Conversations, Reflections & Meditations


	Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family
Sign Guestbook \| View Guestbook Comments? Questions? [email protected]	Prayer topics You Are Doing Your Work! Thank You! Weakness and Foolishness What About My Vision, Lord? Wondering About Your Will For Me, Lord You Are Doing Your Work! Thank You! Date: October 31, 2004 What a sermon this morning, Lord. It is the answer to so many things. It is what I needed to hear, yes. But oh, God, it is what my kids, my husband, my family, my life group, my church… what all of us need. And Lord, half way to church this morning, I felt Your Presence so strongly. And I started praying. Or should I say, the Spirit praying, giving me words I don’t know, because I have no words for it. And then through the worship time… I don’t know exactly what is happening, Lord, but this I do know: You are doing Your work. So do it. Do it in Your way, Your time, Your will, Your purpose. I don’t really have anything else to say. Maybe I just say too much anyway. Maybe I just need to sit back and listen. And pray. Return to the top Weakness and Foolishness Date: November 4, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Good morning, my Lord and my God. Here I am before You once again, asking You right now to forgive me for all my weaknesses and sin. Dear Lord, last night at life group ____ was talking about how one knows who the “voices” are in one’s head. And he said the accusatory voice that lays on guilt and judgment is always the enemy. Okay, well I am wondering, lately I have had this way stronger sense than ever before of my weaknesses, my shortcomings, my faults, my foolishness, and how easily I often fall into sin, sometimes without even realizing it at the time (but I look back and see it). I don’t feel all guilt-ridden about it. I know I am saved and I know that God sees me as righteous through the blood of Jesus. I think I’m just beginning to understand that “I” am just as filthy rags without the covering of Jesus’ salvation. I do feel humiliation, even embarrassment, but not long-term discouragement or depression, because I know who I am in Christ, and as I keep looking up at Him, coming to know Him, longing to follow in His footsteps and become like unto Him, I am in the light, and that encourages me! It’s just that I’m seeing so many weak and foolish things in myself, and sometimes I wonder how people can stand to be around me. I wonder if I’m one of those hard-to-take people God puts in our lives to force us to grow up and be more patient and loving? I know I’m sometimes – quite often – a square peg in a round hole, and yes, I’ve been kind of proud of it. I’m a person who loves variety and I’m kind of driven crazy by strongly set roles, repetitive jobs, cookie-cutter people, lack of individuality. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing, to love variety. After all, God must love variety: look at His creation! But it’s what I do with it that can be a problem if I’m impatient, rebellious, prideful about it. Sometimes my head hurts because it seems like I can never stop thinking, never just “veg out,” even when I’m sleeping. I wake up so tired from my brain struggling all night, quite often. It sure did last night. Return to the top What About My 'Vision' Lord? Date: November 4, 2004 Lord, at life group last night ____ gave us “homework,” to put down on paper our greatest desires, longings, dreams… visions, I suppose. We talked about how those things can change over time as we go through growing experiences, as we gain wisdom and insight, as we grow to hear Your voice more clearly, and long and strive more and more to be in Your will and purpose for our lives. I know that refining of vision also occurs on the church body level as well as on the individual level, as we grow in Christ, as we are willing to let go and let God work things out in His ways, His timing, His will. Yet I think that if the original vision of a church (or an individual) was from God truly, it won’t change – at least the underlying principles and the main direction will remain firm, though our perception of how those foundational things will “work out” must come to yield to God’s perception, God’s plan and purpose which is always right and perfect and unchangeable. I think that is right, or at least in the right direction? Lord? So I don’t know. I have my “vision statement” from a couple years back. But the thing about it is that it contains “restrictions” that I still feel have been placed on me more by other people than by God’s Word, restriction based on being a woman, particularly. And on being in the role of wife and mother, the whole “barefoot and pregnant by the kitchen sink: know your place!” syndrome. And yes, even now I am struggling with the whole submissive wife concept, although I do believe that God is working a great work in my husband’s life, and that one day soon his leadership position over me will be from more of a godly love viewpoint. Maybe that time will come finally when I actually relate to him with a godly love viewpoint myself! The thing