Precious Moments

God will often use our children to teach us some pretty amazing spiritual lessons. I have written a previous post entitled “Lessons From Our Children.” If you have not read that post feel free to go back and read it or revisit it again for a refresher on this very topic. The sad thing is that we do not typically look at our children to be our teachers in the spiritual classroom. I am quite certain I have missed numerous lessons that God intended to teach me through my children all because I was not paying close enough attention. However, I wanted to share with you a recent lesson that I learned in a moment I was paying attention.

This was one of the most precious moments I have ever had with my children. The funny thing was that it came about because I allowed my emotions to get the better of me. I had to seek out forgiveness from my children for snapping at them, for being cranky with them and just plain having a stinky attitude. Can I just tell you how hard it is to humble yourself in front of your children! But I want to just share with you one reason why the Lord desires us to have a child like faith. Here it is... they are simply quick to forgive. When I sought out forgiveness from my children, all three of them, without hesitation, came running to me with arms wide open and embraced me. As if that were not enough to melt a mommy's heart, this will for sure top the cake, each one said "I forgive you mommy." There were no strings attached, no ulterior motives, no I told you so, no you'll pay for this, just a simple "I forgive you mommy." The words penetrated my heart so deeply and they continue to echo in my mind as one of the most humbling and enlightening experiences I have had the opportunity to be a part of.

This is how Christ responds when we go to him. Without hesitation He forgives us, with no questions asked, no strings attached, no I told you so, and no you'll pay for this. My children responded to me with the heart of Christ when I sought out forgiveness, a response I was not expecting. These precious moments are I things I won't quickly forget as a mom!

Lord, I am so thankful that you use our children to teach us things about your character and your nature. I pray that as you continue to use our children as teachers in our lives that we yield to their God given wisdom and glean from them what it is you have for us to learn. Help us to remember that you can use them to speak into our live just as easily as you can use anyone else. Thank you that you have provided a means for us as moms to learn more about you from our children each and every day. Help us not to miss those precious opportunities because we are to busy to see them when they are right in front of us. Thank you for the gift of our children. You know just what we need and when we need it. Continue to work on our hearts each and every day.

Challenge # 6 Undercover Blessings

Just in case you haven't already noticed I am all about finding ways to bless others in these challenges! This challenge is not going to be any different. What will be different will be the fact that the person on the receiving end hopefully will have no idea whom to thank for the blessing being bestowed upon them. I’m calling this challenge “Undercover Blessings.” In other words, our kindness should be seen, but we should not. The truth of the matter should always be this, it is never a good practice to have the recognition being put on us for our kindness that we pass along. The recognition should always go directly to the Lord himself. After all, it is the Lord who enables us to bless in the first place. Our actions and words should point others to Christ, not point them to ourselves. This month we are going to focus on blessing others and trying to keep from being recognized that it was us doing those blessings. You can choose to perform your undercover blessing acts upon those you know, or complete strangers if you would like, but the point is, try not to get caught “red handed.” I personally am aiming to bless those who know me well, this way I can see if I can “get away” with it. This might take some forethought and careful planning if you are planning one blessing close friends or family members. Try to bless at least one person each week without being “caught” this month. My hope is that you get as much joy out of blessing someone as they do out of being blessed!

Please feel free to share some of your stories. I would love to hear some of the creative ways you have chosen to secretively bless others.  Have fun sneaking around and showering blessings on others this month!

Facing Our Giants

I’m sure most of us know the story of David and Goliath. Many of us were told this story from a young age. We read about it in our picture Bibles and maybe even acted it out in Sunday school. I want to encourage you, if you have not read it in a while, head on over to 1 Samuel 17 and revisit this incredible story. I got to thinking about this story and was amazed where my thoughts took me.

The Story

Here is David and according to 1 Samuel 17:33, he is “only a boy.” The Bible does not give the exact age of when David stepped out onto the battlefield, but according to my research he was probably somewhere around  the age of 15. I want us to try to wrap our minds around this picture for a moment. Here we have this 15 year old child with faith in the Lord far beyond what many of us can even fathom. I can only imagine the thoughts that were whirling around in King Saul’s mind when he handed over the fate of the entire nation to a 15 year old kid! I’m sure he could only figure he was nothing short of crazy for even considering such an insane proposition. Not only that, I’m sure his advisers as well as every Israelite were probably thinking that their king has just lost his mind and should be checked into a mental institution! I’m sure these thoughts would cross my mind at least once or twice, how about you?

