Day 8 - Confidence in Christ

^“14 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” I John 5:14 - 15

I am seeing a theme develop today for these forty days.  As I’ve mentioned before,  I have been  a prisoner to what others think of me.  This prisoner-ship impedes my relationship with the Lord, and I want to stand against that.  This is a weakness in my spiritual armor, and Satan repeatedly exploits this. My husband is a wonderful example to me in this regard.  He really seeks to honor and pursue God first and has been given the gift and developed the discipline of not really caring about what other people think about him.  It’s beautiful to see him not give a second thought to things people say that would take me days to get over.  I’m really thankful for his presence in my life and all that he teaches me about Christ. 

So today,  I’m taking God at his word, and I’m asking for his peace and freedom in this area of struggle in my life.  I really believe in God’s promises, and I know that the “according to his will” part of prayer is really important in seeing the manifestation of God’s answers to prayer in our lives.  I have been checking my prayers alot lately with the question, “Is this prayer according to God’s will?”  Sometimes that question is difficult to answer, but this time it isn’t.  Several times in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches that we should not be people who do “acts of righteousness” or even just prayer in order to be “honored by men” or to “be seen by men”.  That priority is the same sin that causes us to be afraid of what people thinks of us.  Both of these heart-attitudes mean that we honor what others think above what God thinks.  Jesus also talks about loving our enemies and turning the other cheek.  I think the kingdom of heaven is one in which because we are so in love with our God and full of humility because of his overwhelming, universe-spanning love for us, we are unable to be put down by others or ashamed of anything, even our own nakedness, which was the case, I think, for Adam and Eve.  In the kingdom of heaven, I know I’m a worm (and I can shrug my shoulders and smilingly agree when others point that out), and I know that God has redeemed me anyway.  That fills me up to the point that I can’t even see anything else, really.   In that I take my joy.   No need to explain or defend myself in this life.  No need to have a knee-jerk reaction when someone throws me an emotional punch in the gut.  Kingdom living says, “Give me your best shot.  Humiliate me, embarrass me, throw my efforts back in my face, deride my intelligence, mock my beliefs, reject my love, and I will love you still.  I have an armor of steel that is supernaturally reinforced by the Grace of God whose opinion of me (a redeemed, madly loved child) is more important to me than anything.  And instead of reacting to your emotional or physical bludgeoning, I will turn the other cheek, rest in Christ’s love, and pray that you will be released from your angry prison and come to know the freedom and perfect peace of Christ that I have found.”  Isn’t this what Christ did as He ushered in his heavenly kingdom to an un-heavenly world?  

From kingdom living, I can have compassion on someone who is kicking me while I’m down.  I can feel genuine pity for them because they are stuck, as I have also been, in anger and other sin.  I can pray for my enemy because I desire his freedom and reconciliation to God who loves him so much.  I think that many of us, as believers, hold this up as an ideal, but don’t feel like we can truly achieve it.  Why, as followers of Christ, do many of us view this practice as unattainable?  For me, I think that has been because I have not truly sought that peace of Christ;  I have not truly believed that God’s peace could set me free and make me unafraid of what others think about me.  I do now, though, and I am willing to do battle for that peace in my thoughts and in my actions.  A sweet friend of mine was asked by a few teenage girls what the hardest part of staying a virgin until marriage was.  Her response was that there was no part that was easy.  All of it, every day, every hour, was hard.   She told them, you have to fight for your purity.  I think the same is true for peace.  The peace of Christ that makes us unafraid of anything (like what others think of us) does not come easily, but that does not mean it does not come.  We just have to fight for it.   So, my prayer for God to lead me into a greater confidence in Him, to a soul-level dependency not on what others think, but of what He thinks of me, is one I can confidently pray because I know this is my Father’s will for me.  “¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.” I John 5:14 - 15

 Day 8 is going to be a good day.  : )

Day 6 - Practicing the Presence

Being quiet and still is one of my most challenging tasks.  I can talk, write, process, but stillness doesn't come naturally to me.  My prayer life sometimes reflects this.  Today was interesting.  I am in a busy season, and this sustains me sometimes.  I thrive on productivity and on getting things done;  I didn't have space in world today for much of anything else.  As I sit down to write and think through ways in which I brought the kingdom today, I am struck by how wrapped up I got in my own head and how little I thought about kingdom-life today.  I passed on two conversations with friends today in favor of work.  I do want to do work well as I believe that this, too, glorifies the Lord.  I guess in this scattered post today, I'm trying to say that I need a bit more practice at listening to the Holy Spirit and letting God guide my day-to-day, hour-to-hour choices in this way.    I'm seeking to do what Johnson leads us into which is to listen more intentionally to the Holy Spirit and to not succumb to prioritizing what I need to get done and what I need to accomplish in a day, but rather, to truly be sensitive to where the spirit is guiding me, so that I can be fully present wherever I am with whomever is in front of me.   This is a massive shift in my thinking that I recognize will take time to adopt, but I long to see the outcome of a life led to seek first the Kingdom.  That life is where I am convinced I will see God and be able to bless others with the joy and power of the Holy Spirit.  I've done life my way, and I'm excited to put that to death in order to pursue life God's way.  How are you all with being still and quiet in the Holy Spirit?  What blessings have come from times of stillness for you?

