People will often attempt to refute the existence of a loving God because in their limited human capacity, they cannot logically wrap their minds around the concept that he can exist amidst a world filled with so much suffering. We don’t argue or question the existence of suffering in the world. Suffering is something we know to be true because we see it all around us, we feel it, we experience it personally, and therefore it becomes a reality. But what if God’s Goodness was something you could experience in the same way? What if his goodness became such an intense reality that we could not argue it or dispute it? How do you live in that kind of paradoxical reality? That is what happened to me; I experienced Gods unimaginable goodness amidst a world plagued by suffering and thus began the journey to discovery how it all works together and what implications does that have on my future.
The thing is that we are human, and while God has given us the ability to think, analyze and reason, we can never fully see thing s through the lens of eternity. God exists outside the limits of time. Our past, present and future are all viewed equally and simultaneously because God is eternal and in his domain time does not exist. He knows where we have been, where we are now and where we are going.
God is bigger than the suffering that goes on in this world. While he could step in at any moment and sovereignly put an end to it, more often than not he will choose to use people to be his hands and his feet. Why did he choose to do it this way? I can’t answer that, however there are a few things I am learning that help me to understand things better.
I often struggle with the concept of free will; it’s something that makes my head spin and my brain hurt. But I look at it this way…if you forced someone to marry you and love you, how much would their love be worth? God has given us choices and ultimately I do believe we have free will. We were created to love God, to know him and be used by him. But he gave us the ability to choose NOT to love him, because only then does his love have any real value. God didn’t want a world full of robots, so he gave us a choice. So what happens to a world full of people who were created to love God, to know him and be known by him, but fail to understand what they were created for? In every human heart God has placed a hunger to be known and loved. It’s more than a hunger, it’s a need. The root of suffering is a need that goes unmet, which then spirals out of control. People go through their lives knowing there is something missing; they spend their entire lives searching for something else to fill that void that only the love of God can fill. The harder people search and seek outside themselves, the more suffering prevails. What ends up happening is you get a population of hurting, broken people, but that’s not the way that God intended for it to be. He is looking for people who are willing to partner with him to attack the suffering through his goodness. To show people who they really are and who they were created to be.
Now I don’t want to insinuate that world change can only come about by people who know God. There are plenty of people in the world who do not know God and they have a heart to see an end to suffering. There are people that make a huge positive impact on society who don’t believe in God at all. But people will always be limited in what they can achieve on human effort alone in the simple fact that they only have eyes to see what is in front of them. Hayfords Bible handbook states it this way, “Time is like a parade that man sees only a segment at a time. But God sees time in it’s entirety.” Without knowing God, you can address a need, you can promote a cause, but you are still limited to only being able to see that one segment of the parade. When you decide to partner with God, he actually gives you eyes to see through the lens of eternity. He gives you divine insight into people’s hearts, how he has created them, how he wants to use them and how to set them free. You are treating not just the symptom, but the disease itself. The amazing thing is that God has the ability to take the worst suffering in our lives and use it for the good, enabling us to make a huge impact in the lives of others.
For school I had to choose from one of the many options of various outreaches where we would basically go out into the community and share the love of God with people. Our goal wasn’t to go out and preach religion or convert people; it was simply to be a living example of God’s love. I prayed over which outreach God wanted me to be a part of and decided on one that reaches out to women in a drug rehab facility. Having grown up around addiction, I really have a heart to see people set free. There were times growing up when I would cry out to God asking him how he could allow something so painful and so destructive to tear apart my family. No rehab, treatment facility, medication or therapy could fix my family until God stepped in and changed everything. Out of that suffering I have a huge testimony of Gods goodness and his ability to restore that which was thought at one point to be irreparable. I sat in this room of about 25 women and I could barely contain my emotions. These were women with amazing gifts, women with potential, women with destinies. In that moment, I knew God had a plan and a purpose behind every negative thing that had every happened to me. He redeemed my suffering by allowing me to be an instrument of hope to these women. The Hebrew root for the word “testimony” is “do again.” I realized that in sharing my testimony with these women it was a prophetic declaration that what God did for me, he would do again for them. And in that moment the paradox of a the goodness of God amidst a world of suffering began to make complete sense to me. I realized that this is what I was created for; to bring the goodness of God into the darkest places so that God can redeem it with his love, seeing both what lies behind and what lies ahead. This was only day one of my outreach, but as I hugged these women goodbye, with tears and hope in their eyes, I knew I was exactly where God wanted me to be. I was flooded with the revelation that no matter what I faced, God knew where I was going, and if I only listen to his voice; he will lead me where he desires, for he is a good God.
