Lies are from...

Where did the urge come from?

If you are Christian,  it came from the serpent coaxing Eve to eat the fruit.

If you are human, it seems to always be the easy way out.

If you are Indian,  its how you save your pride which mostly comes from, the fear that you arent good enough.

For me? I cant wrap my head around this need to hide things or lie.  I lived a lie for a long time, a lie that I was a good Christian...

I believed the whole time. Well even that is a lie. I doubted the existence of this Supreme Creator God.

I pretended to br interested but guess what, He called me to him.  MULTIPLE times.   My first encounter,  in 11th grade.  My second,  in college. And they few and far between and I thought that was normal and the way things worked with God.

In the last 6-7 yrs, I have come to learn its more like a moment to moment thing.  God speaks, we just have to be in tune to hear at all times.  He is working constantly, He wants us to know that, be aware of the reality of that.

Some of us live life as if no one is watching.  As long as we project on the outside what we want the world to see then we dont have to deal with the reality of what's happening on the inside. 

That's a lie!

God will bring it to the light.  He brought my fear of being alone out for me to deal with in front of the world.  He brought my urge to tell white lies out in the open.  He brought my fears out.  He brought my inability to trust to test last October.  Why? So that I am aware that He knows and also because He cares that I am overcoming these and not getting bogged down by them.

My Father in Heaven, break your children Lord! Break every chain that ties us down.

Love God and the rest will follow...

Over done?

This morning my reading had a bit of Job's story as a reference. That man had it all taken away and he was made to suffer throughout with boils.

Overdone?

My friend and I made a soup and it sat in the crockpot a little longer than it should have so it turned more into a chili than soup.

Overdone?

People killing each other, forcing authorities to place entire cities on lockdown.

Overdone?

This is the world we live in. Sometimes it doesn't quite make sense in the here and now but in hindsight it will.

For all the three scenarios above, my answer is NO!

Job's story had a beauty of its own. All of his experiences gave each one of us a story and an example to look to about perseverance and humility and long-suffering.   Most of all, Job never stopped trusting in God.  Through it all, God was still Job's ally.

The soup that turned to chili? Something comforting in a hearty chili on a cold and rainy night.  The spices were just right and the entire dish pulled itself together while cooking. Beauty that initially I might have refused to see, now is more than evident. Why? Because I changed my perspective. Praise Jesus it is edible, right? In this case its edible and comforting.

As for the lockdown?  Authorities are completely in the right.  Those heartless people who have gone on this rampage? Utterly insane! The authorities who have to put their lives on the line? Heroic beyond words. Who wins? Who loses? At the end of the day, I want to venture to say, everyone loses a part of their peace,  a part of their sanity and part of their feeling of safety.  New Yorkers will never return to the same place they were at before 9/11 but they have fought through it and Boston will do the same. In the long run, if even one person comes to know Jesus as his/her Lord and Savior then some good came of it all. Personally,  I would want another means to bring people to Jesus, but God uses all means.

In the end of it all, I see how we can take something that makes no sense, that seems overdone and turn it around for the better.

One thing I know for sure,  Jesus is never overdone.  He is never out of line or out of style.  God, Jesus and The Holy Spirit will always be reliable, accountable and most of all The Truth.

Love God and the rest will follow...

Rest...

Been a while, it almost became a chore to remember to log in and do this.  The thing is... I was really miserable at certain points and knew that if only I wrote my thoughts out then I would be able to process all that was running around in my brain. And somehow I still didnt do it, just chose to wallow instead. Not. Heatlhy.

A few days ago I had this feeling again so I decided to get the app on my phone.  This way I have no excuse for not blogging anymore.  Coincidentally, I got a text from Jyo the same day, that said "you should start a blog" that's when I realized that the youngens in my life didn't even know that side of me.

Had that girl died out while maneuvering around the paths of this life?

Why didnt I feel like I had a moment of rest when it came to my thoughts recently?

Then talking to one of my sisters this morning I was reminded that the idea of rest is something we tend to take for granted in the world we live in.

We are reminded of the need for rest even in the creation story when our Creator took the seventh day to rest.

Why then, as humans, do we not see the need for it? And why are some of us not blessed with the ability to rest?  Even when we want the body to rest, our minds are bombarded. These days with so much available to us via the internet on our phones and tablets and tv and computers, its a miracle we even blink.

The idea of rest is necessary on so many levels.  Our bodies, physically need to rest the muscles and every system has a need to rejuvenate while at rest.
Mentally we need rest from thoughts and things being bombarded at us.  Meditation is a popular way to "unwind" for this very reason. It brings clarity to decisions we might be pondering over.
Our soul needs rest from being teased by the world all the time. Most important of all, our spirit needs rest so that Jesus can mend and heal what He needs to in our soul.

We have convinced ourselves that life xan be lived without rest, without healing and worst of all without Jesus.

We need Jesus for he is the one who said,

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."
- Matthew 11:28 NASB

So we must learn to find our rest in Jesus "who will all our sorrows share."

Love God and the rest will follow...