God Keeps Leading

Waiting For the Frog to Emerge

As I was praying this morning I felt that something inside my spirit is about to re-emerge, something that has been dormant for a while.  As I was pondering this feeling of anticipation for what God is about to do, I remembered reading about this frog that can survive in a state of torpor for months or even years.

(Picture and article quote below are from http://www.livescience.com/)

"One species of burrowing frogs can survive for years buried in mud without food and water. New research has figured out how the frog and other 'super-sleeper' animals do it.

Many species of animals go through a period of torpor to conserve energy when resources are scarce. The champion in energy-saving mode is the burrowing frog (Cyclorana alboguttata).

A team of scientists at the University of Queensland discovered that the metabolism of these frogs' cells changes radically during the dormancy period allowing maximized use of limited energy resources without ever running on empty."

I had previously been thinking that the "desert" time I have gone through for the last 5 years or so had left me feeling extremely dry and nearly empty.  I decided to look up the frog to read about it again, and as I read I was encouraged.  I realized I had been listening to a lie, and now I felt like God was saying, "Look back at all that you have walked through in these last 5 years.  Look at what I have accomplished in and through you. Though you felt like you were in a dry and bleak place, I put you there and I was there with you.  I protected you and provided for you by how I created you, like that frog, giving you energy to get you through that time so you could re-emerge still very full of life."

I am excited to see the plans God has for me in the coming season of life.  I do see that his presence has certainly not been withdrawn, but that he has walked by my side every day.  I know I have grown in so many ways these last 5 years - that my cells have been forever altered by my time in seminary, and that I do not need to fear running out of energy, for he will continue to sustain me.

Nehemiah 9:20-21: "You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen."

Psalm 130

Here is a song for your enjoyment.

I am a PREPARE/ENRICH certified Facilitator

What is this thing called PREPARE/ENRICH?  It is premarital and marital counseling materials.  Watch this video to learn more...

Wandering....

I was just reading through some of my older blog posts.  On June 10, 2009 I wrote, "And - I was just recalling how fairly recently I felt like there was 'an exodus' coming. (I think I even declared so on facebook.) Not really sure what it meant, but I was very excited about it. I thought at the time it might mean an exodus from my dry 'desert' time, but now I'm thinking maybe it wasn't an exodus from the desert, but rather from Egypt into the desert. If I spend 40 years here I will truly die."  All I have to say today is... 4 years down, 36 to go.

Patience

I am, once again, being taught lessons on patience, contentment, trust, and peace.  God uses little things, such as a job search, to impart more of his character in my life.  All I can do is fold my hands and wait patiently.  This is also what I do when I'm waiting to be called in to an interview - I sit with my hands folded and breath.  I pay attention to my breathing, I let go of tension, and I sit patiently.

This has been an intense and emotionally draining time, but it has also been an exhilarating and life-giving time for me.  I am learning more about myself as I work to listen quietly to that still small voice that speaks peace and patience to me.  And I sit, and I fold my hands, and I rest in who I know God is and how I know has a plan for me.  After all, it is all in his hands, not mine.

I'm trying to make sense of it

Someone posted this picture on a social site to show what rained down on them during a church service.  People were responding with how they wanted some of that too.  One person said she had gold dust on her all night but wished she could have a pretty purple gem to go with that gold dust.

Okay....
Here is my question: Did anyone take those gems and sell them so they could feed the poor?

I'm sorry if that was judgmental, I just don't get it.  I never will.  What is the fruit of that?  Just joy for joy's sake?  I am truly attempting to understand.  I am not posting this to make negative comments about any persons.  Please forgive me if I have offended anyone.

Knowing the Divine

Sounds weird, but, I miss worshiping, truly worshiping, with my whole self - body, mind, and spirit.  How can I go on like this?  How long Lord?  I may shrivel up soon.  God help me please. Wash over me as I stand in the river and wait.

On the Precipice

It's been about 9 months since I have posted. I just changed my background from a Christmas theme. This reveals some things about me: I have not felt I have had any important thoughts to post, I have had other priorities, I have been wasting my time on FB, and I have had to work on allowing myself to feel again. Yep, it's true. I have been numb for quite a while now, until anxiety overwhelmed me and that was all I could feel. This has been dealt with. After some psychotherapy and some drug therapy I am doing much better. I am learning to feel again. It's been good, but it's certainly not over.

