Be Anxious For Nothing***

The Holy One calls to me this morning. He has been my comfort and peace while this life is spiraling out of control.  Where would I be today without my Savior and Lord?  What would I do were it not for the Holy Spirit maintaining my faculties?

The news came fast, hit hard, and left us with a totally different life and perspective.  Funny how everything In this life can change in an hour of "discovery".  We can observe for many years the outside of things and never really know what lies within.

This is why we must pay attention to what each trial and the heat it brings exposes, from deep within our heart.  Unholy attitudes, unaddressed, are to the soul like cancer is to the body: devastating, destructive, virile, and death producing.

As the heat gets turned way up, the Holy One awaits my cry.

I cannot get past the "anxiety", the fear of the unknown, the reality that life has forever changed.  I know full well that I, who am a control freak, have no control.  Not external and not even self-control for this anxiety seems to rule.  My heart is jumping out of my chest, my stomach is in knots.  I just want to run and hide but there is no place to go to get away from this emotional strain.

All around me are the "effects" of my old life and the things that have always brought me familiar comfort are now adding to the anxiety as I realize their value is worthless to me now.

And so I cry out to the One who is always there.  The One who will never leave me nor forsake me.  But my cry is one of shame.  After all these years of knowing Him and truth and dependency, why the anxiety?

The devil say, "If your faith was real you wouldn't feel this anxiety".  Oh the liar, what a low blow.  He brings death and then accuses us of handling it poorly.

Then my Holy Counselor speaks:  "Remember Gethsemane".  Two words that begin to part the dark suffocating clouds of insanity and anxiety.  "Jesus, too, was anxious. He was so anxious, He sweat blood.  He knows!  He knows!"

Just realizing that my beloved Savior, who suffered and died for all of us was anxious as he faced death brings relief to my shame.

The Holy One takes me back to God's Word.  I Peter 4:12, "Dear friends, do not be surprised, at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed". 

There is no human explanation for the Presence of the Holy Spirit and His powerful influence over our lives.  In two words spoken to my heart and mind, He destroyed the grip of the ancient deceiver. The anxiety left.  The rule of Holiness was restored.  I know I can face each new day not in my own strength but in His.

So what does that mean, "be anxious for nothing"?  Phi 4:12 begins, "Rejoice in the Lord always, I say it again rejoice", just like I Peter 4.  Then comes, "Do not be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God."

Truly the only place I can find thanksgiving is in the knowledge that I know I cannot function apart from the Holy Spirit.  I am not thankful that I cannot function, but I am thankful that I know I cannot function without Him manifesting His life in, to, and through me at this moment or season of crisis.  "and THEN the peace that transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus".   A Holy, Heaven peace comes.  Like a Heavenly Peace I.V. hooked to my Spiritual vein.

Faith is real.  Faith is not a Pollyanna denial of earth's reality.  Faith grabs hold of a superior reality:  A loving Heavenly Father, A fierce and powerful Savior, who hates and conquered death and an indescribable indwelling Guardian of my heart and mind who radiates His comfort and peace into every cell of my being.

Anxiety and fear are not to be denied, but they can and are to be overcome.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?

Lighten Your Load

The Holy One calls me this morning.  I admit that life with the Holy One can be difficult as surrender does not come easy to the "Scotts-Irish" genealogy.  I am a flaming redhead at my roots.  While time has turned what can be seen into shades of gray, the hot tempered woman in my heart still throws a blow and speaks angry word at times.

Life with difficult people and outrageous situations that shriek "foul" present a myriad of opportunities to see the Holy One working in my life. In and of myself, I simply cannot forgive what  has been done by and through people under the influence of darkness.  I confess my weakness and the Holy One forgives me. 

It doesn't seem right that I must seek His forgiveness for just reacting to things done to me.  But then, the ways of Holiness are not like my ways.  I am running through all the excuses I have to hold things against others, but none seem good enough, when in His Presence.

So I began the very familiar task of unloading my backpack before Him.  Unforgiveness is a heavy load to carry.  It is truly back breaking and weighs me down on my journey with Jesus.

Matt 11:28, "Come to Me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.  Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.  For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."  These words of my Savior float through my thinking.

