Tiara Ladies Retreat 2015 Redux

Saturday Night Talk…Tiara Ladies Retreat August 2015

We are going to focus on the decisions that Much-Afraid made as she journeyed to the High Places.

We all have decisions we make every day…this morning I had to decide if I wanted coffee or tea.  Not a major decision, but one that could affect me for the rest of the day.  If I chose coffee I might be more alert.  I would definitely have to go to the bathroom sooner rather than later.  I might have acid stomach and then have to deal with being uncomfortable or go looking for some vinegar.  If I had tea would I add milk to it today or just sugar?  Would I choose a breakfast blend or go for Earl Gray….decisions, decisions.  None of them major, but they could influence the decisions I made later.  Do I eat a big breakfast or hold out for lunch.  Do I have something sweet or do I eat only healthy choices. Or do I go for a run instead of doing breakfast at all?….that was thrown in for levity to those of you who know me.

Tonight we are going to focus on decision making…what do we do when we come to those forks in the road?  You know those places where you either continue on the path you are on or you chose to turn and go what seems to be a completely different way.  These can be major decisions…not the what to do for breakfast decisions, but the decisions where Jesus is asking you to go higher up with Him and not remain in the status quo.  The interesting thing about our walk with Jesus, many times it seems He is asking us to go the complete opposite way of what He has promised.

Much Afraid had several of these “forks in the road” to choose which way to go…her companions always seemed to know the path but often she was unsure and had to call to the Shepherd for help.  And as He would tell her the way to go she would have to give something up in order to be obedient.

Let’s take a look at some of these decisions that Much Afraid made on her journey and compare them to the decisions we have made on our journey here to this mountain, not just this physical location, but to the place we are in the spiritual.

We know that Much Afraid was already a follower of the Shepherd, so that decision is left out of the story.  But when you are journaling on your own you might want to take a little time and write down what it was that was the clincher that made you choose Jesus in the first place or re-dedicate yourself to him if you were saved as a very young child and do not remember.

Back to Much Afraid…her first decision was to ask to go to the High Places where she would be given hind’s feet.  What could be some of the reasons that made her want to leave her valley at this point in time?

·         She wanted hind’s feet and to no longer be lame

·         She loved the Shepherd

·         She had friends that she wanted to be like…Peace and Joy

What were some of the things that had kept her in the Valley of Despair for so long?

·         Her family

·         Her perceived limitations

·         What she thought of herself and the lies she believed

·         The expectations others had on her

·         How difficult the journey to the High Places would be

·         She had no one to go with her

Then think, who are the companions that the Lord has chosen to go with you on your pilgrimage?  Is it suffering and sorrow or maybe loss and rejection how about loneliness?   Just know that it is not fear, or pride, or envy or any of the others that Much Afraid encountered.

I think this first choice is one that we all have to make as we follow Christ.  Many are content to stay in the valley and go about their daily activities…but for each of us there came a time when we knew that we could no longer be satisfied with the way things were….we wanted more.  We are the ones Jesus refers to in the Beatitudes as Blessed are those that hunger and thirst after Righteousness.  Know that is a God given hunger and thirst and we can never again be satisfied with just our salvation.  We may have tried to live back in that Valley again but there is no satisfaction there….Absolutely none!!!

So as we have traveled on this journey that we call our spiritual walk, how many times have you come to that fork in the road and really thought that the Lord had lost His mind?  Or in the very least, that you could not possibly be hearing what it is, and where it is, you were to go.

Our walks are as individual as each of us are.  We may have gone through similar circumstances…job loss, death of a loved one, a straying child, divorce, infidelity, bankruptcy, sickness, etc, but we are each affected differently and have our own unique things we learn through the process.  The same is true if we were to write the allegory of our pilgrimage to the High Places.  We would not necessarily go in the same order that Much Afraid…or Hannah Hurnard…did but we are definitely on a pilgrimage. There are times of rest and times of struggle, times of doubt and confusion and times of complete clarity.  Times when we must build an altar before we can proceed and times when the Lord must chasten us for not listening.

Tonight we are going to be thinking like Much Afraid in the cave…the storm is raging all around us but here we sit, dry and comfortable, waiting for the next part of our journey.  And what was the next step, but complete and utter abandonment of all of her hopes and dreams on the final altar.  Just like Much Afraid we have come this far and now it is time to take out our stones of remembrance and decide if they are worth it or not.  Do we keep these memorials or do we toss them away to lessen the weight.  And tomorrow, do we make the sacrifice….whatever you are here to offer up…or do we head down the mountain and back to the same old, same old.

