EPIPHANIES!!

There have only been two major “epiphany” moments in my life – two times when I have literally been stopped in my tracks and have had to re-evaluate the way I think and behave and the consequences of those thoughts and behaviour. 

This morning I had my third epiphany moment!

I struggle with the concept of grace:  ‘the free and unmerited favour of God shown towards man’.  I also struggle with the concept of unconditional love.  The fact that there is no limitation on God’s love for us and that there is nothing we can do to make Him love us more or less.

In the back of my mind I always have this little voice saying ‘who do you think you are to believe that God, the maker and ruler of the universe, would be interested in you?”

As I grow older and my relationship with God develops the little voice has grown fainter but every now and again when I lose self-control and allow the uglier side of my nature to emerge it shouts out “you are such a failure, so worthless!”

I identify so much with the sentiment expressed by Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher who lived in the 16^th century when he said “I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself”.

Well, my third epiphany occurred this morning when I read the following words:

 “Why are you downcast, O my soul?” (Psalm 43:5)

Is there ever any reason to be downcast?  Actually, there are two reasons, but only two.  If we were still unbelievers, we would have a reason to be downcast; or if we have been converted but continue to live in sin, we are downcast as a consequence.

Except for these two conditions, there is never a reason to be downcast, for everything else may be brought to God “by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving” (Philippians 4:6).  And through all our times of need, difficulty and trials, we may exercise faith in the power and love of God.”

(Streams in the Desert, L.B. Cowman)

The truth in these words struck me forcefully.  It is when I feel like a sinner that my soul is downcast.  When I know that I am thinking or behaving in a way that does not please God my spirit withers inside me.  When I go against God’s dictate of “love one another” and insist on getting my own way or feel superior to someone or judge someone my soul becomes downcast.

During very difficult and trying times in my life I have known God’s peace and His comfort, the peace “which transcends all understanding” and my soul has not been downcast – my soul has been comforted by His words as I have prayed to Him.

My soul is only downcast when I sin.  It is entirely my responsibility and my choice to have a downcast soul.  As soon as we let go of that habit or behaviour which we know is wrong for us and hand it to God and put our hope in God we will find peace and joy again for our souls.

The problem with that, however, is the fact that it is just so much easier to carry on behaving the way we always have (never mind the consequences!). To change requires a lot of energy and effort but if we persevere we can be confident that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion”.

Good habits result from resisting temptation. --Ancient Proverb

The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken. --Samuel Johnson

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS!!

I have decided that for the next year I am going to wake up every morning and take God at His word!  I am going to LIVE in the knowledge that His plans for me are good. He has plans to prosper me and not to harm me, plans to give me hope and a future.

I am going to believe that ‘the grace of our Lord has been poured out on me abundantly, along with faith and love’ (1Timothy 14).  I am going to live in the knowledge that ‘the Lord longs to be gracious to me’ (Isaiah 30:18).

The verse that I have chosen to accompany me on my journey is found in Deuteronomy 11:11&12 “But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven.  It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end”.

Biblically the River Jordan represents freedom from slavery – freedom from bad habits and attitudes.  It represents deliverance and cleansing and is the transition from sin to righteousness.

TODAY I am choosing to cross my River Jordan and to live in God’s righteousness and His grace.  I choose to believe that my sins are forgiven and that ‘God will remember them no more’ (Jeremiah 31:34) AND I am going to stop constantly reminding God of my failures!

My prayer for all of us this year is that we will we live in the ‘land of mountains and valleys (ups and downs, happiness and sorrows, death and life) but that we will remember that this land drinks rain from heaven’ we are living in the ‘land that the Lord our God cares for’ and that we will know that the ‘eyes of the Lord our God are continually on us from the beginning of the year to its end’.

Gods Promise for Families

TURNING FIFTY!

Forty years old

The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life  -  Cassius Clay aka Muhammad Ali

In a few weeks’ time I will be turning fifty years old – I will have lived on this earth for half a century.  As I reflect on the past ten years I realize how much I have grown spiritually and emotionally and how much baggage I have managed to dump on the roadside of life in the past decade.

I have started to like myself and to make friends with who I am. I am finding that I don’t really care so much anymore if I leave the house without having made my bed or done the dishes. I am developing patience and my feelings of empathy and compassion are far deeper now than they were when I turned forty.  I am really beginning to enjoy being a mother and am starting to truly appreciate the fact that I actually have the most amazing children!  They are unique and wonderful.  They make me laugh and they make me cry and they are the reason that I have such a close relationship with God – I spend hours praying for them!

