It's Not About You!

God said to me today,
"You know, Cindy, this whole thing about losing your job and the spiritual journey I've had you travel these past 17 months isn't all about you...it's about David as well. This isn't all about you."

Gasp! God's voice was audible and as plain...whew. Tears immediately came to my eyes. It took my breath away. Even when I was in my car driving home after church thinking about what He had said...I, again, felt this physical phenomena...my breath was taken from me. I don't know how to explain it.

Lesson learned?

The road you're traveling is not necessarily all about you.

Open your eyes (spiritual eyes). Look at your husband, your children, your sister, your parents...this isn't all about you.

When was the last time God took your breath away?

The Garbage Collecctor

My church sponsored a mission trip to the dumps in Mexico City. Today in church several gave their testimonies about their experiences. One mission team member spoke about her life. She grew up on the streets of Mexico City sleeping under an old pickup truck. As a little girl, she begged on the streets of the City and was abused at home.

Going back to the streets of Mexico City was very difficult for her as it held much baggage for her. She liken it to the dump. She said she had a great garbage dump in her soul that she had been carrying around for many years having pushed it deep, deep inside.

But, she said by the Grace of God and love of the Church, family and friends, she was able to release and let go of all the garbage (baggage) she had been carrying around for so many years.

It made me liken Satan to a garbage collector. He just loves to collect all our garbage (baggage) and make a big dump out of it within our hearts, minds and souls. He collects and collects and adds to the heap. The garbage begins to stink and rot and we never feel clean.

I guess then the Lord is the great recycler. He takes the parts of us that are precious to Him and lovingly recycles it all into a new creation.

What love is this? What love is this? What love!

Trip to San Antonio

"The human body has limitations.
The human spirit is boundless."

Your mind, in other words, is your most important muscle.

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention to arrive safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow! What a ride!"

Dean Karnazes
Ultra Marathon Man
http://www.ultramarathonman.com/flash/

Provision

I'm home today from church...as much as I wanted to go, it's pouring rain and I just didn't want to get out in it. Bad, I know. But, here I am trying to focus for a time this morning on what's going on with me as of late.

This whole "slow season worriness" that OMM is going through. God's hand was in our work as He took such good care of us last year. He provided so much work for us when we had such huge bills and expenses. At the end of the year we had not dipped into our personal investment. I think back and am amazed at that. Now we're in this slow season, which is so needed in order for us to have the time to market ourselves, see people, network, seek new clients and expand our base.

Why would I think God is not in this as well? Why would I think He's abandoned us?

I hate not being able to see when I'm driving!

Oh wait. Maybe I shouldn't be driving????

Sigh...ya, ya...I should by living by faith not by sight. Gulp. Okay.

God doesn't open the door without providing for us. Provision doesn't always mean "money." It could be an idea, a plan, a strategy. I Chronicles 4:9-10 & Psalm 115:4

What a journey! I began praying 5-6 years ago that my desire was to "step it up a notch" in my spiritual walk. So, I found a new church, I've seen the Holy Spirit, I lost my job, I've started a new business, I put together a retreat for my girlfriends, I joined a small group and actually conducted a Bible study....Whew. God has stretched me. And, that prayer/desire from 5-6 years ago is being answered.

YIKES!!!

Celebrate the Darkness, Part 3 (Final)

The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning
CHAPTER 7

"Hans Kung’s On Being a Christian:
'Jesus’ unresisting suffering and helpless death, accursed and dishonored,for his enemies and even his friends, was the unmistakable sign that he was finished and had nothing to do with the true God. His death on the cross was the fulfillment of the curse of the law. “Anyone hanged on a tree is cursed by God.” He was wrong wholly and entirely: in his message, his behavior, his whole being. His claim is now refuted, his authority is gone, his way shown to be false…

The heretical teacher is condemned, the false prophet disowned, the seducer of the people unmasked, the blasphemer rejected. The law had triumphed over this “gospel.”

