What Can I Do For You?

Dan. 10:10 “And, behold, a hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands.”

I asked Him, what can I do for you?

As I teeter on the brink of the beginning of the Lenten season, I asked what I could do for God. As in earlier years when I talk to God, He listens intently then gives me a softly whispered reply. This year his reply was ‘think about it’. What? Think about what? No, He’s not a God of confusion I knew what He meant but like so many other people who pray and want a simple answer, it is what it is, a simple reply.

You see, in years past I sacrificed by giving up meat, or Pepsi, one year I was told to blog for forty-five days straight. Since my illness has me sacrificing basically everything and He knows I’ve been a stoic woman strict in my protocol, God called for something different from me that I wasn’t expecting. Think about it. Now, you’re wondering, what, what did He want you to think about.

Here goes… He wanted me to prayerfully think about everything. Wow, that’s a tall order, you might say. Seriously, to me, it doesn’t seem like a sacrifice at all, and I wanted to do something grand, but there it is, ‘think about it’ plain and simple. 

Now you being on the outside looking into my window, reading my thoughts I put on my screen, you’re now thinking about it. Define ‘it’ if you can. Not so simple is it?

Before I write, I need to think of what I’m going to say. Before I pray I need to think what will be heard. Before I judge I need to think about the truth and if it will do more damage than good. Before I speak, I need to think. You might be saying that this is a quite simple task but not for me, the person still being molded into all He created me to be.

He knows me all too well, He knows I have a tendency to jump to a conclusion without thinking the scenario through and reacting to that too swiftly. Now He’s asking me to think before I act. You might be saying to yourself, “Oh I do that all the time.” Maybe you do but I don’t. Right there is a perfect example, I was going to write, “Yeah but you drink, eat, and fill yourself with toxins…” but I stopped and thought. Wow, He's quick! 

Yeah, it’s not going to be easy for me to think first. Luckily I have two more days to tell you what I really think. I’m kidding. I always speak my mind and sometimes, or so I’ve been told, I can be brutal in my honesty. I need to think before I speak/write and put my words more softly on the page before tapping out my aggravations. I can save my aggravations for my private pages of writing but even then, I will filter my thoughts and think first. You don’t know how challenging this is going to be for me. 

Now many of you might be familiar with the ‘Daniel Fast’, Lent is not the Daniel Fast. Lent is the season of remembrance of the days leading up to the Crucifixion of Christ, forty-five days to be more precise. They are similar in their purpose, to become spiritually closer to God, hunger for Him, physically and mentally in everything we do.

While some of you younger Christians, new to the faith, might misunderstand all of the activity surrounding lent and anything to do with fasting, let me try to explain it, gently. 

Let’s say you’re a new driver, what do you do to prepare for the exam? You study, you study your heart out so you pass, right? No, Christianity is not a test or the preparation for one, get that out of your head right now. New to the faith, you will read and read, and study the bible over and over until you feel comfortable with where you’re driving your life.

God is not a God who wants you comfortable because comfort causes complacency. God is a God of growth, we can only grow if we give new life to the skills we already have. We’ve studied and learned, we’ve passed the test but now we’re comfortable driving, in any kind of weather, we are in the driver seat. There it is, you are NOT in the driver seat. As a weathered Christian, you’ll learn quite quickly that God is always in the driver seat.

With your license in hand, well versed in driving the open roads, you need to learn something new that will enable you to drive on an ice skating rink. This is where fasting comes in; to spiritually grow we need knowledge and to fill up the tank for the long drive. Since we’re smug in our sense of security, if you’ve lived in Florida all of your life and you move to Colorado, you’ll quickly realize there is more to learn with your driving skills. There is always more to learn as a Christian. God does not like conceited Christians.

Fasting humbles the soul. I’m reminded of the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3-12

Blessed are the poor in spirit, 

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Blessed are they who mourn, 

for they shall be comforted. 

Blessed are the meek, 

for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

for they shall be satisfied. 

Blessed are the merciful, 

for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure of heart, 

for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers, 

for they shall be called children of God. 

