Category: God

Checking Relationships

tlc4womenLeave a comment

The value of friendship

How are your relationships? Not every relationship is God ordered. As much as we like to think it is. A daily dose of the wrong thing and pretty soon you’re just as unhealthy. I used ask our youth group this question:

If I am in a white dress and I kneel in the dirt, do I make the dirt white or the dress dirty?

Love everyone, be positive, be kind, but more importantly know your limits. Jesus met many people, healed many people, loved everyone but you see him make a distinction between those he drew near to follow him and those that were acquaintances.

In Luke 6:12 it says Jesus prayed all night about choosing the twelve disciples. Now, he chose 12 to come in close. Remember he still taught the rest of the people but with the guidance of his Father he chose 12 to pull in close. When was the last time you prayed all night about who your CLOSEST friends should be? My grandfather used to tell me,

“Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Your surroundings influence you. And that is the cost. You can chose those who will help you to be a better person or those who will be a drag. The cost of unhealthy relationships are wrong influences, wrong directions, unhealthy connections, misdirected purpose, unfulfilled dreams, changed destiny, poor mindset. Check your relationships. Are they healthy? Are they on purpose? Are they moving you forward?

Teachable

tlc4women1 Comment

bethkingphd.com

Are you teachable? The key to building anything is to first build a solid foundation. Are you solidly committed to the word of God? Do you believe it all or do you take issues with some of it? Do you fight against the word? Have you received Jesus into your heart and do you let him work in your life?

Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

Part of our mandate is to be disciples and then to go and make disciples. What does that mean exactly? A disciple is a student. So what this verse is saying is that you are to be a student of Jesus and you going around teaching everyone what you know about the gospel of the Kingdom and making sure everyone is baptized including yourself.

What trips us up here is that we spend our time religiously arguing the points we don’t agree with. So to avoid the real issues of building solid foundation and to look smart and to feed our ego and puff out our chest we decide to argue or stop learning.

So when you say, “I’ve read the bible 5 times, I already know it”, yes you do know it, but remember that the bible is LIVING word. Now, ask yourself a really important question today ~ When I look in the mirror do I look like I did 10 years ago? If the answer is no, then why do you think the bible will look the same year after year just because you’ve read it?

Keep a teachable spirit. Read, grow, learn, there are things we still don’t know. My husband and I read a passage of scripture just the other night after Friday night biblestudy that we’d read a million times before and yet, it popped out to us as significant for the first time. It sparked discussion and it sparked interest and study.

What’s the cost of not having a teachable spirit? Getting stuck in your life, falling for a lie, never reaching your full potential, and the worst is getting a critical spirit. In the book, The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis, Wormwood, who is a Satan’s officer, tells the demons that if they can just keep the believer critical he won’t learn anything. Let him look around and critique the church, keep him critical and he’ll never grow and mature. He’ll spend his time always debating and despising and he will never really capture the gospel. What’s worse is he’ll duplicate his critical spirit. I want to be molded, even when I have squash every single ideal I think I may have right for the truth.

Words Can Hurt You

tlc4women2 Comments

Are there promises that you need to renounce? Are there negative words that you’ve spoken and made agreements with? We call these in church speech or churchese as I call it, Inner Vows.

For example saying, “I’m fine”, when you aren’t, isn’t always positive confession. Sometimes it’s just pride. A refusal to admit to others that you’ve got some fractured parts of your life that need help doesn’t help you. In fact, it often creates barriers.

How about the “I will never……”, vows? I can’t even begin to tell you how many times my nevers turned into reality. I used to say I’d never speak in public and here I am. In fact, gasp, gulp, I have been known to sing in public. So God took me from never speaking in public to speaking and singing. Then when I said okay, I’ll speak at the church I’m a member of, but not anywhere else……. Well you all know what happened.

Okay those are some vows, but about the more serious ones? I will never love anyone too much because I saw how much my mom loved my dad and in the end he left. So instead of guarding your heart and sharing it, you pull it so far back the guy never stands a chance.

Maybe your mother wound is so deep or your ex-wife hurt you so much that you tell yourself if there is even a hint of any of the behavior you recognize you’re out of there. And so you eventually see it, or manifest it by unchanged patterns in your life, and run for the hills when the reality is you’re making the new person pay for the sins of the past.