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.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Where's Your Focus?
I have been listening to a lot of teachings and doing a lot of reading over the past month here. I wish I had heard some of these things a long time ago, it would have saved me a lot of unnecessary pain and heartache. I wanted to just share some things I read in a workbook I am working through called, “Basic Training for the Supernatural ways of Royalty” by Kris Vallotton. The workbook goes along with the actual book which I have yet to read; but the concept is understanding your identify as a redeemed child of God. Basically, it teaches you how to walk out who you were created to be rather than submitting to the standards that the world tells you to live by. I’m just going to pull portions directly from the book, because it’s so good, Kris is talking about what we believe becoming our reality…
“The first principle of belief to consider is this: that which you focus on will determine your reality. Every day, all day long, our minds are receiving information from the world around us and interpreting our experiences. Our minds filter out that which we have learned to be irrelevant and enable us to focus in on what is most important. ..”
He goes on to talk about the connection between our imaginations, our thoughts and our hearts.
“ That which fills our daydreams and our thoughts - that which is important to us - is connected to the heart, which is the seat of our emotions and desires…This explains why whatever we focus on will become our reality, for that which captures our attention, focus, and imagination will fill our hearts, that which fills our hearts will fill our lives, for life flows from the heart.”
“What I am realizing about many of us is that we spend much of our lives reacting to what we don’t want to be instead of responding to the call of God on our lives. We waste a lot of energy trying not to be something. In order to not be something, I have to keep it in front of me so I can avoid it. The crazy thing is that I reproduce what I imagine. If I see what I don’t want to be, just envisioning it causes me to reproduce it…we break out of this prison by responding to the call of God on our lives and meditating on his vision for us.”
Here he is specifically talking about bitterness and jealousy…
“The point here is that as long as our focus is locked on what we or other people have done or not done, our focus cannot be locked on what we care called to do and what God is doing. Forgiveness is a vital step in repenting of our wrong focus. The lie we believe when we fixate on that which other people have done or have not done to us, as well as that which we have done or not done, is that these things are a greater reality than the reality of that which God has done or will do for us.”
After reading this, I really started to pay attention to what I allowed to consume my thoughts. It says in proverbs 4:23 "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." After reading this, I realized that guarding my heart actually begins in my mind. What I allow to penetrate my thoughts will eventually penetrate my heart, and my heart determines the course of my life. We don't typically consider this when we start to relive the past in our minds, or focus on how we've been hurt, or worry about what someone might be thinking about us. It’s one thing to have a fleeting thought, we’re only human. You might not be responsible for the fleeting thought, but you are responsible for whether you choose to entertain it for an extended period of time. Kris talks about the irony of us actually reproducing the very thing we are trying to avoid. Often times we end up thinking ourselves into a state of discouragement, insecurity or anxiety that actually results in missing the solutions to problems when they come; keeping us trapped in situations we are desperate to be freed from. You can usually determine whether something is worth focusing on by the fruit of those thoughts. Does it solve a problem? Make you feel good about yourself? Make you anxious? Give you hope? Does thinking about this make me feel closer to God or further away from God? I would challenge you to take notice of what happens when you make a conscious decision to change your focus. The battle is won in the mind.
"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done." - Philippians 4:6
“The first principle of belief to consider is this: that which you focus on will determine your reality. Every day, all day long, our minds are receiving information from the world around us and interpreting our experiences. Our minds filter out that which we have learned to be irrelevant and enable us to focus in on what is most important. ..”
He goes on to talk about the connection between our imaginations, our thoughts and our hearts.
“ That which fills our daydreams and our thoughts - that which is important to us - is connected to the heart, which is the seat of our emotions and desires…This explains why whatever we focus on will become our reality, for that which captures our attention, focus, and imagination will fill our hearts, that which fills our hearts will fill our lives, for life flows from the heart.”
“What I am realizing about many of us is that we spend much of our lives reacting to what we don’t want to be instead of responding to the call of God on our lives. We waste a lot of energy trying not to be something. In order to not be something, I have to keep it in front of me so I can avoid it. The crazy thing is that I reproduce what I imagine. If I see what I don’t want to be, just envisioning it causes me to reproduce it…we break out of this prison by responding to the call of God on our lives and meditating on his vision for us.”