Jesus found himself left alone, not only by his people, but by the One to whom he had constantly appealed as no one did before him. Left absolutely alone. We do not know what Jesus thought and felt as he was dying. But it was obvious to the whole
world that he had proclaimed the early advent of God in his kingdom and this God did not come. A God who was man’s friend, knowing all his needs, close to him, but this God was absent. A Father whose goodness knew no bounds,providing for the slightest things and the humblest people, gracious and at the same time mighty; but this Father gave no sign, produced no miracles.

His Father indeed, to whom he had spoken with a familiarity closer than anyone else had ever know, with whom he had lived and worked in a unity beyond the ordinary, whose true will he had learned with immediate certainty and in the light of which he had dared to assure individuals of the forgiveness of their sins; this Father of his did not say a single word. Jesus, God’s witness, was left in the lurch by the God to whom he had witnessed. The mockery at the foot of the cross underlined vividly this wordless, helpless,miracle-less and even God-less death.

The unique communion with God which he had seemed to enjoy only makes his forsakenness more unique. This God and Father with whom he had identified himself to the very end did not at the end identify himself with the sufferer. And so everything seemed as if it had never been: in vain. He who had announced the closeness and advent of God his Father publicly before the whole world died utterly forsaken by God and was thus publicly demonstrated as godless before the whole world: someone judged by God himself, disposed of once and for all. And since the cause for which he had lived and fought was so closely linked to his person, so that cause fell with his person. There was no cause independent of his person. How could anyone have believed his word after he had been silenced and died in this outrageous fashion? It is a death not simply accepted in patience but endured screaming to God.'

What an awesome graphic description of the dark night of Jesus Christ. No human mind will ever comprehend the depths of desolation, the indescribable loneliness, the utter abandonment that lay behind Jesus’ cry, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” The cross is the symbol of our salvation and the pattern of our lives. Everything that happened to Christ in some way happens to us. When darkness envelopes us and we are deaf to everything except the shriek of our own pain, it helps to know that the Father is tracing in us the image of his Son, that the signature of Jesus is being stamped on our souls.

Forgiveness is the key to everything. It forms the mind of Christ within us and prevents the costly and painful process of the dark night from itself becoming an ego trip. It guards us from feeling so “spiritually advanced” that we look down on those who are still enjoying the comforts and consolations of the first conversion. The gentle and humble heart has the mind of Christ.

We hear Jesus praying for his murderers, “Father, forgive them. They do not know what they are doing.”

Here is the final repudiation of the ego. We surrender the need for vindication, hand over the kingdom of self to the Father, and in the sovereign freedom of forgiving our enemies, celebrate the luminous darkness."

Celebrate the Darkness, Part 2

The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning
CHAPTER 7

Undoubtedly in each of our lives there were periods of intense fervor when we could almost touch the goodness of God. Bible studies, prayer meetings, retreats, and devotional times were precious securities to many of us. It was pleasant to think of God, a comfort to speak to him, a joy to be in his presence. Perhaps all this has changed. We may feel we have lost Christ and fear that he will never return. Now it is difficult to connect two thoughts about him. Prayer has become artificial. Words spoken to him ring hollow in our empty soul.

It is a comfort to know that this is a path that many have tracked before us. Moreover, it is reassuring to learn that the longed-for growth in faith is not far away. God’s love and mercy have not abandoned us. Clouds may shroud us in darkness, but above, the sun shines right. God’s mercy never fails. The Christian who surrenders in trust to this truth finds Jesus Christ in a new way. It marks the beginning of a deeper life of faith where joy and peace flourish even in the darkness, because they are rooted, not in superficial human feelings, but deep down in the dark certainly of faith that Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

The very inability to feel his presence with our unstable emotions, or to appreciate his goodness with our feeble thoughts, becomes a help rather than a hindrance. Joy and sorrow may play havoc with our feelings, but beneath this shifting surface God dwells in the darkness. It is there that we go to meet him; it is there that we pray in peace, silent and attentive to the God whose love knows no shadow of change. It is there that we celebrate(!) the darkness in the quiet certainly of mature faith.

When we have hit bottom and are emptied of all we thought important to us, then we truly pray, truly become humble and detached, and live in the bright darkness of faith. In the midst of the emptying we know that God has not deserted us. He has merely removed the obstacles keeping us from a deeper union with him. Actually we are closer to God than ever before, although we are deprived of the consolations that we once associated with our spirituality. What we thought was communion with him was really a hindrance to that communion.