is, I feel strongly that God has called me to preach. I have attempted to fit into people’s expectations by changing the word “preach” to “teach,” by limiting the scope of ministry to women and teen girls. The thing is, it is possible that might be God’s plan, and if it is God’s plan that’s fine with me. But I know that in writing out my “vision” in the past, I’ve put those restrictions there because people told me I had to. The basic thing is that I know what God has called me to – to preach. When He first called me to that, it was so clear. And that clarity has remained despite all the foggy stuff people have strewn in my way. Before people had a chance to do that, I just joyfully started taking the opportunities God sent my way. I gave “preachimonies” in churches when the pastor was away, I did special speaker engagements for Women’s Aglow, and Student Wives meeting at Bible College, and Women’s Ministries meetings at churches, and preached on “women’s” Sundays in churches. I didn’t worry about who the audience was. I just got up there and preached the message God gave me. And people’s lives were changed. My messages were taped (unknown to me) and ended up being copied and distributed. By the end of every message I gave, people would be weeping and seeking God. But then people said, “You can’t be doing that!” So I pulled back. I taught Sunday School, ran kids’ clubs, talked to young people one-on-one or in small informal groups; and always, even though there were “successes” and people would say that I really have a “gift,” I have always felt that I have been living under a “quenching.” I have even feared to consider the possibility that God has given me a gift in this area, instead coming up with ideas of “administration” or similar gifts. And then, also, I started having trouble with my kids in their teens, and I was constantly badgered by a “voice” in my head telling me I was a failure as a mother and parent, and as long as I was having any trouble with my kids I could never be a preacher. But even then I was invited to speak at women’s groups! And did! If God only wants me to preach to women and children, that’s okay with me. But I know what God put on my heart… to preach, not just to teach (and yes, I am a good teacher, but that’s not the vision, the calling, the dream, the desire and longing God has given me). And I have preached, in those early days before people starting saying, “You can’t!” to groups that included men, and God worked. I do think God has a special plan for me with women, but at the same time I don’t think He wants me to be under the bondage of “man’s ideas.” Well, the details of God’s call to me are up to the Lord, because the vision is from Him! Return to the top Wondering About Your Will For Me, Lord? Date: November 14, 2004 Lord, I am content, in You, to take each day as it comes, maybe never even see a “big plan” or have a “ministry” in the sense of something “important” or “successful.” Or at least in the sense of anything I can see. But You know my flesh struggles against that. You know how hard it is for me to give up any chance of “recognition” by people, or any feeling of “personal fulfillment.” We are so brought up to succeed, to make a difference, to do something important (to be recognized and remembered). And in the world’s way of thinking, that is “right” if you think that this life is all that you have, or even that the life to come is just sprouting wings and floating on clouds and playing golden harps (ha! What kind of hope is that… where did that idea come from anyway?... whatever happened to perfectly restored relationship with God to His glory?.... whatever happened to “created with a purpose”? … wiped out, I suppose in the mindless, soul-less void of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Oh dear God, please help us.) "Unrealized Dreams..." In the past 12 months I have worked at Tim Hortons, got hurt and lost my job at Tim Hortons, been in lots of pain but got to spend lots of time learning to know my Lord and God (Father, Son and Spirit), started a party business and a cake decorating business but not getting enough business to really make a go of it; learning to fast and pray and wanting to do more; trying to start a prayer ministry; wanting to start a youth ministry with ___ but it hasn’t worked out; fizzling out as a Children’s Celebration (Children’s Church) worker; doing all kinds of things at church like library, filing system, etc, but seemingly going nowhere; starting a cookbook business but only selling a few; wanting to start a ministry lining new people up with life groups but finding out that I wasn’t needed for that; starting a kid’s ministry in our old life group but not finding anyone else willing to participate; wanting to be a host home for our new life group and really, really reach out to our neighborhood but they only stayed at our house for two meetings because they decided our home isn’t big enough; starting a paper route (and still hanging in there!); getting my daughter’s college funding lined up and seeing it pulled out from under just days before the