unbelieving, but the same can be said for the believer when they allow tribulations in their lives to pull them away from Christ.  It boils down to faith. In Matthew 17, Jesus said that faith as small as a mustard seed is strong enough to move mountains.  Nothing is impossible.  For many, because of our fallen nature it’s still so easy to lose heart and fall back away and forget that the victory is won.

I love the hook in Trip Lee’s song, “Sweet Victory” where it says:

I feel thorns where my crown was
I’ll be weak but I’m alive
From the dust until dawn yeah
I’ll survive cause I got
Sweet Victory
Nobody can take it from me
Sweet victory
Cause I got, sweet victory yeah

I feel like this so powerful for all of us to remember.  We may feel weak.  We may have times where we just struggle, we may feel down, but we are alive in Christ.  We have sweet victory that can’t be taken from us, ever.  We win because Christ already won for us.  As Jesus said, we will still have trials and tribulation in our lives.  Until His return that’s the world we live in still.  We can take heart and bring the finished works of Jesus Christ over our lives and bring the Cross of Christ between us and any struggles we face.  We are victorious in Him, forever.  Let’s take great joy in this and know that no matter what we face, Christ overcame to free us and we can overcome through Him.

“God expects you to have the mentality of a conqueror. See yourself as a victor in Christ Jesus, and go about life with a holy swagger!” – Pedro Okoro

 

You Can’t Stop Me

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Two weeks from today, I will begin a brand new adventure that I’ve been pumped-up about for the last few months.  I will begin studies in my pursuit of a Masters in Professional Counseling.  I’ve known for some time that God was calling me to do something, but for quite some time, I didn’t know what that was or really just didn’t hear Him.  I tell you though, since January 31st, my life has been on a fast track like I had never seen before and at that point, my heart opened to God’s calling as I am now fully surrendered.  I feel like a freight train coming down the tracks that is unstoppable.  The calling of God is irrevocable (Romans 8:29), so I now stand firm ready to keep pressing forward down the tracks.

I was listening to some christian hip-hop recently.  Tell you what, that can really get you hyped up when you just let the words flow like any other worship song.  There is a song called “You Can’t Stop Me” by Andy Mineo.  The hook in this song got my attention:

They try to shut us down, and it ain’t gon’ slide
Only thing I fear is God and he on my side
That’s the confidence of God, cause he got me
That’s why I really feel like
You can’t stop me

This resonated with me big time.  I am embarking on a journey that’s going to involve some long range learning over the next few years as I work to become a licensed counselor. It’s got to take some serious work and concentration to get through all that is required as a part of this process.  I believe that God’s bringing me on this journey as it will help to strengthen me spiritually in the process.  Along the way and even since January, I get filled with doubts and fears.  I know there will be times on this journey that I know I will just be worn out and stretched to the limits.

There is a difference this time from when I was on my doctorate journey a few years back, which I never finished.  This time I have God filling me.  He has filled me with a confidence that seems unshakable.  Yes, the enemy and this world will test it, but I am so locked in now, I know God has got me and will pull me back up if I fall back along the way.  With the strength of God, I know my new nature that is alive in Jesus can overcome my old self, even if it tries to rear its ugly head and bring me down.  I will be reminding myself constantly that this world, the enemy, and my old self can’t stop me ever again.  Only thing I fear is God and He’s on my side.

I look forward to sharing the experience along the way when I begin my schooling.  I believe firmly in where the Lord is leading me now.  I’ve never had this much excitement in anticipating what’s to come.   When I came home from Colorado I was ready to just role with everything.  I think God slowing me down and bringing me through this more deliberate process is crucial to the development as I first crawl, then I can walk, and then he will set me loose to run.  If I jumped right it running, I would have fell long ago.  But now working on God’s timing, nothing can stop me.

After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. – 1 Peter 5:10 NASB

The Call of the Bible

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I absolutely love reading the Bible.  I began reading it daily about 4 years ago and it has been a great part of my spiritual growth as I have learned from God’s Word and read through the stories of history that laid out in the Word and the teachings from Old and New Testaments.  I firmly believe that The Bible is the infallible Word of God.  There is nothing on earth greater than the 66 books He has given us.  It’s amazing that each time I read it, that I learn something new.  I gain new insight or God reveals a new idea or peace of wisdom to me and often times it comes at opportune times.  That’s pretty cool when I read through something and then sometimes that same day something comes about that brings that whole message right back again.