Now what you came from, your walk, might have been amazing.  You might feel that you are already in a good place and there is no need to offer anything else…as you have already offered it all.  Or you might say…it is not me who has to make the sacrifice, it is someone else that is standing in my way.  Or you might think that you have come pretty far and now is the time to just rest in what has been accomplished so far.  But as I have been reading and listening to Hind’s Feet I have this thing gnawing on the edge of my consciousness that makes me know that this is a time for decisions…a turning point in my pilgrimage.

I have been on hold for the last three years…looking out my kitchen window at Chinle the schools and the hospital and the hill behind it and the mesa behind that watching the seasons change and wondering what it is I am supposed to be doing.  So I can identify with Much Afraid as she was going through the gray mists.  There are times when a shaft of light seems to break through the mist, but for the most part it is the same every day.  But yet, I know that I know that this is where we are supposed to be.  That God is preparing us in this desert place.  I am hoping it is for revival on the Nation, but we could be gone before that happens. I just know that so far this is our home.  You can picture in your mind where it is you think you are on your journey.

I want to share with you the picture I had on my drive across the Rez to get to Holbrook.  First of all, I was starving and looking forward to breakfast in Holbrook.  It had been rainy the first 25 miles of my drive and I was pondering going the long way to avoid some areas on the shortcut that have a tendency to flood.  But the drive along the 15 is one of my favorite.  So I had decided if it was dry at Ganado High/Burger King I would take the shorter way….since I was sooooo very hungry.  Well, when I arrived at the round-about the dark foreboding clouds were all behind me and it looked clear and dry ahead so off towards Greasewood I went.  I was hoping to see llamas but I did see sheep, horses and cattle on this 30+ mile section.  I was enjoying the scenery and listening to worship music and thinking about retreat and just generally going down the road.  I had just passed the Greasewood turn off when I stopped my reveling and just looked and enjoyed all the flowers.  There were fields and fields of what I always called Black-eyed Susans…but the ladies at sewing group call them small sunflowers.  There were literally thousands and thousands of these beautiful and joyous flowers. In other fields there were yellow low lying bushes and purple flowers. I started to think once more about the abundance of wild flowers this year on the Rez.  A couple of weeks ago it was purple thistles and before that is was the yellow brittlebush and there has been purple and yellow and orange and white and  even across the street from my apartment it has been green and I noticed some tall white flowers there.  This is a field that is usually just dirt.

As I looked at all the flowers I thought what an amazing year this has been and how incredible and late the flowers still are.  I remember the first spring we were in Chinle.  I kept waiting and waiting for the wild flowers and they just did not seem to come.  I had been back to the Valley and there were flowers in the desert and even in the mountains but not up on the plateau.  It wasn’t until May that I noticed some wild flowers on the road to Ganado. And then for a couple of months you would see some flowers here and there but hardly any in town.

So I thought, you know those flowers did not appear out of nowhere.  There were seeds that had lain dormant for who knows how many years waiting and waiting for just the right set of conditions in order to spring to life.  What I had seen as barrenness in previous years was just vast potential waiting to happen.  Holy Spirit showed me that my life is like that field…when the time is right and everything has been done that needs to be done then I will be able to bloom in the same way.

Sitting here and writing this the thought came…Jesus always sees us as that glorious field full of flowers!!!

What were the lessons that Much Afraid was able to learn on her journey to the High Places?

·         Accept with joy everything brought her way and the path on which Jesus leads her

·         Bear what all others were allowed to do against her and to forgive without bitterness

·         The Shepherd never saw her as she was, only as she was going to be

·         Overcome evil with good

·         As long as she was Acceptance with Joy and Bearing with Love she could never be crippled again

What are the promises that were made to Much Afraid by the Shepherd?

·         I will make your feet like Hind’s feet and place you on higher places

·         What I do now you do not know but you will know later

·         This is not unto death but for the Glory of God

·         Breadcorn is bruised but no one crushes it forever

·         Cannot I do with you as the Potter, says the Lord.

·         Oh you afflicted and not comforted, behold I will lay your stones with fair colors.

·         My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.

·         Now you will see what I will do.

·         God is not a man that He should lie, has He not said and will He not do it or has He spoken it and not make it happen.

·         Your ears will hear a word behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it.

·         When the rains come down the house will remain for it is built on the Rock.

·         His love planted in your heart will grow and flourish when all human love is placed on the altar.