Yet the dark night is not the end—only the means to union with God. We have asked God for the gift of prayer, and he visits us with adversity to bring us to our knees. We have prayed for humility, and God levels us with humiliation. We cry out for an increase of faith, and God strips us of the reassurances that we had identified with faith.

Does growth in Christ follow automatically

No. Suffering alone does not produce a prayerful spirit. Humiliation alone does not foster humility. Desolation alone does not guarantee the increase of faith. We can still be wallowing in self-pity and rebellion, pride or apathy, and the last state will be worse than the first. We can eat humble pie until the bakery is bare and emerge with only tightfisted bitterness in our hands. One further crucial step in the process of ego-slaying remains.

The most characteristic feature of the humility of Jesus is his forgiveness and acceptance of others. By contrast our nonacceptance of others and lack of forgiveness keep us in a state of agitation and unrest. Our resentments reveal that the signature of Jesus still is not written on our lives. The surest sign of union with the crucified Christ is our forgiveness of those who have perpetrated injustices against us. Without acceptance and forgiveness the dark night will be only that. The bottom line will be a trouble heart."

Celebrate the Darkness, Part 1

The Signature of Jesus, by Brennan Manning
CHAPTER 7

A certain Christian thought it was of vital importance to be poor and austere. It had never dawned on him that the vitally important thing was to drop his ego, that the ego fattens on holiness just as much as on worldliness, on poverty as on riches, on austerity as on luxury. There is nothing the ego will not seize upon to inflate itself.

Death to self is necessary in order to live for God. A crucifixion of the ego is required. That is why mature Christian prayer inevitably leads to the purification of what St. John of the Cross called the dark night of the senses and the spirit which, through loneliness and aridity, buries egoism and leads us out of ourselves to experience God.

The “dark night” is a very real place, as anyone who has been there will tell you. Alan Jones calls it “the second conversion.” While the first conversion was characterized by joy and enthusiasm and filled with felt consolation and a profound sense of God’s presence, the second is marked y dryness, barrenness, desolation, and a profound sense of God’s absence. The dark night is an indispensable stage of spiritual growth both for the individual Christian and the church.

Merton writes:

“There is an absolute need for the solitary, bare, dark, beyond-thought, beyond-feeling type of prayer…Unless that dimension is there in the church somewhere, the whole caboodle lacks life and intelligence. It is a kind of hidden, secret, unknown stabilizer and compass, too. About this I have no hesitation or doubts.”

Though painful, the purification of the ego in the dark night is the high road to Christian freedom and maturity. In fact, it is often an answer to prayer.

Have you ever prayed that you might be more prayerful? Have you ever prayed for a lively and conscious awareness of God’s indwelling presence throughout the day? Have you ever prayed that you might be gentle and humble in heart? Have you ever asked for a spirit of detachment from material things, personal relationships, and creature comforts? Have you ever cried out for an increase in faith?

I know I have, and I suspect that we have all prayed often for these spiritual gifts. But I wonder if we really meant what we said when we asked for these things? Did we really want what we asked for? I think not. Otherwise why did we recoil in shock and sorrow when our prayers were answered? The suffering involved in arriving at the answer made us sorry we ever asked in the first place.

We ask for spiritual growth and Christian maturity, but we really don’t want them—at least not in the way God choose to grant them. For example, if we ask the Lord to make us more prayerful, how does he answer our prayer? By bringing us to our knees in adversity and suffering. Have you ever heard of a Christian complain, “What happened? The week after was I ‘born again,’ all hell broke loose. I lost my job and my car keys, quarreled with my wife, got on the wrong plane, and wound up in Philadelphia instead of San Francisco.”

Through a sequence of human events (divinely inspired), the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ leads us into a state of interior devastation. When we are like this, it is highly probable (though not inevitable) that we become more prayerful. Up to now perhaps we have not been praying in depth. But now we are truly praying. We might not be saying all that many prayers, and we might not be following the set formulas that we presumed were prayer, but we are praying as never before. God is drawing us closer to himself. We ask, “What’s happening?” And the answer comes: “Don’t you remember? This is what you asked for. There is no cheap grace. You wanted to be more prayerful. Now you are.”

