Envy and coveting and suffering

Have you ever, in a place of hardship, looked at another and envied or coveted their lack of trials or good health? It is easy to do, as if this type of coveting somehow belonged in a separate category than the usual ten commandment list of, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, wife, servants, ox, or donkey” (Exodus 20:17). Yet this verse catches us when it continues with “nor anything that is your neighbor’s” which would include your neighbor’s health and trial free life. So yes, coveting your neighbors lack of trials is still a sin that needs to be repented of. But, questions can remain like, “How can God lavish blessings on some and seem to overlook others, giving them hard things in their place?” Or “Why does He heal one person and not another, or give one person success yet another is hampered from reaching that potential due to illness or hardship?”

Whenever we have seemingly unanswered questions, it always helps to go back to what you do know. In Romans 8:28 and 8:31, it states that God is for us and not against us, that He works all things together for good for His children. Why? Because He is good.
Continue reading Envy and Coveting and suffering →

The Doors – Worry

Worry is like being in a room with ten shut doors facing you. These doors represent all the possibilities of what you think might happen in the future about a particular situation that consumes you. Since the future is not yours to know, you don’t actually know which door you will walk through eventually. But there will come a time, soon, when one door will be opened and you will have to walk through it, even a door you hadn’t thought of yet.

In the meantime, the ‘not knowing’ part is very hard. It is consuming you, so you decide to go over to take a peak behind the first door which is labeled ‘Worst case scenario door #1’. You try it and it opens, so you walk through that door and down its virtual path, playing out what could happen if you were to later enter this door. You experience in your mind one ‘what if’ after the other. As you do, you become more anxious and even weep at the sad events and final ending of this path. This traumatizes you so much that you rush back to the waiting room and shut that door. You are shaken. How could this possibly happen to you? Maybe it won’t, because there are still 9 other doors left of possibilities.

You wait. But the waiting is killing you so you creep over to ‘worst case scenario door # 2’, open it and walk down its virtual path. Again you play out all that could happen down this path, with each situation more horrible than the last and in a panic you rush back to the waiting room, slamming the door as you go. By now, your breathing is heavy and you are in a sweat. You are anything but relaxed and at peace. But will you stop there? No. There are now 8 more doors left, all tantalizing you with their possibilities of your supposed future. Will you leave the future to God? No, because He doesn’t seem to be taking an active role in your potential crisis and the ‘not knowing’ part is killing you. So, you again take matters into your own hand and open the rest of the doors, one by one and virtually experience all their ever increasing stories of gloom and destruction. At the end you are exhausted. Because of opening all those doors, you are now an anxiety ridden individual and no more the wiser in knowing what will actually be coming to you.

So, the question that needs to be asked is: ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’

You may reason, “Well, I need to be mentally prepared for any scenario that might happen, so I might as well know my options.” But what good has all this done you? By the time you had reached the tenth door you were thoroughly exhausted and worn out. So how can you fight the real battle if you have already worn yourself out by fighting the imaginary ones?

Consider this. When you walked through those doors, God was not with you, because He only gives grace and strength for real situations, not imaginary ones. By opening each door, you were walking down their virtual path on your own strength and getting beaten up emotionally in the process. None of those paths were real, they were only imagined since the future is not yours to determine but God’s.

The way to solve your dilemma of the future is this. When you are in the waiting room of the present, ask yourself this: “Right here, in this room, has God taken care of me up to this point?” The answer will be ‘yes’. You are ok right now in the present with Him. You’re alive, aren’t you? You’re a child of God with His help, aren’t you? But, you say, “What about those doors? Which one will I go through? I have to know!” Actually, you don’t have to know. You can just rest in knowing that when the future becomes the present, God will open a door and it could even be a new one that you hadn’t counted on. But whatever door He opens, He will then take your hand and walk through that door with you and you will be given all the strength and grace you need to walk that path with Him one step at a time. He promises that. It will be manageable because you will not be alone. For the real paths, He promises: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb.13:5).

But you might ask, “What about planning for the future?” That is true, but there is a big difference between planning and worrying. In planning, you look up to God andask Him what you can do since He sees where you can’t. You present things to Him, and in doing so you shift the burden of what could happen onto His broad shoulders. You then thank Him for taking it, and then you wait for an answer. He will guide you with wisdom in how to prepare, and you will give Him your confidence in return. In all this, you are always looking up, and not down the sideways paths that you were never meant to travel. The one is preparation, the other is worry. You will know the difference by whether you feel peace or anxiety, whether your burden is heavy or light.

Remember, God gives grace for what is real. The present is your sphere of responsibility, and in it you will hold His hand. This makes your responsibility very simple and your burden light. The future is God’s. He has it under control. That heavy burden is on Him.

So the solution to worry is to keep your hands off the door knobs and to look up and rest.

