Introspection! Stinking Thinking

Ok!, here we go!
Boy, last night it hit me....you know when you work hard to try and do things right and then you take a look and see that you have been doing some things wrong, boy what a whammy!.

I am a big believer in introspection because I love people and love relationships.  And so I try and to examine myself regularly, daily, I pray to my Father asking him to cleanse me and search me, to purge me and of course He does. By His manifold graces He reveals to us our true selves and we come up short.

I have always had a fight with my self esteem; always fought fear and it has not stopped. The thread of those feelings always seem to creep into my life when I don't want them to.  The Apostle Paul speaks of, "For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want."
That's how it is with my thinking.....and so I realise that the things or people I cherish most are pushed away because of my fear and low self esteem.

So I had been praying for others and and a myriad  of things and last night I had a conversation with someone. My husband, Jeff and I, had been talking about this situation with this person and analyzing it and kept missing it. We could not understand that we love this person so much and was doing everything in our power to help them and to try and put them first and it seemed as if they were out to take us down.

Did you get it the problem? "OUR"... it was our power, OUR thoughts....sometimes in OUR doing; we miss the mark...actually can I say always in OUR doing we miss the mark.

So finally as we are wont to do, when we fail; we then decide to bring God in on it. I take it to prayer and God in His infinite grace and faithfulness allows me to see that it was me and my "STINKING THINKING" that was putting a barrier in the way.  I prayed about everything that I was concerned about with this person and then God allowed me the opportunity to speak with them and they during the course of that conversation shared that they loved us, saw what we were doing, thought the best of us, but because of the issues they were dealing with personally it came across a certain way.

WOW!

I was so thankful for God for revealing this and seeing that I have to think less of myself and more like him and try to see others more with His eyes than my own. This is hard because I want to protect myself from being hurt also. Boy, so my prayer is that in my doing, that I bring it all to Jesus Christ, who knows all things and sees all things..

Pray for me as I strive to be more like Christ and less like Rhonda. Pray that I don't allow my insecurities and fear control my actions.


"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus" Philippians 2: 4-5

Broken!

Have you ever been broken, you felt like you can not go on, there was no reason to walk this walk anymore; you have been so hurt that you believe that no one could truly understand........You are not ALONE!

So many of us have felt this way and we have the scars to prove it.

How many of us cover our scars with any manner of things to disguise the evidence of the once painful times, that sometimes come crashing in?

Most of us do!

Do we realize that we share something so tangible with Jesus Christ; my Savior, My Father.....He was broken, he was bruise, he has scars.....Many of our scars come from our own sinful choices and his did not come from sin only because of a choice. A choice born of out love for us. To provide a path for our hurts to be healed, for us to desire to live in Him, for us to have peace.

Many times we believe that no one can understand what we are going through or have gone through and so we hide; in our own ways we hide.

God is saying to us; "Come"....my child come...I desire broken and contrite vessels. Let me mold you into my image. Taste and see that, the Lord is good.



I have found comfort in this verse and so many others in the scriptures that let me know that I do not have to walk this alone. That Christ is there, asking me to come near.  He is asking the same thing of you. He is offering mercy and grace. I know because I received this from him. I was lost and now I am found. I was broken, shattered, in despair and He gave me peace, joy, redemption.
This too can be yours!

The Cooling Embers

This morning the analogy of a cooling ember was used by Pastor Rob. I love this analogy because I love heat and I love fires.  Growing in the Bahamas, there was not much need to build a fire unless it was for a grill or something like that. But, nothing compares to building a fire in the winter to get warm.

I remember my first time building a fire in our fireplace at home; it was one of the coolest things ever and my husband, and child made it a competition as to who could build the biggest and quickest fire.  We won't say who the winner was... The other fire that brings back memories is a campfire. Our friends Charles and Mary would invite every one over right around October/November and we would have hayrides and the biggest bonfire you could imagine.  We would all have have sticks with hot dogs, marshmallows, you name it.

Our sticks got so hot; but the ones actually sitting in the fire were red hot; they burned with an intensity that was truly evident.  This is just like a new christian or one living close to the source. They burn with an intensity that is truly evident.

The sticks that we pull away from the fire, of course cooled and some burned out or other just had a flicker of the preexisting fire. This is just how it is when we have experience the source, Christ and the power of His word in our lives. But, we stop! We stop reading our Bible, we stop praying, we stop seeking his face, we stop going to church and being with other believers.

Have we lost our salvation? No!...but we have no power.  There is a sphere of influence around you; that God has allowed and those people need the saving grace that you know, but have moved away from. You are the God that they need. Don't let them tell you, "why should I be saved, it has not done anything for you" 

Tomorrow is not promised to any of us...nor the people around us. You, I have a responsibility to burn with an intensity that they desire to know Christ. Today's challenge is to, "Look how far you have fallen from your first love! Turn back to me again and work as you did at first." —Revelation 2:5

Return to the things that bring life to you and to others.

God Bless!