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Showing posts with the label God's truth to fight the lies

How Long?

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I went on a biblical spelunking expotition ( think Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin ) this morning. I was looking for David’s plea of “how long”. I knew he’d raised it, because I know David throughout the Psalms is oh so much like me. In my quest for the verse pictured, I scampered among these other gems: “Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?” Psalm 2:1 “You have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer!” Psalm 4:1b “Give ear to my words, O LORD; consider my groaning.” Psalm 5:1 “My soul also is greatly troubled. But You, O LORD—how long? Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of Your steadfast love . . .” Psalm 6:3   “Why, O LORD, do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” Psalm 10:1  More confirmation of what the Spirit has been impressing on my heart all week. I am not alone in my  anxiety, in my pleas for answers, in my groanings, in my questions, in my confusion, or my wondering where God is in

BEHOLD the Beloved

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With so much time to think, I have been pondering and avoiding the pondering. How about you? Are you using this time to dig deep into your own soul and your inherent motivations for why you even do life the way you’ve chosen to do it? Are you asking yourself the tough questions? Delving into your own psyche and seeing how a time like this pandemic unveils the best and worst of who we are at our very cores? To be perfectly honest and keep this post gut-level real at its very ugliest, I have spent far more time contemplating my next quarantine snack than my core motivations. I’ve been self-focused on my own allergy-provoked sniffles and what they might mean beyond the seasonal pollen-ridden air, instead of seeking to check my heart and why I care so much about so many things that truly matter little in the grand scheme of who God created me to be in the first place. I have scrolled and jumped from one report to the next, one meme to the next, one complaining tirade to the nex

SLOW: Writing Challenge Day 5 with hope*writers

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“For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow , wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.” Habakkuk‬ ‭2:3‬ ‭ESV‬‬ God cannot be rushed. I get impatient at least once a day. Okay. Probably more often than that, especially if any of my day involves being behind the wheel and sharing the road with “slow” motorists. Without Jesus, I’d probably be a pretty rage-filled driver. With Him, I still beep my horn more frequently than some. All that to say . . . though I’m not one to like things to go slow; God has His own timetable. Let’s take  the pace of my healing post-divorce. I gave myself a bit for that. You know . . . a few months should have taken care of it, right?  I was married for more than 20 years, so an extended school-length vacation should have whipped me right back into shape, ready to tackle all things new?!?! As you can most likely guess, it has been quite a SLOW process instead. Patterns of thinki

DREAM: Day Four New Year Writing Challenge with hope*writers

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I used to think dreaming was a bit like this photo, complete with similar results. I would exhale my dreams out into the world. They’d then catch in the wind . . . only to drift away, settle in the soil, and become someone else’s weed — a virtual nuisance to the ones who caught them. This mindset is directly related to what I shared about feeling like I am too much, therefore it is a natural progression for me to believe my dreams are also way too much. What I have so often neglected to do with my dreams is leave them in the capable grip of the Dreamgiver. My Jesus is perfectly able to fulfill those very dreams He has placed in my heart. However, I am guilty of holding on to them myself, squashing them with my toddler-like fists, and somehow wondering why I feel undervalued and forgotten when I still see myself so far away from my dreams coming to fruition. How do I stop this spiral of unfulfilled dreams from continuing? One way is to identify what dreams I am choosing

LIGHT: Day Two of hope*writers New Year Writing Challenge

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Light. I struggle with feeling anything but light. From as far back as I can remember, someone in my family has had a poor relationship with food. I grew up in a household of diets and closets full of all the seasonal clothes in addition to all the sizes for every season. My parents each had their own self-image battles that ran the opposite ends of the weight spectrum.  The number of times I saw anyone stop and admire the reflection in the mirror amounted to a handful in the 22 + years I primarily resided with my dear parents.  My self esteem and relationship with my own reflection was shaped by what was modeled for me. I saw the critical eye of my parents, internalized their statements to and about themselves, listened to their judgments, and I deduced a number of things that ultimately shaped my thinking about myself for the rest of my life: I said too much ( I was sassy from word one ) I ate too much ( I got to a point of hating the feeling of being full )

NEW: hope*writers Challenge Day One

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New. Like new. Newborn. New again. Renew. All words and phrases tumbling around in my head as I try to wrap my brain around what the start of a new year has for me. As a youngster I found it a bit disappointing that though the fanfare of a new year was big, I woke up January 1 much the same as my December 31 self had gone to bed. Once deemed old enough, I joined in the fun of watching both Guy Lombardo’s New Year’s Eve special and the much cooler New Year’s Rocking Eve hosted by Dick Clark — with whom I was already acquainted from countless Saturday afternoons watching American Bandstand (the only acceptable segue from Saturday morning cartoons). As an adult, I am still a bit underwhelmed at the reality of awakening New Years Day with any significant change underway. The view from this side is slower to come into focus than I’d probably prefer. I wish I were better at switching gears. Unfortunately, the date on the calendar does NOT make everything I’d like to leave behind

Breaking in Our Armor

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Part Two: What is "customized" armor anyway? I mentioned the last time that our armor is customized. A friend of mine challenged me . . . four years ago now, to draw what I thought my armor might look like if God was designing it specifically for me. While this is a four-year-old pencil sketch I unearthed three years ago and colored -- rudimentary at best and with a need to tweak, maybe even paint on a canvas at some point -- the basic concept is still intact. The concept is this: God knows us. He knows exactly what we need and when we need it, right up to how He chooses to clothe us for battle every single day. He knows what we need to wear and what we need to "take up." I was reading a Priscilla Shirer devotional via @youversion on the armor of God. In it she says this (and so much more you can find in the full study), "In Ephesians 6, Paul conveys the belt, the breastplate, and shoes as a spiritual uniform that should be worn by believers at