With all of that said, in my reading and in some continued studies, I was given a realization about what it that God is really offering through His Word.  There are many that say the Bible is the source of God talking to us and they keep Him at at distance.  However, I firmly believe that what the Bible offers is an intimate relationship with God. He is calling us, through His Word to walk with Him and talk with Him, and yes, as I’ve said before, He talks back.  Not just in the words in the Bible, but to us, in our hearts.  Yes, God talks directly to us.  The thing is, do we listen.

For some this sounds crazy.  I used to often hear of people talk about God talking to them. God putting things on their heart.  When I would hear this, it made me feel like an infant spiritually.  I would wonder why God never had those conversations with me.  This goes right up to last year.  It never occurred to me the things He would put on my heart through different situations or that He even spoke back to me.  For one, my prayer life was not the greatest, so I didn’t understand this at all.  I know I’m not the only one who has had this or is still dealing with this issue.

I’ve learned a great deal about this though in recent months and I learn more each day.  The first time I ever remember hearing God speaking to me and really recognizing it was Him was while I was in Colorado.  I was out walking and reflecting on questions from a session we just finished.  I was first sitting and reflecting on myself.  Just doing a complete gut check on who I felt I had been as a man.  Then I got up and started walking.  While walking, I felt and heard God’s voice speaking to me.  He told me that in my life I had never allowed myself to venture off the path the world had laid out.  I had never fully trusted in His path nor been willing to take any real risk.  He said, “Don’t let fear lead you.  That’s the enemy.”  He said, “Let me lead you.  Trust me.”  

At this point, I was just blown away.  Completely blown away.  Here I was, by myself, unplugged and I heard God.  This was not the first instance that weekend either.  It came again and again.  When I was in my journal, words would just flow and I knew it was not just me.  Then the ultimate was when He told me, “Your are a son…You are My son!” It was an experience like nothing I had ever felt and I knew for certain that God does speak back to us.  Prayer is not just about a one way conversation as I mentioned last week.  God wants that to be both ways.  He wants to build a real relationship with us.

This is what is spelled out in the Bible.  Relationship.  God’s infallible Word tells gives us example after example of what having that relationship with Him like and how real and intimate it is and the life that is available in that relationship.  There’s also example after example of people who turned away from that relationship and from loving God and the consequences of that choice.  The Bible is not a cosmic rule book.  It is God’s revealing to us that He does love us and wants to walk close with us throughout our lives.

Now, since I’ve been home, there have been times where I feel like I just can’t lock in and hear God.  Sometimes I felt like I just was not committed enough to the relationship. Then I realized that in this the crazy of our everyday life and when we are under daily pressures, it can be difficult to lock in.  We get so busy and so cluttered that we can’t filter out the junk without work.  This takes time and work to get to where we can.  Where we can get to our quiet moments to just have those conversations with Him and build on that relationship.  It takes work and I know it will take time for me to get better at this.  Thomas A Kempis said, “Be humble and be quiet and Jesus will be with thee.”

So just remember that God wants relationship with all of us.  He desires this.  He wants to converse and walk with us in our daily lives.  He wants to converse with us and teach us to hear Him.  Isaiah 50:4 says, “He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught.”  Psalm 95:7-8 says, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”  This is the other critical point, we have to allow ourselves to be open to hearing His voice and not ignore what He is telling us.  Let our hearts be open to the fact that He speaks to us and be willing to hear His voice.  Allow your hearts to also hear Him when He uses situations and others to speak to you as well.  We don’t perfect this overnight and I learn more about this everyday and in how God speaks to me.  The important start is to now be tuned to Him and be willing to hear and see all He wants to reveal in your heart.