start of the semester, and trying to keep her going anyway, and now seeing her feeling maybe it wasn’t meant to be; rushing around planning my parents’ 50th anniversary and taking care of my mom all summer as she suffers from dementia; taking care of my grandson while his mom works; enjoying our summer life group (no, it hasn’t turned out exactly like my dream, but there is, I feel, something very good and right happening); trying to use my “administration” gifts and feeling like I don’t even have that as a gift after all; getting my teaching job; loving to learn French more, and enjoying teaching, but now feeling frustrated by the school “system”; doing the church newsletter, which is sometimes exciting and sometimes, well, the “editor’s thing”; starting to help with the church bulletin (but finding out I’m not a fill-in-the-blank kind of person); starting, with great joy and excitement, an organizing business (but it seems nobody really wants my services); getting excited about the “one-eighty” young adults group’s new vision, but seeing it meet with disappointment; having my husband home from work for 6 weeks with a back injury, and having him “pull the plug” on my church activities (okay, that is good, because they were just activities, I’m afraid, and now our relationship is improving, and God is working in both our lives!); and thinking I might be able to get a piano to use, and the music pastor wanting me to play, and a couple people wanting me to give lessons, and then the opportunity to get the piano fell through; and several times people making me think I might get to join the worship team on occasion, but nothing happened; practicing my guitar in fits and starts; and my great excitement and vows to get out of debt “God’s way” (and supposedly to become financially free: oddly enough, even though it seems to have blown apart on the surface, I do feel freer than I’ve ever felt before! Wow, dear God!); and the excitement of house hunting, and the sudden and very certain sense it was not meant to be; and realizing that things I pray for and pray for don’t seem to come about the way I’ve hoped; and understanding that God’s ways are not my ways, and His times and purposes not mine either. And what about my dreams and desires? Where are they from? What about my “call to preach” and my “vision” that just won’t go away? "...Yet Growing in God!" But through all this crazy year of dreams, seemingly unrealized, I’ve been growing in God, finally really starting to know Him and trust Him and let all my things and dreams go. And I don’t really mind at all, though at moments like this I sometimes wonder… And have to bring it all back to Him again and again. Christmas is coming, Lord (no money, but that’s okay) and a New Year with maybe no plans or dreams of my own making… a blank slate for God to write His story on. And yes, that is enough! "And Letting Him Work OUt My Life In His Own Way" One thing I’ve concluded in the past week, when I had things I thought I needed desperately to get done, and then couldn’t do anything because of laryngitis and being so sick and exhausted and out of control of my circumstances, is that God must have a plan that I don’t know about. I can keep doing what I can do (or should I just sit and wait and pray? Lord, this is something I’m still not understanding very well). Or maybe do nothing? Anyway, letting God work things out His way is all that counts in the end. “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purposes that prevail.” I keep thinking of how we have so much… stuff, education, opportunities… when so many people spend their whole lives just surviving. What’s with that? “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Why are we given so much? If we’ve been given so much, what happens if we don’t fulfill our potential? Why do we have to learn to “let it all go”? (Yes, I know I must learn to “let God”…) All those people with “nothing”…. Do they have dreams? Do they ever wonder if they are creating anything of value? Do other people in our society even care about that? ___ and I both seem to be so obsessed with thinking. We think and think and we can’t stop. Sometimes I (and she, I know) just long for rest and peace in our minds. What’s that about? Why is it so hard to rest in Jesus, for us? Is it hard for everyone? Do most people even care about that? I don’t hear people talking about it much…. "For Me To Live Is Christ... That's It!" “For me to live is Christ.” That’s it. All the striving to move up the ladder, to get to the top, to be number one, to be… a little god. It’s so wrong. All that scrambling for nothing. Gotta let it go. No wonder I’m tired. My head is aching. My brain is so tired. And of course I have this cold in my head, and all. I think You sent it along at a time when I would want to leap in and solve problems that are occurring, in my own weak way. So You made it impossible for me to do anything but just have to give it all up to You. Thank You for this lessons. I love You, Lord. Amen. Return to the top
Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family


	Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family
Sign Guestbook \| View Guestbook Comments? Questions? [email protected]	Prayer topics You Are Doing Your Work! Thank You! Weakness and Foolishness What About My Vision, Lord? Wondering About Your Will For Me, Lord You Are Doing Your Work! Thank You! Date: October 31, 2004 What a sermon this morning, Lord. It is the answer to so many things. It is what I needed to hear, yes. But oh, God, it is what my kids, my husband, my family, my life group, my church… what all of us need. And Lord, half way to church this morning, I felt Your Presence so strongly. And I started praying. Or should I say, the Spirit praying, giving me words I don’t know, because I have no words for it. And then through the worship time… I don’t know exactly what is happening, Lord, but this I do know: You are doing Your work. So do it. Do it in Your way, Your time, Your will, Your purpose. I don’t really have anything else to say. Maybe I just say too much anyway. Maybe I just need to sit back and listen. And pray. Return to the top Weakness and Foolishness Date: November 4, 2004 Dear Heavenly Father, Good morning, my Lord and my God. Here I am before You once again, asking You right now to forgive me for all my weaknesses and sin. Dear Lord, last night at life group ____ was talking about how one knows who the “voices” are in one’s head. And he said the accusatory voice that lays on guilt and judgment is always the enemy. Okay, well I am wondering, lately I have had this way stronger sense than ever before of my weaknesses, my shortcomings, my faults, my foolishness, and how easily I often fall into sin, sometimes without even realizing it at the time (but I look back and see it). I don’t feel all guilt-ridden about it. I know I am saved and I know that God sees me as righteous through the blood of Jesus. I think I’m just beginning to understand that “I” am just as filthy rags without the covering of Jesus’ salvation. I do feel humiliation, even embarrassment, but not long-term discouragement or depression, because I know who I am in Christ, and as I keep looking up at Him, coming to know Him, longing to follow in His footsteps and become like unto Him, I am in the light, and that encourages me! It’s just that I’m seeing so many weak and foolish things in myself, and sometimes I wonder how people can stand to be around me. I wonder if I’m one of those hard-to-take people God puts in our lives to force us to grow up and be more patient and loving? I know I’m sometimes – quite often – a square peg in a round hole, and yes, I’ve been kind of proud of it. I’m a person who loves variety and I’m kind of driven crazy by strongly set roles, repetitive jobs, cookie-cutter people, lack of individuality. I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing, to love variety. After all, God must love variety: look at His creation! But it’s what I do with it that can be a problem if I’m impatient, rebellious, prideful about it. Sometimes my head hurts because it seems like I can never stop thinking, never just “veg out,” even when I’m sleeping. I wake up so tired from my brain struggling all night, quite often. It sure did last night. Return to the top What About My 'Vision' Lord? Date: November 4, 2004 Lord, at life group last night ____ gave us “homework,” to put down on paper our greatest desires, longings, dreams… visions, I suppose. We talked about how those things can change over time as we go through growing experiences, as we gain wisdom and insight, as we grow to hear Your voice more clearly, and long and strive more and more to be in Your will and purpose for our lives. I know that refining of vision also occurs on the church body level as well as on the individual level, as we grow in Christ, as we are willing to let go and let God work things out in His ways, His timing, His will. Yet I think that if the original vision of a church (or an individual) was from God truly, it won’t change – at least the underlying principles and the main direction will remain firm, though our perception of how those foundational things will “work out” must come to yield to God’s perception, God’s plan and purpose which is always right and perfect and unchangeable. I think that is right, or at least in the right direction? Lord? So I don’t know. I have my “vision statement” from a couple years back. But the thing about it is that it contains “restrictions” that I still feel have been placed on me more by other people than by God’s Word, restriction based on being a woman, particularly. And on being in the role of wife and mother, the whole “barefoot and pregnant by the kitchen sink: know your place!” syndrome. And yes, even now I am struggling with the whole submissive wife concept, although I do believe that God is working a great work in my husband’s life, and that one day soon his leadership position over me will be from more of a godly love viewpoint. Maybe that time will come finally when I actually relate to him with a godly love viewpoint myself! The thing is, I feel strongly that God has called me to preach. I have attempted to