Patience, My Precious

Before the storm

Pss. 47:1  “O clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph.”

Patience, my Precious

We live in a world where we want things and we want them now, our way and it’s the only way, no one is willing to be patient and wait. Oh, they’ll wait for a day or a week or two but that’s it!

We have people who cry out for healing and they want it now, they want a miracle to just poof into existence with no waiting. They don’t want to do anything but sit back, pray and wait for the miracle to enter their lives. Well let me tell you, that is not how it works. 

As anyone can tell you, I am the first person to believe in miracles but even with the conception of a child, you must wait nine months before you see the ‘miracle’ child. Why is childbirth considered a miracle, because not every pregnancy turns into a live birth. Every mother knows the pains that one has to go through before this little miracle comes forth into the world.

So why would any other miracle be any different? What makes you so special that you don’t have to go through pain and suffering? God loves change. He loves it so much he draws us out of our comfort zone and tosses us into a lion’s den, so to speak. He observes, he listens and he hears. I have many non-believer friends who think that is just a cruel God and will not follow or serve anything that doesn’t serve them. People want to be the god of their life. They want to control the good, the bad and the ugly but honestly, I’ve yet to see anyone happy with handling the ugly in life.

Life is hard and people are not willing to have the patience to wait out the storm, they want what they want, when they want it, and they want it now! If my God can’t do that for them, then phooey on my God. If only they could hear how selfish and lonely that sounds.

While I look around and see a nation of give me and wants, I see very few people with the patience of the very people they read and believe in the Bible. Daniel, Ruth, the Hebrews in Egypt, nobody is willing to be THAT patient, believer or not, they want a miracle now!

I am a faithful servant. I’m no different than Job or Moses, Noah or Ruth. Times may have changed, the planet may have changed but God using His servants have not changed one bit. We’re called to endure, we’re asked to be patient, He expects us to be faithful and trust in Him. He wants us to be all He created us to be, His disciplined children.

When I was diagnosed with this disease, it was like I was standing out in left field and instead of catching the ball, it smacked me right in the face! A wake-up call shook me to my knees. Pain, tears, wonder, sorrow, shame the emotions flooded in like the crowd of disgruntled fans as I missed the ball. They were not worried about my face exploding into pieces; the people were too consumed with the loss of the game.

I embrace the diagnosis. While I am not out of the woods yet and still have a long way to go, I choose to be patient and see where it is I’m being led. I am a faithful servant who will cry out to God and ask Him to show me where the path leads. I will patiently wait, in the midst of struggle, the duration of pain, and I will not complain about all I have to endure. I will try and show you how to sail without sails; move forward without a compass, strengthen without food. 

Willpower. Willpower is that force that little David had with him when he went out and fought the giant Goliath. People wonder where this little fella got the strength to fight such a huge beast. Let me tell you, I think I know where he got the strength from, that little thing called faith. Faith in not only one's self but faith in an all-powerful God to be with you and carry you. When you have neither your willpower nor faith, your strength to fight will wane; your patience lost. It is a fact. You have to embrace both.

I am an alien in this world. I am living to die but I am living to obtain an eternal place in the heavens where I am a part of a society where I fit in, belong. 

2 Corinthians 12:9 (NIV) “But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.”

You Can't Force Love

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

You Can’t Force Love

Can you imagine a heavenly Father forcing himself on us and making us love Him? Or trying to guilt us into loving him unconditionally? No, I can’t imagine that either. That is why we have a thing called free-will, we have a CHOICE to love the Lord or not to. We can love Him from afar or have an up close and personal relationship; the choice is ours. 

Relationships, whether earthly or spiritual, work two ways. Let’s say a person gives love but the receiver doesn’t return that love, but expects more and more love from the giver without ever acknowledging the heartfelt sentiment from the giver. Does that sound like love of any kind?

Take for example God. He gives you love, you receive it but never ever thank Him for all the love He has given, then when you’re down that’s the first thing you want is your Heavenly Father. 

Do you have a relationship with God where you do all the giving and He does all the taking? I myself cannot see a God that doesn’t reciprocate the love you give to Him. I can however see mothers and fathers and children with earthly choices choosing to do all the taking without ever an ounce of giving. I can see children growing up in the ‘me generation’ making love all about them without ever giving the love that it takes to get some in return. 

The children today are all about what THEY need, what THEY want and never thinking far enough ahead of what was given to get to this point of wanting and needing. Children today are very selfish and always worrying about their wants and not focusing on Him. It’s a hard realization when we come to terms that life is not about US, it is about Him and the sacrifices we must make to be at peace and have a relationship in a clogged-drain world. Kids today don’t realize the severity of not having Him first and foremost but they’ll learn, one day. 