 

Do We Dare Stand Naked

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Everyone of us have had a poser side.  A fig leaf that we’ve hid behind for fear of allowing the world to see all of the hidden junk we may have in our lives.  It may not seem like it on the surface, but we go through motions each day putting on that facade that everything in our world is okay.  Sunday mornings at church can often times be poser city, when everyone puts on that happy face for those couple of hours before getting back to life as normal.  They may have troubles at home or doubts about life, but they don’t let that out.  In our jobs, we often hide.  Just take a ride on the elevator.  What do most people do, including me?  We stare at the floor counter, the ceiling, straight ahead.  We are afraid to be seen.  We hide ourselves from the world.  There are issues we all have in our lives that we can work on through many avenues.  Through prayer, counseling, fellowship, and more.

Even when we’ve repented of our sins and begin to work on those issues in our lives, there’s still something we hide.  As John Eldredge shares in Waking the Dead, we hide our own glory.  That’s the glory we receive from God when we are made new in our relationship with Christ.  There’s something fearful here and that is the fact that when we decide to live from this glory and the holiness that Christ offers, we stand fully exposed to the world.  For many, this still seems so risky, because it puts us out there fully.  As the book says, “It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling theirs.”

When I was reading this, this completely stuck out to me.  There is a great deal of truth to this thought.  The world has become a post-modern mess where the idea of living out the Truth of who we are in Christ can gain a lot of down the nose looks.  Many will often turn their nose up at people who are just out there and confident in who they are in Christ and aren’t ashamed to let it be seen.  It’s exposing and for many and yes for sometime even me, it can be a scary.  So what do we do?  We go back to posing.  We are around our friends, families, and acquaintances and we go back to hiding.  We either bring back the poser or just shy away from our glory.

Reading this gave me a lot of food for thought.  As I wrote the other day, Jesus said ““Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father.” (Matthew 10:32-33).  We are called to boldly proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  We are called to publicly acknowledge Christ to the world.  If we do, we will be acknowledged before the Father.  So the answer to this is simple.  We need to live from our glory and from our true self.  We need to be bold about who we are in Christ and no longer hide from this fact.

Eldredge says, “To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to being to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true – that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it.  Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky…really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive.” 

We can now stand naked to the world.  It does not matter how the world looks at us if we are living in the glory of God and from that.  We are made new in Christ.  Romans 2:29 says, “A person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.”  We need to learn to live our lives seeking Gods praise and living for his glory alone.  “Put on your new nature, created to be like God…” (Ephesians 4:24:).  “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ” (Ephesians 5:2).

This is boldness that is needed for all followers of Christ.  I pray each day to grow in this way to stand not just on what I write, but in the way I live and in my actions. I have worked to continually get out from behind the fig leaf.  I tell you what, since I started to come out, God has had me on fire.  It takes work each day because of the world we live in, but it’s worth the risk to stand bold and naked in our glory for the world to see.  Jesus felt it was worth the risk to hang on that cross for us for all the world to see.  It is worth the risk to stand bold and naked to the world in the God’s glory as well.  Do we dare to stand naked?

The Power of Choice

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Currently, I am reading through the Gospel of Matthew.  It has been a great study so far as I take time to really dive in and see how Jesus teaches about the Kingdom that we can inherit.  That God offers for each of us as His children.  I’ve thought about this before, but something struck me today as I was reading through Matthew 10.  In verses 32-33, Jesus says, “Everyone who acknowledges me publicly here on earth, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.  But everyone who denies me here on earth, I will also deny before my Father.” In verse 37 he says, “If you love your father or mother more than you love me, you are not worth of being mine…”

I was reading through this and something struck me again that I just had to share.  It all boils down to a choice.  We either choose to accept and receive Jesus Christ and all His works or we don’t.  We either choose to believe in God as our Father, or we choose not to.  We either love God and love each other or we choose not to.  Either we choose to accept the life and restoration that is offered in Christ or we choose to not.  It all boils down to a choice and the choice belongs to nobody accept ourselves.

God gave us something pretty miraculous when He created us.  He gave us free will.  He gave us choice.  It’s really a beautiful thing when you think about it.  God loves us that much to allow us to choose to love Him as well.  Simply being, He wants us to want to love Him and not be forced into loving Him.  The choice has always been ours.  Adam chose Eve first over God and the result brought evil into the world and man fell and Satan was given dominion over the earth.  The authority now belongs to Jesus now as He took it back.