fit into people’s expectations by changing the word “preach” to “teach,” by limiting the scope of ministry to women and teen girls. The thing is, it is possible that might be God’s plan, and if it is God’s plan that’s fine with me. But I know that in writing out my “vision” in the past, I’ve put those restrictions there because people told me I had to. The basic thing is that I know what God has called me to – to preach. When He first called me to that, it was so clear. And that clarity has remained despite all the foggy stuff people have strewn in my way. Before people had a chance to do that, I just joyfully started taking the opportunities God sent my way. I gave “preachimonies” in churches when the pastor was away, I did special speaker engagements for Women’s Aglow, and Student Wives meeting at Bible College, and Women’s Ministries meetings at churches, and preached on “women’s” Sundays in churches. I didn’t worry about who the audience was. I just got up there and preached the message God gave me. And people’s lives were changed. My messages were taped (unknown to me) and ended up being copied and distributed. By the end of every message I gave, people would be weeping and seeking God. But then people said, “You can’t be doing that!” So I pulled back. I taught Sunday School, ran kids’ clubs, talked to young people one-on-one or in small informal groups; and always, even though there were “successes” and people would say that I really have a “gift,” I have always felt that I have been living under a “quenching.” I have even feared to consider the possibility that God has given me a gift in this area, instead coming up with ideas of “administration” or similar gifts. And then, also, I started having trouble with my kids in their teens, and I was constantly badgered by a “voice” in my head telling me I was a failure as a mother and parent, and as long as I was having any trouble with my kids I could never be a preacher. But even then I was invited to speak at women’s groups! And did! If God only wants me to preach to women and children, that’s okay with me. But I know what God put on my heart… to preach, not just to teach (and yes, I am a good teacher, but that’s not the vision, the calling, the dream, the desire and longing God has given me). And I have preached, in those early days before people starting saying, “You can’t!” to groups that included men, and God worked. I do think God has a special plan for me with women, but at the same time I don’t think He wants me to be under the bondage of “man’s ideas.” Well, the details of God’s call to me are up to the Lord, because the vision is from Him! Return to the top Wondering About Your Will For Me, Lord? Date: November 14, 2004 Lord, I am content, in You, to take each day as it comes, maybe never even see a “big plan” or have a “ministry” in the sense of something “important” or “successful.” Or at least in the sense of anything I can see. But You know my flesh struggles against that. You know how hard it is for me to give up any chance of “recognition” by people, or any feeling of “personal fulfillment.” We are so brought up to succeed, to make a difference, to do something important (to be recognized and remembered). And in the world’s way of thinking, that is “right” if you think that this life is all that you have, or even that the life to come is just sprouting wings and floating on clouds and playing golden harps (ha! What kind of hope is that… where did that idea come from anyway?... whatever happened to perfectly restored relationship with God to His glory?.... whatever happened to “created with a purpose”? … wiped out, I suppose in the mindless, soul-less void of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Oh dear God, please help us.) "Unrealized Dreams..." In the past 12 months I have worked at Tim Hortons, got hurt and lost my job at Tim Hortons, been in lots of pain but got to spend lots of time learning to know my Lord and God (Father, Son and Spirit), started a party business and a cake decorating business but not getting enough business to really make a go of it; learning to fast and pray and wanting to do more; trying to start a prayer ministry; wanting to start a youth ministry with ___ but it hasn’t worked out; fizzling out as a Children’s Celebration (Children’s Church) worker; doing all kinds of things at church like library, filing system, etc, but seemingly going nowhere; starting a cookbook business but only selling a few; wanting to start a ministry lining new people up with life groups but finding out that I wasn’t needed for that; starting a kid’s ministry in our old life group but not finding anyone else willing to participate; wanting to be a host home for our new life group and really, really reach out to our neighborhood but they only stayed at our house for two meetings because they decided our home isn’t big enough; starting a paper route (and still hanging in there!); getting my daughter’s college funding lined up and seeing it pulled out from under just days before the start of the semester, and trying to keep her going anyway, and now seeing