Fire-Starter or Harmony-Maker?

How often have we been told that to keep things all bottled up will cause us to explode eventually.  All that anger and frustration will just bubble over and burn an acidic route out of your mouth and heart and into your circumstances. 

To some extent I agree.  I do not believe we should harbor resentments and keep everything bottled up inside.  I do believe that we need to sometimes talk to someone trustworthy, someone who would counsel us and guide us with godly wisdom.  And, if there is not that someone, or you do not know who to trust, you can speak to God about it.  David spoke to God a whole lot!  One thing I am realizing though, the Word does not say "Let it all out!"  No, the Word says, "Let it all go!"

Colossians 3 vs 8 - 9:  (8) But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.  (9) Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices.

Paul tells us to put these things off, get rid of them, not let it all spill out of your heart.  He also then tells us to replace these vices with new ways:

Colossians 3 vs 12 - 14:  (12) Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, (13) bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  (14) And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

God wants us to let go the poisonous stuff that harms our hearts and souls, and those around us as that all overflows out of us and replace it with Colossians 3 vs 10:  And have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.  He wants us to replace those ugly characteristics with those that are of the Creator, or Jesus, our Lord and Savior. 

How do you do that?  Well, its not easy.  If it was so easy hatred and jealousy and all those things would not feature so much in our world would it? 

• It is a daily renewing of our minds in the Word of the Lord.  
• It is choosing to not conform to the ways of the world, but conform to the Word of the Lord.  
• It is choosing to let anger go, to let resentment go, to let jealousy and hatred go, and 
• to choose to love in its place.  
• Choose instead a word of kindness.  
• Choose to keep quiet instead of voicing your opinion or anger.  
• Choose to be slow to anger.  
• Choose to be understanding.  
• Choose to look at the other person and see into the eyes of someone God loves too.

All of this is possible only because God gives us His grace and mercy daily.  We on our own would not be able to maintain such choices.  It is only because of God that we can.


In the midst of your choosing, choose love:

1 Corinth 13 vs 4 - 7: 

• Love is patient and kind; 
• love does not envy or boast; 
• it is not arrogant or rude. 
• It does not insist on its own way; 
• it is not irritable or resentful; 
• it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, 
• but rejoices with the truth. 
• Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

We can with our words (which are tempered by what is in our hearts) start fires or create harmony.  Which do you want to be?  A fire-starter or a harmony-maker?

God bless
Tracy

How's that Attitude working for you?

Lately I have been spending a lot of time in my head mulling over all the bad stuff that has been happening and the people responsible for it.  Partly because I am tired of it and I want it to end already and partly because I suppose, deep down, the whole forgiveness thing is grinding on me in that I need to keep doing so.  For the old stuff and for the ongoing stuff (another post for another day no doubt).  So, yes, lots of unpleasantness going on in the brain.

However, this is not how God wants us to deal with stuff.

I read this recently:  Proverbs 15 vs 15:  All the days of the afflicted are evil, but he who is of a merry heart has a continual feast.

Truly, reading this has never made too much sense to me.  But this time I dug deeper.

What it basically means is that a negative person will always be in a negative space all their days.  They will always be on the short end of the stick, their "luck" will always be bad, they will always be the victim, people will always be mean to them.... basically, their perception of their day to day lives will lead to a lifetime of affliction, self-inflicted mostly.

Whereas, the positive person, because they choose joy, because they choose contentment, because they choose to focus on what is good, wholesome, lovely, of good report (Phil 4 vs 8), because they choose to see the good in people, and choose not to take offence, it will be as though their lives are in a place of continual "feast"/ happiness/ positivity, etc.  It is all about your attitude in your circumstances.

My bible's notes say: "Look at your attitudes and then examine what you allow to enter your mind and what you choose to dwell on. You may need to make some changes."

Having considered what that verse means, and having considered my bible's notes on the matter, the one word that literally jumped off the page for me was "DWELL"!  What am I dwelling on?

I have got to say that what I have been dwelling on has certainly tainted my "every day".  It has certainly tainted many of my conversations, and yes, to a degree, some of my decisions.

So it is with a humble and relieved heart that I now choose to "focus" on the Lord, His word, and all the good around me.  Instead of all the muck that pulls one into a life "afflicted with evil"!

I hope this has encouraged you too, to look up at the Lord and focus on Him and the good and beautiful He has placed in your life and environment, instead of the filth the devil wants you to focus on!

God bless
Tracy

Confidence in God's Word

Sometimes it seems like what God said He would do is never going to come to pass.  You feel like everything just remains the same and the evil that those perpetrate against you just keeps on keeping on.

Last night I came to a place in myself where I had to make a decision.  Am I going to focus on my circumstances, or am I going to focus on Jesus, on what He says, and trust Him regardless of how things look right now?  So... of course I am going to trust Jesus.

I am reminded of Job, where in his most desperate moments he chooses to trust God regardless.

Then we have the man in Psalms who could not understand why the evil man prospers in his ways.  But God showed him their end and he was saddened for them.
(Psalm 73 vs 12 -17: (12) Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.
(13) All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  (14) For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.  (15) If I had said, “I will speak thus,” I would have betrayed the generation of your children.  (16) But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, (17) until I went into the sanctuary of God;  then I discerned their end.)