Ponder this for a minute as well.  God had a choice too.  He made us in His image, so we bear that same choice.  What if God chose to not spare Noah and his family?  What if God didn’t promise Abraham that his descendants would number like that stars?  What if David didn’t kill Goliath?  What if God didn’t launch the biggest raid and rescue through the womb of young virgin raiding into enemy territory to rescue and restore the human race?  What if Paul remained the Pharisee he was?

All of these questions are very relevant to us, because they all hinge on choice.  Choices were made all through Scripture and today we have choices to make as well.  The same holds true in life today.  Looking at my own for instance.  What if I decided not to go to Wild At Heart in January, where I strongly feel that God was calling me too?  Sure, I may be going about my life, but I certainly would not be locked in the way I am now.  It all comes down to choice.

Dwight Eisenhower stated, “The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!” That goes for all of history.  None of it is by chance.  We have come where we because of the choices that have been made.  Our freedom in Christ is found because God made the choice to always pursue us, put on a robe of flesh, suffered and died for our sins, was raised to life to give us new life, and ascended to God’s right hand to take all authority and give us our freedom in Him.  God could have let this world go long ago, but He chose to love us.

I may sound repetitive, but I think this is a critical thing that we must remember.  God doesn’t want to lose any of us.  He will pursue our hearts as long as He can, but He knows we won’t all choose Him.  Hell was never intended for the human race, but for Satan and his demons, but if you don’t choose God, then as much as He won’t want to, we will denied to.  Think about it.  Why would you accept someone that continued to deny you as much as you try to pursue them?

So the choice is simple and it’s very powerful.  As Andy Dufresne says in Shawshank Redemption, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really; get busy living or get busy dying.” When we make that choice to live in Christ, the offer is life and life abundantly.  Life to the full.  If we choose to deny Christ, the consequence is being denied ourselves and death.  The choice is powerful and the choice is really simple.  What do you choose?  

Rise and Rise Again!

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Have you ever had those days where you just feel like throwing in the towel?  You feel like things are just never going to go your way and you don’t know if you’ll ever find a way out of the problem you find yourself in.  Maybe you even feel like things have just become so bad you just feel like God has given up on you.  Trials and troubles come our way all the time and all too often, especially in today’s 24/7 society of go, go, go and faster, faster, faster.  We can get overwhelmed and feel like there is just no hope.

In preparation for my counseling studies, I picked up one of my text books last night and began to read a little.  This is from the Volume 1 of Competent Christian Counseling.  In the first chapter it states, “Faced with an uncertain future, many people believe that they are falling farther behind and will never get the chance to stop and smell the roses. It’s too late, they think. I’m in too deep.”  It’s so easy to find yourself in a world where you forget about what’s important, forget about God, and throw your hands up when you feel completely lost.  Sometimes it’s easy to forget if we hold tight to our faith, we can persevere through anything.

There’s a phrase I saw from the movie Robin Hood, with Russell Crowe.  It’s a phrase that has stuck out to me and now I have it as daily reminder on my phone.  This phrase is, “Rise and rise again, until lambs become lions.”  I find this phrase to be so powerful and something I read and think about each day.  It’s a constant reminder that no matter how many times I find myself knocked down, that I need to be get back up again.  I need to rise again and again.  With each time I get back up, I become stronger and stronger.  The first time it can be difficult to get back up.  Fear can set in.  But each time after that, we take the step to get back up again and be strong and courageous in the Lord, we become stronger and move from being lambs who are weak to being lions and ready for anything.

2 Timothy 1:7, “For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self discipline.”  Sometimes we have to deal with the spiritual warfare that tries to overtake our us.  It pulls into a world where we feel lost and live in fear.  Spiritual warfare is needed to combat these spirits so that are true spirit of power, love, and self discipline shines through.  Thomas Fuller said, “All things are difficult before they are easy.”  This is where self-discipline and the need for perseverance comes in so that we can rise again and again.  If we choose to shrink back into a world of capitulation and complacency, we sink further and further.  We have to choose to rise and rise again and again.