This numbness does not just affect me emotionally. I do not feel that people can separate their emotions, thoughts, spirit, and physical selves. One part affects the other. We are complex beings. When I started therapy I realized, or admitted to myself, that I was perhaps mad at God for a few things. This realization came with anger, pain, and sorrow. It was a first step to recovery of feeling. I think admitting my feelings, rather than hiding them, was freeing. I was holding something back from God. Letting God take my pain was weightlifting for me.

These days I am learning to be aware of the Divine again. I am looking for moments to be used by God, to bless others, to be impressed by the majesty of creation, to feel joy at a sunrise and pain over loss. I feel like I am just skimming the surface of the deep that is the sacred and divine. I want to dive deep into the ocean of the Holy and rise up as one who has been baptized a new creation once again.

Lord, breath your life in me and fill me again and again.

A quote to ponder

Came across an interesting quote today:
"Christians love to correct other people. But an appropriate prophetic attitude for a renewed and faithful church will begin with the recognition that we can only effectively challenge others to follow the way of Christ if we are continually hearing God's voice for ourselves, and allowing our own understandings to be changed in the process. We have something to share with others not because we are different, but because we are no different, and we can become credible witnesses not as we condemn others and dismiss what we regard as their inadequate spiritualities, but as we constantly listen to the gospel and appropriate its challenges in our own lives." - John Drane

I'm a growing tree...

Howdy friends. It has certainly been a while. I haven't felt like I have had anything to blog about for some reason even though I have gone through a lot of changes in these past few months. Life is such a process...

As most of you probably know, I am now a grad student attending MB Biblical Seminary here in Fresno. I am so so happy to be there. I am learning so much already. If you want to know what has really hit home for me pick up Dissident Discipeship by David Augsberger and read at least the intro and first chapter. If you are not drawn in and wanting to continue reading then we are in two different places. (Which is OK.) For me, reading this has been an "A-ha!" experience. I have known that I have held to some beliefs, but didn't really know why, or wasn't able to express it all, but Augsberger really put my beliefs to words I guess. I'm not done with it, but I am really enjoying it so far. I am gaining an understanding of myself, which is truly great.

This last weekend was the Seminary's Fall retreat. We went up to Camp Keola and it was a wonderful time. Almost the whole family went. (Kanada went with the youth group on their retreat to Morro Bay.) It was so nice to be in the mountains and so nice to build relationships with fellow students. Sunday morning service was AMAZING for me. I could feel the Spirit so sweetly and I was a little overwhelmed. I couldn't see a box of tissue anywhere so I held back my emotion a little, but it was alright. We were in the presence of the Divine as a community and took part in the Eucharist and it was a beautiful time. It filled my cup.

I will try to blog more often. I think I have been getting my feelings out in little snippets on Facebook and so haven't known what else to say here. Oh well. I'm still alive and kicking if you were wondering.

Fuzzy Discourse

My mind is a blur. I feel like God is trying to communicate with me but there's a layer of static enveloping the message and fuzzing it up. Can you hear it too? Like a record that has reached the end, but keeps spinning and hissing "sssshhhhhhhhsshhhhhshh..."

Here's what I know - very little. OK, but here's what I have - Chris and I have been going through some old boxes of papers and "stuff" that have been cluttering the garage forever. Chris came across two envelopes. One had my name written in my handwriting, one had his name in his handwriting, both with cards inside. Inside my card I had written simply "Isaiah 42." Inside Chris's he had written "Isaiah 42:1-4." Neither of us recall when the heck we wrote this down and sealed it up, nor why we did it, but there we found it years later. So I looked it up. Then as I read, I recalled how I had gotten this passage once upon a time and really felt like God was trying to tell me something through it back then. Even at that time when I first received it, it was unclear just what the message was, though I had some thoughts on it. Now I read it again as this vague sense of déjà vu came over me.
Anyone want to read it and tell me their thoughts?

And - I was just recalling how fairly recently I felt like there was "an exodus" coming. (I think I even declared so on facebook.) Not really sure what it meant, but I was very excited about it. I thought at the time it might mean an exodus from my dry "dessert" time, but now I'm thinking maybe it wasn't an exodus from the dessert, but rather from Egypt into the dessert. If I spend 40 years here I will truly die.
If that's where I am though, I do think I'm getting my daily manna. So... perhaps I overreacted and I won't die after all.
I'm ready for the roller coaster to stop.

