As I can I want to offer a fresh word of encouragement sharing from my experience how our Father God meets us in the middle of loving and living out our faith to draw others to freedom.
I fully believe we are offered so much more than we ever experience as Christ followers. We settle for a life in bondage to the elemental nature of this world and continue to live as Hagar when in fact we are daughters of Sarah.
Galatians 4:31
31 So, brothers [and sisters], we are children not of the slave woman, but of the free woman.
-Callie
You are the ones who have stayed with me throughout my trials.
Just as my Father gave me the right to rule, so I give you an appointment,
namely, to eat and drink at my table in my Kingdom and to sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
Luke 22:28-30 CJB
"For I tell you this: the passage from the Tanakh that says, He was counted with transgressors, has to be fulfilled in me; since what is happening to me has a purpose."
Luke 22:37 CJB
process
verb (used with object)
verb (used without object)
to undergo the activities involved in hiring or firing personnel:The recruits expected to process in four days.
The words appointment and purpose jumped out at me as I read Luke 22. Jesus in preparation for the changes and challenges facing his followers set an appointment when they would meet again and see the ultimate purpose of the trials ahead. Jesus was exemplifying yielding to a process, that has a purpose leading to an ultimate appointment in His Kingdom. Process is a word we do not often care to hear. I have found myself in a renewal process after a long season of operating in crisis and hyper vigilance. It is not dissimilar to the process that we have lived out over many years with those living with us. This experience of yielding to authority, finding a healthy, healing rhythmn of life, and practicing new responses when faced with the unseen obstacles of abuse, trauma, hyper arousal, conflict, ...
Over the years I have observed most of the women we have walked with bucking at this and sabotaging their success because of the monotony, constancy and misunderstanding of the process and purpose of being changed, pruned, and living out a new life. Just as glass is put in the fire, tools are used to form and recreate what once was merely grains of sand into beautiful, delicate, reflective objects for practical use and for admiration so is the process of being made new in Christ. The question is "Am I willing to walk through this same process in my life? Am I willing to do what I have counseled and taught others? Am I aware that Jesus has given me an appointment and what I am yeilding to has a purpose?"
May you be willing to yield to the process! May you be encouraged that you have an appointment in His Kingdom!
May the Holy Spirit reveal to you the purpose!
John 6:67-6 (TPT)
67 So Jesus said to his twelve, “And you—do you also want to leave?”
68 Peter spoke up and said, “But Lord, where would we go? No one but you gives us the revelation of eternal life.
69 We’re fully convinced that you are the Anointed One, the Son of the Living God,[a] and we believe in you!”
There have been many points on this journey where the Lord has revealed a "hard teaching" much like what was shared in John 6, learning what it is to "eat His flesh and drink His blood". These hard lessons that come in the experiences of loss, hurt, the cost of loving hurting people, the cost of choosing to yield and submit, the cost of following Jesus.
My pregnancies and deliveries were all unique, just as unique as my children and each delivery came with a challenge. I had decided during my first pregnancy and delivery to do everything natural and with the exception of labor induction I had no medical interventions. In my second pregnancy and delivery it was much the same going through intense allergy symptoms, but a releatively quick delivery and struggle with post-partum. By the third pregnancy and delivery many factors had changed, our choice to be live-in house staff in a maternity housing program had greatly challenged and altered my eating habits, my time spent in exercise and preparation...I had other young moms and their children, volunteers and team members as well as my husband and daughters who all had part of my time, my schedule and my heart. I was learning the sacrifice and hard lesson of loving others over myself and with it came a great emotional and physical struggle that spilled into the circumstances and my readiness for the delivery. I felt unable to push through and asked for an epidural during the labor...for me it was a weak moment that caused more pain and discomfort and came with longer term discomforts and physical pain.