We Can Be Perfectly Clothed

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Core Wounds. We all have them. No one escapes childhood without one or more of these core beliefs that shape and drive the way we approach and avoid throughout the rest of our entire lives. How do we go from eager, unassuming, adventurous toddlers to fearful, hesitant, sometimes paralyzed adults? I cannot unhear the things my parents unknowingly said that contributed to the haunting words and phrases still echoing in my mind more than 50 years later. It isn't their fault, and I cannot blame them for the enemy twisting their words to virtually strangle and suffocate me for decades. I cannot unsay those I said to contribute to the ones rattling around in the minds of my three adult children. It is not my fault or my responsibility to erase all the mistakes I made in the two-plus decades I've been a mama. I was not, nor am I able to heal the damage that's been done from my own mouth or the mouths of others with whom they've crossed paths in their steep clim

hope*writers Fall Writing Challenge Day 4 -- FOLLOW

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I often feel like this. I try to stand out but end up wanting to disappear altogether. If you mention the word "follow" I cringe. Though leading is far from my jam, I am not a great follower or one I think you'd want to follow. I often fade away entirely when called on to step forward to a place with everyone's eyes on me. I hear I need to have a "following" as a working writer who wants to eventually publish anything you can hold in your hands in book form, and I immediately hear this chorus of taunts rise up in unison and then break out in solos from within the fluff of my brain: You've made too many mistakes for anyone to follow you. You're divorced for goodness' sake. Why would anyone listen to what you have to say? You're too old. You're broken. You're messed up. You're not pretty enough. You're not thin enough. You're too much. You're not enough . . . From my perspective, I fall short in so

Strong Looks Like . . .

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I do NOT look strong. I am barely 5' tall even on my fluffiest hair day anymore. My image definitely ascribes to and lives out the following verse: "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is  wasting   away , our inner self is being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthian 4:16 ESV However, the pictured verse is where I will choose to camp for a moment today: "I ask the Father in His great glory to give you the power to be strong INWARDLY through His Spirit." Ephesians 3:16 NCV  Though my outward appearance and my own perspective of myself may indicate I have no strength or power on my own, I can ask the Father for that power through His Spirit. I can ASK for it. Inward strength. I firmly believe our Father is delighted when we recognize we can't do it. We have no strength on our own. We finally lie down at His feet and seek Him and His power. We admit we can't do it. I know I can't. I am a veritable weakling in my own strengt

Thursday Thanks Tank

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( a time to intentionally redirect my gaze and give testimony to the ways God blesses me) Good Morning! I'm not good at faking things. I have one of those faces and apparently even one of those texting styles that reveals my true thoughts in spite of the emojis I choose to tack on to the end of my full sentences. Yes, I am a " grammar girl " and text with case sensitivity and punctuation. ( You never know who might be watching, of course!) Back to my first comment . . . I'm not good at faking or pretending. I can't hide it if I'm not doing well or feel deflated. It's written all over my face and bleeds through into my writing. So, I am going to follow through with a commitment I made to myself in breathing life back into my blog.  I will intentionally take time at least once each week to give thanks for how God is filling my tank. He doesn't stop doing it just because I don't feel upbeat and grateful.  He doesn't

Sufficient

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SUFFICIENT ___________________________________________________ As with so many issues of the Christian life, I deal with the different way God and I tend to think. I find the verse above a comfort at first glance.  I like the part about "sufficient" but my finite mind and sometimes oftentimes stubborn heart wrestle with what God means by sufficient versus what I deem sufficient.  What if He doesn't think I need what I think I need? What if He thinks I can subsist and be content on a way different amount than I think I can? What if His determination of sufficient doesn't add up when it comes to the commitments I've already made? What if His numbers aren't the same as my numbers and those of the cumulative amount of my current bills? What then?  Again . . . what then? Does that mean He is not being sufficient? Does that mean He doesn't care about me?  Does that mean . . . He's forgotten me?  Let's read on

Faith Or Fear

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Some days are just like that, aren't they? You know the ones. You wake up simultaneously whispering "Jesus" and "what in the world am I going to do?" in the same ragged breath. You long to spout faithful treatises and flowery expressions of God's sovereignty. Yet all that comes out is a puff of empty air. You don't know what to pray. You don't know what else to say. Your neck hurts from hunkering down and pushing on through. Your sleep is sporadic, because though you said you'd leave it in the capable hands of the Lord; you've conjured up a thousand ways you could try to fix it all by yourself in the inky blackness of the night. You balance the desire for the darkness to stay like a comfortable invisibility cloak and an eagerness for the dawn to break and relieve you from all those night time tangle of thoughts that send the morning racing ahead without rest for your soul. "What comes with this new day?" you hesitantl

Thursday Thanks Tank

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( a time to intentionally redirect my gaze and give testimony to the ways God blesses me) I spoke briefly last Thursday about the sacrifice of praise.  "Through him then let us continually  of fer up a  sacrifice of   praise  to God, that is, the fruit  of  lips that acknowledge his name." Hebrews 13:15 ESV I am keenly aware of the way I currently look on paper. How the numbers DO NOT add up. How my month is exceeding my wealth financially. I have gotten more "no's" than the one "yes" I have longed to hear. Yet in all this, I know that I know God is still Who He says He is. God can STILL do what He says He can do. I am still who He says I am. His Word is STILL alive and active in me, my life, and in that of those lives around me who believe in Him, too.  So, though at moments throughout ALL of the last few days, weeks, and yes, months now since I have been employed in a full time fashion, I have felt slayed, abandoned, is