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, 

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 

Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

The Daniel Fast (Old Testament) is the epitome of the Beatitudes (New Testament). God wants us to draw spiritually closer to Him. He knows we don’t have much time left. He calls each and every one of us to be filled with the Spirit and He also knows the only way for humans to appreciate all that we have is by taking something away, hence the fasting. It brings about a spiritual closeness to God that we may have never comprehended. We allowed our egos to drive our car and control our every step for far too long. Now I’m going to ask you, my friends, to ‘think about it’, plain and simple.

Eph. 6:10 “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.”

Luke 22:43 “And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.”

A Brush with Death

Job 15:30  He shall not depart out of darkness; the flame shall dry up his branches, and by the breath of his mouth shall he go away.

A Brush with Death

I kissed the lips of death

The taste of blood sublime

A doorway opened up to me

I feared my end of time.

Clutching with my fingers

The beating of my heart

Pounding out the echoes

The pain in me to part.

Embrace the taste of death

Like lovers on the grass

Pray for God’s own mercy

As the pain will surely pass.

I look to a second chance

One that I won’t blow

I’ll take the time allotted me

And soon you’ll see me grow.

No more darkened journey

Behold my Light-filled path.

Taking tiny steps by day

No longer filled with wrath.

I heard the angels calling

I kissed the lips of death.

I’ll heed the Word of my Lord

As I take just one last breath.

Job 12:10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.

Lent Day 2 ~ Spiritual Hunger

Luke 6: 21 Blessed are ye that hunger now: for ye shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.

As you know, or have an idea, that this is the Lent season, I deem it my spiritual renewal and I tend to get deep into thought. I hope you can all bear with me and my hope is that you, through reading my journey of renewal, will take a peek in the mirror and instead of condemning yourself, try and look into your mind, your heart, your soul. What you see is the true essence of you.

If you look into your eyes and see yourself as fat and ugly, no good, unworthy, unaccomplished or unappealing then you are full of doubts and fears not truth. You may even put on a false face as you embrace the world but know this, I SEE the real you. Even in your doctored persona I can see right through the veil and see all the negative energy seep through.

Don’t ask me how I see, all I know is that everyone emits an energy; a deeply rooted energy. Like the sun rising and moving across the sky, you might never actually SEE the sun move, but you KNOW it moved from one second to the next because it shows in the warmth of the rising to the setting. Humans emit much of the same energy. And if you are full of a negative energy it shows. You can’t mask energy no matter what you do.

Have you ever awakened in the morning and your stomach started churning inside, grumbling like a madhouse in there? You realize you’re hungry, so you eat; rumbling and churning gone, you then feel satisfied that you’ve eaten. You go about your day when around noon time, there it is again, the rumbling begging for more food.

Your body needs sustenance to keep you going. It feeds the energy inside you. You see where I’m going with this, don’t you? God is a lot like that, He wakes you in the morning, calls to you and you eat food instead of asking Him what He wants. You need to be filled but your not getting the fullness through food and can’t put your finger on those images you saw in the mirror. The ones you saw yourself in the morning? You know, the ones where you looked and saw fat, ugly, unworthy?

You might only know me through WORDS but do you see me as fat, ugly, unworthy? I hope not. I hope you see me as a jovial spirit, filled with love, happy-go-lucky kinda gal.

You probably wish you could smack the happy right off my face, don’t you? Well you can’t, why? Because it is the energy I emit and energy cannot be contained.

You might also assume that I have never experienced lethargy, depression, anxiety, sickness, anger or hunger? Well you have assumed wrong. I have suffered through the pains, been dragged about on limp legs, have cried in pain until I felt all the life in me leap out and go off into the unknown.

But wait, you don’t see that, do you? Well quite honestly it was through the saving Grace of God that I came through EVERY hardship, illness, every bout of depression and all self-doubt. How? I looked in the mirror one day, I looked in my eyes and didn’t see doubt and fear surface; I saw God looking back at me. Would that scare you straight? Seeing God looking right at you, THROUGH you?