So let’s take these lessons and promises…you can add to them some of your own…and think about what it is we are here to make real in our own lives.

What is it you are desiring from Jesus this weekend?

What is it Jesus is desiring to give you this weekend?

In conclusion, from her vantage point on the High Place Grace and Glory looked down to the Valley of Humiliation and realized how little she saw before when she looked up to the High Places and turning and looking the other way, she realized how much more she still could not see.

Do not give the enemy any power

September 1, 2015

Thoughts while driving home from Tiara Ladies Retreat August 2015

Pornography was brought up by one of the ladies at retreat as being a devastation to our country and she is committed to getting the message out on this horrible sin that is everywhere.  But being me and loving the Old Testament and easily set on other paths, my thoughts turned to Hosea and the things I have been sharing with the Adult Sunday School class at church.  We have been looking at Israel’s spiritual adultery and the problems they had with the worship of false idols.

An integral part of cultic worship is sexual in nature.  And the reasoning behind it is to stimulate the local deities into producing abundant harvests and needed rains and just all around fruitfulness.  As I thought about that component of worship the thought came to me that these temple prostitutes and their “worshippers/johns” were acting out or doing pornography for their false gods. They were the living videos and smutty books and sexual pictures to get these gods/demons all excited and out there making the land fruitful by having intercourse with their demonic counterparts. Every one of these cults seemed to have a male and female god that were fertility gods in one way or another.

So how does that affect us today, where most people are not out at the Ashtoreth pole, or up on the mountain or in a grove worshipping but simply sitting at their computer surfing the porn sites?  What about those many people that have come to believe that it is ok to have multiple sexual encounters prior to settling down. Or those that have become so callous to what is common to be shown in our movies, TV, magazines and even video games that they have come to believe that anything goes?

There must be something to the fact that these demons need to be stimulated and they are stimulated in watching humans sin.  So it then becomes a vicious cycle.  The person sins sexually, which gives the demon power, which makes them lead the person farther and farther into their sin.  A demonic catch 22 if you would, where power is increased in the demonic realm the more that sin is increased.  And the only way to break the cycle is through Jesus.  Obviously the demons do not want to break the cycle and very often the person involved in the sin cannot see a way out through shear will-power (there will be those that do break their addiction through will-power but the root cause will still be there and it will surface elsewhere)

But Jesus died to break those chains and when we come to Him with a repentant heart then freedom can be won and the cycle broken.  If we really understood that our sexual sins, whether actual or in thought, are like food and water and energy to the demonic, overcoming and repenting of them should become more of a priority.  Who wants to be the one that is supplying the enemy with all the equipment and armament they need in order to defeat them and the ones they love?

What soldier would take his food, water and bullets and go across the DMZ and hand it all over to the enemy that is there to kill, maim and destroy everything they love.  But that is exactly what we are doing when we continue on in these sexual sins.  You may say it is only my mind that strays from time to time, I would never be unfaithful to my vows…that may be true but you are underestimating how powerful those thoughts are in the spiritual realm.  Jesus reminded us that as a man thinks, so is he.  That even to just look at someone or think about something in a lustful way is sin.  That we are as guilty as if we had actually done the act of rebellion.  That is why it is so important that we learn how to break those ties and to take every thought captive.

But once again we are back at the very real problem that we cannot do this on our own strength for we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities in the spiritual realm.  So then closing down all pornographic sites will not cure us.  Because the problem is not external but internal.  After all the Israelites in Hosea’s time did not have the internet and they still had the very same problem.  Does that mean we sit back and do not fight…no…but we need to go into the fight with our eyes open.  We fight to bring the captives out of the prisons made by this industry, whether boys and girls sold into prostitution and pornography or the fact that our children need to have safeguards in place to keep them from becoming entrapped by looking at these images and warp the way they feel about sex. This is a fight for the heart and soul, not just a modification of our physical life.  And since it is demonic in nature we must fight in the spiritual realm first and foremost.  As Christians we need to use our God-given authority to cast down these strongholds.

Choose Good

If God would send His Son Jesus to suffer and die for all of our sins, why do we think it out of the range of possibilities that God would create the whole universe just for our enjoyment and exploration?

As we were driving over the mountains and the high mesas to get back to our home in northern Arizona I was thinking about a small part of what I had shared at retreat. I shared how the LORD God had given Adam and Eve the ability to explore all of that which was good and unlimited time in which to do so. As long as they obeyed and stayed away from eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil they could choose to do whatever their hearts desired.