The cost of these inner vows are fear, anxiety, isolation, rejection, bitterness, resentment, mistrust of others, distance that can’t be brought back together. Count the cost. Sometimes the price is way too expensive for your lifestyle.

How do you know if the inner vow you’ve made is right or wrong? Ask yourself, does it add to my life? By adding I mean does it add love, does it add friends, does it add benefit, or does it just cost me?

Whosoever WILL

tlc4women1 Comment

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m a firm believer of when you know better, you do better. Some lessons are harder than others to learn and the one I learned recently was a false perception that I thought that I was capable of mentoring anyone. After banging my head against the wall a few times however, I realized that there is an important clause in this faith I follow and that’s the whosoever will clause.

Not everyone cares or wants to change. While change be inevitable it’s no less hard and some are not willing nor ready. So this year, I determined to stop beating my head against the wall. Oh sure I would pray, I wouldn’t hold offense, but I wouldn’t stop my forward motion or the progress of others to beat a dead horse. It has worked miracles in my life.

There is no scriptural  reference to nagging and pleading. The whosoever will clause takes care of that. I’ve learned that when I speak to you about the things I have gone through, or even better, the things I have learned along the way, or even better still what the bible has to say about a situation, there is zero return for me. I walk in the door of my house and there is still carpet to vacuum, floors to sweep and mop, dinners to be made. There are still personal devotion times to be had, books to be read, health issues to contend to, and my own growth and learning process. I get nothing out of mentoring another other than sheer joy that the person has moved on past the problem, learned a solution, and has stepped up their level.

When my own mentor, sets me straight, or tries to teach me a principle, or comes and sits and prays with me, she gives up her time for me. She doesn’t get anything from it. I submit and retain the advice or I don’t, it will be entirely up to me. Her workload doesn’t change, in fact, it increases because I become one in her scope of leadership. I add work to her life. It’s one she takes on freely without regret or rancor because she loves to see the progress and she is saddened when I get stuck, but, and here’s the key to mentoring, she refuses to come and sit in the stuck with me. She’ll come and extend her hand but if I am continually trying to drag her down, she walks away. She doesn’t have endless hours for me either. Minutes each week and sometimes not even that. When I used to tell her I have no one to talk to and I needed advice, she would say, “You are never alone, sometimes you need to just get on your face and tell your heavenly Father. Sometimes he’s the only one with the answers.” Great advice that has saved me on so many occasions I can’t even begin to count.

So who is mentoring you? Are they frustrated or thrilled with your progress? Are you listening? Or did you listen with one ear already having chosen what you would do? Who are you mentoring? Are there places where you get stuck? It’s really wisdom to assess your effectiveness in both areas of your life. Take a little time to do that today.

How’s Your Self Talk?

tlc4women1 Comment
pickthebrain.com

How’s your self talk? Sometimes the devil doesn’t have to do much work in our lives. Our self talk is so hateful towards ourselves that it brings the same effect. What do see when you look in the mirror?

Luke 6:45 A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.

This is not to say that when you speak negatively about yourself that you are evil, only that what you think about yourself is evil. In other words, it doesn’t produce life affirming things, or good things for your life. I don’t go and look in the mirror when I’m talking to myself. No, I talk to myself all day in my mind. So when it says that what I say flows from my heart, I have to remember that it’s subconscious, or embedded belief, and that what I am saying to myself can either be constructive or destructive. What is the price we are paying for what you are promising will come to pass in your own life? Be kind to yourself.

The cost of negative self-talk will be negativity towards myself and others, missed opportunities, loss of potential, doing things to fit in rather than doing things because they add to my life.

In For A Penny

tlc4women2 Comments

There’s an old saying, In for a penny in for a pound. It means that if you’re going to go for something then go for it all the way.

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

The fool shall not discern the value and shall cast aside great treasure. The practiced eye knows the true worth of a gem and shall not let it escape him. Thus shall you be in spiritual matters.

Train your eye to discern that which is of true worth, and let it not escape you. ~Frances J. Roberts

It’s the great Christian cliché to say that we are sold out to Jesus but what does that look like? What’s the worth of service to others? What’s the cost of volunteering in your community? What’s the price of time spent in prayer? What’s the pain of fasting or intercession?