I saw Him looking at me as HE sees me and not as I had seen myself. He saw His creation, perfect in His eyes for He makes no mistakes. If I saw ugly, He saw beauty. If I saw doubt, He saw faith. If I saw darkness, He saw Light! His Light and Son shining through me. The closer I looked the more and more I saw the same thing He saw! Great, now the tricky part is to carry that satiated energy throughout the day.

Depression looked bearable. Anxiety looked tolerable, illness looked manageable. The mirror looked less foggy when I saw through His eyes. HE was now the image I saw in the mirror every single day as I woke up. HE was the image I rested on through the night. HE was the strength in the mirror I would carry with me day after day, second by second. HE became the very heartbeat of my soul.

That hunger I felt was not for food after all, it was a Spiritual Hunger that my soul yearned for, craved for, would DIE for. A hunger that only God himself could fill. I am now a spirit-filled image that you see or read and only through the spirit that God gives each and every one of us will we begin to see the Light, the Truth, our Comforter and Holy Spirit in the mirror that we look in every day.

Next time you look in the mirror ask yourself a question, “What am I going to feed myself with today?” I can guarantee you’re spiritually starved and once you start feeding your soul, YOU too will see God in the mirror!

1 Cor. 16: 18 For they have refreshed my spirit and yours: therefore acknowledge ye them that are such

 

 

Poetry Sunday~ Twilight

2 Timothy 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
***

TWILIGHT

I claw my way out of the light
finding myself in the still of the night.
Wolves they howl and wild things stir
leaving my mind an ominous blur.

My nails they sink into the soil
I fight my way through lifeless toil
sweat rolls down my furrowed brow
the timeless flight cinches me now.

Creatures lurk as the abyss is looming
deadened trees have all stopped blooming.
He thirsts to drink my fruitful blood
I paw my way through moistened mud.

The beast is heaving ripe with lust,
cry if I will; die if I must.
Lord and Savior help me please
I lost my way; I’m on my knees.

Upon the hill the light it beckons
The Lord is near within just seconds.
Wrapping me in all His Glory,
I wake amid a fabled story.

Gone from me is all the dark,
the Lord has smoldered the evil spark.
I will never stray from the shade
The Lord my God has an angel made!

***
2 Tim. 2: [1] Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
[2] And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.[3] Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.

Knowledge is Power

2 Samuel 22: 33 God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect.
***

Do you really understand that statement? Knowledge is power? Let’s think for a moment shall we? Without the knowledge that we have as individuals, we could never carry on living day to day with functions and technology. We’d wither for sure.

We begin drinking in knowledge from the day we’re born. Yup, the day you were born and inhaled air for the first time, your mind wondered what all the light was from. From that day on you sought to know the light source; where it came from and why it was here, who created it and so on.

Month after month your thirst for knowledge went from the mini to the macro. And as you grew, you wielded the power that knowledge gave you. What? You don’t wield power? Yeah sure you don’t. Never have? Okay, you’re lying to yourself.

Think back a minute. Remember those days when you were thirsty, you were a newborn with wrinkles the size of a cavern, soft as a cloud yet you, the tiny little rugrat, wielded power! You CRIED! When you cried, your mother gave you milk or food or a pacifier, or whatever else to satisfy you so you wouldn’t cry anymore.

You realized this crying game made you achieve something. You my friend, wielded the POWER like it was a red flag of warning to your mom. You knew that crying was one way to get her to notice YOU! You knew knowledge was power, and that wielding the juicy stuff, got you places.

We did this all of our lives but we’ve gotten more creative. Now when we want something, we ask for it. The older we get, the less we whine for something(most of us whine less, anyway), but still we wield our power, this is great knowledge.

As writers we need this knowledge to propel us forward. I say, you can never gulp down enough knowledge but you have to be willing to understand how you can wield it, or as we get more advanced as humans, we utilize our knowledge. We’re going to put to use all that we have gained.

We’re going to become better writers, we’re going to revise our work, we’re going to be persistent and persevere until we become a published author. Then when we become published authors, we’re going to be energized enough to move forward like a freight train and keep going. Not for the love of money, but for the love of writing and for the fact that we now know...knowledge has given us POWER!