The Avenues of Thought
Now that we have established the thought process of every person that surrounded David on that day, let’s talk about the thought process of David. There really are two avenues  of thought that we could look at. The first avenue of thought that could have been going on inside of David may very well have been one of extreme confidence in his God. An avenue of thought in which he remembered what God had done for him in the past and anxiously anticipated what God had planned for the future. Faith by definition is believing that God is going to stay true to his character despite the circumstances we may find ourselves in. For David, God had always provided a way to defeat his “giants,” for example, the lion and the bear from his childhood. So, since God always stays true to His character, then He surely would deliver David from this giant as well. In this avenue, David probably did not think about questioning God partly because of his past experiences with God’s deliverance and partly because he was still young and I believe still had a sense of child like faith about him. For whatever the reason, we tend to question more the older we get. It’s as if we lose sight of the child like faith and doubt and unbelief begins to sneak in. I tend to think David had not yet reached the stage that he questioned God’s faithfulness. He had no reason. God had always proven Himself faithful. I find that this particular avenue of thought is the one I typically lean towards when reading this story, but there is another avenue that I tend to forget even exists.  

The other avenue involves the understanding that because David is human, he is going to have to wage war with his mind long before he will ever wage war on Goliath. This avenue would probably sound something like this… “I must be crazy. I can’t believe I’m going to do this. I am going to do this. I killed a bear. I killed a lion. I can kill this giant. I must be losing it. Look how big he is. I am just a boy. He is a giant! My God is so much bigger than this giant.” Can you see the internal battle that must have been going on inside David’s mind?  Many of us are not much different. I know I constantly find myself in these ping pong games with my thinking; the going back and forth between believing that God is true to his character on one side of the table and the questions and doubts on the other side of the table. Just like David, we have to wage war on our minds long before we can ever wage war on the giant that is physically standing right in front of us.

Our Mental Giants
When I look at these two different avenues of thinking. It helps me to gain a better perspective of these impressive bible stories. It helps me to better relate to the characters in these stories. Sometimes I feel like the heroes in these stories were almost not human, as if they were somehow angelic. They did these great things and had such great faith. How could I, one who wavers in my faith, and questions things even put myself in any of these situations? I would fall flat on my face in failure. But when I start to think that they were human just like me. I realize they had some of the same struggles that I have. They fought some of the same battles of the mind that I fight.

There was nothing special about David. God did not give him a super power in order to defeat Goliath. He was human, no different than myself. Yes, his giants were physical giants. Some of mine have been physical as well, but he also had to face the giant of his own mind, just like I do. God is working out in each of us our mental giants. He will often times use the physical giants in our lives to teach us how to win the war against our mental giants.

Lord, I thank you that we are no different than David. I thank you that just like David, you are working in us on the battle with our mental giants. You desire for us to not only win the war against the physical giants that are staring us right in the face, but you desire for us to win the war against the mental giants as well.  Help us in the times of battle to remember that you stay true to your character. Help us to not forget the amazing things you have done for us in the past, because it can be so easy to forget where you have brought us from when we are faced with a giant right in front of us. Lord, I thank you that no matter what challenges we face, you are always faithful!

Hurts

People are going to say and do things to us that hurt us and that cut us deeply. Sadly this is part of being human. We step on one another's toes, and most of the time we don't even realize we are doing it. But we don't have to let those things rock us to the core. We don’t have to let these things over take our thoughts, rob us from our peace and steal our precious joy. What we must do in these moments is to take our eyes off our own hurts and put our eyes on the one who created us, the one who knows our name, the one who loves us more then we can put into words. Yes, there will be moments that we question God's love for us, especially in the moments of deep hurt, but in our moments of questioning we must remember to take a good look at His hands, His feet, and His side and that will be proof enough of His love for us. What is ironic, is that most of these hurts we carry around truly mean nothing in the realm of eternity. The hurtful things people say to us and do to us often times has very little impact on eternity. It is not God’s design for us to carry around the hurts of this life. He desires that we be free from those things, that we can walk in liberty from our hurts. (To read more about this topic visit my blog post entitled "Casting Our Cares".) 

How can our hurts be a positive thing for us?

God can use our hurts to do some amazing things in our lives. Believe me, if it had not been for some heartbreaking things in my life, I am quite sure that I would not have learned some of my most beautiful spiritual lessons, lessons that I know could not have learned without the hurt attached to them. It was in the times of hurt that I ran to the arms of my beloved creator, and it was in His arms that these lessons were learned. If I had not had the hurt driving me into His arms, I probably would not have been there otherwise. What a sad thing to think that it sometimes takes hurt to get us to sit in the lap of our father. But I for one am thankful for these precious moments. They are moments that I cherish and moments that will not be quickly forgotten.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything” James 1:2-4

If we look at the purpose of us experiencing hurts through the funnel of these few verses found in James we will see that hurts in this life are almost necessary in order to bring about perseverance and maturity in our faith. Perseverance and maturity are not handed over to us automatically with our salvation. These things only come by way of some trials in our life. If we look at those trials as opportunities to grow, it is then that we can experience the pure joy that James is sharing about. On the flip side of that if we fight the hurts and trials that come into our life and do not allow the Lord to develop His character in us in these challenging times, then growth and maturity will not be the outcome for us, and it is quite possible that we will see even more hurts and trials come because of our lack of willingness to surrender to the process of growth. So, as hard as it is to be thankful for the moments when we are hurt by someone, we just need to remind ourselves of God’s greater purpose in it all. Unlike the Lord, we see in part. This inhibits our ability to see God’s purposes for the times of hurt entering into our lives.