Yes Lord, I am here and I do want to walk out lighter than when I came into Your Presence this morning. I start to unload all the things that my unforgiveness has picked up along the road since yesterday.  Some are familiar boulders that I must have overlooked when I last unloaded my satchel.
No wait, they are new offenses by the same people.  They look like the others long since forgiven, but these are new to me today.

As I get to what I think is the end and see the backpack no longer bulging with the load, The Holy One speaks, "It's good you have put down those big issues that others have committed against you, but do you see those little rocks in the corner over there?  These are the issues of omission.  Things you expected that people did not do. You have been wounded by your own expectations when people failed you.  You must forgive those things as well."

I know what the Holy One speaks is true.  Most of my life is interaction with the Body of Christ, with others who claim Jesus as their Savior.  We share life with people we think are on the same page as us.  Then one day a crisis occurs where all our expectations of what others can or should do gets dashed.

I confess, I haven't realized that unforgiveness toward those who have failed to act, can be as heavy a burden as unforgiveness toward those who have acted in despitefully wicked ways against me and those I love.

Today is a day to go back through my backpack of burdens to see the smaller things that need to be unloaded and forgiven.  Now I know that even the small things can add a lot of weight on the journey.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?

Soaking in God's Peace*

The Spirit calls me today.  Last week is a blur of recollections.  Much happened fast and the demand was just to react and sort things out later.  I am thankful to know that  the Holy One was and is in control.  It's at these times of crisis when we see the work of the Holy One in our lives.

Getting past the place where all our best plans go out the window and we are so personally out of control is hard.  But then to find that we are not so unhinged that we fall apart and become useless to the Lord and the world around us, that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit's Presence. 

I am so thankful for all the days of sitting with the Lord, soaking in His Peace. For when the days of crisis hit, that "peace" tells me I will be OK and He will bring me through whatever touches "our" life together.

This morning the Holy One draws me in to ponder the words of Jesus in His teaching on prayer for His disciples and for me.  The Word of God is our plumb line.  It is the standard we must always return to and align our thinking with. 

It is the work of darkness that keeps us in chaos.  The evil one  has a motive behind every untoward circumstance he provides.  Life with the Holy One is the only thing that can break up the chaos and still the confusion.

The Holy One takes me to Luke 11, to remind me about the extravagant promise in the power of prayer.  In this passage, Jesus had finished praying and upon request of one of the Disciples, He began to lay out a lesson on prayer.

From the mouth of our Savior God we receive the vital words that should drive us to seek God in prayer.  He starts by assuring us that the Sovereign God of all creation can be addressed as our "Father".  His name is Holy and He has a kingdom.

The verses in Chapter 11:9-13 give us the assurance of answers and not just any answers, but good answers.  The kind of answers a loving father provides for his child. 

The Lord said for us to "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you, for everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be open."  Then the lesson turns personal.  "Which one of YOU, fathers, if YOUR son asks for a fish would give him a snake instead?" 

Jesus' words come away from the theoretical.  He didn't say, "what father", which might cause us to humanly question what some "other" father might do for some "other" child, not ours.  Jesus brought the message down to one of the deepest personal relationships we have here on earth and nailed the point.  What would we personally do if our personal beloved child asked for something?

He goes on to say that even with an 'evil" nature, we still know how to give good gifts to our children.  So how much more will our loving Heavenly Father who knows no evil give more of what we, His Beloved child, needs?

And then, there is the clincher!  What we need, is the Holy Spirit and He is exactly the "much more" our Heavenly Father will give to those who ask.  This is an amazing truth provided by the Creator to meet the needs of the created.  He will give us His Holy Spirit.

In Provb 4:5-5, we are exhorted to ask for wisdom.  Wisdom is what we need in each and every situation we face on earth.  Wisdom would guide all our choices, decisions and write our  "how to" succeed plan for this earth realm.  Wisdom guides, protects, defends and preserves.
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The Holy Spirit is wisdom.  With Him we have all we need all the time.  No exceptions.  When Jesus walked the earth, He brought the Kingdom of Heaven to this earth.  The Holy Spirit is the unifier between the Savior and the saved.  He is the One who will bring the life of Jesus to bear and manifest to and through our lives. All that we will ever need comes through the life of the Holy Spirit up to and including our ultimate resurrection.  Soaking in His presence will draw up His fruit: Love, Joy Peace, Patience, Goodness, Kindness, Gentleness, Faithfulness and Self-control

Peace is needed today.  Peace is available today.   I John 3:1, "Oh, how great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God"

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?

