The Desert

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When we get to the place where we no longer believe or trust God we find ourselves wandering in the desert without direction or purpose. The desert experience can take forty years or forty minutes it’s up to us. Our choices determine our direction and we either wander aimlessly or we walk through these times.

We can recognize the exit scene of the garden and the entrance to desert when we let our spirit run dry and our ego rise up. Ego what exactly is it? It’s defined as:

1. The self, especially as distinct from the world and other selves.
2.In psychoanalysis, the division of the psyche that is conscious, most immediately controls thought and behavior, and is most in touch with external reality.
3. An exaggerated sense of self-importance; conceit.
4. Appropriate pride in oneself; self-esteem.

I heard Dr. Wayne Dyer explain ego as an acronym of Edging God Out. We get to take a walk in the desert when we edge God out of our lives. We can tell when we are heading to a desert experience when we hear these words coming from our lips but the thought process has already been marinating,

“Where’s God?”
“The message did nothing for me”
“I just don’t feel it anymore.”

We all have been in the desert. The desert is dry, barren and without meaning or purpose and void of the Holy Spirit. Each day looks just like the other. We get up, we go to work, we come home, we eat, we watch TV and we go to bed and we do it all over again tomorrow. Our lives become mundane. The desert tends to get really cold at night and that is how it is with us. We get cold to the things of God. We get cold to the service of others. We begin to wallow in our own problems and the life we are living and we continually murmur and complain about everything. We lose our sense of gratitude and although we may have seen many miracles in our time, we have forgotten or dismissed them as a thing of the past. We have forgotten God but we turn it around and declare that He has forgotten us. Dr. Myles Munroe says this, “The person who cannot see the ultimate becomes a slave to the immediate”.

Deuteronomy 8: 11 “Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, 12 lest–when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; 13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; 14 when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; 15 who led you through that great and terrible wilderness, in which were fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty land where there was no water; who brought water for you out of the flinty rock; 16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might humble you and that He might test you, to do you good in the end—

We’ve all met people who decided to set up camp in the desert and they get stuck there. They are no longer free to fulfill their purpose in life. They have become slaves to themselves. If and when they determine to deal with the truth of where they are in their condition, and then have a change of heart and mind they can pack up and come back to living in freedom. Until then they are doomed to wander in the desert. The desert was meant to be a journey but God can only help you when you are ready to move. It’s all about choices.

Good and Evil

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Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

We learned yesterday that everything that happens is for a reason and that reason will have a good outcome for us in some way. If that is so then what is truly bad? If even bad things can turn out good then good and evil become subjective until we understand the whole story. We all carry battle wounds and scars that tell a sad story. The scar shows we got through the wound or ordeal and we have proof that things heal and get better. Moreover, if we truly trust who He says He is we come out strengthened in our faith. Therein lies the problem; trusting God that He has our best interest at hand. Especially when we’ve had to endure a struggle.

Disobedience can kill all the good in our life in an instant. There is a cost to being free will human beings and I wonder if we often count the cost of that before we set out to do a thing? We learned in day one of this teaching that when Adam and Eve sacrificed their self for the self image they distanced themselves from the reach of the Father. Not that He couldn’t reach them but that He honors our choices. They now could honestly say they had knowledge of good, the time with God, and evil the time when they determined to take matters into their own hands and edge God out. Disobedience, defiance, or an act outside of love removes the presence of good in our life and we delve head first into the dark, bad places of where life can take us. In this condition we become like hardened clay unable to mold into any possibility of hope. In this condition we find all sorts of evil that ultimately proves to destroy our soul. This is where victim thinking comes in, this is where despair comes in, this is where we meet depression, despondency, despair. This is the place where hope is lost.

You see, outside of the boundaries of God we live an unprotected life. Yet, I believe that all of us truly know that this sort of lifestyle feels good to the flesh for awhile. We’ve all put our toe in the water of evil and felt the warmth of the water there as it invited us in. Some of us dove straight in and swam around for a time, while others of us cautiously took the steps one by one. Either way we have knowledge of what it feels like. Only, it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. We noticed that we were swimming around with hungry sharks that were taking us apart piece by piece. Some of us still don’t see the chunks missing and we continue on. Some of us choose to ignore the fact that we are being devoured and pretend as if all is well.

In this place of darkness we begin to live in fear. When conviction comes we question whether the others swimming with us will still like us? We begin to feel entitled to live in debauchery and we call it our right. We relish the power of living our lives our way and we take free will to a level it was never intended to go. Then when the bottom falls out and we no longer have any options left, we ask God why he allowed us to go so far? Why has He betrayed us?