Our original petition was to achieve a constant state of prayerfulness. Well, nothing inspires prayer like adversity, sorrow, and humiliation. In these broken times we pray at our best. Our prayer rises in simplicity.

When we pray for the gift of a prayerful heart, the Lord strips away props we might lean on and leads us into spiritual desolation, into the dark night of the soul, in order that we might pray with a pure heart.

We cry to the Lord, “Make me what I should be, change me, whatever the cost.” When we have said these dangerous words, we should be prepared for God to hear them. These words are dangerous because God’s love is remorseless. God wants our salvation with the determination due its importance.

Jesus says, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). So we respond, “Jesus, gentle and humble in heart, make my heart like yours.”

Now we are really in for it! We have just opened Pandora’s box. Why? Because we don’t learn humility by reading about it in spiritual books or listening to its praises in sermons. We learn humility directly from the Lord Jesus in whatever way he wishes to teach us. Most often we learn humility through humiliation.

What is humility? It is the stark realization that acceptance of the fact that I am totally dependent upon God’s love and mercy. It grows through a stripping away of all self-sufficiency. Humility is not caught by repeating pious phrases; it is accomplished by the hand of God. It is Job on the dunghill all over again as God reminds us that he is our only true hope.

Biblically, there is nothing more detestable than a self-sufficient person. He is so full of himself, so swollen with pride and conceit that he is insufferable.

The school of humiliation is a great learning experience; there is no other like it. When the gift of a humble heart is granted, we are more accepting of ourselves and less critical of others. Self-knowledge brings a humble and realistic awareness of our limitations. It leads us to be patient and compassionate with others, whereas before we were demanding, insensitive, and stuck-up. Gone are the complacency and narrow-mindedness that made God superfluous. For the humble person there is a constant awareness of his or her own weakness, insufficiency, and desperate need for God.

Of course, the most withering experience of ego-reduction occurs when we pray, “Lord, increase my faith.” We need to tread carefully here, because the life of pure faith is the dark night. In this “night” God allows us to live by faith and faith alone. Mature faith cannot grow when we are surfeited with all kinds of spiritual comforts and consolations. All these must be removed if we are to advance in the pure trust of God. The Lord withdraws all tangible supports to purify our hearts, to discern if we are in love with the gifts of the Giver or the Giver of the gifts.

“The question is, do I worship God or do I worship my experience of God? Do I worship God or do I worship my idea of him? If I am to avoid a narcotic approach to religion that forces me to stagger from experience to experience hoping for bigger and better things, I must know what I believe apart from the nice or nasty feelings that may or may not accompany such a belief. The second conversion (the dark night of the soul) has to do with learning to cope and flourish when the warm feelings, consolations, and props that accompany the first conversion are withdrawn. Does faith evaporate when the initial feelings dissolve? In psychological terms, the ego has to break; and this breaking is like entering into a great darkness. Without such a struggle and affliction, there can be no movement in love.”
Alan Jones Soul Making: The Desert Way of Spirituality

After a long period of dryness, emptiness, and aridity, without any preparation or warning, we find Jesus again. And, then we complain and ask where the Lord was when we were so far down the well. The answer Jesus gives us leads us into a new depth of faith: “During all your temptations and emptiness I have remained with you in the depths of your heart. Otherwise, you could not have overcome them.”

At that critical moment, we surrender forever our old concept of the presence of God. Jesus’ words teach us that his presence in our heart was something deeper and holier than we could imagine or feel. Human feelings cannot touch him and human thoughts cannot measure him. Personal experience cannot heighten the certainly of his presence any more than the absence of experience can lessen it. These words make us realize as never before that nothing but, grave, conscious, deliberate sin could separate us from the Beloved of our soul. Not noise or irritating people, distractions or temptations; not feelings of consolation or desolation, success or failure; nothing but turning back could ever separate us from the love of God made visible of Jesus Christ our Lord. He would always be there in the quiet darkness just as he promised: Be not afraid. I will be with you. We lose the presence of God only to find it again in the “deep and dazzling darkness” of a richer faith. The dark night was an answered prayer. We are free to celebrate the darkness. We tend to believe that when we no longer feel the presence and consolation of God, he is no longer there.