Think about it, if you had a perfect body without any signs of aging or disease and literally all the time in the world what would you want to study? Would you create music and musical instruments? Would you study plants or animals in such detail that you would completely understand them, even down to the tiniest atom? Would you look up to the stars and make a way to go explore other planets or galaxies? Would you pick up a paintbrush and paint for thousands of years trying to capture the colors of a sunset? How about exploring the world from top to bottom to discover all the amazing places God had created for them here on this world. There was no limit…

Paul in Philippians 4:8 tells us…."Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things." And since they only knew good they would be doing exactly this. They would know no fear or worry, there would be no guilt or selfish desires because only that which was good would be fodder for their thoughts and desires. And to top that off, each evening they had a face to face encounter with Creator God as they walked in the Garden and discussed the day’s events.

Adam had to choose to disobey…he did not get tricked, he was not fooled, he was not beguiled…he chose to disobey. He had seen God face to face. He was just beginning to explore an amazingly beautiful world. He had the perfect mate and the promise of many perfect children to come. He could know all good, yet he chose to know less good because that is what happens when you know evil. You no longer are able to know the good in an area if you chose to know the evil in that place. Imagine you are given two apple slices, one is luscious and crisp and the other is starting to turn brown and looks mushy. Which do you want your mouth to know? If you eat the good piece you have no need to experience the bad one and if you eat the bad one it will take away from the pleasure of then eating the good one.

In both of the Gardens, Eden and Gethsemane, the choice was whether or not to do God’s will. The first involved not eating and the second involved drinking of the cup of God’s wrath. The first caused man to be separated from God and the second made the possibility of restoration available to those with faith in Jesus. We do not see any great struggle in Adam’s decision but we see Jesus sweating great drops of blood in His agony.

What is it like when we are presented with the same choice of whether to obey God or to go on our own way? There are times when we agonize over the choice and there are times when we seem to make the choice easily, whether rightly or wrongly. But the truth is, each and every time we are choosing whether we want to know more of the good or do we want to decide for ourselves what is more desirable… good or evil. If God is all Good then to not choose Good is to choose less of God. We may think the sin is little, but then so did Adam and look what happened there. By choosing less of God, Adam ended up with a dead spirit and a dying body and this is our legacy from him.

But our legacy from Jesus is life and life more abundantly; a living spirit resides within us now, indwelt with all good in the form of Holy Spirit. We now have complete access once again to all good. Unlike Adam we have baggage from our pasts that may cause us to stumble now and again. But also unlike Adam we have been redeemed and when we stumble we have one who will forgive us as soon as we repent and confess.

For the rest of our lives here we need to be learning more and more of that good. How do we do that?

• Get to know intimately the One who has come to restore all that was lost. 
• Spend time in conversation with Jesus. 
• Study the Bible so you can learn what is good. 
• Revel in the promises that are in the Bible for you because of God’s great love for you. 
• Share your love with those around you. 
• Choose good at every opportunity. 
• Repent when you do not choose good…the only defeated sin is a forgiven one. 
• Spend time with other Christians. 

The most important thing we can ever do is to love the Lord God with our whole being,…body, soul, mind, emotions, will, strength and spirit. As we love Him more, we will get more of a sense of just how much He loves us.

Asleep or awake?

I find it amazing at how deep and vast the Scripture is.  Even the most well known bits can surprise me with a new insight into a deep meaning that is being conveyed.  This morning was one of those special times when a familiar passage gave me an ‘aha’ moment.  I was listening to the Gospel of Mark and when it came to the Garden of Gethsemane and Jesus asking His disciples if they could not even stay awake for a little while and pray with Him while He was in agony I thought back to the story on the boat where the disciples were wondering how Jesus could sleep through the storm that was so terrifying them.

All of a sudden as I thought of these two different stories I realized how they were linked.  Let’s look at the disciples in the boat with a worn out Jesus asleep.  Many of the disciples were fisherman and had spent most of their lives on boats.  I am sure that during those many nights out fishing they had encountered storms and all kinds of inclement weather.  They had obviously survived those storms and had learned how to handle their boats but they were afraid, which means this was some kind of storm that they were now in the middle of.  They were pros and they were afraid, which I am sure made the non-fishermen of the group even more afraid than they were to begin with.  So what is the answer…they wake up Jesus so He can join them in their fear and they could die together.  They even rebuke Jesus for not caring about their plight.  He then calms the sea with just a word and then asks why they have so little faith. 

