life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “Vulnerability”
I Surrender All
When we pray for God our shepherd to lead us, we usually have green pastures in mind. But when Peter and James healed a paralytic, preached to the crowd, and testified to the authorities who arrested them, they didn’t do this out of their own personal desire; they did it because God led them to. God didn’t exactly lead them beside still waters.
Our lives are richest in blessing, peace and vibrancy when we live not according to our own impulses, but in harmony with God’s grace. Whether it is toward peaceful rest or challenging action, God leads us from within, guiding, nudging, sometimes compelling us, and leads us from without, alluring, beckoning, pleading, needing us. We much prefer going our own way, of course―so we do what we can to ignore God’s shepherding. One way is to believe that God is on our side, so that we don’t feel the need to listen to God. We already know. Another way is to limit our faith to ideas, so that we can “believe” without actually acting. Another escape is to be busy, so that we believe we can’t afford to slow down as much as is needed to listen to God. Many believers are so sure and busy that if God really is a shepherd, they’re atheists.
You will not likely know God’s will for your life by pushing hard. You’re more likely to find out by listening for the voice of your shepherd and following. Whether you feel the need to stand up and act or lie down and rest, let God shepherd you. Let the Spirit within you and in others speak to you. Let God’s “rod and staff” gently lead you. Rather than deciding where you ought to be, discern where your shepherd is, and be there. Renounce all your ideas of where God ought to lead you. Let the shepherd decide. In stillness, listen. In openness, wait to hear. In humble trust, resolve to follow the shepherd before you know where he’s going.
Don’t resist when the shepherd leads you either to pastures greener than you think you deserve or valleys darker than you think you can handle. If you are with your shepherd, you are in the right place. You are in “the house of the Lord.” Listen, trust and follow. And don’t worry about saving the world. That’s God’s job. Neither shrink back in despair nor run ahead on your own; just stay with the shepherd. Just show up and take your place in the flock, where God needs you. Surely goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life.
_____________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Used with permission
We are the body – use all your gifts!!!
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. – I Peter 4:10 NIV
During your times of ‘active waiting’ keep your eyes and heart open for God!!!
The greatest discovery of all time is that a person
can change his future by merely changing his attitude.
– Oprah Winfrey
The many contradictions in our lives – such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts – can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed.
But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.
Henri Nouwen
http://www.henrinouwen.org/
Look for the miracles and the openings!!!
It is what it is
I believe this statement above is true, and when you really get the importance and the impact of that statement it truly changes your mindset about the growth and evolving nature of people and how we change our lives – or not.
I remember when I began to realize this truth – in 1995, I had been struggling with my weight since 1987-88, I had 2 babies in 2 years and was in a very unhappy, abusive relationship. Food was my friend, and the joy of my day. Yet also a source of imprisonment and shame. I would diet/fail and then feel worse about myself than ever. That all changed for me one day. I decided I had enough and I was going to lose that 90 pounds.
This was five years into my life-changing experience with God. I had been reading every self-help idea that I could find, and following the words of Jesus from Matthew 5-7, and, as I look back, this was my first big test of faith and endurance. Could I discipline myself, could I change myself, change the way I thought about food? Could I really change my life so openly and begin to become who I wanted to be?
Six months later I had lost 90 pounds, but that wasn’t all that had changed. I had a new confidence in myself. I had many new ideas about my own strength, my value, my ability to accomplish what I wanted in the face of adversity, and a new concept of change. My faith was stronger and my resolve was more firmly established! I remembered trying before and failing – what made this time different? I was ready. This truth has followed me since, and I have begun to understand myself and others better because of this truth. This is why ‘motivation’ and ‘resolutions’ don’t last. It has to be an embracing of a new way. A readiness to let go of the old in order to go higher and arrive at a new and better place. This usually makes life uncomfortable – sometimes for a long time, and so we have to be ready and willing to make that move.
Some people never do.
It is each persons responsibility to decide how they want to live their lives, and that means their choices and their changes are up to them. When we stand at the end of life and look back, what do we want to have left behind us? What do we want our lives to look like? Who have we crafted ourselves into? Have we settled, or have we prepared ourselves and then embraced the changes to become our highest selves?
That’s my goal! I keep getting preparing myself to be ready to grow in grace, knowledge and love! We must be willing to change – we must be prepared to make choices which reflect our desires!
LOVE this thought…a ‘wow’ poem for us today!!!!
Flesh and Bones
“Look at my hands and my feet;
see that it is I myself.
Touch me and see;
for a ghost does not have flesh and bones
as you see that I have.”
—Luke 24.39
The Roman Imperium by its sword
tried to sever Jesus from his life,
to pry him from his own flesh;
and their minions ever since have sought
to separate the spiritual from the physical
Death, they reasoned, ought to do it well.
How daft of them to think
The One who made all things,
who crafted earth and us from dust,
who fashioned smooth and rugged stones,
and lungs and lips and eyes and hands,
and bones that bear their burdens
with such elegance and grace,
and skin, its mounds and cups and curves
and plains and folds so eloquent,
alluring, and divine—
that the Creating One would by their force
forget pronouncing all things,
in their concrete thingness, good.
They didn’t know the one thing that God wants
is for all love to be made flesh.
So when they robbed poor Jesus of his breath
and blood, the one thing that God gave him, new
and holy, raising him from death, was this:
a body, flawed but breathing, flesh and bone.
Believer, show yourself your hands and side,
your trembling, lusting, spiritual mass,
your creaking, flabby, leaking, blessed flesh.
Look at your hands, that God has made. This is
the glory in which resurrection comes.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
even so…come quickly
For seeing that something always comes
to fill the empty places.
For making spaces,
and not being afraid of
the empty places —
for letting all the moments be
these empty containers
sure of the filling of God.
– Ann Voskamp
http://www.aholyexperience.com/
I have waited a lot over the years, for many different reasons. In 1997 I stepped out in a leap of faith, and my life exploded in ways I certainly never expected and I began a walk of faith that has been quite an incredible journey with God. It certainly was not what I would have picked for myself, yet, I do not question the way. As the song, Heal the Wound says, ‘I have not lived a life that boasts of anything, and I don’t take pride in what I’ve done, But I’ll build an alter with the rubble that you found me in, and every stone will sing of what you can redeem.’
In 2008 I waited on God for 52 days. It was an indescribably difficult time, in so many ways, and it changed me. It took my relationship with God and my faith to a new level. It was a time of learning and trusting God way beyond anything I had ever done before, and it set incredible things in motion over these next years. It took me to places of growth and healing that I did not expect, yet and so grateful for.
As you can probably tell by this blog over the past week or so – I am at another place of waiting, and, as I walk thorough it I am so thankful I have the prior experiences to encourage me as I walk through this time. Yes, patience is a virtue because it’s HARD!!! haha Certainly doesn’t come naturally for me…how about you? I want to make things happen! Shake up the people involved! Get something resolved – RIGHT NOW!!!! And yet I know, if I wait on God, if I am patient, it will be the right resolution, not just an end, or a beginning. Living with faith, having patience, putting life’s tough issues into God’s hands – then not worrying about them, and just waiting for Him is a practice of strength, discipline and courage – it is a choice which adds maturity, peace, joy, abundance, and so many other great benefits to our lives. It also allows us to grow in intimacy with God in ways that are like nothing else we experience.
As I read Ann’s words above, I, too, am sure (and eager) of the filling…and so I wait…
life: acoustic & amplified 