It becomes a matter of trusting that God is really good because we’ve seen so much evil we can’t conceive that there is One who is trustworthy. Besides, it is much easier to blame someone else for our own choices.

Matthew 18:3. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

The King Can Do No Wrong

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My husband has a saying when I say something like, “Lord why is this happening?” His explanation is always that if we believe God is good and that God is love then there is truly nothing wrong in what He does or what He allows. “The King can do no wrong.”

Examine this premise today because if that is true, it means that we trust God in the plenty and in the lean. It means that although we have free will, we give up our desire for what we consider the blessed life, for the life that he chooses no matter where that takes us or what sacrifices we have to make to follow Him. It means that we are no longer victims to circumstance but an essential part of something bigger than ourselves. It may even mean that we have to suffer some things so that others may learn or be provided for.

To think that I may have to endure something so that the bigger picture of life may be fulfilled seems on the outset unfair. When I look at the bible I see the life of Joseph. He spent 13 years learning total dependence on God. Joseph was tormented by his brothers, sold into slavery, thrown into prison for a crime he didn’t commit, forgotten by his friends and ultimately made the right hand man in Pharaoh’s court. All of these things happened in his young life so that when famine came to the land of Jospeh’s family, the 12 tribes of Israel, his brothers, would not starve. God’s plan for their future was more than they could see at the time. Those same brothers who threw him into a well, considered killing him and instead sold him to slavery for twenty shekels. Not a random amount as it’s the price of redemption to the Lord according to Leviticus 27:3. Genesis 37-45

All of these things happened to Joseph and yet, when Joseph’s brothers are out of food they go to Egypt for help, they are met by Joseph. Imagine their fear, dread and regret. Only here is what Joseph says to them:

Genesis 45:5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. 8 “So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. 9 Now hurry back to my father and say to him, ‘This is what your son Joseph says: God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; don’t delay.

The King can do no wrong.

In a culture that values self and promotes the need to be happy above anyone or anything else that may be going on in the world, this seems like an impossible concept. What is an insurmountable concept, it would seem, is that we are not here for ourselves, but for each other. That flies in the face of everything the “me generation” has been taught. It means that it challenges our ideal of right and wrong and good and evil because if Joseph’s life of false imprisonment was an act of God’s goodness and greater plan, then our concept of good is subjective at best.

There is great discomfort in this thought and yet, there is great peace. It becomes unsettling to us as we process through this concept. To think that even in the tragedies that life hands us, there can still be good, seems cruel to our human understanding. Yet, since we don’t see the end from the beginning we must learn to trust that what is happening is not without reason. It is actually for a bigger picture that we may not even be conscious of.

Naked and Unashamed

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In a recent survey, dating couples were interviewed about the first time they slept together. 33% of couples say they slept together on the first or second date. Yet, these couples after dating an average of 8 months still did not know things about each other in terms of past experiences, life-long goals or childhood memories.

Genesis 2:21 So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. 22 Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. 23 The man said, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” 24 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. 25 The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

In the garden, we find Adam and Eve the first naked man and woman. I know that we focus on their physical nakedness but there is a deeper thought process to all of this. They were not only naked physically, they were naked emotionally. That is to say that they were open and honest with each other. Their relationship transcended the shallow and dared to swim in the deep richness of a true communion of acceptance and love. They could truly be themselves with each other and not have to worry about the judgment of the other person. At this point in time in history it was all good.

Genesis 3:6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. 8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

In a moment of weakness they opted to gain worldly knowledge and thus sacrificed true self for self-image. Instantly, they covered themselves from each other.

So today we find that getting physically naked with one another is acceptable but getting emotionally naked with each other is taboo. This is why pornography and illicit affairs are prevalent. We hide our emotions and our true self hoping that when you when you see us, you only see what we tell you is pleasing to you and not what is real.

A woman who shouts to her mate in the middle of an argument, “You don’t really know me!”, may be correct. She may have been showing her self image for the length of time of their relationship rather than her true self. A man consumed by pornography to the detriment of his marriage, may be burying himself in self-image rather than dealing with the work it takes to build a lasting relationship.

Those who are called according to his purpose have an obligation to live beyond the cross of calvary. Jesus died so that we may have true relationship back. We need to stop being superficial and thinking the self-image will suffice. Maybe then our divorce rate will drop, our self-worth will return, our friendships will be fulfilling, and we’ll return back to the place where we can be naked and unashamed. It’s called authenticity and we should be desperate for it.

Luke 9:25. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self ?

Or in terms of this blog, what good does it do to share our physical body if our soul and heart get lost in the process?

Foolishness

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Calling someone a fool is the worst thing you can say about someone according to the bible. (Matthew 5:22). Only what do we do when we see someone in our life doing foolish things over and over again?