Let’s read it from Mark 4:35-41
Jesus Stills the Sea
35 On that day, when evening came, He *said to them, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd, they *took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him. 37 And there *arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up.38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they *woke Him and *said to Him, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” 39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Hush, be still.” And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. 40 And He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?”41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?”

Then we have the scene in the Garden, Jesus has been betrayed and is in the Garden waiting for Judas to bring the guards to arrest Him.  He is praying so hard that drops of blood are oozing from His pores.  He knows that in a matter of hours He will be hanging on the cross atoning for the sins of the world completely cut off from God the Father, alone, in pain, being punished for something He did not do.  And His friends, who He is dying for, are so sleepy they cannot even stay awake with Him for a little while.  He is utterly alone as He wrestles with the consequences of all that is about to take place.

Let’s read Mark 14:32-42
Jesus in Gethsemane
32 They *came to a place named Gethsemane; and He *said to His disciples, “Sit here until I have prayed.” 33 And He *took with Him Peter and James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled. 34 And He *said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.” 35 And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. 36 And He was saying, “Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.” 37 And He *came and *found them sleeping, and *said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? 38 Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 Again He went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to answer Him. 41 And He *came the third time, and *said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? It is enough; the hour has come; behold, the Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up, let us be going; behold, the one who betrays Me is at hand!”

So looking at these two passages the question that came to my mind, ‘are we sleeping at the right time?’.  Do we worry and pace when it is time to sleep and do we sleep when it is time to be alert and engaged with what is going on?

Why did Jesus say the disciples had little faith during the storm?  Obviously, a storm that was bad enough to worry the most professional sailor among them is one worthy of fear and worry.  Why could Jesus sleep through the storm?  Let’s think about this.  It was not because He was God because Hebrews tells us that He laid aside His Godness in order to be human and to live His life under human restrictions.  He was able to do all the miracles He did because He listened to the will of God the Father and then the Holy Spirit worked through Him…he was showing us the way it is to be done and promised that if we did it the same way we could also do the same miracles He did and even more amazing things than He did.

He was asleep in the boat because He knew it was not His time to die.  He was not destined to drown or be thrown off a hill by a mob or have an accident.  He was meant to go to the cross the way it had been predicted centuries before.  He knew that even if the boat went down, He and His disciples were safe because God had promised it.  If the disciples had been listening to what He had been telling them they would have realized that for the time being there was no power in heaven or earth that could harm Jesus or those the Father had given to Him.

But they did not understand,  later they had gotten so used to the idea that Jesus could handle any problem that came up that they fell asleep when He was in the agony of the choice that lay before Him.  He could do the will of the Father and go to the cross or He could decide that humanity was not worth the price and go back to the Father and let the world be destroyed.  The very balance of the total future of everyone alive, who had ever lived or who would ever live was being fought for, yet the disciples could not keep their eyes open for even a few moments.

How often are we guilty of being just like these disciples?  Is our faith so little that we worry when God has promised us that we will reach the other shore?  Or are we so tired that we cannot keep our eyes even open when we have been called to do something important like watch and pray?

A while back the Lord gave me a picture of Him asleep in the boat and I could see the storms raging all around me.  I was going through many, many things at that point in my life but I knew that for that time my choice was to either be afraid or to get my blankie and join Jesus in the stern for a nap.  I pictured myself curling up beside my Lord and resting in His presence.  This picture got me through a lot without the stress that I normally would have felt knowing that God had everything under control.  When stress or fear would rear its ugly head I would close my eyes and picture myself curled up like a little child feeling safe and secure while the storms raged.

Now, I think I need to learn the other lesson in a new and fresh way…to stay alert to what the Lord has called me to.  To not fall asleep or to rest on the past, but to diligently and earnestly pray for the next step and then with the leading of the Holy Spirit to take those steps….one at a time.

Why study the Old Testament

Why study the Old Testament?  It seems so far removed from our lives and our experiences.  After all we are modern and have such technology that they could never imagine life in the 21^st century.  Our lives are so fast paced, they just worried from day to day whether the crops would grow or the rain would come, we have so much loftier things to worry about, like how to feed our families and how to afford to live in a nice home.  Okay, so those really are the same things…oh I know what’s different…relationships…how are we going to have a successful marriage and raise kids that will have a better life than we do….okay, okay….that’s the same too.

Paul gives this admonition to Timothy…

2 Timothy 3:15-17

New King James Version (NKJV)

¹⁵ and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
¹⁶ All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, ¹⁷ that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And what is the Holy Scriptures he is talking about?  He is referring to what we call the Old Testament.  Remember at this time the New Testament is being written and has not been put together in one place.  Whenever we see Paul or Jesus talking about Scripture, we must remember what it is they mean.  They are talking about the very part of the Bible that most modern Christians fail to read, let alone study.