“You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength” (Isaiah 26:3,4).

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;’ and the peace of God. which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6,7).

The Lion Pit

“Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand” (Ephesians 6:10-13).

When temptations are surrounding you it is like you are in a pit of lions that are ready to pounce. If you ignore them and continue to mull on how you got there and how bad things are, the lions will come in and attack and you’ll go down. These lions are the temptations of your mind with the names “Worry”, “Anxiety”, “Envy”, “Anger” or “Bitterness”. These lions want to tear you apart if you let them so you must fight to stop their advance. But thankfully you are not alone. You have a heavenly coach who will teach you to fight and how to use your weapons.

Continue reading In the Lion Pit →

Stand Fast, Take Courage

“I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand I shall not be moved” (Psalm 16:8).

Here is some encouragement to seasoned warriors, for people who have lived long enough in this life to have had their struggles, learned from them, and are still standing to march on. We all have access to God and He wants us to encourage each other, so this is your encouragement to stand fast in the Lord.

Why are big battles difficult? Because we are mortal, the outcome unknown, and because the battle is real and not in theory. In a real battle you are forced to fight because God, the general, is the one who puts you there and asks you to take this ground. And take it you must, even in your imperfect, fallible state.

So how do you approach a battle? Focus. Focus on something bigger stronger and more stable than you are. Focus on the One who says He will go before you and be your rear guard, on the One who gives you your weapons, ‘the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit,’ and who teaches you how to use them to their fullest. Focus on the One who has everything in perfect control and is working it out for much good for His kingdom in ways that even you can’t know. And, focus on the One who, even if you were to get a little bit beat up in the process, will scoop you up in His arms and hold you.

“The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27).

That is our goal for all battles that will come our way –to focus on the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who bought us with the blood of Jesus and is conquering the world for Himself somehow using our trials to do it. It is a privilege and an honor to be so used.

So stand fast. Take Courage.

John 16:33 states the words of our Lord: “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace, In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Swimming in a storm

“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! for my soul trusts in You; And in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by. I will cry out to God Most High to God who performs all things for me” (Ps 57:1, 2).

Trials are hard. Sometimes in a hard trial you can be on top of it emotionally, having given it to God, but then, out of the blue, you get hit with an emotional reaction. This can be frustrating but this is how I see trials in this metaphor on swimming.

Sometimes your trial assigned to you is swimming in an indoor pool doing a mile. It is work, but you learn how to do it and reach the end. Sometimes your trial is swimming a mile in a lake. Hard work again, but you are able to do it by remembering what you had learned in your previous trials in the pool, so that even with difficulty, you finish the mile in the lake. But sometimes, you are asked to swim in an open ocean at night in a storm. This brings swimming up to a whole new level. You now need to remember what you learned both in the pool and in the lake to attempt the ocean successfully. Even though it is still a mile you are swimming, it is a different matter altogether, because in the ocean you are dealing with cold, with darkness, with waves that will batter you, roll over you, and sometimes make you dip under their surface with their strength. But, the amazing thing is, that you keep popping back up to the surface to keep going. Why? Because you have a heavenly coach right with you saying, “stroke, stroke, ‘at a girl, now come back up, good, steady, keep fighting, don’t give up, come back up, now stroke.”

With your heavenly coach, along with the boat crew cheering on the side as you go, you make it. You make it based on the strength of the One who is teaching you to swim in high seas. I like the fact very much that there is such a strong, caring God who loves His mortal, weak children so much that He even puts His hand under their chin when they need it.

Count it all Joy (James 1)

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (James 1:2).

There is an odd connection between joy and trials, even to the point that God is asking us to count it all joy when the trials come. But how can this connection be possible? Trials don’t usually cause the emotion of joy but the opposite. So how can they bring joy?

“knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience”(James 1: 3).

We can have joy because we know that this trial will test our faith and that the result of this testing will be patience. If our faith being tested is so important, then we need to know what faith is, to understand what is being tested.

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Continue reading The connection between trial, joy, faith and patience →

The Diamond

A daughter at birth, is like a diamond in the rough. When you are given this precious gem, you form it and mold it with great care, spending much time and energy to make sure the chips fall in just the right places. Slowly, over time, something emerges that is both beautiful and shining brightly in your hand. As you enjoy the brilliance of your diamond you feel that all the sweat and tears, time and care were worth it. You guard that diamond carefully since it is very precious to you. But as the diamond shines in your hand, others notice it too. And one day a young man is captivated by its beauty and feels he can’t live without it. Then he does a bold thing. He has the audacity to ask you for your diamond even though he did no work to form it to its present glory. But what is even stranger than this, is that you give him your diamond if you deem him a prince among men.
He then takes this precious gift, carries it away and puts it in his crown to shine brightly for all to see. The light reflected from within its depths is cherished and helps him to truly be the prince he was meant to be.