Day 5 - Just a Prayer

Heavenly Father,

You are Holy above all else.  I am humbled that you hear my prayer today.  Your Kingdom come, your will be done in and through me.   Teach me what it means to choose life today. I struggle with teaching my children your ways in my relationships with them. Show me how to choose life in these relationships you've blessed me to have. God, please accept my yearning for repentance.  I want to see the world as you see it.  I want to see others as you see them. Teach me to love my children better, Father.  Lift the scales from my eyes, Lord, so I can see them with your eyes.  Help me know repentance at a deeper level.

Amen.

Day 4 - Captive and Captivated

Oh my goodness! I am getting more and more excited about this journey. I have chosen for these forty days to give up TV and to read the Bible and pray for an hour each day because I want to pursue Christ with such intensity and passion that I let nothing else in. I can already feel a recentering, a love and holy hunger for every word of Christ welling up in me. I'm looking forward to each day of this journey. Is there anything God is calling you to lay before him in this journey? Is there anything you are sacrificing in order to build your relationship with him or is there anything you could offer him as a gift? The part of the devotional today that blessed me most was where Johnson says "This explains why there is such an intense war being waged for your mind and your mental agreement. Every thought and action in your life speaks of allegiance to God or to satan. Both are empowered by your agreement. Renewing your mind means learning to recognize what comes from hell, and what comes from heaven, and agreeing with Heaven." I have known for quite some time that sin doesn't start in our actions, but in our thoughts. I have known how important it is to take my thoughts captive for Christ. I can think of many times in my life where God has called me to take another step in this regard, and this is one of those times. This, like other aspects of my Christianity, has been about what is happening inside of me. It has been about my belief in Christ and my obedience to him. One of the ways in which I have been challenged today is to turn this on its ear a bit. As I shift gears toward surrendering my thoughts to Christ, I want to be less about getting rid of the thoughts that are not of Christ (though this is an important, even critical, first step), and more about saturating my mind in His word. I am reminded of this scripture in Matthew 12: 43, "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean, and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of the man is worse than the first." I can no longer just stand against the evil that invades my thoughts; I need to replace the thoughts, to fill my metaphorical house with God's every word. I want to be so full of God that there is no room for anything else. I want to move past the place where surrendering my thought-life to Christ is only an internal process and into a place where I am so suffused in God's Word that it spills over into everything I do. The shift is one that moves me from an outside-in approach to an inside-out approach to giving up my thought-life to Christ. What this means, then, is leaving my sin - my anger, my frustrations, my unrealized dreams, my personal ambition, my unforgiveness, my disappointed hope -all behind. No looking back, no mourning time lost. Johnson says "If you have stepped out in obedience and then stopped when it didn't seem to bear fruit, ask the Lord if there is fear or disappointment there. If he shows you anything, confess it and ask the Lord to restore your hope and expectation to walk into the "normal Christian life" he's provided for you - a life filled with His supernatural, life-giving Spirit and all the goodness that life brings." This is where I'm headed, and I know that this Word of life, planted deep in my heart, will bear all that God promises it will.

Day 3 - Commissioned

Tony and I had a great conversation today on our way home from Angel Fire. This is admittedly a little outside of the devotional text, but my hope for this blog was that it might be a place for us to share the places in which God is challenging us and moving us forward, whether or not that followed the path on which the devotional book leads. So here’s the detour we’ve been on today. Tony asked me today if I thought we were really using our metaphorical talents to multiply the kingdom (the conversation was birthed from the parable of the talents in Matthew 25). I didn’t even hesitate. My answer (for myself, anyway) was “no”. I think that most of my Christianity, even today, is about me. I have been about believing; I have been about serving others; I have been about kindness, love, knowledge of God, and doing what is good and right, even when it costs me something, but I have never really been about multiplying. God is calling, pulling me into a deeper understanding of this part of followership today. Outside of Johnson’s devotional book, I’m also reading David Platt and Francis Chan’s Multiply. In it, they talk about how silly it would have sounded for Christ to come to his people and to have said, “Please believe in me. Please just believe that I am who I say I am. There’s nothing more; that’s it.” Instead, Christ called people to FOLLOW him, to leave everything behind because what he had to offer them was so incredibly beautiful, powerful, transformative… I asked Tony what it might look like if our lives looked more like what Jesus calls us to in the parable of the talents. Our central consensus was that we wouldn’t fear “preaching the word” or talking to anyone about God and his crazy, amazing, mad love that has pursued all people across space and time from the beginning of the human story. I found freedom today in reading Matthew. Jesus, in the great commission, doesn’t give me the task of growing a church (which is often a heavy burden on my heart). He gives me the task of making disciples. I can’t grow a church. There is no way. I am too imperfect, too self-concerned, too fearful of what others think of me (though I intend fully to have stamped that out of my life by the end of these forty days). But I can make disciples. I am crazy in love with the Lord. I want to know Him more and follow his every word better and better until I am set free from this failing body. I am excited to know him more and to invite others to do the same; inviting others to share life and Christ in that life is something I find amazingly appealing and beautifully simple. I’m going to start with those around me; my neighbors, friends, and whoever else God brings my way today. And if they don’t want to be disciples? If they want nothing to do with me and my crazy love for my Creator? This is no matter at all. I can still honor them and love them completely, all the while being totally and completely confident that I have carried out the Great Commission. If I haven’t tried, then I haven’t followed Christ in the last (and perhaps most important?) word he gave us. I haven’t truly been a follower. But as I go, I rest on the truths that my job as a sold-out follower of Christ is to go and make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them, and that Christ promises, he PROMISES, that he is with me always. Where has God led your heart today?