I also realize how blessed I am that after 21 years of marriage my husband is still my best friend and we are still in love with each other.

A decade ago God gave me a prophesy which is being fulfilled on a daily basis.

“I began reading Exodus prior to turning forty years old.  I was filled with a sense of excitement; this was going to be the year I started to fulfil my dreams, straighten out my life, and let go of past hurts to become the person God intended.

On the morning of my birthday, I told my husband what a wonderful feeling it was to be forty years old, how I was going to release the burdens from my past and start trusting God to equip me for the future.

Shortly after I declared this, our eight-year-old daughter walked into the room.  “You know, Mommy,” she said, “God let the Israelites wander in the desert for forty years then brought them out of the desert into the Promised Land.  You are forty today”.  (Extract from God’s Promise for Families)

A few weeks ago God gave me another prophecy for the next decade, this time via Pastor Victoria Idoko.  I attended a talk she gave on “Secrets of a glorious destiny” and when she had finished speaking she started prophesying into people’s lives.  I was one of those people.

She took my hands and repeated the word ‘fulfilment’ four times.

She then prophesied that God will fulfil my expectations.

“My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my EXPECTATION is from Him.

He only is my rock and my salvation;

He is my defense; I shall not be moved.

In God is my salvation and my glory;

The rock of my strength, and my refuge, is in God

Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before Him;

God is a refuge for us.”   Psalm 62:5-8

My expectation for the next decade is for God to continue to show me who I am in Him.  To help me to continue growing into the woman He created me to be.

My expectation is that He will fulfill the prophecies that have been spoken over my life about being a speaker and a writer and bringing His word of healing, hope and encouragement to others.

THE END OF THE TUNNEL

Imagine yourself a silent witness to the humiliation that Jesus was subjected to before his death.  The soldiers stripped him of his clothes, put a crown of thorns upon his head and mocked him. They spat on him and took a stick and struck him again and again on the head.  Prior to this he had been slapped and hit with fists and flogged.

Now, imagine Jesus standing there and in his mind’s eye he is looking through a tunnel into the future, thousands of years into the future and he is focused on one person at the end of the tunnel.  As he stands there with spit and blood running down his face, enduring the pain of being brutally hit and mocked, all he can think about is this person at the end of the tunnel.

The person he is looking at is a murderer and an adulterator, an alcoholic, a thief and a liar, someone full of pride and envy, someone who is destroying their lives by cutting themselves, starving themselves or throwing up after every meal because they think it will make them feel better.  The person is a sadist, cannot control their temper and lashes out at people, verbally and physically.  The person has so many hidden sins it is unbelievable. The person he is thinking of doesn't even believe in God and thinks of themselves as being a decent human being.  He is concentrating so hard on this person in an effort to blot out what is happening to him and he is repeating to himself “I will endure this, I will willingly go through being nailed to a cross and being separated from my Father in heaven if it means that that person has a chance of asking for forgiveness, of being forgiven and of being able to spend eternity with God and me”.

Jesus knows that the only chance that person has of having a relationship with God is through his death and resurrection because God cannot accept a sinner into heaven and have His kingdom tainted with sin.

He knows that the only chance that person has is for him to die on the cross – to take that person’s sin upon his body, to have those sins nailed to the cross and to die for that person in the hope that that person will accept him into their lives, confess their sins and because of the blood that he shed on the cross they could be forgiven and so enter into a relationship with God.

Jesus would be the bridge between this person and God.

“Forgiveness is the divine miracle of grace. The cost to God was the Cross of Christ.  To forgive sin, while remaining a holy God, this price had to be paid.” (Oswald Chambers)

You are the person at the end of the tunnel. You are the person that Jesus looked at.  You are the person Jesus died for.

I AM THAT PERSON

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.   John 3:16

LIFE, DEATH AND ANSWERED PRAYER

DANIEL KYLE 

26/09/1961 - 17/11/2013

Daniel came into our lives in the year 2007.  

We had often seen him before at church but never actually spoken to him.

We were at a church camp and Daniel was having a smoke break outside and Steve happened to be standing alongside him.  They started talking and during the course of the conversation Daniel told him that he was far lonelier in the church than he had ever been whilst living on the streets.  Yet, he would later acknowledge, how within the church body, God blessed him.  The church needed him and he needed the church.

Steve invited him to come have supper with us and to do a Bible study after supper.