And lately the Lord has been bringing lots of scriptures my way that encourage me that those who try to hurt others will not get away with their lies, their deceit, and their actions.  Here are but a few:

Prov 3 vs 25 - 26:  Do not be afraid of sudden terror or of the ruin of the wicked, when it comes, (26) for the Lord will be your confidence and will keep your foot from being caught.

Prov 11 vs 8:  The righteous is delivered from trouble, and the wicked walks into it instead.

Prov 11 vs 21:  Be assured, an evil person will not go unpunished, but the off-spring of the righteous will be delivered.

Prov 11 vs 27:  Whoever diligently seeks good seeks favour, but evil comes to him who searches for it!  
If someone is deliberately and consciously seeking to hurt or destroy someone, deliberately lying about someone, deliberately being a false witness, the hole they dig for someone else, they themselves WILL fall into.  God will not be mocked.  His waiting is His grace extended to them.  But eventually, that time will run out.


In Proverbs and Psalms there are plenty scriptures about what the Lord will do to those who hand themselves over to evil.  But He does not want my focus to be on them.  I (and you) are to leave them to God.  They are His problem.  These scriptures next, remind me where my focus should be:

Prov 4 vs 25:  Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you.
Do not look at your circumstances, or worldly solutions, look only to God and His word

Prov 4 vs 27:  Do not swerve to the right or to the left, turn your foot away from evil.
Don't look to the world or yourself to resolve things that only the Lord can resolve!

I hope that I have encouraged you if you feel that you just cannot hang in there anymore.  You can!  Because God is your strength and the battle is His and not yours.

God bless
Tracy

My One Word for 2019 - Surrender!

My Word for 2019! For 2018 my One Word for the year has been ABIDE, and truly, I have tried very hard to abide in God's word.  I would say I did okay, but of course, being human, I did fail occasionally!  Do I think it made a huge difference in my life?  Well, on a day to day basis, maybe not in ways that I can see but certainly overall, I have noticed some changes.

For example, as I go through the Bible again, I am reading stuff in there that NEVER caught my attention before.  Just the other day, I was reading about Moses giving the 10 Commandments from God to the Israelites.  I always assumed Moses brought these to the people.  I never realized that God actually spoke the 10 Commandments to the people, prior to Moses bringing the tablets down to them (Exodus 20). That astounded me.

Another example, someone close to me told me off and said some really mean things, for something they felt I should have done, or handled differently and in how I did things, this person felt rejected and hurt.  I knew that they were speaking out of their own experiences and their own hurts.  They were trying to wound with things that would have wounded me in the past, with the intention of moving me to act as they would have me, or make me do something rash to make them feel differently about me.  But, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace.  I did not feel manipulated into an unwise action, even though I believe that was their intent.  I did not believe what they said about me to be true.  I had confidence in that moment, that what they were saying was not truth and I truly felt unmoved.  I mean unmoved in being hurt and manipulated and in my belief of who I am in Christ.  Not unmoved, in feeling no sympathy for them and their response.  I was not wounded by their words.  THAT, I believe, has come from ABIDING in God's word.  It is nothing that I have done differently.  I have not been telling myself in the mirror every day that I am acceptable and worthy, no!  It has come from abiding in God's word, and He has wrought that change from inside.

So, another new year is just around the corner and I see others are posting their "One Word for the Year" posts and it got me to thinking about what it is that I feel needs the most attention spiritually in my life...  I mulled over it for a bit.  I considered where I am standing right now in my walk.  What goes on in my thoughts?  What unnerves me and ties me up in knots?

I think, for me, its that I don't feel like my faith, what I read in God's word, the truth that I know from past experience, is translating into my attitude.  I'm not sure if that makes sense.  What I mean is, if everything feels as though it is going wrong today, my go to emotion is frustration, anger at the Lord, annoyance, feeling that my little problems are obviously NOT important to God (and thus I am unimportant to Him).... See where I am going with this?  My attitude sucks!!!  

I thought then that maybe "attitude" ought to be my word for the year.  But I felt God wanted me to press in deeper.  Changing my attitude is/can be an act of my will, something I can practice and that is not a bad thing.  But, I want that change to come from inside and become part of who I am.  So that, when circumstances suck - my attitude doesn't!  The word that came to mind is......

SURRENDER

I can only imagine SURRENDER is not going to be easy!  But I also feel in surrendering myself to God, surrendering myself to His truth, to His faithfulness, to His grace and mercy, surrendering myself to His will, will have changes so monumental in me, that my attitude will be forever changed.

So, my "One Word" for the previous years have been:
2018 - Abide

2017 - Consistency

2016 - Choice

2015 - Wisdom

2014 - Joy

2013 - Trust

2012 - Content

And now, for 2019, my "One Word for the Year" is SURRENDER!

Surrender encompasses so many facets

• Trust
• Faith
• Dependence
• Humility
• Speaking what is truth despite what is circumstance

I am sure there is more to this list.  My goal for 2019 is to work on SURRENDERING all to Christ and learning all the facets of that because my relationship with Jesus is what gives me life and I want my life and how I live it to bring attention to Christ and His saving grace.  I can't do that with a bad attitude!

What is your one word for 2019?

God bless

Tracy