Logic Is Loud

God was talking to me about faith this morning. I think my faith is in question. Not the big picture faith that saves me from hell, but the day-to-day faith that allows me to step out and risk while I'm here on earth. I have no doubt that God has a plan, that God is in control, that I will not find myself and my family begging on the street. But do I have the faith that would allow me to move to a new city with no real job or even just a part-time job if I knew that God had plans for me and my family there? I'd like to think so. I'm quick to say, "Yes! I'll do whatever you tell me." But am I allowing myself to hear an out-of-the-box request (if it existed)? I don't know.

But man, logic is loud, you know? It can really get in the way sometimes I think. It tells me that God would give me a clear view of how our bills will be paid if we were to be told to go somewhere. Logic says I can't move my family across the U.S., or even across California, unless we have either one full-time or two part-time jobs lined up first. (Am I lacking faith?) We pass up applying for some awesome sounding jobs because they don't pay nearly enough for us to survive in the city they are located in (like a part-time job in Burbank that pays a max of $12,000). And pastors have passed us up for the same reason (at least that's what they say), because they can't afford to pay us enough because we have a large-ish family, so they just say sorry, without even attempting to see if there is another way. I've been telling myself that God will work it out. If the ability to pay bills is not apparent, then it must not be God's will for us. But, HELLO! The ability to pay our bills is not apparent here in Fresno right now either. So what does that mean? It's not God's will for us to stay here either?

I'm so weary. This search for our "path" is so tiring. At what point do we just get jobs at McDonalds or wherever will hire us?

We are hanging on to a thread of hope still. Not the hope in the big picture. We have a firm grasp on that hope. I mean the hope that the path will just appear before us, that the perfect plan will be revealed, and that it won't involve taking "a" job, but rather "the" job that was meant for us. Is it OK to keep hoping for that?

So, faith is being sure of what we hope for, but isn't that really talking about the big picture hope, rather than the day-to-day hope? I don't know... I think faith is required to be sure of both kinds of hope.

At this moment I feel sure of very little...
(Thanks for letting me ramble.)

What's withering away?

Some of the house plants are dying. They are in the living room where we spend most of our time. One sits about 3 or 4 feet from the stupid TV that gets stared at a lot. Yet, there it sits dying. It hasn't been tended to as it should have. It didn't get watered many times. I wonder how many other things in my life are dying due to neglect, even though they are right under my nose...

Christ's Body

In his blog, John Mark McMillan was saying:

"Why do church people focus so much on the cross when Jesus' death was actually powerless without the resurrection? (at least that's what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:13)

If Christians taught more on resurrection than death, would Christianity be more interesting? Or maybe Christians might be more interesting people? Would I be more interesting?

Do we focus more on death because we don't really understand resurrection?

What if I focused on living resurrection instead of mostly talking about it and singing about it?

What if I don't have to wait until I die to be resurrected but my body, which dies a little everyday, could be resurrected every day?"

And I've been reading Rob Bell's book Jesus Wants to Save Christians. In it he talks about the church actually being the Eucharist. I've been pondering this all as I look at various churches and their websites and what they are about. Some churches practice the Eucharist every week. Some do not mention it at all.
This is all very interesting to me.

Does practicing the Eucharist keep our focus on Jesus' death and our sin? Or does it point to the life we can live as the resurrected?

I do think that practicing the Eucharist every week does build community ties if it's done in a manner that would cause us to be in contact with each other. I mean breaking bread and drinking wine/juice across the table from someone really brings it to "Jesus did this for US" rather than "Jesus died for ME." I think how you execute communion is key. But I don't really know. I'm just thinking it through.

I would like a season of having it every week I think.
But John Mark was right, we focus too much on the death rather than living the resurrected life every day, living like Jesus no matter what.

I don't know. I've been sitting on this for days, but my thoughts still aren't fully formed. I'm kind of living in a daze right now.

Anyone else have any profound, or otherwise, thoughts on this?

School Daze

So I realize I haven't blogged in a while. I've been wrapped up in so much, and I sit down to post something, but end up staring at the screen for 5 minutes trying to think of something profound. It doesn't happen and I close the screen once more. Well, I still don't have anything profound.