Why do we avoid the Old Testament?  I think it is because deep down the Israelites give us a glimpse of the very worst of our character and we do not like to see it.  Mainly because we know that they will be punished and terrible things will happen to them.  Also, it is discouraging to see how a people that have walked in the very shadow of the Most High keep messing up, they are like the silly teenagers in the movies that keep going into the basement when they hear a spooky sound while we yell at the screen to not go down there in the dark.  They go and they are killed and we sit there and say, “I told them to not go down there!”

So why do we study these people that just don’t seem to have any sense at all?  They keep doing the same thing over and over, they cry out to God, God hears them and delivers them, they worship God, they fall into sin, they are punished for sinning (this always involves either worshipping false idols or making alliances with heathen kingdoms) they suffer, they repent and cry out to God for deliverance and the whole process goes on and on.  They keep going into the dark basement or the dark woods and they keep getting killed.  And we read the stories and we yell at them to stay off the high places and to not go into the heathen temple, to not bring the strange idol into the house that will kill them and definitely avoid the strangers that bring in strange ways of worship but they keep doing it and keep getting killed.

So when we do read or teach the OT we stick with the adventure stories where there is a hero and the enemy is destroyed.  We love David and Goliath or Daniel in the Lion’s Den but avoid Lamentations.  In the prophets we go to Jonah and the whale but avoid the locust plagues, being taken captive to Babylon or Assyria starving and stripped naked, parents eating their own children because the famine is so bad or the fact that the people still preferred the carved images to the LORD God who had rescued them over and over again.

We judge them for being so short sighted, for not understanding that only God can rescue them while we lay awake at night worrying we will lose everything we have worked for because we are over our heads in debt, our house is worth half what we owe on it, the car keeps breaking down, our company is down-sizing and our job is either in jeopardy or already gone and our kids are more interested in social networking, reality TV or video games than in following what we taught them was important.

The other problem with the Old Testament, we are afraid of God…that He will treat us like the children of Israel.  We do not want to be chastised when we mess up, we just want things to be fixed or for God to stop us when we are making a bad decision.  That the opportunities of life would miraculously come with a warning label saying do not go down into this basement, scary things are down here, instead go the opposite direction and you will find the hero waiting to rescue you.  We want sunshine and roses without the rains.

A few years back I was asked to teach the Minor Prophets and agreed to do so, not because I wanted to teach them but because I wanted to teach either Romans or Hebrews, and I thought if I did a class that was not my first pick then maybe I would have first pick the next semester.  Little did I know that this would begin a love affair for me with the Old Testament.  What I saw as I began to really dig into the prophets was the amazing love that God the Father has for His people.  Every plague, every invading army, every heartache made it more and more clear to me.  Instead of seeing God waiting to smite with a bolt of lightening, I saw a Father doing everything possible to bring His wayward children back to a place of blessing and security.  I saw God’s heart as I had never seen it before, aching and bleeding, crying out come this way you no longer need to go into the basement, I will protect you and care for you.  You will be safe and nothing can ever hurt you again.

I realize now that I would never have been able to teach Romans or Hebrews back then like I could now; because now I have a glimpse of the Scriptures that are a basis for those two amazing New Testament books.  I can see a little into the back story that makes them so powerful.

And I have come to the realization, that no matter how much I hate the fact, I am exactly like the Israelites.  My memory is very short and I forget from one moment to the next how much the Lord has blessed me.  I let things come between me and God which is idolatry.  I tend to not give God the credit He deserves when things go well which I am finding out is spiritual adultery.  I only cry out when I am in trouble and it takes a crisis for me to know it is time to repent.  No, I am not different at all!  I wish I were, but I am not.  This realization has also brought on another change; I can no longer judge people the same way I used to.  I do not see their sin so much as I see someone that is in bondage and needs to be set free.  Instead of being disgusted by what they do; I am starting to see they are just like me but have chosen to hide their pain in a different way than I did.  That sin is sin and in God’s eyes they are all equally disgusting.