A few times in my life, I felt lost.  I didn’t know where I was going and even tried to understand what it was God was doing in my life.  I had no understanding about where he was working.  I let the poser come forward and I followed the way that I thought was right even though it brought me to a state of misery sometimes.  I didn’t understand the need to let go and let God.  I became self-reliant and refused to let Jesus be my advocate and depended on my own knowledge and what I saw the world wanted.  When I was knocked down or felt stuck, I never turned to God for an answer.  I didn’t understand all of that.  You can ask my wife, there were times where I was just flat out miserable and didn’t understand where I was going.

I now have a new perspective though.  It first comes with full surrender to God and allowing Jesus in as my savior and advocate  To allow Him to lead my life rather than depending on myself to get through challenges.  Now, when struggles hit, I am on my knees.  I go to God first, who tells me time and again to trust Him and get back up.  Rise and rise again.  We are made for more, we just need to choose to rise up even when this life has us down.  Let go of being self-reliant and trying be your own advocate and let God lead the way and armor you for the battles that you will face and then you move from being a lamb being slaughtered to a lion to can overcome anything because Christ overcame for us.

“Who has a harder fight than he who is striving to overcome himself.” –  Thomas a Kempis

Two-Way Conversation

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There are many people across the Christian faith that have talked about hearing God.  About God putting something on their heart and being able to hear that still, soft voice in their heart.  There are many that look at this as crazy, even in the Christian faith.  They either don’t believe converses with His children directly or only speaks through those in clergy positions.  I used to not be able to make heads or tails of this.  For most of my life, I either did not hear God, although I believe He did communicate, or I just was unwilling to listen.  I often wondered what it would be like to have God speak to me.  Low and behold, I realize, there are many instances I have experienced where I now know He was there, but I didn’t realize it until I was more willing to surrender and go all in, allowing Jesus to dive deep into my heart.

Did you know that this two-way conversation was the way God always intended things to be?  Dallas Willard points out this ongoing conversation with the examples of God’s visit to Adam and Eve in the Garden, Enoch’s walks with God, and Moses in his face-to-face conversations with God.  These are just ordinary situations.  Willard explains, “They are examples of the normal human life God intended for us: God’s indwelling His people through personal presences and fellowship.”  This is the way it was always meant to be.  We are meant to live in this ongoing conversation.

For many this sounds just too far fetched.  They see God as that distant cosmic sheriff in the sky and can’t bring themselves to accept the idea of God talking to them directly.  It just seems to far fetched.  Quite frankly, I blame the religious establishment for this. They have spent all this time trying to re-create the Holy of Holies even though God tore that curtain with His own hands.  They have put a barrier up between us and God that makes God seem more and more distant.  God ripped that curtain, however and for good.

Evan as I write this, I find the enemy on my heart trying to tell me that people won’t accept this.  I know there are many of you out there that won’t for one reason or the other.  The only thing I can offer, however, is my own personal experience with this.  Like I said, I never fully felt God speak to me directly.  I have felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in different times, but never took the time to listen what I was being told.

When I was in Colorado, God opened me up.  When I was fully away from the world I know, my heart was fully open.  God gave me, I believe, just as Solomon prayed for, a hearing heart.  He enabled me to be fully locked into what He was telling me.  I would ask questions and the answers about myself, my wounds, my identity to Him, and so much more just began to flow.  It was the most amazing experience I have ever felt and I know it was God.  It came with gentle authority and were things I never thought about before.

I at first felt I would have a hard time discerning what was really God or other things.  When it came, however, it was unmistakable to me.  One way I found to know the difference is that God is not going to put things on your heart that will cause conflict.  It comes in that still soft voice with a gentle authority, not antagonizing and not conflicting.

It’s been amazing to learn this in the last many months.  I’ve learned to find different ways God speaks to me through different circumstances and through conversations I’ve had with people.  It’s truly a two-way conversation, not just us sitting here talking.  He truly does talk back to us in many ways and I can definitely testify to this.  Now that I have learned to discern this more in my own life, I look forward hearing from God more and more.  I’m accepting of this fact and know that I can hear Him if I can cut out the noise of the world and just focus on Him.