Here he is specifically talking about bitterness and jealousy…
“The point here is that as long as our focus is locked on what we or other people have done or not done, our focus cannot be locked on what we care called to do and what God is doing. Forgiveness is a vital step in repenting of our wrong focus. The lie we believe when we fixate on that which other people have done or have not done to us, as well as that which we have done or not done, is that these things are a greater reality than the reality of that which God has done or will do for us.”
After reading this, I really started to pay attention to what I allowed to consume my thoughts. It says in proverbs 4:23 "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life." After reading this, I realized that guarding my heart actually begins in my mind. What I allow to penetrate my thoughts will eventually penetrate my heart, and my heart determines the course of my life. We don't typically consider this when we start to relive the past in our minds, or focus on how we've been hurt, or worry about what someone might be thinking about us. It’s one thing to have a fleeting thought, we’re only human. You might not be responsible for the fleeting thought, but you are responsible for whether you choose to entertain it for an extended period of time. Kris talks about the irony of us actually reproducing the very thing we are trying to avoid. Often times we end up thinking ourselves into a state of discouragement, insecurity or anxiety that actually results in missing the solutions to problems when they come; keeping us trapped in situations we are desperate to be freed from. You can usually determine whether something is worth focusing on by the fruit of those thoughts. Does it solve a problem? Make you feel good about yourself? Make you anxious? Give you hope? Does thinking about this make me feel closer to God or further away from God? I would challenge you to take notice of what happens when you make a conscious decision to change your focus. The battle is won in the mind.
"Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done." - Philippians 4:6
Saturday, October 9, 2010
A Drop from the Head to the Heart...
So I have put off writing for a number of reasons. One, I am learning and experiencing so much, it’s difficult to collect and condense my thoughts, emotions and revelations in to a blog-friendly piece of writing. There is a long trail of events, struggles and breakthroughs and I would love to share them all…but you have to start somewhere right? I’m going to start with Psalm 37:23...
“The Lord directs the steps of the Godly. He DELIGHTS in every detail of their lives.”
Now a common theme since I've arrived at Bethel seems to be that God more than just loves his children, he delights in them. It was easy for me to believe God loved me, but delighted in me? I had a hard time with that. There are people you love, but it's almost because you have to. You don’t necessarily delight in everybody you love. I think I always saw God as loving me because he had to, even though I didn't really deserve it. I never imagined God delighted in me. I was really struggling with fear and anxiety the first two weeks I was here. I ended up having a conversation with the people I live with and one of them said, “ I feel like this is going to be a year of really discovering your core beliefs about God; how you see him and how you believe he sees you.” I realized how crucial what you believe about God and the way that he sees you is, because everything you do flows out of that belief. Do you believe God is actually good all the time? Do you believe he loves you desperately? Do you believe he actually delights in you? I almost felt crushed beneath the burden of my own logic and my false beliefs about God. I went to my bedroom after that conversation and decided to write down verses in the bible that talk about God delighting in me. I thought, "This is so cheesy, but something's gotta change."
Psalm 37:23
“The Lord directs the steps of the Godly. He DELIGHTS in every detail of their lives.”
Psalm 149:4
“For the Lord DELIGHTS in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.”
Zephaniah 3:17
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great DELIGHT in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
I went to school the next day and the teaching was on prophesy. At the end of the teaching, Kris (the one teaching) had us all stand up and partner off with someone we didn't know, hold hands, pray, and ask God for a prophetic word for that person. So this guy is holding my hands and we're praying and then he starts laughing and says, "Okay, I got a clear word from God! He really wants you to know that he delights in you! That this is just a season where he wants to hold you in his arms and show you what that means." I could tell from the intensity in this kids eyes he had just heard the voice of God so clearly it actually shocked him. THEN we break into revival groups and we do this exercise where we each write our name on a piece of card board and then they collect all the pieces and pass them out again, name down, so you cant see whose it is. Our revival group pastor tells us to ask God for a prophetic word and write it on the card board and then pass it to our right, and continue doing that until they have made it all the way around the room. I was thinking, "This is stupid." But I really asked God to give me words and I wrote whatever I heard on every piece of cardboard. For one I heard "Delight" so I wrote it down. Then they collected them and passed them back to us. When I got mine back, I flip it over and saw the word DELIGHT, in my own hand writing...I had written it on my own piece not knowing it was mine! At this point I can actually sense a shift happening on the inside. For the next two days I felt so overwhelmed with a feeling I can only compare to falling in love. It changes everything; how you view yourself, how you view others, how you view your problems and the future. I went to worship last night and I couldn't stop smiling. I was thinking "Wow, you actually do delight in me..." As I am thinking this, they start playing Cory Asbury's song "Where I belong" The bridge of that song just repeats, "Delight in me, delight in me, delight in me." I felt like my heart was going to explode, I had never experienced anything like it before in my life. My heart came into a new understanding of what my logic was trying to argue. Nobody could have convinced me with scripture or theology, I needed the experience. Experience unlocks mystery, it allows us to perceive things with our whole beings rather than just our minds. It doesn't take believing something to experience it. It simply takes wanting to believe something, and the willingness to say "Okay God, show me...I need to know this for myself." So ask God how he sees you, you will be surprised at his willingness to show you. You are in for the experience of a lifetime!