My choice to share my life with others deeply affected and challenged me. The birth was dramatic and the post-partum difficult but I had tasted and was convinced that God is good and this struggle was only temporary; looking back I knew that I would choose the hard path of doing life with others where Jesus led over the comfort of living life on my terms and in my control. In the middle of the delivery struggle I also knew that the delivery and birth of my baby was promised, there would be an end and the outcome was worth it.
I have had this experience again and again getting through a hard season of challenge and struggle [emotionally, physically, spirtually] then I get to the top and see the view and know that I am not going back. This new place I have been brought out to and what lies ahead is where I want to go following after the heart of Jesus.
May you be fully convinced that Jesus is the Son of the Living God! May you see the view ahead and not loose heart!
May you follow after the heart of Jesus!
Romans 4:6-8 (AMP)
6 And in this same way David speaks of the blessing on the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:
7
“Blessed and happy and favored are those whose lawless acts have been forgiven,
And whose sins have been covered up and completely buried.
8
“Blessed and happy and favored is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account nor charge against him.”
It snowed today. A beautiful ground, tree and building cover of white has settled in every direction. The beauty of the snow covered landscape was accented by sunshine and the promise of sledding and a playful puppy and cold but happy children. It is the cover of the snow that reminded me of how completely covered I am. That I am blessed and happy and favored!
There are many days and times when I have not realized that I am so. I spend more time thinking of how I am not blessed, how I am not happy and how I am not favored than I care to admit. It often takes a season of loss of control and change of perception for me to realize that God's blessing, God's happiness and God's favor are with me and have been even as I have walked through trials, transitions and training. I am reminded how even my anxious thoughts, my negative thinking, my eye on lack or failure cannot remove the beautiful snow covering and it will not melt into mud, mire and muck. {Isaiah 1:18}
The joys this week of enjoying the work of my hands, possible opportunity to serve a new maternity client, writing this simple blog and the ability to cook a meal with my family...these speak of blessing, happiness and favor. My sin, my failure, my lack are covered and completely buried. This blessing, happiness and favor are for me to share much like sharing in a beautiful, snow covered day and so I pray that you too will know this for yourself and share it with those whom you love and serve.
May you experience the blessing, happiness and favor of forgiveness! May you know for yourself that the Lord has covered you!
May you no longer listen to the lie that there is an account against you!
Luke 1:17 (NIV)
17 And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—
to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
You are a people prepared! You are ready to see the Lord work through you! You are in your place for a purpose!
Luke 1:17 caught my attention during our family bible reading leading up to Christmas. It caught my attention because it has been my heart cry. It is the prayer and promise that has propelled what my husband and I and countless others have been preparing and working for. Planning for the time and season when those ready to receive the word of the Lord in their distress, dysfunction and disunity would turn and need a place to learn the wisdom of the righteous and how to walk out of the darkness and into the light. Each housing ministry, pregnancy help organization, feet on the street, mercy ministry, evangelist effort, ...anywhere His body is allowing His Spirit to lead .... we are in process and are prepared. The time is now. The season has come. We are a people prepared for the Lord to move and call forth His treasure...each heart, each mind, each individual from prostitution, pornography, promiscuity...addiction, anxiety, anger...hurt, hunger, hardship and all the things that separate us.
We are prepared and in our places to walk alongside. To model what love looks like in good and bad times, in the messy and the joyous, in the beautiful and the ugly. To give voice, flesh and meaning to the Living Word that has come. How do I know this? How can I say this from behind this screen? How can you believe it even though all you see in front of you is hardness and pain? I know it because the Lord has promised it. He is drawing the lost, He is calling His people to be prepared, He has said it is time!
I have seen and spoken to those in deep darkness drawn to His light. I have heard the heart cry of those lost. I have witnessed the decision for help move from an instant need being met to the determination of making a long term change moving from living aimlessly to a life of purpose and hope. I have walked through dark seasons where death was calling, memories invading and no end in sight to the pain...yet always, always where the Spirit of the Lord is there IS freedom! [Galatians 5]
Stand in your place as a people prepared! Lock in for the long journey of growing up God's people! Walk as those who are Free!