Proverbs 26:11 As a dog returns to his own vomit, So a fool repeats his folly.

If we know better then why do we keep repeating the same mistakes? Think about it, a dog vomits because its food did not settle right in its body. The same is true for us, if something didn’t settle right in our body why then do we go back to feed on it some more?

Stop making the same mistakes over and over again. Does it really matter if the new job is in a new city if you are only going to work the job for a year before you are bored and moving on to something else? Does it really matter if the face on the man’s body is different from the last face if the man is doing the same thing that you couldn’t live with before? Does it really matter if you take new classes at college if you did nothing with the last ones you took? The problem isn’t the job, the man or the course of study. The problem is you. You do not have satisfaction or peace in your life.

Stop putting off decisions in your life. How many times do I have to hear that you want to change all the while you never get up out of where you are? How many times are you going to wish things were different before you begin to change and pray and move to make things happen? Today, begin to prioritize your life. What do you really want? Complaining is so much easier isn’t it? It allows you to be lazy about the priorities. Playing the victim of your bad choices throws the responsibility off of you and on to someone else but the result is the same. You are still in the same spot. Stuck. You like that we feel sorry for you but I am beginning to think it’s wasted effort on my part. You are still in the place you are in because YOU CHOOSE TO BE. No one put a gun to your head. Prioritize your life.

You’ve been in church for so long, you’ve heard countless messages and yet you’ve never brought that knowledge from your head to your life. You are still searching for the solutions of the world because the godly ones seem boring. Instead it’s much more exciting to live your life precariously on the edge of disaster. It takes no effort that way. And your life continues in the spiral it’s been in and you say you can’t help it. And yet, you are the only one who can help it. Still, you throw the responsibility of it on others thinking it’s all of our responsibility to rescue you yet again. I ask myself though if I am your source then I am playing god when God is who you need the most, not me.

The wisdom of the world leaves you with nothing but foolishness. The word says to drink your wine with a merry heart, to be happy with the wife of your youth and yet you look for contentment in other things. In alcohol abuse, in drugs, in illicit sex, in your work, in porn when the simple solution was always a relationship with God.

It was always in a relationship with God and will always be. So what will you do? Will you continue to complain and go about your merry way accessing the things of the world? Meanwhile, you are sitting in church on Sunday trying to shake off the effects of Saturday night. Only the world is winning and the voice that was trying to lead you down the right path is dimming. You want something better for yourself but what are you going to do to get it? Another year is going down the drain. You can rescue it if you want to, only I’m not sure if you really want to. In your opinion there is just too much to lose. Only the loss is not in the way these things make you feel, the loss is your life.

Date Abuse In Teens

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I was reading a statistic that said that 1 in 3 teenagers report abuse in dating. I googled to see if that seemed normal and one site said 38% and another said 1 in 4 teens are abused. Reporting can be spotty since most girls keep it a secret. On the surface it’s hard to understand why a girl would go through this when she has her life ahead of her and her choices are endless. The problem with this type of thinking is that we forget to think like a teenage girl whose completely infatuated with love and having that cute boy or bad boy at any cost.

As with adult women in abusive situations these men are often quite apologetic after their abuse. They cry, they send flowers or gifts, the promise that it will never happen again. They swear that if she hadn’t have angered him so much he wouldn’t have done it. If a grown woman falls for these lines time after time then what can we expect from our teenagers? As with adult women, teenage girls tend to make excuses and feel responsible for the abuse. Then there are the girls who abuse the boys as well.

One question needs to be asked: What does using our strength look like? If we, as the women God, have been placed to lead our girls and don’t know the answer to this questions then how do we think they respond? A question I asked a group of youth girls recently was, “What does showing your strength as a woman look like?”, it was met with blank stares and a question, “What do you mean?”. I then asked the women, “Why can’t the girls that we mentor answer this question confidently?”, and it was boldly answered by one women, “Because we don’t know either”.

We must empower our girls to know that they are the Crown of Creation. There is a way to treat a woman and that must be taught. I know you are reading this and thinking that we have to teach our sons but you, as a woman, need to understand how you should be treated and not accept anything less than that. I have to admit I saw that we aren’t doing our job with our daughters when I heard a young woman of 17 say, “A woman shows her strength by being tough, showing a man she can do it by herself, you know? They can’t hurt her.”

A woman doesn’t show her strength by being tough. We weren’t designed to be physically tough. We were designed after everything on the earth was created. God didn’t create anything else after he created us. We show our strength in our nurturing, we show our strength in our ability to be relational, we show our strength in our love. Teen girls are being abused because they don’t know their strength, they don’t know their worth, they don’t know their possibilities. So they think being abused is as good as it gets and that saying sorry fixes it. We need to elevate our worth to a higher standard.