Day 2 - Fear

"For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live because those who are led by the spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of Sonship.” Romans 8:13 – 15 I think that fear is one of my greatest sins. This sin, for me, often dominates my language (I’m afraid that this will happen if…; I’m afraid I let this person or that person down), my thoughts, and my decision making. I love that Johnson put in this scripture because it speaks so clearly to where I am so, so much of the time. One of my primary goals of this 40-day season is to repent of this sin and to be finally and completely free of this particular prison. I am looking forward to having opportunity to prove the will of God in boldness and fearlessness in the days to come.

Day 1 - In the Kingdom of God....

God has been doing something in me (drawing me in, capturing my attention) for quite some time now. He has used people, circumstances, and books to speak to my heart, and I am ready and listening. While I am not sure where this journey will lead, I am sure that I am ready to go, and I am more sure I am ready go deeper with my Creator. So today, I’m starting a 40-day push toward spiritual renewal. I’m reading Bill Johnson’s Supernatural Power of the Transformed Mind in order to lead and jump-start this renewal, and I’m excited that a few are coming along; I am blessed to have people in my life who would support such a journey and who would come too, if for no other reason than to keep me company. I am surrounded by good people, and for that, for you all, I am so, so grateful. I hope that God speaks to our hearts in this process, that He challenges us, refines us (even through painful processes), and transforms us into something completely new. This God I have loved, I want to love more. This life I have lived, I want to live better. I want to sleep, eat, and breathe Christ so that there is no moment, no detail, no thought that is not surrendered to Him. I want to lose myself that I can gain Christ because I have tried him and I have found him to be worth loosing everything. I believe that seeking the kingdom is worth everything I have, and I am ready, in this journey, to hold nothing of my own as sacred. If there are habits in my life that are inhibiting the Spirit’s voice and direction, I want to cut them out. If there are parts of my life that are not surrendered to Christ, I want to lay them on the altar to be consumed in a holy fire. I am ready for transformation, not as a one-time event, but as a practicable life change to be engaged for the rest of my earthly life. In today’s devotional, Johnson says that “the will of God is simpler and plainer than we have thought…The will of God is simply this: ‘On earth as it is I heaven.’” I want to look today to bring heaven to earth. Johnson prompts us in the journal section to write down some of the “works of the devil” from which Jesus has freed us, and for me, this has been a great exercise in seeing moments of interaction with Christ throughout my life. God has freed me from anger at different points in my life which encourages me to lay this before him in some of my relationships today; he has proven himself trustworthy in this. God has taken care of my physical needs several times throughout Tony and I’s marriage in ways that could only be God (exact dollar amounts that we needed being given to us by people who did not know we needed it, bills being taken care of by both named and unnamed people on different occasions, etc.). This encourages me to not rely on my own power to take care of myself and my family. Though I have the ability to care for myself right now, this ability, I am reminded, comes only from the Lord. And all of this reminds me to lay down my own ambition. Lastly, God has healed me physically on more than one occasion. This one is a tough one for me to write because I struggle daily with not feeling physically healed from this chronic illness. Though I am not seeing that healing manifest in my life today, I am sure that God can heal. In the kingdom of God, there is no sickness. My prayer is that whatever the reason (or reasonlessness) I am sick, God would use this non-kingdom event to usher in His kingdom anyway. Please feel free to jump in with your own responses to Johnson’s text or the scripture you’re reading today or to the Spirit’s leading in your heart. I’m not sure what to expect as far as responses go here. I am a writer at heart, so my posts will be lengthy, guaranteed, but I’m aware that not everyone will be blessed by this or engage in this way. Whatever way God speaks to you, I hope that your day today is blessed with renewal and growth. I am thankful for all of you today.