It is Finished

This is a late post of an earlier conference with Holiness.  As life happens fast and furious, sometimes I get pulled away and side tracked from posting, but His words are important to me and so I share them today, even through late.  This was our conference on Resurrection morning:

The Holy One calls me this morning.  The dark of the night is giving way to the morning of a new day.  It's the day we celebrate as the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  History tells us the tomb is empty.   Eye witnesses tell us He lives.  My heart tells me that all of that is true.

For years I have tracked on the day my Savior was crucified.  In my mind, through the Scriptures, I have placed myself at the Last Supper, in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the trial, and along side of Him as He bore the weight of the Cross, to the place of His crucifixion.  For the 6 hours on that horrific day when the suffering Messiah surrendered His life and His Glory, I have year after year tracked Him, knowing it is my sin and guilt for which He, the sinless One, hung on that Cross.

The graphics of the film, "The Passion" gave an even greater vision of His suffering and instilled in me and even greater sense of guilt and shame for what He suffered.

Today, the Holy One calls me to focus on the Resurrection past the Cross into the place of "New Life".  As I ponder the past "Easters", for all the celebrations, with all the new outfits, and songs sung about a victory over death, my mind remained focused on the Cross.  I haven't been able to shake the guilt for a life that made His suffering necessary.

The Holy One speaks through time and repeats what my Savior said so long ago:

"IT IS FINISHED".  John 19:30.

Then the conversation turns personal.  "Stop living with the guilt of what Jesus was sent to die for."  The Holy One continues to press in and on the message of the Cross. He gently lifts me out  of my own thoughts to gain a new perspective.  "The death that Jesus died was necessary and nothing about your life could or would have changed what had to be done."

His point is well taken.  The agony of the Cross relates back to each one of us and the sin we have inside.  However, and this is the point to be made for Grace and not to relieve any personal accountability, we were born with a "sin nature" and that means it was not our choice.

Our flesh birth carries a death sentence and we on our own simply cannot live up to God's Holy standard necessary to be in right relationship with Him.  All our attempts are futile in and of our best "works" at being good enough.  We need to grasp and understand the mystery and majesty of God's plan.

Jesus came to die for more than that argument we had yesterday, or the indiscretion of 30 years ago.  Jesus came to die for more than the sin of our national leaders or our neighbors that impact our lives and our best intentions.

Jesus had to die to take away the sin of this world of people born after the fall.  Jesus died to give us a chance for a new nature, a new birth as it were.  All of us were born in sin that happened at the original fall.  We cannot undo that original rebellion.  We in our "flesh" have no hope of living a life without violating God's Holiness.

It is this "sin nature" that Jesus came to die to save us from.  Without a Savior, we will stand forever guilty with no way to get free from a corrupted nature.  Without a new birth we will live forever in an old death.

The message to me today is: "move past the guilt of the Cross as if you were ever capable of sparing Christ the suffering.  If you live in guilt for what He paid to free you from, then He suffered and died in vain.  Embrace the Salvation He provided and move on into resurrected life.  Live for Christ now and stop agonizing over the "if only I hadn't done that".

Nothing but the Cross can change our birthright and take us out of the Kingdom of darkness and death and bring us victoriously into the Kingdom of Light and Life.

The reality is, however, that while Jesus came, lived and died to atone for the sin nature that drives all flesh failures we have and do commit against our God, there comes a day when we must make the decision personally give up the old and take on the new.

This is the true message of Passover and our celebration of the Resurrection some call "Easter".  The dead of Winter is giving way to the new life of Spring.  The death of the Savior crucified for the sin of the world, gives way to the Resurrection of His new life within.

The important truth is that not all can experience this New Life.  Only those who willingly pass through the Cross of Jesus and leave their sin nature nailed there with Him can claim His new Life.  Only those who say, "Yes" to Jesus as their  Savior can claim the New Birth He promised as their Lord.  A fresh start, new beginning, born again, resurrection life requires a willing surrender.

I know that The Holy One has a message for all who are reading this post. 

But for me, the Holy One speaks to my heart of hearts, "It is finished, now walk in your freedom".  I rejoice with thanksgiving for what He has spoken to me today.

The Spirit is calling.  Can you hear Him?