So back to the original question, why study the Old Testament?  Several reasons:

• Foundation to the whole Bible
• Explains why we even need a Savior in the first place
• Times and technologies change but people don’t
• It truly shows the love of God the Father for His children
• It shows human nature more clearly than any psychology book ever did
• There are no excuses for our sins or failures
• Only Jesus can save us, there is absolutely no other way
• God has never changed and He never will
• Everything is for the glory of God, always has been and always will be!
• We can only be truly happy when our relationship with God is personal and intimate.
• There is no God but God, everything else is a worthless idol.
• We can be victorious, but never in our own strength.
• It shows the patience God has for us
• God wants to bless us
• We have a deep longing to be connected to something more than us and only God can fulfill that longing.
• Victory is assured
• Promises will be kept

Fighting for Sanctification

I am going through my journals and notes as I prepare to write another Bible Study.  I am thinking this study will deal with Sanctification and when I found this journal entry from last year I thought it appropriate to share.

July 23, 2012

A tweet on the Desiring God website got me to thinking this morning. It said

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

It got me to thinking about what we teach as part of our Tiara Ladies about coming out of bondage and not going back as compared to the Israelites coming out of Egypt, which symbolized the world, and the thought that once we have freedom we are not to return to the bondage.

Well taking the analogy a step farther, we have the Israelites entering into the Promised Land and all that entailed. The land was occupied. Not only was it occupied, it was occupied by giants and very evil people. God told them through Joshua that they were to go in and conquer the land and make it their own.

Why was the land occupied? God told them He had allowed these evil people to live in the land so that it would be cultivated and built up, ready for the Israelites to come in and take possession. It had all been built for them!

How were they to take possession? By following and listening to everything God told them to do. When they did not follow directions, they were defeated. But when they did as they were told, miracles happened.

What does this look like in the Christian life? So this is where I started thinking about how this relates to us coming into the Promised Land….Kingdom Living and walking victoriously in the Spirit.

When we are saved, come to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, it is like crossing over the Jordan. It is miraculous and completely done by God. There was nothing we could do to make our salvation happen. The only thing we could do is believe and accept what Jesus had done for us. So we crossed over from death to life. We are now in the Promised Land but it is not empty, it is full of all kinds of things and people; things that we do not like and may even scare us. Things that we may have naively thought would just disappear if we became a Christian and now we realize are still very much a part of the landscape.


Our Christian lives are therefore full of those things that were a part of our life before our salvation. Why? Because there is no such thing as a vacuum, something must fill the space. As a natural person, we had filled the space with all kinds of things and just because we get saved does not mean those things now leave, creating a vacuum. Instead, just like the Israelites, we must begin the process of removing the old and replacing it with the new. Now our life of sanctification begins. Which means this is the life of conquering that which is not of God, destroying what is evil, replacing it with God and enjoying the fruits of what is good.

But just like the Israelites we must go only in God’s strength and timing. He has a plan for our lives, what we need to conquer first, second, etc. We must follow His directions or we will get in trouble. If we go and try and destroy in our own strength we will be easily defeated or worse, we could think that we do not need God’s help. If we try and hold on to those things we are told to destroy, we will cause destruction to come into our lives and the lives of those around us. We cannot make any treaties with those things from our past, because they will become a snare and a trap in our lives leading us to worship things other than God.

Some of the stories that made me think of our Kingdom walk:

Jericho…followed God’s leading and a great victory

Achan…coveted things from the past and destroyed his family

Ai…went into battle without God because it was a little battle, thought they could handle it…lost many people

Jebusites…tricked into a treaty leaving behind a people in the land that were not Godly

Inter-marriage…allowed the customs of the people to influence them

Not completing the task….lead to following after the false gods, also leading lives of fear and bondage from invading groups of people

Getting tired…not having their own relationship with God but relying on Joshua, as soon as a strong leader died they would go back to sinning and worshiping false gods.

How then can we possibly live the victorious life that we desire to live? The answer is actually quite simple. The same way we were saved!!!! There is nothing we can do to become more like Jesus; which is the ultimate end for our Christian walk anymore than there was anything we could do to earn our salvation.

It is this very simplicity that becomes a stumbling block to us. We think we must do something, we must prove our love, we should at least clean ourselves up a little if we are going to serve Jesus. All the things that may have kept us from accepting the free gift of salvation are again trying to keep us from enjoying that salvation. This is why the Israelites kept failing in taking possession of the land, they were unwilling to go to God individually and accepting from God’s hand what He had for them. We cannot hope to live in freedom if we too refuse to go directly to God and accept what it is He has for us.

Stop striving! Stop trying to be good enough! Stop hiding! Realize that you are unique and God loves you right where you are. That Jesus longs to lead you step by step in the path that has been set out just for you. He will not leave you in the wilderness and He certainly will not leave you in bondage to anything you are willing to let Him free you from. All you need to do is believe and accept what He has for you.

Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying it will not be hard or take a lot of effort on your part once you accept and believe what Jesus has for you. But it will look more like the march around Jericho. The Israelites had to walk around the city everyday, in the heat and the dust with thousands of others. So you can imagine what a massive ordeal it could have been just getting everyone lined up each day and then marching. But you could tell it was God because at the end of the time of obedience the walls just fell down. Then they had the job of going into the fallen city and finish conquering what was left.

Our sins, faults, bondages, addictions, whatever, may live in walled and fortified cities or have chariots of iron and warriors that are giants, but if we realize what we have been saying here and that according to God’s Word they are defeated. We will be so far ahead that there will be no stopping us on our way to complete freedom. As was stated in the opening tweet:

“"You shall drive out the Canaanites though they have chariots of iron."

Josh. 17:18 No rooted sin is too strong for God.”

God has a gift of freedom for you today, will you believe Him at His word and accept it?

Victory for past hurts

January 7, 2014

I am reading an amazing book by Beth Moore at this time.  It is called When Godly People Do Ungodly Things.  This is a question that has been burning in my heart for the last several years.  In fact, many of the studies I have done and the things I have taught and written about deal with this question or a variation on the question.  I look around and try to figure out why so many Christians live such a life of powerlessness.

Beth made a statement about how we defeat those things from our past that we have never dealt with completely.  The idea of her thought was to see that time and then see Jesus there with us through whatever had caused us to be victimized.  This same strategy was in something that I had read just a day before on powerful spiritual warfare and defeating the strongholds that Satan has set up in our lives.

So if I understand both these thoughts, when we remember a hurt that has happened and it is causing us to sin, or be in bondage, or keep us from living that victorious life we so desire, we stop and then look at that time in history once more, but this time we see Jesus being there with us through the horrors of what we had lived through.  I have had people share how effective this has been in their lives on overcoming past hurts and going on to healing.

As I was thinking about this I got a picture of why this is so effective.  Here we are remembering how we were used or abused.  The pain is as real as the first time, maybe we have learned to stand back in detachment and not feel it as much, but still it is real and it still has power over us.  If it does not cause us to sin directly, it has caused a weak place in our life that the enemy will come and attack us through. Then we change our focus, look and we are able to see Jesus there with us.  His eyes are full of tenderness and love.  His tears show us that he feels the pain and deep hurt that we do.  He gently folds his arms around us and draws us into his heart.  But why is this healing?  Why does this give us the power to overcome whatever terrible thing we have lived through?  How does this defeat all of Satan’s schemes?

One of the answers to these questions is found in Isaiah 53.  We read this scripture and see a picture of what Jesus went through on the cross in order to purchase salvation for us.  But more than salvation he has purchased our healing and our restoration.  So the reason that realizing Jesus was indeed with us through the darkest of the darkest times is because he was there in the victory he had purchased for us on the cross.  He had already taken our pain and our brokenness onto his own body.  We were not alone, have never been alone. 

Isaiah 53:4-6

Surely our griefs He Himself bore,
And our sorrows He carried;
Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten of God, and afflicted.
⁵ But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
⁶ All of us like sheep have gone astray,
Each of us has turned to his own way;
But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all
To fall on Him. (NASB)

Not only have our sins been forgiven but he carried our sorrows, he bore our grief, he was beaten for our well-being, we are healed completely (body, soul and spirit) and whatever part we had in the sin or we fell into later because of what was done to us is gone, laid onto him.

Jesus was there with us in victory, the price already paid, the healing already purchased, the enemy already defeated.  Instead of remembering with pain, we can now remember the cost that was paid for us by our Savior and Lord.  The lover of our soul was there with us making us whole and pure and showing us his amazing love.

We can still cry “why me?” to the universe but now the question should be “why me, why does Jesus love me so?”  Victory is already there for us, we just need to realize and believe God at his word. 

I can tell you one thing, if you start seeing Jesus there with you in these horrible times with victory as well as compassion the devil will stop bringing it up so often.  After all, why would he want you to remember those things where you have found victory in overcoming his evil intentions?  So a double victory is won.

Another important step is to share this victory with someone you can trust.  Satan loses his grip even more when we bring things out into the light.  He seeks to keep things hidden so that our sisters in Christ will not know that there is power and victory available to all of us. And if you cannot quite get the victory yet, be sure to have someone pray with you as you learn to see God’s truth in your life. Having prayer surrounding you will always be a good idea.