Just because a male is good-looking, charming, popular, smart or a jock doesn’t mean he has character and integrity. A person can be smart but that doesn’t mean they are decent humans. Just because he says he is sorry doesn’t mean we take him back. We are worthy of so much more than this! How will our young women know these things if we aren’t teaching it? How can we change these statistics unless we speak out and have dialogue? Stop for a moment as you read this and think about it. Have you talked to the young women in your life about abuse in dating? Are you watching for the signs?

We must learn that our strength is in our ability to think for ourselves. Our strength is holding ourselves to a high standard of morality and worth. Our strength is in not following the crowd. Our strength is in the ability to discern right from wrong. These things only happen when we are able to truly know who we were created to be.

Young Mother’s Group

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Titus 2:3 Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. 4 By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, 5 be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior.

Tonight TLC starts a new class for the young mom’s in the church. Those of us who have older children and have been there done that and have the t-shirt have decided to feed them with a potluck dinner and then begin to mentor them.

What kind of chores can you give a toddler?

How can you get a shower when you can’t even get a single moment alone?

How can you keep the house clean when each time you leave a room, a child or children come and throw their toys again?

What do you do about a husband who wants to have some sex and you just want to sleep?

What happened to the pretty perfume smell you used to have because now you smell like baby spit-up?

Is there anymore ME time?

What do you do with a child who refuses to do anything you say?

What do you do when your child asks why for everything?

How do you get your child to eat something other than chicken nuggets?

What do you do when a child throws a major tantrum in the grocery store?

Yes, lots of questions that the older moms and grandmothers can answer. It’s going to be a great night! Looking forward to being a help and support!

The Spirit of Pharaoh

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Moses was asked by God to deliver his people, the Israelites, out of bondage from the Pharaoh of Egypt. Moses and his brother Aaron went obediently to Pharaoh and gave him the word of the Lord. Pharaoh’s first reply to Moses was,

Pharaoh 5:2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.”

Sadly, the story goes downhill for Pharaoh from there. As God introduces himself on the scene of Pharaoh’s life it’s not a pretty greeting. Three chapters later we find Pharaoh in the same place. After God has begun to send plagues to the land of Egypt, Pharaoh cries uncle in the midst of each plague and then reverts back to his old ways of thinking once the danger is gone.

Exodus 8:8 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the LORD to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the LORD.” 9 Moses said to Pharaoh, “I leave to you the honor of setting the time for me to pray for you and your officials and your people that you and your houses may be rid of the frogs, except for those that remain in the Nile.” 10 “Tomorrow,” Pharaoh said. Moses replied, “It will be as you say, so that you may know there is no one like the LORD our God. 11 The frogs will leave you and your houses, your officials and your people; they will remain only in the Nile.” 12 After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the LORD about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. 13 And the LORD did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. 14 They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. 15 But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said.

How frustrating it must have been for Moses who saw hardship escalate in the land where he was raised. How misguided Pharaoh was to give a word and then retract it once the danger was over. Yet, that spirit follows us today. How many times do we pray to God making deals to get out of situations only to find that we once the danger is over the deal is off and our hearts are hardened once again? How often do we make promises and then mid-stream determine that we no longer want to fulfill them? Rather than deal honestly with the real issue at hand, losing control of our lives, we instead cast the bait and then retract it.

For Pharaoh, the end result was the death of his first born son. What will it be for us? What price is too high to pay? Why not allow our word to define our character and not make deals we were never intending to keep? Why not allow God to move in our lives?

The Man Who Is My Son

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Today I celebrate one of the best days of my life. Today is the birthday of my son. How could I have known love so profound as the day I met Anthony?

I was a young, stupid, crazy teenager when he was conceived but he changed my life more than any other event so far. He was precious from the day I laid eyes on him. How could I have known that one day he would be this grown man who is taller than I am and so much wiser?

“Hola Momma” is how he starts out his conversations to me each week. That’s about the extent of his Taco Bell Spanish but when I hear his voice on the phone, I smile no matter what is going on in the moment. How could I have known how much I miss hugging that puppy-smelling little boy?

He’s in love now and she’s a great girl. I watch how he watches her, how he treats her, and I see that my son is good to her. How could I have known as I stood outside his car when he was 16 and insisted that he get out and come and open the door for me, that I was teaching him to be a man and not just a male?

So many memories flood my mind on this day but one thing is for sure in my life. I am blessed to know Anthony. If that were all I’d be happy. How could I have known that God would love me enough to allow me the privilege of being his mother?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY SON-SHINE!