The following Wednesday Daniel arrived and for the next 5 years (apart from school holidays or when we were away) Daniel came and had supper with us every 2^nd Wednesday of the month until he married Cheryl.

Daniel longed to have someone to love and to share his life with, so for five years we prayed for God to fulfill the desire of Daniel’s heart and God did.  He brought Cheryl into Daniel’s life.  One of the happiest days of our lives was when we witnessed the two of them getting married in our church.

Daniel became a part of our family.  He loved my mom and was very fond of my brother Paul.  They accepted him and treated him as a member of the family and this meant the world to Daniel.

At the supper table Daniel would tell us stories about his life and we and the girls would listen with fascination as he told us what it had been like growing up as an orphan in foster homes, Marsh Memorial Home and St Johns Home. He had spent many years living on the streets and moving from town to town and the sharing of his story of this time exposed us to a way of life that we knew nothing about. He once said to us that apart from a Christmas meal at our minister’s house, we were the first family he had ever eaten a meal with – a mother, father and children all sitting around a table together eating and talking. He was 46 years old.

He brought a new depth into our lives and we started to see the world from a different perspective.  He had compassion for those less fortunate than him and he was an incredibly generous person. I will never view beggars in the same light again after having a conversation with him one night.  I had shared how I did not know how to react to the beggars on the road especially the ones that swamped the car as soon as it stopped at a red traffic light.  We have always been told not to give food or money as this just enables folks to stay on the street and the money is often used for substances that are detrimental to them.  Daniel told me that the only thing I had to do was give them their dignity.  I had to acknowledge them as people, make eye contact, smile and ask them how they were doing.  I have found that about 85% of the folks I greet in this manner always respond positively and with great surprise. 

Daniel had a lovely sense of humor and the gift of being able to laugh at himself.  He challenged us to think about and accept people from his background and with his condition and struggles.

Daniel loved writing!  In fact he wrote copious notes.  He loved and worshiped and feared God.  He was not afraid to question God or get upset with Him and often felt deeply disappointed by God.  But through all his fears and doubts he knew that God did love him and care for him and on the 3^rd July this year, a few months before he died, he wrote the following in a piece entitled DO YOU KNOW YOUR GOD?

“Why trust in the gold and riches of today, while tomorrow it may be gone?  Why spend your time and wealth on food that does not satisfy the soul?  But rather feed on wisdom, that fills your appetite for truth and life into Eternity, where there is no death nor sorrow nor pain!  For life thrives on the unity of truth, grace, mercy and love for one to another.”

We will miss you Daniel.

"A friend loves at all times"       Proverbs 17:17

PARENTING - A THANKLESS JOB!

This morning after I had dropped my children off at school the thought crossed my mind that “sometimes it is quite a thankless job being a parent”.  God immediately replied “Tell me about it Noel. I totally agree with you! You didn’t even greet me when you woke up this morning and it has been quite a while since you have taken the time to just sit and look at the wonderful world I created for you, never mind thank me for it.  You take a lot of things for granted, my child”.

As I reflected on this I realized that God must sometimes feel exactly the same way about my attitude as I do about my children’s attitude.  He must look down at me and think “My child, why are you so thankless”.

We provide a home for our children, work hard to feed and clothe them and give them a good education.  We love them and care for them and yet at times we feel discouraged when it seems that everything we do is just taken for granted and there is little sense of appreciation of what they have.  Can you just imagine how God must feel?  He gave His only Son to die a horrific death on the cross so that we could have fullness of life here on earth and eternal life with Him and yet how often do we just take that for granted?

We grumble and complain that we don’t have this or that.  We constantly ask God to bless us and help us and give Him a list of demands of our ‘needs’ and then get upset when those ‘needs’ are not met in the way we want them to be.

God disciplines us because He cares for us and does not want any harm to befall us and yet we rebel against Him because we want to live our own lives.  We don’t want to have to love and care for everybody.  We don’t want to have to practice self-control and not swear at the taxi driver who is blatantly breaking the law and driving dangerously.  We don’t have ‘time’ to pray and meditate on God’s word on a daily basis.

That last ‘we don’t’ brought me up short as I realized that my children must feel exactly the same way about me as God does at times.  I often don’t have ‘time’ for them.  I am so busy working, cleaning, lifting, cooking and doing a myriad of things that are actually not that important that I don’t have time to just ‘be’ with them.  The two most common sentences that they hear me utter are “not now, I am busy” and “I am so tired”.  Basically time is all we have and we can either use it well or waste it.

“I tell you, now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation”.

(2 Corinthians 6:2)

 "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1)