True stories:
I have a niece born out of wedlock, an illegitimate child. Her mother forced child support, while bio-dad forced visitation rights. A compromise was made and thirty years later all involved has a mutual love-filled relationship; all because of CHOICES made in FORMING the relationship.

I have other nieces born out of love but torn apart by divorce. The choices of the mother and father to have relationships and be involved in their lives make the world of difference between bitter or self-absorbed. 

I have a son, who was born out of love who was torn apart by divorce, never seeing or knowing his dad since he was seven and as an adult now makes the CHOICE in whether he seeks out or has ANY relationship with his father. He chooses not to have one and I won’t FORCE him to do anything different because he’s an adult now. 

Some parents build a fantasy world for their children like telling them Santa exists and will bring you presents only for the kids to grow and realize their parents lied to them. If they lied about Santa, Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy what other lies were told that you, as an unknowing child, bought into? I’ve seen over the years so many kids torn apart by lies and deception only to find out later the truth. I never lied to my son about Santa, he never knew him whereas I tried to FORCE my God and all of MY opinions on him and it backfired. I didn’t lie to him about God, but I tried to FORCE him to love God.

God will never FORCE himself upon you. He gives you truth as a gift and it is up to you to wrap your mind around the giver or let it blow in the breeze like a self-entitled receiver. When we lie to our children by giving them what we think they want to hear, it is going to backfire and hurt the children in the long run and in the end FORCE them into making decisions as the adult they’ve become. We can no longer make decisions for our adult children because they have already formed an opinion. Either from what we forced on them, lied to them, or tried shaping them into.

I always told my son the truth about his father and our relationship and it is now up to him as an adult, to shape whatever if any relationship will be had later in life. The choice is now his, I can’t make it for him. God gives us the CHOICE to have a relationship with Him. My son now knows it is up to him to have a relationship with God and as an adult, he makes his own choices. Mom can’t save him now, only God can do that.

The CHOICE is always yours!

“A perfect relationship is two imperfect people who refused to give up on each other.”

Continued Change

Pss. 55:19 “God shall hear, and afflict them, even he that abideth of old. Selah. Because they have no changes, therefore they fear not God.”

Change…I can smell it in the air.

Ah, the year of change has commenced. I can smell the aroma as it drifts in my window, I can see it pass me by in my words, I can feel it erupting in the core of my being, change the ever fearful stir. 

Some people face change like a thick wall of mud, they can feel the impending surge coming but they’d rather walk through the wet clingy mud and drag their feet along until it hardens on their feet leaving them growing stagnant stuck in nothingness. In other words, they stay the same never embracing change and turn into a rock-solid mudpack.

The moist stench that this unchanging community leaves behind is nothing to be reckoned with. They will spout the darkened soil, cling to the cracks in the road and try to move into a positive sand-filled vicinity but would much rather just linger with their shoes stuck in the mire.

Rom. 1:25 “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.”

This change I sense is not one of my own making. I didn’t set a date and say, this is it, this is the year of change. No, it bubbled down inside of me around September and built itself into a surge that was released by the end of the year. I felt the geyser of emotions inside and knew I had to take a form of action. I’m not one to allow my soul to stagnate because I fear change, I embrace the force that calls me into an active pursuit of positive energy, meaning change is inevitable; cradle and nurture it until something beautiful forms. 

If we cling to the negative energy that is released in the world, and it is there, we cling to a darkness that envelops our soul and never allows streams of change into our being. If we allow the negative influx to win, we are allowing our ego to take the reins and put its own spin of confusion on the table. Our babbling becomes just that, babble that no one wants to hear. Everyone sees the walls of gibberish and passes by quickly so as not to be affected by the negative overtone.

Now, take the reins of change and put them through a whirlwind of a positive nature, then people stand up and take notice, they listen to what you have to say, are delighted by your presence instead of being filled with emotional turbulence. No longer driven by the ego, the world around you takes on a different form. It begins to be satisfied with the change that surged within you and surfaced on the path of honor. You find contentment with the light of each new day because within you is sheltered the glorious light of God. 

Can the world run on light alone? No, there needs to be darkness so we can see the tiny glimmer of hope in the stellar nation that emits light. Can the world run on change? Yes, as long as it is not a forced change and allowed to flow from within, the world could be a beautiful effervescent place. Will it ever be content? No, because people want what they want when THEY want it and there is NO change in that position, stagnant. The earth becomes a gurgling cesspool of mudslides and the people of the earth become mummified. 

Change, it can only happen from within. That is our greatest challenge.

1 Cor. 15:51-52 “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”