Don’t Let Worry and Fear Run Your Life

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Every one of us has worry in our life.  Worry about bills, worry about our jobs or finding a job, worry about money, worry about family and friends, and many, many other things.  A part of our nature causes us to worry about things.  We know, whether we accept it our not, that our world is fallen and full of trials that bring heart ache into our lives.  Sometimes, it can come from the craziest or most minute things.  For example, if my wife is out somewhere, and maybe I had not heard from her for a bit, I start to get worries about what may have happened, even wondering if she was in a bad accident or something.  Crazy things that I know the enemy and his cronies are flooding my mind with to try to get me to panic in fear.  The problem is, that no matter how hard we try, because of our nature, because of our experiences in life, we are going to have those worries.  Maybe we are not sure if we’ll have enough money to feed our family or keep a roof over our heads.  These things come with life.

This past week, the Lord prompted me to begin a deeper dive into the Gospel of Matthew.  In part to really get a deeper understanding of Jesus’s teaching on God’s Kingdom and our place in His Kingdom.  It has been cool so far to read through the book at a slower pace and meditate on Jesus’s teachings.  Right now I am in the Sermon on the Mount.  In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches about worry and anxiety starting in versus 25.  Here is what Jesus says…

“For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, as to what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, that they do not sow, nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? and who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But much more clothe you? You of little faith! Do not worry then, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drive?’ or ‘What will we wear for clothing?’ For the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things; for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Bottom line here from Jesus, is do not live a life of worry, but seek the Father first.  We have a serious struggle with this in our lives.  I know I have and my wife has struggles with this as well.  She comes from a long line of what we call ‘worry warts’ in her family.  But isn’t this teaching so simple.  Don’t worry, but seek God first.  Seek His kingdom and righteousness.  That’ the bottom line for anything in our lives.  If we learn to truly, and I mean truly seek God, what is there to worry about?  As the song we sang in worship Sunday morning said, ‘There is no one higher than our God.’  This rings out so true, if we just learn to remember it and live our lives in this way.

 I know I write this and it all sounds so easy, but the reality of it all is for us is that it’s not that easy for us.  Because of our fallen states and who we are and because we are in constant war with the enemy, worry and fears just seem to overtake us constantly.  For some the worry become so great that it’s crippling.  It literally enslaves them and overtakes their lives to the point where it’s all they think about.  It then leads to worrying about the next thing and then the next.

Seek His kingdom and His righteousness.  This something that becomes difficult for so many because we get gripped in doubts and fear.  The enemy finds those fears and then establishes a foothold where he can then camp and continue to pull at you.  It is however, something that we all can do, if we are willing.  We can choose to seek God’s kingdom.  Seek Him in all we do.  Learn to walk with Him.  Learn to talk and converse with God.  Not just where you are praying to Him, but where you are filtering out the noise and listening to Him as well.

Hebrews 13:5 says, “Don’t love money; be satisfied with what you have. For God has said, ‘I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.'”  This is in reference to Deuteronomy 31 where Moses was telling Joshua to be strong and courageous, “For the Lord your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you” (verse 6). God is with us through every aspect of our lives.

We can’t let worry and fear run our lives.  My challenge here is to seek God everyday just has Jesus tells us.  Don’t worry about the petty things and don’t let us get so caught up in worry that it runs our lives.  God will never fail us or abandon us.  I believe this with my whole heart.  Dallas Willard says in his book ‘Hearing God,’ “God is able to penetrate and intertwine himself with the fibers of the human self in such a way that those who are enveloped in His loving companionship will never be alone.” We must choose to surrender though and let Him in.  If we choose to do so, there’s nothing, and I mean nothing in this world that we need to worry about.  Jesus took on more than we can ever imagine and He did it for us because the Father loves us enough to take all of that away, if we will choose to surrender and put our faith and trust in him fully.

God wants to help us through the struggles of our lives and does not want us to worry.  He knows we will have them in this life.  Jesus told us this in John 16:33.  But we have to choose to surrender and so that we can overcome through Him.  As Watchman Nee said,“He can only keep those who have handed themselves over to Him.”

When you feel yourself beginning to worry, try to stop and seek God.  When you start your day, seek God first.  This will definitely help set the pace for the day and help you cover yourself with the Armor of God to take on all the enemy has in store.  Let God lead you.  Let His will envelop your heart in a way to where the fear and worry gets overshadowed by His mere presence.  There is no one higher and nothing greater than our God.