It seems a great sacrifice on the surface of more pressing things in life, but that which is born in spirit and that which is born in flesh is noticeably different. One is sustained while the other burns out.

Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

tlc4women1 Comment

Navarro Vineyard
Navarro Vineyard

Each night at 10:00 there is an announcement on major television stations which goes something like this:

“It’s 10:00, do you know where your children are?”

It makes you stop to think about it. Do I? On a weekend, if your kids are out, you may text your kids, “Hey where are you?” Today I can hopefully cause you to have one of those moments but on a profoundly higher level than the daily 10 pm alarm.

Sheep are notorious for being slow-going creatures. You can’t drive them like cattle or you’ll kill them, they must be lead with great patience. Not one for having much patience myself, I often admire shepherds because they must learn the art of going easy in their lead and still retaining control, knowing when to push and when to step back is an art.

So when it’s time to move the herd after lambing, the time when the ewes give birth to the lambs, imagine the chaos! Baby lambs playing, easily distracted while mothers are letting their kids be kids. The scene could easily look like a scene from Wal-Mart where mom is shopping and the kid  is running around grabbing everything off the shelves it can and knocking it down. If that drives you crazy now multiply that times 50 and you start to get the picture.

Shepherds have a secret though. They understand that if you need to get mom to follow you, you pick up a couple of lambs and now you have mom’s full attention. She will go where the shepherd goes.

So who’s carrying your kids?

This question is so important because whomever that is, that’s where you’re being led. Are you getting the picture of where I’m going with this? If your kids are being carried by the bumping and grinding world of MTV then you can best believe that your attention is there. If your kids are being carried by Snooki and her bunch, you can bet you’re being led there. If your kids are being led by gangs and the local drug dealers then you’re being led to hospitals and jail.

Now, we as humans are likened to sheep, but hopefully we have a better handle than they do. Hopefully, when the shepherd signals for his flock to follow we are not letting the kids dictate where we are being led. Instead my hope is, that we are following the shepherd and bringing our kids along.

Sometimes I see sold out Jesus freak parents who think their kids will find their own path. Not even a ewe does this. Let’s be smart. Let’s be intentional. Whether you’re a Christian or not, pay attention to who is carrying your kids. That influence has the power to lead you and your family around.

As for me and my house we will serve the Lord. Joshua 24:15

Sunday

tlc4women2 Comments

theartzoo.com

Luke 6:25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature? 28 So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; 29 and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’

I love Sundays. We wake up, get the coffee going, get the shower started and get ready for church. We all head out to church separately because we all have to be there at different times. We worship with fellow believers and before we know it, it’s over and it’s time to figure out lunch. Today it was hot outside so my husband decided to grill some steaks. I got some artichokes steaming on the stove and some red potatoes boiling and pretty soon we had a fantastic “linner”. You know what that is right? The lunch that is so big it takes care of dinner as well.

This Sunday there were no appointments or plans so we took some nice long naps. The great part of living in this little town is that pretty much without fail the evening brings a cool breeze. That makes for some backyard time in the evenings when we’re home.

I made a pot of coffee, and went and sat out on the swing to enjoy the breeze. The palm trees were swaying, Greta, our German Shepherd is now a middle-aged lady at 6 years old, she bounces around for awhile when she first sees you but she prefers to just sit on your feet and enjoy the evening with you. Lulu, the wonder dog, is only four so she is still quite the spas. She never stops coming to you to play keep away.

My husband has this bird feeder on the fence, he likes to help God out. The birds came to the feeder as I drank my coffee. Sometimes there were three at a time, sometimes only one. Pigeons and sparrows mostly. They come and stay a few minutes to eat their seed, then stop at the waterfall and take a quick shower. Then they stop at the top of the fence and sing as they figure out where they are going next.

They don’t store up seed as squirrels do, there are no to-go plates as funky family members make. They simply eat their fill in that moment. They don’t worry about where the next meal will come from, that is simply God’s job. As I sat there in this simple moment of life, I realize I take life way too seriously. I spend too much time on the what-ifs, making to-do lists and thinking these moments of stillness could be better used to scrub the tub. I think I need to take some lessons from the birds. I’ve been told they’re not very smart, in fact, calling someone a bird brain is an insult. Actually, I think they may be wiser than we are.