“The Lord directs the steps of the Godly. He DELIGHTS in every detail of their lives.”
Now a common theme since I've arrived at Bethel seems to be that God more than just loves his children, he delights in them. It was easy for me to believe God loved me, but delighted in me? I had a hard time with that. There are people you love, but it's almost because you have to. You don’t necessarily delight in everybody you love. I think I always saw God as loving me because he had to, even though I didn't really deserve it. I never imagined God delighted in me. I was really struggling with fear and anxiety the first two weeks I was here. I ended up having a conversation with the people I live with and one of them said, “ I feel like this is going to be a year of really discovering your core beliefs about God; how you see him and how you believe he sees you.” I realized how crucial what you believe about God and the way that he sees you is, because everything you do flows out of that belief. Do you believe God is actually good all the time? Do you believe he loves you desperately? Do you believe he actually delights in you? I almost felt crushed beneath the burden of my own logic and my false beliefs about God. I went to my bedroom after that conversation and decided to write down verses in the bible that talk about God delighting in me. I thought, "This is so cheesy, but something's gotta change."
Psalm 37:23
“The Lord directs the steps of the Godly. He DELIGHTS in every detail of their lives.”
Psalm 149:4
“For the Lord DELIGHTS in his people; he crowns the humble with victory.”
Zephaniah 3:17
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great DELIGHT in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
I went to school the next day and the teaching was on prophesy. At the end of the teaching, Kris (the one teaching) had us all stand up and partner off with someone we didn't know, hold hands, pray, and ask God for a prophetic word for that person. So this guy is holding my hands and we're praying and then he starts laughing and says, "Okay, I got a clear word from God! He really wants you to know that he delights in you! That this is just a season where he wants to hold you in his arms and show you what that means." I could tell from the intensity in this kids eyes he had just heard the voice of God so clearly it actually shocked him. THEN we break into revival groups and we do this exercise where we each write our name on a piece of card board and then they collect all the pieces and pass them out again, name down, so you cant see whose it is. Our revival group pastor tells us to ask God for a prophetic word and write it on the card board and then pass it to our right, and continue doing that until they have made it all the way around the room. I was thinking, "This is stupid." But I really asked God to give me words and I wrote whatever I heard on every piece of cardboard. For one I heard "Delight" so I wrote it down. Then they collected them and passed them back to us. When I got mine back, I flip it over and saw the word DELIGHT, in my own hand writing...I had written it on my own piece not knowing it was mine! At this point I can actually sense a shift happening on the inside. For the next two days I felt so overwhelmed with a feeling I can only compare to falling in love. It changes everything; how you view yourself, how you view others, how you view your problems and the future. I went to worship last night and I couldn't stop smiling. I was thinking "Wow, you actually do delight in me..." As I am thinking this, they start playing Cory Asbury's song "Where I belong" The bridge of that song just repeats, "Delight in me, delight in me, delight in me." I felt like my heart was going to explode, I had never experienced anything like it before in my life. My heart came into a new understanding of what my logic was trying to argue. Nobody could have convinced me with scripture or theology, I needed the experience. Experience unlocks mystery, it allows us to perceive things with our whole beings rather than just our minds. It doesn't take believing something to experience it. It simply takes wanting to believe something, and the willingness to say "Okay God, show me...I need to know this for myself." So ask God how he sees you, you will be surprised at his willingness to show you. You are in for the experience of a lifetime!
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