The theology of St. John of the Cross regarding the dark night:

“The first sign of the dark night of the soul is that we no longer have any pleasure or consolation either in God or in creation. Nothing pleases us. Nothing touches us. Everything and everyone seem dull and uninteresting. Life is dust and aches in the mouth. The second sign is an abiding and biting sense of failure, even though the believer conscientiously tried to center her life on God. There is a sense of never having done enough and of needing to atone for something that has no name. The third sign, and the one that is most threatening to us today, is that it is no longer possible to pray or meditate with the imagination. Images, pictures, and metaphors no longer seem to reach us. God (if he is there) no longer communicates with us through the senses. In more modern terms, it is a matter of living from a center other than the ego. Even to begin to do this is to enter a great darkness, a new kind of light or illumination comes; and through it our relationship to God, although more hidden than before, becomes deeper and more direct.”

The Other Side of the Street

Had a long discussion with Stan last Friday about where we/I am with the Biz.

As I've elluded to in previous postings, I'm just suffering a bit of depression and finding it a pain to get up and out of the house in the mornings. Over the past four months I've been slowly figuring out that I'm not happy about where I am with my life right now. I could never figure out why I was feeling this now as opposed to last year.

It hit me on Friday.

I was SO busy June through December of last year, I didn't have time to think about (in any depth anyway) where I was and how I got there. I was processing what had happened to me and knew I was healing slowly. But, I realize now that I was only going just under the surface in my thinking. Now, during these months in 2007 when our biz has been slow God has pushed me deeper. I find it quite interesting that God waited until now to push me. He knew I couldn't have handled it last year.

So, a lot of things going on right now and are slowly coming to light.

First of all...
...I've been trusting in the busy-ness!

I've been, not in a panic, but certainly anxiety-ridden these past months because of the slowness of the business. This "quiet" time has shown me that last year I was trusting in the busy-ness of the work. God, I believe, has been ok with that, but now He's saying to me..."okay let's get your trust placed where it should be."

Another thing...
...I am angry.

Having experienced grief in a powerful way because of losing my brother (died in 2003 unexpectedly from complications due to Diabetes), I realized what I am feeling right now is the same thing. Let me explain...

It's funny, but I didn't realize it until talking with Stan on Friday. Let this be a lesson to you all...talk out your thoughts/feelings to someone you trust. It forces you to SPEAK what you're feeling and it is amazing what comes out of one's mouth!I didn't realize I was angry, but I am. And, this is one of the "seasons" in experiencing grief. We've been saying since way last April that it felt like we were experiencing a death and we knew that we were grieving for the loss of our jobs and the loss of the department in general. But, it didn't occur to me that I would go through the same "seasons" of grief.

So, I'm mad.

Mad that I'm here right now in my life. I don't want to be. Thus, the reason for feeling depressed, not wanting to face the day, etc. And, this feeling has been amplified these past months because the work is slow and the anxiety of finances is high.

I'm not happy or feeling joy in my life at all right now. And, that sucks!

So, I'm processing all this right now. You all are traveling this road with me. It's all slowly coming together... figuring out why I feel the way I do, trying to understand why I don't feel content in where I am with my life, etc. It's been a slow journey, but I'm beginning to see some light and I'm slowly getting to the other side of the street.

Okay...so I'm mad.

I get that now. I'm mad that what's happened to me has happened. It pisses me off. I'm angry at God, though....not the Army anymore. Isn't that lovely? I've transferred my anger to God! HA.

So, I'm mad because this is hard, I'm not putting any money into our retirement accounts, I can't travel which is my heart's desire, etc. etc. I didn't ask to be here. And, when I look out in front of me, I see nothing...blackness.

Okay, so that makes me depressed and feel sorry for myself and all I want to do is eat and sleep. So, I've got this much figured out. I know this much.

What else I know (I've just figured this out since Friday)...is that I KNOW I'm in God's will for my life right now. I know I'm suppose to be running this company with Stan, and we're running it under His authority. So I'm good there. Which, in my mind, means that if that is true, then I should be content and have joy because I am right where I'm suppose to be. But, I don't feel or have those things in my spirit right now.