her feeling maybe it wasn’t meant to be; rushing around planning my parents’ 50th anniversary and taking care of my mom all summer as she suffers from dementia; taking care of my grandson while his mom works; enjoying our summer life group (no, it hasn’t turned out exactly like my dream, but there is, I feel, something very good and right happening); trying to use my “administration” gifts and feeling like I don’t even have that as a gift after all; getting my teaching job; loving to learn French more, and enjoying teaching, but now feeling frustrated by the school “system”; doing the church newsletter, which is sometimes exciting and sometimes, well, the “editor’s thing”; starting to help with the church bulletin (but finding out I’m not a fill-in-the-blank kind of person); starting, with great joy and excitement, an organizing business (but it seems nobody really wants my services); getting excited about the “one-eighty” young adults group’s new vision, but seeing it meet with disappointment; having my husband home from work for 6 weeks with a back injury, and having him “pull the plug” on my church activities (okay, that is good, because they were just activities, I’m afraid, and now our relationship is improving, and God is working in both our lives!); and thinking I might be able to get a piano to use, and the music pastor wanting me to play, and a couple people wanting me to give lessons, and then the opportunity to get the piano fell through; and several times people making me think I might get to join the worship team on occasion, but nothing happened; practicing my guitar in fits and starts; and my great excitement and vows to get out of debt “God’s way” (and supposedly to become financially free: oddly enough, even though it seems to have blown apart on the surface, I do feel freer than I’ve ever felt before! Wow, dear God!); and the excitement of house hunting, and the sudden and very certain sense it was not meant to be; and realizing that things I pray for and pray for don’t seem to come about the way I’ve hoped; and understanding that God’s ways are not my ways, and His times and purposes not mine either. And what about my dreams and desires? Where are they from? What about my “call to preach” and my “vision” that just won’t go away? "...Yet Growing in God!" But through all this crazy year of dreams, seemingly unrealized, I’ve been growing in God, finally really starting to know Him and trust Him and let all my things and dreams go. And I don’t really mind at all, though at moments like this I sometimes wonder… And have to bring it all back to Him again and again. Christmas is coming, Lord (no money, but that’s okay) and a New Year with maybe no plans or dreams of my own making… a blank slate for God to write His story on. And yes, that is enough! "And Letting Him Work OUt My Life In His Own Way" One thing I’ve concluded in the past week, when I had things I thought I needed desperately to get done, and then couldn’t do anything because of laryngitis and being so sick and exhausted and out of control of my circumstances, is that God must have a plan that I don’t know about. I can keep doing what I can do (or should I just sit and wait and pray? Lord, this is something I’m still not understanding very well). Or maybe do nothing? Anyway, letting God work things out His way is all that counts in the end. “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purposes that prevail.” I keep thinking of how we have so much… stuff, education, opportunities… when so many people spend their whole lives just surviving. What’s with that? “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Why are we given so much? If we’ve been given so much, what happens if we don’t fulfill our potential? Why do we have to learn to “let it all go”? (Yes, I know I must learn to “let God”…) All those people with “nothing”…. Do they have dreams? Do they ever wonder if they are creating anything of value? Do other people in our society even care about that? ___ and I both seem to be so obsessed with thinking. We think and think and we can’t stop. Sometimes I (and she, I know) just long for rest and peace in our minds. What’s that about? Why is it so hard to rest in Jesus, for us? Is it hard for everyone? Do most people even care about that? I don’t hear people talking about it much…. "For Me To Live Is Christ... That's It!" “For me to live is Christ.” That’s it. All the striving to move up the ladder, to get to the top, to be number one, to be… a little god. It’s so wrong. All that scrambling for nothing. Gotta let it go. No wonder I’m tired. My head is aching. My brain is so tired. And of course I have this cold in my head, and all. I think You sent it along at a time when I would want to leap in and solve problems that are occurring, in my own weak way. So You made it impossible for me to do anything but just have to give it all up to You. Thank You for this lessons. I love You, Lord. Amen. Return to the top
Main Page \| My Articles for The Life Connection \| Prayers and Meditations \| Poetry Haida Gwaii Reflections \| Education & Home-School \| Family