God’s Using The Round Table

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I continue to get astounded by God’s lead and the way I continue to see Him working my life.  I had worried about falling back to “life as usual” in the months following Wild At Heart, where God pierced my heart to heal me and bring me to life like I’d never known.  With each passing day I seem to learn something new.  Something that just magnifies the glory of God in my life and the life and freedom that is now my through Jesus Christ.  One of these ways has been my Round Table.

When I was alone with God in Colorado, one of the things he put on my heart is the identity of King Arthur and the knights of the round table.  It was rather amazing to feel that on my heart.  In the weeks, prior, I was in our men’s Bible Study and it first hit me there.  I was a lone ranger.  I did life alone or with just my wife.  Didn’t lean to other men for counsel and to really do life with.  I wrote about this in late February in my post “The Round Table.”  Since then, God has shown it to be of great significance to my life as it should be for all of us.

I believe the circles we keep are very vital to our own growth with God.  Having people in our lives that we can trust to be honest with us, not just blow smoke with what we want to hear, and will be there to support and love you through your circumstances.  I think this is huge.  I’m finding those people each day.  Guys I go to worship with, my pastor(s), the guys from Colorado that I now connect with regularly.  Huge part of life and so thankful God has placed these guys here as a part of my round table.

It’s ironic we started a series at church on circles in our life, starting with God and then spreading outward to our family/marriage, friends, etc.  I believe these circles are vital and I believe this is part of the reason God put the round table on my heart, to show me this shortfall and trust that He was placing men in my life I could now trust and turn to.

Here is another example of how vital the round table has been.  In the last couple of months, I made the decision to return to school as I feel that God is calling me into christian counseling and even ministry.  Not sure of what would be the right program, I just chose one to get in the door.  Since then, my pastor/friend/mentor Tim, connected me with a good friend, who is also a christian counselor who sat with me to talk with me about this road and advise me on it.  HUGE!  He helped me to hone in on where I should go, based on my desires and how God is leading.  So now, I am pursuing a Masters in Professional Counseling with the goal of becoming a Licensed Professional Counselor over the next few years.  This will open up great opportunities for reaching peoples and counseling them from the Biblical perspective of trust and in the 4 Streams of Walking with God, Receiving God’s Counsel, Deep Restoration and Healing, and Spiritual Warfare.  I am truly excited about what God is doing and how he has used the round table to counsel me and steer me.

You see, 5 years ago, I started working on a Doctorate in Business.  With no real direction here, I just did it.  People would cheer me on through it, but in reality, I was doing it for wrong reasons after I lost my Dad in an effort to gain focus in my life again, but never received real solid counsel on this.  I didn’t have round table.  There have been other things I done in life in the same manner.  Just doing, but not seeking advice on anything from people or from God.

Again, I look at Scripture in this category too.  All throughout, we see people who have their circles to go through life with.  Most notably, look at Jesus.  He had his inner circle, those closes to Him, His 12, and then other disciples further out from the circle who were sent out.  These people were a significant part of Jesus.  Jesus taught them along the way through His earthly ministry to prepare them for the mission of spreading the Good News to the world after His death to defeat sin, His resurrection to defeat death and give new life, and ascension to the throne with all authority over heaven and earth now His.  His circles very significant, which leads me to believe it’s significant for us as well to as we are now alive in Christ.

I share all this because I believe my testimony here and in other circumstances are significant for all our lives.  God puts the round table in our lives because we are not meant to go through life as lone rangers.  I know there are many of you out there.  When you trust God and put that aside, the way He works in this is so amazing.  You’ll never figure it all out, known of us will, but when you let go and trust Him, He can use you in so many ways for His glory and the freedom we can gain from loving God enough to choose Him first is amazing.  We need people to guide us in this and there are people that need each of us too.  Trust in it and let God use your round table.   I have found, that when you go through life with others, we’ll be amazed at just how closely related we are in our brokenness and sin in the fact that we’re all jacked in someway but can walk through it all together to allow the healing of Christ to enter each of us.  We don’t have to do any of it alone.

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”   C.S. Lewis