God is okay with that...He certainly, I believe, is glad...well, maybe that isn't the right word, but I think He is "okay" with me being where I am because He's trying to get me to the next level and without going through this muck, I can't reach it. Get it? An Ah-Ha moment for anyone besides me?

I refer back to that previous blog which references Revelations 12. The dragon is standing right in front of me (thus I only see blackness) waiting to devour this new thing that is about to be birthed in my life. He knows God is pushing me to the next level...this is huge for me. It is a level of trust that I've never experienced before in my life. Satan knows it and he's waiting. And waiting.

So, I'm on the brink of getting to the other side of the street...I'm almost there. But it's like wearing lead shackles on my ankles. Sometimes I have dreams where I'm trying to run, but my feet are like lead and I just can't move but in super slow motion. I just need to be patient, though...I think I need to move slow and process all of this...so it sinks in. And, sinks in deep so it becomes part of the foundation God is laying in my heart.

So, friends...pray that I continue to move in the direction of the other side of the street, though it may be slow going. At least I'm moving in the right direction. A couple of months ago I was just standing on the other sidewalk looking across and having no desire to go anywhere.

Happy Happy Joy Joy!

Okay, so my small group (Sharon hosts it at her home) is studying Romans. A real challenging book to understand and follow. We're just on chapter 5 right now. Whew...what a chapter! How many times have we each read that chapter...go ahead and read it one more time!

I mentioned in a previous blog how I'm feeling a little blah, in a bit of a funk, as of late. Can't seem to find joy in where I am in my life.

v3.
"Let us be full of joy now! Let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance."

Oh, that's good.

v.4
"Endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character of this sort produces the habit of joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation."

v.5
"Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God's love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us."

So, verse 5 is interesting. This hope that is built on pressure, affliction and hardship doesn't disappoint, delude or shame us. Why? Because God's love has been poured into our hearts. Okay. What does that mean?

Here's a thought:

"When we are reconciled to God, we discover that He wants not simply to enjoy this one-to-one relationship, but to enlist us in Hisservice in working for His kingdom. And that will bring all kinds of His presence, even when it doesn't "feel" as though there's anything happening. We mustn't imagine that our feeling of being close to God is a true index of the reality. Emotions often deceive. Paul is summoning us to understand the reality, the solid rock beneath the shifting sands of feeling.

Note Paul doesn't say we celebrate our sufferings. We celebrate, he says, in our sufferings.

The Christian, like Abraham (whom Paul talks about in the previous chapter), is called again and again to "hope against hope (4.18). We look foolish in the world's eyes, waiting for something we can't see (8.25), but we don't appear foolish to ourselves, because we are sustained by something deeper, something which grows directly out of the gift of "peace with God", out of the reconciliation which Paul describes in a few verses later."

Paul for Everyone by Tom Wright

And yet another thought:
The word Paul uses for fortitude is hupomone which means more than endurance. It means the spirit which can overcome the world; it means the spirit which does not passively endure but which actively overcomes the trails and tribulations of life.So, I feel I need to get off my passive butt and begin actively living through and overcoming my trials!!

Joy in the Journey

If we claim to be children of God...
then we should be in His will right now. (I hope all of you are).

So.......are you seeing an enemy standing in front of you?
Do you feel your way is blocked and you can't see because of the darkness or fog surrounding you? Do you feel an enemy is standing in front of your destiny? Has all hell broke loose?

It's that dragon that sees what's inside of you. Seeing what changes are taking place in your life. And he knows God almighty has sown a seed in you. He knows it is about to be birthed into reality. And, he's standing there about to devour this thing. Satan stands before you.

But......the battle is the Lord's.
(Revelation 12)

Words that Challenge & Inspire

Renovation of the Heart
by Dallas Willard


The Divine Conspiracy
by Dallas Willard


The Signature of Jesus
by Brennan Manning

Here is Superman doing wonderous feats! I told Jessica that I thought Shine really liked his superman outfit, but she said it was the car that he liked so much. LOL.

This is Shine. Jessica/Dicky's son. What a cutie!