Now, I am not saying that we should allow other’s to snow plow us over and that we should not stand up and say something when it is appropriate to speak. However, I am saying that it is important to recognize that God has the ability to teach us some very precious things in these hurtful moments, but we must simply stop, and take the time to seek Him before we respond to the one who has hurt us. God can give us great wisdom in these moments and if we just spout out whatever comes to our minds first we can quite possibly miss a beautiful thing that God has planned for the situation we find ourselves in. Let’s allow God to do the leading in our moments of hurt and we will be amazed at the outcome of the situation!

Lord, thank you that you can see us in our moments of hurt and that you have beautiful plans in the midst of it all. Help us to seek your face in the very moments that we just want to explode on the person who has hurt us. Help us to listen for your voice and respond not as we want, but as you want us to respond. Help us to exhibit self control in these moments. Help us to be willing to look for the lesson in the midst of our hurt. Lord, we know that you work all things together for our good, and we also know that our moments of hurt are no exception.

A God Of Consequence

Our God is a God of love, mercy and grace, but He is also a God of consequence. Our God is a just God. He allows us to reap whatever it is we have chosen to sew. He does not do this out of spite, He does this because it is in the reaping that we will learn a lesson far greater than we could ever learn by being rescued from getting what we deserve. Our God loves us too much to allow us to go through this life without learning some things along the way. Sometimes the school of hard knocks is the best place for us to learn some of the most valuable spiritual lessons we will ever learn in this lifetime. Now, I am not saying that God is going to give us what we deserve all of the time. If this were the case, not one of us would be a child of the living God because none of us can do anything to deserve this beautiful gift bestowed upon the human heart, the precious gift of salvation. We truly do not deserve the love of Christ and yet in His grace and mercy He showers us with it. It is in that same grace and mercy that He also brings consequences when they are needed.

God Disciplines Those He Loves

“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves,  and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” Hebrews 12:6

This verse brings about a beautiful thought. God disciplines and rebukes us because we are His children, because He loves us, not because He wants to watch us suffer. How many of us as parents would stand by and watch our children play in the middle of the street, or play with fire? I think all of us would be bringing some form of correction and rebuke to our children if we saw these things occurring. Why? Is it because we want to watch them suffer? No, it’s because we love them and we don’t want to see them get hurt. God is no different! We are His children. His discipline and correction is because He loves us and He doesn’t want to see us get hurt. Yes, there are going to be times when His correction is not going to feel good, but it is always better than the alternatives. If we would simply allow our children to continue playing in the street and playing with fire with no consequences, it is only a matter of time before we no longer have children. If we don’t allow the discipline of God to do a work in our lives, it is only a matter of time before God does not have us as His spiritual children. As time goes on we will slowly harden our hearts toward Him and His ways, and eventually walk away from His kingdom altogether. I hope you can clearly see why God desires to bring correction in our lives. He longs to keep us as His own. He does not want to see us walk away.

Godly Discipline Brings Healing

Discipline seems to have such a negative connotation in our society. We view it as something that is going to scar an individual for the rest of their life. However, Godly discipline does not bring about any form of scarring. It does however, bring about healing. It brings healing to the innermost parts of our hearts, our minds and our relationships. Godly discipline flows from a place of love. This is why it will heal the deepest wounds and hurts. This is why we should not view Godly discipline with negativity in our hearts and minds, because if it were not for His loving correction, healing could not be our portion in many situations.

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

When God disciplines us, it will feel unpleasant and uncomfortable, but if we allow the Lord to teach our hearts, then what we reap from those times will far and above out weigh those momentary feelings of displeasure and discomfort. Let’s allow the Lord to bring correction in our lives because it will always bring about precious fruit when we yield to it with a humble, teachable spirit.

To read more about Godly discipline and how it should be used in parenting go to: "A Mother's Commission".

Thank you Lord that you love us enough to correct us when we need it in our lives. Thank you that your discipline leads to a harvest of righteousness and peace. Help us to stay in a place of humility. Help us to remember that your discipline is for our growth, not our destruction.Thank you for not leaving us to our own demise. Help us to remember that in those moments of discipline, though they will seem unpleasant, they are only for a moment, and that you have greater things in mind for us. Lord, we trust that your plans and purposes are far better than anything we can even imagine for ourselves. Thank you that you have the best in mind for us! We love you Lord and desire for you to have your way in our lives.