I just counted it up and I only have 27 more days that I have classes to attend before I graduate. It still sounds like a lot to me. I hope I can get through without dropping the ball. I'm feeling pretty weary right now. One day at a time, though. One day at a time. I have 2 big tests next week, one with a take-home essay. I'm not looking forward to that. Actually my statistics class doesn't bother me nearly as much as my Art History class. What's wrong with that picture? I'm really not into being tested on Pre-Columbian Andean Art. I just don't give a rip right now. I have so much to memorize before next Thursday, and I have taken every excuse to not study. Aah. I just need to squeak by. I don't need the class to graduate. It's just "for fun." So much for that.
Apparently I'm in a whiny mood. Sorry.

I'll be fine. No worries. I just had to complain a little. Now I can buck up, and hop to, and make it happen. I'd be a little disappointed if I didn't continue my straight A streak I've had for the last 7 semesters, but it wouldn't kill me. :-)

Coffee. Lots of coffee...

An Existential Meltdown

I grew up with the notion that God and his angels started off all happy up in heaven, and then one day one angel decided he was as good as God and ruined everything. He chose to go against God and evil was born. He was banished to hell, along with anyone who followed him. From then on there were the Trinity and the good angels in heaven, and Lucifer became "the devil," or Satan, and had all his fallen angels, also known as demons, with him in hell.

Hmm. I'm thinking that's not really how it all went down, but the more I study the more confused I get.

It seems that the name "Lucifer" is the Latin translation of "Morning Star" or "Day star" referenced in Isaiah 14:12 which is a taunt directed to the king of Babylon. (Read Isaiah 14.)

But then this same term is used in 2 Peter 1:19: "And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."

And again in Revelation 22:16 : "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star."

So Jesus claims to be the Morning Star, which in Latin is Lucifer? That's confusing.

Also, I always blamed evil on Satan (Lucifer). He was the one who became evil and now taunts humans and causes all kinds of evil in the world, right? But John 1:1-3 says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.
Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."

So, nothing that has ever been made was made apart from God, including sin and evil?
Maybe someone who has more knowledge can shed more light on this for me.

And what about Beelzebub (aka Ba'al Zebûb, Lord of Things That Fly, Lord of the Flies), the deity that was being worshiped and was called "the prince of demons" by the Pharisees in Matthew 12:24: "But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, "It is only by Beelzebub, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons."

Why do we assume these are all the same-- the serpant, Satan, the Morning Star or Day Star or Lucifer, Beelzebub?

I know so little. Maybe none of it matters. Maybe it matters a lot. I don't know. But can I blame the origins of evil on "the enemy" or was it just God's plan all along that it would exist? I'm not sure. But it does exist. I believe that God is the victor and in Him I will be too. I believe that God loves us all very much and we are to love like Him. But it's all very confusing to me right now...

Lent

Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.

-Joel 2:12-13

Today is Ash Wednesday and marks the beginning of the Lent season, the 40 days leading up to Easter. What will I give up? And why? I believe it's good to set apart times to do something different and refocus. I want to observe Lent, not out of ritual, but as a true sacrifice from my heart. I want to rend my heart and return to the Lord my God once again.

I'm still praying about what to give up. I'm a little late this time, but I'll figure it out before the day is over. Do you observe Lent? Why? If you do, what are you giving up this season?

Burnin' Down The House

I have been chipping away slowly at this book New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton. I only get to read a paragraph or two at a time, but believe me, there's a lot to chew on in each paragraph. So I was reading along and all of a sudden I felt like he had read my mail. He described exactly what I have been going through. It's been a time of questioning all, reworking in my mind, finding new understanding, or finding that I lack the understanding I thought I had. I told Chris just the other day, "The more I learn, the less I find I know."

I totally connected with Merton's words. Read this paragraph:
Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial "doubt." This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious "faith" of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false "faith" which is what we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our "religion" is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas. Hence is it clear that genuine contemplation is incompatible with complacency and with smug acceptance of prejudiced opinions. It is not mere passive acquiescence in the status quo, as some would like to believe--for this would reduce it to the level of spiritual anesthesia. Contemplation is no pain-killer. What a holocaust takes place in this steady burning to ashes of old worn-out words, clichés, slogans, rationalizations! The worst of it is that even apparently holy conceptions are consumed with all the rest. It is a terrible breaking and burning of idols, a purification of the sanctuary, so that no graven thing may occupy the place that God has commanded to be left empty: the center, the existential altar which simply "is."

Wow. What else can I say.

Interesting Quiz For You

I came across this quiz (click on that) and thought it was kind of interesting. It's 20 questions about faith and then they tell you who your answers line up with. Take it and share your results with me, then I'll post mine...